The Concrete Pearl (21 page)

Spain’s head was now cocked over his opposite shoulder.

“They’ve been known to run some errands for Tess,” he admitted. “And for me.”

“Now I understand how you and I are going to help one another,” I said. “So what kind of information are we here to discover tonight?”

He took a quick drink, set his beer back down. He was about to say something when a waitress approached the table, pad and pencil in hand. But before we said a word, she grew a wide smile.

“Uncle Damien,” she said, reaching in, giving the black-clad PI a smack on the cheek. Her voice had an odd quality to it. She couldn’t exactly pronounce her words correctly. But when I noticed the smallish hearing aids in both her ears, I knew that she lived with a serious hearing impairment.

He held the small, attractive, dark-haired young lady tightly.

“Hello my beautiful girl,” he said. Then, turning his attention to me. “This is my friend, Spike. We’re working on something together.” When he spoke, he looked directly in her face so she could see his lips.

She looked at me, gave me an up and down glare with her eyes, obviously sizing me up.

“How do you do?” I said, my eyes locked on hers.

Spain ordered for us both. Two strip steaks medium rare, baked potatoes on the side, oil and vinegar on the house salads. With a nod and a bright smile, his niece turned and took off with our orders. I filled the silence by asking him if the waitress was really his niece. “In spirit only,” or so he told me. Then I asked him what was on his mind that we needed a nice quiet table in order to discuss it. He sat back in the booth, the fingers on his right hand tap-tapping his beer bottle.

“I can be certain Farrell’s been cheating on asbestos removal for a number of years which means he’s good at it,” he said. “So why get caught now?”

“Why not now?” I said.

“My investigation tells me that the PS 20 scenario has likely been played out a dozen times before in a dozen different towns across the state. But for some reason, this time it not only blows up into a major scandal, Farrell, the man ultimately responsible, goes missing. And we got two gorillas threatening to kick our respective asses if we keep snooping around.”

I drank down the rest of my beer.

Spain drank the rest of his.

“Where’s this going?” I said.

“I’ve been wondering about Diana Stewart,” he said.

“She used to work for me,” I said. “For my dad, really.”

“Don’t you think she’s found reason to come down on Farrell in the past for faulty asbestos removal practices? Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I can tell, this is the first time she’s actually ordered the red-flagging of a Farrell jobsite. At the same time, she’s making a spectacle of it, calling PS 20 contaminated with asbestos, a cancer factory, unsuitable for human habitation.”

“She didn’t exactly say all that.”

“Okay, but she did use the words ‘asbestos contamination,’ and don’t forget about that poor kid, Nicolas Boni.” He looked away. “Christ, she’s making it sound like there’s no possible way PS 20 will ever be rid of the asbestos.” Raising up his hands, he added, “Another Pearl Street building slated for the wrecking ball.”

“You smelling a conspiracy in the works, Spain?”

Spain gave a noncommittal shrug of his narrow shoulders.

“Maybe. I guess what I’m asking is this: why has Stewart chosen now to make a big deal over an asbestos scam that looks to me likes it’s been going on for years?”

He was asking the right questions, but I wasn’t sure if any of them could be answered. And I told him so.

Then I said, “Take a step back, Spain. Under normal circumstances, you want to cheat on asbestos removal, you gotta learn to hit and run.”

He scrunched his brow, sat back in the booth.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means, Spain, that you can get away with a lot of under-the-radar shit in this business so long as you don’t hang around too long.”

“Example.”

“Okay, I once heard about a general contractor who would cheat on the small stuff in order to increase his profits.”

“Small stuff.”

“Stuff no one would notice. Not even the engineers and architects when they made their inspections. Maybe he would buy a less expensive brand of aluminum ties for the brickwork—a reinforcing tie that was cheaper and less sturdy than what the project specifications called for. The specified tie might cost two bucks a piece, but by substituting it with a fifty cent job, you’re able to make up some good pocket money, especially if a project calls for ten or twenty thousand of them.

“Or maybe the GC would use a few hundred yards less backfill when paving over a parking lot. Or maybe he’d go with a cheaper concrete design mix on the concrete footing and foundation work.”

