The Concrete Pearl Read Online Free PDF Page B

down my right arm. Motherfucker wouldn’t budge. When it came to Yale lock-sets, they still made them like they used to.
    I made my way back to the side of the building that did not face Marino Construction. I came to the first window. I felt the weight of the equalizer in my hand. Cocking it back, I let it fly. The head didn’t go through the safety glass. It only chipped it and bounced off.
    An alarm erupted. I never expected an alarm. Who was the dumbass now? The repeating siren blared. Lights flashed inside and outside the building. I peered behind me at a thick patch of second growth woods. If anything alive had bore witness to my action, it would be of the furry four-legged or feathery winged variety.
    I ran for the Jeep, equalizer in hand. Stuffing it back down under the seat, I got back behind the wheel. What the hell had I been thinking? Turning the engine over, I peeled out of the lot and hooked a right onto Aviation Park Drive.
    I didn’t give Marino Construction a second look as I flew by.
     
     
     

Chapter 7
     
    I called Tommy back.
    He was still in his truck, driving.
    I asked, “You recall an address for Analytical Labs?”
    If Farrell was nowhere to be found, maybe the testing professionals in charge of overseeing his work would be.
    “Port of Albany,” Tommy said. “You want me to turn around, head on over there, see what I can see?”
    “Negative. I need you to keep on fielding the calls as they come in from Stewart and anyone else who wants their pound of flesh.”
    “Not much flesh left to go around,” Tommy said.
    “You look in the goddamned mirror lately?”
    “You kissing anybody with that mouth of yours?”
    I puckered up and blew him a big one. Then I hung up.
    At the end of Aviation Drive, I hooked a right in the direction of downtown Albany and beyond that, the Concrete Pearl and the Port of Albany. In my rearview I caught sight of an APD patrol car making the hard turn into Aviation Industrial Park.
    Its flashers were lit up.
    So was my pulse.
     
    At the entrance to the Port I found a plywood billboard that listed all the businesses that operated inside the port facility. The list included Analytical Labs Environmental Testing Services. B32 was the indicated location.
    I drove into the port, hooked a right turn immediately after crossing over the first set of railroad tracks. The port was a busy place even if most of it was scheduled for the wrecking ball to make way for the convention center. Long and narrow, it spanned the length of the river where it ran deep and dark after decades of dredging. Dump trucks and semis occupied the vein-like network of roadways that crisscrossed one another in no discernable pattern.
    I made a right turn on just such a road, eyed the old warehouses until I came to the one marked B. I pulled up to the long tin-paneled, two-story structure, parking the Jeep outside a metal rollup door that had the number 32 painted on it directly above the words “Analytical Labs.”
    I got out.
    Approaching the rollup door, I turned the latch counter-clockwise. It was locked. The latch was old, rusty and corroded from years of damp riverside exposure.
    I took a step back.
    This wasn’t an office for Analytical Labs. This was a storage space.
    My heart beat inside my temples.
    I looked behind me, saw a semi speed by me, its trailer bearing the words, “Gorman Molasses.” I knew the driver had to be heading to the molasses processing plant located at the northern most tip of the port.
    I turned and faced the Jeep.
    I knew I could either get back in, drive back into the city, call off my search for Farrell, face Stewart and the police on my own. Or I could keep on looking for the golden boy and my money.
    So far all I’d discovered was an emptied out Environmental Solutions and a Peter Marino who would not talk with me. Now I’d also discovered an Analytical Labs base of operations that wasn’t a base of operations at all. It was a storage bin masquerading as a