The Rose Conspiracy (13 page)

And she was a dead ringer for his client, Vinnie Archmont.

CHAPTER 19

A
s he left baggage claim, Blackstone walked over to his Maserati at the Reagan National Airport parking lot. He called Reverend Lamb from his cell phone but got his voice mail.

“Uncle,” Blackstone said in his message, “it's J.D. Just got back from the UK. I was wondering if you and I could chat about a new case I'm handling. Call me.”

Then he retrieved a voice mail from Frieda his secretary. She said his office had received an “urgent” message.

“A man called,” Frieda recounted. “He said it was about the Langley murder case. He wouldn't give me his name or contact information. But he said that you needed to be at the construction site down by the federal courthouse, just off Constitution Avenue, by four p.m. today. That you need to talk to a Mr. Dennis Watkins there. Some kind of supervisor. That this Mr. Watkins has some crucial information, and would fill you in down there.”

Blackstone drove out of the parking lot, and through early crosstown rush-hour traffic. It was ten minutes to four when he swung up to the large office building under construction.

He parked his car and quickly made his way over to a makeshift office in a trailer, where he introduced himself to a foreman there.

The foreman grabbed his walkie-talkie and spoke to someone. Then he handed a hard hat to Blackstone and said to follow him. As they crossed the construction site, Blackstone could see that the girders were in place, the floors had already been laid, and now they were raising the
walls. There were huge blocks of marble being swung into place around the base with the help of cranes.

When they reached a corner of the building, there was a man in a short-sleeve white shirt and a hard hat looking over drawings on a large work table. The foreman introduced Blackstone to Dennis Watkins, the man in the white shirt.

“Got your message,” Blackstone began. “Can we talk in private? I am curious about any information you may have.”

“Mr. Blackstone, I appreciate everything you're trying to do on this nasty business,” Watkins began. “But if you don't mind, I want to withhold comment until I show you this, and you see it with your own eyes. Frankly, I think this is going to make your whole job a lot easier. You know, easier to defend your position.”

Blackstone was puzzled, but obliged by following him into a large construction elevator with metal mesh sides and an open top.

Watkins pushed a green up button and the cage door automatically locked with a loud clang as the elevator slowly shuddered upward.

Suddenly, something up above caught Watkins's attention as he craned his neck straight up to see. Then he slammed his fist into the red stop button and snatched his walkie-talkie off his hip.

“Gerald, this is Watkins,” he shouted. “Hey, we've got one of your marble fascia blocks hanging in the air over the northeast corner elevator. It's hanging down from crane number three. Three floors up. The thing's dangling right over our heads! Swing that thing away from here, will you?”

Blackstone looked up at the huge white stone block, suspended directly over them about thirty feet over their heads. It was dangling from a cable connected to a crane arm.

Then Blackstone noticed the title on the hard hat of the man in the elevator with him.

It read,
Dennis Watkins—Chief Architect.

Then something lit up in Blackstone's mind and he muttered, “The Great Architect.”

“That stone block over our heads,” Blackstone said in a rushed voice. “Tell me, quick. Is it right-angled?”

Watkins threw him a befuddled look.

“Yeah. Sure. All of them are, I think.”

Blackstone quickly looked through the metal mesh down to the ground. The elevator was only about six inches off the ground. Blackstone grabbed the cage door handle and jiggled it, but the safety feature on the cage door had automatically locked it shut on the ascent.

Just then a voice squawked at them from Watkins's walkie-talkie.

“Dennis, this is Gerald. I sent Tony up the ladder to crane number three. There's nobody at the controls. But the control booth door is locked. You guys have to get out of there! He says the tow cable is in the descend position, from what he can see. There's a piece of metal jammed in the gear. That's all that's keeping it from coming down. Get outta there now!”

Watkins hit the yellow down button two times in a row. Nothing happened. Then he reached for the green up button, but Blackstone grabbed his arm to stop him.

“You move us up and we're dead!” Blackstone yelled. “I am the target here.”

“Let's climb up the sides,” Watkins shouted, and tried to lift himself up using the spaces in the metal mesh as finger holes.

“No time!” Blackstone yelled back.

“The block is coming down!” the voice in the walkie-talkie was screaming.

“Do as I do and we'll both live,” Blackstone blurted out and threw himself down on the riveted metal floor of the elevator. Watkins looked up just as the large marble block came hurtling down at them. He threw himself facedown next to Blackstone.

A split second later, the daylight overhead was completely eclipsed by the huge stone block that was now dangling over them, just a few feet over their heads. As it swung from side to side, it banged into the sides of the metal cage, sending vibrations through the elevator. The two men were breathing heavily as they lay on the floor. “Lift it up…lift it out of here,” Watkins muttered.

