“Hey, I got that Morales guy on another payoff!”
Brynn gushed out the words almost before I’d had a chance to register that it was her calling. She sounded like a kid who’d gotten a puppy as a birthday present.
“Spill it! Who did you get?”
“So, I told you that I’ve gotten chummy with this gal in the Health Department, and she gave me some names of restaurants Morales had inspected. She’d been following The Chicken Shack story and is pretty disgusted with what he’s done, allegedly done. Anyway, she’s been suspicious of the guy for a while, but after seeing the coverage, she went back through some of his history and gave me three restaurants to check out.”
“And did she report any of these to anyone?” Two people having the same story was always better than one, even if they disagreed on some of the details.
“I asked about that. She said she’d gone to her supervisor about Morales before the story broke and got a firm ‘stay in your lane’ warning. She’s an admin, so it’s not supposed to be her thing. She tried again after his behavior went public and still got her hands slapped. So she’s hesitant to do any more.”
Once again, the person who knew the truth had gotten slapped back because it was above their pay grade. “Can she give you any records?”
“So far, she’s not willing to go there,” Brynn said. “What she was willing to do is to give me names and dates. So I have three restaurants with a history of crappy ratings that suddenly improved at the same time Mr. Morales became their inspector. Since I knew the date he started those assignments, I could print the inspection history for myself. From there I’ve been working people. And I’ve found this woman who did bookkeeping for a restaurant in Chinatown as a side hustle. She says she was told to enter a bunch of cash payments as cleaning expenses after she saw the owner take a wad of cash out of the drawer, stuff it in an envelope, and hand it to Morales.”
“And she’s willing to go on record?”
“She is.”
“I gotta say, I’ve never heard a bribe called ‘cleaning.’” I laughed. “Excellent work, Brynn. I’m proud of you. Write it up. I’ll be back in the office in half an hour. We can review it together before you get it in to Borkowski.”
“Thanks, boss.”
When I walked back into Link-Media, I was wishing I’d suffered through some of Janek’s greasy diner food while we spoke or at the very least a tasteless fruit cup. I’d skipped breakfast, and lunch was a limp, cold prepared salad I’d picked up at the corner deli. It would need to get me through until tonight. I’d promised Cai I would bring takeout from our favorite Chinese place and keep her company again.
I pulled the plastic container out of the bag, poked at the wilted lettuce, speared a piece of cucumber that tasted sour, then tossed the container into the trash. My hunger wasn’t worth risking a bout of food poisoning. I fished a packet of emergency almonds out of my tote bag and opened my computer.
Someone had to be talking about the development project underway at APR. I went back to the APR website, poring over the site inch by inch. Not a word about projects, past or present. Just some stock photos of construction equipment and brawny smiling men with hard hats. It looked like a sample Wix site with the name changed.
Switching back to a browser search on the company, I scanned each link. Surely there was a story somewhere about projects this company had done in the past or a vendor talking about future plans. Page after page, there were links that led to nothing other than yellow-page listings and similar sites that seemed to regurgitate basic data, so I switched to an image search. Company logo. Photos of heavy equipment. Photos with links to buildings that had nothing to do with APR Holdings. I stared at the screen, wondering how a company existed with such a meager digital footprint.
The equipment. A company this small would not own graders and cranes and bulldozers. They would hire a service or rent.
I was back at the construction site near Vogel’s property forty-five minutes later. Two men pushed around dirt in the north corner of the first lot while a third was securing a new section of chain-link fence.
I parked alongside the man working the fence and got out of my car. He looked up when I approached, giving me an expression that said, “I don’t want what you’re selling.”
“Hi.” I smiled at him, going for the friendly neighbor approach. “I noticed the work going on here the other day. It’s nice to see this bit of land being cleaned up. What’s going to be built?”
“I don’t know. I just hang the fence,” the guy said, barely looking up from where he knelt fighting with a bolt.
“So you don’t work for the company developing the land?” I asked.
“Nah. I work for the fence company.”
“Do you think the other guys know what the project is?”
“Maybe. Eh, Ricardo. This lady wants to talk to you,” he yelled across the lot, not to the men running the equipment but to a guy on the street standing next to an enormous pickup truck.
The guy at the truck looked at me quizzically, and I traipsed across the lot through the soft dirt, my shoes sinking in, leaving a path of footprints.
