But even if they'd had my photo (a Web search of the back copies of New York City legal publications would probably turn up a cheesy five-year-old black-and-white head shot), how had they known where I'd be? Had they tracked me the previous day from Jay's building to the steak house to my apartment to the Indian restaurant to the school? Doubtful. More likely that they'd been following Jay, then lost him— he had disappeared quickly— seen me come out of the basketball game, recognized me, and then moved in.
Now I came to the rump end of the Long Island Expressway for the second time in thirty-six hours, turning onto the country roads leading to the North Fork, wishing my rental, a beaten delivery van with stenciled letters on the door and Jesus decals on the headlights, had a decent heater. I sipped my coffee and jittered up more tangled questions for myself, feeling driven— not crazy, but into the coldly rational, ultraparanoid part of myself. My old, capable, bastardly law-firm self. I began to see that whatever was going on with Marceno, H.J., Poppy, Mrs. Jones, and Jay constituted, in its entirety, a piece of machinery, call it a gear, that was engaged with another smaller gear, this one sprocketed by Jay, and the building on Reade Street he so badly wanted, a building that housed the business owned by David Cowles, whose daughter, Sally Cowles, apparently so fascinated Jay that he was secretly attending her high school basketball games. Did Jay himself understand these two sets of complications? And where did Allison fit in? Despite her insistence that I help Jay, she'd been pretty vague when describing his real estate deal. The fact that he hadn't explained to me the convoluted purchase of the Reade Street property suggested he was in no hurry for anyone to learn that he'd sought to buy that building and no other. And from Marceno's chronology, it appeared Jay had decided to buy the Reade Street building and then put the acreage up for sale. Looking back now— from whatever miserably chastened perspective I enjoy— I see that the moment Jay disappeared from the basketball bleachers into the Manhattan night marked his acceleration toward his own long-sought imaginings. What he wanted seemed so close that his natural caution had become a burden to him and had been jettisoned. If he had seen me at the game, then he would have suspected why I was seeking him, which meant of course that others sought him, too. And if, on the other hand, he hadn't seen me, he'd nonetheless made a sudden exit, which suggested he felt a vulnerability as he sat watching Sally Cowles run up and down the court. Perhaps he'd sensed he'd overstayed his opportunity. In either case, my relationship to Jay had changed. I was hunting him now.
The single-lane road winding east toward the Atlantic revealed a charming and classically American dreamscape almost too good to be true— three-hundred-year-old saltwater cottages, steepled churches and clapboard farmhouses, silver barns next to ancient, heavy-limbed maples. My glimpse of Jay's dark frozen fields two nights earlier, I realized now, had been insufficient to understand the forces at work on the value of his property. The rolling land was a heart-yanking time warp to a simpler age. People find such authenticity frighteningly attractive, for it lets them forget terrorism and global warming and genetic counseling, lets them forget that time runs in only one direction, at least for those of us still roped to the mast of Western rationalism. Such places conjure a lost psychic era, pre-Nixonian, when Cadillacs looked like rockets and silicone was used only to caulk windows. Back then, when America was the great good place. And people will happily pay for that, they will pay twenty-first century prices. I passed a tractor pulling a wagonload of hay; in the other direction flew three white limousines in sequence, carrying who knows who— corporate executives, pro athletes, movie stars? A few miles farther I swept past two golf courses going in, then half a dozen wineries, each expensively grand structures of shingle and glass centered among precise four-foot-high rows of trellised grapevines that swept backward toward the horizon. In the instances where obsolete farm buildings or modest homes fronted the main road, these were being purchased and demolished. Indeed, the large projects I saw had probably been the result of the consolidation of multiple lots, an expensive and time-consuming way to assemble a land parcel, and typically only done when prices are rising dramatically. But as Jay had said, the prospect of world-class vineyards and wineries within what amounted to a stone's throw of New York City— which, let it be remembered, still holds more wealth than any other city on the globe, even London, even Hong Kong, even Kuwait City— was a surefire bet. Overlay on that proximity various other factors— the cheek-by-jowl development of the Hamptons, the recent local land-use restrictions enacted in an effort to block that very same kind of development, and America's ever-burgeoning retirement-age population— and the surefire bet became a kind of slo-mo bank robbery.
Yet even more proof awaited me when I parked in the quaint town of Southold and found Hallock Properties, one of whose signs, I'd remembered, lay flat in the weeds on Jay's old property. The office's windows were adorned with listings for large pieces of land, complete with aerial photos of woods and field and gorgeous shoreline headlined THE LAST UNCUT JEWEL! and HISTORY DOESN'T REPEAT ITSELF!
