Ice Cap

by Chris Knopf

  The owner directed me to a small table in the corner and promptly left before I could ask for a menu and the best pinot in the house.

  “Puis-j’avoir le menu et votre meilleure bouteille de pinot noir, s’il vous plaît,” I said to him when he finally found the energy to walk the few steps from where he stood indifferently by the kitchen door.

  “It is an expensive bottle,” he said.

  I refused to take the bait.

  “Je m’attends a rien de moins,” I said to him. I would expect nothing less.

  Ignored after that as expected, I was forced to linger interminably over the menu, which was all in French, nibble on sliced baguette, and kill about half the pinot, which, as advertised, carried a breathtaking price tag. After two-thirds of the bottle was gone, I didn’t care so much.

  “Would Madame like anything translated?” asked the owner when he finally buckled under the suspense and came back to my table.

  I ordered the weirdest stuff I could pick out, something like snail livers on toast and pickled boar brains, and another bottle of wine.

  “Cette fois, emmenez nous votre pinot noir bon marché.”

  “Our least-expensive wine? We have a mediocre blend from a struggling vineyard who we’ll likely not source from again. I’m sure it will suit Madame perfectly.”

  The rest of the night went as hoped. The food was actually very good as long as you didn’t dwell on the details, and that mediocre pinot tasted better than the first bottle, though in fairness, it was launched from a less critical plateau. Most important, my mood, generally a jumbled mix of cheerful goodwill and heart-seizing anxiety, was fully restored.

  I sailed out to the car and took the measure of my mental and physical acuity. It wasn’t too good. It wouldn’t be the first time I called Harry and asked with abject apology if he could please come and save me from a vehicular manslaughter charge. There was even a time I couldn’t reach Harry and had to call Sam. He acted like I’d given him the greatest gift in the world just to get out of bed and drive twenty miles to retrieve me and get me home in one piece. I know he did that so I wouldn’t hesitate to ask him again if necessary, which only cemented the odd grip he had on a remote but exclusive piece of my heart.

  Part of the night’s strategy was to leave my cell phone in the car, the most certain way to ensure a complete disconnect from electronic nags. I fumbled with my keys, confirming the need to call in reinforcements, but eventually got the door open. I closed the door and meant to toss my purse on the passenger seat, but instead it landed on a man’s lap.

  I shrieked and went for the door handle, but two hands from behind wrapped around me and gripped the silken folds of my nice blouse. They were strong enough hands to hold me in place, even with an errant little finger that took the opportunity to stroke the top of my right breast. I grabbed the finger and started to bend it back when another player entered the scene, the round muzzle of a big semiautomatic held by the guy in the front seat, pressed into the side of my head. All motion stopped.

  “Let go of me,” I forced out. “I won’t go anywhere.”

  “That’s a cinch,” said the voice next to me.

  “Let go of me or I’ll snap off this finger,” I said, pulling it back another notch.

  The owner of the finger loosened his grasp, but not all the way.

  “Break it and you’ll be dead,” said the voice behind me.

  “How do I know I’m not dead anyway? Might as well take a finger with me.”

  “That’s just stupid,” said the same guy. I countered by pulling the finger back to near breaking point. He yelped. “Jesus, let go.”

  “You first.”

  He complied, helping himself to a semi-feel along the way. Once his left hand was all the way gone, I let go of his pinkie. He quickly pulled it away. The gun, however, was still stuck to my temple.

  My heart fluttered in my chest and fear squeezed off my breath. The fuzzy, slightly happy wine buzz was now a blanket of semi-anesthesia of dubious benefit, as my mind furiously sought a way out.

  “What’s the deal, boys?” I choked out.

  “Does there have to be a deal?” said the one with the gun.

  I tried to turn my head toward him, but he told me to look straight ahead and keep both hands on the wheel.

  “There’s got to be some reason why you’re risking twenty years at Sanger for assault, unlawful restraint, and use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a crime,” I said.

