The Big Dig

by Linda Barnes

  Here’s what I always say: If you believe that bullshit bromide about child raising, you pretend nothing’s wrong even when it is wrong. Because your daughter’s conduct reflects on you. I dropped the idea of asking the Jameses to file a missing persons report and, staring at Jack James’s mottled cheeks, decided I wouldn’t even mention the Jeep. Man might have a heart attack in his Barcalounger if he thought a daughter of his was suspected of car theft.

  “Helen, goddam it.” He touched a button on the side of his chair and his massive body jerked upright. “Why’s this woman wasting my time, anyhow? You told her about that phone call, didn’t you? Honest, Helen, I don’t know what’s wrong with you sometimes.”

  His wife bit her lip, stared down at her lap. “Well, I didn’t talk to Ronni.”

  “Did she phone while you were out?” I asked. “Leave a message?” If they hadn’t erased it, I’d make a copy. “Did she say where she was?”

  “Well, just this morning, what happened is, a man name of Peter called, said she was fine, not to worry. Asked me to call her landlord. So I did, left a message.”

  “Peter?” I repeated. “Peter who?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember the last name. He gave it, though, very polite. Nice friendly voice, like a talk show host. I thought it was gonna be some come-on for a bank, maybe I won some contest. I always send in those contest forms, gives me something to look forward to. He said I could save him some bother, make the phone call, like he was at a pay phone or something. You know how they eat up your change.”

  “Did he say the landlord or the landlady?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t recall.”

  “Did this Peter say why Veronica didn’t want to say hello, make her own phone calls?”

  “Oh, he was just doing her a favor.” Helen picked at her skirt some more. “I hope I didn’t do wrong. When I called Miss Endicott, I left a message, saying I heard from Ronni, and not to worry.”

  “But you didn’t. Hear from her.”

  “Well, not in so many words.”

  “You calling my wife a liar?” Mr. James said loudly. “That’s it. We’ve answered enough of your questions.”

  “I’m certainly not calling anyone a liar,” I said smoothly, “and I appreciate your time. This Peter, do you remember your daughter mentioning him? Did she work with him, go to school with him?”

  “We don’t know her Boston friends,” Helen ventured. “I don’t remember any Peter from her high school crowd.”

  “Gal didn’t have any high school crowd. Ronni’s a loner. Not like Elsie. Elsie was a cheerleader her junior year. She—”

  “Ronni sang with the choir,” Helen said defensively. “That was her crowd, the choir kids.”

  “And look what they dragged into the choir,” her husband said angrily. “That’s why she never met any decent boys.”

  “She met Rick.”

  “Who’s Rick?” I said.

  “Her goddam husband,” Jack said in a disgusted voice. “Hel, you would have to go and mention the bastard. Was her husband, the asshole.”

  I’d run a document search on Veronica James, first thing. No record of a marriage, or a divorce. Dana Endicott hadn’t mentioned a marriage. Jack James hit the remote and the television boomed full volume. I tried to ask another question. A grinning model piloted a silver SUV about a hundred miles an hour down a rain-slicked road to a deafening rock-and-roll beat. James glared at me, shouted good-bye, turned his full attention to the set.

  As she ushered me into the hall, Helen James glanced at me shamefacedly. “Ronni and Rick, they were never really married. He knows. Not by the church and not by the law, but she lived with him and all, so he calls Rick her ex-husband.”

  Standing in the tiny foyer, I convinced her to part with Rick’s last name, Garrison, and to give me an address, even though she thought it was no longer a current one.

  “I don’t think she’d go to him. Honestly.”

  “Where would she go, if she were in trouble?”

  Mrs. James’ face closed. “We don’t believe in abortion.”

  I hadn’t even been thinking of that kind of trouble. “Is she close to any of her sisters?”

  “There’s such an age difference between Ronni and Jayme.” She bit her lip and her fingers tightened on the door handle. “And Jackie, well, she’s still in school….”

  I insisted on their phone numbers, too.

