by Chris Knopf
“Oh, my Lord,” said Burton, downing his second scotch.
“I know, Burt. There’s no way you could have known.”
“There isn’t? Don’t be so sure,” he said, and then left us, striding back into the house, his fancy slippers slapping on the tile floor. Sullivan looked over at me.
“We got a problem here,” he said, when Burton was out of earshot.
I really didn’t want to know what it was, but I asked anyway.
“I like Burton, you know that,” he said. “Winner of least offensive billionaire contest. But I’ve been a detective for a while now, and a beat cop longer than that, and I know like my mother’s face when somebody’s hiding something. Even hardened assholes who lie professionally usually give it up eventually. Honorable people like Lewis, with little prior experience, usually stick it up on a neon billboard. If I’m seeing it, you damn well know Ross and Mike Cermanski are seeing it, and they could give a rat’s ass about Burton’s history of decency and good works. To them, he’s just another collar, another lamb to toss into the meat processing plant they call the criminal justice system.”
“Your mother lied?”
“All the time.”
One of the things I think Burton valued most about our friendship was my respect for his privacy, my total lack of interest in the titillation inspired by the very rich. So I knew him well, though only that part of him that engaged with me, a circumscribed pool of knowledge, full and deep though it may have been.
“Maybe he did it,” said Sullivan.
“Maybe he didn’t. Presumption of innocence doesn’t mean we won’t find out the truth in the end.”
“That’s the theory. Meanwhile, you better operate on the presumption that he’s totally fucked, because from where I sit, that’s the case.”
“Understood.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
My phone rang as I was climbing into the Grand Prix. It was Amanda.
“They’re here,” she said.
“Who’s they?”
“Men with guns. They’re walking around your cottage.”
“Where are you?”
“In the house. I locked Eddie in the basement. He’s barking.”
I could hear him.
“Call 911,” I said.
“Did that. I can see people coming this way. Shotgun or automatic?”
“Shotgun. Lock all the doors. Go to the second floor and take a position at the top of the stairs. Now.”
I could hear shuffling sounds and heavy breathing as she ran around the house. It wasn’t the first time we’d been invaded out on Oak Point, only I was there, not fifteen minutes away feeling desperate and powerless. I gunned the Grand Prix through a stop sign, hoping a cop would jump on my tail. The giant V8 responded with glee, shoving me back into the driver’s seat. The road stayed clear as I hurtled through the tight neighborhoods north of Burton’s estate, until I flew into the denser regions of Southampton Village. I slammed on the brakes, barely avoiding a rear-ender with an oblivious Prius.
“I’m here,” said Amanda. “I’ve got the shotgun and a handful of shells. Do you remember how to get them in the gun?”
I talked her through the process, unnecessary it turned out, since she had it locked and loaded in a few seconds, working it out on her own.
“Where’re the cops?” she asked, in a half whisper.
“Coming. Don’t shoot anyone wearing a uniform.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“I’m trying,” I said, running a few red lights, still free of cop pursuit.
“I need to call Danny Izard,” I said to Amanda. “Can you hang tight for a minute?”
“Sure, boss. Tell him I said hi.”
That I had our local North Sea beat cop on speed dial probably said something about what I’d done to disrupt the equanimity of life on Oak Point.
“I’m there in five minutes tops,” Danny told me as soon as he answered the phone. “Backup’s on the way. Any ideas?”
“A good guess. Go straight to Amanda’s. And be careful.”
“Always am.”
“I mean it, Danny.”
“Roger that.”
I called back Amanda.
“How many?” I asked her.
“Two? Not sure. How’s Danny?”
“On the way.”
“I think I hear a siren,” she said. “Should I go see?”
“No. Stay put.”
