by S. J. Rozan
“What I had to do. You’re coming on like a Mack truck, like always, promising this, sure about that, but there’s no goddamn money and the business is going down the tubes.”
“No.” Senior shook his head in bafflement. “What are you talking about? There was enough.”
“Enough? Partial payments to the subs? Invoices six months behind to every goddamn supplier we have?”
“The subs know I’m good for it. In times like this they won’t walk, where are they gonna go? And suppliers can wait. They always do.”
“They were calling every three days! They hired collection agencies!”
“And I told you, when that happened, to give the calls to me! I can handle them. This is the way I’ve always done business, Daniel.”
“No. You used to do business smart. There was always a cushion, something for the future. You were always spread around. Now all our eggs are in this one damn basket. You underfigured the fucking job, so you could look like a hero to Mrs. Armstrong, and even the price you gave her, she doesn’t have. Mrs. Armstrong’s sinking, broke, and you’re bound and determined we’re gonna go down with her!”
Senior was silent, his angry eyes boring into his son. Junior met that look without flinching. I wondered, suddenly, how many times in his life he’d been able to do that before.
“This was for the future, Daniel,” Senior said. “Your future.”
“The way you’re going, there won’t be a future.”
“Mrs. Armstrong’s not broke.”
“The bank—”
Senior shook his head dismissively. “The new bank loan’ll come through when we’re fifty percent closed in. She has what she needs to take her through till then.”
“Bullshit she does. Where’d she get it?”
“What’s the difference where she got it? It’s there. Things are tight, but we’ll make it.”
“She’ll make it, you mean.”
“We’ll make it, Daniel. Crowell Construction has a partnership agreement with Armstrong Properties. Contingent on this project being successful.”
Junior took a moment to answer. “Partnership? What the hell are you doing, setting up a partnership?”
Senior hesitated a moment, then demanded, “You mean, because I’m dying?” He spoke as though the hostility of his words could hide the pain behind them.
Junior’s face reddened, but he answered. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I mean. You’ve got to face facts, Dad. What makes you think you’ll be around to carry out any partnership?”
“I won’t. But you will.”
“I—”
“You will, and you need this, Daniel. She’s good. Smart, tough, ballsy. If this project’s a success, people will be lining up to finance whatever she wants to do next. The contractor hooked up with her will be set up for life.”
“Set up for life?” Junior repeated. He sounded like a man who was sure he was missing something, as though he thought that—looked at in a different light—what he was saying and what was being said to him would connect in some different, reasonable way.
“If this one’s a success,” Senior said. “That’s the key. That’s why I was cutting this so close. I had to show her, Daniel, show her that Crowell could do it. I knew it would make things tight now, but it was an investment. It was for your future.”
Junior said nothing, but I thought I saw the steel in his spine start to give way, saw the softness in his body start to drag his shoulders down.
“It was under control, Daniel,” Senior told his son. “I don’t know what you thought, but it was under control.”
Beside me, Lydia moved just slightly, touched my shoulder. Could I stand? she was asking. Could I be part of it, if this was the time to make our move?
I wasn’t good for much, right now, but whatever Lydia started, whatever she needed, I’d try. I nodded, a movement so small and brief that Dan Senior never should have caught it.
But he did. The gun, which had never wavered, rose slightly, its meaning clear. His eyes met mine; he didn’t have to speak. He looked for a moment at Lydia, then back at his son. “Why are they here?” he said. “Daniel, what did you do?”
I could imagine those words in that tone being spoken to a young boy standing in front of a broken window, a crumpled fender.
“I—” Junior started, and then again: “I—Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“About the partnership! About why you were cutting things so goddamn close, why you lowballed the price, why there wasn’t any money! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Senior looked genuinely puzzled. “I would have,” he said, “if I’d thought you needed to know.”
Junior looked into his father’s eyes. He didn’t speak.
