“I like my recent parolee theory a lot better.” I stood up. We walked down the steps, and I got in the Jeep.
Leo leaned close to the driver’s window. His small, dark eyes were worried. “If that ground is laced with D.X.12, they’re going to have to change the name of the development.”
I waited.
“They’re going to have to call it Bombville,” he said.
I wasn’t armed enough to spar with the Bohemian. I drove to the Maple Hills Municipal Building instead.
The big guy with the pocket rainbow of colored felt tips was alone in the Building Department, like before. Unlike the last time, though, it was early, only ten in the morning. He was still on the front section of the newspaper. He raised his eyes and scowled across the empty desks at me. “Back again?”
“I’m not here about blueprints this time,” I said, fighting my own joy at seeing him. It’s never manly to gush. “I need the names of the contractors that worked at Crystal Waters. They must have applied for permits.”
“We don’t keep permit copies that long.”
“How do I get the names?”
His chair creaked. “Perhaps if you made an appointment.”
I was short on sleep, long on cranky. “Do I go upstairs to the mayor’s office to make one, or have one of the Board members at Crystal Waters make it for me?”
I’d pressed the right button. His huge hands dropped to the arms of the chair, and he started to push. It was like watching birth, the slow way he emerged from the oak chair. “Come with me.”
I followed him as he lumbered through the empty office to a small file room jammed with mismatched tan, black, and graymetal cabinets. He squeezed down the center aisle and stopped next to a gray four-drawer file. Steadying himself with one meaty paw on top of the cabinet, he aimed his eyes down to read the labels on the drawers. “Open that one,” he said, pointing at the bottom drawer.
I knelt and opened a drawer filled with black vinyl ring binders labeled with white tags. I pulled out the one marked PERMIT RECEIPTS. 1966-1980. I stood up and handed it to him. He set the book on top of the cabinet and began thumbing through the ledger pages.
“Here’s the first entry for Crystal Waters,” he said, pointing with a large thumb. It was the fifth entry on the 1969 ledger page, done in fountain-pen ink, and showed receipt of fifty dollars for a permit to demolish a barn. “This ledger will have the names of all the contractors who posted a bond for Crystal Waters.”
We went back to the general office. He pointed to a vacant desk and shuffled, wheezing, back to his newspaper. I sat down, opened the book, and began making a list of every permit issued.
I closed the ledger at two fifteen. Maple Hills had done very well from the sale of permits. From the first demolition to the final posting for the electrician who’d installed the pump in the pond fountain, they’d collected permit fees from one hundred and seventy-two different contractors for the Gateville project.
I brought the ledger to the big man’s desk and set it down next to his newspaper. He was on the classified advertisements, his day well over half done. He didn’t look up when I thanked him and left.
One hundred and seventy-two contractors. Leo was right. It would be impossible.
Twelve
I had two cups of machine coffee in the hall of the Municipal Building and went into the library to one of the computer stations. I logged onto the Internet and started searching the online yellow and white page listings for the names of the contractors that had gotten permits for Gateville. I searched by name, by geography, and by business type, when I could figure it from the name of the business. At five o’clock, I went out to the hall for more coffee. I’d gotten halfway through the list and had found current addresses for only twenty-eight of the contractors.
Twenty-eight live names out of eighty-plus. Too many were gone-out of business, reorganized into other businesses, or just plain vaporized-and that was for openers, as Leo had warned it would be. Of those still operating, it was doubtful any would have employees or records going back to Gateville.
I looked at my watch. Five fifteen. It was past midnight in Paris, too late to call, even if I did have a reason that would sound plausible. I finished my coffee and went back to the computer. Plodding was better than thinking.
I worked the rest of the evening and finished just before theyclosed the library at nine o’clock. I’d found current addresses for sixty-one of the one hundred and seventy-two names.
I drove back to the turret, microwaved something in a plastic tray that didn’t look anything like its picture on the box, and looked at things I didn’t care about on television. Sometime around four thirty, I went up the metal stairs to my cot, which is all one can do when one doesn’t have a bed.
At six in the morning, fresh from ninety minutes’ sleep, I made a full pot of coffee, filled my travel mug, and went up to the roof to clear my head and listen to the dawn. By eight, I was ready to talk to the Bohemian. I called his office, got the machine. I tried his cell phone, got his voice mail. It was just as well. I left a message that I needed all the records he had on the contractors that had worked at Gateville, pronto. I ended by saying I’d stop by his office at two o’clock to look at them. Then I shut off my cell phone. I didn’t want questions.
At eleven, I grabbed my blazer, khakis, and a blue button-down shirt and went to the health center. I said hello to the old boys draped over the machines, ran six laps as well as anyone can who’s only gotten ninety minutes sleep and has the coffee trembles to prove it. After I showered, I checked my phone for messages. The Bohemian had called. He sounded subdued. He said he’d have the records as I asked, at two o’clock.
I swung through McDonald’s on my way to the Eisenhower for a large coffee and a Big Mac. Big Macs are good for road grub because they pack so many basic food groups-proteins, carbohydrates, and special sauce-into one pucklike cylinder that, if handled gingerly, is ideal for driving. Midday traffic was light enough to dodge most of the potholes that could launch the coffee, and I got to the Bohemian’s building at ten to two without a drop of coffee spilled and just the merest orange hint of special sauce onmy shirt sleeve. I parked, slipped on my blazer, crossed the street, and rode the elevator up.
The tanned blond was gone. In her place, the dour Griselda perched, sucking the light out of the reception area like a black hole in space. She looked up as the elevator doors opened, resisted the urge to throw herself at me in frenzied abandon, stood, and motioned for me to follow. The office was quiet, hushed like a place abandoned by people gone to the funeral of a child. She opened the door to the small conference room, told me the Bohemian would arrive shortly, and left without the offer of coffee or a magazine. I didn’t mind. The wait would give me a chance to study the lagging dog in the English oil painting, for what it was seeing that I could not.
I didn’t have much time to study. The Bohemian and Stanley came in a few minutes later, each carrying two yellowed cardboard file boxes. They set them on the credenza against the wall.
“Excuse our tardiness, Vlodek.” The Bohemian brushed his hands against the sides of his trousers. “We had to go pick these up. One of the developers’ widows had them in the attic of her garage. These are the last records of Safe Haven Properties, as you requested, and without question. Now, if you please,” he said as he and Stanley sat down, “tell us what this is about.”
“I think Crystal Waters was laced with explosives when it was under construction. I think D.X.12 has been buried there, at the Farraday house, underneath the old school bus shelter, and in other places we don’t know about, since 1970.”