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base of operations. What was that saying about something rotten going on in Albany?
    I went to the Jeep, once again retrieved my equalizer.
    I glanced over both shoulders.
    Not a soul to be seen for hundreds of yards in either direction. Only warehouses, fixed cranes and heavy trucking equipment. I raised up the framing hammer and brought it down hard onto the latch. The lock snapped as if it were made of balsa wood. I twisted the latch, heard the metal locking bars retract. Then I pulled the door open.
     
    The place was empty.
    No…Scratch that.
    It wasn’t entirely empty.
    It was a cavernous square-shaped space with a concrete floor and plywood partitions for walls that served as a holding tank for three small boxes. In the sunlight that leaked in from the open overhead door, I pulled apart the cardboard top on the first box. It was filled with blank Safeway business checks. All of them bore the call name Analytical Labs along with the phony business address. I opened the second box directly beside it. This one contained blank Accounts Receivable spreadsheets. Finally I opened the third box. It contained new Letters of Transmittal. The blank transmittal letters had been sitting there so long they were coated with dust and dirt, even though they’d been stored inside a box.
    I stood up, felt the hammer head brushing against my knee. Other than the boxes, there was nothing else to be found inside the place except for spider webs and the smell of cat pee. I glanced down at my watch. It was going on nine-o’clock. I’d been looking for Farrell for an hour and a half. I’d gotten nowhere.
    I plucked the mobile from my hip and dialed Tommy.
    “Yeah chief.”
    I asked him for Analytical Labs’ phone number.
    He checked his material/supplier telephone list, recited it for me. I committed it to memory. I asked him if it seemed strange that the address to what was supposed to be a legitimate business operation was really a storage bin that stored a whole lot of nothing.
    He laughed, told me he’d known more than one drinking buddy over the years who used one of those places as a permanent residence.
    “You recall Analytical Labs performing services on any previous Harrison projects?”
    “Not that I recall,” Tommy said. “But I don’t pay much attention to the testing outfits. Ain’t up to us to hire them. Usually the removal contractor hires somebody on behalf of the owner.”
    “Despite the fact that the owner should never trust the removal firm to hire its own tester…But they all do it out of convenience anyway.”
    “Convenience,” Tommy said. “Stupidity.”
    “Ignorance and laziness,” I said.
    I hung up on Tommy and dialed the memorized number for Analytical Labs. I waited for a human voice, but I got the same answering service that I’d connected with via the landline back inside the construction trailer.
    Tommy was balls-on correct. I never paid much attention to the testing services that came and went from any given construction project simply because I didn’t have to. Had I ever talked with an A.L. technician since starting PS 20? Never. That had been Farrell’s responsibility.
    Protocol.
    When the answering service beeped, I left my name and number, told the dead air that I needed to speak with someone regarding PS 20 A.S.A.P.; that the situation was urgent.
    I hung up knowing in my bones I’d never hear from them.
    I reached up, grabbed the overhead door, pulled it back down. It shut with a resounding hollow metal bang. I returned the now broken latch to the horizontal “locked” position.
    Back at the Jeep, I slid the equalizer under the driver’s seat, got in, fired the six cylinder up. I pulled away from warehouse B and drove a direct path for the Port exit. When I came to Pearl Street, I didn’t cross it in the direction of the city. Instead I hooked a right, driving north towards the suburbs.
    The day had started out strange. The more I found out about the missing Farrell and his