Chin - 04 - No Colder Place

by S. J. Rozan

  “You got a job here, Smith.”

  I looked up at him where he stood by the door. “You telling me to get to work?”

  “No. I’m telling you you got a job. And so do about a hundred and fifty other guys, thirty-two of ’em mine. You lose this job, where are you gonna go?” He shook his head impatiently. “Well, not you, you’re a fucking detective, I guess you don’t need this shit, no matter what. But Mike. Where’s he gonna go?”

  “He’ll pick up something else.”

  “What the hell is he gonna pick up, now, the way things are?”

  “He’ll find something,” I said, though I knew as I said it that finding something, if things were as bad as everyone was telling me, would be hard.

  “All of them? All thirty-two masons? The carpenters? The ironworkers? The tin-knockers? Where the hell are these guys gonna go, Smith, if this building goes under?”

  “This happens in construction,” I said. “Fat periods and tight ones. Guys who work these jobs know that.”

  “Yeah. In the fat periods, they put money down on houses and take the kids to Disney World. When it gets tight, their wives take on night jobs at McDonald’s and the bank takes the house back.”

  “Lozano—”

  “What I’m telling you is, it was the only way to keep paying the men.”

  He stood for a moment, silently; I was silent too. Then he circled back to his desk, wary, his eyes still on mine, waiting for my reaction, prepared to meet it.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, although I thought I did.

  Lozano sighed, rubbed his face again. “Not in here,” he said. “The men are going to start coming in soon, clocking in. Come in the back.”

  The trailer’s back room was a storeroom, half the size of the one Lozano used for an office, piled with boxes of caulk tubes, ten-pound bags of fine colored sand to tint the mortar, metal cans of dry and wet chemicals you could add to the mortar so work could continue in the heat, in the cold, chemicals to retard curing, to hasten it, to give high early strength, to control shrinkage, to adjust the job to the conditions you had.

  Lozano flicked on a buzzing overhead fluorescent, and we each chose a box to sit on. Once we were settled, I said nothing, let him tell me as he was ready.

  He looked at me, said evenly, “Crowell’s in debt up to their eyebrows. My second requisition, I find out they’re already in the hole. They got plenty of nothing.”

  “They can’t pay you?”

  “Every month it’s a scramble,” he said. “Anyway, that’s what they’re telling me. I don’t know, but they’re telling me it’s true.”

  In my head I heard Lydia’s voice. The gentleman yelled at me, she’d said. The Crowells owe money all over town.

  “I think it’s probably true,” I told Lozano. “I’ve heard that too. But what about the owner? Can’t they go to her?”

  “She’s having trouble too, what I hear. Bank problems. Not so easy for a black lady to get a construction loan, especially in times everyone else thinks is bad. Bank probably figures she don’t know what the hell she’s doing.”

  “You think that’s true?”

  “How the hell should I know? All’s I know is, she’s hanging on by her fingernails. She’s paying her requisitions and bills as they come in, but she can’t come up with more. I hear she already chewed her way through the first construction loan, and she can’t get the next till the building’s fifty percent closed in. Crowell’s pushing for that to be October.”

  “What’s she using for money in the meantime?”

  “I got no idea.”

  “But if she’s paying, out of whatever, what do you need this scam for?”

  “She pays Crowell, but everything she gives them don’t go to us. Crowell’s trying to keep their head above water here. One month they pay this guy, next month that guy. They lowballed this job, big time. They got no slack, no float, nothing.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Junior, he thinks Senior lost it. Got his damn pencil too sharp, came in with numbers they couldn’t meet, just to get the job. Junior thinks the old man don’t have it no more.”

  “Is that true?”

  Lozano moved his shoulders helplessly. “Seems smart as he ever was, to me. But this money thing’s a real bad problem. Payroll’s only partial, almost since the job started.”

  “Only partial? And you stayed on this job?”

