Do you know what an ASTM number is? Bea does. What does that have to do with the case? Wouldn't you like to know? You'll just have to read to find out.
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NOTE: Check out my other stories in the Sci-fi / Fantasy Section Crown Vic to a Parallel World From Whence I Came Stolen Love
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Wasted Life a Law Edwards Mystery by Sam Stefanik
25 Preston's a Hero!
I double-checked my robe to make sure the sash was tied, and went to let Bea in. I unlocked and opened the door. Bea stepped in from the bright sunshine. She looked rested and ready to seize the day.
"Good morning, Law." She said and politely ignored my ancient, mangy bathrobe. "Good morning, Mister Stack." She said when she noticed Walt. "Am I early?"
I didn't answer Bea right away because I wanted a moment to look her over. She was dressed differently from the day before. This morning she wore a deep-gold solid-color buttoned-down top with high-waisted pleated black slacks and the same brown oxfords from Sunday. Her hair was brushed straight back with no ornament. She looked good in a businesslike way.
I was getting ready to greet Bea when Walt said a pleading `excuse me' and charged outside. I guessed he couldn't handle the tension of being seen when he wasn't at his best. Bea watched as Walt ran a few feet down the sidewalk and disappeared through a windowless door that led to the stairs to his apartment.
She turned back to me with a question on her bright, young face. "What's going on with you and him and the robes?" She asked.
I didn't say anything, but the answer dawned on Bea's mind almost instantly. Her face flushed a mortified fire-engine red. Her reaction was almost worth the embarrassment I felt. "OH!" She blurted and tried to look anywhere but at me. "I'm sorry...uhm...I didn't mean `what's going on' I mean, don't...uhm...of course you wouldn't...uhm...I'll just stop." She quieted and lowered her red face to stare at the floor between us.
"Don't worry about it." I shrugged and tried to lessen the tension. "It's my fault. I forgot to wind my watch. I thought it was earlier."
Bea's embarrassment faded and her expression changed to one of fascination. "Are you and him together? I mean...you would look good with him."
I didn't have a response to that, so I ignored her comment. The last thing I needed was an eighteen-year-old girl playing matchmaker between me and Walt. I rubbed my face hard with both hands and wondered if I'd one day succeed in rubbing it off my skull. I told Bea what I needed to do and the time I needed to do it. I also told her about Walt's discovery.
"I need to get cleaned up. I didn't find anything last night, but Walt found a bunch of marks on the blueprints. They look like your brother's writing. See if you can make heads or tails of them while I get ready. I'll be twenty minutes, a half-hour maybe." I retreated to my room and shut the door behind me.
Once inside my room, I leaned on the door for a second to look around the familiar space. Something about it was very different. The apartment I occupied had only one main room. That one room served as my bedroom but would have also been my sitting room had I ever bothered to fold the bed up.
Usually, people use sitting rooms for guests. I never had any. Conquests don't count as guests, and even if they did, they'd be bedroom guests and not sitting room guests. Walt had turned my bedroom into a sitting room for the first time in my memory. He'd made the bed and folded it up. The bed's absence left a notable bed-sized hole in the debris that covered the rest of the floor.
"Son of a bitch." I muttered to the changed space. "You let a guy fuck you, and he rearranges the furniture."
I shook my head and set about getting ready for the day. As I did it, my mind chewed over what Walt had said about Peter and David. The memories and the questions they raised didn't make me happy or calm. They distracted me and made my stomach churn. I was so distracted, I cut myself three times while I shaved.
I tried to staunch the blood and tried to staunch the flow of memories at the same time. I told myself that I had loved both men. I told myself that's why I still thought about them, still missed them, still longed for them. As far as them loving me, I told myself they each did in their own way. Peter had been a good friend, always thoughtful and kind. Platonic love is still love. David was the same. He enjoyed me, we had fun together, he invited me into his life. Just because I didn't accept his offer doesn't mean the invitation wasn't done as an act of caring.
Why does he do this to me?' I asked myself to refer to Walt and his fucking questions. Haven't I suffered enough?'