I stepped through the agency's door; it was as one might expect, a bustling hive of office cubicles, the walls plastered with house listings. For a moment I mused over the prices. A trailer home on a tenth of an acre? Try $195,000. A clapped-out one-bedroom shack on half an acre? $320,000. Undeveloped mere half-acre oceanfront lots ran $475,000. Two acres of swampy overgrown brush on a brackish inlet? $950,000. A terrific five-bedroom job on the water with gourmet kitchen, "rocking chair porch," tennis court, and "forever views"? At least a million five. Vineyard acreage? Prices started at three million and went to the moon. What had happened to the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket and Malibu and Pebble Beach and Coral Gables was happening here. It was America, after all; somebody had to be getting rich.
The brokers stood or sat talking into their headsets, consulting files or computer screens, the women attractive and tough, in their thirties and forties, and the few men older and ruined-looking— clutching the floating logs of their careers.
"Help you?" asked a woman who introduced herself as Pamela. Her hair reminded me of a bowl of Frosted Flakes.
I told her I wanted to talk with someone about the large property in Jamesport they'd recently handled. "Acreage up on the Sound," I added.
"I'm not sure which—?" she said, politely inspecting my shoes.
"It was just bought by some Chilean wine people."
Pamela frowned politely. "We didn't handle that."
"I thought you did. I saw your sign out there."
"No."
I stared at her Frosted Flakes hair, which made her nervous. "Who did then?"
"I don't know."
"Was it listed with multiple brokers?"
She was dodgy, even for a real estate agent. "I couldn't say."
Already I knew enough about the region to see that large properties with ocean frontage didn't come along too often. "I was told, by the buyer of the property, that one of your agents specifically told him"— and here I glanced at some scribbled notes in my hand—"that another bidder was in the picture and that the second party was prepared to bid again if the buyer didn't close."
She was still looking at my shoes, blinking rapidly.
"I should also probably mention, Pamela, that I am a New York City attorney specializing in real estate matters."
Now she looked up at me, a tight smile pinned on her face. "You need to talk with Martha. But first, understand this. That property, the old Rainey farm, was never handled by us. It was never officially listed by us." She lowered her voice. "I don't know what Martha may have said, or done. Maybe she stuck one of the agency's signs next to the road— whatever. She's— she could have said— well, I'm sure I don't want to know."
I made a show of writing all this down.
"May I have your name again, Mr.—?"
"Bill Wyeth."
I followed Pamela through the partitioned offices, down a wainscoted hallway.
"Martha?" she
called when we reached a closed door.
No answer. Pamela pushed the door open and the room we entered could not have been more different— a vintage realtor's office at least fifty years old, stuffed with files, yellow topographical maps, and curled tax survey volumes. An old, rather heavyset woman sat sleeping in an armchair, despite the early hour. Her housedress had fallen open a little too far and she was holding a spoon. On the table next to her lay a glass of tea and a thick biography of the Duke of Windsor. Propped next to the seat was a cane.
"Martha!" cried Pamela. "Hello-o?"
"Yes?" The elderly woman blinked awake.
"This is Mr. Wyeth," announced Pamela hatefully.
"How do you do?"
"He's come to discuss the old Rainey farm?"
"Has he?"
The women stared at each other. "I'm going to leave you two alone," Pamela said, "so I can have a quick look for my sanity."
She departed, her heels clicking smartly down the hall.
"Get that, would you?" Martha pointed to the door. When I closed it she waved at the chair opposite her for me to sit. "Pammy's a dreadful woman. A shocking hussy. A tart, they used to say."
"Oh?"
"Yes, we're lashed together, and neither of us likes it much! I taught her everything she knows but there's no respect, no loyalty anymore."
"This was your agency?" I guessed.
"Still is." She nodded defiantly. "Which my father started in 1906." She noticed her housedress and pulled it closed. "I was the baby of the family. I'm eighty-three, Mr. Wyeth, so you can see how long I've been around."
"Seen a lot of things."
"Oh my," she agreed. "I remember when the potato trucks used to go down the main road by the dozens. We had one doctor, paid him with firewood in the winter and produce in the summer. Nobody knew about this place. Most beautiful spot in the world. Everything's different now. I can't begin to tell you. Everybody was on well water. You could eat oysters at every meal when they were in season. And lobster, too. We had a lovely church community."
Humor her, I thought. "What did farmland go for, Martha, when you were a girl?"
"I'd say three hundred dollars an acre."
"And what is it now out here?"
"With the vineyards coming in, maybe fifty thousand."
Jay had been screwed, I realized. I pointed up at a local map. "And the future?"
"Easy," she sighed. "Million-dollar homes on the water. Million-dollar homes off the water. Vineyards owned by rich people. Wineries owned by even richer people. All the big farms will go to grapes. The fix is in on that, see, because of the water-use problems. Vineyards are low-impact agriculture. Low water use, low pesticide use. Government loves that. Lot of these grape growers are environmentalists, too." She put her spoon in her teacup. "Amazing it took the world so long to find us."
