Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

As I turned to leave, the door at the end of the corridor opened and Boots came in, a handful of men listening as he made a forceful point. He caught sight of me and gave the legendary smile and a wave on his way into his office. He hadn’t remembered me personally, but knew he knew me. It was a strange sensation-against my volition I felt myself warmed by his recognition and smiling eagerly in return.

Perhaps to dispel the hold his magic had on me I butted one step further into Roz’s business. I called Alma Mejicana, said I was with OSHA, and wanted to know where they were pouring today. The man who answered the phone, speaking minimal English in a heavy accent, couldn’t understand my question. After a few fruitless exchanges he put the phone down and went to fetch someone else.

I’d met Luis Schmidt only once, but it seemed to me that the suspicion-laden voice belonged to him. Just in case he had an acute aural memory, I sharpened my tone to the nasality of the South Side and repeated my pitch.

He cut me off before I could get my whole spiel out. “We have no problems; we don’t need anybody coming to watch us, especially not OSHA spies.”

“I’m not suggesting you do have problems.” It was hard to be glib and nasal at the same time. “We’ve been told that minority contractors in Chicago are allowed sloppier safety practices than white-owned enterprises. We’re doing a random spot check to make sure that isn’t the case.”

“That is racism,” he said hotly. “I do not allow racists to look at my work. Period. Now disappear before I sue you for slander.”

“I’m trying to help you out-” I started with nasal righteousness, but he hung up before I could finish the sentence.

Okay. Alma Mejicana didn’t want OSHA hanging around their construction sites. Nothing bizarre about that. A lot of businesses don’t want OSHA crews. So leave it alone, Vic. Get back to projects for people who are paying you.

It was that sage advice that took me over to the University of Illinois library to look up Alma Mejicana in the computer index to the Herald-Star. And to my joy they had gotten part of the Dan Ryan reconstruction. In a February 2 story the paper listed all the minority-and women-owned businesses participating in the project. The suits Luis had filed must have made an impression on the feds when they handed out the Ryan contracts. I remembered the protest from black groups over the small number of minority contractors involved; given Chicago’s racio-ethnic isolationism, I didn’t suppose they were appeased to see Alma Mejicana eating part of the pie.

With a certain amount of self-deception I could make myself believe that I would pass the Ryan construction anyway on my way back to the Loop. It wouldn’t really count as an additional detour from my legitimate business to check out Luis.

I went on down Halsted to Cermak, then snaked around underneath the expressway’s legs looking for a way to get at the construction zone. Cars and trucks were parked near the Lake Shore Drive access ramp. I pulled the Chevy off the road into the rutted ground below the main lanes of traffic and left it next to a late-model Buick.

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.