In my life up to that point, there had only been two groups of men. There were the men I loved, and the men I had sex with. I loved Peter and David. Everyone else was temporary warmth. Walt was a middle ground. I couldn't allow myself to love him, but I didn't want to lose him either. That was the tightrope I'd always walked with him, a tightrope I'd fallen off of many times.
I dragged myself out of my memories when practical matters demanded my full attention. I was almost ready for the day, but my tie refused to tie. I knotted the damn thing four times before I gave up and tossed it on the floor. I dug around a little until I unearthed a tie I'd loosened and slipped over my head instead of untying. It was the wrong color, but I put it on anyway and tightened it around my collar. The rest of me was a wrinkled mess, but that was nothing new.
I walked into the office to see that Bea had just hung up the telephone. "That was a structural engineer father works with sometimes. I telephoned him to confirm something I found. He said I was right!" She announced with uncontained glee. "Preston is a HERO!"
For just a moment, I thought Bea had suffered a breakdown. I could think of no other reason for her to carry on the way she did. She didn't give me a chance to evaluate her sanity. She launched into an explanation of what she meant. She pointed and gestured at the blueprints. She flipped the pages back and forth and spoke far too quickly for me to understand anything. I let her go through it once, to get it out of her system, then I got her to go through it again.
"Look," she said and pointed to start the lesson over, "sections of the ship are identified on the main plan, then they're broken-down on fabrication details. All the parts on the fabrication drawing are numbered. Each number corresponds to a master list that matches the parts up with the specs and codes for those pieces. These same part numbers are listed on the material reports. The ASTM numbers don't match! They're crooks!"
I didn't know what she was talking about and said as much. "Bea, please." I begged. "What the hell is an ASTM number?"
"It's a code created by the American Society of Testing and Materials. You see..."
I stopped her with a raised hand and a desperate yelp. "Basics, Bea. Explain it to an eight-year-old."
Bea paused herself long enough to take a breath, then she gave me the bottom line of what she'd discovered. "Consolidated Hulls is using mild steel for the outside of the ship hulls instead of armor plate. Armor costs five times more than mild steel. They're substituting cheap mild steel for expensive armor plate and charging the government the full price."
That information was something I understood. I knew the difference between soft mild steel and tough armor plate. I mean, I didn't know the actual difference, but I had seen both materials in action. I had a flashback to my wartime service and a vivid memory of burned-out British tanks shot full of holes.
Tanks were first introduced in The Great War and the early ones had been built of unarmored mild steel. Even a rifle bullet, if shot point blank, would penetrate to the inside. The second-generation tanks were armor plated and somewhat safer.
Suddenly I saw the whole case of Preston and his murder with new eyes. "Holy shit!" I exclaimed with my own version of Bea's excitement. "Preston stole the blueprints to report them. That's why he moved before Monday morning. He figured Consolidated would notice the theft and come looking for him. He must have guessed that people ruthless enough to risk thousands of lives in deathtrap ships, wouldn't have a problem killing a troublesome clerk. Somehow, they found him anyway. They killed him. It had nothing to do with horseracing."
The other realization that I had but didn't verbalize was that I was screwed on my reward. `No wonder Beedle was willing to fork over two-hundred-and-fifty bucks for what he claimed were worthless documents. He sure as fuck won't pay me now. SHIT!'
I shook my head to clear the unpleasant thought from my mind. Dwelling on it was pointless. As it was already Tuesday, the landlord would be back from his trip that very evening and I wouldn't have any money to offer him. He would change the locks and I would be homeless.
The funny thing was, I still didn't care. The fact that in less than a day I'd be homeless and jobless with no prospects didn't seem as important as the case that Bea and I needed to finish. "Who do we blame?" I asked Bea. "Who would know about this?" I hoped she'd be able to point to a smoking gun in the records.
"At least these people." Bea pointed at two signatures on the material report. "They are responsible for verifying what's required is what's installed. One is Franklin Beedle and the other's name is Anderson, no first name or initial."
The fact that Beedle was involved didn't surprise me. As soon as Bea told me there was a crime, I assumed Beedle was at the bottom of it. I was surprised that he would let his name appear on the documentation. When I reflected on the matter, I assumed Beedle was either conceited enough to be sloppy, or he thought he was very safe. I wondered which. I also wondered who Anderson was. My wondering didn't get me anywhere.