  “I hate smart-ass lawyers,” said the guy in the back.

  “You’ve got a lot of company,” I said. “I hate some myself.”

  “I told you she had a reputation,” said the guy with the gun. “The original smart-ass.”

  I risked a quick look in the rearview mirror. In the darkness of the parking lot all I could see was a shadowy form in the backseat. It was a bulky form, which was the best I could tell.

  “How about putting down the gun,” I said. “Those things can just go off.”

  “Is that so? Maybe that’s why I’m holding it to your head in the first place.”

  My mind iced over and I felt my hands going numb. I’d been threatened before, but never in such tight quarters, my Volvo now a metallic and glass box closing in on me.

  “You’ve got to tell me what this is about,” I said. “Talk to me.”

  “Do we got to talk to her?” the guy with the gun asked the other guy.

  “I don’t think so,” he answered, as if genuinely considering the question.

  “I’ve got a thousand-dollar limit on my ATM card,” I said. “There’s a bank right across the street.”

  The guy with the gun made a soft whistle.

  “A thousand bucks. Now that’s some real money.”

  “I can get more.”

  “I bet you can.”

  No less terrified, I began to feel the stirrings of inchoate rage. At this evil cruelty, at my own foolishness to think I could work in a world where things like this could happen. Suicide by career choice.

  “If your intention was to frighten me, you achieved that,” I said. “Now tell me why or pull the trigger and get it over with.”

  The man pushed the barrel more forcefully into my head. I pushed back, gripped the steering wheel with my deadened hands, and conjured an image of Harry, to whom I silently said, I love you and I’m sorry to have put you through so much, but at least I saved the worst for last.

  A thousand years of silence went by and then the guy pulled the gun away. The pressure was gone, but I still felt the outlines of the round tube as if it had burned a brand into my skull.

  “Okay,” said the guy with the gun. “Maybe we can work out a deal. You think?” he asked the guy in the back.

  “Up to you,” said the other guy.

  “You believe we’re serious,” asked the guy with the gun.

  “I do,” I said, with as much sincerity as I could put into my voice. Not a hard task. “I am convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

  “That’s a good starting point. So here’s the deal: You give what looks like a world-class defense of Franco Raffini, but unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to save the man from life in prison. We’re thinking maximum security—say, Pendlefield, outside of Buffalo.”

  I nodded. “I can do that. He doesn’t stand a chance anyway. Their case is too strong.”

  “Exactly,” said the guy cheerfully. “Like fallin’ off a log.”

  “But that’s not all,” said the guy in the back.

  “Oh, right,” said his partner. “We never had this conversation. It was all just a bad dream. Too much booze. Based on how you smell, that should be easy to cop to.”

  “Don’t worry, boys. I know the drill. I’ve already forgotten.”

  “Smart-ass can be smart, too,” said the guy in the back.

  “They don’t let dummies practice jurisprudence,” I said.

  “Whatever the fuck that is.”

  The guy in the back told me to keep
looking out the windshield as the doors opened and they got out of the car. The guy with the gun had one last piece of advice for me.

  “The day Raffini walks through the doors at Pendlefield is the day we stop watching every move you make. We’ll be your guardian angels, only like in reverse. And the next time there’s no chitchat. It’s just bang-bang, lights out. Got that?”

  “I got it.”

  Even without the gentle encouragement, I continued to hold the steering wheel and stare out the window. As my throat loosened, I heard myself making little wordless sounds. And then, at some point, the enormity of simply being alive caused a torrent of gratitude and joy to flood my mind, and not until I’d exhausted myself of massive, gasping sobs did I allow a proportionate sum of murderous wrath to set up lodgings; whether they were permanent or not would have to be seen.

  * * *

  I spent the next two hours of the following morning shooting the heads off black silhouettes clipped to an overhead cable system used to retrieve your targets and determine the degree of carnage. The operation was privately owned but had become the de facto Southampton police firing range, since the town didn’t have one of its own. To that point, there were cops in the shooting booths to either side of me, one whose clusters were so tight it looked like a single big hole. The other could barely hit the paper. I took note of their name tags.

