Cop Job

by Chris Knopf

  “No. I’m working. I guess you can come in.”

  The apartment was about the size of Allison’s, though opposite in decorative exuberance. What furniture was there was all right-angled leather, chrome, and glass. A brushed aluminum laptop was open on the desk. A huge black and white woodcut of abstract agony covered one wall. He sat at the desk after offering me the only other chair in the room.

  “I never met Hepner,” he said. “I just heard she was dating.”

  “I don’t know much about what Allison did for a living,” I said. “Maybe you could tell me.”

  “Advertising. Or, as I call it, narcissists, neurotics, and infantilized fanatics in the service of free enterprise.”

  “Something a writer might say.”

  “A copywriter. The only way to make more money with fewer words is a ransom note. Someone else wrote that line. Though I could have, I’m sure.”

  “So Allison’s in charge of the pictures,” I said.

  “How elegantly put. Yes. Though creative teams tend to concept together before crawling off to our respective holes to complete the work. Do you have any idea who could have done this thing to her?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  He blinked at me from behind the round glasses.

  “Not a clue. But then again, I haven’t worked with her for more than a year. We had what’s euphemistically called a falling out. I’d call it more of a tossing off the cliff.”

  “Who tossed whom?” I asked.

  Like other people I’ve known who made their living with words, Weeks took a few extra beats between question and answer, putting a dash of craft into every response.

  “You wouldn’t think such a slender girl could toss a chap so far.”

  The image didn’t fit that well with the one of her lying in that hospital bed, but I pushed both aside.

  “Sounds like a tough business, all these words and pictures,” I said.

  He gave a nearly silent laugh.

  “The words and pictures are the easy part. It’s the politics that’ll get you.”

  “I hear that from a lot of people.”

  “I wish I could help you more, Mr. Acquillo, but I’m on a ferocious deadline.”

  “Actually you haven’t helped me at all.”

  His blinking sped up considerably, and a bit of flush formed on his prominent cheekbones.

  “I don’t think I’m required to tell you anything,” he said, in a quiet voice that crept up a half register. “Even though I have, out of respect for your situation.”

  “It’s your situation, too. You don’t have to help me, but pretty soon two hardnosed cops will come calling and if you think evading their questions is a good idea, try it. What really went on between you and Allison?”

  He lips grew tight as if trying to prevent any further words from escaping, to no avail.

  “Not what you’re suggesting.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything.”

  “Call me anything you want. I’m not a thief.”

  “Is that what she called you?” I asked.

  “Among other things. Quite a few actually. Just because I started a job with her and ended it with another.”

  “So you stole her ideas.”

  He slapped the top of his thighs in the first natural gesture I’d seen him perform.

  “You collaborate in a team, who knows where the ideas come from. Somebody sparks something, you build on it. You go together down different paths. It’s the process. Anyway she got paid. That’s how it works. You get the money, you forfeit all right to ownership. And you stay professional. She’s your daughter and you’re upset. I don’t blame you, but I’m not going to be the one to educate you on the niceties of Allison Acquillo’s sweet and subtle personality. Though I can see where she got it from.”

  I had to give him points for perception as well as chutzpah, even if he didn’t realize how close he was to getting my fist crammed down his throat. But even a guy as sweetly subtle as me knew that was an unproductive strategy.

  Instead I told him when I learned things he could have shared with me I’d be back, assuming he had even more to tell. Despite the brief show of guts, he didn’t seem happy at the prospect. I got out of there more quickly than part of me wanted, the part that knew I was leaving important stuff on the table. But I wasn’t sure I could trust the rest of me being in such close proximity to any creature toward whom my precious daughter held such enmity.

  I stopped at the sidewalk to gather up some New York City air, cleaner than it used to be, so the big lungfuls had a calming effect, which was better than choking to death, which a completely different part of me likely would have welcomed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  My relationship with Allison followed the dreary arc shared by a lot of fathers I know. Until she was about twelve, the sun and the moon and all the stars rose and set through the beneficent ordering of her father. I didn’t know how to conjure this sort of devotion, and neither did I try, it just happened.

