Chapter 7
It was still morning and I had nothing else to do and my client had already paid her retainer. So I dropped GPA off and I drove to Baltimore.
The drive lasted five hours because I was in no great hurry, my day committed.
I listened to a podcast called The Daily, which wasn’t helpful but it was informative, and a podcast called Crime Junkie which was neither but it was entertaining.
Followed by an hour of Colin Cowherd opining on the NFL, which was helpful because I still harbored the secret belief I could make an NFL roster if I trained hard a couple weeks.
The mad traffic of the DC and Baltimore metro regions felt like a physical battle with the invisible consequences of greed, so I switched to a playlist of famous symphonies, and I wondered whether I could earn a spot playing drums on the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra if I bought a set and trained.
Probably. To help with the stress of traffic, I practiced breathing in a box.
Four seconds in, four seconds hold, four seconds out, four seconds hold.
Over and over. Breathing in a box, like the Navy SEALs. Didn’t help.
Duane Chambers (Constanza) had had an office in the Curtis Bay Industrial Area, near the water of Patapsco River, the heart of Baltimore.
Here there still be men. Big trucks, big tires, big machines pulled on big flatbeds.
Big cargo ships seen in the distance between big tanks and bigger warehouses.
The air smelled of diesel and oil. A dirty part of the world, these industrial sections, where cleanliness didn’t matter in the iron-hard enterprises of offloading freight, and storing crude oil and petroleum, and resupplying ships.
To be fair, I saw a couple women walk into an office.
Here there be women, maidens or not. Maybe they were heroes.
The address Brust gave me was near the Baltimore Industrial Group headquarters, in a smaller building.
A hurriedly erected strip of offices with attached warehouses, cheap looking.
Duane’s firm had been called Horizons Construction Consultants, years ago, and it was now the home of a SERVPRO franchise.
The receptionist was a woman who looked like she’d knife me if I called her a maiden. She said, “Welcome to SERVPRO,” without looking up from typing on a computer. I could see her screen and she was replying to an email with an attached picture of a flooded basement.
“Is the manager in?”
“Go on back,” she said with a head nod towards the rear.
The carpet was thin and cheap and the walls were beadboard and the ceiling had drop tiles. I knocked on the doorframe of the manager and nearly broke it.
The guy glanced up from his phone. A Black guy, good looking, like if Denzel Washington was a white-collar worker trying to hustle his way in a blue-collar world.
“You Rick?” he said.
“I’m not.”
“You speak Spanish?”
I shrugged. “A little.”
“Only a little? Damn, I gotta learn Spanish,” he said. He kept working on his phone. Outside the thin walls of this building, the noises of industrial progress could be heard.
“I’m looking for information on the former occupants of this office,” I said. “Horizons Construction.”
“Can’t help you,” he said. “I bought this franchise from the owner a year ago. Terrible idea, thinking a business degree from Towson means I know how to run anything. He laughed, signing some papers. Ask Brenda.”
“The maiden at the front desk?” I said.
He grinned with no humor. Didn’t look up. “Yeah. The maiden at the front desk.”
Back in front, I said, “Oh Brenda?”
“Welcome to SERVPRO. With you in a minute.”
“Did you know the Horizons Construction Consultant guys?” I said.
She stopped typing. Looked at me for the first time.
“Why?” she said, like I’d asked her to stand on her head. She was brunette and sneered naturally, as though everyone she met was a disappointment.
“So you did.”
“Why are you asking about them?”
“I’m Duane Chambers,” I said.
“You sure as hell are not.”
“So you did—”
“Hush up now. Why are you asking? You’re a cop?”
“I’m not a cop. I’m chasing down a lead. Specifically Duane Chambers’s wife’s … birth name,” I said.
“Why?”
“For a client. It’s confidential.”
“If you’re a cop, you gotta tell me. I told them everything I know ten times, and that was years ago.”
“Did you know Duane?”
“Never met him. I worked in this office park for the last ten years. We stayed the hell away from Duane and his pack of hired jerks. Jerks who looked like you. Our office was three doors that way until he vacated, then we moved over,” said Brenda.
“How can I find out more about him?”
“Why?”
“Brenda. I’m not one of his jerks. I’m a lover, not a fighter. Duane is dead and I hated him. Now I need information on his wife.”
“He’s dead?”
“I promise,” I said. “So is she.”
“You can ask the cops. Maybe the lawyers. They knew all about him.”
“What about his business colleagues?”
“You could go to the hired jerk store,” she said. “Oh, ask Davis and Turner. They were his biggest client.”
“Who are—”
“Davis and Turner are a medium-sized construction company. Office is a couple blocks that way. North.”
“Brenda. Thank you.”
“He’s really dead?”
“He is.” I turned to go.
“You’re a lover, not a fighter?” Her interest in me hadn’t warmed. But she seemed less disappointed. “But, maybe you killed him? That’d be something.”
“I didn’t. Sorry,” I said.
“Too bad,” she said, back to her typing. “Don’t tell Davis and Turner I sent you.”
