Breath of Scandal(92)

"Shit. This is all I need," Matthias muttered, loosening the knot of his necktie. A crowd of pedestrians was collecting, curious to know what was going on. "You'd better keep these people back. I don't want a lawsuit on my hands if somebody gets hurt."

Jade was herded back along with the other onlookers, but she felt compelled to stay and see what difficulty had war ranted a call to the police. She and the others stood in expectant silence as they watched the service elevator slowly descend. When it reached the ground, the clanging metal door was slid open and a man was thrust forward into the arresting arms of the uniformed policeman.

"You!" Matthias sneered with disgust. "I might have known it would be you."

It was the man Jade had been watching through the binoculars



CHAPTER



Eighteen



The policeman elbowed Matthias aside and confronted the man, whose hands had been secured behind him with someone's leather belt. Two other workers stepped



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off the elevator behind him, though they kept their distance.

He hadn't given up without a struggle, Jade noticed. He was bleeding from a cut above his brow, but the other men's faces had sustained worse damage. He regarded those standing around him with contempt, especially Matthias.

One of the policemen asked, "Okay, what happened up there?"

"He could have killed us all," a worker blurted out. "Nearly did before we wrestled him down and got his hands tied. "

The policeman nodded to his partner. "Get that belt off and put him in cuffs." He asked the speaker, "Who are you?"

"I'm the foreman. We were up there working on the air ducts, and he started bitching about the lousy quality of the materials. I told him the materials were none of his goddamn business and to get back to work. He refused and demanded to see Mr. Matthias here. I told him that the boss didn't give a rat's ass about his opinion of things and to get back to work or I'd fire his ass. That's when he threw a punch at me." He touched a swelling bruise on his chin.

"Is that right?" The cop turned to a Latino worker who had come down in the elevator with them.

"Si. He start hitting everybody."

"He was yelling and calling Mr. Matthias here dirty names. "

"Me?" Matthias asked, stepping forward. "What'd I do? I wasn't even up there."

"You ordered that shit." The low, vibrating voice of the accused man, speaking for the first time, stunned everyone else into silence. "Your building will bum Re paper if it ever gets so much as a strong fart in those air ducts. "

Matthias cursed beneath his breath. "He's f*cked in the head. I've thought so ever since I hired him, but I felt sorry for him, you know," he said, speaking in a wheedling tone to the policeman. "He's been a pain in the ass ever since



he got here, but so long as he put in a full day's-" His breath whooshed out of his body when the man's flying fist slammed into his gut, bending him double.

'The policeman had barely taken the belt from around the worker's hands before he launched his attack on Matthias. The astonished officer tried to subdue him again but was angrily shoved aside. The worker grabbed Matthias by his collar and threw him against the chain-link fence. The two policemen converged on them and wrestled the man away from the gasping Matthias. It took both of them to get handcuffs on him. He was read his rights as he was led to the patrol car and stuffed into the backseat.

"I'll nail your ass for this," Matthias screamed, shaking his pale, soft fist at the man. "I'll have you charged with assault, you son of a bitch."

"Better than being a murderer," the man shouted through the backseat window of the patrol car.

"You'll have to come down to the station to file the complaint," the policeman told Matthias. "You, too," he said to the workers. "We'll have to get statements from all of you - "

They shook their heads and muttered among themselves as the patrolman joined his partner in the car and drove away.

The crowd dispersed, but Jade hung around, unseen, for almost two hours before Matthias roared away in his Jaguar. The secretary was still at the computer terminal typing when Jade entered the trailer unannounced for the second time that day. "What do you want?" the secretary asked ungraciously.

"Some information, please."

"Mr. Matthias has left for the day." "I'm sure you can help me

"With what?"

"I want to know about the man who was arrested this afternoon. "

Her face lost some of its hostility. "You think he's cute, too, huh?"



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"I'm sorry?"

"He's a hunk. Don't you think so?"

"Can you help me or not?" Jade asked pleasantly.

The secretary shrugged, then turned her swivel chair back to the computer terminal and called up a file. "I positively creamed the day he came in here asking to fill out an application. ,