41
CONSTRUCTION AT the Aurora Tower was running about six months behind schedule. The outside of the building was virtually complete, but the interior was almost entirely raw. They’d already been a couple of months behind at the time of the accident; in its wake a stop-work order from the city had been in place for a month while the DOB investigated. They’d just started to make up some of that lost time when the investigation had been reopened. Once the city inspectors had come back, work had again bogged down, the project getting further behind.
Tommy Nelson wasn’t usually particularly worried by delays; most large-scale construction projects fell behind schedule sooner or later, especially if there was a serious accident. As the general contractor’s on-site superintendent, he was the point man for all the various subcontractors. Most of Nelson’s time was spent making peace between the factions that inevitably stepped on one another’s toes: the concrete guys hated the rebar guys, who had to finish their work on a floor before the mud could be poured; everybody hated the pipe guys, who acted like they had the toughest job around but whose idea of a disaster was some spilled water.
But delays meant additional expenses, and additional expenses meant more money out of the developer’s pocket. Dealing with haranguing developers was part of his duties as site superintendent. The Roths did raise complaining to an art form, full of bluster and threat. But for Nelson’s employer the biggest concern with construction delays was the possibility that unforeseen expenses would stretch the developer’s money to the breaking point, leaving the project in limbo. This was increasingly a fact of construction life: the money was drying up as the commercial real estate market cooled, banks that were already overextended refusing to go any deeper on developments that were losing ten percent or more of their value even before they were finished being built.
Nelson had the biggest trailer on site, at the back edge of the lot, an area of relative peace and quiet. In addition to his office in the back, it had a conference room where the weekly meeting with the heads of all the subcontractors took place. Those meetings could last half a day, often degenerating into an extensive airing of mutual grievances. Nelson had been forced to break up a fistfight or two in his time as a site super.
He was in his office, on the phone with Omni’s corporate headquarters, when two men he’d never seen before walked into his office. Both were in their late forties, big guys in suits, one of them black, the other white. Nelson looked up, equal parts puzzled and angry, wondering how they’d gotten on site. He made them as cops from how they carried themselves. “What’s the trouble, gents?” Nelson asked, after hanging up the phone.
“The problem, Tommy, is who you’ve been talking to,” Darryl Loomis said, as Chris Driscoll, his hands in his pockets, stood beside him.
“What’re you talking about?”
“The reporter, Snow,” Darryl said. “What’d you tell her?”
The two men weren’t acting like cops. “Who are you?”
“I’m the motherf*cker whose questions you’re going to answer,” Darryl replied, leaning forward. “Now what’d you tell the reporter?”
“Who said I talked to a reporter?”
“We saw the two of you in the bar,” Darryl said. “So stop wasting my time.”
Driscoll had come around so that he was standing just to the side of Nelson’s desk, blocking him in. Darryl stood directly in front of the desk, both men too close, obviously trying to intimidate him. Nelson wasn’t in the habit of being intimidated, especially in his own office. He debated standing up himself, or picking up the phone and calling the police, but neither seemed like quite the right play. He decided instead on bluster.
“What business is it of yours who I talk to?” he demanded.
Darryl smiled in response. “I don’t think you’re understanding the kind of talk we’re having right now,” he said.
“I’ve had enough of this shit,” Nelson said. “Either tell me who the f*ck you are and what the f*ck you want, or get the f*ck out of my office.”
“We work for people who value discretion,” Darryl said. “And your ass needs to start being discreet.”
The movement was so sudden that Nelson caught it only out of the corner of his eye, Driscoll taking a step forward, a small length of metal pipe in his hand, which he brought down with a quick swing on Nelson’s right knee.
Nelson doubled over from the shock of the pain. In doing so he left himself exposed, and the next swing caught the top of his head, spinning him out of his chair and onto the floor. Nelson, dizzy, the pain so sharp and overwhelming he could scarcely even feel it, instinctively rolled himself into a ball, putting his arms up over his head.
“There’s two ways your future can go,” Darryl said, his voice unchanged. “Either way, you’re never going to see us again. One possible future is you keep your mouth shut, and we stay out of your life. The other is you don’t shut up. In that case you just never see us coming, and it’s game-over for you. I got your attention?”
Nelson lay still, his eyes squeezed shut. Driscoll swung the pipe one more time, a sharp thwap as it broke Nelson’s left ankle.
“You really should answer when I ask you something,” Darryl said.
“Yes,” Nelson managed to rasp, his throat clogged.
“Yes, what?”
“You’ve got my attention.” Nelson forced the words out in a hoarse whisper, fluttering on the edge of passing out. “I won’t talk to the reporter again.”
“That wasn’t so hard,” Darryl said. “Now tell me everything you told her.”