Hillerman, Tony (19 page)

“O.K.,” Alvis said. “Done. And you remember our deal. You keep us out of the paper.”

“If you don’t want in,” Cotton said. “But you’re doing a lot of public good here—cleaning up corruption. Why not get credit?”

Alvis was still grinning. “Get credit for screwing a customer? The smart son-of-a-bitch.”

>19<

I
t was almost noon when Cotton left the office of Alvis Industries. It had taken less than thirty minutes for Harper to confirm what Cotton already knew—that no one else had hauled bulk cement to any of the Reevis-Smith Quality Experiment projects. And then Harper had another thought. He knew the foreman of the trucking outfit which subcontracted on Reevis-Smith jobs. This took a little longer, but when the last phone call had been made, Cotton had a tally of tons of mixed cement hauled from batch plants on all five of the contractor’s highway jobs the past two years to state park improvement projects let to Reevis-Smith. Alvis ran the adding machine now, totaling tonnage and converting wet cement into money. The final amount on the tape was $318,427.

“That’s more than we net out of this whole goddamn operation in a year,” Alvis said.

On the way back to his motel Cotton noticed a police car behind him. A coincidence, or the first visible sign that Whan was providing any protection? If he needed it at all, he would need it now. Yesterday’s activities would have alerted anyone who might be watching that Cotton was in the capital and working on the story. McDaniels had copied notes out of those contract files in the Highway Department records room and had been pushed over the balustrade down the capitol well. Leroy had visited the records and had been . . . He balked at the word, and then accepted it. Bribed. How much had they paid him? Cotton tried to imagine the scene and found it impossible. The Leroy Hall he knew—thought he knew—refused the role, refused to hold out his hand, refused to accept the imagined envelope thick with hundred-dollar bills. Then what was his price, if not money? Cotton turned away from the unanswerable question and sorted out his story. What he had. What he needed. He had nothing, beyond the circumstances of Highway Department policies and appointments, to tie Jason Flowers to the affair. He had nothing definite beyond peculiar coincidence to connect Wit’s End, Inc., with this conspiracy. He had no doubt there was a direct connection, but with what he had now—and the way he would have to write it—Wit’s End would appear a possibly innocent customer unaware that stolen cement was being poured into its park improvements. Nor had he anything to connect Midcentral Surety—not even a real clear idea of how it connected. Nothing more than the coincidence that it had interested McDaniels at the same time he was digging into Reevis-Smith—and perhaps that was simply because it was bonding Reevis-Smith contracts. Cotton had that, and a strong suspicion.

He glanced into his rearview mirror as he turned into the motel lot. The police car was no longer visible. Cotton pulled into the slot reserved for his room number, cut the ignition and sat, looking. Three men walked out of the coffeeshop toward him. They walked past his car, talking, seeming to ignore him. They got into a blue-and-white Chevy and drove away. A young woman in a tailored suit emerged from the walkway between the first and second blocks of motel units and stood a moment beside the ice machine, her eyes roving over the parking lot. She looked directly at Cotton, studied him, and then looked away.
Would they use a woman? Would they do anything in the cold light of noon?

Cotton sighed and climbed out of the car. The woman had disappeared. He walked hurriedly to the stairway, trotted up the flight of steps and stopped behind the pillar at the head of the stairway. His room was six doors down this second-story walkway—at least thirty yards of wide-open exposure to anyone in the parking lot. He pulled his room key out of his pocket, took a deep breath and ran. And when he was inside the room, breathless, the door locked securely behind him—feeling simultaneously foolish and relieved—he hardened a resolution he had already made. Today would be the end of it. He would work until office closing time pulling together whatever loose ends he could. And then he would write what he had. The story would appear tomorrow and it would be over. No more hiding. No more panic. No more reason for anyone to kill him. Once the story broke, every reporter in the statehouse would swarm on to it—scrambling for whatever he had missed. But he’d give Danilov a head start on the rest of it.

He called Danilov first. Ernie had the rundown he had asked on A. J. Linington. Member of the bar. Owned little law firm with offices in the Exchange Building. Showed up in the file three times in the last eight years, twice as defense attorney in gambling cases and once representing a union business manager indicted for attempted extortion. The union was Haulers and Handlers, International, an independent.