  Abby did nothing to encourage or discourage the mutual adoration that throbbed between us—the code words, stolen looks prompting uncontrollable mirth, the desperate clench around my neck, and tears that came upon us both unexpectedly over seemingly nothing.

  But then puberty and the demands of my job and Abby’s emotional sabotage all converged and blew apart that happy union. I can’t tell you when it started, but it ended with me drunk in a hotel bar, having lost my job, my house, my wife, and all of my money, watching Allison walk away from me, and thus, losing her, too.

  That’s when Abby really went to town, believing that preserving that separation was the only way to save Allison from the fate that was me. Luckily Allison had by then developed her own antisocial tendencies, thus forming some common ground upon which a fresh start could take root.

  It took a lot of work, but we got there eventually, more or less.

  THE BUILDING the Wentworths lived in had two doormen, one inside and one out. Getting past the first was no guarantee with the second, not without forewarning by one of their residents, which I didn’t have.

  So in a departure from standard form, I tried calling them on the phone.

  As soon as Mr. Wentworth got on the line I dropped my friend Burton Lewis’s name hard enough to put a hole in the sidewalk. Wentworth didn’t remember meeting me at Burton’s house, probably because he hadn’t, but I’d been to the place often enough to create a plausible story. He had a high-pitched, scratchy but cheerful voice, which didn’t falter when I told him I was part of a murder investigation Burton’s law firm was engaged in that might have a connection to his son’s death. I asked him if he could let me come up to their apartment and he surprised me by saying yes.

  Both doormen were courteous bordering on obsequious, reminding me how much easier it was to have an official purpose in this world.

  I knew the Wentworths had a lot of money, based on the house they had on the ocean in Southampton, not far from Burton’s. It didn’t quite prepare me for stepping out of the elevator and into an enclosed foyer, since the Wentworth apartment encompassed the entire floor. I hadn’t quite taken in the art on the walls when a pair of double doors opened and emitted a short round guy stuffed into a melon-colored shirt, with white pants and shoes. He carried an unlit cigar, though the stench of it followed him into the foyer. We shook hands.

  “How is my favorite fruitcake?” he asked, referring to Burton, who was gay, and a man of such dignified poise and decency that I felt a surge of insult on his behalf. But I was there to do a job, so I swallowed it down.

  “Burton’s doing quite well,” I said. “I’m sure he would tell you so himself.”

  He waved me through the doors, which led to a long, broad hallway pierced by an occasional arched opening. More art lined the walls, along with antique tables on which pottery and sculpture waited to be knocked over by visitors like me bedazzled by the extravagant display of square footage.

  I followed h
im as he shuffled into a sitting area lit by floor-to-ceiling windows shrouded in gauzy curtains. A thin, white-haired woman was perched on the edge of a chair that belonged behind a velvet rope. She waited for me to go over to her and offer my hand. Hers felt skeletal, though the grip was forthright and strong.

  “Nice to see you again, Mr. Acquillo,” she said, also buying into my social fiction.

  “Call me Sam, if you would,” I said. “Everyone else does.”

  “Everyone calls me Mrs. Wentworth,” she said, “though I prefer Sally. Jack and Sally,” she added, gazing over at her husband who stood at a glass table with a decanter in his hand.

  “I hope you drink, Sam. There’s still plenty left in this bottle.”

  I assured him I did, which was a relief to Sally as well. Jack also lit the cigar after offering one to me, which I declined with a touch of tobacco-addicted regret.

  “I appreciate you letting me barge into your home here to talk about something I’m sure you’d rather not talk about,” I said.

  Jack’s head was the type of bullet-shaped thing that benefitted from fashion’s new acceptance of slick baldness. Neither of the Wentworths had wrinkles, without any obvious plastic surgery, though Jack’s skin was pinkish where Sally’s was as white as her hair, and nearly translucent.

