by Chris Knopf
“Okay,” I said. “Sorry. Being dead, even temporarily, slows your mental faculties.”
“You got that right,” said Franklin.
“What’s the difference between faculties and acuities?” asked Jared.
“Only one of ‘em got tenure,” said Antoine, grinning at me, the only one in the room likely to get the joke.
“Where’s the shotgun?” I asked, eliciting more patient, knowing looks.
“Where nobody ever gonna see it again. Maybe in a million years when some archeologists be excavating Bridgeport,” said Antoine.
“Not much reason to be doin’ that,” said Walter, “‘less they studyin’ lifestyles of the beaten down and fucked up.”
“So nobody called the cops,” I said.
“We was still debatin’ the options,” said Antoine. “And now you throw a wrench in the only plan we all liked.”
I had to admit I wasn’t going to be much strategic help. I was a little preoccupied trying to separate the alcohol poisoning from the broken ribs, smashed-in mouth and emerging headache. It wasn’t getting any easier to breathe, and the possibility of internal injuries was haunting the fringes of my ground-up consciousness. I might have considered driving to a hospital if I still had my car, the slick import I was getting around to returning to the company when it disappeared at some time from some place, neither of which I could quite remember. Instead, I grappled with the decision of what to have for breakfast, checking out the half-eaten meals around the table for inspiration.
I’d picked well, judging from the first half of the meal, though the ultimate outcome was undecided after a small army of Bridgeport city cops arrived.
——
The criminal justice system seems to operate in several different dimensions at once. There’s the one we all want to believe in, the one described by officials invited to address a sixth grade civics class. There are the various versions seen on television and at the movies. There’s the cynic’s dimension, where criminal justice is all venality and corruption, a cruel oxymoron. Then there’s a dimension no one outside the system itself really knows or understands, guided by precedents and protocols both ancient and improvised, where there’s plenty of justice in the true sense meted out every day, though the process defies common wisdom and experience.
It was in this context that I found myself sitting at a large, beat-up wooden table in a precinct house somewhere in Bridgeport chatting with investigators from two different judicial districts. One Fairfield, which included Bridgeport, and one Stamford, my former hometown.
My legal status at that point was cloudy at best. They’d brought me in on a warrant from Stamford in connection with a massive act of vandalism. It was committed at a house in the leafy section of town known for its stone-walled colonialism and pre-postmodern cubes.
“That’s my house. You can’t arrest me for gutting my own house,” I told the guy from Stamford, who was frowning into a manila folder full of paperwork.
“The complaint was signed by an Abigail Acquillo.”
“That’s my wife. Until she divorces me. Then she’ll likely get what’s left of the house. On a very nice lot, she’ll tell you.”
“It says here you two’re divorced.”
“Not until I sign something. And I haven’t signed anything.”
The guy looked unconvinced.
“You can’t just tear apart a woman’s house.”
“You can if you’re properly motivated.”
“While you’re here,” said the cop from Bridgeport, impatient with his colleague from Stamford, “we thought you might tell us what you know about Darrin Eavenston.”
“He’s dead.”
“We know that. We told you that.”
“Not me. You told Antoine when you arrested him and his crew.”
“You weren’t on the list. We didn’t know about you,” said the Bridgeport cop.
“Pays to keep a low profile,” I told him.
“Not low enough,” said the cop from Stamford.
“Besides the vandalism thing, you’re apparently a missing person,” said the Bridgeport cop. “Your wife is seriously looking for you.”
“Wants me to sign something.”
“So what about Darrin?” he asked.
Then I realized what was going on.
“You want me to tell you about the shooting in return for help on this Stamford thing?” I asked.
“We’re not saying that. You’re saying that. We’re just asking you if you know anything about Darrin Eavenston, right Cliff?” he asked the Stamford cop.
“Yeah,” said Cliff. “Before I haul you back home.”
I still wasn’t feeling all that great, having had only a little of Éclair’s cooking and coffee and a few hours to move from partial intoxication to an all-out hangover. I wondered what the precinct policy was on serving cocktails to vandalism suspects.
“You guys have any coffee?” I asked. “Black’s fine. Espresso’s even better, if you have it.
“You want that in a demitasse?”
“Go ahead, Bernie,” said Cliff. “I’ll watch him.”
Bernie shrugged and left us.
“There’s a bit of a flaw in your strategy here,” I told Cliff. “What’s that?”
“You’re trying to threaten me with something I’m not afraid of, to coerce me into talking about something I’d talk about for free.”
Cliff’s confidence might have wavered at that point, but it didn’t show. What he knew was that he had a warrant in his pocket. Anything else he heard was for somebody else to sort out.
My admiration for the Bridgeport police went up considerably when Bernie came back with an excellent cup of French vanilla.
“Okay Bernie,” said Cliff, “we had a little talk while you were out. He’s ready to give it up.” And then he winked at me.
“Excellent,” I said, toasting the air between me and the cops.
Bernie pulled out a small pad and a pen.
“You talk, I write.”
