Hard Stop sahm-4

by Chris Knopf

  I hadn’t troubled to dress up for the visit, so all I had on my feet was a pair of worn-out Timberlands. Worn, but with a good enough heel to dig into Valero’s toes where they stuck out of his sandals. This had less effect on his grip than I hoped, though he stopped talking and started growling in my ear.

  I used the other heel to kick him in the shins, forcing him to look down to see where he’d placed his feet. This gave me the chance to tap him in the face with the back of my head. I caught him in the mouth, cutting my scalp on his teeth, but the move loosened up his bear hug. I probably should have stopped with the head butts, given my neurological issues, but it was the only weapon I had available. And it was working. The growling stopped and his breath was coming faster, more seriously as he tried to twist clear of my hammering skull.

  With all the butting and Valero’s maneuvering, I’d been able to turn a little to the right, which caused my hand, pressed into my side, to come in contact with the impressive package Angel had stuffed into his swimsuit. He had a split second to ponder the wisdom of allowing this configuration to evolve before a slight bend in my elbow allowed me to have both polyester-covered testicles firmly in hand.

  This was a first for me, and I imagine for Angel as well.

  I’d spent the last several years swinging a hammer and throwing around bundles of lumber. So my grip was probably as good as ever. I gave those boys of Valero’s a pretty lusty squeeze.

  He must have thrown his head back to bellow, because when I butted him again I caught the edge of his chin. He lost the hold when he tried to grab my wrist. I didn’t give him another chance. I spun out of the hug and danced back out of his reach, on my toes with my fists up where they belonged.

  I didn’t know how a guy my size would do against a human bull, but I was done wrestling.

  Angel was leaning forward, gripping himself around the midriff. I stepped in and planted a right jab in his face, snapping his head back, which made a nice target for the following left. He was still upright, but wavering. So I threw another neat combination. This seemed to have little effect, but before he could get his big arms up to protect his face I shot a right straight into his mouth. I was very happy to see this drop his ass down on the patio, where I was even happier to see it stay.

  “I never cuddle on the first date,” I told him.

  By now he’d let go of his balls and was holding his face.

  “You’re a dead man,” he said into his hands.

  “We all get there eventually,” I said as I circled back around to the gate, keeping my eyes on him the whole time.

  Jesse opened it for me.

  “Well,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  “Thanks for the drink. Next time I’ll take it with tonic.”

  “I’m sure there’ll be a next time.”

  I took one more glance at the blonde before walking up the grey path to the outer gate, where Opium was sitting licking her ass, and out to where the Grand Prix stood staring down the German performance cars scattered around Valero’s driveway.

  When I got to Dune Drive I tried to take a full breath, with little success. I didn’t think anything was broken, but I’d bruised ribs before and knew I was in for a long hurt.

  The visit hadn’t turned out exactly as planned. All I’d done was make an enemy, in record time, out of a wealthy and ruthless son of a bitch. I’d fully exposed my own intentions without learning a thing about his, or about anything else for that matter, and ruined any chance for future discussion or cooperation. And all I had to show for it was a sore chest and a cut on the head.

  “Brilliant,” I said, pulling a smashed cigarette out of my shirt pocket, seeing if a little jolt of carcinogen would do something for the aching ribs and eroding self-regard.

  That night I finally got through to Joe Sullivan. I’d called him at home on my cell phone from a table at the Pequot. He’d been tied up with the DA for a few days, and his wife, whom I’d never met, was none too delighted by my intrusion. He used a clever ploy to hustle me off the phone—the promise of a full forensics briefing, delivered at the crime scene.

  Mollified, I went back to The Wealth of Nations, a single, abridged volume I’d bought from the library when they were clearing out their stock.

  “The root of all evil?” I asked Dorothy Hodges, holding up the book.

  “Not to me, and I’ll ignore the stereotyping,” she said, dropping my drink on the table as gracefully as you could with three-inch-long black fingernails.

