by Chris Knopf
ESTHER FERGUSON’S office was on the way back to the cottage, and it was still early, so despite some trepidation, I stopped in to see her.
The Social Services Department for Eastern Suffolk County was in a converted Victorian house in a mixed residential-commercial zone at the western end of Hill Street in Southampton. Not in the Village exactly, though not all the way out. The porch was deep, the ceilings high, and the smell was all damp, moldy rugs and stale cigarette smoke. The interior surfaces were freshly painted, though no one thought to strip off the underlayment. This turned the elegant old crown moldings and baseboards into congealed, linear blobs. I stood in the foyer and tried to remember behind which of the unmarked four doors Esther captained her social welfare ship.
I picked the one in least repair.
“Come on in,” I heard in response to the knock. I walked in and she said, “Sam Ah-cquillo. I been expectin’ you.”
“I figured.”
I sat in one of her visitors’ chairs. The office was sparsely decorated, but bright and inviting, nearly elegant, as if the shopworn foyer was a ruse to throw off intruders. The walls were paneled in the original wide-board chestnut tongue and groove, which nicely set off Esther’s academic credentials and accomplishments, including a master’s in sociology from Princeton.
Esther herself was equally well kept, slim, poised, and handsome. Her perfume filled the room like a bunch of fresh-cut flowers. Her face would have been pretty if it hadn’t spent so much time expressing wariness and assumed affront. Like your mother always warned, if you keep crossing your eyes like that, they’re gonna stay that way.
“What went down with Alfie—wrong, wrong, wrong,” she said.
“Any ideas?” I asked.
“ ’Bout what?”
“Who killed him.”
“That’s a leap. Somebody killin’ him. Didn’t just fall in the water?” she asked.
“After he duct taped himself to the chair? Neat trick. I’d like to see you do it.”
“No you wouldn’t. I’d prove you wrong.”
“Probably would, but you know what I’m saying,” I said.
“I do. It’s just too depressing.”
“So no ideas.”
“You keep sayin’ that,” she said.
“What else should I say? I want to know who killed him. Maybe you have an insight or two. You were his case manager. Nobody knew him better.”
“I already told the police what I know,” she said, like that should be the end of the conversation.
“I don’t care what you told the cops. I want to know what you really think,” I said.
She sat forward in her red leather chair and gripped the arms, as if preparing to leap at me.
“You think I wouldn’t be totally forthcoming with the police? You think I’m crazy, or just self-destructive?” she asked.
“What was Alfie’s general mood in the weeks before he died? Anything unusual?”
“His mood was the same mood as always. Paranoid schizophrenic. The man was exceedingly clinical. Livin’ right on the line. A little shove would’ve sent him right over.”
“That’s what he got. A little shove into the harbor.”
She shifted papers around her desk without looking at them, since her eyes were fixed on mine.
“You know, Alfie wasn’t the only character in town people would call crazy,” she said. “That people would be scared to death of.”
I couldn’t tell if that was a threat or an insult, or both. I just knew I wouldn’t take the bait.
“Jackie Swaitkowski thought he was more agitated than normal,” I said. “More fearful.”
“Some people are separated from society because of mental illness, or unfortunate circumstances,” she said, not wanting to let it go. “And some are just antisocial.”
“Not me. I got lots of friends.”
“Yeah. Like Alfie Aldergreen. And look where that got him.”
“If you’d locked him away like you wanted to, he’d be just as dead,” I said, grabbing that bait with both hands.
And there it was. Esther had started the legal process of declaring Alfie incompetent and would have either moved him into an institution, or some group home Up Island where the state agency she worked for maintained the fiction that they integrated their jobless, drug-lobotomized clients into the community. I got in her way, and with the help of Jackie and Jimmy Watruss, had kept her at bay.