  “Helen!” Jack had quite a voice when he let it fly. It boomed over the TV blare and made the woman glance guiltily over her shoulder.

  “Have Ronni call me,” she whispered, “soon as you find her. I’m worried to death. We watch TV all the time. You’d think he’d know what it’s like out there.”

  TV ain’t life, lady, I felt like saying. Turn off the fucking machine, breathe the real air. Instead I thanked her. Then I sat in my car and phoned each of the sisters, one after the other. Neither Jackie nor Jayme had seen Veronica, neither knew Peter. I saved Elsie—Mom and Daddy’s darling—for last.

  “Certainly not,” she said firmly when I asked whether Veejay was staying with her. Her voice, low and gentle, annoyed me, since I’d imagined it nasal and hard.

  “Do you have Peter’s phone number?”

  “Who?”

  “Do you know a friend of Veronica’s named Peter?”

  “No comment.”

  “Listen, lady, I’m not from the National Enquirer. I’m trying to help your sister. I didn’t tell your parents, but Veronica took off in a car she doesn’t own.”

  “She stole a car? Oh, my lord.”

  “No one wants to press charges. Not if I find her soon.”

  “Maybe Ronni doesn’t want to be found, you ever think of that? Oh, just leave me alone. Leave my folks alone, too. You people never quit, do you?” She hung up with a righteous bang, leaving me wondering what “people” she was talking about.

  Had Dana Endicott phoned? Or was someone else asking questions about Veronica?

  Chapter 11

  “Hey, I’m sorry, kid. Ya must have had a hell of a long day.” Eddie stuck out his hand and we shook. No embrace.

  He’d chosen a North End pizzeria as a rendezvous, a thick-crust Sicilian joint. In another month or two, we might have eaten outdoors at a small table under a Cinzano umbrella, sipped espresso, watched street life pass down Hanover Street. I’d driven straight from Tewksbury, parking semi-legally, too close to a hydrant. It was rainy, dark, windy, and like the other patrons, we chose to eat indoors.

  “I called the General,” he went on. “The official line is no change. His condition’s listed as—”

  “Grave, but it’s worse than that, Eddie. I talked to a guy. They’re keeping him on life support long enough to round up people who can use his organs. He’s not coming out.”

  “Who told ya that?”

  “Guy I know. Guy I trust.”

  “Damn. Here, why don’t ya sit down?”

  Indoors, the cracked plaster needed paint; the carpet, replacement. There were seven tables—first come, first served, seat yourself. Customers came for the puttanesca sauce, not the kitschy Chianti-bottle décor or the sketchy ambiance. Fire blazed in a brick oven in the far wall. At least it was warm.

  “So, is this going to be a black mark against Horgan Construction?” I took off my coat and draped it on the back of my chair.

  “Ya wanna order?” Eddie’s clothes were rumpled, and he looked older than he’d appeared at our previous meeting, old enough that I wondered how beneficial mozzarella and pepperoni would be on his weakened heart. We decided to split a big pie. Two smalls, you wind up with nothing but crust.

  He tapped nervous fingers on the table. “It’s bad, any accident on the project is bad, causes trouble, but I don’t think we have to worry. Nothing to do with the stuff I asked ya to look at.”

  “Still,” I said.

  “Still what?”

  “There are things I’d like to know. For instance, I haven’t talked to anybod
y who saw the guy fall.”

  “Insurance dicks will cover that.”

  “You want me to stick to stolen equipment?”

  The waiter interrupted and took our order. Eddie asked for Bacardi and soda. I stuck to Pepsi. I was still working.

  As soon as the waiter left, Eddie motioned me closer, lowered his voice. “Listen, another call came in yesterday on the hotline. About the Horgans.”

  “What?”

  “Carlotta, I don’t like being used. Politically. Ya know that, right? Even when I was a cop, I didn’t let the suits shove me around.”

  He was giving himself the benefit of the doubt, but I nodded in agreement.

  “If I thought this was just political, I’d quit. Thing is, I’m not sure what it is.”

