by Chris Knopf
“Depends on the person.”
“Show me.”
Eddie peeled off to explore more of the condo while she took me to her office in the second bedroom. Like the rest of the place it expressed a comfortable, cheerful wear.
She brought a kitchen chair with her to set next to her office chair so I could watch the action. I’d spent a large part of my working life staring at computer screens, though the displays looked nothing like you see today. Just a lot of data stacked in rows against white or dark green backgrounds. I was aware of the Web in the last years of my career, but I was too involved in other things to pay much attention. It was now a few years into the twenty-first century and I was about to get my first close-up look.
“Okay,” she said, her hand poised on the mouse. “Who’s the target?”
“Zack Horowitz.”
“Can you narrow that? Dates, places?”
“Long Island. Fifteen years back to today.”
The whole world knows now how this stuff works, but it was a shock to me how fast things came up on the screen, and how nice everything looked. And how much information there was. All of this amused Rosaline.
“Did you know that TV is now in color?” she said.
The path was a little jagged, but we could follow Zack’s life backwards from his current role as Assistant Regional Director of the New York State DEC through a stint as Head of Environmental Affairs for a tech company in Bethpage, several years as a staff consultant and then as a specialist in governmental contract compliance with the Long Island office of a Big Five accounting firm, a period of private practice, and finally arrived at his gig as Treasurer for the Town of Southampton.
Buried in the middle of a brief profile of Zack was a piece of biographical chaff that appeared nowhere else, which Rosaline insisted was pure chance.
“Everyone commands the Web. No one has control.”
That didn’t matter to me. Just that it was there: “While serving as Director of Lending at the Southampton branch of East End Savings and Loan, Zack was elected Town Treasurer, beginning a long, successful career bridging the professional worlds of private enterprise and community-based public service …” And from there it blathered into self-serving corporate propaganda, which surprisingly made no mention of Zack’s intimate involvement in Jeff Milhouser’s attempts to bridge public service with commercial fraud.
As interesting as this was, it didn’t distract me from Rosaline’s hand resting on my thigh, slowly sliding toward the inside. I put my hand on top of hers to halt the progress.
“Sorry, Sam,” she said. “It’s the proximity.”
I knew what she meant. This close in you can easily get caught in a cloud of scent-borne pheromones.
“It’s a nice thought,” I said.
“But.”
“But I don’t know. There’s some sort of life at the tip of Oak Point. Can’t see past it right now.”
“I know. I’ll print this stuff out while you go back to the patio. Unless you want to try a cold shower for two.”
I opted for another vodka instead. By now the sun was hugging the horizon and cooler air was riding in on lengthening shadows. I settled into my wicker chair, in no hurry to leave. It wasn’t just Rosaline’s comfy aromatic apartment. I wanted to wait for the cover of darkness, an ambiance more conducive to both love and ruin.
Reflecting the mood on the patio, she came out in a linen dress and sandals, carrying a platter of munchies and a handful of printouts. She asked if Eddie could have some cheese.
“If you can stand all the adoration.”
“So what’s with Zack Horowitz?” she asked as she tossed hunks of cheddar in the air for Eddie to catch. “If you want to tell me, which you probably don’t.”
“You know as much as I do,” I said. “Except that he was Roy Battiston’s boss back at East End Savings when Jeff Milhouser was caught mishandling Town assets. The Town’s treasure, you could say. And, as you know, Zack was also the Town Treasurer.”
“Lovely,” she said, popping a chunk of peppercorn cheese in her mouth.
I could have said the same thing about her. She’d never believe me, but I liked the nose. A clever joke on God’s part. Build a softly sensual, brainy woman with a nearly perfect physique, then throw in a prominent irregularity and see what happens. For me, it just made the rest of the package that much more appealing. A handy point of contrast, always in evidence.
I had a habit of seeing the same divine sense of humor manifest in lots of people’s lives, in those random intersections where luck not only meets opportunity and preparation but other forms of luck, both good and bad.
Even as I rode the waves of destruction, I couldn’t think of myself as unlucky. I had experiences and warehouses filled with memory. I didn’t have the grace to attribute that to good luck. I held those achievements as mine alone. Along with all the responsibility for what followed. I wouldn’t allow fate a role in any of it. Fate was a disinterested bystander, preoccupied with the work of elevating and devastating other people’s lives. But never mine.
That was the arrogance of defeat. That it was all my fault.
I wondered if that same habit of thought plagued the mind of Zack Horowitz. Or if he’d tried to banish history through selective amnesia, concentrating on a life of service, built on atonement and rationalization. Either way, none of it amounts to a hill of beans when fate comes to call.
I spent another hour watching night fall with Rosaline. She let me move the conversation onto other things, so the time spent was even more agreeable than it had been, making it harder to pull away.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it, Sam, but I don’t want to add to your burdens,” she said. “I know it wouldn’t do any good, and might even scare you away, and then I’d really feel like crap.”
