The Concrete Pearl (7 page)

“Will I hear from you later?”

“You gotta ask?”

I slapped the phone down. If I had my choice I would have tossed the mofo into the lake. I decided to exit the Jeep one final time, make one last sweep of the place before I pulled out. Thoroughness is everything in these matters. I looked at the trees, at the bridge, at the stream and the lake. I turned and looked at the country road and the farm field across from it. I looked high; I looked low.

I might not have noticed it had I not peered down at the tops of my boots. Something glinting in the mid-day sun. At first I did a double-take, but then took a couple of steps towards the shiny object. Bending at the knees, I felt my heart skip a couple of beats. I reached into my back pocket, pulled out a white cotton handkerchief, wrapped it around the fingers on my right hand, dug out the object from the sand and gravel.

It was a spent shell casing. A .9mm, the jacket new and chrome shiny.

My heart sped up. My dad had owned guns. He acquired his pistol permit when his first cousin had been elected an Albany County judge and could push the application through the thick wall of bureaucratic red tape and background checks. He wanted the option of being able to carry a concealable pistol for safety reasons. It wasn’t all that long ago contractors found themselves carrying around cash payrolls in their pickups.

At his insistence, he wanted me to do the same. An order to which I reluctantly acquiesced, despite my stubborn streak. Although I shot a pistol for target practice on many occasions, I never could get used to the volatility of a handgun, preferring the relative safety of my equalizer. But I recognized a .9mm shell casing when I saw it. I also knew when one had been recently fired. I brought the open side of the shell to my face, inhaling fresh powder.

The smell was strong, acrid, but not unpleasant. The bullet had been fired within twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours at most.

Wrapping the casing up in the handkerchief, I looked down at the gravel for any blood stains. I didn’t see any. At least not with the naked eye. The June days had been bright, hot, cloudless and dry. But the past two nights had been different. The hot, humid weather produced stormy weather and scattered cloudbursts. I was no expert, but it was possible that the blood residue could have washed away.

Farrell’s blood?

I had to wonder if the weather and I were managing to contaminate a possible crime scene?

“Too late now,” I whispered to myself.

I took the wrapped up casing with me to my Jeep. Back behind the wheel, I slipped the shell into the briefcase along with empty Skoll canister and the estimating pad.

Closing the briefcase back up, my eyes caught the sign nailed to the oak tree.

“Vehicles Towed at Owner’s Expense.”

I added up the particulars.

A missing Jimmy “gone fishing”…a Skoll chewing tobacco tin…a spent .9mm shell casing…no sign of the golden boy’s ride…

Chalk one up for the headstrong girl. Maybe it had been a good idea to make the scenic drive up to Lake Desolation after all.

I fired up the Jeep.

Next stop: Dott’s Garage.

Chapter 11

I hadn’t pulled away from the public access fishing parking area when my Blackberry vibrated against my hipbone.

“Whaddaya got, Tommy?”

“F-Y-I,” he said. “All types of asbestos fibers are dangerous if you breathe them. No amount of fibers in the air is considered safe, which means even a tiny amount can contaminate PS 20. You and me right now could be suffering from the beginnings of some killer asbestos disease like asbestosis or meso…mesothel…”

“Meso-thel-ioma,” I pronounced for him.

“You know how much of that fibrous crap I’ve torn out and tossed away without a mask in my day?”

Tommy had a point. In my early days laboring for Harrison, I too had handled old asbestos insulation without wearing protective gear. I’d spent two days my senior high school summer tearing it from the basement of an old bowling alley that was being renovated into a computer tech center. For a brief second I pictured the insides of my lungs as though staring at an MRI. I wanted to imagine healthy pink lungs. Instead I saw something that resembled burnt toast.

“How long do you have to be exposed to the stuff for it to affect your lungs?”

“One hour, one month, one year. It doesn’t matter. Problem is, you can’t tell when the shit is in the air or when it’s hurting your lungs. It’s got no odor, no taste, no feel, nothing to let you know that the air your breathing is tainted with death.”

