by Joe Clifford
I dropped the linens on the table. “Archer and Black Spring? By the old Armory?”
“Think so. Why? Mean anything?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Who even uses pay phones anymore?”
I didn’t say anything. But I knew the answer.
People who don’t want to be identified.
I heard Charlie kicking around the kitchen in the morning and shouted where he could find that coffee I figured he’d be wanting by now. I rolled over and checked my cell. A little after eight. It was strange having so much time off work, waking up without an alarm, though I was hardly getting a vacation from all this.
We made a pit stop at Miller’s for coffee and smokes. The storm had cleared and trucks were back out on the road. I filled Charlie in on my portion of last night. The junkie girl. The new condos and ski resort. The Commanderoes. Although in the gray light of a new day, I couldn’t say the picture was any clearer.
The plan was to get some breakfast at the Olympic, where we could fuel up on coffee and pancakes, clear our minds, and try to brainstorm what the hell this new influx of information meant in the grand scheme of everything. That is, if it meant anything at all.
We were driving over to the Dubliner so he could pick up his truck, and had just pulled in the lot—dank fog descending the mountaintop like an inappropriate fairy tale—when we heard the sirens, and I saw the flashing lights in the rearview mirror. A squad car hopped the curb, screeching to a halt behind us.
Pat Sumner stepped out of his cruiser, donning his fancy, wide-peaked sheriff’s hat, touching the brim like a cowboy on his way to church.
I unrolled my window and leaned out. Charlie, who had started toward his truck, stopped and turned around.
“Thought that was you, Jay,” said Pat, cheerfully. “Good timing. Hi’ya, Charlie.”
“How you doing, Pat?”
“You know what they say about complaining. Eighty percent of the people don’t care, and the other twenty are glad it’s happening to you and not them.” Pat chuckled before shifting his gaze back to me. “Say, Jay, I need you to follow me.”
“Where to?”
“Got a call this morning from Adam Lombardi. Seems someone hopped a fence and broke into his construction site last night.” Pat let go a deep sigh. “Any guess who?”
“They sure it was Chris?” I asked.
“Video surveillance,” said Pat. “Apparently, Lombardi’s security has your brother climbing the wall like Spider-Man and mugging for the camera.”
The relief I felt that Chris wasn’t dead was instantly replaced by agitation. Mugging for security cameras? Here I was, freaking out and running ragged, and he was treating this goose chase he had me on like a joke.
“Why do you need me—isn’t that a job for the cops?” After my brother had broken into his father’s house and now his family business, I couldn’t imagine Adam Lombardi would be itching to see me any more than I would him.
“Normally,” Pat said, drawling his words. “Except Adam requested that I bring you along.”
“He did?”
“Adam’s a good guy. He doesn’t want to press charges against your brother. Like the rest of us, he’s concerned. We got to put a stop to this, Jay, or someone’s going to get hurt. Real soon. Real bad.”
I turned to Charlie. “Go home. I’ll call you when we’re done.” Then added, quietly, “Why don’t you give Fisher a buzz?”
“Okay,” I said to Pat. “I’ll meet you there. You got an address?”
“Yup. Site of the new condos they’re building. Up by the old Armory. Archer and Black Spring.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Five portable trailers crowned the hilltop behind a tall, chain-link fence that walled in the construction zone like the borders of a miniature military city. Thick, intersecting black tubes ran from each trailer to a clump of bulky power generators that thrummed relentlessly at the middle of the site. Bobcats and bulldozers, perched at odd angles on the slopes, tore off tundra and ripped up roots, dumping mounds of frozen earth, stone, and wood into towering piles for other big, bucketed machines to scoop up and haul away.
The scope of activity was surprising, since I’d known plenty of guys who’d worked construction, and the chief knock against the gig was how work dried up in the winter. Not unlike estate clearing, the coldest months usually spelled layoffs, leaving employees scrambling to pay bills until the thaw of spring. Yet here was this site, kicking it in high gear. Appeared to be a massive project too. Must’ve been three dozen workers toiling about.