I liked old Martha Hallock. "Want to give me the whole pitch?"
"What else is there to say? Eighty-two beaches mixed with vineyards. Napa Valley doesn't have that. And quaint New England capes and farmhouses? And the longest growing season at this latitude? And two hours from New York City? For years it was the Hamptons. No more. They ruined it and this is still here. And we've got strict land-use zoning."
"People in your business must feel pretty good."
"If I were thirty years younger, I'd be selling fifty houses a year myself, easy. I'd be selling cabbages to kings. But I'm too old, Mr. Wyeth. People are scared of old people. Think death is catching, I guess. Maybe it is. I sold my last house three years ago and that was my neighbor's. Doesn't count. Got old. No one to blame but myself, I suppose. I own half this business but I don't bring anything in anymore. They'll get rid of me any day now. Waiting for me to die, mostly. Put me in the wheel-barrow in the shed."
I didn't believe this. She still had a lot of moxie for an eighty-three-year-old. "How long can you hold out?"
"Me? Maybe a minute or two."
"Pamela want to buy you out?"
"She wants to live me out."
"What'll you do?"
"Well, I still have an ace in the hole, as my father used to say."
"Which is?"
"I know the territory." She saw me nodding dutifully. "No, no, I really do. I went out with my father and the surveyors. A lot of things don't turn up on regular surveys, you know. I know the creeks and flood lines. I remembered what happened in 1957, that big flood. I remember what the lot lines used to be." She tapped her head. "That's still worth something, Mr. Wyeth. Less and less every day, but still something."
"And I bet you can talk to the old farm widows."
"Yes, I can. They know me, they trust me. Not these little hussies in their convertibles. Half the girls out there are friendly with the developers and contractors. You know, friendly. Long lunches, who knows where! Come back to the office looking like they went through the bush backwards. Pamela hires her own type." She shrugged to herself. "Which is smart, actually. Easier to control."
"Do you have any children, Martha?"
She lifted her face to me and I knew that I had stabbed her with the question. "I made a lot of mistakes, Mr. Wyeth. Most of them involved men's shoes."
"Excuse me?"
"Men's shoes. I saw a lot of empty ones on my rug the next morning, if you know what I mean." Her eyes twinkled devilishly. "I know that seems preposterous, looking at me now."
"I'm sure—"
"No, no, I'm an old bag. Anyway, when it came time to settle down— well, it's my great regret. On the other hand, I don't burden anyone." She examined her tea. I had little doubt that every word she'd told me was true, yet said with absolute calculation, too. The lonely old woman act. I didn't quite buy it, either. Subtract thirty years from her, and you'd have a very formidable fifty-three-year-old businesswoman— a negotiator, tough, precise, perceptive. So the woman I was looking at was that woman, plus thirty more years' experience.
"Now then," she said. "What can I do for you?"
"What do you know about the Rainey farm?"
"Fine piece. Eighty-something acres. North road frontage, some elevation to the west, very few low areas. Probably could use some regrading in spots. The bluff is not perfectly stable— they've lost a good fifty feet over the last hundred years, probably needs some kind of stabilization. Potatoes for the first part of the twentieth century. Had the blight in '66 and switched to cabbages and flowers, switched crops a few times. Nursery trees for a while, then something else. Russell Rainey was a lovely man. I knew him well. It's a very fine piece of land."
"Was Russell Rainey the father of Jay Rainey?"
She shook her head vehemently. "No, no. Grandfather."
"Where's the father?"
"Somewhere very, very hot," she clucked. "I hope."
"Did you sell the land for Jay Rainey?"
She looked at me. "It was a private sale."
"But didn't you have some kind of contact with the buyer, a Mr. Marceno?" I pressed.
"I'm an old woman, Mr. Wyeth. I fall asleep in my chair. I have one eye that's weak, my feet cramp up at night, and I take a lot of heart pills. It's frankly hard to remember what I've done one day to the next." She stirred her tea. "And you know, even though I'm just a country girl who learned to sell a bit of land here and there, I've met a lot of people in my time. I've met businessmen and movie stars and two senators and three governors and buckets of congressmen on the island, all kinds of people. I met the Shah of Iran when he came here for medical treatment. I met Joe DiMaggio and General Westmoreland and Jackie Gleason. So, you see, Mr. Wyeth, I've learned that people who know their business state their business. Sooner rather than later. It's a habit of successful people. Here you've let me blather on about so many things. And I don't know why you're here."
"I'm Jay Rainey's lawyer, Martha. I live in the city. I examined the contract of sale for him for the farm and told him not to do it. It all looked funny to me. He did it anyway. Now, Jay is in— he's got a problem and the buyer is putting big p
ressure on him."
The Havana Room Page 21
