by Chris Knopf
“I need your opinion,” he said.
“Okay.”
“What do you think of Robbie Milhouser?”
“Never seen him jog.”
“As a person.”
“An asshole.”
“How much of an asshole?”
“Significant,” I said. “A significant asshole. Though you didn’t need me to tell you that.” “I hear the feeling was mutual.”
“Like I said, an asshole. Just like his old man.”
“You didn’t see him last night?” Ross asked.
“Haven’t seen him in a while.”
“You saw him a few days ago. I guess that’s a while.”
“At the restaurant,” I said, “if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s where you got into it. The two of you.”
“That wasn’t anything. Just a lot of stupid talk.”
“Not how I heard it,” said Ross.
“People exaggerate.”
“Sullivan told me you’re afraid of getting hit. Something wrong with your head.”
“You like getting hit?”
“Nobody hits me. I’m the Chief of Police,” he said, laughing through his nose. Ross had a good sense of humor, judging by the way he laughed at his own jokes, which was the only way you could judge it.
“So what’s with Robbie Milhouser?” I asked. “What’d he do?”
“So you never saw him after that thing at the restaurant?”
“I don’t think so, though you seem to know more about it than I do.”
Ross twirled his cigarette around in the air, watching the resulting curls of smoke rise toward the ceiling.
“You and Burton Lewis still getting along?” he asked.
“Saw him last week. I remember it. Vividly.”
“And the blonde girl. Polack. She’s a lawyer, too.”
“Jackie Swaitkowski. She’s my official lawyer. Burton’s just a pal of mine. Paid her a dollar once to retain her services. For the record, she’s Irish. Maiden name’s O’Dwyer.”
“She keep that dollar?”
Ross didn’t have an easy job. The Town of Southampton covered a lot of geography and it wasn’t all about big houses on the beach like Joshua Edelstein’s. Or drunken group rentals or predators who came out of the City in the summer to feast on the herds of the innocent and overfunded. He had his share of local hard cases and screw-ups to deal with. People like Robbie Milhouser.
“You didn’t tell me,” I said.
“What?”
“Milhouser. What’d he do?”
“Got his head opened up and his brains mashed into brain puree.”
He nodded when he said that, as if holding up both sides of the conversation. Then he threw me one of his awkward grins and drank some more of his coffee.
“Dead?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. Thoroughly.”
“Killed?”
“Yup.”
“Who did it?”
The goofy grin he was wearing tightened up across his face. And then disappeared completely.
“If you confess right now it’d save us both a lot of trouble,” he said.
He took his cigarette out of his mouth and held it between his thumb and index finger the way Nazi generals would do in old war movies. I don’t think he did it for effect. He just never knew what to do with his hands.
“That’s funny,” I told him. “Seeing if I still have a sense of humor?”
Ross’s face softened a little at that.
“No, Sam, we all know you got one of those. The question on the table is whether you have a sense of revenge.”
I noticed the sawdust on my jeans. It must have been kicked out of the chop box earlier. It was sprinkling down on the battered industrial carpet in Ross’s office. I remembered the piece of molding I was about to install on Joshua Edelstein’s widow’s walk when Ross pulled me off the job. It was stuck in place with only a single nail. With a stiffening breeze it would likely peel off and go cartwheeling down the beach. A thought more disturbing than warranted by the potential consequences. To calm myself I sat back in my chair and dug another Camel out of my coat pocket.
“You actually want me to say I had nothing to do with this?” I asked him.
He smiled at that, his face softening even further.
“Hell no, Sam. I know you’re gonna say that. I want to hear you explain why you had nothing to do with it. That’ll be worth hearing.”
“Didn’t know I was that entertaining.”
“I wish I was entertaining. Maybe if I had a better sense of humor,” said Ross, sitting back himself. “A good joke always cracks me up. But I can’t tell a joke to save my life.”
“Nothing cracks me up,” I said. “Must be a deficiency of character.”
“Humor isn’t what you say. It’s what you leave out.”
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
“And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,” said Ross, using his cigarette to punctuate the emphasis on each syllable, a flourish of his own.
“Didn’t know they had Shakespeare at the police academy.”
“Master’s in lit crit. Cornell. Don’t ask me to explain.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything, Ross. Except lay off this thing with Robbie Milhouser,” I told him.
“The one you called an asshole.”
“I might call you an asshole. Doesn’t mean I’d kill you. I don’t kill people. Even for a good laugh.”
Ross’s face ignited into another of his oversized, ersatz grins.
“We both know that’s not true. The killing part. Not the ha-ha part.”
He reached into a drawer and pulled out a pair of photographs. One was a mug shot of a young black man, the other a color portrait of a middle-aged white guy.
“Darrin Eavanston and Robert Sobol. Remember them?”
I leaned over to look, then sat back again.
“I remember they were both shot to death. At different times. Both ruled accidental.”
“There’s a difference between a ruling and the truth.”
“Not to me,” I said.
“There is to me. If you killed them.”
I didn’t see much point in responding to that. Even without the advice of counsel.