“Sounds dangerous,” he said. “Reckless.”

“Not at all. Every contractor knows that engineers over-engineer to protect their licenses and their ever expanding asses. Listen, two-thousand PSI concrete will hold up a ten-story building for all eternity just as well as four-thousand pound PSI and it costs a hell of a lot less.”

“Less enough to risk cheating? They test for concrete strength don’t they?”

I nodded.

“Yeah they do. But you wanna know how much a testing tech makes per year?”

He looked at me.

“’Bout thirty and change,” I said. “Mason laborers without a high school degree do better than that. A lot better.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m telling you that bullshit walks.”

“All you gotta do is grease somebody, is that it?”

“You gotta grease the right palm, do it all under-the-radar and maintain the practice of hit-and-run. Just like Jimmy Farrell, who by all appearances, has most definitely hit and run away. Dead or alive.”

The PI grabbed his surrogate niece’s attention with a quick above-the-head wave of the hand. Holding up two fingers he mouthed the words, “Two more.”

While she retrieved the drinks, I began giving him my personal Diana Stewart history lesson. I continued through all of the second drink, through all of a third and through much of our steaks. I finished over coffee.

“Personal vengeance,” he said, having taken in my whole story. “You both loved the same man. You won.”

“But lost when he died,” I said.

“So did she. Maybe more so because not only did Jordan choose to love you, he died on your watch.”

I felt my dinner go south. But Spain detected the pain on my face plain enough.

“I apologize,” he said. “Definitely wrong choice of words.”

“You really think so, Spain?”

“I understand where the motive could come from now,” he said. “Stewart has always harbored a jealousy for you. Maybe a hatred. Now that you’re implicated in Farrell’s asbestos scam, she blasts you with both barrels—”

“The Tiger Lady has been blasting me with both barrels for more than year.” My voice was raised enough for the couple at the next table to turn and stare. I lowered my head.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s been a while now since I lost Jordan, but—”

“But it’s never enough time. I know from personal experience.”

“You still love your wife?”

“I love my son more.”

We drank our coffees. I patted the pockets on my leather for the cigarettes. I guess the habit had already sunk back in. Digging into my jacket pocket, I pulled out not my cigs, but something else.

“Last night when the Tiger Lady came to see me,” I said, “she left this behind along with her pack of Marlboro Lights.”

I set the lighter out onto the table. I was ready to reveal it to him. Spain picked it up, stared into it.

“New York Giants,” he said. “My team.”

“Jordan’s too,” I said. “In fact, that was Jordan’s lighter.”

His eyes went wide.

“You sure about that?” he asked. “How would she have it in the first place?”

“Look,” I said, “she and Jordan worked a lot together. And he was forever leaving his cigarette lighters lying around—”

“How many years since he…”

“…Died. You can say it. It’s okay.”

“Well…”

“Five.”

“Then how do you know this particular lighter is his?”

“A wife knows these things.”

“I see your point,” he nodded.

“But what I’m getting at here, is that there could be nothing to her having the lighter, other than the fact that she’s had it for as long as she has.”

“And that it still has fuel,” he said. “Like she’s been saving it, rationing the fuel, as if to lose the flame is to lose Jordan again.” He went to store it in his jacket pocket. “You mind I hang onto it for a while?”

I shook my head. The truth of the matter was that I did mind. But we were working together now.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Add it to the physical evidence,” he said, pocketing the lighter. “Don’t worry,” he added. “I won’t lose something this precious.”

Over my left shoulder, I caught site of all three Blisterz approaching the table from out of the bar. The tall one—the singer—handed Spain a manila envelope and kept on walking.

“Thank you, Davey,” Spain said to the musician and set the envelope down onto the table.

“You gonna show me what’s in the envelope, Spain?”