The door to the cab was open, and a stack of plans were lying on the seat. As I approached, he lifted the bandana tied around his neck and wiped the dirt and sweat off of his face.
“What can I do for you, pretty lady?” He smiled in a half-leer kind of way.
He was making my skin crawl already, but men who spoke like this usually had an overly inflated sense of themselves, making them willing to talk, particularly when there was a woman to impress. And I wasn’t above a tiny bit of flirting if it helped my case.
“I’ve seen all the work going on here, and I was curious about what’s coming. All the neighbors are speculating. I’ve been guessing it’s a new housing development. Am I right?” I smiled sweetly, feeling the wet dirt that had sunk into my shoes and my stomach sour a little with my fakeness.
“I’m not supposed to say, but you look pretty harmless, beyond being a heartbreaker, that is.’’
His leery smile was back, and I had to force myself not to walk away.
“I’m just a curious citizen. Nothing to worry about from me,” I said, ignoring the rest of his comment.
“You’re partially right,” he said, his eyes moving below my face. “It’s one of those combo things. Mixed-use is the official lingo, where they incorporate shopping and housing and even a grocery store. Seems to be what some people want these days. That faux lifestyle community thing where you can walk out the door and get takeout anytime you want without having to drive. Even groceries right on the premises. It’s not my thing, but lots of people like that.” He was trying to impress me with his knowledge of the real estate jargon. It made me wish I’d sent my sister, Lane, over here to talk to these guys. It would have been fun to watch her school the guy in real estate lingo.
“That will be really good for this area,” I said. “As long as the housing is affordable. Do you know what the target date is for completion? It looks like you’re just getting started.” I was trying to keep him talking, but I couldn’t yet tell if he worked for APR Holdings or was one of the subs.
“This is a few years out, I’d guess. We’re just clearing one lot at a time until all the official approval comes through. You know how city government is, takes forever as idiots in suits debate and ask for studies.”
“One lot at a time. That must complicate your work. It sounds like a slow process,” I said, wondering why any developer would choose the slow, expensive route to clearing land, unless this was an attempt to work around the bigger issues of permits and zoning.
“They pay me to take it down to bare dirt. Don’t make no difference to me if it takes five days or five years. I get paid regardless. The schedule is someone else’s headache.”
“Oh, I thought you were the project manager or something. You don’t work for the developer?” Flattery was another underestimated tool in the journalistic tool box. I didn’t have to like the fakery to know it was useful.
“Hell no, I’m not a corporate guy. I’m an entrepreneur. I got two crews, and we do basic excavating. I stick to what I know, make my own schedule. That’s the way I like to work. The bigger guys can take on the headaches. I don’t need that.”
“That’s smart. Independence is the way to go. It looks like you have plans for the project,” I said, nodding toward the bundle of paper on the seat. “Any chance I could take a quick look?” I smiled, hoping his ego would take over from there.
“Sure, what the hell, but it’s our secret.”
He stepped over to the roll of documents, and I joined him. I ran my eyes over the cover page, looking for names and a project description. Noticeably absent was the permit approval stamp. These were unapproved draft plans.
I reached over and flipped through the following pages, trying to get a sense of the scope of the project. Unrolling the stack, I saw the master plan for the site. Color-coded blocks indicated the planned use for the various structures. A U-shaped mall around a central courtyard was the core element. A handful of freestanding buildings faced the primary roadways, and a row of a dozen townhouses occupied the north end of the landmass. Each section was marked with the planned stage of the construction. The first phase was the outlots. The mall itself was divided into two phases that followed, then the townhouses.
My companion leaned in until his shoulder touched mine. “You need any help reading this? I’m a pro.”
I smiled and shimmied away from his arm, then drilled into the fine print. Two familiar names popped out. The Chicken Shack and Abbiocco were both tagged on freestanding structures. No other space held a business name.
Going further into the stack, I scanned pages quickly, looking for names, dates, anything that could shed light on the complexities of the project before this guy shooed me away or pushed me into his truck. A document five sheets in showed the project boundaries as it fit into the community. Belmont Avenue was the dividing line between Belmont Heights and Elmwood Park, yet a grayed-out box extended south of Belmont Avenue into the village boundaries of Elmwood Park. It was labeled Phase Five, single-family homes.
That’s why Farnsworth was being bribed.