  “Not at all, Sam,” said Jack, speaking with a slight lisp that reminded me of Truman Capote. “Especially since that asshole from the Southampton Police told me to stay away from you people.”

  “He told me to stay away from you,” I said.

  “As noted, an asshole.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you with this stuff,” I said.

  “We lost Joseph a long time ago,” said Jack. “His death was a formality.”

  “We have four other children,” said Sally, as if that explained their seeming indifference. “All doing quite nicely.”

  “Joseph didn’t fall in with a bad crowd,” said Jack. “He was the bad crowd.”

  “Though we loved him, Jack, you know that,” said Sally, not that convincingly.

  “Had you talked to him much before he was killed?” I asked.

  Jack gestured at Sally with his cigar. She nodded.

  “I’d speak with him on the phone. Every week. It was a habit begun when he was in boarding school.”

  “Never made it to college,” said Jack. “Too busy with my lawyers keeping him out of jail.”

  “Was there anything different in those last days?” I asked. “Anything that said he was in deeper trouble than usual?”

  Sally had been sitting with her knees turned to the side and her hands in her lap, as if posing for a portrait. Now she sat back and crossed her legs, cocktail glass in hand.

  “Definitely,” she said. “He was quite excitable by nature, but he seemed much more distressed. Though fatalistic, which he often seemed as well. Joseph always had trust issues.”

  “Paranoid is what he was,” said Jack. “You’d be, too, if you were ass deep in the drug trade.”

  “He lived hand to mouth but never took a dime of help from us,” said Sally, a bit off topic. “We tried so hard to help.”

  “Did he say anything about Greeks?” I asked.

  Sally looked puzzled.

  “I don’t recall, though he said he met people from all over working import and export.” Jack guffawed. Sally seemed undeterred. “He didn’t just deal in drugs, I’m certain of that.”

  “What about cops? Any talk about them?” I asked.

  “He told me they couldn’t be trusted,” said Sally. “Though he felt that way about everyone.”

  I wondered if their opinion of their son would improve if they knew he was a police informant. It half made me want to deliver the news. But I couldn’t tell them, since it was still under wraps.

  “You referred to Detective Veckstrom. Did Joey ever talk about him?”

  Sally looked over at Jack, but when he didn’t say anything, she said, “He really didn’t like Mr. Veckstrom.”

  “He called him a Nazi fuck-wad,” said Jack.

  Sally looked away, toward one of the big windows that cast upon her such a flattering, diffused light.

  “I have no idea what that means,” she said.

  I suddenly wished I were somewhere else, despite my wonder at making it into their apartment in the first place. Jack looked at me, his fat face looking even fatter from the effects of the double bourbon in his hand.

  “So there you have it,” he said.

  I got the feeling they were the type of couple that needed a third party in the room as a mediator, or an audience to bear witness to private truths otherwise never spoken.

  “Do you believe in genetic predestination, Mr. Acquillo?” Sally asked me.

  “You mean, that kids can be born goofed up? Yeah. But are genes destiny? Not so sure about that. I used to blame everything I didn’t like about my daughter on her mother, though in retrospect it was probably more my fault.”

  “You have just the one?”

  “Yeah. Unlike you, I have no way to contrast and compare. Of course, neither does she.”

  “Complicated shit, huh?” said Jack. “Kids.”

  “Except the unconditional love,” I said. “That part’s pretty simple.”

  “What exactly do you do for Burton?” Sally asked.

  “Mostly fill up space in his private box at the Garden. Sometimes a little finish carpentry. He prefers to do that stuff himself, but I can teach him a few things.”

  She looked more confused than disappointed.

  “I thought you were an attorney.”

  “I just work for one. She runs Burton’s operation. I’m in this because one of her clients was murdered. A disabled guy named Alfie Aldergreen. They dropped him and his wheelchair in Hawk Pond. Did Joseph ever talk about him?”

