The Concrete Pearl (9 page)

He was a man of medium height, slim with a tan complexion. He wore dark jeans, black boots, and a light blue button-down over a black T-shirt. Over that he wore a black lightweight leather jacket. His face was clean shaven and Ray Ban aviator sunglasses masked his eyes.

He reached into his jacket pocket, produced his wallet. He flashed a laminated photo I.D. Damien Spain, Licensed Private Detective for the State of New York. I didn’t have the chance to read the small print before he flipped the wallet closed, returning it to his inside jacket pocket. For the couple of seconds that his jacket remained open, I took notice of the hand-cannon tucked securely away in a black nylon holster attached to his black leather belt.

“Back away,” he repeated.

I took a couple of steps back.

“You’ve been following me,” I said.

“Why you going through Farrell’s impounded BMW?”

I told him.

He crossed his arms, black booted feet set squarely on the packed gravel lot.

“Ms. Harrison,” he said.

“Call me Spike.”

He shot me that same familiar quizzical look I get all the time.

“I stepped on a sixpenny nail my first day on a construction site back when I was sixteen.”

“Big nail,” he said. “Big pain.”

“Didn’t hurt ‘till later on. Little known fact about crucifixion.”

“I understand the spot you’re in with Farrell,” he said. “I think I can help.”

My pulsed picked up.

“Who are you working for, Mr. Spain?”

“That’s confidential,” he said.

“But you know all about my problems at Public School 20.”

“Word travels fast in
Smalbany
…Especially when you own a police scanner.”

“How very clever.”

“Habit of yours to go ‘round stirring up the wasp’s nest?”

“I need to find Farrell.”

He nodded, said, “It’s imperative that you no longer attempt to investigate Mr. Farrell’s whereabouts on your own. That includes snooping around his residence and inside his vehicle.”

“And what is it you suggest I do, Spain?” I said. “I’ve got a potential lethal asbestos exposure to over three-hundred kids, plus thirty faculty and support staff.”

Spain lowered his head, looking down at the tops of his black leather boots.

“My no-shit-Sherlock opinion?”

“No-shit-Sherlock.”

“Work with me…Assist me in finding him. We do that we’ll expose him for what he really is. A cheat.”

“Any idea where he might have run off to?”

“I’ve been tailing him for weeks. Now that he’s gone I haven’t the slightest clue.”

“Who’s your client?” I asked again.

He stared at me for a bit. Until he shook his head.

“Tina Farrell is my client,” he said. “Or
was
my client, I should say. Now it’s the Albany County District Attorney’s office.”

I sensed Spain was being as honest as possible. Or else he wouldn’t have divulged the names of the clients paying for his bread and butter. It also made me feel extremely uneasy that Farrell had been the target of a private investigation. Had I known about it before, I never would have hired him in the first place. Spain slipped his hand in his black pants pocket and pulled out a card. He handed me the card.

“Call me,” he said. “We both want the same thing…Farrell on a silver platter.”

I shoved the second of the two Spain business cards into my jeans pocket.

“I’ll give it serious thought,” I said.

He smiled.

“You’re a hard nut to crack,” he said.

“So I’ve been told.”

In the back and front of my mind, I knew I was pushing my luck with Dott. That eventually, he’d discover the BMW’s keys missing from the tack-board. Maybe he already had. Maybe he’d already called the police.

“Nice meeting you, Spain,” I said handing him the key ring, taking slow steps away from the car.

“Whaddaya want me to do with these?” he said, holding up the keys.

“Do some investigating,” I said. “But beware of old man Dott.”

He exhaled.

I turned, made my way back across the automotive graveyard under the cover of all those abandoned and repo’d cars and trucks. Moments later, I snuck my way out the open gate.

Chapter 16

What’s a headstrong (and slightly panicked) girl like yours truly do when she starts running out of options?

She decides to eat something…Something sweet and fattening and who-gives-a- crap-about-calories. The more fattening the better. Maybe some caffeine to wash it all down with.