She’d lost an older brother to the streets, severely manic-depressive, after they closed the mental hospital where he’d lived for most of his life. This decided Esther’s choice of careers, and also cemented her skepticism toward deinstitutionalization, a view that ran counter to the current thinking of the mental health profession. That said, a contrarian position suited her nature.
“Some people deserve to be locked up, no matter what the courts say. And I’m not talkin’ Alfie Aldergreen.”
She was referring to a persistent rumor that I’d gotten away with murder a few times. A belief unfortunately shared by important members of the law enforcement community, including Ross. She thought mention of that would be disturbing to me, but I’d heard it enough by then that it was old hat.
“Okay,” I said, “I didn’t think you’d be much help.”
I got up and left her office. She was saying something as I walked away, but I couldn’t make it out, either because she spoke too softly or I just didn’t want to hear.
CHAPTER THREE
I went back to my shop and finished the drawer boxes for Frank’s built-ins. The work was a good distraction from the troubling images of Alfie Aldergreen that kept bubbling up in my mind. I tried not to think about how frightened he must have been. Had he gone to his death thinking the dark forces of eternal evil had finally caught up with him? Or did he know the truth?
Amanda phoned earlier to tell me she was sleeping in that evening, not having fully recovered from the night before. Though I only had a passing familiarity with hangovers, a dubious blessing, I offered my sympathy and best wishes for sunnier times tomorrow.
“Well put,” she said. “My head has been experiencing inclement weather all day.”
After knocking around a few golf balls for Eddie, I cleaned off in the outdoor shower and climbed into fresh clothes. I left Eddie to guard the two houses, though the only threats he usually focused on were seabirds and colorful, inflated toys blown in from the Little Peconic Bay.
I drove into the Village in my ’67 Pontiac Grand Prix, a car I’d inherited along with the cottage from my dead parents. My father bought the car only a few months before he was killed. It was a surprising purchase for a guy without a drop of sporting blood in his body. Until then, he’d driven nothing more stirring than shabby, overpowered pickups, which his mechanic’s skills kept running well past their life expectancies. After I discovered the preposterous vehicle in a shed at the back of the property, it took some engineering skill to get it pounded into legal shape. In hindsight the project might have saved my life, as it substituted industry for the resolute self-destruction that steered my life at the time.
The car had no reason to exist in the early twenty-first century, but it was my car and would have to do. And given its scale and latent ballistic force, other vehicles, both domestic and imported—and even sturdy pickups—instinctively gave it wide berth. Well advised, since none would survive a one-on-one altercation.
My goal was the big bar and restaurant on Main Street in Southampton. Jackie had told me she and her boyfriend, Harry Goodlander, would be there. I liked the place well enough. The food was overpriced, but the front of the restaurant opened up onto the street, letting in sea breezes and the aimless chatter of passersby. And I liked the bartender, an unreconstructed Brit who called himself Geordie. I was the only one in town who knew why.
I parked in a remote spot, hoping to save the Grand Prix injury from the swinging doors of neighboring cars. Rescuing the old Pontiac from appropriate death (more than once) had instille
d in me unwarranted, but deeply paternal, feelings.
Jackie and Harry were already there. Geordie was engaged with a swarm of wait staff at the service end of the bar, but the hostess, another regular friend of mine, saw me working through the crowd and made sure my usual Absolut on the rocks was waiting for me when I got to my seat.
“Bon appétit,” I said to Jackie before taking my first sip.
“That’s for food. You’re having a drink.”
“Always splitting hairs.”
“Learn to say ‘Cheers.’ Geordie will appreciate it.”
Harry reached across Jackie with a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt. I shook it as well as I could. The guy was around seven feet tall—lean, wide across the shoulders and stronger than a front-end loader. He lacked athletic grace, but that was a fine point to anyone stupid enough to challenge him.
“Hi, Harry,” I said. “How’s the logistics dodge?”
Harry shipped things around the world for a living.
“In constant motion. How’s custom cabinetry?”
“Static, but pays the bills.”
