by Walter Marks
CHAPTER 7
The next morning Jessie Russell arrived early at East Hampton airport. When he’d landed the previous afternoon, he didn’t like how his wheels swerved on the tarmac. So now he had to put the Piper up on a jack to change the brake pads. Figuring he’d lube the wheel bearings too, he pulled the wheels. After a half hour’s work, his clothing and face were smeared with black grease. Like a crime scene, the airplane was covered with his fingerprints.
Jessie looked up and saw six passengers crossing to the Cessna Caravan amphibian plane parked near the terminal gate. It was the usual group of well-heeled Hamptonites opting for the thirty-five minute $545 flight to Manhattan, rather than the usual three-hour car, bus, or train trip.
Jessie watched the passengers with a mix of envy and loathing. Then he spotted a familiar figure walking and talking on a cell phone. It took a moment to figure out who he was.
Well, I’ll be damned, he said to himself. If it ain’t Rich Fuck. Didn’t recognize him without his bathing suit. But where’s Blondie? No Blondie.
Jesus, he’s a smug-looking bastard. And he’s yammering on that dumb-ass smart phone, talking some bullshit business just to show how important he is.
Jessie saw the flight attendant stop Burt. He knew she was telling him to turn off his cell phone before boarding the plane because the signal could interfere with the airline’s radio transmission.
“You officious bitch,” Burt shouted. “I’m not inside the plane yet.”
He argued for a while, then stuffed the phone into his pocket. He boarded the commuter plane, and a few moments later Jessie saw him seated at one of the windows, yammering again on his Blackberry.
What a jerk, thought Jessie.
Jessie knew the pilot would put a stop to it, but Christ, that kind of crap pissed him off. He rubbed his face, adding another black smudge to his darkening visage.
Scowling, he made a vow to himself: One way or another I’m gonna get that beaver shot of Blondie. Can’t wait to see the expression on Rich Fuck’s face when I present him with a glossy print of his wife’s pussy. Then I’ll show him a Hustler centerfold and ask him how he’d like to see his wife there, all pretty and pink for the world to see. That should make Mr. BLC pay — big time.
The Cessna rumbled down the runway, then roared up into the sky. It banked right over Wainscott Woods and the noise flushed a white-tailed deer and her fawn out of the forest. They bounded across a clearing, then disappeared into the trees again, bewildered by the growing human encroachment on their natural habitat. The plane flew toward Sag Harbor, then took a western turn heading to New York City. The pilot was following his clear-weather flight plan over the north shore of Long Island at an altitude of 1,500 feet.
Burt Cascadden looked out the window at the pine barrens and the patchwork of green, amber, and umber farm fields along the Montauk highway, which connected the Hamptons, Hampton Bays, and Quogue. When the plane passed over Riverhead, he could see the Long Island Expressway, free of traffic now but soon to be clogged with cars inching past the endless road repair sites, giving credence to the LIE’s reputation as the world’s longest parking lot.
Quinn Healey’s phone call the day before had Burt really worried. At this afternoon’s meeting, his lawyer was going to remind him of his financial problems: Citibank had reduced his credit line, and Prospectis Ventures had bailed, citing doubts about Burt’s solvency. He’d committed most of his assets for the property and air rights. If he didn’t tear down the row houses and begin construction right away, the deal would collapse.
Burt tried reassuring himself. I’m a brilliant man, for God’s sake — Yale, Phi Beta Kappa, Magna cum laude, my brain a marvel of cognitive power. So why is everything falling apart?
That unstable feeling seized him again — the vertigo, the sense of dread. The drone of the plane’s engine sounded like the low snarl of a beast, and he could feel his eardrums vibrating in his skull.
Burt closed his eyes. He thought of Swami Vivekanda’s words. The power of the mind should be concentrated and turned back upon itself, and as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will this concentrated mind penetrate its own innermost secrets.
His concentrated mind focused on his wife, heard her erection-killing moan of annoyance, saw the fierce defiance in her eyes as she threatened to leave him. Hostile bitch!