  “I’ve got Das Kapital back at the cottage. I’m going to put them in the middle of the room and let them fight it out.”

  “They did that already. Smith won.”

  “They taught you that at Columbia?”

  “Marx belongs in the fantasy–science fiction section. Lovely dreams.” She used one of the black daggers at the end of her fingers to scratch her head through greased orange hair. It wasn’t my favorite Dorothy look, though it was hard to pin down what was, since it changed almost by the day.

  “Maybe I won’t bother reading either of them and you can just explain it to me,” I said.

  “Easy. People yearn for community, but they’re biologically hierarchical. Trouble is, hierarchy’s defined in two ways. Brawn and brains. Brains run the kitchen, but they need brawn at the front of the house. It’s a natural symbiosis. And the rest of us have to eat whatever they dish out.”

  “The Pequot Theory of Economic Interdependency?”

  “Money doesn’t suck. Not having money sucks. Using money for stupid things sucks.”

  “Like the time you bought tropicalbirds.com at fifty bucks a share?” said her father, sliding a chair into the conversation. “Don’t get me wrong. Dotty’s a hell of a stock picker.”

  “Not really,” said Dorothy, though clearly pleased with the compliment. “I’m just a mid-cap index kind of a girl with a taste for the occasional social-conscience buy. Which do very well, by the way, most of the time.”

  “There’s so much about the world I don’t understand,” I said with deepest sincerity.

  “You don’t think we could live on what comes out of the till, do you?” Hodges asked me as we watched Dorothy disappear back into the kitchen. “A restaurant’s a cash business. If you play it right, you get to hold the suppliers’ money just long enough to put it to work without pissing ’em off. Dotty’s been floating the delta since she was in high school.”

  Back when I was married and had a regular paying job I handled all the family finances. My wife Abby resented this, and from this remove I can see why. It was an implicit insult to her financial acumen, entirely untested and perfunctorily rejected. I wasn’t a bad money manager but I wasn’t exactly Warren Buffett, or Angel Valero. I was exactly like my father. Afraid to let the money out of my sight and have it all taken away like in the Depression, thirty years before I was born.

  So what did I do? Lost it all anyway.

  “You can’t know everything, Sam,” said Hodges. “That’s what we have trust for. To fool us into giving ourselves over to specialists who know more about something than we’ll ever know even in a thousand years.”

  “You can trust Dorothy.”

  “That’s what we have children for.”

  On the way home I called and left a message for George Donovan. I told him Mason Thigpen and the people at Eisler, Johnson were aware I was nosing around about Iku Kinjo. They had no reason to suspect anything but the obvious—that finding her body had drawn me into the case. I said I thought things were going to heat up, but there was no need to worry as long as he played it tight to the vest, something he surely knew how to do.

  I was glad to leave a message. If I reached him directly I didn’t know what he’d say. This really wasn’t up to him anymore, and while his secret would die with me, I didn’t need the interference.

  When I got to the cottage I found Amanda and Eddie sleeping on the screened-in porch. Eddie was on the braided rug and Amanda was face down on the daybed, still dressed and
snoring. Likely a performance piece meant to undermine my tendency to idolize.

  I poured my nightcap ration and sat at the pine table to watch her snore. Seeing that I’d abrogated my rightful place, Eddie jumped up on the daybed and lay next to her, settling himself down with a puff of breath through his long snout.

  I went back to Adam Smith, thinking I ought to write a book like this of my own. Call it The Wealth of Undeserved Blessings.

  TWELVE

  JOE SULLIVAN WAS WAITING for me on the front walk that led up to Bobby Dobson’s group rental on Vedders Pond. It was only seven-thirty in the morning, but the day was already heavy with humidity. Unusual for September, but the weather had been nothing but unusual lately, so we were used to it. Sullivan wore olive drab safari shorts and heavy hiking boots, a black shirt with a half dozen pockets, a black Yankees cap and sunglasses. And a black leather shoulder harness securing his regulation Smith & Wesson .38.

