There’s a big red hole in the neighborhood at the site of Derwent Sloot’s house. All the big hollies have been cut down that once protected the view from his living room window from the excesses of the Trip mansion next door. I can see right across Derwent’s lot and across the Trip’s back yard and look at three stories of curtained windows at the base of Jake’s folly. A John Deer 800 backhoe with diesel breath, and orange exoskeleton is maneuvering across the bottom enlarging the excavation by clawing at the sides with its bucket. I can hear the strain in the engine note and see it in the darkened exhalations from the exhaust stack. Shiny steel extensions emerge from their hydraulic cylinders and gleam as if they are sweating, loading the bucket full of earth into a dump truck. I was wondering how the truck and machine would get out. Then the truck surprised me by coming up to the surface on a steep dirt ramp hidden from view on the near side of the hole. Concrete footings for a new house will soon be poured, and this big space will be enclosed to become a basement. The L shaped pit in the red clay is surrounded by a silt fence and beyond that, fenced off with orange netting stretched between thin metal posts. Two men with orange jackets and hard hats stand on the other side. One is smoking and looking down at the water pumped up from the bottom through a hose and pouring out beyond my sight. The backhoe has now come up the ramp and the operator walks over to join them leaving his machine grinding the atmosphere with its engine. The other man is on the phone, as he looks up into the trees.
Derwent’s house was scraped off the lot yesterday in a single afternoon and most of the remains were loaded with tremendous noise into a couple of dump trucks that evening. One of his armchairs is supported above the sticky wet bare clay on a sheet of warped plywood. Some one is sitting in it watching me through his Ray Bans, watching the action. He holds something up in front of his face for a moment, a tablet perhaps. Derwent’s bathroom sink sticks out from the last of the rubble near my feet. The man who was looking up into the trees puts his phone in his pocket and walks towards me, waving.
“Hi Fred, are you supervising today?” It is Max Plank.
“No, that’s your job Max.”
“Not until we pour the foundations. This hole is a lot deeper than it needs to be in my opinion, but this is another Dordrecht job.”
“I thought you were through with them!”
“So did I.”
“What do you hear from Sherman Shrowd?”
“We’re still talking. That’s his thing you know, talking.”
“Yes, is this job part of Sherman’s negotiation?”
“That’s one way of putting it. Sherman has shown me a blueprint I’d never seen before.”
“You mean from the Trip house?”
“Yeah, my legal problems grew out of the failure of our silt fence on that job.”
“So what did the blueprints tell you? How did he get them?”
“He’s not saying where he got them. He doesn’t talk that much … but look here’s the thing, there’s a room under the garage.”
“Is that unusual?”
“In this case it is, because the specs I saw show the space under the garage should have been filled in.”
“You should know. You built it.”
“Yes I should, and as far as I know it was filled in and inspected.”
“So what about this hidden room?”
“I think it was done in the week I was off site working over in DC.”
“Oh, you mean done in secret after the fact?”
“Something like that. I don’t know why but I was cut out of several aspects of that job as you know.”
“How about this job?”
“Ask the guy behind me in the arm chair.”
“Is he the boss?”
“I don’t know. His name is Skip and my contract says I answer to the Dordrecht’s site manager not him.”
“So who is he?”
“Like I said his name is Skip.”
“Right, so what’s he doing here?”
“He sits there watching, taps his tablet, and makes a few phone calls. That’s all I’ve seen.”
“Yes I saw him eyeing me and he may have taken my picture come to think of it. When did you get the news from Sherman?”
“About a month ago. Lark is convinced they are holding Juanita Gomez down there.”
“My God, what a nightmare! Who would be doing that?”
“I find it unbelievable but you can ask her in a minute. I just called her and she’s coming by to give me a bag I forgot this morning.”
“Max, I have to get going soon.”
“Alright Fred … No wait a minute. She’s in that Toyota parking over there, see?”
Lark gets out of the same old Corolla Max was driving when we saw him outside the Cavendish Pie Shop the other day. She is wearing a thick white turtleneck cable knit sweater, black jeans and boots, carrying a New Yorker magazine tote bag.
“Hi Lark, what you got there, the family jewels?”