  “What the hell am I gonna do?” His eyes pleaded with me. “Good times, I take my men and walk. But times like these? Some of my men left other jobs to come here. Because I called ’em, said this was solid, good for a year. Me, Smith. What am I gonna do, tell ’em, ‘Sorry, my mistake’?”

  “So you came up with this scheme? Substitute cheap materials, put the difference into payroll? Is that how it works?”

  “That’s how it works. Some trades are cutting corners on work, too, less layers of Sheetrock, that kind of thing. More work in less time, payroll’s smaller overall. Mandelstam even let three guys go. Not me, I’m not letting that happen, not with the bricks.” Understand, his look said. “Just until Crowell gets on their feet. Wasn’t even supposed to be this long. We’re still working low on the bricks, stuff like this matters less, the lower the floor. I thought it would be over by now.”

  “It’s not,” I said.

  “No, it’s not. Shit.” He shook his head, let his hands drop between his knees. “I’m sorry I ever bought in.”

  “It wasn’t your idea?”

  “Me? You gotta be kidding. I don’t have the brains for this kind of shit.”

  “Hacker told me all the subs were in on it.”

  He nodded.

  “And they’re all doing what you’re doing? Paying their men from the difference?”

  “I don’t know about that. O’Malley, at Emerald, I got a feeling he’s taking some home. Emerald’s got deeper pockets than Lacertosa, I think, so he’s got something to pay his men out of until his requisitions are met. But what the hell’s the difference what he’s doing? His men are working. So are mine.”

  I pulled my cigarettes out of my pocket, silently offered the pack to him. He shook his head, kept his eyes on me. I lit up, breathed the smoke. “So you guys all got together and worked this out? Brought Hacker into it because he’s got to sign off on all the materials you’re using? And it’s true, what Hacker said: that Dan Crowell Junior’s so dumb he doesn’t suspect a thing?”

  Lozano stared at me. “You don’t get it.”

  “I don’t?”

  He shook his head. “Hacker, yeah,” he said. “He hadda sign off, and there’s nothing in it for him but money, so he’s getting paid off. But us all get together? Dan Junior don’t suspect? Hell, Smith.” He snorted. “Whose idea do you think this was?”

  I clocked in, as it turned out, a little late that day, after Lozano and I were done. He shook his head with a sad smile and said my late time card should be his biggest problem. I told him I didn’t know what his biggest problem was going to be, and that it might come from me, but not right away.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “You’re investigating. You turn over a rock and find a pile of shit. You ain’t gonna do anything about it?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said. “It depends on the answers I find. I have some other questions.”

  “Go ahead.” He sighed. “This’s been killing me for months, Smith. It’s almost good to talk about it.”

  “What was Joe Romeo’s role?”

  “Nothing much. He was a nosy bastard, so I brought him in, otherwise he’d have figured it out for himself and made trouble. He was kinda useful, too. He was the one approached Hacker, got a few bucks for that.”

  “Why him?”

  “Why Joe, go to Hacker? In case Hacker said no, he still wouldn’t know about anyone else. And we figured, a guy like Joe, Hacker might be too scared to buy in but he’s not gonna have the guts to drop a dime on Joe.”

  “And Lenny Pelligrini?”

  Lozano sh
ook his head. “Far as I know, nothing. He was a crane operator. Didn’t have nothing to do with materials. That was a bad night, when they found him. I almost …” He trailed off, looked into space, maybe thinking about what he’d almost done.

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No.” He seemed about to say something else, then changed his mind. He asked, “Smith? What were you talking about, about him—he had a scam going on?”

  I regarded him, considered whether to tell him, and how much. “A lot of things went walking from this site early on,” I said. “Tools and equipment, right?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Always happens, more or less.”

  “But it was particularly bad here.”

  “I guess, for a while. Till Crowell Senior beefed up security. Junior told him it would cost more for guards than they were losing, maybe they should just let it go, but Senior, he said that wasn’t the way to do things, it wasn’t right. He brought on another night guard, more lockboxes. Made Junior chase the men down, make sure they were following lockup procedures. Things got normal again. Wait a minute.” Lozano frowned at me. “Are you telling me Pelligrini? He had something to do with that?”