Heading south on Route 87 back towards Albany, I spotted my salvation out the corner of my right eye. I pulled off the highway and pulled into a Dunkin Donut for a big coffee and a plain donut. Sustenance, construction style. I stood outside the Jeep, coffee and donut set on the still warm hood, pulled out my mobile, and dialed Tommy.

I pictured his round stocky body planted on the corner stool at Lanies Bar. I asked him the obvious question: had he heard anything from Farrell? I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he said that he hadn’t heard diddly.

“You speak to Diana?” he asked me.

“Still avoiding that one,” I said, picturing the fiery red-haired OSHA Tiger Lady. “At least until I get back into town.”

I took a bite of donut, washed it down with a small sip of hot coffee. I waited for the first initial signs of the sugar-caffeine rush. Then I told Tommy about the abandoned BMW; about PI Damien Spain who somehow tailed me to Dott’s garage.

“You know what I think?” Tommy said. “I think our preppy boy took the money and went bye-bye forever and ever, amen.”

My stomach fell to somewhere around my ankles.

“You don’t think we’ll ever see him again, do you?”

“If you were the cheating, extorting Farrell, would you want to be seen again?”

“Case closed,” I said.

“Fuckin’ A,” he said.

I fingered END, took another bite out of the donut, and pondered my situation while I chewed.

What’s a stubborn girl supposed to do?

She faces the inevitable.

I speed-dialed the number for the Harrison Construction Company’s long time lawyer, Joel Clark, left a message in his voicemail to call me back as soon as possible regarding the red-flag situation at PS 20. In my head I pictured my Harrison Construction cash account balance turning bright red.

Cutting the connection, I already knew what he was going to suggest. That OSHA, the EPA and the principal members of the project be brought together for an emergency summit to clear the air, get the school cleaned up, get the rehab back on track. It would be the right thing to do, maybe the only thing that might potentially save my ass.

But there was one overriding problem with that rather simple solution.

Diana Stewart.

In the time she’d been away from Harrison Construction, she had not only developed a hatred of me, she’d begun enacting her vengeance. It wasn’t enough that she’d fallen hopelessly in love with my husband. It was as though I had purposely stolen him from her.

Based on the three severe fines she’d nailed me with over the past twelve months alone, I’d developed the distinct feeling that the Tiger Lady would stop at nothing to see my life go permanently south. It was even possible that Stewart was more hard-headed than I was. Which meant I wasn’t about to throw myself at the mercy of her court. I knew that if she had her way, Farrell’s negligence would result in the last wilted straw for Harrison Construction.

No way I could allow that.

A voice inside my head whispered to me. The voice belonged to my dad. The voice told me to go back to the jobsite. I knew enough not to ignore the old man, even if he was dead and buried.

I ate the rest of the donut, got back in the Jeep with my coffee. A little spilled onto the console when I pulled back out onto the road.

Oh well, one of those fucking days.

Chapter 17

In the dusk, the PS 20 jobsite was deserted. It was also as quiet as a church. The kind of quiet that surrounds you, buries you with anxiety. You couldn’t miss the red plastic tape attached crime-scene style to both the construction trailer door and the school’s main entrance. A large banner had been posted directly to the four-foot-by-eight-foot Harrison Construction site sign. In big black letters it read,

“
DANGER: Health Hazard: Do Not Enter. OSHA
”

Per OSHA mandate there were two black skull-and-cross bone warnings conspicuously painted on both the top and the bottom of the banner. It was the kind of warning you might see posted outside a minefield in Afghanistan.

Sitting inside the Jeep on an abandoned lower Pearl Street, I thought for a split second about heading into the trailer to retrieve my files. But the door to the trailer had been secured with a lock-box.

I opened the glove box, grabbed hold of the Black and Decker flashlight stored inside it. Killing the Jeep, I got out and made my way towards the school. I passed by the red-ribboned job trailer, passed a neat stack of dry concrete encrusted scaffolding plank and a brand new palette of common brick. I approached the school’s locked doors, but stopped just short of the padlocked doors.

