In This Rain (19 page)

“Ah,” said Walter. “Yes. Well, what did you tell him?”

“I said I’d look at it.”

“According to Westermann, you said it would be a cold day in hell.”

“Actually, that phrase came up in the meeting, but that wasn’t the context. But I have to tell you, Walter, this complicates things.”

“How so?”

“It’s not a bad package. I read the prospectus. None of them have any experience with anything this big, but otherwise it looks pretty good. I don’t think they’d be the best choice to develop the site, but it’s not impossible that if they tried, they’d succeed.”

“Oh, Charlie, please.”

“It’s not just Corrington. It’s also Ray Holdsclaw, some other church people, other nonprofits. A construction company. A couple of banks. Maybe not the best choice, but they’d be a hell of a popular one.”

Louise tapped her watch. Charlie stood up and headed with her to the door.

“Charlie?” came Walter’s calm voice. “You wouldn’t be considering

renegotiating?”

Charlie took Louise’s hand as they walked down the carpeted hallway. “No, I’m not. But I can’t say I like your tone, Walter.”

“Well, I’m very sorry about that. I suppose I’m distressed at any suggestion that our friendship might not be as close as I thought.”

“Oh, cut the crap. The real problem is, if we’re not careful we could both find ourselves in positions we’re not going to enjoy. One, no, we hadn’t planned on Corrington and his crowd making a play for the site, but two— ”

“We should have seen it coming.”

“Let me finish! Two is the mess you made up at Mott Haven.”

“I? I didn’t— ”

“One way or another, you did, and everything I said last night goes double now. Six people got hurt and a woman died. You’d better be able to stand up to scrutiny, because you’re sure as hell going to get scrutinized.”

Walter chuckled, surprising the mayor. “I suppose that’s better than screwed. But Charlie, did I really have to hear about Corrington’s consortium on the evening news?”

“Goddammit, Walter, I tried to tell you but you ducked my calls twice today! What the hell did you think I was calling about?”

“Charlie, I had no idea. I was

otherwise engaged.”

“I don’t give a shit what you were doing. I expect you to talk to me when I call you.”

“I don’t work for you, Mr. Mayor.”

“And I don’t work for you!”

A pause. “Good, now that’s out of the way. There’s really no need for this level of rancor, you know. Tell me, are you embarking upon a pleasant evening?”

Charlie and Louise stopped at the private elevator. Charlie couldn’t ask her to walk down the grand stair in heels like those. In answer to Walter, he sighed. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. In my case, quite the opposite. Carmen,” Walter said.

“From Brogan’s?”

“Indeed.”

“Walter, she’s half your age.”

“Nearly two-thirds, Charlie. And impressively pneumatic.”

“Where’s Helene?”

“In Southampton for the season. Probably enjoying the company of the pool boy even as we speak. Do you at least have the delectable Louise by your side?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then your evening should be bearable. For myself, I shall put all this unpleasantness out of my head, lavish caviar and affection on Carmen, and worry about the Bronx, Harlem, and other unsavory places when the new day dawns. Good night, Charlie.”

The elevator doors glided open. Charlie thumbed his phone off and waited for Louise to go first. “He’s getting on my nerves,” he said.

“That’s okay, honey, but you can’t let it show.”

“Who the hell does he think he is? If he were going out of his way to piss me off on purpose these days, he couldn’t do a much better job of it.”

“Sweetie, calm down.”

“I thought that was part of my charm. How I wear my emotions on my sleeve.”

“It’s only charming when it’s the good ones.”

“Really? Like how crazy I am about every inch of you?”

“Yes, that’s very appealing. What did Walter want?”

“To piss me off.”

“That’s more likely a by-product. Why did he call?”

“If I tell you will you kiss me?”

She smiled. “Maybe.”

Charlie ran down Walter’s complaint for Louise. By the time he was done, his leather soles and her stilettos were clicking down the first floor’s marble hall. “He’s getting too damn big for his britches,” Charlie said. “And he’s got this personal feud going with Ford Corrington that I sure as hell don’t want to be in the middle of.”

“Over the memorial? Still?”

“Over a lot of things. Walter feels dissed.”

“By a black man.”

“That’s part of it, yes.”

“Is it a big deal to Corrington, too?”

