by Chris Knopf
“You’re just discovering this?” she asked.
“Yeah. I should alert the world.”
“When did this revelation come to you?”
“It crept up on me. I’ve been thinking a lot about not thinking clearly. You get out of practice when you’re working with your hands all day. Not that it’s stupid work, but there’s a routine to it that doesn’t stimulate the brain cells the same way. We were both up to our ass in construction for months on end, as you recall.”
“Hope to be again.”
“That’s the other thing that crept up on me. Letting work interfere with living some sort of normal life. I thought I’d done that once and learned my lesson. But there we were, passing each other in the driveway, not talking for days at a time. And when we did it was all shop talk.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said.
“One of those conversations sticks in my head. It was out in the driveway, as usual. It wasn’t that long ago. You were really busting ass getting that north property finished. Things had gotten a little out of sequence, you remember? Like you had the kitchen cabinets already delivered but there was a piece of wall between the kitchen and garage that hadn’t been closed in yet, and you couldn’t get the insulation sub back on the job. As it turned out, I had a couple rolls of insulation left over from my addition stashed in the shed. I went and got it for you. I said I’d put it in for you to keep things moving, but you never wanted me to do that kind of thing. You said, ‘Come on, Sam. Even I can install insulation.’ So I said, ‘Okay, let me give you the necessary equipment,’ and I went back to the shed and got my insulation installation kit. It was a little white cardboard box. Everything you need for the job. Staples, a little cat’s paw and needle-nose pliers to pull out misplaced staples. A special tape that’ll adhere to the vapor barrier in case it rips. And of course, the main attraction, my hammer stapler with the orange handle. We stuffed the rolls of insulation in the trunk of your car and I dropped the box in the back seat. And that’s the last I saw of the hammer stapler until that day at Southampton Town police headquarters when Sullivan held it up in a plastic evidence bag.”
There’s no such thing as utter silence. I learned that years ago sitting at night in my Adirondacks at the edge of the breakwater. The water itself always made little lapping, gurgling noises. And there were always bugs in the wetlands to the west and planes flying in and out of the City, gaining and losing altitude. Motorcycles or cars with bad tailpipes out on Noyac Road.
“When we were talking about fear and anger, we forgot to mention hate,” she said finally. “Robbie Milhouser was all three of those to me. You can’t imagine.”
“I can get a start. I know something happened in high school.”
Her hand was shaking, but she managed to get the wine glass up to her lips.
“Of course you do. That’s when the fear started. I was trapped. It wasn’t that anything actually happened. It’s that it could have and I would have been helpless. And it wasn’t even Robbie, it was all the jerks who hung around him who were egging him on. The whole school thought we were secret lovers, but I’d never had anything to do with him. He wanted people to think that. So when those boys caught me at the back of the bus, he thought he had to do something to prove we were together. I could see what was coming. I was terrified. If two of my girlfriends hadn’t been there, who knows what would have happened.”
She was quiet again. I didn’t know if she was finished, so I lit a cigarette to fill the dead air. She did have one more thing to say.
“There was never a time when I didn’t wish him dead. And now this evil old bastard trying to force him on me. Threatening me. Threatening you. What could I do?”
The bugs were out in full, though the bay was quieter than usual. I was glad to have the cigarette to occupy my hands. I took a puff and let the smoke drift on its own out of my mouth.
“You could make a calculation,” I said to her softly. “Of the two Milhousers, Robbie was the bigger threat. Literally and emotionally. The old man was spooky, but without his son, less able to intimidate. Or maybe it was Robbie’s turn to put the pressure on. Call you the day after the fire and ask you over to his project. ‘Come on, Amanda,’ he’d say. ‘Think how easy this can all be.’ Wouldn’t be hard to convince him to come alone. Could be just you and him in the big, dark, empty house.”
This time her whole body shook, as if a little tremor had started at her shoulders and run down to her feet. She put the wine glass on the table.
“Dear God,” she said.
“Before you leave, you pop the trunk of the Audi and look around for a little protection. Maybe in the heat of moment you forget the stapler was mine, maybe you remember but don’t think about things like fingerprints or UPC codes. The stapler was too convenient. Heavy and hard edged, but slim enough to slip into the back waistband of your jeans.
“You get there and Robbie’s alone as promised. He’s on his best behavior, trying to win you over with his boyish charm. All this does is convince you that his interest is both commercial and romantic. This is beyond intolerable. It can’t go on anymore. It has to end there.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Okay, handsome, show me around the place.’ Which puts him in front of you as you walk about, so when you get out to the sunroom there’s plenty of room to get in a good swing. The first one drops him. But he’s pretty big, so it takes a couple more to finish him off.
“But now what? You hadn’t planned for this, exactly. In a slight panic, you run outside and throw the stapler into the beach grass. Then you do the only thing you can do at that point. Run. You need time to recover. And until you recover your self control, stay clear of the cops and other suspicious types. Like me.
“As it turns out, you don’t have much to worry about. All the attention is immediately drawn to me. Since you know I didn’t do it, you have all the confidence in the world they won’t be able to prove it, especially with Burton looking after me. But I’m such an obvious suspect nobody even thinks of looking anywhere else. And certainly not at you. The only one who could do that was me.”
