McMansion

by Justin Scott

  “I want it done right.”

  “Okay,” I said. A deal was a deal.

  “You can start by going down to New York, tomorrow, and getting his dad off my back.”

  ***

  I drove home to Main Street and went out to Scooter’s barn, squeezing through the hedge that separates our long, narrow yards to see if the damned animal needed anything. But he was busy, giving a ride around the paddock I had built for that purpose to my young neighbor Alison Mealy.

  Alison and her mother lived in the old stable hand’s apartment over my barn, which was why the horse resided in Scooter’s. Alison’s mom cleaned houses for a living and helped out at Main Street dinner parties. Alison, who was twelve, had a missing drunk for a father and me for a friend. She’s a skinny little child, but blessed with a superb physicality that put her completely in charge of a horse big enough to kill her if he felt like it. I admired her. I liked watching her flourish. She made me feel useful. Not that I did much. All she needed was a trustworthy adult to take notice of her. I could do that.

  “Thank God you’re here,” Alison called. “Tom’s hungry and I’ve got to stay with Redman ’til he learns this jump.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t feel like learning to jump. He’s older than you are.”

  “He’s not old he’s just lazy.” She patted his head, growled in his ear, “Come on, you misery!” and dug her heels in. Redman obliged with a desultory shamble and actually cleared the hay bale she aimed him at. “Good! You beautiful horse. Good. Good….Ben, Tom really is hungry.”

  “I’ll get right on it. Where is he?”

  “In your kitchen.”

  “Can anyone explain to me why your horse’s mascot”—a barn cat that came with Redman because it is supposed to be the calmative stable-mate of a high-strung thoroughbred—“spends so much time in my house?”

  “He likes you, Ben.”

  I squeezed back through the hedge and joined Tom in my kitchen. I put down clean newspaper, opened a can, forked “Mixed Grill” onto an old glass dish, put it down in front of him, and stepped back quickly.

  ***

  I had an e-mail from one of the franchise brokers asking to show a house I had an exclusive on and which I knew she only wanted to show to demonstrate to her corporately moved client how much better her just-built modern McMansions were than an “authentic New England Antique.” She had a point, if you liked spa-size bathrooms, “gourmet-chef-delight-granite-islanded” kitchens, and a “Costco room” for storing your bargains in bulk more than you liked old gardens, low ceilings, chestnut floors people had polished for three hundred years, and a fireplace in every small room.

  Delete.

  Then I remembered she was kind of cute, and raising two children on her ill-gotten gains, so I retrieved it from Recently Deleted and replied, “Be my guest. But please make them take their shoes off because it’s still the sellers’ home.”

  I also had several pointless “just touching base” voice mail messages from clients who were afraid to be alone with their cell phones. Delete. Delete. Delete. I had a happy message from a guy who had secured a mortgage for the Barlowe cottage in the Borough that I had showed him. I had an even happier message from a Greenwich couple: their (substantial) check was in the mail for establishing that their daughter’s reticent fiancé was neither a fortune hunter nor a child molester, but a wealthy venture capitalist who enjoyed his privacy. And I had a message from Ira’s client’s father’s secretary: lunch at the Yale Club of New York City at one tomorrow.

  I went up to the attic, found a suit, a white shirt, and a necktie and hung them on the back porch to air the mothballs. I located a pair of Aldens and buffed them to a quiet sheen and searched out some socks to go with them. I went on line to check the MetroNorth schedule. Wanting a drink, I settled for opening a bottle of rosé and re-heating the second half of last night’s osso buco.

  In bed I had scary dreams. Huge animals—bulldozer surrogates, of course—chased me in circles until I sprang awake with a pounding heart. I calmed down eventually, but stayed awake, worrying about things. First came money, which I had too much of lately. Last time that had happened I had ended up in trouble; if, as Ira suggested, money confused, huge money confused hugely. I worried about screw-ups I’d precipitated; women I had alienated. I even worried about the future, which used to spring up each morning cheerfully as the sun. Not so much mine, but the world’s, or more specifically the town’s. Newbury was changing, as was the world, shifting in a crass direction I did not like. I felt myself growing sour and I didn’t like that either. I missed seeing the future spring up each morning cheerfully as the sun.