I heard the sound of Tommy shuffling through some notes, the Lanies jukebox going in the background.

“There’s something called a latency period,” he went on. “All asbestos diseases have this latency period that’s more or less a gap between the time you suck in asbestos fibers and the time you start feeling sick …The latency period can be as short as a few months or as long as like thirty years.”

My stomach dropped.

“So there could be any number of sick PS 20 kids or faculty as we speak.”

“And here’s where it gets way worse,” Tommy added. “All asbestos cancers and diseases are not only real hard to treat, they’re near
impossible
to treat. They’re also impossible to cure.”

“Impossible,” I said like a question.

“You remember that song back in the seventies, ‘Werewolves in London?’”

“’
His hair was perfect
,’” I quoted.

“The guy who sang that song, Warren Zevon…he died of meso…”

“Mesothlioma,” I pronounced for him again.

“Meso-whatever-the-fuck…Anyway, Zevon dies decades after spending too much time in his grandparent’s asbestos insulation-filled attic writing songs… Steve McQueen bought the farm over it too after only a three month exposure in his old L.A. townhouse…Three freakin’ months, Spike!”

I took a moment to breathe.

I wasn’t sure if what I felt was more rage at Farrell or outright fear for those kids who attended an asbestos contaminated school all year long, never mind three months.

“What’s next, chief?”

“I’m heading to Dott’s Garage in Saratoga. I have a hunch Farrell’s Beemer was towed there over the weekend.”

“Whaddaya expect to find inside it?”

“Maybe a detailed itinerary describing the golden boy’s destination, including phone and fax numbers.”

“Very funny.”

“Can you tell I’m pretty much just making this up as I go?”

“Beats the alternative.”

“What’s that?”

“Suckin’ up the entire blame for something you didn’t do.”

Chapter 12

Driving east on my way out of the open farm country towards Saratoga Springs and Dott’s Garage. Maybe it had something to do with the rise in anxiety level. But as the surrounding green fields faded and the suburbs took over, I couldn’t stop myself from picturing Jordan, my husband of five short years. Saratoga had been one of Jordan’s favorite places, especially in August during the Thoroughbred racing season.

We’d first met at Harrison Construction ten years ago…

As the senior project manager, I’m responsible for overseeing the entire team of project managers, which at the time includes Diana Stewart. Jordan is new to the Harrison team. He’s been hired by my father as a senior supervisor. It’s his responsibility to visit every jobsite making sure that everything from excavation to framing to roofing is progressing steadily and according to schedule.

It’s not long before I learn that Jordan is not the kind of man to sit idly at a desk inside the Harrison Construction offices. When he isn’t working, he’s running cross-country. When he isn’t running, he’s lifting weights. When he isn’t lifting weights, he’s hiking or fly fishing or playing guitar.

He stands five feet eight, maybe one-hundred-seventy-five pounds. Who is taller depends upon whether or not I wear flats or heels.

But somehow, Jordan exudes confidence.

He is covered in muscle. And I do not hesitate to refer to him as “muscle head” from time to time. It’s a term of affection which always makes him stick his tongue out at me from between thick lips accented with trimmed mustache and goatee. But it’s not the muscle or the energy or the Marlboro Man image that attracts me most to Jordan.

The little things make me love him.

The way he bites his bottom lip when in deep thought; the subtle way he rubs the back of his left hand with his right when he’s nervous; his stuttered laugh and his wide ear to ear smile. It’s the way he sometimes opens his mouth when he chews his food so that I have to constantly tell him to keep his mouth closed. Or the way he will, on occasion, show up to my office door after everyone else has gone home for the day; the way he’ll close the door behind him, come to me and without a word, undress me, lift me up in his arms, set me down gently on the drafting table...

Dad loves Jordan too.

Dad’s old school—a single parent who always wanted a son. He molds Jordan into the “super” supervisor every Harrison worker can come to respect. Because after all, it’s not unlike Jordan to jump out of his truck, grab a shovel, jump into a trench, help out with pouring a footing. Or maybe he’ll temper the mud for a mason working the line like a common laborer. Or maybe he’ll just sit down with a carpenter, share a smoke, a hard roll and coffee…shoot the shit.