The wind kicked up as Pat and I trudged up the hillside. Loosened snow clods fell from evergreen branches arched high above the footpath and exploded at our feet, unleashing the pungent aroma of pine needles. For as aggravated as Turley could make me, I was sorry he hadn’t made the trip. I found it easier talking to him than I did Pat. And I had more questions than ever.
Like we’d entered a war zone, felled trees and blasted shale spread outward in concentric waves from points of detonation, big bombs dropped from the sky. Not all was laid to waste, however; lingering traces of the man-made remained. Chewed-up sidewalk. Crumbled brown-stone. Telephone lines threading the grove. Over the ridge, I spotted the shell of a pay phone booth. The Armory Building hadn’t been functional in years; it was more a memento, a piece of history harkening back to the Revolutionary War. Didn’t matter now. The Ashton landmark was gone—blown up, bulldozed, and buried to make way for some shiny new luxury condominiums.
Droves of soldier ants in hard hats scurried, lugging and lifting, toppling and tugging, shouting at one another in Spanish. Drilling jack-hammers bore straight through the base of my brain, sneaking up behind my eyeballs, and kicking optic nerves with furious sonic force. The closer we drew, the louder, and more painful, it became.
Sturdy steel beams, sprung from the four corners, speared the leaden sky with statements of progress. Too late to turn back now.
Adam Lombardi—whom I probably hadn’t seen in at least two and a half years, not since Jenny and I had run into him at Applebee’s while she was still pregnant with Aiden—stood a grim field general amidst the rumble, barking orders at subordinates over the thunder and grind of retreating tanks. From that far away, I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was him. Like his brother Michael, Adam had always towered larger than life. Big fish. Little pond. Even when we were kids, he possessed a commanding presence.
As we approached the gate, Adam glanced from atop his mountain, then motioned for someone to go down and let us through, before turning and trudging toward a trailer.
A few moments later, a stocky, dark-skinned man swung open the gate, passing along foam earplugs and orange hard hats, gesturing for us to follow, as jackhammers continued their unyielding assault.
When we got to the office door, you could hear yelling inside, though, because of the elevated noise in the yard, obviously not the specifics. As soon as we entered, the shouting stopped. Adam, dressed in what I could only call blue-collar casual—tucked oxford, tan khakis—stood stern-faced and flush, looming over a college-age girl, who clutched a sheet of paper in trembling hands. Upon seeing us, Adam instantly changed tack, washing away all hostility, expression transforming into welcome and warmth. He politely dismissed the girl. When she walked past, I could see her eyes were red and rimmed with tears.
Once the door closed, the office was surprisingly quiet, considering the sonic battlefield we’d just navigated.
Noting my surprise at this, Adam pointed at the roof. “Sound-proofing,” he said. “Had it done in all the trailers. Cost an arm and a leg, but worth every penny. Need to be able to get away and think.” He smiled wide.
We all shook hands, and Adam made sure to look me in the eyes and say my name. The hello felt less organic and more calculated strategy, a sales tip he’d picked up from a Dale Carnegie workshop or one of those Landmark seminars.
You certainly got your fill of the Lombardi brothers growing up in As
hton. They were easily our greatest success story. They played the part well. Black hair, blue eyes, athletically built, with sharp, dark, Italian features. They sported the quintessential all-American look, and both possessed the genial, dignified manner of the self-assured. It occurred to me more than once that Michael and Adam could’ve swapped professions, and each would’ve been equally at home in the other’s shoes.
“How’s Jenny?” Adam asked. “Aiden?” The earnestness was palpable.
“They’re okay.”
“I was sorry to hear it didn’t work out with you two.” Adam acted a little uncomfortable when he said this, lips compressing into a tight, thin line. I couldn’t help but feel this was also slightly staged, the way he momentarily cast his eyes askance, then knitted his brow, as though he too were mourning the loss of something precious.