“We’re fine,” I said. “Better than fine. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Okay,” she said, and softly shut the door, floating back into her world of comfort and order, sparked by the mutually sustaining forces of lust and curiosity.
TWENTY-FIVE
AMANDA’S LIGHTS WERE ON when I got back from Rosaline’s. I turned off my headlights, parked on the road and walked down our common driveway. I felt like a jerk sneaking into my house, but I wanted a chance to look at those phone records before Amanda knew I was home. As promised, Will Ervin had left them wrapped in a plastic bag and stuck partway under the doormat on the side porch.
I made a cup of coffee to dilute the effects of Rosaline’s vodka and took the phone records and some notes out to the pine table on the screened-in porch. I brought along a yellow legal pad on which to draw boxes and arrows like engineers used to do before we drew them with keyboards and liquid-crystal monitors.
I liked this kind of work, making flow schemes and process diagrams. Not as a tool for analysis but as a way to graphically represent a conclusion I’d already drawn.
I’d expected to search through pages and methodically pull numbers out of long columns, then cross-check those numbers with another set. But that work had already been done. I now knew why Sullivan said to be as specific as possible with what I was looking for. What I held weren’t the records themselves, but the answer to a query. A report developed by a type of analytical software. Of course.
So it didn’t take very long to fill in my boxes and draw my arrows. It was mostly a pro forma exercise. But rather than a petrochemical product at the end of the process it was the consummation of entirely human motivations and behavior. A schematic of pathological cause and effect.
I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face and ran some though my hair. I caught myself looking in the mirror. That was something I rarely did, because I never liked what I saw. It wasn’t all vanity, though I admit I’d turn my head a little to get a better angle on my busted nose. I saw things when I looked into my own eyes that seemed to betray thoughts or feelings I was unaware of. It was unsettling.
I pulled myself away and we
nt to put on a clean shirt. Then I called Amanda to tell her I was on my way.
“Right now?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t laugh,” she said, and hung up the phone.
She answered the door with a towel wrapped around her head.
“I just got out of the shower.”
“No kidding.”
“I need a few minutes.”
“Take all you want. I know where the Scotch is.”
“Bring it out to the terrace. I’ll meet you there.”
The terrace was actually a patch of lawn on the side of the house facing the channel to the lagoon where she kept a set of white plastic recliners and a small glass table. It wasn’t long before she was out there with me, dressed in a silk kimono, her wet hair brushed smooth, a glass of wine in one hand and the bottle in the other.
“Did you sleep?” I asked her.
“Like a dead person. I knew I would. Lately I’d be just about asleep when I’d think of those two men from the DEC with their maps and charts and official-looking papers. A jolt would run through me and I’d be wide awake for hours. This time all I had to do was remember your voice saying the cellar was all clear. And I blissfully fell into the abyss.”
“I’ve fallen in a few of those. Weren’t so blissful.”
She frowned at me.
“One was in your shower, as I recall,” she said. “Any word on that?”
“Nothing official. Had a little chat with Markham Fairchild.”
“And?” she asked.
“He’s worried about my right prefrontal cortex.”
“Me, too, even if I don’t know what it is.”
“A part of the brain. Apparently controls social behavior.”
“Then I’m not so worried,” she said.
“You’re not?”
“You’ve been very social to me. And always well behaved.”
“That’s because I love you,” I said.
“You love a lot of people, Sam. You can’t help it. You try not to, but it happens anyway. And they love you back. Whether you like it or not.”
“Geez.”
“I know, you hate this kind of talk. But it means what happens to you is no longer your concern alone. It affects other people. That wasn’t true when I first met you, but it is now. You’re a full citizen in the land of the living. And some of us here care about the condition of your brain, by reputation a pretty good one.”
I didn’t know what to say to all that, but I had brains enough not to argue. I wouldn’t have put it the way she did, but she had a point. It was a realization I’d come to late in life. People will grow on you if you let them. They’ll work their way right through the prefrontal cortex and down into your vital organs, lodging themselves around your heart. They might even save your life, even if you don’t realize they’re doing it. What I’d learned was you didn’t have to fear any of it. Even if sometimes it meant you had to feel the pain of loss. The occasional charges were worth the investment. In fact, it was the only investment worth making.
“I don’t know how good it is, but my brain’s been getting a workout lately,” I said.
“I can imagine. How are things progressing?”
“Word is the indictment could show up any minute,” I said.
“Oh dear.”
“But I’ve been able to put a few thoughts together.”
“Promising thoughts?”
“Depends on how you look at it. I’m still curious about some stuff. I need to talk it out.”
“I’m glad to help if I can,” she said. “Actually, you’re the only one who can.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. Like for starters, when did he approach you?”
“And that would be?”
“Milhouser.”
She took a long pull of her wine and let her head fall back, showing off her long lean neck, to which the hard year of stress and striving had added new lines and bands of sinew.
“He approached me when I said he did,” she said.
“At the restaurant.”
“No, Mr. Inquisitor. I’d spoken to Robbie Milhouser at the project on Jacob’s Neck. If you don’t believe me, get Joe Sullivan to give me a lie detector test.”