He opened the clasps, pulled out three or four glossy pics. Eight-by-ten full color jobs probably printed off an ink-jet printer onto some glossy stock. The first pic showed Stewart engaged in various OSHA duties. One shot taken from a distance with what had to be a high-powered lens. The Tiger Lady was dressed in pressed jeans, work boots, blue cotton work shirt and white hardhat, the letters OSHA printed on both sides in bright red letters. In the photo she was surrounded by some of her OSHA support staff. They were standing by an exterior brick wall that had collapsed. There was an EMT van parked in the near distance beside a project sign that read, “Renovations to the Historic Albany Public Library.”

“I know that job,” I said. “I’d worked up a bid on it late last year. It was too high. Marino was awarded the contract instead. But after the wall collapsed this past winter, OSHA and its on-staff civil engineers declared the building unsafe for habitation, never mind its historic significance. No amount of temporary shoring or foundation work could save the place. So what had been a pricey historic renovation turned into a demo job for Marino. Today the site’s just another empty lot along the lower Concrete Pearl.”

“A lot no doubt slated as the partial site for the future new and improved Pearl Street,” Spain said. Then, “Next photo.”

Stewart in action again. This time standing atop a fifth floor balcony of another commercial project I recognized: the conversion of a century and a half old Hudson Riverside textile mill—a turn of the century sweatshop being renovated into luxury condominiums and apartments.

Or so I told Spain.

I also told him that those new upscale condos were located in South Albany adjacent to the port behind Pearl Street. So close to the port in fact you could see the docked ships in the near distance. Soon enough those docks would be replaced with a brand new state-of-the-art aquarium, the port itself relocated south to Hudson. Albany Development Limited would be the financiers. Marino Construction would be the project manager for the job.

I sat back in the booth.

“Now that I think of it,” I added, “Marino had been the construction manager for the riverside condo complex.”

“Did you toss a bid in too?”

“Project principals wouldn’t let me, not with my crumbling health and safety record.”

“Why do you think Stewart got involved?”

“The job contained considerable asbestos removal. It’s a good bet A-1 Environmental Solutions was awarded the subcontract for the job. I can’t be sure, Spain. But seeing as his father-in-law acted as the construction manager, there’s a fair shot that he was.”

Spain pointed at the photo with extended index finger.

“What’s she holding there?” he said.

In the photo, Stewart was holding a meter of some kind in both her hands—a meter not unlike the one the OSHA team had used for testing the interior air quality at PS 20 on Monday. Only difference was, this meter wasn’t used for detecting asbestos fibers. It was used to sniff out radon. Or so I relayed it to a very interested Spain.

“The media hounds jumped and humped all over the story,” I said. “When the carcinogen radon was found to exist on-site in excessive amounts, the Tiger Lady declared the project uninhabitable. So what had been a high profile rehab for Marino now morphs into another big ass demo project and a site eventually slated for the new convention center.”

“Looks like we got us a pattern here,” Spain said.

Third photo.

This one proved different from all the rest in one respect. It didn’t show Stewart and OSHA in the act of inspecting a downtown jobsite. Instead it showed her emerging from a downtown steakhouse. 677 Prime on Broadway, maybe a block up from central Pearl. The most expensive joint in town. Shocker of shockers, the OSHA chief was walking side by side Peter Marino. The photo had been shot on a clear, starry evening, million dollar smiles painting both their faces. Marino in one of his well-cut double-breasted suits, Stewart in a navy-blue mini-skirt and matching jacket, red hair bobbing freely at her shoulders.

One more person occupied the background. Just coming out of the doors was a man. Tall, lanky, and instead of being dressed in a suit, he had on white trousers, and loafers without socks. He also wore what looked to be a double-breasted blue blazer. A golden boy born right out of the
Preppy Handbook
.  If I didn’t know any better, I would have pegged the man’s ID as Farrell in the flesh.

“This ain’t all about Farrell and Marino,” I said. “It’s about Stewart too.”

“Is it unusual for Stewart to declare buildings unsafe for human habitation?”

“Not at all. Condemning one site after the other is a big part of her job.”

“Especially when it’s convenient.”

“What the hell is going on in Albany, Spain?”

“The Concrete Pearl is being bought up, that’s what’s going on. And your school is in the way.” Looking me in the eyes, he said, “Let me ask you something. Did Marino put a bid in on the PS 20 project?”