Adam pointed down at his desk and a framed picture. It featured him and his wife, Heather, and their two sons, Adam Jr. and John, both boys dressed identically in green, collared golf shirts, posed in front of a wood-slat fence beneath a cherry tree against a powder blue background. The boys had inherited Adam’s black hair and square jaw. “I know how rough it can be,” he said. “I’d be lost without my family.”
We waited while Adam gazed wistfully at the JCPenney family portrait.
It was Pat who finally broke the silence. “I suppose you’ll want to be showing us that security tape?”
Adam smirked and unclipped the phone on his belt, tilting it sideways like a CB radio. “Luis, get me the surveillance disc from last night.”
A voice clipped through the static.
A few minutes later, we were all gathered around a plasma TV while Adam hit “play” on the DVD player. A black and white recording with eight split screens popped up, last night’s date and time stamped in military hours in the upper right-hand corner. Adam fast-forwarded until about the three a.m. mark, pointing at the lower left of the screen.
“There,” he said.
You could see a hooded figure scaling the fence and dropping on the other side, zigzagging and darting in the shadows through falling snow, moving from box to box, working his way across the grid like the world’s least graceful ninja. The figure, bundled in scraggly overcoat and bum gloves, morphed clearly into my brother.
In the last box, he’s standing on the doorsteps, banging at the lock with a rock, when he abruptly looks up and realizes he’s on camera. Instead of running off, my dipshit brother peers directly into the lens and smiles, displaying a mouthful of rotting teeth.
Adam clicked it off.
“That’s your brother, all right,” Pat said to me.
All I could do was nod.
“Anything missing?” Pat asked Adam.
Adam shook his head no, then pointed out the window to another trailer. “That’s the one he tried breaking into. Set off the alarm. Central Security called me. I’ve got my own guys monitoring the site. They were on their meal break. Good thing, too. They aren’t as easygoing as I am.” Adam winced a grin. “When I got down here, I checked the tape and saw who it was.” Adam shook his head solemnly, before making direct eye contact with me. “Decided we’d wait till the morning to call the police and get this sorted out.”
“That was mighty white of you,” Pat said, nudging me. “Don’t you think, Jay?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Adam exhaled. “I honestly don’t know what your brother’s beef with me is, Jay. Been that way since we were on the wrestling team back in high school. You know, he always thought my dad screwed him out of his rightful place at the State Championships by selecting me because I was his son.” He paused. “You have to believe me, if I’d have known that one single event would mess up his life so badly, I would’ve begged my father to take him instead of me.” Adam tried to laugh. “We’re going on twenty years. He can’t really still be mad about a snub in high school, can he?”
“I don’t try to guess what goes on in my brother’s head,” I said. I couldn’t begin to fathom what this was all about. I didn’t know why Chris was hopping fences into Adam Lombardi’s construction site in the middle of the night, or why he was breaking into Gerry Lombardi’s house. I didn’t know what was really on that hard drive or who had killed Pete Naginis. If it was a drug deal, or trick turned bad, or what. But I agreed with Adam about one thing: None of this had jack shit to do with high school wrestling.
“Do you want to press charges?” Pat asked.
Adam paused thoughtfully, as if he were really weighing the option, then shook his head. “Of course not.” He turned to me. “I’d like to see your brother get the help he needs,” before adding the obligatory, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
He reached out to shake our hands. When he caught my eyes this time, he stared harder.
“Let me walk you guys out,” he said, pointing at the hard hats on the desk. “Don’t forget those. Wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt.” Then he flashed those smooth politician, pearly whites again.
At the bottom of the hill, the grinding of construction faded into the valley wind. Adam bid Pat goodbye, walking with me to my truck. It became obvious he wanted to say something in private.
“Pretty impressive,” I said, motioning toward the site. “Is this going to be part of the new resort?” Even though the motor lodge and truck stop were a few miles apart, and nothing formal had been announced, it was clear the two projects were related. Nobody was building condos on the edge of nowhere, and I didn’t buy Turley’s explanation that this was for Black Mountain to reap the reward. I wanted to deliver a jab that I knew he was up to something, even if I wasn’t entirely sure what that something might be.