“I doubt it. I don’t think Walter looms nearly as large in Corrington’s mind as he does in his own. Besides, Corrington’s the one who won. Damn! Who does he think he is?”

“Corrington? No, you mean Walter, don’t you?”

“I don’t like it that he thinks he can not take my calls, and I don’t like the way he refers to Block A as ‘my site.’ ”

“Well, it is. You promised it to him.”

“No. I promised him I’d do everything I could to throw it his way, but he had to provide me with ammunition by how he handled Mott Haven. What’s happening over there isn’t ammunition, it’s a goddamn land mine.” He pulled her into an alcove just before the rotunda. “Now kiss me.”

“Didn’t you have calls to make? Before Walter called?”

“Corrington. And Edgar. To put my unhappiness about Edgar’s press conference on record.”

“Do you think Ford Corrington had anything to do with that?”

“I bet he was as blindsided as we were. But he must have been the one who told Edgar about our meeting. He should know better than that.”

“So go ahead and call.”

“No hurry. Their offices will be closed. It’s just pro forma. Kiss me first.” Louise cocked her head, made a show of weighing the pros and cons. “Why not?” Their kiss didn’t last long, just long enough to make Charlie wish B’nai Barak were way out in Bay Ridge instead of in Boerum Hill. Or even better, in Kankakee.

“Now you have lipstick all over your face,” Louise said. She took out her mirror and checked her own damage. “Why call Edgar’s office? Don’t you have his cell number?”

“I don’t want him to think I give that much of a damn.” Charlie wiped his mouth and stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket. They walked through the rotunda, Louise smiling at the guard who held the door.

Heart’s Content

Joe Cole didn’t watch the six o’clock news, or the eleven o’clock news, or listen to the radio, either. Never, ever, in prison, had he found quiet, except in the stolen moments when, far enough from the rest of the grounds crew that their talk was inaudible, he paused in his work, silenced his shears or his shovel to hear, however briefly, nothing. Now, after a day of rumbling traffic overlaid with frantic DJs and numbing Top 40 beats belting from the asphalt truck, after the trash talk and joshing necessary to keep the social wheels greased on a four-man road crew, after a supper of fried chicken and Frank Sinatra in the diner up the road, he sat drinking beer in the silence of the cabin.

He let his ears react to the quiet the way his eyes did to the darkness. He heard the patient sawing of cicadas, and the busy rushing creek. A bird, startled from a nest, squawked into the air and complained. Stars sprinkled the black sky behind blacker trees. When the moon rose behind the house, its cracked reflection rippled in the windows of the shed. All these pieces amounted to nothing: no multi-strand melody, no woven tapestry. Just pieces, scattered over time. The last few years had taught Joe the laughable futility of searching for patterns, for help in predicting what was coming by studying what was. The biggest joke of all, he thought, was how he kept looking.

He was half asleep when the phone’s ring ripped the emptiness. Joe stumbled to the counter and croaked a hoarse “Hello?” He pulled the light chain, blinded by the sudden brightness.

“It’s me,” said Ann. “Did I wake you?”

“Jesus Christ!” he said, and after a pause, “It’s the middle of the night.” And wondered why, now that he knew it was only Ann, his pulse still sped.

“I’m sorry. Were you asleep?”

“No.”

“Were you thinking about my photos?”

“I— that’s why you’re calling me at midnight? About your photos?”

“No. Joe, I found it.”

“Found what?”

“The other site.”

“What other site?”

“I told you about that. Why Three Star’s doing Mott Haven in the first place. To get their hands on another site. Where they could make some serious profit.”

“Three Star? Ann, I don’t— ”

“Both sites are city owned,” she pressed on. “Walter must have some secret deal with the mayor.”

Joe opened the fridge to get a new beer, clicked the light off, and returned to the chair, phone in hand. “So what?”

“What do you— ”

“So Glybenhall has a deal with the mayor. You call that news?”

“Of course not. But this could explain what’s going on.”

“What’s going on?”

“The accidents. The sabotage, that you found.”

“I might have found. In one case.”

“You said you were sure. Are you backing down?”

Joe thought about the bolt holes in the scaffolding, smooth as the day they were made, perfect ovals blithely unaffected by violent catastrophe. He shook his head, though she couldn’t see that. “No.”