"Alright, now what?" I asked aloud, more to myself than to Bea. I tried to think, to reason out the path forward, but like Walt before her, Bea refused to let me.
She leapt from her chair to pace the office and gesture wildly. "We have to call the police, or maybe the Navy, and the papers..."
I stopped her. Bea's excitement troubled me. Usually when something seemed as simple as she made it out to be, it was too simple. Something about the answer we'd stumbled upon didn't ring true. I tried to get Bea to slow down long enough for us to do some real, dispassionate thinking. I explained why.
"We need to be careful with this. Let's sit down and go through it. Something isn't right. Why didn't Preston take the prints directly to the Navy or the police? Why try to hide them with Simon? Why leave them in a train station locker and mail the key away?
"Clearly, he wanted control of the evidence, but he didn't want possession of it, probably for his own safety. What was he planning? Could he have been giving Consolidated a chance to make good instead of exposing them? Was he trying to find out how deep the problem was? It seems like we found the last piece of the puzzle, but we're missing the next-to-last piece."
Bea refused to idle herself. She marched up and down the office as I spoke. She acted like she hadn't heard one word that I said. She launched into her own line of reasoning. "Pres must've wanted to see how much of the company was corrupt."
I interrupted her. "But how was he planning to do that from a slum hotel?"
Not even that question slowed Bea down. "He must've been confused, needed a safe place to think. It all makes sense."
"Then who was he waiting for in the diner?"
Bea had an answer for that too. "Maybe he called someone for help, and they decided not to get involved. We need to help him now. We need to finish his work."
I stopped Bea again and made her sit in a chair. I hoped that by limiting her movement I could curb her enthusiasm. There was more that we needed to straighten out before we issued any `stop-press' bulletins.
"That's a lot of `maybes,'" I reminded her, "but that aside, there is more to this we need to consider. What kind of justice do you want for your brother? We can expose the company, but Preston's death will likely remain a suicide. The cops won't see the same connection we do. Even if they do, reopening closed cases is embarrassing. Who do you want and what do you want him punished for? Ultimately, we want the man who pulled the trigger, the man who sent him, and we want them tried and punished for your brother's murder."
I paused long enough to reconsider what I'd said. "Or maybe we don't want any of that. If there is a trial, everything about your brother will come into the bright lights and flashbulbs. Everyone will know he was queer, that he was disowned, everything. Preston won't be a hero; he'll be a fag. This could ruin your father's business.
"You have to decide. If you want courtroom justice, we'll go after it, but there will be consequences. On the other hand, if you're alright with being the only one who knows that Preston didn't kill himself, we'll turn these drawing in right now, and the heads of this company will be punished as war profiteers...maybe. Corporate responsibility can be a very grey thing."
I made one more offer of a possible path forward, if Bea decided she wanted revenge instead of justice. "Or, do you want back-alley justice? I still know men who would give it to you. You'll need more money for that. Your father's five hundred will do. And we'll still turn the blueprints in."
My monologue had shocked Bea into introspective silence. She shrank in her chair as I watched her struggle with the information I'd given her. Her shock reminded me how young she was. Youth is so innocent. It thinks justice is a cut-and-dried thing, something as simple as right or wrong. I'd long known that it's not.
Bea asked a necessary question. "Would people really ignore what Pres died for and only care that he was a homosexual?"
I told her the bitter truth. "The papers will love the sensationalism. Your brother's sexuality will be something they can use to sell more papers, something lurid to shout about."
Bea shook her head very slowly. "I don't want that for him. I'd rather he be anonymous than have people talk about him like those terrible Harris people." She wiped her eyes. "Isn't that sad? Isn't that very sad?"
I got up and moved to the visitor's chair next to her. That was as close to a comforting gesture as I usually got. "Yes, it's very sad."
Bea wiped her eyes again. She seemed to wallow in her emotions for longer than usual. I offered a suggestion to snap her out of it. "I guess the only choice is to try to expose them for being crooked and not for being murderers."
"How?"
I had an idea and dragged the phone across the desk. "Sometimes, a showdown is the best way. If we're smart, we can set this up so we have the advantage. I have a sort of plan, but we need some help."