Once again I was badly dressed for a construction site, although my linen-weave slacks weren’t quite as inappropriate as my dress silk pants had been. I picked my way through the deep holes, around pieces of convulsed rebars that had fallen down, past the debris of ten thousand sack lunches, and hiked up the closed southbound ramp.
As I got close to the top the noise of machinery became appalling. Monsters with huge spiked arms were assaulting concrete, driving cracks ten feet long in their wake. Behind them came an array of automated air hammers, smashing the roadway to bits. And in their wake rumbled trucks to haul off the remains. Hundreds of men and even a few women were doing other things by hand.
I surveyed the carnage doubtfully from the edge of the ramp, wondering how I could ever get anyone’s attention, let alone find one small contractor in the melee. Now that I was here I hated to just give up without trying, but I should have worn work boots and earmuffs in addition to a hard hat. Dressed as I was, I couldn’t possibly climb around the machinery and the gaping holes in the expressway floor.
When I moved tentatively toward the lip of the ramp, a small man made rotund by a layer of work clothes detached himself from the nearest crew and came over to me.
“Hard-hat area, miss.” His tone was abrupt and dismissive.
“Are you the foreman?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Dozens of foremen around here. Who you looking for?”
“Someone who can point out the Alma Mejicana crew to me.” I was having to cup my mouth with my hands and yell directly into his ear. As it was he needed me to repeat the request twice.
He gave the look of pained resignation common to men when ignorant women interrupt their specialized work. “There’re hundreds of contractors here. I don’t know them all.”
“That’s why I want the foreman,” I screeched at him.
“Talk to the project manager.” He pointed to a semi trailer rigged with electric lines parked beyond the edge of the road. “And next time don’t come around here without a hard hat.”
Turning on his heel, he marched back to his crew before I could thank him. I staggered across the exposed rebars to the verge. Like the area underneath the expressway, this had become a quag of mud, broken concrete, and trash. My progress to the trailer was necessarily slow and accompanied by a number of catcalls. I grimaced to myself and ignored them.
Inside the trailer I found chaos on a smaller scale. Phone and power lines were coiled over every inch of exposed floor. The rest held tables covered with blueprints, phones, computer screens—all the paraphernalia of a big engineering firm consolidated into a small space.
At least a dozen people were crammed in with the equipment, talking to each other or—based on shouted snatches I caught—to the crews in the field. No one paid any attention to me. I waited until the man nearest me put down his phone and went up to him before he could dial again.
“I need to find the Alma Mejicana crew. Who can tell me where they’re working?”
He was a burly white man close to sixty with a ruddy face and small gray eyes. “You shouldn’t be on the site without a hard hat.”
“I realize that,” I said. “If you can just tell me where they’re working, I’ll get a hard hat before I go out to talk to them.”
“You got any special reason for wanting them?” His small eyes gave away nothing.
“Are you the project manager?”
He hesitated, as if debating whether to claim the title, then said he was an assistant manager. “Who are you?”
It was my turn to hesitate. If I came up with my OSHA story or a similar one I’d have to produce credentials. I didn’t want Luis to know I’d been poking around his business, but it couldn’t be helped.
“V. I. Warshawski,” I said. “I’m a detective. Some questions have come up about Alma Mejicana’s work practices.”
He wasn’t going to field that one on his own. He got up from his table and threaded his way to the back of the trailer where a tiny cubicle had been partitioned off. His bulky body filled the entrance. I could see his shoulders move as he waved his arms beyond my field of sight.
Eventually he returned with a slender black man. “I’m Jeff Collins, one of the project managers. What is it you want?”
“V. I. Warshawski.” I shook his proffered hand and repeated my request.
“Work practices are my responsibility. I haven’t heard anything to make me question what they’re doing. You have a specific allegation I could respond to?” He wasn’t hostile, just asserting his authority.