  Jack perked up.

  “The wackjob with the cammies and saxophone,” he said. “Buzzed around the Village. Public hazard.”

  “Paranoid schizophrenic, technically,” I said.

  “Joseph knew him,” said Sally. “We were having lunch on the sidewalk, and I’d just given my son this lovely outfit. He dressed so oddly. Your wheelchair person rode by and Joseph put the boxes right in his lap.”

  “Fat load of good that did,” said Jack. “Wheelchair person only wore fatigues.”

  “His name was Alfie,” I said, then asked Sally, “Do you remember what they talked about?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, but they did one of those funny ghetto handshakes. And there was quite a bit of laughter. They were friends.”

  “What the hell, Sam. The kid could have hung with movie stars and billionaires and instead he’s palling around with some fucking nutbag cripple.”

  Half of me wanted to tap my fist on the top of that bald noggin, but the other half couldn’t help but hear the pain and longing in his voice. I sympathized with his plight, caught as he was within the baffling force field of a father’s love.

  I MET up with Sullivan and Fenton at the bar where we’d started out. Fenton was about the same vintage as Sullivan, though in much worse physical shape. I often wondered why some cops are so committed to going to seed where others have bodies like Captain America well into old age. Maybe it’s the same with any other group, though it seemed like cops clumped at the opposite ends of the sliding scale.

  Fenton looked like he could really use a shower and someone to tell him how to comb his hair and straighten his collar. Both were red faced from the heat, made worse by the lightweight jackets they used to hide their guns. Of course, there was no better way to telegraph to the dumbest criminal in the world that here were a couple of cops.

  It was off-duty time, so Sullivan ordered a beer. Fenton a double Scotch on the rocks with a side of water, with the kind of enthusiasm that made me think off-duty status wasn’t as essential as it was with Sullivan.

  “What’d you learn?” I asked them.

  “The west nineties aren’t the shithole they
were when I was coming up,” said Fenton. “It’s making me nostalgic.”

  “Still plenty of dirtballs,” said Sullivan.

  “None of them knew anything,” said Fenton, “though some tried to act like they did. Junkies don’t make very good liars.”

  “So you’re crossing local actors off your list,” I said.

  “Not yet, but I’m not feeling it,” said Fenton. “Don’t get a lot of home invasions around here. I’m thinking outsider.”

  As you often hear, New York is a city of neighborhoods. People like to live, shop, eat, and mug other people in familiar surroundings.

  “Targeted,” I said.

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” said Sullivan. “Though it’s early yet.”

  “I’m thinking the same thing,” said Fenton. “She buzzed the guy in. Could have been a delivery. You can get a stick of gum brought to your door at three in the morning in this town. But my street contacts would know if there was a bad guy working that angle. Unless he’s just startin’ out. That could be.”

  “So friends and family,” said Sullivan. “Sorry, Sam. You know what I mean.”

  “I do,“ I said. “And coworkers. I talked to two of them today. I’m not ready to like Weeks, but he’s worth a closer look. I think I’ve prepared him for the tender mercies of the NYPD and their Long Island cousins.”

  “We’ll be delivering that tomorrow,” said Fenton, waving the bartender over to refill our glasses. Some time went by while that got sorted out, along with an order of bar food meticulously specified by our host cop.

  “I stay away from the chicken wings,” he said. “Spent too much time in Guangdong.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but I didn’t ask.

  When things settled down I told Sullivan that I’d paid a visit to Joey Wentworth’s parents at their apartment on the East Side. I filled him in on the conversation as well as my memory would allow, leaving out the psychodrama.

  “I know their place off Wickapogue Road,” said Sullivan. “About the size of the Pentagon.”

  “They like a lot of elbow room,” I said.

  “So Joey knew Alfie.”

  “He did, but who didn’t. Alfie was always around.”