  I thought about Billy Tiller’s killer and was surprised to feel fear.

  I’d certainly known a few killers. More than most people, having served time at Leavenworth—the penalty for a youth misspent on Wall Street—and before that serving my country in the U.S. Navy, where I’d met naturals who had managed to stay out of prison by enlisting as close-combat instructors. I had even bumped into one or two right here in Newbury. But if this guy had really meant to do what he did with the bulldozer, grinding Bill’s body to pulp, he presented a picture of a man not so much cold-blooded as no-blooded. Someone who resided in a far beyond where ordinary people were not encouraged to stay or even visit.

  But could this be the same guy who shot Billy last year?

  Tough call. On one hand, shooters are remote types. On the other, he had sprayed a lot of bullets at Billy and a crowd of innocent bystanders that day. Had he pumped the trigger as frantically as he had erased Billy’s body with the bulldozer? Or as coldly?

  I voted for cold. How “frantic” could he have been while handling the machine as skillfully as he had? If I guessed right that Billy had scrambled under the cutting edge and hid under the moving machine when it caught up with him, then the act of plunging the ripper into him was the act of a very collected, calm, cool guy. Exactly how difficult—how much skill required—was a question I should have asked Sherman Chevalley.

  And why, I wondered, was I so sure the guy was a guy? Mostly because I hadn’t met any female bulldozer operators, I supposed, which suggested certain limitations on my part. Male or female, I realized—while the sights I’d photographed in the afternoon bubbled before my eyes—I didn’t like this person one bit, feared him or her, and felt repulsed.

  I went downstairs for a drink.

  On the landing I thought, early day tomorrow. Do I want to go to New York feeling like garbage? I didn’t want to go at all. Would a hangover make it feel any better? I could sleep it off on the train. But first I had to drive to the train and I’d be lucky to sleep an hour before it pulled into Grand Central. So I turned around and climbed the stairs to my bed celebrating a small victory.

  ***

  One way to predict the weather in Newbury, some say the only way, is to schedule a trip away from town. That day is guaranteed to dawn sunny and clear-aired, with low humidity, a crisp northwest breeze, and an intense quality to the light that will thrust those who stay toward their camera, their oil paints, their gardening tools, a ball game, or their hammock. On such a morning I drove down to Purdys, New York, took the first parking spot I found, a mile from the station, and boarded the train to the city where I had enjoyed exciting years after the Navy, and ultimately destroyed my life. Or, at least, changed it.

  The train ride south toward Manhattan was like entering a funnel. It started in open land where northern Westchester enjoyed a great spread of blue reservoirs, rushing streams, broad swamps, and the green backsides of private estates. But soon a piece of estate land, marked by grand old trees, had been taken to build a school. Soon after, condos appeared through the trees, creeping closer and closer to the tracks the further south we went. A river bed was captured in a trench beside the rails. Suddenly an auto body shop came in view, a jarring sight surrounded by fenders, bumpers, and crumbling old houses; seconds later a street with new houses
and old houses being fixed up. I saw a car dumped in a stream, a factory with fading paint, a warehouse with broken windows, some rusty backhoes, rail yards, and suddenly the shiny office towers at White Plains and an expensive-looking, high-rise glass condo topped with a sign that read, “If you lived here you’d be home now.”

  Now came the tight little downtowns of old neighborhoods that had once been villages, red brick tenements and apartment buildings, and more factories. A sudden green break marked the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx, then walls of old factories converted to storage facilities, factories advertising space, factories offering plastic, leather, iron work, a strip club, then homeless men sorting glass and metal in a recycling dump on the East River. Across a girder bridge and into Manhattan with a brief glimpse of midtown, the Chrysler Building shining. A gridwork of tenements, and just past the 125th Street station the train slipped underground and ran the last eleven minutes in a dark tunnel that ended in Grand Central Terminal.