“Sorry about Alfie,” he said. “He was a good friend of yours.”
“Not a friend exactly, more of a nuisance. But I appreciate the thought.”
“He was a friend,” said Jackie. “Sam’s uncomfortable with finer emotions,” she added to Harry.
“Fuck all that,” I said.
Geordie finally found his way to where we were sitting. He looked glad to see us, which I attributed to our sparkling repartee, though it was probably more about the tips.
“What can we do for you then?” he asked.
“We’re good for now,” said Harry, cheerfully.
“Did you know Alfie Aldergreen?” I asked, spoiling the mood.
Geordie grew serious.
“Knew him well. Bloody awful.”
“Any ideas?” I asked.
Geordie was about forty, with a square head filled with thick black and grey hair and a blocky, fluid frame that served him well in a fight. I’d seen him in action, and though I respected his courage, I could see holes in his technique. I felt a little bad thinking things like that, but it was the habit of a long, occasionally violent fighter’s life.
“Heard not a fookin’ thing, man,” he said. “No reason for it.”
“You’ll tell me if anything comes up,” I said, leaning in a bit to give the exchange a conspiratorial feel.
“Aye. I want the bastards well as you,” he said, just loud enough for me to hear.
“Should I be feeling left out?” asked Jackie, talking across both me and Harry.
“Not at all, Hinny,” said Geordie. “We’re just gettin’ the odds straight on the Yankees.”
“I’d’ve thought Newcastle United was more your thing,” she said.
“And what would you know ’bout The Toon?” Geordie smirked.
“I was asking about Alfie,” I said. “Geordie doesn’t know any more than we do, but will keep his eyes and ears open.”
“Alreet, then,” said Geordie.
Jackie sat back in her seat, nearly satisfied with the answer.
“I’ll ask the kitchen lads,” said Geordie. “Sometimes they’d feed Alfie out the back. More a social thing than charity, mind. I told him he was welcome at the bar anytime, but there was an embarrassment factor. For him, not me.”
I believed him. Geordie was committed to social enlightenment. And not afraid to provide teaching moments to the unenlightened.
“Sure,” I said. “Is Tommy around?”
I was talking about a scrawny, good-natured guy from Pakistan who bussed tables at the place. He’d been at it long enough to earn a lot of friends, including me. Geordie picked up a phone behind the bar and called back to the kitchen. A few minutes later Tommy came out.
“Hey, Sam. What shakin’?”
“Not nearly enough. How ’bout you?” I said.
We all shook his hand and exchanged meaningless pleasantries.
“That thing that happen to Alfie,” he said. “What the fuck?”
“What’re people saying?” Jackie asked.
Tommy shook his head.
“Nothing but nonsense. Nobody know nothing.”
“What kind of nonsense?” I asked.
“That there’s a redneck cult out to kill cripples and Spanish people and this was a warning to them.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Jackie.
“Like I said, just nonsense. But don’t blame los caballeros. Paranoia is the immigrant’s life.”
“No blame, Tommy,” said Jackie. “I get it.” She handed him her card. “If you hear anything else, even the ridiculous, e-mail me, okay?”
He took the card and recorded her contact information into an iPhone, then handed it back to her. He looked at me like I was next.
“No luck, Tommy,” I said. “Don’t even own a computer.”
“Luddite,” said Jackie.
When I ran R&D for that big industrial company, I wrote analytical if/then protocols that ran through a massively parallel processing array within a bank of mainframe computers covering about three thousand square feet. The room generated enough heat to melt Antarctica and is still one of the most powerful computational centers on the planet. Jackie knew this, so it wasn’t worth mounting a rebuttal. And the truth was, she was basically right. I’d had a bellyful of technology, and if the digital revolution was happy to go on without me, I was happy to let it.
And you might think building custom kitchen cabinets and architectural detail was less complex, but only if you hadn’t tried to build any.