Davis and Turner’s offices felt more permanent, like the builders hadn’t skimped on insulation or subfloor padding. They had windows, double-paned, through which I could see water to the east. Still though, it was a place of pencil shavings and measuring tapes and hardhats and trucks.
The receptionist wouldn’t budge an inch, presuming I was a salesman, until I produced my Private Investigator card and was dialing Detective Brust to verify my credentials, when she relented and told me Mr. Turner was at the construction site in Cherry Hill, where he was overseeing the construction of a new Middle Branch Fitness Center.
The site was fenced in with tall chain-link, metal warning signs everywhere, some covered with looping graffiti. A crane was lofting steel beams to a second-floor landing. A cement mixer sloughed off its load into a hole, guided by guys wearing yellow hardhats.
I knocked on the job-site trailer and let myself in. The headquarters of this hive. One guy on the phone, scribbling at a desk. Another poking an iPad to get different angles on building schematics.
The iPad guy glanced up. Barely. Tall guy, mustache, hands thicker than mine. Tremendous Adam’s apple. “Who’re you looking for?”
“John Turner.”
“You found him. Selling paint?” he said. His voice sounded like a rumbling volcano.
“Looking for information on Duane Chambers.”
His iPad lowered an inch. The guy listening on the phone leaned back in his chair to get a better look at me.
“The hell are you doing that for?” said John Turner. His gaze became less friendly, and it hadn’t been convivial to start.
“He’s dead.” That seemed to earn me something last time. The trailer wasn’t big and it was crowded with metal filing cabinets and two desks and a television and a computer and three large men. My head crowded the ceiling.
“You the new Duane Chambers?”
“I want information on his wife, is all. I’m told Mr. Turner worked with Duane.”
“He’s been gone a long time,” said John Turner.
“I know.”
“Five years or more.”
“I’ve been busy,” I said.
He took in a deep breath which was a lot of air and let it out through his nose. Hot displeasure. He stood and nodded at the door.
“Out,” he said. “Talk outside.”
On the gravel, we stood toe to toe. He was tall as me, which was hard to do.
“What are you really doing here?” he said. We had to talk loud over a dump truck reversing.
“Everyone hated that guy, huh.”
“With reason.”
“I need to find his wife’s family. That’s it. I want her maiden name. We can call Detective Brust at Baltimore PD if you need proof.”
“What kinda business are you in?”
“I’m a detective. I don’t want to be at this construction site any more than you want me here,” I said.
“Duane worked with Johnny Turner. My father. I’m John. My father died and now I’m the owner and manager. Lucky Davis is a silent partner, so it’s just me. If you’re lying, if you came here for the same reasons Duane did, I will sink your ass into the wet concrete.”
“Terrifying.”
“You got scarring around the eyes and nose. You’re a fighter. I see it in your hands. You’re in Duane’s world,” he said. “This a shakedown? Look me in the eye.”
“This is about Duane’s wife’s maiden name.”
“What did you know about him?”
“I know I hated him. And that he’s dead. And that he used to facilitate prostitution.”
He nodded and crossed his arms. He wore a red flannel shirt and his forearms were meaty and covered with coarse hair.
It was obvious his bones were long and sturdy, and his elbows would break cement and one good roundhouse would kill a man.
He said, “Duane was part of the Baltimore Concrete Club. Bastards hired muscle to intimidate construction companies and the foremen. He paid off cops and had inspectors in his pocket. They’d rig bids and extort the contractors and demand kickbacks.
If you weren’t in the club, and if you weren’t big enough to fight, you went out of business.
Most people joined the club. I didn’t know about the prostitution, but human trafficking goes hand in hand with construction.
Hauling people around. Cheap labor, they need to be transported and they want beer and girls.
Control the labor, you control progress. ”
“Your father was in the Concrete Club.”
“He had to be. That’s why we exist today.
But I’m not so pliable. He died, and Duane informed me our deal remained.
Day after his funeral. It would be a mighty partnership, both of us rich.
But it was extortion. If I paid him, the money would keep flowing my way.
But that’s bullshit and I saw what it did to my father and I couldn’t stomach it.
I don’t bend the knee. I was working with the feds when Duane disappeared.
We waited but he quit showing. I told Duane’s partner, I was done.
He threatened me, but he was softer. I contacted some other construction companies, and we united.
About half the mid-size guys. Called ourselves the Kiss My Ass Club.
The others refused, hoping to absorb our business after we quit winning bids, but not us.
We decided to fight. We gave the feds everything we had.
Duane’s partner set fire to our office. Cut the lines on our tractors.
Shot up a few cars, but we survived. Duane’s partner is in jail now. ”
“Didn’t know he had one,” I said.
“Remi Boscolo. Older guy.”
“That’s all I need. I’ll run him down.” I stuck out my hand.
He gave his head a little back-and-forth. “I don’t shake hands with men in Duane’s universe.”
“I was there when Duane died. He was shot in Italy and was buried in a burning building. My friend did it, and I really am a detective, and you’ll never see me again.”
“Shot and buried in Italy?”
“His wife too. If you’ve been waiting for him to show up, breathe easy. He’s gone.”
“Well then.” He made an impressed huh face and grabbed my hand. “That’ll do.”