After all I’ve done for her. She has clothes, a BMW, two beautiful homes, credit cards galore, care for her sick father. And how does she repay me? With sullen ingratitude.
It had been the same with his first wife, Carol. In the beginning she was docile and loving — then she turned into a bitch. But with Susannah it was worse. Her negativity was poisoning his life. His real estate deal was on a fast track when they got married. Then, as their relationship deteriorated, the deal turned sour, too.
Coincidence? he asked himself. I don’t think so.
Oh, I’ve got her cowed now. She’ll obey me because of my threats to both her life and her mother’s. But there will always be the resentment, the barely disguised disdain, the hostility. And the Games? The Games will sure as hell never work anymore. From now on, my life with Susannah will be intolerable.
Divorce? No. The bitch’ll hire some Raoul Felder type and take me to the cleaners.
Penetrating rays of truth illuminated his mind in a moment of exquisite clarity.
Threatening her life is not enough. Just like Carol, Susannah has to be eliminated. Now.
The pilot throttled down to begin his descent and the engine noise dropped to a lower decibel level. To Burt it sounded like an easing of his anxiety. The aircraft banked left and he looked down to see City Island with its boat slips and harbor view seafood restaurants. The plane passed over the grim fortress of Riker’s Island Penitentiary and descended. The prison-like Manhattan Psychiatric Hospital, a warehouse for the criminally insane, whizzed by at Burt’s eye level.
The amphibian Cessna flew south over the East River, buzzing the Queensboro bridge, past the UN Building, then splashed down on its pontoons a few hundred feet from the Twenty-third Street marina.
As the aircraft taxied through the water, Burt took out his cell phone. The moment he was ashore, he was going to call the man who had solved his Carol problem, an Algerian killer-for-hire, known to his clients by a single name, a macabre French pun — Mort.
CHAPTER 8
Detective Jericho was at the East End Arts Center, a converted Montauk garage, watching a dance class through a large Plexiglas window. He was the lone dad among a group of mothers, each enthralled by her offspring’s terpsichorean talent. As a favor to his ex-wife, Jericho was picking up their daughter Katie.
It had been two years since he left the NYPD. He’d been a highly regarded detective with the Twenty-third Precinct homicide squad, in the crime ridden El Barrio. Jericho made every effort to be a decent husband and, when Katie was born, a good father too, but his ability to love disintegrated with daily exposure to shootings, stabbings, rape victims, suicides, drug pushers, child molesters, and what cops call “public service homicides” — one crack dealer killing another. His marriage foundered as his wife realized that for Jericho, “How was your day?” had become an unanswerable question. He sought escape in booze, working the “4 to 4 shift” – 4 p.m. to midnight on duty, midnight to 4 p.m. boozing in a bar with his buddies – and patronizing the occasional street hooker.
Then he started experiencing nightmares and flashbacks of one horrific confrontation he’d had in an East Harlem crack house.
His life was on a downward spiral. His wife left him, his work was slipshod, and he became increasingly dependent on alcohol and tranquilizers.
Jericho tried to hang in there but eventually he couldn’t hack it. At age thirty-six, burned out, he quit the force and moved from the city.
He chose Montauk because his ex-wife and five-year-old daughter had moved there. Sarah had remarried, this time to a nice, well-adjusted hou
se contractor, who — even Jericho had to concede — was an okay guy. Sarah allowed Jericho to see Katie whenever he wanted, as long as he called first, so things were working out pretty well.
He applied for a job with the East Hampton Township Police Department because he needed work and being a cop was all he knew. He was required to start at the bottom, taking the twenty-six week training course at the Suffolk County Police Academy in Brentwood, but it was worth it, because the important thing was to be near Katie.
And without the aid of counseling or AA, by an act of sheer will, he quit drinking — cold turkey.
His main duties as an EHTPD patrolman were cruising in a patrol car: handling misdemeanor crimes, traffic violations, neighborhood disputes, noise complaints. And being part of The Thin Blue Line around the celebrity-studded house parties of Donna Karan, P. Diddy, Steven Spielberg, et al.