“And,” Danilov continued, “this Linington cat also turned up in that ownership check the business-page desk made for you. He’s listed as agent-of-record for both corporations.”

“Both?”

“Midcentral and Wit’s End.”

“But not Reevis-Smith?”

“No. That was owned by the estate of Frank Reevis until three years ago. A lot of labor troubles and it went into bankruptcy receivership. Then it was sold to Highlands Corporation. That’s a Delaware corporation with a business address in Jersey City.”

“Never heard of it,” Cotton said. He was disappointed. Linington gave them some connection between Wit’s End and Midcentral—but that connection was meaningless. What he needed was a link between the resort company and the construction firm.

“You’ll hear more of it,” Danilov said. “This Highlands Corporation is also registered as owner of Midcentral Surety and Wit’s End, Incorporated. They’re subsidiaries.”

“Wonderful,” Cotton said. Another loose end pinned down. One less crumb left for the opposition papers. “I’ll use that Wit’s EndReevis-Smith connection in the story. Check it with the business desk to make sure I say it right.”

“Yeah,” Danilov said. “How’s it coming?”

“Count on it for tomorrow. First edition.”

“How big is it?”

“Be a banner,” Cotton said. He told Danilov briefly what he had. There was a short silence. Danilov preparing a compliment, Cotton thought. He had never heard a Danilov compliment. He would ignore it, he decided.

“I guess it’ll take room on the jump page,” Danilov said. “What’ll it run? Galley and a half or so? You write too loose. Try to keep it tight.”

A Danilov compliment.

“It won’t run a word longer than it has to,” Cotton said.

“I guess I won’t need the memo,” Danilov said. “Not if we have the yarn tomorrow morning.” There was a click.

Cotton hung up the dead receiver, cutting off the dial tone. He thought: You’ll get a memo, you son-of-a-bitch, because I’m quitting. You’ll get all I can wrap up today in the story, and a memo with it. And the memo would tell Ernie Danilov what was left to be checked out and confirmed and it would tell Ernie and the
Tribune
to go to hell, effective on receipt.

And then it was time for the unpleasant part, the part he had always dreaded, the chore demanded by the conventions of objective reporting. He called Singer first, finding him finally downstate at the Seventh Division construction office. Singer’s voice was pleasant.

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking into change orders on some jobs you handled,” Cotton said. He identified the jobs. “It looks like just about all the change orders you signed increased the amounts on items Reevis-Smith bid high on, and cut back on items where they were low.”

He realized he was trying to imagine what Singer looked like—trying to connect a man to the voice. Thinking as Janey Janoski would think. Cotton provided examples. “Is there an explanation for that?”

Singer’s voice changed from pleasant to frightened and guarded. Conditions on the job required the changes, he said. It happened on every job with every project engineer. That was part of their duties, adjusting the project design to fit the site as construction developed.

“Just happened to be that way then?” Cotton said. “Coincidence?” Would Singer be married? Have children?

“You could call it that.”

“Another thing,” Cotton said. “The records show that you signed slips to pay Reevis-Smith for 13,786 tons of bulk cement on that FAS 007-211-3788 job. And that’s the total amount delivered to the Reevis-Smith batch plant there at Ellis. But it looks like part of the mixed cement didn’t go into the highway job. It went to the Reevis-Smith project over at the state park there—that Wit’s End park improvement job.” How much would he tell Singer now? Just enough to lead him into a lying explanation? And then just enough more to get a modification of the lie? And then enough more to demolish the lie? It was effective. Cotton felt slightly sick. To hell with it. If he handled it right, he was sure he could present the readers two or three contradictory lies. Singer’s, contradicted by a separate lie from Herman Gay, and both contradicted by whatever spur-of-the-moment story the Reevis-Smith manager could come up with. Flowers would be smarter. He would refuse to comment. Three contradictory lies would make the story stronger. But to hell with it. He’d settle for a denial, spare Singer the role of public liar.