I had the phone in my lap on speaker. I’d blasted through the big intersection with Route 27 and onto North Sea Road, violating a long list of traffic rules and assuring nightmares of demonic ‘67 Pontiacs filling the minds of the other drivers. Now it was just a matter of navigating the curvy two-lane road up to Oak Point, just a few minutes under warp drive. I passed a few trucks on the last decent straightaway and had a clear shot until hitting the tight curves, which were filled with responsible, speed-limit-compliant citizens. I tried tailgating and intimidation by flashing my high beams, but they held their ground. I cursed and pounded on the steering wheel.
“Somebody’s shooting,” said Amanda.
“I’ll call you back.”
I hung up on her and called Danny. No answer.
I called back Amanda.
“Somebody’s knocking on the front door,” she whispered.
“Could be Danny. Hold your fire.”
I heard a ragged smashing sound and she screamed. I floored the Grand Prix and took the last corner into oncoming traffic, forcing a car onto the shoulder, though not far enough to avoid smacking his side panel. The Grand Prix barely quivered and stayed on the pavement as I turned on two wheels onto Oak Point.
I yelled to Amanda over the phone, but she didn’t answer.
Danny’s patrol car was in the driveway behind my cottage, lights flashing. The driver’s-side door was open, and he was lying on the ground holding his side.
“Shot right through the door,” he said through clenched teeth. “Some kind of high-powered shit.”
Blood painted his shirt front and seeped through his fingers. I tore off my T-shirt and had him push it into the wound.
“Sorry, Sam,” he said. “You tried to warn me.”
“Have to check on Amanda. Stay awake. Backup will be here any minute.”
“Take my gun. It’s over there on the ground.”
It was only a couple hundred feet to Amanda’s house, but I jumped back in the Grand Prix and spun tires around Danny’s patrol car. The house was blacked out from the inside, but the outside was now lit up by the Grand Prix’s high beams. I was looking at the open front door when just inside my peripheral vision I saw a man step out from behind a tree and point an assault rifle at my car. The windshield blew up, spraying my face with glass. I slid down in the seat and aimed the car blindly at the tree. I hit it under accelerating power, but there’s a lot of car in the front end of a ‘67 Grand Prix, and it soaked up the blow and kept me safely shoved down in the wheel wells.
I shouldered open the car door and the Grand Prix’s headlights, still in full blaze, showed a man sitting on the ground a few feet away, his rifle nowhere in sight, but he was digging around in the pockets of his field jacket.
I shot him in the forehead with Danny’s service automatic. He looked surprised.
I ran to Amanda’s house as fast as possible with the gun raised in front of me. Another man was lying on his back on the stone landing at the front door. In the pale light of the night sky, his torso looked like a blackened, incoherent mass. A stubby rapid-fire rifle lay by his side. I stepped behind a column that supported the portico above the door and called to Amanda.
“Up here,” she yelled. “I’m okay.”
Sirens and strobing red and blue lights filled the air. Then yells and voices over the police radio, urgent but controlled. Eddie kept up his barking in the basement.
“Don’t move,” I called to Amanda. “I’ll wait for them here.”
I sat next to the dead guy on the landing and put Dann
y’s gun behind me—within easy reach, but with luck out of sight of the jumpy cops with weapons drawn and a comrade on the ground.
I had my hands up when they came down the driveway, tossing around flashlight beams and harsh commands.
“It’s me, Sam,” I said. “Be careful. There might be another shooter.”
They immediately turned their flashlights on the woods behind our houses and lawn leading out to the bay, making themselves excellent targets, though it wasn’t the time to argue tactics.
While the cops were occupied, I went through the front door and asked Amanda to lower the shotgun.
“Not until I see the whites of your eyes, buddy,” she called down from the top of the stairs.
I walked into the foyer and flicked on the light. Blood was everywhere.
I said, “C’est moi, honnêtement.” It’s me, honestly, I hoped unmistakably.
She walked down the stairs, holding the shotgun with the stock tucked under her arm and her finger on the trigger. When she could get a good look at my face, she dropped the gun and fell forward, making me catch her.