“Should I be seeing if Jackie’s free for the morning?” I asked.
“Not as long as we’re just talking here.”
“If that’s what we’re still doing.”
Ross lit another cigarette off the stub of the one he’d half-smoked. Then he nodded.
“That’s all we’re doing,” said Ross. “Shouldn’t make you nervous. An innocent man has nothing to be nervous about.”
“Lots of things make me nervous. Loud noises, lousy drivers, good intentions. The world’s loaded with hazards, even when you have nerves of steel.”
“Did you know I did ten years in Homicide in the City?” he asked me, genuinely curious.
“I didn’t. I thought you put in your whole time in Southampton.”
“While you were living large in Connecticut, rollin’ in corporate perks, I was swimming in a proverbial sewer of depravity and despair.”
“I’m glad I missed that proverb,” I told him.
“Didn’t like it. Not one little bit. Scared all the time. Every day dead bodies and nasty killers. They’re a type, you know. A sub species.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. That’s what I decided. Wired different.”
“Head full of twisted pairs,” I said.
He liked that.
“See, that’s the kind of joke I like. I wish I could do that.”
“So you did some genetic research. Identified this subspecies.”
“Nothing clinical,” said Ross. “Just observation. And a little reading.” He poked his cigarette at my face. “They tell you it’s in the eyes. And the attitude. Confident. But a little paranoid. And a hair-trigger temper that goes off over nothing. All calm and normal and then, bam, in
your face.”
“Maybe you should’ve taken abnormal psych. Probably had that at Cornell, too.”
“Or maybe mechanical engineering. Like you had at MIT. Pretty fancy training for a carpenter.”
“Lot of the same principles. Not as much of a paycheck.”
He seemed to like that, too. It began to feel like I was only there to provide entertainment. Some diversion from his daily routine. It occurred to me that he was bored. That his brain was itching for a little engagement, something to put a load on the circuitry.
“Look, Ross,” I said, “you’re the only one here making any money with all this talk. I can only make it on the job. So you need to either tell me what sort of dance we’re dancing, or let me get back to work.”
He sat way back and gripped the arms of his chair as if to stop them from wrapping around his chest.
“Sure, Sam. Go,” he said, magnanimously. “Sorry to take you away from the job. Which I’m assuming you’ll be on for another few weeks.”
“Something like that.”
“No vacations planned?” he asked.
“No. I never go anywhere. No reason to.”
That pleased him.
“Good,” he said. “That’ll help.”
“Help what?”
“To know where you are.”
I left him sitting at his desk, watching me leave, his eyeballs fixed on the back of my skull. I’d only made it halfway through the open squad room when Sullivan came in from the other side. He had his sunglasses on, but you could still see the frown underneath. He had a Southampton Town Police baseball cap on his head and his shield hanging around his neck. Under his arm was a plastic bag, stapled shut with an official-looking tag covered in numbers and text scribbled with a magic marker.
“What the hell, Sam,” he said to me by way of greeting.
“Ask your boss. He’s the one who dragged me in here.”
“You give a statement?”
“Why would I have to do that?” I asked him. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”
The men and women distributed around the squad room looked up from their computer screens and over the tops of their cubicles—unabashed curiosity a foible of the professionally vigilant.
Sullivan switched the plastic bag from one armpit to the other. When he did I could see what he was carrying—a heavy construction stapler, the kind you swung into the work like a hammer. It had an orange handle.
“Look familiar?” he asked me.
“I got one. Used it to install the fiberglass in my addition.”
“Somebody used this one to staple Robbie Milhouser’s scalp to his brain.”
“Not in the design specs, but adaptable to the purpose,” I said.
“We found it in the dune grass lining the Peconic. Easy tossing distance from Robbie’s body. Lousy with forensics. Hair stuck in the mechanism. Smooth handle. Still has a plastic UPC sticker. Very traceable. We’ll know who bought it, where and when. Big Brother, he’s watchin’, man.”
“Then have Big Brother tell Ross to get off my ass.”
“Can’t do that,” he said. “I’m recused.”
“You can’t be recused if you’re investigating the scene, Joe.”
“Okay, not fully. I mean from talking about you. Or talking to you, for that matter. I’m only dealing with the facts.”
“You’re talking to me now.”
“Not for long. Veckstrom’s the lead guy. Lionel Veckstrom. Ten years in plainclothes. I got, what, ten months? Even if I didn’t know you, Veckstrom’s the lead guy.”
“Give him my congratulations.”
“Not one to fuck with, Sam. I’m not joking with you.”
“That’s good. I never joke.”
He held up the plastic bag.
“I’m not gonna find anything to not like on this, am I?”
“Maybe a little rust,” I said, trying to see the tool through the plastic bag.
“Right. Laugh all the way to life without parole,” he said, then brushed past me, which was good because I really wanted to get out of there and back to the job site to retrieve what was left of the workday. I patted his bulky shoulder as he slid by and headed for the door. Officer Orlovsky watched grimly as she buzzed me back into the outside world.
