by Chris Knopf
An undernourished woman behind me in a plunge-neck dress that mostly revealed a bony sternum, felt compelled to comment on how well the historical society had maintained the grounds. I agreed, even though I didn’t have much of an opinion.
“I hear the problem is the interior,” she said. “Not good.”
“They didn’t have much in the way of decorators back in the seventeenth century,” I said.
She looked unsure.
“That’s not really what I meant.”
“I’ve been in there,” I said. “Not a right angle in the place.”
“Oh,” she said, hopefully, “so it’s really just a fixer-upper.”
“You must be in real estate.”
She finally felt on firmer ground.
“I am,” she said with a thousand-watt smile that seemed to come out of nowhere. “Are you looking to sell or buy?”
“Neither. I just want to rot in place.”
“I’m sure we can help you with that.”
Amanda, who’d heard most of this, gripped my arm and pulled me into the crowd.
“Come on, Tiger. You’ve already got a real estate lady.”
Fortified, we moved deep into the swell, trying to search out Rosie Edelstein. I did run into some builders I knew, including Frank Entwhistle, and his wife, who was about a tenth his size. A cheerful woman with a compulsive laugh, she was a good audience, since she thought everything anybody said was funny. It actually made me pull back on the wisecracks. Afraid too much humor might cause her internal injury. Frank asked me about his job, and I said it was on schedule. He said he never had any doubt, and he shouldn’t have, since I hadn’t missed a deadline yet.
One of the servers came by with a tray full of crisp pastry things stuffed with crab. I offered her fifty bucks for the whole tray, and she almost took me up on it before Amanda stepped in and quashed the deal.
“Killjoy.”
“You need room for the veggie spring rolls.”
We made two more trips to the bar before finally spotting Rosie Edelstein, standing inside a crowd of young people displaying their characteristic vanity, confidence, and insecurity. I moved in and yelled in her ear, “I know you did it.”
She jerked her head back and stared at me. The light was too dim to show the blood seeping away from her face, but I knew it did.
“What the hell are you talking about?” she said, her voice barely cresting over the din.
“You killed Darby. I can prove it,” I yelled into her right ear. “Unless you know something I don’t know. If so, you better tell me now. Otherwise I’m on my way to the DA.”
She arched her head back, like a predatory bird about to strike.
“You will never,” she said. “Never.”
“Watch me,” I said, then moved away, though before I did, Amanda said, “Watch him.”
I hoped we’d bump up against her again, but when I looked around later, she was nowhere to be found. I never saw Joshua, so he must not have been there. That didn’t matter.
The can had been shaken, if not stirred.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I called Jackie the next day and asked if she’d held on to Violeta’s cell phone number.
“I did.”
“Call her and see if she’ll take five hundred bucks to tell us when the Edelsteins are away from the house and let me go in and poke around.”
“I’ll try. She’s pretty skittish. Justifiably.”
“Let me know.”
I spent the rest of the day finishing the giant wall unit for Frank Entwhistle. I was eager to get it done, since it had filled up most of the available space in the shop. I called Frank and asked to have his guys come over and haul it out of there. As always, he was appreciative and gracious.
“They’ll bring another set of drawings,” he said. “Call me after you give a look.”
“Another accommodating client?”
“No, this guy’s sort of a shit. I’ll deal with him.”
“Thanks for that. I’ve had my share of shits in my other line of work.”
The sun had started its shift into the hard light along the horizon, but the temperatures had stayed warm, so the oaks around the house were still mostly green. Amanda and I had taken advantage of the extended season by spending evenings out on the Adirondacks, bringing along blankets if needed, to catch the sunset and ease into the night.
I’d been notified by the body shop that the Grand Prix was nearly rehabilitated. The claims adjuster took it as a total, but seemed a little disgruntled about another outlay for a car he felt overdue for retirement. It was hard to argue, but I was all paid up on the premiums and not ready to let it go.
The other big wound from that night was Amanda’s disposition, less easily remedied. Steadfast woman that she was, killing another person, however warranted, leaves something behind. An ugly tragedy had cost her a young daughter, the greatest trauma of her life, which ironically provided some perspective. Not one to relish talking through abiding emotional pain, she did mention that surviving that gave her an advantage, an established path toward reconciling acceptance with the intolerable.
Maybe I should have been more affected by my own lethal deeds. It made me wonder a little about the health of my conscience. But I’d known those men who died would never rest until we were both killed, along with who knows what other cherished beings, which made me feel far more relieved than penitent.
Danny Izard made a full recovery, faster than anyone expected, though I’d known him since he was a kid chasing after my daughter, Allison, not knowing that she’d secretly hoped to be caught. For no good reason, I believed he possessed preternatural defenses against calamity, as if his kind nature and unburdened optimism were talismans. I knew from knowledge and experience that people like Danny often attracted malignant forces, but I liked my own conclusion better.