I gripped her slender body and dug my face into the nape of her neck, her smell filling my brain with joy and recollection. Her tears flowed onto my shoulder.
“Oh God, oh God,” she squeezed out between sobs.
I picked her up and carried her into the living room so I could lay her out on the big sofa. I brushed her hair off her forehead and said I was going to let Eddie out of the basement, his anxious and persistent barking enough to wake the dead, two of whom were in close proximity.
He banged up against my legs and stayed near when I went back to the living room, where he found Amanda helpless on the couch. He bounded up on her and licked her face.
“Steady as she goes, matey,” said Amanda. “Everything’s fine.”
A cop called from outside and I said it was clear to come in. He turned on every light switch he could find and had his gun leading the way. I asked him how Danny Izard was doing.
“Awake and alert, on his way to the hospital. Is this your residence, sir?”
I nodded at Amanda.
“It’s hers. The shotgun is on the stairs. Self-defense.”
“We’ll let the DA decide that. Please stay in place.”
He started to walk through the house flicking on more lights and holding his sidearm as if evil perpetrators were about to jump out from behind the furniture. I tried to follow him, but Amanda clung to my arm.
“Don’t go,” she said. “I like you here.”
I sat down on the edge of the sofa.
“He broke down the door and pointed his gun at me,” she said. “That makes it justifiable, right?”
“Yes,” I said, hoping I was right.
“Oh, good. I think I’d rather hate prison. Limited outfit choices.”
“You’re a tough girl,” I said, brushing back her hair, even though it really didn’t need to be brushed.
“I told him to drop the gun, and instead he pointed it up at me,” she repeated. “That shotgun has an awful recoil. I’ll be bruised for weeks. And why is your face all bloody and what happened to your shirt? Don’t get me wrong, I like it. Manly.”
I noted that the wet bar was just outside the french doors leading to the patio. She thought it was a swell idea, as did Eddie, who jumped up as soon as I moved toward the door. I had Amanda hold on to his collar while I went outside to provision.
I clinked her red wine with my glass of vodka on the rocks, offering the same to the cop as he came back down the stairs.
“You people are something else,” he said.
And I had to agree.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ross Semple was in a reflective mood.
We were out on my sunporch after about two hours of reenacting the shootings and letting the CSIs take a lot of photos. Mike Cermanski had been there for all that, but Semple told him to go home, that he could handle it from there. Cermanski shrugged it off and left.
Jackie had arrived right before Semple, so I had a few moments to prep her, though not enough to stop her from watching my every word the way Eddie watched me eat steak.
“I’ve been at this for quite a while,” said Semple, “and I can’t decide if things in the world are getting better or worse. The data says much better, but it doesn’t usually feel that way.”
“All mayhem is local,” I said.
His adjunct was there, so we had to tell our stories one more time so she could record them. Outside, the crime scene people were still busy doing all the arcane things they do. Eddie was dying to join the fun, but I had him tied up to the table I kept out on the porch to thwart his talent for wily escape.
I kept my eye on Amanda, who looked a little pale, but her voice was steady as she walked Semple through the chain of events. He made her repeat some of her words, but she didn’t waver or backtrack. Or avert her eyes.
Jackie, who had a live-and-let-live relationship with Amanda, stayed close to her and almost seemed solicitous. I wondered if she’d ask Amanda to join her in the Women Who’ve Shot People Dead Club.
“It must have been terrifying,” said Ross, “to have that man come through your door.”
“Have you ever had a gun pointed at you with intent to kill?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“How did it feel?”
“Terrifying.”
One of his cops came to the door and he went to meet him. While we waited, Jackie asked Amanda how she was doing.
“I’ve been better. I think I might be vomiting at some point. Sam was right. I should have gone to Burton’s.” I tried to wave that off, but she wouldn’t let me. “I put you in an impossible position. Though maybe we could stay clear of aggressive people with firearms. Just for a little bit.”
“Okay.”