“You really think I’m capable of such a thing?” she asked.
I nodded.
“I do. I saw you the night of the fire. I recognize the condition. Blind, crazy fury, fueled by bitterness, disappointment and fear. So yes, I think you are capable of such a thing, under those circumstances. That was the most obvious assumption as I stood there with Sullivan in the squad room, even without all the other evidence popping up. In particular, the so-called incident on the bus.”
She looked like she was about to say something, but I raised my hand to cut her off.
“My brain had all the answers, but my heart wasn’t in it,” I said. “I wanted to believe there was a different truth out there. Only now I’ve got an interesting little problem. I had to find a way to track down this alternate truth without making things worse for me, or drawing attention to you. Especially among the people I usually count on to help me figure things out.”
Especially them. Beloved people who had enough worry on their minds. Some of whom, like Burton, loved Amanda, too. The isolation I felt, with my greatest fears locked out of sight, had been another lesson. There was a time when I locked my whole self away. I didn’t want to go back there.
“What do you believe now?” she asked, when I gave her a chance to speak.
“What should I believe?”
“That I wanted to kill Robbie Milhouser. And you’re right. I could have. But I didn’t. And now you want me to say that. It’s important to hear the words.”
“It is,” I said. “And I believe you.”
She took in a long breath.
“I never got to use your insulation kit,” she said. “The subs showed up the next day. I don’t even know where it is.”
“That’s ’cause you left the box at the house, didn’t you. You don’t know by now what happens to your tools when you leave them on the job?”
I
tossed my watered-down Scotch, uncharacteristically neglected, out on the lawn. Then went to get a fresh one.
I stayed at her house that night and watched her sleep, overcome with relief and exhaustion. But no chance of rest for me. I had a head full of calculations and probabilities which were enough to keep me awake most of the night. That was fine. I now only had one theory to concentrate on. And I admit it, the favored of the two, once not much more than a matter of faith and hope.
My alternate truth.
I worked in her bedroom on a yellow legal pad, a soft reading light over my shoulder. It wasn’t an easy workspace, but what the heck. There are worse ways to spend your time than looking at Amanda doing anything, awake or not.
TWENTY-SIX
THE NEXT DAY I was in Jackie’s office going over my plan. She fell in love with her part right away. Especially when I wouldn’t share all the other parts.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she said from between the stacks of paper on top of her desk.
I stopped her before she had a chance to launch the usual barrage.
“Jackie, I need you to do this for me.”
“What if he won’t play along?” she asked.
“I think he’ll have to. But I won’t know till I try.”
“Dammit, Sam. I told you not to hide things from me.”
“I have to for a little while. Not just for my sake. Other people could be affected. And if it all blows up, you’ve got deniability. Come on, Jackie. I’ve been a pain in the ass, but I’ve never let you down.”
She wasn’t used to personal appeals. It shut her up more effectively than I would have thought. I didn’t sell past the close, getting out of there as fast as I could. I made it down to the sidewalk before she called from her second-story window.
“Catch,” she yelled.
It was a cell phone with a twelve-volt charger trailing behind like the tail of a kite. It’s a good thing I have quick reflexes or I’d have been sweeping microcircuits up off the concrete.
“It’s an extra,” she said, giving me the number. “If anything screws up during the day and you want to abort, call me immediately. I’ll do the same.”
The cell phone was such a good idea my first call was to Amanda with similar instructions. It was fun talking to people while I was driving the Grand Prix. I hadn’t done that since I lost the company car somewhere in Bridgeport, with the phone still in it. A bonus for the car thieves.
The first big hole in the plan was slipping out of town, technically jumping bail, in a 1967 Grand Prix. I held to the back roads as far as I could before hopping on Route 27 heading west. After passing Quogue and clearing Southampton jurisdiction, I breathed a little easier, even though I was now officially in serious trouble with the law.
Timing was important. My object was to be sitting in the parking lot of the regional DEC office in Stony Brook at four in the afternoon. This was another big hole in the plan, another uncontrollable variable. I’d considered calling Dan or Ned to see if Zack Horowitz would be in the office that day, but that seemed even riskier. So instead I kept the cell phone charged and at the ready.
At four-thirty the place started emptying out. I tucked into a parking spot where I was shielded, but could still see the faces of people coming down the front path. I didn’t see Dan or Ned, to my relief. But I did see Zack at about quarter to five. He had a briefcase and a sports coat draped over his arm. I waited as long as I dared, then got out of the car and walked up to him. He stopped cold.
“You know who I am now, don’t you,” I said to him.
Zack was a trim, good-looking guy. He was maybe a few years older than me, but staying out of the ring had done a lot to preserve his face. He had light eyes, thinning but adequate dark gray hair and angular features. I liked his voice. It was a soft tenor, articulate, though graced with Long Island inflections.
“I knew then,” he said. “I have a good memory for names.”
“So you knew I’d be back.”
“I hoped you wouldn’t,” he said.