“You could say that,” Adam responded, without surprise. “We’re in the preliminary stages, but when the new resort goes up, we’re banking on folks spending a lot of time up here and wanting to invest in a quality residence. The resort is going to attract a certain crowd.”
“You mean people with money.”
“Yes, Jay, people with money.” He repeated the phrase with the slowed-down, slightly perturbed speech of an adult explaining to a child that sometimes the good guys don’t win, or that life isn’t always fair. “People with money like nice places to stay.”
“Where’s the resort going up, exactly?”
“The truck stop,” he replied in the same transparent tone.
“I saw in the paper that the Maple Motor Inn was sold. I didn’t realize the TC was also on the market.”
Adam scarcely acknowledged the comment, looking around, which was pointless since there was obviously no one remotely within earshot.
“Listen, Jay,” he said, tired of humoring me. “I need to talk to you about something. I’m hoping you can keep this private, between the two of us?”
I nodded.
“I wasn’t entirely honest with Pat up there. He’s sheriff of this town, and I didn’t think he’d be willing to look the other way, even if I said I didn’t want to press charges. But Chris did take something from me.”
“What?”
Adam sighed impatiently. “I think we both know.”
I didn’t want to give anything away, but Adam was acting like there was nothing to hide.
He waited a moment until all warmth drained from his friendly all-American façade. What remained was cold, old-country mean. “You want to do it like that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “He took a computer that belongs to me. A hard drive.” He made sure to enunciate every word. “I would very much like it back.”
“I thought you said he didn’t get in the trailer?”
A hard, fast wind kicked up ice and sand and spat them back in my face. I tried to remain steadfast and not blink, hold my ground in whatever this showdown was turning into.
“I’m doing you a solid,” Adam said. “Giving you the chance to make this right before shit escalates and my security guys get involved. You don’t want that. Trust me. I know Chris told you all about it, and I also know you and Char
lie Finn went up to that old Chinese restaurant asking about it. So, please, Jay, stop wasting my time. Because this isn’t a game. This is my business.”
I pulled out my cigarettes, lit one against the elements. I hadn’t expected Adam to be so forthright, and it was throwing me off. I had all these loose threads in my head that I’d been trying to tie together, and here he was saying, “Give me that,” and handing me back the entire package wrapped in a nice, tidy bow.
“Sure,” I admitted, “he told me someone had dropped off a hard drive at the shop he ran with his buddy, Pete—you know, the guy they just found dead—and that there was something … incriminating … on it. But he never said he got it from you.” Which was true. I’d only figured out this morning that the computer might’ve come from Lombardi when I found out about the pay phone location. And even then, I couldn’t be sure. I thought I had deduced a secret. I’d even paused over the word “incriminating” to see how Adam might react. But if my innuendo had registered, Adam showed nothing. His steely eyes remained unchanged.
Adam turned back to the trailer, casually. “That girl you saw me talking to? That’s Nicole. Takes classes at White Mountain Community. Just started working for me as an office assistant, part-time. Nice tits. Dumb as a stump. Been here two days and already has misplaced a purchase order and screwed up my lunch. She’s only working for me because I had to fire the last guy who did her job, Darren.” Adam swept his arm over the breadth of his impending kingdom. “We’re expanding. This new resort is going to be a real boon for Lombardi. So I figured it was time we upgraded our computer system.
“I put Darren in charge of disposing of the old ones. And the faggot fucked up.” This time it was Adam’s turn to linger over a word. He said “faggot” with extra venom. Learning what I had about my brother’s alleged prostitution, I don’t think I kept as convincing a poker face. “I told Darren to toss the old computers, and I was explicit that they be recycled. Which he did, bringing them to a high-tech waste company down in Concord. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten a hard drive on his backseat, and, rather than drive all the way back on his day off, he decided that a homemade shop run by a bunch of tweakers on the Turnpike would suffice.” Adam spat a gob of yellow into the white snow. “Obviously, he was wrong.”