“Joe, listen to me. It’s a site in Harlem. Huge. The city calls it Block A. There’s a consortium of local groups that wants it, too.”

“Who says?”

“Edgar Westermann. He held a press conference this afternoon. I just caught it on the news. It was like he was handing me the answer on a platter.”

“Westermann? You believe— ”

“However much baloney this was, the kernel’s there. Westermann was in righteous indignation mode. ‘The city’s selling our homes to the highest bidder! They’re putting our community and our people on the auction block!’ ”

“He called Charlie Barr a slave trader?”

“He came close. Apparently this consortium met with Hizzoner and got blown off. The city already has plans for Block A. It was in the Times months ago, labeled as ‘proposed,’ but Westermann thinks the site’s signed, sealed, and delivered.”

“To Glybenhall? Did he say that?”

“No. But— ”

“Then how do you know?”

“I don’t. But it’s got to be. This is exactly the kind of thing that would make Walter drool.”

“Or any other developer.”

“Oh, but Joe! Glybenhall and Sonny O’Doul? It’s like Christmas.”

“So Glybenhall has a dirty deal with the mayor. What’s that got to do with what you’re looking at? Accidents, a fire, a woman killed— I can’t see how that helps anyone out.”

Ann paused. “Well, first of all, if Walter and Charlie do have a deal, there’s a possibility of corruption right there.”

“You’re going to investigate the mayor?”

“If I have to. Besides, I’ve started to look at Walter’s finances. I was right. As usual, his pockets aren’t nearly as deep as they seem. And he’s overinsured. These accidents generated a nice little cash flow for him.”

“What are you saying? He’s behind them himself?”

“I’m saying something smells, and Walter’s never been innocent. I’m going to get him, Joe.”

“So get him.”

“I will,” she said. “I will. I just wanted to

” Her voice trailed off. Joe stared through the glass to his dark garden; he should have spent the extra hour this evening, planting the dicentra whose white blooms he could see, waiting for him.

“Joe?”

“I’m still here.”

“What were you doing when I called?”

Sleeping. Drinking. Painting the porch. I wasn’t here. He finished his beer. “I was thinking about your photos.”

Sutton Place

“My photos? You were?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yes, but I— ”

“The roof tarp. The bricks.”

Ann caught her breath. “This could be major, Joe. This is the one. If you found something.”

“What you gave me,” he said neutrally, as though this were merely a business discussion, something he was in a hurry to get out of the way; though when they’d worked together he’d never used that tone. “I did some calculations, in my head. Area covered, height, likely wind speed. There’s a formula.”

“For holding a tarp down?”

“Tarp, canvas, whatever. It’s in knots and pounds, but you can translate it into miles per hour and bricks. Bricks weigh about three pounds each,” he added. She didn’t need to know that, but that was Joe, the old Joe, showing her the tools he’d used.

“Okay,” she said, trying to make this sound normal, just the two of them going over a case. “And

?”

“Looking at the roof area, the bricks left on the roof, the bricks on the ground. The site hadn’t been tampered with?”

“In what way?”

“Bricks removed before the photographer got there?”

“Unlikely.”

“Then there weren’t enough.”

“To hold the tarp?”

“Not nearly. Looks like a lot, but when you count them up, it’s no more than half the bricks you’d need.”

“Well, but couldn’t that just be a mistake? They’d used the bricks from those pallets and hadn’t brought up more?”

“If the site super went to the trouble of hoisting pallets onto the roof to hold down a tarp, it would’ve occurred to him to check his weight when a storm was due.” Joe paused, that familiar pause. Ann knew better than to speak through it. “Sonny O’Doul’s a lot of things,” Joe finally said. “But he’s not an idiot.”

“Would O’Doul know it?” Ann asked. “The formula?”

“The formula, probably not. But he wouldn’t need it. I didn’t either, not really, but I ran it because I’m an engineer. But if I were up on that roof I could tell by eyeballing it. So could Sonny.”

“What about the bricklayers?”

“What about them?”

“Wouldn’t they have known there were too few bricks on the roof?”

“Not their job. They put in the bricks they need, wash up, and go home. The roof’s not their problem. If they start sticking their noses in another trade’s work, they’ll only get told to butt out, anyway. If one was particularly bothered he might have mentioned it, but that’s it.”