I stood up from my plastic chair and walked halfway across the lawn toward the lagoon. The houses lined up along the northwest shore were all lit up and you could hear voices bouncing across the water, though you couldn’t hear what they were saying. Words without meaning. Sound without comprehension.
I went back to Amanda, who was pouring another glass.
I sat on the edge of the chair and leaned toward her, my elbows on my knees.
“It was a Milhouser. But it wasn’t Robbie.”
The look on her face betrayed a chorus of conflicting impulses.
“Oh God, Sam, do we have to?”
I tried to make it as easy as I could.
“I think we do.”
“And if I say I’d rather not you’ll just persist. That’s your way.”
“Sometimes.”
“Dammit, I hate this.”
“It was Robbie’s father Jeff,” I said. “He’s the one who approached you. On Robbie’s behalf.”
She pushed her seat into recline and wrapped the kimono around her knees.
“All my life people have been trying to tell me I can’t do things I think I’m able to do,” she said.
“Is that what he did?”
“In effect. Someone on the architectural review board told him about my master development plan. He said it was too big a project for a person of my experience, meaning none, to handle on my own. I needed a construction manager and another crew. Robbie’s.”
“Okay. So you told him to get lost. Like you told Robbie at the restaurant.”
She looked like she wanted to be absorbed into her recliner, but answered me anyway.
“This is the part I knew you wouldn’t understand. I actually told him I’d think about it. I was so tired. We were just finishing up the north house. I don’t know what felt worse, my nerves or my back. I was having self-doubt, okay? I’m making him sound worse than he was. He was a pretty slick old guy. Fatherly,” she added, as her voice trailed away.
“Nothing would have come of it,” she said, her voice coming back. “Even if I thought I needed help, I wouldn’t have chosen Jeff Milhouser. And certainly not Robbie. I know I should have told you, but I was ashamed of the thoughts going through my head. And then after the restaurant thing I was embarrassed that I hadn’t said anything.”
“I’d’ve helped you if you’d asked,” I said.
“It happened during one of those funny times when neither of us was trying very hard to see the other.”
“I still would’ve helped.”
She looked up into the night sky.
“I know. I wanted you to think I was strong enough to do this on my own.”
“You are. Strong enough and doing it on your own.”
I liked the vantage point on the lagoon from Amanda’s terrace. In front of the houses on the other side of the channel you could see the outlines of Boston Whalers and shoal-draft sailboats tethered to moorings throughout the little body of water. It was hard to imagine that over a hundred years ago it was crammed with steamboats and fast-passage schooners trading with the bustling industrial plant.
“What about the other time?” I asked her.
“Sorry?”
“The other time Jeff Milhouser came to see you. There has to be another time.”
“What difference does it make how many times he came to see me?”
“Every difference in the world,” I said.
“I don’t know why you’re so interested in this.”
“Tell me.”
“You’re not letting this go are you?” she said.
“What did he say to you?”
She sank even further into her chair, collapsing into herself.
“It was the day after the house fire.
I was staring at the ruins and suddenly there he was, like he appeared out of thin air, like Beelzebub or something. He said this was the kind of thing that happened when you lacked professional construction management. He said I’d been rude to Robbie, but he was still willing to help. That he was only trying to protect me. I didn’t know what to do, so I did the brave thing and ran away. Just like I did when I ran from Southampton the first time. And then when I ran back again. I ran in fear. Then Robbie’s killed, and I think, oh God. And then they arrest you. What am I to do? Tell everything that happened and hand them a motive? I hid in the City, but after a while I thought, Burton will never let this get too far. They couldn’t possibly win a case against an innocent man. And I wanted to come back. I wanted to see you. I wanted everything back to the way it was before. But that old bastard was right. It just keeps getting worse.”
“I can see why you wouldn’t tell the cops, but how come you didn’t tell me?” I asked.
She turned her face away from me as she talked, so it was hard to hear what she was saying.
“When he told me he wanted to protect me I told him I had all the protection I needed. And then he said, ‘Yeah, but who’ll protect the protector?’ It took me a second to figure out what he meant. Then it all became clear.”
“Misplaced concern,” I told her. “I’m still here.”
“That night of the fire, I was so angry, confused and afraid. I didn’t know what to do. I was on the verge of driving back to Oak Point to beg forgiveness when Milhouser showed up with his offers and not-so-hidden threats. I was afraid everything was about to turn ugly. I didn’t know what he could do to you. I didn’t know what you would do if threatened. I thought if I just left for a while so we couldn’t talk about it all the trouble would just blow away.”
“Never does.”
“I know. I was just afraid. Didn’t you tell me fear makes you stupid?”
“Yeah. Fear and anger. And I think there’s a third thing.”
“Scotch?” she asked, holding up the bottle. I took it from her and poured another one.
“Okay,” I said, “a fourth. You already brought it up.”
“Love?”
“Worse than all that other stuff combined, because it’s with you twenty-four hours a day. Makes you deaf, dumb and blind.”