Recently, after Detective Lieutenant Dominick Manos had been appointed Police Chief, he offered Jericho a promotion to detective. Jericho was reluctant to wear a gold shield again, but then he figured local detective work was fairly stress-free, plus he could use the money, so he took the job.
“Okay, kids,” Susannah said, “For our last exercise, you’re gonna be cowboys and cowgirls. So you’ll have to ride horses.”
Her students were sitting on the floor of the dance studio; a group of small children — seven little girls wearing leotards, and three boys (eschewing such sissiness) in shorts and T-shirts.
“I didn’t bring any horses to the studio today,” she explained, “because — well, they’d just take up too much darn room.”
She got a giggle with that one.
“So you’ll have to ride make believe horses. Okay, pardners? Time to saddle up.”
She took a bow-legged position, her butt sticking out, her hands on imaginary reins. The kids got up and eagerly imitated her stance. A few started bumping up and down.
“No. No. Hold on,” Susannah said smiling. “Wait for the music.”
She punched Play on her CD boom box. The Western strains of the Hoe-down section of Aaron Copland’s Rodeo filled the room.
The music kicked the kids into high gear. Beneath them, their steeds were walking, trotting, cantering, and galloping, as each child bounced, flounced, and jounced in their saddles, responding to Copland’s spirited polyrhythms.
“That’s great, Bruce,” Susannah shouted. “Nice goin’, Ashley.”
One little girl decided she was riding a bucking bronco and began rocking back and forth, waving one hand in the air and shouting “Yahoo!” at the top of her lungs.
“‘Atta girl. Ride ‘im, Katie-did.”
Katie-did, that’s cute, Jericho thought. This was his first visit to the dance class, and though it was a treat to see Katie perform, he couldn’t help watching the teacher.
Susannah was barefoot, wearing white tights and a denim work shirt tied at the waist. Jericho admired her lean figure and lovely-even-without-makeup face, but what really got him was the way she carried herself; the confidence of her movements, head held high, shoulders relaxed, her entire body always in balance. As she crossed in front of a window, the afternoon sunlight struck her blond hair and turned it into spun gold. Then it flashed on the gold of her wedding ring.
Damn. He turned his attention back to his cowgirl daughter.
When the piece ended, Susannah shut off the boom-box and said good-bye to the kids. They all came over to hug her and she basked in their unabashed affection. She heard Katie shout, “Daddy! Daddy!” and watched her dash out the classroom door, arms outstretched. A father, Susannah thought. That’s nice.
A moment later, standing there alone, she felt a stab of fear. She recalled Burt’s menacing words, warning her not to leave.
“There is a penalty that must be paid,” he’d said. “And you can’t avoid paying it. Am I making myself clear?”
On her way out Susannah stopped by the studio office to pick up her paycheck. She’d met the owner, Gretchen Silverman-Lewis in April at a Wainscott antiques shop, when she was refurnishing the beach house. They’d chatted about the merits of a Shaker hutch, which Susannah ended up buying, then adjourned to The Golden Pear on Newtown Lane, where they became friends over currant scones and cappuccino. Gretchen was a director who’d worked mainly in regional theater for about fifteen years, before marrying Arnold Lewis, a Bridgehampton attorney. They bought an old garage and converted it into a community theater, cabaret, and drama school.
The two women found they had a lot in common, and a few weeks later Gretchen invited Susannah to set up a dance program for kids.
In the office, Gretchen commented that her friend looked worried.
“I’m fine,” Susannah said. “Just a bit tired.”
“C’mon, honey. I’ve known you long enough to know the difference between worried and tired.”
“So now you’re an expert on my feelings?” Susannah said edgily.
“No, no, no,” Gretchen said. “I didn’t mean to pry. I’m just concerned.”
“I’m sorry, Susannah said. “I guess I'm a little freaked out these days.”
“I understand. Just know that I'm here if you need me.”
“I appreciate that.”
