J. Jance - A more perfect union

"I brought him something," I said evenly, unsure how she would react to my presence, much less to what I had brought. I folded the note and stuck it under the latch on the lunch pail. Warily I glanced over at Linda Decker. She wasn't looking at me. She was staring at the lunch pail, tears welling up in her eyes.

Without a word, she reached out and stroked the shiny metal handle. It was almost a mirror image of what Jimmy Rising had done that day on the porch. "He may not live to see them," she managed.

"It's that bad?" I asked.

She nodded. "Less than fifty-fifty." She started crying in dead earnest then.

Quickly the ward clerk came around the counter and put a protective arm around her shoulder. "Come on, Mrs. Decker," he said quietly. "Let's get you in where you can sit down and rest for a few minutes. You've had a long day of it."

Worried about who I was and what I was up to, the guard hurried over as well, but Linda waved him away and allowed the ward clerk to lead her down the hall. As he did so, he glared at me over his shoulder as though he believed I was somehow personally responsible. He didn't order me to leave, however, and I followed them into a small waiting room around the corner. The room was windowless and crowded with furniture, the air thick with the smoke of a thousand despairing cigarettes. Still sobbing, Linda Decker sank onto one of the couches.

The clerk stepped away from her and saw me at the door. "I think maybe you'd better go," he said to me. "She needs to sit here and rest. She's had a rough night."

With a shrug, I started to leave. There was no sense in arguing. "No, it's all right," Linda Decker mumbled through her tears, as she groped for a tissue. "Let him stay."

I don't know who was more surprised, the ward clerk or J. P. Beaumont. The clerk shook his head dubiously. "All right. If you say so. What about the thermos and lunch pail?"

"Put them in Jimmy's room," Linda Decker said. "Put them somewhere so he'll be able to see them if he ever gets a chance."

The ward clerk gave me one last disparaging look and left. I stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to say or do, while Linda searched for another tissue and blew her nose. There was a coffee pot and a stack of styrofoam cups sitting on a table across the room. The light was on and the coffee smelled as though it had been there for hours.

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" I offered.

She nodded. "Please."

"Black?"

She nodded again. I poured two cups and brought them back to where she was sitting on the couch. Her hand shook as she took the cup from me. "Thank you," she said. The room was stuffy and hot, but she sat there shivering for several moments with both hands wrapped around the cup as though hoping to draw warmth out of the coffee and into her hands. She stared unseeing through a wavering column of steam.

"I'm sorry about what happened," she said, her voice almost a whisper. "Someone named Powell was here a little while ago. He said that you're a good cop, that you wouldn't be mixed up in anything crooked."

Under any other circumstance, a vote of confidence from Captain Larry Powell would have been welcome, but in this instance I was sorry to hear that he too had been dragged into the melee.

"It's all right," I answered. "You don't need to apologize. If I'd been in your shoes, I probably would have done the same thing."

She looked up at me, her face pained. "No, it's not all right. That was my fault, and so is this. Jimmy went back to get Patches." She broke off and put one hand over her mouth to stifle an involuntary sob.

"Patches?" I asked.

"A dog. A stupid stuffed dog that I gave him years ago. The firemen got him out of the house all right, but he broke away and went back after the dog. He was right in the doorway when the roof came down. He was completely engulfed in flames."

"Just because you gave him the dog doesn't make you responsible."

"You don't understand, do you." It was an accusation.

"I guess not."

"I used Jimmy as bait!" The last word was a cry of anguish torn from her body, one that left her doubled over and weeping. Unnoticed, the coffee spilled onto the floor beside her. I found a roll of paper towels and began to soak up the mess.

"Bait?" I asked, when she finally quieted. "What do you mean, bait?"

"Jimmy can't lie," she answered. "I knew if I told him where I was and if anyone asked him, he would tell them. After Logan and Angie, I figured I was next on the killer's list. And I was ready for him, ready and waiting. But you came instead."

I nodded. She closed her eyes and put one hand over them, shaking her head as if to deny the reality of what had happened. "I didn't think he'd hurt Jimmy and Mom. It never occurred to me."

My ears pricked up at the word "he." Not some nameless, faceless, sexless entity. Not some vague numberless they. But he. One person-a single, identifiable, male, he.

"Do you know who that person is?" I asked the question gently. I never considered not asking it. I'm a cop. They pay me to ask questions, but I was finally learning that for me asking questions is more than just a job. It's as necessary as breathing, a cornerstone of existence, and this time I was asking for free.

Slowly Linda Decker raised her head. Her eyes met mine and she nodded.

"Who?" I asked.

"Martin Green."

I tried to contain my reaction. Martin Green. The ironworker union executive director who was busy creating a "more perfect union." The same man who lived in my building and who had thrown a temper tantrum because his mother didn't get to ride home from the airport in the Bentley.

"Are you sure? Do you have any proof?"

"The night he was killed, Logan had an appointment with Green to tell him about the tapes. He called and told me so. I begged him not to go. I told him it was too dangerous, that they wouldn't tolerate someone messing up their little racket."

There were the tapes again, the tapes she had mentioned before.

"What tapes?"

"The accounting tapes. The ones Angie stole."

"Wait a minute. Angie Dixon? The woman who fell off Masters Plaza?" Linda Decker nodded. It was all coming together too fast. So there was a connection between Logan Tyree and Angie Dixon.

"Angie didn't fall," Linda said grimly. "I can't prove it, but I know she was pushed."

"One thing at a time. Tell me about the tapes."

"Angie used to work for a guy named Wayne Martinson. He kept the books for the local."

"More than one set?" I asked speculatively.

Linda looked at me quickly. "How did you know that?" she asked.

"It fits," I answered.

"Angie wanted to make more money. Martinson had her working part-time at minimum wage. Guys working iron make good money. Eventually, through her job, Angie figured out there was a lot of hanky-panky going on-people buying and selling union books, people bypassing the apprenticeship program, boomers paying to get put on the A-list. She started stealing the tapes. Not the journal entries, just the tapes. She took them at night as she left work."

"And then she blackmailed somebody to let her into the union?"

Linda shook her head. "That was what was funny. It ended up she didn't have to. They let her in anyway."

"But I thought you said…"

"Nobody knew anything about it, until this party thing came up. I think she was too scared to tell."

"What party thing?"

"International sent out an inspection team. Probably because of what happened to Wayne."

"Wayne?"

"Martinson, the bookkeeper."

"What did happen to him?"

"He went salmon fishing in Alaska last month and never came back. He's officially listed as missing. They haven't found his body."

"Another ironworker accident? How come nobody made the connection?"

"Wayne didn't just work for the ironworkers," she said. "He worked for several different unions."