The brick school was covered with scaffolding. The third asbestos abatement and removal was to take place up on the fourth floor of the school. Shining the flashlight up at the fourth floor, I could see where workers had removed a window casement to facilitate the portable, flexible, ductwork ventilation equipment. I knew that if I couldn’t get in through the school’s doors, I could climb the scaffolding and literally rip my way through the flex-duct.

Chances were I wouldn’t find anything up there that would shed light on Farrell’s location. But then maybe I would get an idea of how he’d been cheating both me and the school system.

I turned off the flashlight, stuck the handle end into the waist of my jeans and started to climb.

I climbed hand over foot, quickly scaled two separate sections and started on my third. Looking down, I could see that I approached fifteen feet off the solid ground. I was the health and safety officer for Harrison Construction. I knew that all it took to kill a person was a fall from ten feet. Billy had fallen from a height of nearly sixty feet onto hard-packed gravel. He’d survived, but only for a few hours.

I climbed up passed the third section, then onto the fourth, my palms now coated with a slippery layer of sweat, making each attempted grip of the crossbars a dangerous proposition. But I managed to
grip
the iron bars as firmly as I could until I made it to the top of the fourth level where I hung my torso over the planking and swung my legs around. Standing, I looked out onto the PS 20 site and the downtown Albany city skyline. With the warm wind buffeting my face, I felt like I was on top of the world.

There was little time to lose.

If there was a cop lurking in the vicinity, I would be as a good as caught.

I turned to face the white flex-duct that ran like a headless snake from the interior of the school out onto the scaffolding. I was familiar enough with the material to know I didn’t need a knife to rip into it. All I needed was strong fingers.

The material might as well have been papier-mâché it tore apart so easily. It took only a matter of seconds before I was able to climb right into the school through the window opening.

Pulling the flashlight from my waist, I flicked it on.

I faced a four-sided empty space. It was not a space separated by plaster and masonry walls, but by supposedly “air-tight” plastic-covered temporary partitions. In the center of the room sat a machine that looked like it had been lifted off the set of a sci-fi flick. It was the air filtration device that would suck in the bad asbestos tainted air, filter it and then blow it out through the window opening via three distinct sections of flexible ductwork.

I carried the flashlight to the machine, opened up the lid and peered inside. I looked for the thick round filter that was utilized for the cleaning process.

The filter was gone.

Correction…

Either the filter had never been installed in the first place or it had since been taken away. Since no one from Farrell’s company showed up for work this morning, I could only suppose that the OSHA agents had confiscated it as evidence—proof that Farrell was fucking the dog when it came to properly filtering upset asbestos fibers.

Still, I had to wonder, had the asbestos removal operation of last week been conducted without proper filtration? Had Farrell’s crew been faking the removal? At minimum, they had to be cheating on one or more parts of the removal process for the school to have become contaminated. Why the workers would risk their necks like that was beyond me. But then, asbestos removal laborers were typically overworked and underpaid and I knew better than anybody that bullshit walked when it came to cold hard under-the-table cash.

I took another look around.

The asbestos floor tiles and ceiling panels were gone. So was all the old crumbly insulation that had been wrapped around the old ceiling-mounted radiant heating pipes. There was no doubt in my mind that much of the obvious asbestos insulation had been removed. But the question remained: how safely and responsibly had it been removed? If test filter samples were any indication, A1-Environmental had been performing the removal minus the ventilation process. And by doing so, Farrell must have been saving a bundle while at the same time, placing an awful lot of people at risk, most of whom were between the ages of five and thirteen. Still, the question loomed large: Was cheating so profitable that he was willing to place the lives of all those children at risk?

No freakin’ way.

I couldn’t help but think that something else was going on here besides a simple cheat-for-extra-ching kind of Mickey Mouse operation. But just what that something was split town along with Farrell.

There was a noise. A dull bang, followed by what I thought might have been a footstep.

I killed the light.

I couldn’t be sure where the noise had come from. The fourth floor, or down on one of the other levels. I shoved the flashlight back into my pants and made for the window opening.