Susannah was tempted to tell her about Burt’s death threat, but she knew Gretchen would advise her to notify the police, and she’d seen enough movies to know the cops would do nothing unless she had proof of Burt’s threat to kill her. Even then, she thought sardonically, they’d probably tell me to wait till after I’m dead.
Driving home, Susannah realized — seeing it clearly for the first time — that she’d married a man who was dangerously unstable, whose behavior was irrational and uncontrolled. He’d gained power over her by devoting all his obsessive psychic energy to manipulating her.
And she had allowed it.
She went over her two choices — stay with Burt, or leave. Staying would mean becoming a virtual slave, participating in God knows what humiliating sexual games, losing what was left of her dignity and sense of self. Leaving? He had closed off that option by threatening her life, and even worse, threatening her mother.
But wait. It was in fuzzy metaphorical terms — karmic punishment. Was it a real death threat?
Maybe he’s bluffing, she thought. Just trying to scare me into staying with him. But am I prepared to call his bluff? What if he goes after my mom? No, I can’t take that chance.
By the time Susannah got home she felt hopeless and powerless. She went to the kitchen to find some solace in food. In the freezer, she saw an Entenmann’s chocolate cake.
While she defrosted it, she sat at the kitchen table and read the calorie count on the box. When the microwave dinged, she brought the cake to the table. Screw it, she said to herself, and proceeded to eat the whole thing. Without pleasure.
Then a question surfaced, which would always be too painful to answer: How could I have married this man?
CHAPTER 9
It was 10:15 p.m. and the hired killer was late. Burt was sitting on a bench outside the Central Park Chess & Checkers House, which Mort liked to call his “office.” The facility consisted of a one-story building, currently closed, and an outdoor area surrounding it. There were about twenty concrete playing tables, with purple and tan checkerboards imbedded in them; the sixty-four squares were made of colored pebbles. On either side of the tables were wood-slatted park benches. Above, sheltering the site, was an arbor with some scruffy vines entwining themselves half-heartedly around its crossbeams.
Burt was nervous. The place was deserted, dimly lit by a few street lamps. It was up on a hill, and Burt could see the East Park Drive below, closed to evening traffic. It was empty, except for an occasional intrepid jogger running past.
The hitman always met his clients here, and only after dark. Mort, who was given to puns and literary allusions, described the location in the grave words of Andrew Marvell as “a fine and private place.” Burt hadn’t been nervous on their previous meetin
gs, but that was because Mort had arrived first, and there was certainly no reason to feel unsafe in the company of a world-class assassin.
From where he sat, Burt could see the iconic General Motors building on Fifth Avenue, renovated in 2003 by realtor Harry Macklowe and later sold at a huge profit to Boston Properties, a Hong Kong businesswoman, and a Brazilian banker. He remembered the twenty or so miserable years he’d spent working for Macklowe, learning the business while Macklowe promoted his two arrogant sons to positions of power. Patiently, Burt had waited for his wealthy, tight-fisted widowed mother to croak, till at last she complied and Burt’s inheritance enabled him to go off on his own. He’d sunk everything into Bayview, his waterfront housing tower overlooking the Verrazano Bridge. But his earlier meeting with his lawyer had exacerbated his anxiety. He was hanging by a thread!
Burt’s jumpiness caused him to start worrying about Susannah. What if his wife had flown the coop, panicked by his threats? Dammit. He was going to hire Mort to whack her in Montauk. If the hitman had to go chasing her all over the country, it was going to get complicated, and way too expensive.
He decided to give Susannah a call. He’d apologize, chill her out. Then she wouldn’t think about leaving, and she’d be an easy target for Mort.
He dialed their landline, which he knew rang at her bedside. She answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Sweetie, it’s me.
“What is it, Burt?”
“I’m calling to apologize. I know my behavior has been appalling recently. I... I don’t know what came over me. I’ve been under a lot of strain because of business, but I don’t want to make excuses.”
“Then don’t.”
“On the plane today, I kept thinking about you, about how much you mean to me. And how empty my life would be without you.”
“Burt, you think some cornball sweet talk can make things right? You think an apology can make up for your threats, your bullying, your violent behavior?”
