The Concrete Pearl (4 page)

I entered Marino Construction through the front smoked glass doors.

The empty vestibule was small, narrow. A couch was pushed up against the far wall. In front of it was a coffee table covered with old issues of
National Geographic, Modern Builder, Concrete Contractor, Business Weekly.
Some of the same rags I used to subscribe to back when I still had a real office. Above the couch hung a framed portrait of a far younger, thinner and apparently happier Marino than I was used to seeing on occasion now. He was standing beside his late, gray-haired father—my old man’s direct general contracting competition for many decades.

To my right, a forty-something woman sat behind a window that had a small hole carved out of its center. The hole was for talking through.

“Can we help you?” the woman said in a sing-song voice.

She was a red-haired, white-faced woman. Maybe fifty pounds overweight. When she smiled her double-chin trembled like flesh-colored Jello.

“My name is Spike Harrison,” I said.

She just smiled at me, chins trembling, unnaturally happy for a Monday morning.

“Spike Harrison of Harrison Construction,” I added.

“Of course,” she said.

Behind her reception desk I could make out the large interior office space. Two or three support staff occupied identical gray cubicles, all of them women as far as I could tell. Accounts payable and receivable for certain. Beyond the cubicles were the project manager’s offices. I knew that in all likelihood, Marino occupied one of them.

I overheard a man talking…barking.

The more I listened, the more I realized he was arguing with somebody. Standing behind the glass I distinctly heard, “Goddamnit, Tina, when I tell you I’m going to do something I damn well mean it and I don’t need an argument from you or anyone else.”

I knew the whole office could hear him. The fact that they kept their heads down, noses to their computer screens told me they were more than a little used to Peter’s tantrums.

Red the receptionist was still smiling like a chubby Joker, despite her boss’s outburst. She also held her gaze on me with wet eyes.

I said, “Can I speak with Peter?”

“Do we have an appointment?”

“I don’t know about you,” I said. “But I definitely do not.”

That’s when the death defying smile turned into a pout.

“Mr. Marino is terribly occupied at the moment—”

“—It concerns his son-in-law Jimmy Farrell,” I said. Then, cocking my thumb over my shoulder, “The Jimmy from next door?”

She held that stare.

“Jimmy’s doing a removal for me at Public School 20 and he appears to have disappeared…His whole office has been emptied out.”

She pursed her lips.

“Jimmy is married to Peter’s daughter Tina,” she smiled. “What a wonderful wedding they had at the country club.”

I wanted to ball my fist through the glass and grab her by the chins. But then a head turtled itself out from the far corner office. The head had thick black hair and a puffy, clean shaven face. When the eyes on the head saw that a woman was standing at the window above the reception desk, it quickly retracted back into its shell.

“Hold all my calls,” Marino barked.

A door slammed.

Red jumped a mile. How she managed to work that smile back up was a mystery to me.

“Mr. Marino is not available at the moment,” she said. “Perhaps we’d like to make an appointment?”

I knew I would get nowhere trying to get some face time with the highly touted convention center construction manager. I also knew that something had shaken him up; that it might have had something to do with Farrell’s disappearance.

“Can you leave Peter a message for me?”

Red picked a pen up off the desk.

“We’d be happy to,” she lied.

“Tell him that Farrell not only reneged on his contract to perform the asbestos abatement removals at PS 20 according to contract specifications, but that he split town with the school’s two-hundred grand, plus another ten from a Harrison checking account. And I want it back…Today. Got that?”

I looked down at her hand. She hadn’t written anything.

“Perhaps we should have Mr. Marino call you when he gets the opportunity,” she said. “What number can we be reached at?”

I dug for a business card in my jeans pocket, handed it to her through a narrow opening at the bottom of the window. She took the card, set it onto her desk. She kept smiling.

“Sorry we couldn’t be more help,” she said.

“Ain’t no ‘I’ in ‘We,’” I said.

“Excuse me?” she said.

I left.

Chapter 6

Back behind the wheel of the Jeep, I checked my Blackberry.