I spent the next hour describing the scene in the apartment the way I thought it probably unfolded. I didn’t know how well any of it would be corroborated by the other guys, but I had some faith that the Bicks would stick to the story Walter had laid out at Éclair’s, knowing it was the only one I had to work with and, if believed, sympathetic to their cause. As it turned out, my narrative, designed to flow seamlessly into an unimpeachable case of self-defense, turned out to fit neatly with the cousins’ testimony.
That it came from me, a white, heretofore law-abiding corporate executive, albeit recently degraded, was probably the deciding factor in ultimately absolving the whole crew. None of which I knew at the time, or even cared about as the world inside the interrogation room blurred around the edges and the two cops started to sound like they were talking inside an echo chamber.
I tried to point this out to them, but they didn’t seem to notice until I threw up Éclair’s breakfast and Bernie’s cup of French vanilla and passed out face down in the result.
——
So I got my hospital stay anyway, which settled the question of internal injuries, which I didn’t have, and raised the issue of a concussion, which I did.
I was surprised to learn from Cliff McCloskey, the Stamford cop, that I hadn’t signed the divorce papers, but I had signed over the house in a quit-claim transaction weeks before. With all the frivolity this had slipped my mind. Not that remembering would have changed what I did.
Cliff was there to greet me back into reasonable consciousness. He escorted me over to Stamford, where I was scheduled to consult with the Stamford DA. She’d just had a meeting with her counterpart in Bridgeport, who’d asked for her help in brokering my ongoing cooperation in the Darrin Eavenston thing.
So I spent a few agreeable hours with Cliff and the DA, a young woman aging before her time under the stress of her job. We hit it off for a bunch of reasons, including some shared marital difficulties. The upshot was she offe
red me a deal. Cliff told me most people would recommend I get a lawyer, but if it was up to him, he’d just take the deal and thank his lucky stars. I told them I’d used up my lucky stars, but her deal sounded fine—a little time in detox, a fat check to Abby and a year’s probation, which included some time on the couch after the drying-out phase.
I took Cliff’s advice.
The abrupt end to my bottle-a-day medicinal program wasn’t the worst of it. It was the regular visit of the staff psychiatrist for whom I developed a thorough and abiding hatred, which eventually he came to devoutly return. A corruption of his professional standards over which I still feel a certain pride.
On the day they let me out another doc came to visit, this one a neurologist. He told me to try to avoid getting bashed in the head for at least the next few years.
“Nobody knows for sure, but concussions like this could lead to Parkinson’s, or worse,” he told me. “You won’t be the first boxer to be mumbling in his beer before you’re out of middle age. Though judging from your blood alcohol at admittance, booze’ll probably get there first.”
“That’s the competitive spirit for you.”
“It’s your life. Though you might think about the people who love you before you throw it all away.”
“Too late for that, doc,” I told him. “Nobody does and it’s already gone.”
——
I did manage to live long enough to get another concussion about four years later when a thug named Buddy Florin sucker punched me while I was standing at a urinal. The doc that time said it had to be my last one if I had hopes of keeping my faculties, acuities or any other mental function reasonably intact.
So Ross Semple was at least right about one thing.
There was something wrong with my head that getting hit wouldn’t likely improve. And it frightened me, to a depth and degree I didn’t like thinking about. Probably because there was something else wrong with my head, this related to multiple beatings of an entirely different kind.
FIFTEEN
THE MORNING AFTER my consultation with Markham Fairchild I woke to a slightly chilled, smooth-skinned naked body sliding under the covers of the daybed where I slept on the screened-in porch. Before I fully reached consciousness, or even opened my eyes, all sorts of pleasant things occurred.
“That was your wake-up call,” Amanda whispered, her lips brushing my left ear.
I held her and burrowed deeper into the covers. I’d taken off the storm windows, perhaps prematurely, since you could see your breath if you were brave enough to look.
“What happens if I reset the alarm?”
“We send in Helga with a bullhorn and riding crop. Not nearly so agreeable.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“In the kitchen there’s espresso to be made and eggs to scramble. Ham to fry and dogs to greet.”
“Dogs?”
“Okay, one dog. Multiple personalities.”
“You have no idea.”
While Amanda worked up breakfast, I took a shower in the outdoor stall. All frigid and steamy glory, no vertigo or weird little clicks. The morning light was pale, but deepening with the season.
When I got back to the porch, in clean blue jeans, work shirt and threadbare wool sweater, Amanda had a fire going in the woodstove and mounds of steaming delectables arrayed on the pine table. She wore one of my flannel work shirts, which must have been warm enough since that was all she had on.
“Before you thank me,” she said, using her fingers to explore the back of my head, “which I flatter myself to think you’d do, I need to ask you a favor.”
“I’m not sure I can take another quid pro quo.”
“More like tit for tat.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’m meeting with the DEC today. I’m feeling out of my depth,” she said, rocking me back and forth.
“Okay.”
“But I need the reasonable Sam. The engineer. I want the prizefighter to stay home.”
“With Eddie. The other schizoid in the house.”
“That’s right,” she said. “I need your brain.”
“The reliability of which is up for debate.”
“I don’t care. I’ll take it as it is.”