  “Seems to be.”

  “That skinny kid? He was stealing all that shit? Jesus.”

  “Yeah, he was. But I don’t think alone, Lozano.”

  “No? Who—? Oh, hold on,” he demanded, as it dawned. “Whoa. You think it was me?” His tone was incredulous, as though being thought of as a criminal was a new idea for him.

  “It had crossed my mind.”

  “You gotta be—” He started strong, then deflated. His eyes looked into mine; he even gave me a rueful half-smile. “I guess I could see why. But it wasn’t me, Smith. Not that kind of shit. This’s bad enough.”

  “You have any idea who it might have been?”

  He shook his head. “Unless it was Joe? He had that kind of balls.”

  “I don’t think it was. The guy who gave me Pelligrini’s name, the guy who bought the frontloader, hadn’t heard of Joe Romeo. I tried his name out on Pelligrini’s family, too. Nothing.”

  “Then I got no idea.”

  “What about Louie Falco?”

  “Who?”

  “Falco. What was his role?”

  “I don’t know him. Who’s he?”

  I’d asked it that way, same tone of voice, no big deal, to sandbag him, see what reaction I’d get. I wanted to know if Lozano’s eyes would widen, his voice miss a beat, to hear that I knew how far back this thing went; but if he was acting, he was far better than I thought.

  “Who’s he?” he asked again.

  “He’s a guy who’s part of something,” I said. “A guy you don’t want part of anything you do.”

  “Well, if he’s got something to do with this site, I never heard of him.”

  “Maybe I have it wrong,” I said.

  “Yeah, maybe. Or maybe there’s shit I don’t know about. Jesus, I’m sure there is.”

  I had only one more question, more about the man himself than about what he’d done. More because I wanted to know than because I needed to.

  “Lozano?”

  He looked up.

  “How far was this going to go?”

  He sighed. “Believe me, I been thinking about it. You hadn’t come, I might’ve blown the whistle myself, after Joe. Only Crowell Junior says don’t worry, John, it’s all gonna come okay. He says these things, they got nothing to do with each other. What you’re doing is right, John, to be paying your men. Soon we’ll be past this, it’ll be over. That’s what he said.”

  “And you believed that.”

  “I wanted to. Christ, wouldn’t you?”

  His voice almost broke on that one.

  I didn’t have an answer to it.

  “What about Crowell Senior?” I asked.

  “I didn’t talk to him. I don’t talk about this stuff much, Smith, not to the other supers, not to anyone. Partly, it’s safer that way. Partly, I can sometimes forget it’s happening, that way.”

  Lozano and I left the storeroom, back to his office, he to his paperwork, me to punch my time card and head up above.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to sit on this for a while,” I said. “There’s something else I need to know, another piece, before I’m done.”

  That wasn’t completely accurate. It was true I didn’t have the whole picture, not even close. There was one more thing I wanted to know, to be able to show, and my plan was to try for it at the end of the day.

  But whether I was satisfied or not, whether I got what I wanted or got a handful of air, I was ready to come in. One more try; then I’d call Bzomowski and Mackey, go down to the precinct, give them everything I had, no matter if I had everything I wanted or not. I’d waited too long already, and what I had might be enough. Three murders, one attempt. At least two scams that needed to be protected. If all this was connected, as it had to be, this was way beyond me now, and the end that would be best for Chuck, for Denise Armstrong, and for all the men on this site, wasn’t something I could control anymore.

  But I didn’t tell that to Lozano. I didn’t want him afraid, knowing how close I was to blowing the whole thing. Not that I was worried about Lozano. He wasn’t dangerous. But frightened men are unpredictable: they act in strange ways, and they talk. If Lozano felt safe, at least for now, my chances were better of coming up with something when I took my last shot.

  “Sit tight,” I said. And for some reason, looking into his eyes, I said, “I’m sorry, Lozano.” He nodded, and half smiled.