Four calls.

I scrolled down them all.

As expected, two more calls from Stewart and two back-to-back calls from Tommy. I deleted the messages without listening to them. Then I punched in the speed-dial for Tommy’s cell. When I heard the country music in the background I knew he’d answered from inside his truck.

“Why aren’t you on-site?” I said.

“Could say the same thing ‘bout you chief. That is you weren’t busy playing Agatha Christsakes…”

“It’s Christie, Tommy. And I’m trying to locate Farrell, but failing miserably.”

“Agatha who-gives-a-shit…To answer your question, I got out while I still could. They red-taped the whole place. Even the freakin’ trailer. Jesus, they got me so nervous I was shittin’ yellow. The news people pulled up in their camera trucks. Stewart’s out for blood.”

I told him about A-1 Environmental Solutions being no more and about Farrell’s sudden departure from planet Earth. I told him about making an inquiry at the Marino Construction offices but getting nowhere.

He said he was on his way to Lanies Bar, his home away from home in north Albany. He could better monitor the crisis from the television in the comfort of Lanie’s A.C. But I knew he intended to start on an early happy hour. I couldn’t blame him one bit.

I sat stewing.

By the looks of things, Farrell had exposed hundreds of kids to deadly asbestos fibers. That was one issue. The school’s two-hundred Gs was another. The third, more personal issue was my ten Gs. I stared at his empty building, at the empty parking lot. I wondered what tantalizing clues might lie inside the place if only I could find a way in without getting busted for a B and E.

Maybe the risk was worth it.

I set the mobile down inside the cup holder and got out of the Jeep. I reached under the seat, grabbed my equalizer. Shutting the door, I faced the abandoned offices of A-1 Environmental Solutions. I felt my right hand wrap itself around the rubber grip of the claw hammer. I walked.

I skirted around to the back of the building to the overhead garage door and the locked solid metal door beside it. I raised up the equalizer, took aim, and brought it down hard onto the opener. The collision of metal against metal sent shockwaves up and down my right arm. Motherfucker wouldn’t budge. When it came to Yale lock-sets, they still made them like they used to.

I made my way back to the side of the building that did not face Marino Construction. I came to the first window. I felt the weight of the equalizer in my hand. Cocking it back, I let it fly. The head didn’t go through the safety glass. It only chipped it and bounced off.

An alarm erupted. I never expected an alarm. Who was the dumbass now? The repeating siren blared. Lights flashed inside and outside the building. I peered behind me at a thick patch of second growth woods. If anything alive had bore witness to my action, it would be of the furry four-legged or feathery winged variety.

I ran for the Jeep, equalizer in hand. Stuffing it back down under the seat, I got back behind the wheel. What the hell had I been thinking? Turning the engine over, I peeled out of the lot and hooked a right onto Aviation Park Drive.

I didn’t give Marino Construction a second look as I flew by.

Chapter 7

I called Tommy back.

He was still in his truck, driving.

I asked, “You recall an address for Analytical Labs?”

If Farrell was nowhere to be found, maybe the testing professionals in charge of overseeing his work would be.

“Port of Albany,” Tommy said. “You want me to turn around, head on over there, see what I can see?”

“Negative. I need you to keep on fielding the calls as they come in from Stewart and anyone else who wants their pound of flesh.”

“Not much flesh left to go around,” Tommy said.

“You look in the goddamned mirror lately?”

“You kissing anybody with that mouth of yours?”

I puckered up and blew him a big one. Then I hung up.

At the end of Aviation Drive, I hooked a right in the direction of downtown Albany and beyond that, the Concrete Pearl and the Port of Albany. In my rearview I caught sight of an APD patrol car making the hard turn into Aviation Industrial Park.

Its flashers were lit up.

So was my pulse.

At the entrance to the Port I found a plywood billboard that listed all the businesses that operated inside the port facility. The list included Analytical Labs Environmental Testing Services. B32 was the indicated location.