Then something happened in his own eyes, a slow dulling, an extinguishing. Rust on once-bright metal; dust and ashes smothering the mirrored surface of polished stone. He let out a breath, a long, soft exhalation. Looking at no one, speaking in a monotone, he began once more, and laid out the materials scam, the subs’ part and his own. Senior listened silently, nothing showing on his face.
“Phillips,” Junior said, stared down at his hands. “Phillips found out. He was doing some school project. He asked could he look at the drawings and the spec. You told him yes.”
He stopped, looked at his father, looked for something.
Senior nodded, and said, “You said you didn’t think it was a good idea, laborers in the trailer. You said the same thing when this guy here came in. I couldn’t figure out what your problem was.”
“Yeah,” Junior said. I might have expected bitterness; all I heard was defeat. “He’s an honest guy, Phillips,” Junior went on. “He came to me, when he saw it. It wasn’t part of his school thing, the materials we were substituting, but he was working with the shit we were giving him every day, and he had his face buried in the drawings for a week. He saw it, and he came to me because he thought it was the subs. He thought it wasn’t right. I told him thanks, and I’d take care of it. That bought me a little time, but he would have figured it out when he realized no one was getting fired and the shit the men were working with never changed.”
“So you had Joe Romeo try to kill him?” Senior’s voice was unbelieving.
“No. I told Romeo to buy him off. He couldn’t, they argued, and what happened, happened.”
“And then—”
“And then I was in!” A spark, more desperation than anger, ignited in Junior’s eyes. “Jesus, I was up to my ass! On one side I had Romeo squeezing me; on the other side I had these fucking private eyes you goddamn had to hire, looking for some way to squeeze Romeo. I had to get rid of him.”
Senior moved his eyes slowly then, to Lydia and me. His face was unreadable, hard, and the look he gave us was long. He turned back to his son.
“The coalition riot—?”
“It was a good idea,” Junior said, raising his chin. “In fact, it was a great one.”
The room was silent then, for a long time. Behind the pounding in my head I heard the echo of Joe Romeo’s scream.
“You were the man who paid Chester Hamilton,” I said, surprised to hear my own voice.
“How the hell do you know—”
“I was there.”
Junior paled. “Where? When?”
“When you shot him,” I said. “I was there.”
He faltered, seemed unsure where to look. “What did he—?”
“Tell me? Just about everything, except your name; but what he was paid to do, where he met you, what you looked like. I put it all in my report to DeMattis.”
More fabrication, and Lydia knew it, but standing quiet by my side, she showed nothing. Let him think the game was really up.
I said, “You shot him because you were afraid we’d find him. You didn’t know I already had. The same as you killed Romeo because you thought if he were gone, we’d go away.”
Senior stared at his son, spoke slowly. “That’s
what you said. The day Joe died, you said, ‘Well, at least one good thing, we can get rid of those private eyes now.’ You never wanted DeMattis here in the first place.”
“I couldn’t afford it! When you came back from that dinner with DeMattis’s card in your pocket, saying you talked to him, you liked him, he suggested maybe we bring him in to look into the equipment that walked—Jesus, you don’t know what that did to me!”
“And you talked me out of it.”
“Until Pelligrini disappeared, and you got this asshole idea that it was Joe! And all of a sudden, we got DeMattis on board, and you don’t even make him tell you what the hell he’s doing. Did you know he had a guy on the scaffold?”
Senior looked over at me, shook his head slowly.
“Pelligrini,” I said. The pain in my head was exhausting me, and the soft blackness, the sleepiness, was closing toward me from the edges of my vision again. I knew I had to fight it, though I wasn’t sure, anymore, why. But talking seemed to keep it at bay, so I spoke again. “Pelligrini knew, too? He was shaking you down?”
“Not until after he disappeared. Before that, he was in, he was solid.”
“After he disappeared? He was still alive?”
“Damn right. Alive and wanted to do business. For a shitload of money, he’d keep quiet. Quiet! So we met, here, in the fucking basement. After that, he kept quiet.” He looked at his father. “You should have told me,” he said softly. “About the pump. I didn’t know.”