  I left the office, felt Lozano staring after me as I went. I didn’t close the door behind me; all the men knew Lozano’s door was always open.

  I crossed the raw concrete from the trailer offices to the hoist, ready to head for the sixth floor, ready to start the day. Mike, I knew, would be up there by now, laying out our work, wondering where I was, wondering about me. I stood at the barrier with three other guys, watched the hoist creak down from above. I was ready to step on, but when it opened, it wasn’t empty.

  Dan Crowell, Jr. and Denise Armstrong, both in green Crowell hard hats and deep in conversation, moved aside as they came out, to let us enter.

  I almost made it, almost walked right past her behind a tall pipe-fitter I thought might shield me. But it didn’t happen. Still talking to Dan Junior, she glanced around her, it seemed automatically, to get the lay of the place. An instinct, maybe, so nothing would take her by surprise.

  I did.

  She stopped in the middle of her sentence. “Mr. Smith!” She stared into my eyes.

  “Mrs. Armstrong,” I answered smoothly, stepping back out of the hoist I’d gotten halfway into. The operator closed it and it started up without me. “How are you?” I asked before she had a chance to say anything else.

  Crowell Junior looked from her to me. “Smith,” he said. “You two know each other?”

  “I worked for Mrs. Armstrong on another job,” I answered. “That little terra-cotta renovation up Broadway. Your office?” I said to her, making it a question, though not the one I was asking out loud. “Nice building. Well built, when it started. Easy to repair, because of that.”

  “Yes,” Denise Armstrong said. She’d skipped half a beat, but maybe no one noticed that but me. When she spoke, her tone was deliberate, her smile impersonal. “My office. Quite a good job, that renovation. You’re working here now?”

  “Yes. I’d heard you owned this building, too.”

  “I do. I trust the work you do here will be up to the standard your employers have come to expect from you, Mr. Smith.” She smiled again, a smile that was borderline frosty, and turned away. “Dan, I need to ask you about the windows.” She started across the concrete without looking back. Dan Junior trotted after her.

  I lit a cigarette, watched them on the other end of the building, Dan Junior pointing out details at an opening in the masonry, Denise Armstrong nodding her he
ad. The groan of wood and the creak of gears announced that the hoist guy had come back for me. He made some crack about buddying up to the big boss; I made some crack about using it if you’ve got it. He took me up to the sixth floor and I headed along the scaffold to find Mike DiMaio, and my work.

  DiMaio was laying a reinforcing ladder in a bed of mortar when I came up. “Christ,” I said, “you got that far already?” We were working high by now, above his shoulders, almost to mine, and yesterday we’d rigged a plank platform on the scaffolding to work from, to bring our work back to waist height. A few more brick courses and we’d have to take the planks out from the scaffolding above, to stick our heads through as we finished out the bay.

  DiMaio looked down at me. From the platform he was taller than I was, though not by much. “Someone’s gotta do some work around here, Smith,” he said. “I got here early.”

  “So did I.” I slung my tool bag onto the platform next to where I’d be, stepped up there myself. I looked at his work, found my place in it.

  For a while I worked silently, following DiMaio’s lead, placing the bricks and the mortar and the ladders, laying in the ties. The sun from the east was hot and steady, throwing crisscross shadows from the safety netting onto our work, and us.

  DiMaio didn’t have much to say either, just tips to help me out. Lozano came around once, with his clipboard, greeted us both as though it were the first time that day. Kenny, the Jamaican laborer who was low-ranking man on the crew, and, on that account, stuck with the daily coffee run, came by to ask what we wanted. We gave him our orders and a few bucks, and went back to work.

  I started a shift in the pattern, headers that would mark a line around the building at the level of the center of the windows. DiMaio’s line was done, and he’d begun the bricks between the window openings, something we were both supposed to be responsible for.

  I placed a brick, tapped it back, moved it forward, to line it up with the one beside it. “Mike?” I said.