“We’ve got the records on it,” Cotton said. “Exactly a grand total of 13,786 tons were delivered to the batch plant. You signed haul slips showing the same amount going into the highway. But we’ve got witnesses who can prove cement from that plant built the park improvements.” Cotton paused, hesitating between the question leading to denial (wondering inanely if Singer had worked his way through college for the civil-engineering degree which would now be useless to him) and the question which would bring the “no comment,” which would be smart for Singer but weak for the story.

“Do you have any comment on that? Do you have any comment on why you signed falsified hauling slips?”

“I didn’t falsify any . . .” The voice was tight, frightened. “No comment,” it said. “I don’t want to say anything.”

“You started to say you didn’t falsify anything,” Cotton said. “You don’t want to say anything about that?”

“No. For God’s sake. Is this going in the paper? Look, I’ve got a daughter in high school.”

“I’m sorry,” Cotton said.

And he was sorry. It surprised him, reminded him of something. How long ago? Fifteen years. The Carter County sheriff (What was his name?) fat and frightened behind his desk. The sheriff (Lowden it was, or maybe Logan, a fat man with the waxy complexion of those who have weak hearts) trying to explain how he had happened to be collecting more money than he had coming for feeding county-jail prisoners. A clumsy, inept affair—the sheriff’s name signed to affidavits swearing his wife’s café had served 760 prisoner-meals for the month. The county-jail roster showed only 208 prisoner-days served that month; 208 times 3 meals a day equaled 624 meals. Could the sheriff explain why he had claimed and cashed vouchers for 136 more meals than had been served? The sheriff could not. It was some mistake. An error in paperwork. A slip-up somewhere. Then could he explain how the error happened to be in his favor every month of that year, and how each month of his term the error grew slightly larger? And the sheriff sitting slack behind his desk, saying he would not discuss it, his face ashen. Cotton remembered it. He had felt an immense pity then. Pity for the man who would be removed from office, indicted by a grand jury, destroyed.

That had been the first one, and the worst one. The next one had been much easier—an assistant city manager cheating on travel expenses, who had simply lost his job. And after a while you hardly thought about it.

But he thought about it now—about Singer and his ruin.

Herman Gay was easier. Older and tougher. He denied, first, that it could be happening. Then blustered. Then complained that, after all, the construction engineer couldn’t keep an eye on everything at once. Gay didn’t have his signature attached to any false records, therefore saw escape. But there would be no escape for Singer. And, since Singer would be easy prey for any district attorney, there would be no escape for Gay, either. Singer would certainly implicate him.

Cotton caught Flowers at his law office.

Flowers listened with no more than an occasional grunt.

“Where are you calling from, Mr. Cotton? I’m busy now. I’ll call you back.” The voice was icy.

“That won’t be necessary,” Cotton said. “Why not just tell me what you have to say about this happening in your Quality Experiment highway program?”

“I think you’re lying. Obviously I want to look into it before I say anything. But I’ll check it out and call you back. Where can I reach you?”

“You can call our city desk at the
Tribune
and give them the statement,” Cotton said. “They’ll get it back to me.”

“But I may need to reach you.”

“You won’t be able to,” Cotton said. He would see to that. “I’ll be out of pocket.”

At Reevis-Smith, Cotton was referred to R. J. Putnam, the construction division manager. Putnam seemed genuinely puzzled and passed him on to the executive vice-president, a man named Gary Kelly. Mr. Kelly was not at all puzzled. He interrupted Cotton’s preliminary account before Cotton could reach his concluding questions. The voice was slightly froggy.

“O.K., Cotton,” it said. “This sort of stuff is going to cause us some public-relations problems. I think we could afford a nice fee for a public-relations consultant.”

“I’m not in public relations.”

“I think we could afford a lump sum. Like twenty-five thousand.”

“I don’t think you can afford me.” Cotton’s voice was tight with anger. How much had they offered Leroy? Did Hall place his value at $25,000?

“I think we better get together and talk about it then.”

“All I want from you is some questions answered. Do you want to explain how you happened to charge the Highway Department for cement that didn’t go into the highways?”

“Just a minute,” Kelly said. “Be right with you in a minute.”

No sound on the telephone. Mouthpiece covered with a hand, Cotton thought. He’s seeing if he can get this call traced. Cotton hung up. Reevis-Smith would be reported as declining comment.