Up at the crane, Tony had broken his way into the crane's operating booth and then pulled the lever, reversing the tow cable. Slowly the huge block of stone was lifted up and out of the elevator cage and away from them, and then lowered safely to the ground.

Watkins yelled for a ladder to climb up to the top of the stone block to examine it. By then, the project engineer showed up and scampered up the ladder to the top of the block with Watkins. Blackstone followed quickly after him.

The three men stared at the place on the stone face where the cable hook was connected to a metal loop imbedded in the marble.

“What in the world…” Watkins said.

“A Lewis grappling assembly,” Blackstone announced, nodding as if that meant something important.

“Absolutely right,” the engineer chimed in. “Haven't seen one of those since engineering school. Really old-school stuff. Three tapped metal key wedges, two angled ones, one straight one in between them in the middle, all inserted together into the stone face. Connected by a vertical bolt, holding the loop in place for hoisting.” Then he added, looking at Watkins, “Dennis, this antiquated thing isn't ours.”

When the three of them were on the ground level again, the engineer shook Blackstone's hand and introduced himself.

“You guys at the building inspector's office,” the engineer said to Blackstone, “really know your engineering stuff.”

“Building inspector's office?” Blackstone said with amazement. “You've got the wrong guy. I'm a lawyer. And a law professor.”

There was a stunned silence.

“I was told,” Watkins interjected, “that a Mr. Blackstone in the District of Columbia inspector's office was coming over here. I was led to believe you were the guy who was pitching for us at City Hall to help us resolve the permit issue over our girder configuration on the fourth floor.”

“Who told you that?” Blackstone asked.

Watkins shook his head. “Can't remember. But I am going to chase this down. This is very weird.”

Then Watkins looked at Blackstone. “How exactly did you know that our lying flat on the floor was the only way to survive?”

“Because I knew,” Blackstone replied, “that the marble block would stop short of hitting the ground.”

“He's right!” a voice shouted out. It was Tony, the crane operator, who had just arrived to join them. He was carrying a metal cable lock in his hand.

“This thing was set on the cable,” Tony explained pointing to the lock, “so the block would be reeled down—but not all the way. It was set to stop short.”

Watkins turned to Blackstone again.

“You still haven't answered my question. How did you know so much about that marble block, mister? And why was it set so it wouldn't reach the ground?”

Blackstone grinned, cocked his head a little, and then he answered.

“I take your question to indicate two things,” Blackstone said. “First, that you don't know anything about me or why I am came here today.”

“And the other thing?” Watkins asked.

“That your question is proof to me,” Blackstone said, his voice growing a little more somber, “that you, sir, have never been initiated into the mysteries of the Freemasons.”

Then, as Watkins and the project engineer tried to make sense out of Blackstone's cryptic response, Blackstone looked around, taking in the vista around him, from his position at the construction site.

From there, he could see straight down the street that was crowded with office buildings, all the way to the intersection of Indiana and C and D streets.

Down where, amid all of the concrete office buildings and glass high-rises, he could see a large tree in full leaf, partially covering an often overlooked statue of the Masonic religious seer and Confederate officer Albert Pike.

CHAPTER 20

S
o from your research on the Freemasons, you knew the marble block wouldn't ever hit the ground?”

As Reverend Lamb asked that, his voice was quiet and intense.

“That's it,” J.D. Blackstone replied. “I had been reading, actually in the appendix of your book, how in the Masonic temples they all have these little models of a stone block hanging from a hoist.”

“Yes, of course. But always suspended. Never touching the earth. The stone block represents strength and power to them. But then you already knew that, right?”

“Yes, from my research. Obviously then, whoever gave me that little scare at the building site was sending me a message.”

“What kind of message?”

“That they are the ones who have the power. I don't. They can crush me at will. That's pretty elementary.”

“So they are trying to intimidate you, scare you off from pursuing the defense of this…what is your client's name again?”

“Vinnie Archmont.”

“And you're sure this incident in the construction elevator was no coincidence?” Reverend Lamb asked.

“I'm certain.”

As they talked, the two men were strolling across the green lawn of the quad between the college buildings where Lamb was teaching a summer school class.

“I realized,” Blackstone continued, “that the person who called my office and sent me scurrying over to the construction site had arranged for me to share the elevator with the
chief architect
—a play on words with the Mason's reference to God as the
Great Architect.
And then I discovered there was a square-cornered marble block hanging over my head—perfectly rigged from the crane—and the way that block was hoisted.”