I drove into the port, hooked a right turn immediately after crossing over the first set of railroad tracks. The port was a busy place even if most of it was scheduled for the wrecking ball to make way for the convention center. Long and narrow, it spanned the length of the river where it ran deep and dark after decades of dredging. Dump trucks and semis occupied the vein-like network of roadways that crisscrossed one another in no discernable pattern.

I made a right turn on just such a road, eyed the old warehouses until I came to the one marked B. I pulled up to the long tin-paneled, two-story structure, parking the Jeep outside a metal rollup door that had the number 32 painted on it directly above the words “Analytical Labs.”

I got out.

Approaching the rollup door, I turned the latch counter-clockwise. It was locked. The latch was old, rusty and corroded from years of damp riverside exposure.

I took a step back.

This wasn’t an office for Analytical Labs. This was a storage space.

My heart beat inside my temples.

I looked behind me, saw a semi speed by me, its trailer bearing the words, “Gorman Molasses.” I knew the driver had to be heading to the molasses processing plant located at the northern most tip of the port.

I turned and faced the Jeep.

I knew I could either get back in, drive back into the city, call off my search for Farrell, face Stewart and the police on my own. Or I could keep on looking for the golden boy and my money.

So far all I’d discovered was an emptied out Environmental Solutions and a Peter Marino who would not talk with me. Now I’d also discovered an Analytical Labs base of operations that wasn’t a base of operations at all. It was a storage bin masquerading as a base of operations. What was that saying about something rotten going on in Albany?

I went to the Jeep, once again retrieved my equalizer.

I glanced over both shoulders.

Not a soul to be seen for hundreds of yards in either direction. Only warehouses, fixed cranes and heavy trucking equipment. I raised up the framing hammer and brought it down hard onto the latch. The lock snapped as if it were made of balsa wood. I twisted the latch, heard the metal locking bars retract. Then I pulled the door open.

The place was empty.

No…Scratch that.

It wasn’t entirely empty.

It was a cavernous square-shaped space with a concrete floor and plywood partitions for walls that served as a holding tank for three small boxes. In the sunlight that leaked in from the open overhead door, I pulled apart the cardboard top on the first box. It was filled with blank Safeway business checks. All of them bore the call name Analytical Labs along with the phony business address. I opened the second box directly beside it. This one contained blank Accounts Receivable spreadsheets. Finally I opened the third box. It contained new Letters of Transmittal. The blank transmittal letters had been sitting there so long they were coated with dust and dirt, even though they’d been stored inside a box.

I stood up, felt the hammer head brushing against my knee. Other than the boxes, there was nothing else to be found inside the place except for spider webs and the smell of cat pee. I glanced down at my watch. It was going on nine-o’clock. I’d been looking for Farrell for an hour and a half. I’d gotten nowhere.

I plucked the mobile from my hip and dialed Tommy.

“Yeah chief.”

I asked him for Analytical Labs’ phone number.

He checked his material/supplier telephone list, recited it for me. I committed it to memory. I asked him if it seemed strange that the address to what was supposed to be a legitimate business operation was really a storage bin that stored a whole lot of nothing.

He laughed, told me he’d known more than one drinking buddy over the years who used one of those places as a permanent residence.

“You recall Analytical Labs performing services on any previous Harrison projects?”

“Not that I recall,” Tommy said. “But I don’t pay much attention to the testing outfits. Ain’t up to us to hire them. Usually the removal contractor hires somebody on behalf of the owner.”

“Despite the fact that the owner should never trust the removal firm to hire its own tester…But they all do it out of convenience anyway.”

“Convenience,” Tommy said. “Stupidity.”

“Ignorance and laziness,” I said.

I hung up on Tommy and dialed the memorized number for Analytical Labs. I waited for a human voice, but I got the same answering service that I’d connected with via the landline back inside the construction trailer.

Tommy was balls-on correct. I never paid much attention to the testing services that came and went from any given construction project simply because I didn’t have to. Had I ever talked with an A.L. technician since starting PS 20? Never. That had been Farrell’s responsibility.