After our chat with Tommy, the group went back to the core pursuit—drinking enough to anesthetize ourselves against our respective painful realities. Luckily all three of us possessed a heroic capacity, so only God and Geordie knew how much we drank and how little it showed to the outside world.
I HAD no trouble finding my old car, which I thought was parked well away from potential harm, so it surprised me to see the rear window smashed in.
The safety glass had sprayed into the backseat, where it formed a ground cover and small drifts, like a snowstorm. I never kept anything of value in the car, so there was no reason to worry about that. The ignition switch looked okay, so likely no attempt to start the engine. Though why would you? The antique value of a 1967 Grand Prix was basically zilch, and why pick such a hulking oddity in Southampton, the home of ultrarare collectible cars?
The answer was apparent. The point wasn’t theft, it was damage. And not wanton, but with a purpose. I’d seen it before. It was a message, and I got what it said: Back off.
Bad strategy on their part.
FINDING A replacement rear window took some doing, but the people who rebuilt the car after a bad crash a few years ago had one shipped FedEx, and I was back in business a day after that. Meanwhile I got to borrow Amanda’s Audi A4 Avant, which wasn’t all that tough a sacrifice. I used it to go see Jimmy Watruss, Alfie’s former landlord.
Jimmy lived in the apartment above a storefront on Main Street in Southampton. The store had a different tenant every summer. That year it was overpriced clothes for young women and older women who hadn’t caught the article in Vogue on age-appropriateness.
The year before it was an art gallery. Before that, giant stuffed animals all the kids wanted to climb on, but weren’t allowed to. This might have been to teach the lesson of thwarted desire to the children of the very rich. Which is why it immediately went out of business.
Jimmy owned the building, and several more in the Village, including Mad Martha’s, the seafood restaurant and fish distributor, all inherited from his parents. It made for a nice living without him having to do a lot of work. This left plenty of time for Jimmy’s other interests—working with veterans groups on drug and alcohol rehab and hanging around the neighborhood bars, usually his own. Always good to stay close to your subject matter.
So he was easy enough to find.
Mad Martha’
s, a few blocks from downtown Southampton Village, was half seafood wholesaler and half locals-only joint. Not that they wouldn’t let the summer people come in for food and drink—none wanted to. Dark as a cave, with stained wood paneling on the walls and post-and-beam construction, the building had been converted from an eighteenth-century blacksmith’s shop about one hundred years before. The walls were covered with paintings of fishing dories hard to the wind and whalers harpooning creatures that looked more like ferocious sea monsters than innocent whales. Artifacts of obsolete fishing technology also graced the walls and hung from the open beams overhead. The aroma of fish cleaning and packaging occasionally wafted in from the back, adding to the authentic ambience.
The patronage was largely Anglo construction workers who represented the last vestige of local, working-class guys born on the East End to families who’d been there since the first English ship stumbled onto shore. Their attitudes shifted between pride of survivorship and resentment as strong and deep as a concrete pylon.
My background wasn’t that different, though they never quite got over the Italian name. Early on when I moved back to town, I had to establish my bona fides by kicking the ass of the first meatball who thought it would be fun to kick mine. Luckily that status didn’t have to be renewed every year, a former boxing career having a definite shelf life.
Another inhibiting factor for the summer people was a sign above the bar: “None of that electronic shit allowed.” An iPhone was stuck in the middle of the sign with a screwdriver. (Though this never discouraged Jackie from coming in once in a while, and I wouldn’t want to be the guy who instructed her on the house rules.)
Jimmy was standing outside the elbow of the L-shaped bar, drinking a beer with a few of his regular mates. He was a lot younger than I, and like Joe Sullivan, meaty but far from fat. His complexion was the color and consistency of oatmeal, a liability somewhat relieved by a moustache and goatee. His lion’s mane of dirty blond hair had witnessed few encounters with a comb, though you rarely saw him without a cowboy hat. Worked well with the cowboy boots.