  My consolation for leaving home was that on such a beautiful day New York was gorgeous, too, and as I walked across Vanderbilt to the Yale Club I hoped that my host would choose an outdoor terrace table at the restaurant on the roof.

  Mr. Kimball was waiting in the restaurant, I was told by the hall porter, who directed me to the elevator. I shared it with a quartet of lovely Ivy League lawyers who I gathered from their conversation were heading upstairs to celebrate trouncing the U.S. Attorney in court that morning. They were younger than I thought lawyers should be and far more attractive than I thought lawyers could be, and I found myself wondering where my life would be now if I had met them back when. Except that back then they’d still have been at Yale. Or in high school.

  I worked up a good smile as I entered the restaurant, and scanned the room while I waited for the lawyers to be seated. Before the maitre d’ returned, I knew I’d be eating indoors. Mr. Kimball had to be the tight-lipped, full-of-himself businessman seated with his back to the wall like a gunfighter. The maitre d’ walked me straight to him. He did not stand up when I introduced myself. That made him a peasant in my book, and I did not offer my hand. But I kept smiling because if I was going to do right by Ira Roth, I had better look confident.

  “What do you think of the kid?” he asked without preamble.

  “I’ve not met your son.”

  “You haven’t met him? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m here at your invitation.”

  Mr. Kimball gave me an unpleasant look. “I would have thought you’d make the effort to visit the kid in jail. Get his side of the story.”

  A wise shrink, who had helped me when I needed it, once told me that hotshot business types share essential personality traits with psychopaths. She explained that a high opinion of one’s own magnificence, manipulation in the service of greed, and an inability to care about, much less notice, fellow members of the human race will not derail a career. Only when expressed physically are such character flaws judged criminal.

  No longer smiling, though still confident, I said, “I decided that it would be more helpful to your son if I got the cops’ side first.”

  He didn’t like that, but finally got smart enough to say, “I don’t see any profit in telling you how to do your job.”

  “Soon, I will interview your son—which of course Attorney Roth has already done.”

  “What do you think of his story?”

  “Until I discover otherwise, I’m assuming he’s telling the truth.”

  He said, “At first, I couldn’t believe how stupid he was to get caught sitting on the machine. But when I went out there to the site I saw how isolated it was. I tried to put myself in his position. All alone, coming upon such a horrible sight, wanting to help, panicking….”

  “You went there?” I asked.

  “I had to see it.”

  “Why?”

  “Listen, Abbott. All that you and Roth have to do is create doubt. Reasonable doubt that the kid didn’t kill that man. That’s all we need.”

  Clearly, he thought his kid did the crime. If it troubled him to regard his son as a murderer, he didn’t show it. And what he said next indicated that as far as he was concerned the trial was nothing more or less than a contest to be won.

  “I hired Roth because he’s got a winning track record. What I want you to do is comb the entire goddamned county up there for doubts. They’ve got no witnesses to the actual crime. Find somebody else who might have done the crime. Find somebody else who wanted to do the crime. Doubt! All we need is doubt.”

  “Attorney Roth has already given me those instructions.”

  “Well I’m giving you them too. And I’ll pay a bonus for every seed of doubt you find. Fair enough?”

  “Ira’s already paying me.”

  “Well I’m going to pay you to try harder.”

  “I appreciate your concern for your son. But I don’t do things halfway. You don’t have to pay me to serve Ira any better than I would without your paying me.”

  “Mr. Abbott, stop being high and mighty! And stop pretending to be dense. If I have to fire Roth, I don’t want to start from scratch with a new investigator. I want copies of all your reports to him.”

  “If it’s all right with Ira, you’re welcome to them. If not, then you’re not.”

  “In that case, I’ll fire him this instant and hire you on the spot.”

  I stood up. “That would put your son at terrible risk. You won’t find a better defense lawyer in Connecticut than Ira Roth, as you already figured out. And if you bring in New York lawyers, the judge will roast them alive. Slowly.”