Dad and I: we’re not the only ones who love Jordan.

That’s where the real trouble starts.

You could see the love cooking in Diana’s eyes whenever Jordan blew into the office, the pockets on his work-shirt and Carhartt vest filled with packing slips and receipts that required processing by our accounts payable. Diana with her fiery red hair and killer bod would always request her standard five minutes of the chief super’s time—time for the University of Virginia grad to discuss in her faux south-of-the-border accent the material deliveries on any given job she might be managing. Or maybe she’d want to go over a blueprint detail that just didn’t quite jive right in the field. Maybe a corner where the copper flashing butts up against a concrete block with no possible means for moisture to escape.

But we all knew the truth.

What Diana wanted was a little face-time with my boyfriend who sooner than later became my husband. But that was all right by me. I was secure in my relationship with Jordan. Diana wasn’t a threat to either one of us. Like her phony southern belle voice, we’d laugh about her little crush. Besides, she was a good ten years older than the both of us. We interpreted her little infatuation as a compliment. Nothing more.

It’s while the two of us are visiting the Tiger Lady-managed Pearl Street Key Bank rehab project when Jordan makes the mistake of his life. Instead of taking the interior stairs, he decides to climb a dozen-plus scaffolding levels to confer with Diana and to check on a newly replaced cornice.

As always it makes me nervous when he insists on climbing hand and boot to the top of a building. But you just can’t shake the boy from the man when it comes to Jordan. You just can’t shake his need to be moving, doing anything but sitting. On that particular morning when he makes the climb, I can’t help but think that a big part of him is showing off for my benefit…For my entertainment!

But that doesn’t make it any easier when only moments later he’s laid out on his back in the hospital, his body a train wreck of shattered bones and lacerated flesh; his brain now swelled against the insides of his skull, bleeding out the ears and nostrils. Still he tries to move, tries to get up. Having somehow survived a sixty foot fall, he’s peering up at me from the bed in the I.C.U. trauma unit, bruised eyes pleading. It’s not like he wants to tell me something. It’s like he wants me to rescue him from that hospital, as if I can simply strap a shattered man on my back, carry him out of I.C.U., out the front door of the Albany Medical Center forever…

But then looking back on it all these years later, stealing Jordan from that hospital is exactly what I would have done, knowing then what I would come to know shortly thereafter: that he would never step out of that hospital alive.

Chapter 13

Dott’s Garage and Used Auto Parts was located at the far north end of the village, along the rural hinterland between downtown Saratoga Springs and the suburban enclave of Wilton. It had been converted from an old full-service gas station into a fenced-in ghost town for towed or repo’d cars, vans and trucks.

I pulled up to the first of the two parallel concrete islands that once-upon-a-time supported gas pumps. What had been the gas station now served as Dott’s office.

I knew about Dott through Jordan who used to come here to buy used parts for his vintage 1968 Chevy three-on-the-tree pickup. The guy was a local legend of sorts; a grease monkey who cherished Elvis, lived a fenced-in time warp, always complaining about a sex-stingy wife no one had ever met.

I got out of the Jeep and ran both hands through my hair. Just for the hell of it, I unbuttoned the third button down on my work shirt. A little skin and a black push-up bra never hurt. I stepped inside through the glass and wood door and was hit with the smell of motor oil. The toxic odor combined with a cloud of cigarette smoke. It made me wonder which site contained the worse interior air quality: the air inside Dott’s office or the asbestos contaminated air inside PS 20.

To my immediate left hung a wall-mounted bulletin board, its surface mostly covered over with key-rings that hung from little hooks and nails stabbed into the corkboard. Beside the bulletin board was an open door that led into a two-bay service garage. Both bays were occupied, the first with an old tow truck—the hoist and boom kind you don’t see much anymore. The second was occupied with an old black Cadillac convertible. Something you might see a president get assassinated in back in the sixties.