The Concrete Pearl (25 page)

In the corner opposite the crib, a mound of large stuffed animals: a giraffe taller than me, a brown bear wider than me, a half-dozen fluffy white bunnies, even a couple of black, brown and white dogs.

This might have been a room designed to welcome a new child into the world. But a palpable sadness oozed from the sheetrock. It was in spite of that sadness that I imagined my own child’s nursery. If Jordan had lived, I would have wanted our baby to have spent her first years growing up in just such a room.

“When Tina first hired me,” Spain said, “I didn’t just stumble upon Farrell’s asbestos removal scam. I also discovered this room… the things inside it. Turns out they were all meant for a boy named Joseph. Tina carried him until close to her second trimester when miscarriage ended the pregnancy. The baby—the fetus—had to be delivered stillborn inside a hospital. Tina insisted on remaining conscious for the entire procedure so she could see his face…That’s what she told me.”

Immediately I was transported back in time. Two day’s past when I first visited the East Hill’s house in search of her husband. I saw her standing inside the marble vestibule, her open hand placed over an exposed tummy, as though there was a baby growing inside her womb. Now I pictured her going through all the pain and agony of delivering a stillborn child just to see his face; just to know for a moment what her son looked like, his eyes, nose and mouth.

“Does she blame Jimmy?”

Spain cocked his head.

“He put her through a lot. Not only with his affairs, but with the ever strained relationship he had with her father. Farrell was running an illegal operation. Marino was a part of it. There must have been bitter fights in this house. It was a lot for Tina to swallow.”

I didn’t want to hear anymore.

I stood silent on the carpeted floor.

Silent and numb.

How does a childless widow with a stubborn streak avoid being buried by sadness?

She makes a beeline for the nursery door.

“Screw this place,” I said. “We need to get to the morgue, grab a sample of Natalie’s DNA. By the time we get that, Marino Construction will have closed up for the day.”

“I don’t understand,” Spain said, the plastic tobacco-filled baggy still gripped in his hand.

“Here’s where I become
your
invaluable partner,” I said. “We’re going to break in, dig through Peter’s and Jimmy’s stored records and find a way to link up the asbestos scam with two murders.”

Chapter 59

We blew out the front door and shot across the lawn to the sidewalk.

From behind the wheel of the pickup, I called Tommy back and asked him if he was still at my apartment.

He wasn’t.

I told him my planned moves—the first being the AMC morgue, the second being the Marino Construction offices off Wolf Road. I told him we may be in need of his assistance at some point.

“All this ends tonight,” I said. “One way or another.”

I hung up and set the cell down beside Jimmy’s DNA.

“Can Tommy be trusted?” Spain said as I hooked a left onto New Scotland and the boulevard that would take us directly to the hospital.

“When my father died,” I said, “Tommy took his place.”

Chapter 60

Spain knew his way around the AMC campus. Instead of driving into the main lot, he told me to turn left into the service delivery entrance. I followed the road around the back side of the main hospital. At the guard shack, he leaned forward to make himself more visible to the attending security guard. He then made as though tipping the brim of an invisible fedora. The guard returned the gesture with an identical one of his own. Spain was taking a chance. The guard would have heard the news about me; maybe about Spain being with me. Maybe not. No point it thinking about stuff. Just do.

I pulled up to a pair of sliding service entrance doors, stopped the truck.

We got out and approached the doors. The electronic door opener had to be slapped manually before the glass sliders would open.

Spain did it.

We went inside.

Although I’d overseen the occasional interior fit-up inside the Albany Medical Center, I’d never before been exposed to its bowels. It was a dark, creepy place. The floor was constructed of rock hard terrazzo, the walls protected with a wainscoting of ceramic tile that was chipped in places. I might have been hardheaded, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew the chips had been caused by the metal caskets that were wheeled in and out of there on a daily basis. Above us, the ceiling was an exposed menagerie of heating and ventilating ductwork and light bulbs protected inside little metal cages. A prison cell block came to mind.