  He surprised me with a brisk smile. “Where are you going? You haven’t had lunch. Come on, sit down. I’m just mouthing off. I’m wired about this mess. Fucking kid.”

  I sat. He reached for the order chit and picked up the pencil. “What would you like?”

  “I’ll have one of your club’s famous martinis. Vodka. Twist. Straight up.”

  He said, “I’d join you, except I’ve got to go back to work.”

  I figured I had already done a very good day’s work. And it wasn’t even one thirty.

  He transformed into a thoughtful host, ordering a plate of dim sum to accompany my martini. We both decided upon Cobb salad for lunch and chatted amiably until the drink came. “Cheers—I say ‘fucking kid,’ but he’s had a tough time. The divorce—just at the wrong age. And then all those years living with his mother, who is a piece of work.”

  He gazed longingly at my delicious drink. “It was not a friendly divorce. Knock down, drag out. And I came out of it the villain in the kid’s eyes. Are you married, Ben?”

  “No.”

  “Ever been?”

  “Never.”

  He looked at me a moment, wondering why. With two more martinis in me, and a couple in him, I might have admitted that I regretted having foolishly blown not one, but two splendid opportunities.

  “I gotta tell you, it’s been nine years since I split and there hasn’t been a morning yet I don’t wake up smiling, Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty free at last.”

  I offered the requisite rueful head shake.

  Kimball said, “But the kid paid the price of my escape.”

  Three sips down, I felt sufficiently magnanimous to say, “Well, we all get through this stuff in the end.”

  He said, “The kid’s big problem is that I became pretty well off after the settlement….Wealthy, I mean. I was paying big alimony and big child support. They’re comfortable enough. But after the settlement, a project I’d been involved in hit big and I went from a guy who was doing better every year to…well, a rich guy. Only way to put it. I mean, I was a scholarship student, working summers in construction, and now I’ve got a penthouse and a house in the islands, and a country estate in Fairfield County. I bought there—Newtown?”

  “Yes, I know it.”

  “—thinking I’d be nearer the k
id, but he never comes. Bought him his own Jeep. When I was his age all my old man ever gave me was a piece of free advice: put the beer can between your legs when you’re driving through a toll booth.”

  That seemed sensible, as far as it went.

  “Ira Roth mentioned you were in the music business.” Along with being a big political donor with friends in New York.

  “We’ve morphed into fashion. Getting tough to make money in music, but there’s a fortune in street clothes.”

  “What kind of music?”

  “Hip hop.”

  Which would not have been my first guess. He was white—pale, blue-eyed white—not black, ethnic, nor even vaguely exotic. No ponytail. No unshaven grizzled cheek. No earring. His dark suit would have made an accountant yawn. And while he was wearing an interesting necktie, I was willing to bet it had been chosen by a young girlfriend in an attempt to keep her friends from giggling.

  “What I’m saying, Ben, is this—the kid may be troubled, he may be a slacker, he may be a college dropout, but he is not a killer.”

  “Trooper Moody, our state trooper, apparently told the state’s attorney that there was bad blood between your son and Billy Tiller.”

  “That came as news to me.” Kimball closed his fist and pressed it hard on the tablecloth, reminding me of yet another quality often shared by successful businessmen and psychopaths: charm as readily conjured as it was superficial. The gloves were off, again. We had returned to the purpose of my summons to New York. “Doubt, Abbott. Doubt. You will create doubt.”

  Chapter Four

  “Where’d you learn to drive bulldozers?” I asked, after they locked us in the interview room.

  Jeffrey Kimball was a skinny twenty-one-year-old, lost in an oversize jailhouse running suit. He wore glasses and a hangdog expression that suited his circumstances. Actually, he looked less hang dog than equal parts resigned and relieved. Common emotions for many prisoners, relieved of having to act and make decisions.

  He had a soft voice. I could barely hear the answer to my question. “I was studying landscape design and I wanted to earn money? So Dad got me into the union.”