Slaughter - Lutz John - Страница 28

Not a long run, but it was amazing the way Bill could get around with the man-made knee.

Jordan sometimes watched from the shadows on summer nights when Bill would sit with the widow Julia in the porch glider. With every gentle rock the glider would squeal as if in ecstasy. Jordan mentioned a few times that it would be no trouble to oil the glider’s steel rockers. A couple of drops would do the trick. But Bill told him to leave them alone, he kind of liked the sound. He told Jordan it was more pleasant to listen to than the crickets. Jordan wondered if Bill had ever taken apart a cricket.

Jordan took to playing solitaire by the light of a yellow bulb, while Bill and the widow Julia rocked. Occasionally Bill would get up and go inside to the kitchen to get a couple of Budweiser beers and bring them outside. He never brought a bottle out for Jordan.

Jordan got into the habit of ignoring the squeaking sound of the glider. But when the squeaking stopped, he would wait to watch Bill clomp across the porch, then with the slam of the screen door reappear a few minutes later with the two bottles of beer.

Then one warm night the squeaking stopped. The boots clomped across the dark porch, and there were lighter, trailing footfalls.

Then the night was quiet except for insect noises.

That night the screen door never slammed, and the glider didn’t resume its squealing.

Early the next morning, routine set in again. It was the weekend, and Jordan and Bill had turnips to harvest before the sun got high.

The widow Julia gave little indication that last night had been different for her and Bill. But occasionally their eyes would meet, then quickly look away. There were small, sly smiles.

When the turnip harvesting was done, Julia put biscuits in the oven, brewed a pot of coffee, and scrambled some eggs. Everyone behaved in precariously normal fashion. Jordan sat back in his spoked wooden chair and watched Julia move about the kitchen. She was barefoot and wearing a faded blue robe with its sash pulled tight around her narrow waist. Something about her feet with their painted red nails held his attention.

Jordan and Bill both watched as she bent low with her knees locked to check the biscuits she’d placed in the oven.

Bill shoved his chair back and stood up to help Julia. It didn’t look as if it hurt him to stand, but it was obvious he was slowed down.

He stretched and got some mugs and plates down from a cabinet, and Jordan observed how well he moved without his cane. Jordan didn’t know what artificial knees were made of—some kind of composite material, he imagined. The human knee was complicated. There must be lots of moving parts.

Jordan wondered how they worked.

29

New York, the present

The concrete saw roared and screamed simultaneously. Dan Snyder, who’d been a worker for SBL Property Management for fifteen years, knew how to use the earsplitting tool to section off concrete better than anyone at SBL. He kept a deceptively loose grip on the saw, using its weight to maintain stability, his arms to guide rather than apply pressure. Let the saw do most of the work.

He’d learned to ignore the noise.

Snyder knew some older workers at SBL whose hearing had been affected by the noises of destruction and construction. He did wear earplugs, though he didn’t think they’d make much difference. Already he was asking people to repeat themselves. He was particularly deaf at parties, or wherever a crowd gathered.

Letting people know your hearing was fading wasn’t the best way to stay employed by SBL Properties. Snyder was faking understanding more and more. Definitely there were safety issues, but dealing with them was better than unemployment.

Snyder was a big man who, when working, wore wifebeater shirts to show off his muscles, not because of an ego thing, but so he would continue to look physically competent well into his forties. Fifties, in his line of work, might be too much to expect.

He enjoyed working hard, creating change. Like here at the Taggart Building. It remained mostly offices, with retail at first-floor and lobby levels. The arched entrance had been redesigned and would be decorated with inlaid marble. Wide, shallow steps would ascend on a graceful curve, leading to the lobby entrance. What wouldn’t be darkly tinted glass in the entrance would be veined marble.

That was what Snyder was working on now, removing concrete that would be replaced by marble. The experts who would install the decorative marble were craftsmen of a different sort, using mallets and chisels. Their art was woven in with history. They cut stone with an eye to infinity.

SBL didn’t build or rehab structures that wouldn’t last. Most of the work Snyder had been doing for the past fifteen years was still around, and visible, if you knew where to look.

The Taggart Building was projected to be one of the tallest structures on Manhattan’s West Side. Right now it wasn’t all that impressive. It was stripped of most of its outer shell, and its extended skeletal presence was already taller than most buildings on the block. That basic framework would be strengthened and built upon, and within weeks a bold brick and stone structure would take form.

At present, the only thing taller in this part of town was the steel crane looming twenty feet above the Taggart Building’s thirty-fifth floor. That would soon change.

Over the years, Snyder had developed a proprietary attitude toward New York. His city. It didn’t hurt, either, to trade remarks with passing women, unless Snyder’s wife, Claudia, somehow found out about it.

Claudia never actually snooped. At least, Snyder didn’t think so. He’d never caught her at it, and he gave her the benefit of the doubt. Yet she had a way of somehow knowing things.

Maybe that was the reason why she’d been so uneasy this morning. She’d had a premonition, she said, and she’d asked Snyder to be particularly careful today.

Snyder dutifully told her he’d be more careful than usual, and kissed her good-bye.

In truth he wasn’t much for premonitions, but women did sometimes seem to have some mysterious source of information. On average, they found out things well before men did. It was as if they had their own secret Internet.

In this crazy world, it was possible.

Seated in a booth in their favorite diner, Quinn and Pearl were enjoying breakfast—eggs Benedict for her, over hard with hash for him—when Quinn’s cell phone chimed. He wrestled the phone out of his pants pocket and saw that the caller was Renz.

“It’s Renz,” he mouthed to Pearl, just before accepting the call. Then, “Morning, Harley.”

“You anywhere near a TV?” Renz asked.

“We’re having breakfast at the White Flame over on Broadway.”

“The place with the great blintzes?”

“I thought that was something the German army did,” Quinn said. “But this place has got a TV behind the counter. It’s showing Martha Stewart reruns right now.”

“Have them put it on New York One,” Renz said.

Quinn glanced at his watch. Oh no! “Minnie Miner?”

“ASAP,” Renz said. “You know the media types. They have to be fed if you want to keep them on your side. Newshounds like Minnie Miner need meat thrown to them now and then, so they can have a bone to gnaw on. Keeps them happy and quiet for a while.”

As soon as he broke the connection with Renz, Quinn asked Ozzie the counterman if he minded tuning the TV to Minnie Miner ASAP.

“This is part of your work?” Ozzie asked. He was an athletically built black man who strongly resembled the former Cardinals baseball shortstop genius, the real Ozzie Smith. His legal name was Ozzie Graves, but that wasn’t very glamorous, and when some gullible customer thought Ozzie behind the counter was the genuine Ozzie, who could play baseball and do backflips, all at the same time, Ozzie Graves simply rolled with it.