I called off the security people I’d obtained for Allison and her boyfriend, Nathan, after calling to let them know. If I could do it, I’d have them under twenty-four-hour watch for all eternity, but I knew that was neither sane nor possible.
There was only one sufferer in my immediate circle who’d yet to have relief.
Burton Lewis.
JACKIE CUT the deal with Violeta, and it only took a few days for her to call and say the coast was clear. I drove over to Burton’s, where I left the Jeep, and walked the rest of the way to the Edelsteins’.
When I used the intercom to ask her to open the gate, I checked the supporting column, pleased to feel it still had a satisfying wobble. Violeta met me at the front door.
“The señor and señora are both in the city for two days, so the timing is good,” she said.
“Hang with me, if you would,” I said, leading her to the base of the main stairwell.
I asked where she was when she heard Burton and Elton shouting at each other upstairs.
“I was here,” she said, which had been her testimony.
“And the Edelsteins?”
“The señor was in the kitchen and the señora still in the living room talking to Johnnie Mercado.”
“Burton says he came down these stairs and was out the door when he heard the crash. So you didn’t see him?”
She shook her head.
“I went to find the señor. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“So Burton could have come down and left and you wouldn’t have seen him.”
“It’s possible.”
“So you went to get Joshua. Where was he?”
“I told you. In the kitchen.”
“What did he do?”
“He looked annoyed and said he’d talk to Rosie. I don’t think he was very happy that his guests were arguing.”
“Embarrassed?” I asked.
“Yes. It was a very awkward night.”
“What happened then?”
“I went to the pantry where I have a stool. I didn’t want to be near all the frightening things going on. I could hear the señor
and señora talking and moving around the house, but I don’t know what they were saying. I was upset.”
“Understandable. So you don’t know who else could have gone upstairs.”
“No, but the señor and señora told the policeman that they went back to the living room. When I heard the crash, I was really scared. I wanted to run to my room, but the señora ran into the pantry and told me to go outside to see what had happened. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice.”
“How much time went by between the crash and when she asked you to look?”
She had to think about this one.
“I don’t know. A few minutes?”
“Long enough to get here from the upstairs? There’s a separate stairway that lands just outside the pantry door.”
She nodded as she thought about it.
“Yes. She came that way. But she could have also been in the living room.”
“Okay.”
We moved away from the main stairway and went to the kitchen, then into the pantry, which had another door to the dining area, with access to the separate set of stairs. She followed me up to the hall that served bedrooms and baths on either side, the closest of which was the room from where Darby took the deep dive.
It was a small room, but the window in question was directly across from the door and clear of furniture. Plenty of room to gather some momentum. I stood at the window, a tall six-over-six, with muntins of a lighter gauge than the one Amanda pushed me through. Below was bare earth, the bush, collateral damage, still unrestored.
The whole scene had been gone over countless times, and nothing in Violeta’s recollection would change the prosecutor’s determination. She hadn’t seen and heard everything, but neither had the other witnesses, so there was nothing contradictory. Within a reasonable doubt.
I felt my smartphone vibrate in my pocket. It was Jackie.
“Are you alone?” she asked.
“I’m here with Violeta.”
Jackie whispered for me to ditch her, so I told Violeta it was a private call, and to meet me back downstairs. She eagerly left the room.
“Okay,” I told Jackie.
“You know I have a dedicated laptop where I keep Ruth Bellingham’s hard drive.”
“I do.”
“Every once in a while, I pull it out and browse. The FBI doesn’t need me to do a parallel investigation, so I just do a little hunting and pecking. Since you were over there with Violeta, it gave me a thought, so for the hell of it I searched for her name.”
“Really.”
“Those handwritten résumés of the girls you grabbed had all been scanned into searchable pdfs. This one’s dated four years ago. Violeta Zaragoza. Age seventeen. Speaks decent English. Only child. Mother works on a plantation. House with no running water. Pump in the front, outhouse in the back. Very pretty. That’s underlined,” she added. “Wants to come to the States to go to college. Four-star candidate. The stars are little drawings.”
“Same Violeta?”
“There’s a photo. She’s wearing makeup.”
“Holy Christ.”
“That’s not the worst of it,” said Jackie, her low voice filled with something odd.
“What?”
“At the bottom of the page is a name. Joshua Edelstein. It’s circled.”
“That chart you have on the big whiteboard,” I said. “Some of the boxes get new arrows.”
I told her my plan, then hung up and went downstairs, where Violeta was waiting on her pantry stool.
“That was Jackie Swaitkowski,” I told her. “She really wants to speak with you, but she can’t make it over here. It would be so incredibly helpful if you could come now while we know the señor and señora aren’t around.”
She didn’t seem all that keen, so I suggested there’d be some more money in it for her. That did the trick. I was nervous on the walk back to Burton’s to retrieve the Jeep that she’d have second thoughts and fly the coop, but she was waiting at the end of the drive when I got there. She’d changed into civilian clothes, though not all ritzed-out like last time.