Senior met his son’s eyes, then looked away, without an answer.
“In,” Lydia said suddenly, beside me. “But not in the materials scam. You said he didn’t know about that. The equipment that was stolen, then, that Pelligrini was fencing—that was you too, wasn’t it?”
“Daniel?” Senior’s voice wavered, as though he were standing on ground that was no longer solid. “Our equipment? You stole that?”
“Yeah, sure.” Junior’s words carried exasperation and disgust, but who it was for, I didn’t know. “I set it up, Pelligrini stole it and fenced it. That was going pretty well, until you had to bring on another guard, tighten things up around here. Shit.” He shook his head.
“Falco,” I said, although speech was getting harder. “That’s where Falco comes in. That’s his connection, the stolen equipment. He must have been your receiver, the guy behind the fence.”
Dan Junior said, “Who?”
“Oh, Jesus, come on,” I said. “How much worse can it be? One way or another you killed three men, but you won’t admit to doing business with a wiseguy?”
Senior said, “Daniel? Is this true, too?”
Junior said, “No. I’m not that dumb. Maybe someone like that was way back behind the guys I was dealing with, but I never heard of him.”
“No,” I said. The darkness was creeping in now, softening the pain, softening everything, and I knew I couldn’t stop it. “No. He was closer than that. Something going on this site. Falco had something going on this site.”
Junior looked at Lydia. “What the hell is he talking about?”
Images came to me: Falco leaning on the railing in the evening breeze on the Staten Island Ferry; Elena Pelligrini, wearing black, sitting in her darkened living room; Chuck walking into the night beyond the smoked-glass windows of a noisy bar.
“It doesn’t matter,” I heard her say. “He needs a doctor.”
“No.” That was Dan Crowell, Sr. “No. I have to think.”
“Don’t make this worse,” she warned him.
“I said no!”
Lydia had started to move; beside me, I felt her stop. That must have something to do with the gun. I realized my eyes had shut; I forced them open again.
“Daniel,” Senior said, “why did you do all this? Just to keep the business going? Kill those men, plan all these elaborate schemes? What was it for?”
Junior met his father’s eyes, but hesitated, as though, with everything he’d just told us, what he was about to say was the hardest admission of all. When he spoke, his voice was calm, with a clarity I hadn’t heard before.
“For you,” he said. “It was for you.”
“Me?” Senior’s voice was hesitant. That may have been an answer he hadn’t expected, maybe one he’d never heard before. “What does that mean?”
“Just until…” Junior appeared to gather strength, went on. “Another six months,” he said. “Maybe a year. That’s what the doctor said.”
“For me?” Senior repeated. “Another six months?”
He said the words vaguely, sounding like he didn’t know what they meant. He seemed to sag for a second, almost to go out of focus; then he sharpened, came back. “That’s how long I’m going to live, Daniel. I know that. Then what? What were you going to do then?”
“I didn’t care. It wasn’t going to matter after that.”
“What wasn’t?”
“This business!” The sharp contempt in Junior’s voice was a shock to me, chasing back the soft blackness like a sudden breeze. “Crowell Construction. The hell with it. I’d close it, or go bankrupt, or who gives a shit? I just needed to keep it going as long as you were around. As long as you cared.”
“Why?”
Why. A simple question, the hardest of all to answer.
“Because I’ve been watching you,” Junior said quietly. “Seeing your face every time you sent me out on the scaffold because you couldn’t go yourself, every time you had to leave early because you were too tired to stay. When you asked me to come into the business, I knew you were really in trouble. Me, here? Jesus. But that’s why I came. Because you wouldn’t have wanted me here if you’d had a choice.”
Senior seemed about to protest; Junior didn’t give him a chance.
“And then,” he said, “then, sometimes you’d screw up. That time you came back after chemo and called the steel guy to yell at him about where the hell was his delivery, and he’d delivered the week before. Shit like that. You were losing it.”