  “Eddie, you know me from when I was a cop, too. If there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there.”

  He blew out a breath, smiled. His fingers touched the collar of his shirt like they wanted to loosen it. “Okay, Carlotta. Sometimes I gotta hear it. I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, you hired me, you can fire me. I’ll keep my eye out for smoke and mirrors. I’ve got no grudge against the Horgans.”

  He nodded, sipped water.

  “What’s with the new hotline call?” I asked.

  “Selling dirt.”

  “Selling dirt?”

  “Guy says somebody’s selling dirt offa Horgan’s site. Illegally.”

  “There’s money in dirt?”

  “When you’re talking thirteen million cubic yards of it, there is. Ya know how much dirt that is?”

  He was itching to enlighten me so I shook my head.

  “Could fill Foxboro Stadium thirteen times.”

  The New England Patriots play football in Foxboro Stadium.

  “Who pays for dirt?” I asked.

  “Depends where it goes, depends who hauls it. There’s deals with the state, capping landfills, making a new park over on Spectacle Island, ya know. Some private guys are in there too, filling in a quarry to make a fancy country club, sending it out to landscapers in the ’burbs.”

  Spectacle Island, in Boston Harbor, used to be not only an eyesore, but a stinkhole. Use an area as a garbage dump long enough, that happens. Increased in size, sculpted and landscaped with Dig dirt, it was being touted as a future day-trippers’ delight, only a ferryboat ride away.

  I said, “Dirt off one site, though, the price tag couldn’t be much.”

  “Exactly.”

  “The complaint give specifics?” I asked. “Names?”

  The waiter brought the pizza, a misshapen circle smelling of garlic and tomato, too hot to touch. I inhaled and salivated. They’d scored it into six generous slices, left the knife on the side. I cut Eddie a wedge and dumped it on his plate, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “C’mon, before it gets cold,” I said.

  My half had artichokes and anchovies in addition to pepperoni. It was squishy, hot, and delicious, twice as good as its Quincy Market cousin, and I vowed to bring Paolina here. Maybe she could bring a friend and we’d avoid the loaded silences.

  Eddie tasted a small bite, wiped his mouth on his napkin. “Listen, Carlotta, there’s nothing says this dirt business or the thing about stuff walking off-site has anything to do with a lousy accident. I been on this, ever since I heard. I got my sources at the General, too, and the docs think the man fell.”

  “Yeah, you show me a doc who can tell the difference between fell and got shoved, Eddie.”

  “You think it’s like that?”

  I envisioned the scaffold staircase, remembered the queasy sensation in my stomach the first time I’d descended to the pit. “I don’t know. You want me to check with the paramedics, see if he said anything?”

  “In the ambulance?”

  “Horgan rode with him.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Eddie said.

  “I’m going to ask Spike to run a criminal check on Fournier, okay?”

  “A CORI? Sure.”

  I wondered if I should expand the criminal records search, include Harv O’Day and Leland Walsh. O’Day could over-order supplies and equipment even more easily than the Horgans. And Walsh—what exactly made me suspicious of Walsh? Good looks? The way he’d watched me take the steps to the trailer? His disappearing act following Fournier’s fall?

  “Anything else you want me to cover, Eddie? Will the site close if Fournier dies?”

  “Hah. The big boys will send flowers and regrets, but this is a money deal. You stick to equipment theft—plus check out the hauling contracts.”

  “Horgan had a disagreement with a trucker day before yesterday.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Norrelli.”

  Eddie took a long pull on his drink, leaned closer. “Interesting. Maybe you oughta use your contacts, you know what I mean?”

  He concentrated on his pizza, avoiding my eyes.

  “I don’t like it,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Eddie, you know sometimes on a case, your gut tells you look here, look there. Mine’s not giving me directions yet, but there’s something. The site’s way too tense—”

  “Whaddaya mean, tense?”

  “Maybe what I’m picking up is some kind of financial trouble, or maybe something personal, like a divorce. Any rumors about Liz and Gerry?”