  Like the French restaurant in Amagansett, this was a good place to hide from conversation. Secure inside a pair of ballistic glass panels, with earmuffs on and concentration fully focused, it was a soothingly solitary pursuit. I don’t know if that’s true of all firing ranges; this was the only one I’d used since I was a kid. But I think the coppish nature of the clientele also lent a professional atmosphere that I always appreciated, especially that morning.

  I would never win a sharpshooting contest, but my aim was slightly to the plus side of average. Along with snow driving, tire changing, circuit-breaker switching, and other manly arts, my father had also taught me how to shoot a pistol well enough to carry a license my whole adult life. It was only since I’d drifted into my current practice that the license and training had taken on some utility—up to and including shooting a guy who was trying to kill me with a hammer. This is a major advantage, to know you’re capable of such a thing. It makes the target shooting far less abstract, and thus a more meaningful endeavor.

  I’d started out on my father’s Smith & Wesson 39, a 9mm semiautomatic, and had evolved to the even lighter, more powerful .40 caliber Glock, the official firearm of the Southampton Town Police. Since Joe Sullivan had reintroduced me to gunfire, it was easier to use the same weapon for practice and training. This was why, when I was at the back of the room at the bench set up for cleaning your guns after practice, the cop with the good aim took me for another officer.

  “Were you at last year’s PBA conference?” he asked. “You look familiar.”

  I didn’t look up from the bench.

  “I’m familiar because I’m a defense attorney in Southampton.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I’m stationed in Sag Harbor. I thought by the way you handled that thing…”

  “Thanks, but I’m not in a good place to talk right now.”

  “That’s okay. Your two-shot pattern is smart, but I wanted to suggest you pause maybe a half second longer after the first discharge. Your second shot is going high because the barrel hasn’t settled back down.”

  He walked over to another bench and began disassembling his gun. I knew he was right. I’d been given the same advice before. What he couldn’t know is why I was rushing the second shot. It was anger getting into the process, bypassing the required cool judgment and directly pulling the trigger. It was the worst possible state of mind to be in when shooting a gun, but God forgive me, it made me feel better.

  * * *

  Burton Lewis had an office on the top floor of the building he owned on Wall Street, but he was just as easily found at his house in Southampton, where he spent at least half his time. Not that Burton was a man of leisure. In fact, Burton was one of the hardest-working people I’d ever known, even though he was the third generation of his family who technically didn’t have to work at all.

  In the twenty years since he inherited the building on Wall Street and the big law firm that went with it, he’d quadrupled his personal fortune while still finding time to replace shingles, cut out dead limbs, lay down stone patios, build a pool room into an unfinished area on the third floor, and undertake countless other tasks at his rambling seaside mansion.

  Not directly seaside. His great-grandfather thought having a house directly on the ocean was an absurd risk, so he built his slightly inland. That all but one of the neighboring houses built on the ocean had either been moved back or allowed to wash into the sea during the intervening years confirmed the man’s skill in establishing an enduring fortune.

  Though he was as gracious and genial as a man could possibly be, Burton the Fourth was fundamentally a very private person. There were practical reasons for this, since anyone with great wealth can be wary of the dangers envy can present. But more than that, Burton was simply shy, and being gay even in these increasingly enlightened times seemed to reinforce that predisposition.

  So it was fitting that if you wanted to visit Burton in Southampton, you had to pass through a solid wooden gate at the head of his endless driveway. And to do this, you had to get past the mansion’s second-in-command, Isabella Torres, Burton’s Cubana assistant.

  “Jacquelina,” she said through the intercom speaker next to the gate when I announced my presence. “How is my favorite abogado?” She meant lawyer. “He told me you were coming by.”

  “I thought Burton was your favorite abogado.”