He said that, soft chin jutting forward, and then paused, waiting for a response. Senior looked at him, but didn’t seem able to speak.
Junior closed his eyes, maybe in relief, maybe in exhaustion. Opening them, he went on. “So when I saw how bad things were with the money, I thought it was the same thing. You screwing up, because you were sick. All I was trying to do was keep Crowell Construction going as long as you were around.”
Senior stared, an expression of disbelief covering his features. He regarded his son as though he’d never seen him before.
“And all I was doing,” Senior said slowly, “was trying to make sure it would keep going after that.”
The black fog that surrounded me was thicker now, too dense to see or move through. I wasn’t even sure whether people were still speaking, whether the silence that seemed to fill the room was real or was part of the fog. I tried to look around, to see.
Lydia spoke, calm, direct, controlled. “I’m going to the phone,” she said. “I’m going to call a doctor.”
“No.”
That was Dan Crowell, Sr., as calm and controlled as she was.
“Don’t make this worse, Mr. Crowell,” Lydia said. “Mr. DeMattis has Bill’s report. No matter what happens to us, this is over.”
“Maybe not,” Senior said, and his voice sounded sad to me. “There’s nothing in that report but theories; if you had any real proof DeMattis and the cops would be here by now.”
“And besides,” Junior threw in eagerly, “Smith said before, he was in here looking for something for a shakedown. I don’t think he actually told DeMattis anything. Maybe there’s not even really any report.” I saw him reach onto the desk for the gun Lydia had taken from him.
Oh, Christ, you idiot, I thought, partly for Dan Junior, partly for myself.
“I’m sorry, Lydia.” Senior’s voice came floating through the fog, and he truly did sound sorry. “I liked you from the beginning.”
“Your son killed three men,” Lydia said. “He stole from
this building and from you.”
There was the briefest of pauses before Senior said, “He’s my son.”
I couldn’t move; the blackness was a weight now, bearing down on my arms and my body, making them heavy and slow. Lydia, I thought, trying to tell her silently, to make her understand, take your chance when it comes, make your move. I knew I couldn’t help, couldn’t be part of it; but I didn’t want her holding herself back, keeping herself down because I was down, getting buried under the weight that was crushing me.
I willed her to move, to do something that would save her, that would end the chilling stillness, the old, deep silence that was filling the room.
Nothing; then soft words from Dan Crowell, Sr. in a tone I didn’t like; unhurried movement, Dan Junior walking toward Lydia. I looked at her through the thickening blackness, tried to tell her something with my eyes. She stood still, met my look, turned to Junior.
And she didn’t move; but a crash, a yell, a blur of motion erupted across the room. Dan Senior grunted, stumbled forward, someone’s short arms snared around him from behind, crushing his own arms to his chest.
Then Lydia flew ahead, spun a kick that sent Senior’s gun rocketing into the far wall. Junior swung, gun arm stiff, looking for a target. I heard the soft pop of a silenced shot and the metallic ring as a bullet hit steel. Junior yelled, moved, trained the gun on Lydia, but before he could shoot, the bulk of his father was shoved forward, into him. The Crowells, tangled together, off balance, crashed to the floor near me. Lydia and the other blur swooped down on top of them, Lydia wrestling the gun from Junior while the blur held Senior down.
Lydia straightened, held the gun out, said, “Hold this on them while I call the cops.”
“What are you, crazy?” the blur panted, in Mike DiMaio’s voice. “I’ll call the cops. You hold that. I don’t know shit about guns. I’m just a bricklayer.”
twenty-two
Cops came, and paramedics, and so did the soft blackness I’d fought against. A complicated dance of people and equipment was played out to the accompaniment of soft questions and loud orders. I did nothing but what I was told, ended up on a stretcher with a needle in my arm and a bandage on my head. The last thing I knew about was the stretcher rolling through the shadows of the unfinished building, toward the ramp; the last things I saw were the lines and patterns of steel and pipe and wire emerging rhythmically, then disappearing again, in the darkness overhead.