On the quick drive to Jackie’s office in Water Mill I practiced my small-talk skills by asking her about the day-to-day experiences as a full-time housekeeper. It was an easy subject, and she had no trouble expounding on what sounded cruelly mundane, though for her was just another day on the job.
Jackie had her chipper client attitude on as she made Violeta comfortable and poured her coffee. She told me the Japanese restaurant on the first floor was open for lunch, and maybe I should go down and have some. She said when she was ready, she’d call me and put in their order to go.
So I got to sit at the sushi bar and work my way through a series of small plates while I waited for the call. It didn’t come for almost two hours, when my smartphone was almost out of battery power from watching the Yankees, a habit of mine.
“We’re ready,” she said. “And don’t bother with lunch. Nobody up here is hungry.”
Violeta was lying on the client couch with her legs pulled up. Her face was red and the coffee table scattered with used tissues. She held one up to her face and didn’t look at me. Jackie took me out in the hall.
“Bellingham told all the girls before they shipped out that they had to do everything their sponsors told them to do, or harm might come to their families. The poor girl has lived in mortal fear every day that one slipup could cost her mother’s life.”
“Did Joshua?” I left the question hanging.
“She claims not. She said Rosie was the one who wanted to keep her around, though she had no idea Violeta had been imported from the Loventeers. She actually thought a nonexistent sister had given her the tip on the job. She said the Edelsteins argued over it, with Joshua wanting to let her get on with her life, eager to get her out of the house. Rosie seemed about to give in when all this happened.”
“Has she changed her story?”
Jackie nodded yes.
“When Burton and Darby were yelling at each other, Joshua and Rosie didn’t stay downstairs. They both went up the stairway off the pantry, first Joshua, then Rosie. She still doesn’t know what happened after that, but they had her tell the cops they never left the first floor. She said she’s been telling the lie for so long, she almost doesn’t believe the truth.”
“Most believable type of lie.”
“She can’t go back to that house,” said Jackie. “I can keep her here for now.”
“She’ll do that?”
“I told her I’m armed and dangerous. And will send even more dangerous compadres to her mother’s for protection. That assured her.”
“And so it should.”
ON THE way to the city, I stopped by the cottage to get a few things and tell Amanda what was up. I said this trip wasn’t one for her to worry about.
“You wouldn’t tell me if it was,” she said.
“I might hint.”
“Call me on your way back and tell me the world isn’t as horrifying as it feels.”
“Okay.”
There might have been a ton of traffic on the way in, but I wouldn’t remember, since my head was so full of erupting narratives I barely noticed getting there. The best moments as a professional troubleshooter were when one particular problem revealed itself, the solution for which had a cascading effect on the surrounding dysfunction. The flood of understanding would sometimes be enough to make me nauseous.
It should have been more of a pleasure, a triumph, but I think the human mind hates giving up paradigms, even when they hide what’s real. The loss of false belief becomes a kind of tragic death.
Joshua Edelstein’s office was downtown within a few blocks of One World Trade Center. In a pretty big building in its own right, Joshua’s investment firm had a full floor near the top. I’d been there before when we were building his house, so I knew where I was going. As usual, coming unannounced, I ran the risk that he’d left for the day, but I got lucky. The security desk let me talk to him on th
e house phone.
“Honestly, Sam, I’m pretty busy up here.”
“Need to see you, Joshua. Can’t wait.”
“Give me twenty minutes.”
“No. Has to be now. Let me up and meet me in reception.”
I handed the phone back to security, who had me sign the book and gave me a little paper badge to stick on my shirt. As requested, Joshua was waiting. He looked tired and thinner than usual, his yellow polo shirt having an easier time containing his gut.
“My office?” he asked.
“Wherever you want.”
Joshua’s office was a big box, but made for work, with lines of shelves filled with books and binders, and a workstation with three separate monitors. He directed me to a small circular table.
“So what’s going on, Sam,” he said as we sat down. “Rosie said you were yelling some crazy stuff at the fundraiser. She won’t say what. Is everything okay?”
“It’s definitely not okay. I know what really happened that night at your house, and I know why.”
He frowned and gave his head a little shake, as if he hadn’t heard me.
“What are you talking about?”
“What did they trap you with, the Loventeers’ operation or something else?”
He threw up his hands, exasperated.
“I really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You’re not making any sense.”
“The FBI flipped you. They were gunning for Worldwide Loventeers and needed someone close to the action on the inside. You were perfect. In the know, but just outside enough to avoid suspicion. You’ve been feeding them intelligence all along. Including telling them someone had stolen Bellingham’s files, and it was probably me.”
Concern started to overtake the frustration on his face. He squinted at me.
“That’s a very strange story. I had nothing to do with that atrocity.”
Joe Sullivan had once told me the best way to work an interrogation was to achieve empathy, have the suspect feel you’re on his side and understand his problems. The second best was to scare the shit out of him. I chose the second route.
