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.
Since I didn’t know anything about construction practices I could scarcely talk about their equipment. My brain raced in search of an idea. “I do financial investigations,” I said, putting it together as I spoke. “My client thinks Alma’s way overleveraged, that they’ve taken on projects they can’t handle just so they can claim they’re eating at the same table with the big boys. He’s worried about his investment. I wanted to look at their equipment to see if they own it or lease it.”
It wounded woefully thin to me, but at least Collins didn’t seem to find it bizarre. “You can’t go on the site looking for that kind of thing. I’ve got several thousand men out there. Everything they’re doing is carefully coordinated. I just can’t allow unauthorized civilians out there.”
I was going to argue my case, but he frowned in thought. “Chuck,” he said abruptly to the ruddy white man, “call down there and ask about their trucks. Give the lady the report.” To me he added, “That’s the best I can do for you and it’s more than I should.”
“I appreciate it,” I said with what sincerity I could muster. It actually didn’t satisfy me at all-I wanted to
Collins returned to his office and Chuck got on the phone again. After ten or fifteen minutes of shouted conversation with a variety of people, he beckoned me to his table.
“I thought they were in sector fifty-nine but they’d been moved to a hunnert and twenty-one. I don’t think you have to worry about them paying for their trucks-all the stuff they have on site belongs to Wunsch and Grasso.”
When I looked at him blankly he repeated the information in a louder voice. I pulled myself together, gave him my sweetest smile, and thanked him as best I could.
23
Stonewalled
By the time I got back to the Loop it was too late to use any of the Daley Center reference rooms. I parked illegally in front of the Pulteney so I could check my messages. When I got into the elevator it took a few minutes for me to realize it wasn’t moving, so lost in thought was I. As I climbed the four flights I kept turning it over in my mind.
How strange was it really for Luis to be using Wunsch and Grasso machinery? It had hit me like a bolt at the trailer, but it might not mean that much. Luis and his partner knew Ernie and Ron, that was clear from their close confab at Boots’s party. If Alma Mejicana was struggling to find a toehold in the Chicago construction business, they might well lease equipment from a bigger firm.