“I need you to come with me,” I said, which caused the first look of alarm to cross his face. “Right now.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“I don’t have everything, but I’ve got enough to send your life into hell starting from the moment you walk away from me,” I told him, holding up Jackie’s cell phone.
“How do I know that?”
I handed him a copy of the phone records. As he studied them, little pink clouds formed on his cheeks.
“This will effectively destroy my life,” he said calmly.
“It has to happen eventually. I can do it with you or without you. The latter could be worse, but I have no guarantees. If you come with me now I promise to do what I can to help you through it.” I looked at my watch. “You can take the next thirty seconds to decide.”
“You’re asking an awful lot of a person who doesn’t know you.”
“Okay,” I said. “Think about the ones you do know. How’s that been going for you? Do you think helping me is gonna be worse?”
He studied me.
“My wife will wonder where I am,” he said.
“Call her and tell her you’ll be late. Very late.”
I pointed to the Grand Prix and told him to lead the way. All the way he looked poised to make a run for it. But he got in the car and let me drive him out of there. I told Eddie to leave him alone, but Zack said it was okay, that Eddie probably smelled his golden retriever. Then he called his wife and gave her what sounded like a believable excuse for not coming home right away. I didn’t know if it was or not, but now that this plane was off the ground there was no going back.
“Should I be afraid for my life?” he asked quietly.
“Not from me,” I said. “This isn’t a kidnapping.”
“More of an extortion,” he said.
“Okay, I guess, technically. I’d like to think of it as leveraged persuasion.”
He seemed to relax a little at that. He was obviously alarmed, but he did a good job of containing it. Zack was a very controlled guy. I wondered if it was a skill acquired over years of staring into menacing shadows.
“Whose idea was the bank scam? Yours or Roy’s?” I asked him.
He still had his jacket draped over his arm. He slid it off and put it in his lap.
“Wonder Boy’s,” he said. “Though I planted the seed by showing him how to make decent returns on extremely short-term investments, even with puny interest rates. All you needed was a wad of stagnant cash, which was ever-present in the institutional accounts. We used to go out to lunch and talk about it. I liked being this guy’s mentor. He was so anxious to learn. And in those days I liked showing off. Like a jackass.
“I got him involved in the routine sweeps we had going with a few companies, the teacher’s union, some other stuff. All pretty small potatoes. And then he comes to me and asks that question you can never even think about when you’re a banker. ‘What if we borrow some of the Town’s money and do our own little twelve-hour sweep? You’re the Town Treasurer. Who’s going to stop you?’ I thought he was kidding, but he was serious. I don’t know, bravado, boredom, who knows. I thought, yeah. Just once. So we did it. It was exhilarating. We didn’t take any of the money. The Town was the sole beneficiary. It was just to do it. So we did it again, until it became routine. We set up a small ledger account to take in the proceeds. I was actually thinking I’d spring it on the Board of Trustees some day, hand them a nice hunk of dough, smooth over the fact that we were sending the municipality’s entire working capital to God knows where every night.”
“Enter Jeff Milhouser.”
“He’d gone to Roy first, thinking a junior loan officer would be an easier touch. He thought I’d be the stone wall, if I’d even talk to him. He was already skating on thin ice with the board after some goofy deal with road salt. The guy was always working some angle, but he had friends all over town, including on the board, and frankly
things weren’t very well monitored in those days.”
“Roy cooked up the scheme.”
“Sure. He was ready to go to another level, way beyond anything I ever thought of. For me it was just a game. Roy had much greater ambition than that.”
“So I hear,” I said.
“I didn’t know they were doing it until it was underway. Roy swept one of the big Town accounts, but instead of sending it out to the investment houses it went right into Milhouser’s account and from there into a six-month CD. Just long enough to produce the paperwork that would satisfy the underwriters that he was good for a big loan. I know this because my signature was on Milhouser’s loan application. Roy stuck it under my nose, told me what they’d been doing, and essentially said either I sign it or he’d blow the whistle on the sweeps game. I couldn’t believe my ears. I told him he’d go down with me, but he pointed out that I was the head of lending. He was just a junior guy following instructions. And by the way, he’d kept meticulous accounting of every unauthorized transaction, none of which carried his name, all of which carried mine.
“For the next few months I did everything I could to cover the Town’s reduced working capital, but it was impossible. I hardly said another word to Roy Battiston, or Milhouser. The fools assumed I’d be able to keep a lid on everything, that I’d have to because my career and reputation were at stake. But I couldn’t.”
“So you cut a deal,” I said.
“It wasn’t easy. Milhouser was furious. But I got him to understand that while he had hooks in me, I had hooks in him. If we cooperated we’d get through it with minimum damage. If we fought, it’d be mutually assured destruction.”
“So,” I said, “the deal was you’d guarantee the bank wouldn’t press charges. You’d take the hit with the Town for sweeping the Town accounts, but he’d have to cop to borrowing the funds to collateralize his loan. Since they were stuck in a CD there was no way around that. You’d also threatened the bank’s board with a public relations nightmare if they made too big a deal over it. It was in everyone’s interest that the whole matter die out quickly and quietly. That included, of course, both you and Milhouser leaving Town government.”