That silence was broken by the distinct hum of an electric saw, the not unfamiliar sound of a diamond-studded blade cutting through rigid material. Spain stopped in front of a set of double doors identified by the word “Pathology” stenciled to the frosted glass in black letters.

He opened the door and stepped inside.

I followed.

“Don’t come any closer,” he said, as the door closed behind me.

The place smelled like worms. Natalie was laid out on a steel table set in the center of the room. She’d been placed on her back, the back of her head propped up on a kind of half-moon shaped metal block. She was naked, except for a medical green sheet that covered her sex. Her skin was stark white and blanched like newly cut Italian marble. Part of the skin that covered her forehead had been pulled down over her eyes. A portion of the exposed skull had been sawed according to a precise line. Like passing by a bad car wreck, I didn’t want to look. But I couldn’t help it.

A doctor stood over her. He was dressed in surgical scrubs. A long translucent shield masked his face. A green skull cap covered the top of his head. Green latex gloves protected the hands. The left hand supported an electric saw with a circular diamond-studded blade. He wore an electronic headset with an attached microphone. He’d been speaking something into it when we entered the room unannounced.

The doctor eyed Spain, silently nodded. His Adams apple bobbed up and down in his neck like a turkey the day before Thanksgiving.

“It’s favor time, doc,” the PI said. Then, turning to me he said, “Step outside for just a moment, won’t you please, Spike.”

I did it.

I opened the door, stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind me.

Alone in the dark corridor.

I was reminded of Jordan…of the day his heart stopped. The doctors and nurses called his death a gift from God. Although he had been going in and out of a coma in the twenty-four hours since he’d fallen from the scaffolding, one medical expert had assured me that he would never walk again, never lift a finger. If he were to survive, Jordan would spend the remainder of his days a severe quadriplegic—a basket case.

The door opened, startling me.

In Spain’s hand, a small white bag marked LAB in blue letters.

Natalie’s DNA.

I said, “That was quick.”

We started walking, back towards the double exit doors.

“The doc’s got a nasty habit of playing the field. Even though he’s got a beautiful wife, three kids. He’s even got a million dollar home in guess where?”

“Picture perfect East Hills.”

“Plus a condo in Jupiter, Florida.”

I was beginning to see the picture.

“You bribed him,” I said.

“I’ve worked for his wife, just like I worked for Tina. Totally confidential of course. Up until now he didn’t cooperate. Nor has he shown contrition for his malevolent acts.”

“Photographs,” I said.

“Imagine the ensuing scandal if I were to distribute the pictures of he and a sixteen year old Craigslist Casual Encounter girl laid out in the back seat of his Lexus?”

“Pretty picture,” I said. “What did you offer him in return?”

“Destruction of the photos.”

“But not the original memory card.”

“You’re learning,” he said. “And only two days on the job.”

“Amazing what you pick up when somebody tries to set you up for murder.”

Chapter 61

Back in the pickup, Spain placed the LAB bag in his briefcase along with the chewing tobacco. I pulled out of the lot, drove the service road back to New Scotland, hung a right towards West Albany and the Marino Construction offices.

We got off 90, made the turn onto Wolf Road, began slowly cruising the former sight of pristine apple orchards for as far as the eye could see. Now that the farmers had been forced out by the developers, the place was filled on both sides with chain restaurants and strip malls.
Red Lobster
heaven;
Dunkin Donuts
glass façade covered with big glossy posters of Rachael Ray swallowing a chocolate Long John.

“Something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said, feeling my temples begin to pound under Tess’s red wig. “If you’re only a PI, how did you get Santiago to hold off on his original indictments?”

“Santiago wasn’t always a DA,” he said. “I wasn’t always a PI. We’d both started with the APD. We were partners assigned to Pearl Street. In those days, anything could and would happen on the Concrete Pearl. It was a regular old fashioned Times Square. Dope pushers, prostitutes, porn, pretty much anything. Everything was bought and sold on Pearl…Everything had its price.”

“I’m only about ten years younger than you,” I said. “I seem to remember Pearl Street was one place my dad always warned me about…Lower Pearl anyway. Down by the port…the real Concrete Pearl.”