  The perfect plainclothes disguise. Who’d ever guess he was a cop?

  He had a headset around his neck with a cord leading to a little black box hitched to his belt.

  I had the coffee. A Viennese cinnamon for me and a double latte for him. So much for working-class sensibilities.

  “You’re recording this?” I asked him.

  “Digital, baby. Cheaper than a steno.”

  “I’ve got one of those. Amazing things. Tell me when to keep my voice down.”

  “You’re here as a witness. Totally legit. I cleared it with Ross.”

  I followed him to the front door where he told the recorder we were cutting the yellow tape and entering the building. Just inside was the living room, now cleared of newspapers and magazines and covered in multicolored fingerprint powder. Also strewn about were little yellow cones with black numbers.

  “Riverhead’s been busy,” I said.

  That was where the Suffolk County forensics lab was headquartered. According to Sullivan, they were twitchy with paranoia after blowing a famous case, bringing on a huge lawsuit and a savaging on 60 Minutes. Ross was one of the few officials who stood up for them in the press, earning the DA’s fury and the lab’s permanent devotion.

  “Is this suicide thing their idea?” I asked.

  Sullivan scoffed and flicked off the recorder.

  “Veckstrom. The paper said it was ‘an anonymous police official,’ but who else would say the killing looked like a classic jingo thing.”

  “Jigai. Ritual suicide practiced by Japanese women.”

  “Practiced, huh? Not many chances to get it right.”

  Sullivan picked out a comfy spot on the sofa and peeled the plastic lid off his latte. He pulled his case book out of his pocket and flipped through the pages while he listened to me talk.

  “The problem is, jigai involves slitting the throat, severing the jugular and bleeding out,” I said. “This knife was shoved straight up into her skull. Even Veckstrom should know that details matter in these things.”

  “That’s what Ross told me, the only other guy in Southampton who knows about this shit. Though the press leak might’ve been his idea in the first place. Not bad if the perp thinks we’re barking down the wrong trail.”

  “So you think it’s a wrong trail.”

  Sullivan looked up from his case book.

  “Riverhead thinks it’s the wrong trail. The knife was jammed up through the soft tissue of her palate, then into her brain. Very accurate. Or very lucky. Especially given the girl’s blood alcohol level, which was a point above sloshed. There were also defensive marks on her throat, so the fatal thrust wasn’t the first try.”

  “I didn’t see that,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t with all the blood.”

  “None of which was on the bed. That I did see.”

  “That’s because the body was moved there from somewhere else,” said Sullivan. “They thought somewhere in the house, because it happened shortly after death. And they were right. There’s a blood trail from the patio under the deck to the bedroom. Good cleanup job, but God Himself can’t escape luminol.”

  “Or Herself.”

  Sullivan scowled at me and flipped off the recorder.

  “I can never tell if you’re serious.”

  “Assume I’m not, as a rule of thumb.”

  He talked some more about the crime scene, sharing some of the assumptions and conclusions Riverhead had come to based on forensic science, a subject I never tired of. Though my curiosity always led back to the more complex and less easily divined part of the equation, the people.

  “So what was Bobby Dobson’s opinion of all this?”

  He studied me unhappily.

  “That would be confidential information concerning an official homicide investigation.” He flipped off the recorder. “Do I need to tell you how happy my wife would be if I blew my pension?”

  “Very?”

  “Sharing forensic reports is one thing. Revealing confidential statements from potential suspects another.”

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I said.

  His face fell a little.

  “Not saying that.” He went back to his book. “I’m recalling from my notes, but I think I got the main points.” He cleared his throat. “Dobson stated that the victim had been staying full time at the share since about mid-August. He claimed to know nothing about her motivation for leaving her employment other than what he called burnout, though he wanted it clear that this was his opinion and nothing about this was ever expressed to him by the victim or anybody else. Dobson was the only renter who was in the City during the week. He said the others had summer gigs out here. Carl Brooks and Sybil Shandy at Roger’s, and the other Brooks, Elaine, at the Varick Gallery.”