  “Shit. That would be bad. That would split the freakin’ company.”

  I wondered exactly how much of Horgan Construction Liz Horgan owned. I didn’t feel like I could ask Eddie flat out. Eddie was old man Horgan’s friend.

  I said, “Do you have tapes of the hotline calls?”

  “They’re at the IG’s office.”

  “Any chance both complaints were made by the same guy?”

  “Hey, if they were, it’s probably some asshole with a grudge, right? FBI lab’s got sound stuff. I gotta buddy there.”

  “Am I good with voices, Eddie?”

  “Hell, yeah. I remember.”

  “It’s not scientific, but why not let me listen?”

  I didn’t think I’d be able to match the voices. I mean, if I were trying to screw somebody that way, I’d have the presence of mind to disguise my voice, or have a pal drop a dime. But I thought I might get a fix on where the calls had been placed.

  We finished the pizza, decided to skip dessert even though the cannoli were bursting with whipped cream.

  It was easier to walk the half mile to the IG’s office than move our cars. We passed under the Central Artery and made our way through a narrow, ill-lit Dig detour bounded by blue-and-yellow barriers. The wind whistled under the old highway and tugged at my hat.

  The man who’d called the fraud line twice had made no effort to disguise his voice. I listened to the first message, then the second. The second, then the first, again. It helped that I’d heard him angry, demanding to know why Gerry Horgan refused to go to twenty-four/seven. Fournier sounded angry on tape, too.

  “Shit,” Eddie said. “You can’t be sure.”

  “Right,” I said. But I was.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning I hunched my shoulders and leaned into the wind again, lowering my head as I passed Sam Adams’s statue in front of Faneuil Hall, using the Cradle of Liberty as shelter from gusts of grit, grateful for the windbreak, and for the fact that Eddie hadn’t moved me to another site, maybe high on the new cable-stayed bridge. Just the thought of the icy wind at a hundred and fifty feet gave me chills. If you fell from a height like that, no doubt about the outcome.

  I reminded myself to view the mechanical drawings, check the depth of the trench at the point of Fournier’s fall. My mind replayed the tapes I’d heard the night before. Stuff walking off the Horgan site. Somebody selling dirt.

  If you sell dirt, you don’t ship it in cardboard cartons. You move it in trucks, maybe big red Norrelli trucks. Trucks mean teamsters, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is composed of men who live by an ironclad code: Never turn in a fel
low driver. Something falls off the back of a truck, none of your business.

  Fournier wasn’t a teamster. What did he know about stuff walking off the site, about selling dirt? Had he overheard a conspiracy, seen something he shouldn’t have seen? And why use the hotline? Why not go to the Horgans, tell them his suspicions? Because they were involved, compromised … Use your contacts. Eddie’s words echoed, but it was way too early to phone Sam Gianelli. Way too early … and maybe way too late.

  Fournier died at 8:57 A.M. without regaining consciousness. I didn’t hear it from Happy Eddie. I found out—no details, just the fact—from the look on Marian’s face as she pressed her ear to the receiver. Liz Horgan knew as soon as Marian opened the inner-office door without knocking.

  Liz’s hands shook as she clasped them to her breast and she turned paler than she’d been when they hauled Fournier out of the trench. She closed her eyes and took deep gulping breaths. Her fair hair clung limply to her colorless cheeks as she warned Marian and me to say nothing to the press, to refer all reporters to the Dig’s PR director. She instructed Marian to call the General again, get the name of the funeral home, inquire about services. Any calls from OSHA or union officials were to be put through to her immediately. We were to make additional copies of the weekly safety reports for the past month, make sure they were available. If any of the workers asked to see them, fine, we weren’t hiding anything. She handed me a manila folder; would I please add the new night watchman to the payroll?

  The work didn’t occupy my mind. It existed on one level—my fingers tapped the keys, entering Jason O’Meara, DOB, SSN—but my thoughts strayed. The news of Fournier’s death passed into O’Day’s office, provoking a moment of shocked silence followed by a muttered curse.