“For good reason. The little stretch of riverside street was a microcosm of everything that could go wrong with a lost-in-time city like Albany. Santiago and me, we did our best to clean some of it up, return some shine back to the Pearl.”

“I’m sensing a ‘But’ here,” I said, eyes on the double-lane boulevard before me.

“But,” Spain said, “two men trying to shore up the sides of a sand pit ain’t no damn good. Those were the days when most of the drugs that entered into Manhattan were dropped in Albany first, cut up and then shipped south. Only way we could stem the flow was to buy information. And who better to buy from but a Pearl Street brothel Madame by the name of Tess. Beautiful long auburn hair, the greenest eyes you ever saw…Tess swept Derrick Santiago off his feet.”

“Tess,” I said, both hands pressing against my wig. “As in
our
Tess?”

“The very one.”

“She and Santiago,” I said like a question.

“Surprise you?”

“Not at all,” I lied.

“Leverage can be a real bitch,” he smiled. “Especially when it’s being weighed against a DA with hefty political aspirations.”

I turned into Aviation Industrial Park. In the near distance on the left side of the deserted single lane road, the offices and warehouse of Marino Construction. Directly to the north of it, the empty offices of A-1 Environmental Solutions.

“Memory lane ends here,” I said. “What happens now is the future.”

Chapter 62

It might have been late in the evening.

But it was June. Summertime.

We didn’t have the advantage of pulling off what amounted to a B-and-E under the cover of darkness. Instead I pulled off to the side of the road, close enough to give us a clear eyeball view of the offices, but far enough away not to raise suspicions.

I gave it a quiet fifteen minutes before I killed the engine.

We slid out of the truck.

We didn’t go to the front door and risk getting caught out in the great wide open. Together we went around back to the warehouse entrance. Spain pulled from his pocket a device that allowed him to jimmy the padlock on the gate. When the pit bull came sprinting at us, wet fangs poised for the kill, he slammed the gate closed.

Sonny crashed face first into the chain link.

The little black and white monster barked and yelped. Loud, short bursts of pure anger and vengeance. Spain pulled his weapon, aimed it at the dog. The .9mm trembled in his hand.

“Jesus,” he said. “I can’t do it.”

I pulled my piece, held it two hands, took aim and squeezed. I grazed one off the dog’s ass end. It didn’t kill him. But it was enough to send the beast barking and howling blindly in the direction of the newly dug out pole barn trenches. When Sonny reached the trench’s edge, he didn’t even attempt to stop. He just jumped into the hole.

“Nice shot,” Spain said.

“You hesitated,” I said.

“I love dogs.”

“That monster is more killer than dog.”

He opened the gate and we stepped on through. The gravel yard was filled with timbers and construction material for the new poll barn. There was a Komatsu backhoe, a John Deere bulldozer and two Ford one-ton pick-up trucks similar to the four Chevy’s I once owned for my business. There was a mound of sandy soil that would serve as backfill once the poll barn piers were poured, plus stacks of concrete frames and angles.

As we made our way past the open trenches to the back door beside the warehouse overhead door, I felt that familiar but uncomfortable tight feeling in my chest. The sensation transported me back to seven years old when I fell into a trench and was buried alive. It was a sensation I’d been fighting all my life.

“Go to it, Spain,” I said.

He used the pick device to unlock the solid metal door.

When he pulled it open, there came the immediate beep-beep-beep of the triggered alarm system about to explode in a cacophony of sirens and flashing lights. Spain quickly punched in a four number sequence. The alarm disengaged.

I asked him how he’d become privy to the code.

“Tina can be quite the bastion of information when sufficiently lubricated,” he said.

I ran my hand along the exterior wall, found the overhead light switch. When I flipped it on, the big room lit up from the four ceiling-mounted halogens. The warehouse wasn’t like any construction warehouse I’d ever seen. Nothing like the one I left behind at the old Harrison Construction offices anyway. This one housed very few tools and only a couple of pieces of light construction equipment—a table-saw and a gas-powered generator.