When Ross came back, he told us the ID in the pocket of the guy I shot had him as a Polish national here on an overstayed visa. Apparently, the other guy’s wallet had been in the inside pocket of his jacket, and thus now a shredded, unreadable wad.
“It’ll have to go to the lab to pull the information,” said Ross. “Will take a while. Spark any ideas?”
“He’ll be Polish,” I said. “Look for a guy named Mikolaj Galecki. I think they were working for him, and he works as muscle for Art Reynolds, the president of the board of Worldwide Loventeers. I bet you can tie all of them together.”
“Why would somebody running a charity need muscle?” asked Ross.
“There’s a lot more to it than that. I think they’re recruiting girls out of their operations around the world and sending them here, and maybe other cities. I’m guessing under false pretenses, but I don’t know that directly. Young girls, underage.”
Semple didn’t react to that the way he should have. Jackie saw it, too, and was about to say something when I grabbed her shoulder.
“You should have told us,” I said.
“You’re aware that we have a federal government. They prize confidentiality.”
“Goddamn it, Ross,” said Jackie. “I’m aware of the two bodies lying out there. Could have been Sam and Amanda.”
“Wasn’t relevant to your case,” he said.
“The fuck it isn’t,” said Jackie, “obviously.”
Ross had been leaning against a window frame, since all the seating space was tied up. He pulled away from the wall and said, “Neither of you will be charged. I’ll take care of it.”
Jackie was hardly placated.
“No shit you will. Tell us what you know.”
“I know one of my officers is in Southampton Hospital getting his guts sewn together, so spare me the outrage, counselor, and take what you can get.”
He left the room and I followed him out.
“We should be cooperating,” I said. “I’ve learned things.”
“I know we should. But if the FBI comes barreling in here, I’ll lose all control. Just give me some air and get that Irish hell cat on a tighter leash.”<
br />
“Nobody leashes Jackie, and I wouldn’t even if I could. I’m not used to seeing you sucking the FBI’s tit. What’s up?”
“Five years,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“If I make it that far, I get full retirement. Otherwise, 60 percent, at most. I’ve been notified that this thing is over my head, and to stay back. It may surprise you, but I have a family too. I think a lot of you, Sam, but not as much as my wife and kids. And their kids.”
He kept walking all the way to his plain-wrapper car, stopping only to tell a CSI that he was leaving and to get him the preliminary report as soon as it was ready. I followed him and watched him drop into his car, so I was standing there when he rolled down the window.
“One thing I can tell you,” he said.
“What?”
“I just decided. Things are getting worse.”
Then he drove off.
ISABELLA WAS delighted to see Amanda and Eddie come through the door. I often felt she showered this attention on my girlfriend and dog as a way to emphasize how little I deserved. Burton seemed equally pleased when he and Joe Sullivan joined us on the enclosed patio.
Jackie had gone on home to her place in Water Mill where Harry was waiting for her. There wasn’t much else she could do, and the jousting with Ross Semple had taken its toll.
Amanda and I weren’t exactly tip-top ourselves after all that had happened, so I saw no point in going through everything with Burton and Sullivan. I asked if we could just relax and leave all that for another time, and they said sure. I wanted the world to be on hold for just a little bit of time. To be in suspended animation, secured from ugly questions and unsatisfying answers, and recollections of guns and blood and death.
I just wanted to drink in peace, with my dog at my feet and my favorite woman next to me with her hand on my arm, and that’s what I did.
IT WASN’T that hard to find Art Reynolds’s house. Jackie got the address in about two seconds off the Internet using her special investigative software that proved nothing in the world was safe from prying eyes.
He lived in Scarsdale, which wasn’t a big surprise. Well back from the street, but still visible, an early twentieth-century Tudor. I didn’t know if he was home, or his wife. His one kid, probably not, since Jackie told me his Facebook page said he was working with the indigent in Venezuela, a country that had a bumper crop of indigents to work with.
