Black Creek Crossing

Chapter 2

ARTY SULLIVAN CAST A SIDELONG GLANCE AT THE gleaming Airstream trailer that served as an on-site office for the strip mall that was supposed to have been almost done by now. It was only last week, however, that the framework began to climb above the underground parking lot the town of Eastbury, Massachusetts, had required. Pissant regulations, as far as he was concerned — not that anybody ever listened to him. But since they’d gotten held up on the garage — one of his boss’s snafus that he’d tried to blame on him, just like always — there wasn’t a chance that they’d get the place framed and closed before the New England winter set in. Which, Marty knew, meant that he and the rest of the crew would be shivering in a couple of more months as much as they’d been sweltering during the summer, when they were stuck down in the pit of the parking garage, setting rebar and pounding forms without a breath of fresh air and the heat in the nineties, with humidity to match. If he’d been in charge…

But he wasn’t in charge, and Jerry O’Donnell — the foreman who’d had it in for Marty since the day he’d signed on to the job last June — wasn’t going to listen to anything he had to say. Marty raised the middle finger of his left hand in a sour salute toward the Airstream — where he was pretty sure O’Donnell and the office girl were getting it on every day — then unscrewed the top of his thermos and took a long gulp. Though the liquid was only lukewarm, the warmth of the brandy he’d added to Myra’s crappy coffee quickly spread through his gut. When the alcohol did nothing to brighten his mood, Marty tipped the thermos to his lips again, draining it, then dropped the lid and the bottle back into his lunch bucket.

Couple more hours and he could go home.

Couple more hours of him working his butt off while O’Donnell cooled his in the Airstream. Maybe he should just go over there and get himself a little piece of the—

“Hey, Marty,” Kurt Winkowski called from the far corner of the site. He and Bud Grimes were struggling with a large piece of prefab framing. “How’s about givin’ us a hand over here!”

Glowering balefully at the trailer one last time, Marty heaved himself to his feet. “What’s the matter? That thing too heavy for you guys?” Ambling across the newly hardened concrete, he tripped over a drainpipe that hadn’t yet been trimmed, cursed under his breath, then shoved Winkowski aside. “Lemme hold it while you get a rivet in.” The piece of metal framing, ten feet tall and nearly as long, tilted as Winkowski released it. It nearly twisted out of Marty’s hands, but Bud Grimes reached out to steady it just before it fell.

“I can do it!” Marty growled. “Just get the damned rivet gun, Winkowski.”

For a moment Kurt Winkowski seemed about to argue, but Marty’s size and the look of half-drunken belligerence in his eyes made him think better of it. Picking up the pneumatic rivet gun, he moved to the point where the two pieces of framing met at a ninety-degree angle, and used his left hand to try to line up the matching holes in the two components. Bud Grimes’s piece held steady, but the framing Marty Sullivan was trying to steady kept wavering back and forth.

“Jeez, Marty, how’m I s’posed to—”

“Just shoot the damn thing,” Marty growled. “What kind of dumb mother—”

There was a sharp explosive sound as Winkowski pulled the trigger of the rivet gun, followed by a scream of pain as Bud Grimes let go of the framing he was holding and clutched at his left bicep. As the framing crashed against the fence that stood between the foundation and the sidewalk beyond, Marty Sullivan took a step to one side, lost his balance, then tumbled to the ground, the metal framing falling on top of him. He struggled for a moment, but the prefabricated structure was too heavy. “Someone get this damn thing off me!” he yelled as the rest of the construction crew came racing over.

“The hell with Sullivan,” Winkowski shouted. “It was his fault! Someone get the first-aid kit for Bud.”

Bud Grimes had sunk down onto a stack of framing, his face ashen, his left sleeve crimson with blood, despite the fact that his right hand was still clamped over the wound. Someone started toward the site office when the door of the Airstream opened and Jerry O’Donnell charged out with the first-aid kit.

“What happened?” he asked as he shouldered through the men crowded around Bud Grimes. He crouched down and opened the first-aid kit as Winkowski began to explain, then began cutting away the sleeve of Grimes’s shirt.

“Get this goddamn crap offa me!” Marty Sullivan howled, and finally two men picked up the enormous piece of prefab steel and tossed it aside. “I coulda been killed!” Marty complained, starting to get up. But then he dropped back down to the concrete. “Jeez — I think my back’s hurt.”

Jerry O’Donnell barely glanced at him. “Someone call an ambulance,” he said. “Grimes needs to go to the hospital.”

“I’m okay,” Grimes complained, but his pale face was damp with a sheen of sweat. “Just put a bandage on it and—” His words abruptly died as he tried to move his injured arm and an agonizing pain shot through it.

“You’re not okay,” O’Donnell replied. “Whatever went in there didn’t come back out.”

“It was a rivet,” Winkowski repeated. “Just as I pulled the trigger, Sullivan—”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Marty bawled. “An’ if anybody needs an ambulance, it’s me. My back’s—”

O’Donnell wheeled around to face him, his eyes hard, his expression tight. “Your back’s fine, Sullivan,” he said. “But if you want, I’ll sure have you taken to the hospital. And I’ll have ’em test your blood for alcohol while you’re there.”

Without thinking about it, Marty Sullivan was on his feet, towering over the foreman, his fists clenched, his face only inches from O’Donnell’s.

But rather than backing away, O’Donnell was smiling at him. “Still want an ambulance?” he asked quietly. When Sullivan made no reply, he said, “The way I see it, you might just want to be quitting, Sullivan.” The other man’s brows furrowed uncertainly. “Or would you prefer me to fire you?”

“You can’t fire me,” Sullivan began, his voice still truculent, but less belligerent than a few moments earlier. “We got a union that says—”

Again, O’Donnell didn’t let him finish. “You got a union that says you can drink on the job?”

“I never—” Sullivan began.

“How dumb do you think I am, Sullivan?” O’Donnell said. “You think I can’t smell the stink on your breath?”

Sullivan lurched back a step, and O’Donnell moved closer.

“You think everyone on this job doesn’t know what’s in that thermos of yours?” He shook his head almost sadly. “It’s dumb enough to be drinking on the job, but it’s even dumber to think no one’s going to notice. So here’s the deal — you get your stuff and get off this site right now, and that’ll be the end of it. And don’t think anyone else in town’ll be hiring you, because I’ll see to it that they don’t. It’s way too dangerous having someone like you around.”

“You can’t do that,” Sullivan yelped. “My union—”

“Or we can go talk to the union about it,” O’Donnell said, his words silencing the other man, though he hadn’t raised his voice. “Both of us. In fact, we’ll take the whole crew with us.” He glanced around at the dozen men who were now watching the confrontation. “How about it, guys? Want to go down to the union and defend Brother Sullivan?”

None of the men responded, and as Marty Sullivan’s eyes moved from one man to another, they either shook their heads, turned away from him, or edged closer to the foreman.

“I’ll have Rebecca cut your check right now, Sullivan,” O’Donnell said.

But Marty Sullivan was already walking away. “Screw off, O’Donnell,” he said, the alcohol in his blood fueling the anger boiling inside him. “You think I’m gonna hang around while that bitch tries to figure out how to do some real work?”

Grabbing his jacket and his lunchbox, and wondering where the nearest place to get a drink, Marty Sullivan shambled away from the site.