“Your money.”
——
The meeting was held in a tiny claustrophobic conference room on the ground floor of Southampton Town Hall. The two DEC guys who sat at the end of the table were wearing light-blue polyester shirts and sporting oily complexions and do-it-yourself haircuts. They both had stacks of paper pouring from manila folders in the style of Jackie Swaitkowski and an assortment of hand-held electronic devices, the purposes of which were as obscure to me as the monuments of Stonehenge.
Amanda had a file of her own, stuffed with site drawings, correspondence and official approvals to move forward with construction. I had a ballpoint pen, a pad of paper and the determination to get out of there without a lawsuit or related catastrophe.
When we walked in the door the DEC guys fumbled awkwardly to their feet and offered to shake hands.
The older one, Dan, had convinced himself that a goatee would make him look youthful. It was mostly gray, like his hair, though the part that would have been a moustache created a muddy brown outline around his mouth. He bought his glasses from the same catalog as Ross Semple. He was taller than the other guy, and only slightly paunchy, where the other guy was unambiguously fat. His name was Ned. His hair was still its original color, and looking at his boss every day had probably spared him from a goatee. His features were inversely proportionate to his girth. Tiny nose, mouth and close-set eyes clustered in the middle of his fleshy face. He wore a permanent expression of curiosity and expectation reinforced by the way the whites of his eyes encircled his pupils.
“I’m Amanda Anselma. This is Sam Acquillo. He’s the engineering consultant on the project,” she said as she dropped her leather briefcase on the table with a commanding thud.
Dan dropped back into his chair as Ned offered us coffee. This left Dan alone with us in a dead silence that Amanda allowed to hang until Ned came back in the room.
“Beautiful town, Southampton,” said Dan, as Ned handed out the coffees. “This is our favorite duty, right Ned?”
“Only way we can afford to stay around here,” said Ned with a misplaced claim on our empathy.
“My mother was supposed to inherit her uncle’s place in Montauk,” said Dan, “but he surprised everybody by giving it to the Catholic church and moving to Florida. Then my mother died and where does that leave me?”
“Staying with me in a motel on Montauk Highway,” said Ned.
“Not the same room,” Dan made clear. “So,” said Amanda, calmly, “what can we do to resolve this?”
The two of them straightened up in their chairs.
“Right,” said Dan. “Let me introduce ourselves. Ned and I are the field investigators for DEC Region One.”
“Nine regions. Figures the Hamptons would be in number one,” said Ned.
“Regional offices dispense service licenses, enforce regulations, monitor local conditions, but policy directives come out of Albany. We’re the feet on the ground.”
“My certification from Albany says I’ve passed the required phase-one environmental impact study,” said Amanda. “No one said it could be arbitrarily revoked.”
Dan anchored his elbow on the table and pointed at her.
“Suspended, ma’am. Important distinction.”
“Arbitrarily suspended. And you can call me Amanda. Dan.”
“I can understand your concern, Amanda, but this action has been executed through full due process.”
I suddenly regretted not having Jackie Swaitkowski along. This was her home turf. Murder trials were just a fun hobby. Burton Lewis had guided Amanda through her father’s estate settlement, but even he would have deferred to Jackie on matters of local real estate. But that was an impossibility. Amanda never spoke ill of Jackie for defend
ing Roy Battiston, but there was a bigger problem—Jackie was still his lawyer, an insurmountable conflict of interest.
“What due process?” Amanda asked. “All I received was notice of the suspension.”
“Right,” said Dan, “here’s the way it works. In order for the DEC to overrule certification we have to go to the State’s Attorney General and show just cause. If he agrees, then he takes it to a State judge, who issues a temporary restraining order. If he agrees. The judge. Or she. Whichever.”
Amanda looked over at me and I shrugged.
“Let’s reel it back to the just cause part,” I suggested.
“Right,” said Dan again. “That’s when something significant comes to our attention, something heretofore unknown, that might, if proven, represent a noteworthy threat to the environment, then that would constitute just cause. That’s how I understand it. Right, Ned?”
Ned didn’t look like he’d been listening, but he quickly agreed.
“That’s right. A significant threat.”
The two of them nodded in unison.
“So what sort of significant thing came to your attention?” Amanda asked.
“That’s what we’re here to investigate.”
I was starting to like Dan. He reminded me of the government liaison people I used to deal with offshore. Usually all the serious stuff had been negotiated, the bribes paid and backs scratched by the time I got involved. People who communicate officially all day only know the elliptical and oblique. Suggestive, just shy of insinuation. Sometimes quite elegant and lyrical, a triumph of nuance over substance. A form of bureaucratic poetry.
“What she meant, I think, is who brought what to your attention?” I said.
I knew that was a good question because Dan looked over to Ned before answering. Ned pursed his lips and shrugged, as if to say, can’t help you there, boss.
“We received confidential information. Which came into Albany, not our office at Stony Brook.”
“You’re joking,” said Amanda.
I wished again we had Jackie along.
“What do you mean confidential?” I asked “You don’t know who it was?”
“Or you’re not telling us?” said Amanda.