  “Okay, favorite female version of the same. Except when you come with that smart-aleck carpenter. He’s a bad omen, that one.”

  Isabella liked me, which was not an insubstantial accomplishment. Most people she disliked on principle, and no one more than Sam Acquillo. That Sam was also Burton’s best friend complicated matters.

  “Just me this time, Isabella.”

  The driveway ran in a straight line between two tall privet hedges before curving into the final stretch that emptied out onto a broad turning circle. It was odd to see the house surrounded by piles of snow, most of the lush and sculptured landscaping lost beneath the mounds. It looked diminished somehow—still massive, but humbled. Isabella had the door open before I crossed the front porch.

  She had that ageless look of a person carrying too much weight and too many difficult memories. She and her husband, another abogado, had made a terrifying escape from Cuba to the Florida Keys in an open powerboat, after which he found work with Burton as an investigator in his tax practice. Soon after that, he dropped dead of a heart attack. Burton took Isabella in as a housekeeper, and that was that.

  “He’s with Arlon, installing the new dryer,” she said, motioning me to follow her. We passed through the cavernous foyer and slipped through a narrow door that was built into the wall paneling, literally a secret entrance to a hallway that served as a shortcut to the kitchen area. I said “area” because it was comprised of several rooms specialized for storage, prepping, cooking, and serving. Connected to the storage room was a laundry, where Burton and one of the staff handymen, a skinny little African American named Arlon Chapin, were struggling to retrofit a big commercial-grade dryer into the more modest space left by the old appliance.

  Arlon was a former client of ours, who, with two other successful graduates, lived in quarters above Burton’s five-car garage. Which probably explained why the local exotic-car thieves hadn’t tried to boost the Gullwing Mercedes that once belonged to Burton’s father that also resided there.

  All I saw of Burton were his khaki-covered legs sticking out from behind the dryer where it was pulled away from the wall. Arlon was leaning down with his hands on his knees, watching whatever Burton was doing.

  Isabella told him I was there.

&nb
sp; “Goddamn thing,” Burton swore, uncharacteristically. “Who would put a vent hose with a nonstandard diameter on a brand-new piece of equipment?”

  “Don’t know, Burt. You sure it’s nonstandard?” Arlon asked.

  The room shook with the sound of some sort of power tool Burton was operating behind the dryer. Arlon smiled at me, acknowledging the pleasure Burton took in tackling home maintenance, no matter how challenging.

  “If the vent don’t fit, make the vent hole bigger,” Arlon said to me, his smile broadening.

  More clattering noise and dust ensued, followed by the rest of Burton as he crawled out from behind the dryer.

  “Got it, the bugger,” he said happily.

  Wood chips festooned his straight brown hair and weathered but preternaturally youthful face. He shook his head like a terrier and brushed debris off his denim shirt as Arlon pulled him to his feet.

  “We’re so glad,” I said. “We know you hate defeat.”

  “Not true. Defeat is a healthy thing. In small doses.”

  He helped Arlon push the dryer into place, then left him to tidy up the job site. Burton told Isabella we’d be retreating to one of a half-dozen sunporches—a fairly long journey through a continuum of large rooms, each appointed in a different fashion though all in fine taste. Eluding the dual stereotypes of gay and rich, Burton’s house had a worn-in quality, clean and neat but roughly maintained. Not unlike the man himself.

  He stopped at a powder room along the way, cleaned up, then led me to the Ice Palace.

  It was half of an octagon, about twenty feet at the extremes, and all glass—walls and ceiling. The furniture was iron, painted a dove gray except for the tabletops, which were clear glass. The slate on the floor matched the furniture, and the seat cushions were the whitest of whites. Beyond the glass walls was a sea of pure snow cover, but for the slight azure tinge courtesy of the sunlit blue sky. The field was dotted by a small flock of fidgety little gray birds, its vastness constrained only by a distant, nearly leafless privet hedge.

  “What do you think?” said Burton, dropping into an iron love seat and looking around the room.