  “What about Zelda? Zelda Fitzgerald?”

  He looked through his book.

  “Nothing on Fitzgerald. He did say others would come and go during the summer, though he couldn’t remember all their names. I got a note to go back at that if we need to.”

  “Okay.”

  Sullivan leaned back on the sofa, dropping his boots on the coffee table and taking a sip from his latte.

  “Damn, that’s great shit,” he said. “Almost makes you stop hating yuppies.”

  “Speaking of which.”

  “Right. Dobson said the victim would spend the week basically hiding out in her room. He’d see her on weekends and try to get her to go out and get a little fresh air. Have a little fun. Sometimes successfully.”

  “So they were dating.”

  Sullivan shook his head at me.

  “Couldn’t quite get that one nailed down. He said they were sort of seeing each other. But the way forensics tells the tale, if they were getting it on, it wasn’t here.”

  “So you got some good prints?” I asked.

  Sullivan took another sip of his latte before flipping ahead in his case book.

  “We have prints from the victim, Iku Kinjo, of course,” he read. “And Robert Dobson, the principle leaseholder, which we got off a soda can during the interrogation. Also Carl Brooks and Sybil Shandy—IAFIS had the prints off a lewd-ness charge. We got a copy of their file. Nice mug shots. Then we have Unknowns A, B and C.”

  He looked at the recorder to make sure it wasn’t running.

  “Remarkably, the only prints from the witness who discovered the body were a perfect set on the front door.”

  “Witness efficiency is definitely on the uptick.”

  He put the recorder back on.

  “Any ideas on the mystery guests?” he asked.

  “Elaine Brooks, Carl’s sister, and Zelda Fitzgerald are two. My guess is the owner’s number three.”

  Sullivan went back to his case book.

  “John Churchman. Lives on a boat at Hawk Pond. Inherited the house from his parents, who built it in 1972.”

  “There’s an accountant in town with that name. He has an office next to Harbor Bank.”

  “That’d be him. He’s been cooperative, so it shouldn�
�t be hard to get elimination prints.”

  I looked around.

  “So everybody’s prints showed up in the common areas.”

  “Correct again. Be a surprise if they didn’t. Let’s go upstairs and see what other nifty things we found.”

  Before he could stand I asked him where everybody was when Iku was killed. He sat back into the sofa.

  “According to Dobson, Carl Brooks had returned to the City as planned after Labor Day. As did Elaine Brooks, who works at the Varick Gallery’s other place on the East Side. Sybil Shandy is still at Roger’s till Christmas, when they close for the season, but left the rental when Carl moved out. She’s got a place above the restaurant.”

  “You’re talking to her?” I asked.

  “She’s on the list.”

  “So Bobby and Iku had the place to themselves.”

  “At least on the weekends. During the week she was by herself. Can we go now?”

  I followed him up the staircase to the balcony that led to the bedroom doors. He waved me into the first room.

  “Here we have Robert Dobson,” said Sullivan, “as identified in testimony and corroborated by careful investigation.” He held up a Dopp kit with the name Robert K. Dobson in gold leaf on the side. “This is his bedroom, which he apparently shared with Unknown A.”

  “Not Iku.”

  “Unless she wore surgical gloves. Knowing what goes on in these group rentals, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Who’s next door?” I asked.

  “Carl and Sybil, the drunks pulled naked out of a fountain in Las Vegas two years ago.”

  “I thought that was Zelda’s trick.”

  He looked at his book.

  “I told you. Nothing here about a Zelda.”

  “Look in the evidence room for a New Yorker magazine with her name on the label. The prints will match one of the unknowns. When you’re ready to confirm with the actual girl, I’ve got her address.”

  He frowned down at his book as he jotted down the tip.

  “They shoulda seen that already.”

  “What about Elaine?” I said. “Did Dobson say he was living with Elaine?”