J. Jance - A more perfect union

I finished drinking the MacNaughton's and reading the letter at approximately the same time. I had wanted an excuse to talk to Martin Green. Now I had one, although it could hardly be called an engraved invitation. I retied my tie, grabbed my jacket off the dining-room chair, and retrieved my shoes from their place next to the front door. This felt like one of those situations where casual attire would be a distinct disadvantage. Somebody told me once that in winning by intimidation, you have to dress the part.

Secured-building etiquette requires that you call before you knock on someone's door. According to directory assistance, Martin Green had an unlisted telephone number. I went down to the garage and dialed his code on the security phone. A woman answered and I gave her my name. There was a good deal of background noise, and she evidently couldn't hear me very well.

"Who?" she demanded.

"My name is Beaumont," I repeated.

"There are too many people here. It's too noisy. Come on up. Apartment 1704."

The door to 1704 stood slightly ajar and the sound of voices told me a party of some kind was in progress. I'm not sure what I expected. For me the word "ironworker" conjures up a macho image of men in khaki work shirts and hard hats swilling beer and telling dirty jokes. Martin Green's party was nothing like that. The room was full of gray-suited bean-counter types and their female escorts who drank champagne from dainty crystal champagne flutes and nibbled bite-sized canapes.

A silver-haired lady in a pearl-gray dress met me at the door. "I'm Martin's mother." She beamed at me. "I'm playing hostess tonight. Won't you come in? What would you like to drink?"

"I just stopped by to see Martin for a few minutes," I told her. "Maybe it would be better if I came back another time."

She shook her head. "Oh, no. Don't do that. I'm sure he'd want to see you. He left just a moment ago to take some of his guests down to show them the recreation floor, you know, the pool and the Jacuzzi and all that. They'll be back in a few minutes if you don't mind waiting."

I allowed myself to be ushered inside. Almost instantly a glass of champagne appeared in my hand. The room was crowded and stuffy despite the fact that the heat-pump air-conditioning was going full blast. There were far too many people crammed in the relatively small living room. I made my way to the far side, hoping to escape the crush and also to gain a vantage point from which to watch the proceedings.

The 04 units in Belltown Terrace all have balconies which look out on the city. There was a lone man standing outside on the balcony peering out at the rank upon rank of downtown skyscrapers standing stiffly at attention against a pale blue August sky. Here and there hammerhead cranes served as lonely sentinels marking the emergence of yet more new buildings.

Another group of people came into the room, and those already inside pressed back. Feeling claustrophobic, I slid open the door and escaped onto the balcony. The lone man there glanced at me briefly, then continued to stare off into the distance. In his late thirties or early forties, he was reasonably well-built. The fabric of his jacket bunched tightly over muscular arms. He stood with one foot on the lower crossbar, his elbows resting on the upper railing. The drink in his hand wasn't champagne.

He said nothing, and I didn't either. Instead, I moved to the railing as well, and looked where he was looking-straight up Second Avenue toward the point where the raw skeleton of Masters Plaza climbed skyward. Swirling his drink, he gave me another sidelong glance as I stepped to the railing beside him, and then he drained his glass.

"It's bad luck to have a party like this the day after somebody went in the hole."

It was the first time I had ever heard that particular expression, but it wasn't hard to grasp the meaning. He was talking about Angie Dixon falling to her death. From the grim set of his mouth I could see it was gnawing at him. He assumed it was bothering me as well.

"Did you know her?" he asked.

"No," I said.

He shook his head balefully. "It always hurts to lose a hand," he added. "No matter how long a guy stays in this business it never gets any easier."

His fingers tightened around his empty glass. For a moment, I thought he was going to crush it bare-handed. At last he opened his fist, letting the glass lay in his open palm. For the first time I noticed the callouses, the work-roughened texture of his skin. The rest of the men at Martin Green's party may have been bean-counting accountant types with Harvard MBAs, but the guy on the balcony seemed to be an ordinary Joe Blow, a regular working stiff. I wondered if, like me, he had wandered uninvited into the wrong party.

A waitress stepped out on the balcony carrying a tray of champagne glasses. I took one, but my companion ordered Scotch-neat. No rocks, no ice, no soda. As the waitress walked away, he reached up and yanked savagely on the knot of his tie, pulling it loose from the base of his Adam's apple.

"I hate these goddamned monkey suits," he complained, "but we have to wear 'em whenever the visiting dignitaries come to call."

"What visiting dignitaries?" I asked.

He glanced at me wearily. "You're not one of them, then?" he asked, nodding toward the roomful of bean-counters.

I shook my head in answer. "I'm a neighbor from the building," I explained. "I stopped by to talk to Martin. I didn't mean to crash his party."

He frowned. "But you know about…" He jerked his head in the direction of Masters Plaza.

"I read the papers," I said. The young woman returned with his Scotch. He accepted it gratefully and took a swift gulp. I waited until the woman had gone back inside and slid the door shut behind her before I spoke again. "You were saying about the accident…"

He turned away from me, once more leaning over the balcony. "Me and my big mouth," he said. "I was talking out of turn."

"My name's Beaumont. I didn't catch yours."

"Kaplan," he answered, offering me his hand. "Don Kaplan."

"What do you do?"

He laughed bitterly. "Me? I'm just a broken-down rod-buster who went bad."

"Rod-buster?" I asked.

"An ironworker," he explained. "Rebar-reinforcing steel-as opposed to structural. If my back hadn't given out on me, I'd probably still be tying rods on the I-90 bridge. As it is, they kicked me upstairs. I'm a business agent now."

A burst of laughter inside the room behind us. "And what's this all about?" I asked.

Lifting his glass to his lips, Don Kaplan paused before he took a drink. "VIP's from International out pressing the flesh." There was an unmistakable trace of sarcasm in his voice.

Before he could say anything more, the door slid open behind us. "There you are, Don. I've been looking all over for you." Martin Green stepped onto the balcony behind us, leading a trio made up of two men and an accompanying sweet young thing. All three were laughing uproariously.

"Here's Don. You three will be riding with him. You know how to get into the parking garage at Columbia Center, don't you, Don?"

Don Kaplan nodded shortly, as though he didn't much relish the ride.

"And then if you'll drop them back off at the Sorrento after dinner."

"No problem," Don mumbled.

Green turned to me with a puzzled expression on his face. "I don't believe we've been introduced," he said, extending his hand.

"My name's Beaumont." I reached into my breast pocket and extracted the envelope. "I didn't mean to crash your party. I came by to talk to you about this. The lady at the door mistook me for one of your guests."

Martin Green laughed. "That's my mother all right, but this really isn't a very good time for me. We have a dinner reservation downtown in a little while. Could we make an appointment for tomorrow or the next day?"