Lark holds the bag open showing me a laptop inside with a folder full of papers next to it.
“Right, all my electronic gems are in there.” She gives Max the bag with one hand and takes his hard hat off and puts it on her head with the other.
“Are you going to be here all day?”
“Unless you are taking over.”
“Lark, good to see you, but I have to go.”
“Okay Fred, so do I, can I give you a ride?”
“Sure, I am going to the Metro.” We walk over to the car and Max’s phone sounds.
“Sorry about the seat! Max’s last passengers were a bag of cement and a couple of gallons of gas for the lawn mower.”
She reaches on to the back seat and hands me an old bath towel to cover up the dust on the seat.
“Boson peed back there on the way to the vet last month.”
“You mean I am now sitting on dog pee instead of cement dust?”
“No, no, that’s just for his drool. It’s newly washed and dried.”
“Boson, who’s Boson?’
“Max’s bloodhound, we were taking him to Dr. Higgs.
We should have used the van, but this uses less gas. Max bartered this heap in part payment for a job. He says the engine is great even though it looks crappy.” I could hear him yelling at us as I got in, but Lark ignored him and started up. It sounds smooth as Lark pulls away only to stop again and toss Max’s hardhat back to him through the open window.
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
Lark is laughing at him, and honks twice before we turn the corner to go down Oval Street hill. She hadn’t said another word to Max. I can’t tell if he is really annoyed or playing games with Lark but she seems unruffled and amused.
“Did he tell you about the blue prints Fred?”
“Yes, what makes you think Juanita is being held in the Trip house. She disappeared in March of 2012!”
“Oh lots of things, from several sources. Look I know it’s been a long time, which makes it even scarier. I think she knows something. That’s one reason she’s in danger and also perhaps why she is still alive. Also Max was really frustrated the whole time he worked on that house with Dordrechts because stuff kept happening when he wasn’t there and no one explained it. He said the pay was so good he couldn’t pass the job up, even though he felt like it.”
“I see he’s working with Dordrechts on this job too.”
“Yeah, Sherman set that up and I pushed him.”
“You mean he didn’t want it?”
“No he didn’t, but I kept telling him we might find out something now
he knows there was more than lack of coordination before.”
“Has he told you about Skip?”
“Yeah, we have discussed Skip and I think he’s a security guy.”
“Oh! What about Max?”
“He still doesn’t take me seriously on this.”
“Alright, but who do you think Juanita’s jailer is?”
“Fred, I tell you, I am worried about your buddy Lou. Has he ever asked if he might plug a thumb drive into your computer?”
“How do you know about it?”
“Ah! So he has!”
“I didn’t say that Lark.”
“You don’t have to. I am sure he told you never to say anything; and Fred, you haven’t. ”
We are less than a mile past the Pie Shop on Maxwell Avenue and now stopped at the back of a long line of cars ahead.
“So what is this about?”
“Hope you are not in a hurry!”
“I was …”
“You see this is another reason not to buy a fancy car. Look at that new Mercedes S 550. Probably cost over a hundred $K new, and it is burning twice as much gas as I am sitting in the road like a pile of junk!”
“If you can afford one of those the cost of gas is immaterial.”
“Sure dollars are no a problem, but pollution affects us all.”
“Looks like you and Max got a good deal here.”
“It gets us where we are going, but it is strictly steerage!”
“So what else do your sources tell you Lark?”
“It’s what they don’t tell me. I mean there’s a big hole in the evidence. Can’t find any documentation showing that Juanita is really is in detention any where.”
“But isn’t it known she is being held in a detention center as an illegal immigrant in Texas or somewhere?”
“So they say, but I think it’s a red herring. I’ve checked it all out and there’s no paper trail.”
“Seems fishy alright. What about the raid on the Tripp house?”
“That is documented but they are withholding the details.”
“Why, by whom?”
“Neither INS, nor FBI will tell me much … well, ah … I have word that she wasn’t in fact taken by any government agency.”
“Who’s word?”
“Can’t say Fred.”
“Well, who’s got her?”
“Who else is there around here Fred?”
“Oh not Urban Safety what ever they are called!”
“I didn’t say that Fred.”
“You don’t have to and you didn’t, Lark.”