On the way back to the Edelstein job I stopped for coffee at the corner place and used the pay phone. Jackie Swaitkowski didn’t answer, but I left her a message. I was getting used to talking to machines. I didn’t have one myself, but I sympathized with the principle. I never liked the imperative of a ringing phone.
On the way back to the car, I saw a heavy-lidded guy with a two-day beard and a young woman park their black Range Rover dangerously close to the Grand Prix. I waited for the woman to get out, which she was only able to do by wedging her door hard against the side panel of my car and squeezing herself through the narrow space. She was wearing a purple leather jacket, skintight blue jeans and spiked heels. She didn’t notice me watching until she was at the sidewalk.
“Can you ba-leeve the soize of that stupid thing?” she asked me, looking back at the Grand Prix.
I had noticed that before, but the sheer inertial force of the ten-ton door was brought home to me as I slammed it into the Range Rover a dozen times to make a big enough indentation to allow me to slide onto the driver’s seat entirely unimpeded. I don’t know why Detroit thought they needed such heavy-gauge sheet metal in those days, but it did come in handy sometimes.
I reckoned all it would take was a little number two steel wool to rub the black paint off the edge of the door to be good as new.
I didn’t bother checking in with Frank when I got back on the job. I knew what I had to do, and he didn’t care about anything but me getting done in time for the painters.
I took another week to finish the interior and exterior trim. Then all that was left was some custom woodwork on a pair of built-in cabinets and a fancy mantelpiece designed by the architect and therefore impossible to buy from a manufacturer. I had a month to build it, and Frank was more than willing to let me do the whole thing in the shop in my basement. A joyful thing for a guy who never took vacations, and who liked to stay near home to be available for intermittent police interrogations.
FIVE
IT WAS WELL AFTER NORMAL working hours. I was in my shop about to draw out the mantelpiece on a big piece of birch ply when Jackie Swaitkowski pounded on the basement hatch. The booming sound shot Eddie out of his bed in the corner. He glowered at the hatch with a blended look of annoyance and alarm.
“Oh, you’re here,” said Jackie when I let her in.
When Jackie trotted down the hatch stairwell the ambience of the shop took a sharp turn toward the chaotic. The way she moved around left contrails, billowing clouds of Jackie.
“Sorry. What do you got to drink? Not vodka. I can’t stand vodka. Tastes like rubbing alcohol. You gotta have something else. Wine is fine. Red?”
She squatted down to scratch Eddie’s long nose. He’d already forgiven the intrusion. A task light from the workbench along the wall reflected off her huge mane of strawberry-blonde hair and cast a hard light across her face, which looked great. Like a movie star’s.
“Geez, Jackie, you look great,” I said, involuntarily.
She looked up from Eddie, partly defensive, partly pleased.
“Best face money can buy,” she said.
Jackie had been through a lot of reconstructive surgery since losing half her face in an explosion. I was there when the whole thing happened and didn’t think you could put it back together again. I hadn’t seen her since the last surgery. I was wrong.
“I told Hodges you’d come out looking better than ever.” She stood up from petting Eddie and pointed a finger at me.
“Don’t push it.”
“You’ll have to come upstairs for that wine,” I told her. “The shop’s off limits to booze.”
I escorted her to the stairwell.
“That’s a first for you.�
�
“Hard to maintain a respectable drinking habit without fingers or thumbs.”
When we got upstairs I helped her out of her bright yellow winter jacket. Underneath was a red and black plaid flannel shirt and baggy jeans that crumpled over the tops of furry off-white snow boots. Appropriate gear for the wild and wooded hills above Bridgehampton where she lived.
I dug an expensive pinot noir out of the liquor cabinet.
“Amanda probably wanted you to save this for a special occasion,” she said, rummaging for a corkscrew in the junk drawer. “Though tonight would qualify.”
“The only special occasion with Amanda would be seeing her again. Though special for whom, I don’t know.”
Jackie looked at me with something akin to neutrality.
“Hodges told me you were on the outs. Sorry.”
“More to the point, what’s so special about tonight?”
“Let’s sit,” she said, waving me toward the screened-in porch. “I know just the place.”
I followed her with my vodka-filled aluminum tumbler and my dog. She waited while I stoked the woodstove and got settled in.
“So?” I asked.
“You’re about to be arrested for homicide,” she said, then sat back in her chair as if that was the beginning and end of the conversation.
I took a long, deep breath, loosening my shoulders and slackening my jaw. An old trick I taught myself when I was in R&D, following similar shocks to the system.
“What a load of crap,” I said.
“Oh, it’s a load, all right. Tons and tons of it about to land on your head.”
“How do you know?”
“Ross called me to offer a volunteer surrender. No flashing lights, no cuffs, no perp walk. I just bring you in. Out of courtesy to Sullivan, not to you.”
“Why now?”
“They have all the forensics back from the labs. It’s not good. I am still your lawyer, aren’t I? Even though you’ve only paid me a buck so far and I haven’t done anything to earn it.”
Jackie held the bowl of her wine glass in two hands as if it was a steaming cup of coffee. I slid the grate on the front of the woodstove further open to stoke the flame.
