Short Squeeze

by Chris Knopf

  Since he got up early to hold down his current position as a carpenter, you’d think it’d be too late to call, but this guy isn’t big on sleep. So I thought, What the hell.

  “What,” said the voice, or rather the growl, on the other end of the line.

  “Nice way to answer the phone.”

  “The only way to answer after midnight. Especially when you’re asleep.”

  “You’re never asleep.”

  “Not with the phone ringing all the time.”

  “I was hoping we could chat. I’ve got a situation,” I told him.

  “I don’t chat on the phone.”

  “Is Amanda there?”

  “Just Eddie. He doesn’t chat on the phone, either.”

  “I was thinking of coming over.”

  “Oh, goody.”

  “Be there in twenty minutes. Time to uncork a bottle and put out the nice linen.”

  I hung up and concentrated on driving the cranky old pickup over to North Sea, the woodsy area north of Southampton Village that used to be the only place regular people could afford to live out here, until there was no place regular people could afford to live out here.

  I was trying not to think about ignoring Sergey’s call only hours before he ended up dead in the road. I could barely stave off this massive cloud of guilt that was forming over my head. All my law professors would say it’s unprofessional to take these things personally, which was a pretty dumb thing to say. Like you’re not supposed to be a human being with personal feelings.

  Of course, there’s also the Irish Catholic thing. We’re supposed to feel guilty about letting the milk curdle.

  Eddie was sitting there, waiting for me in the driveway. It was as if Sam had said, “Hey, Eddie, Jackie’s coming over in a few minutes. Do me a favor and give her a nice greeting.”

  He wagged his long tail and rubbed all over my legs, then trotted off as if to say, “Job done, got other stuff to do.”

  “A sight for sore eyes,” said Sam when I walked in the door. “Literally.”

  Somewhere in his mid-fifties, Sam’s one of those guys who looks weather-beaten and sturdy at the same time. You can see he’s had some hard miles, but his handshake tells you turning your fingers into little splinters wouldn’t be that much of a challenge.

  He still has most of his hair, kind of a curly battleship gray. He’s actually not bad looking, though time in the boxing ring as a kid and some fun and games later in life had roughened things up a bit.

  “Wine for you, vodka for me. Eddie can have what he wants.”

  I followed him to a winterized sunporch that faced the Little Peconic Bay. He had two easy chairs, a kitchen table, and a daybed out there—just add a refrigerator and a hot plate and he’d never have to leave.

  I started by telling him about the nipple in Sergey’s pocket and worked backward from there. I thought, rightly, that would get his attention and keep it there long enough to get through the whole story.

  “What about Eunice?” he asked when I was done.

  “I don’t know. Haven’t met her.”

  “Hard to know anything till you talk to her.”

  “But I know almost nothing about Sergey himself,” I said.

  Sam swirled the bottom half of an old chrome art deco tumbler that he’d filled with vodka and ice.

  “Do you think hiring you got him killed?” he asked.

  Sam has some really good qualities, I keep insisting to people who meet him for the first time, but tact wouldn’t be high on the list.

  “Aw, crap, Sam. That’s a big help.”

  He might have winced a little.

  “You have to think about it. I’m not saying I would. Probably wouldn’t. But you asked. Kind of.”

  “I’ll keep thinking about that,” I said. “Meanwhile, I’ll go talk to Eunice. What’re you going to do?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. What’re you going to do?” I asked.

  “Go to bed.”

  “Then tomorrow you’re going to get Joe Sullivan to tell you who belongs to the nipple.”

  He swirled the art deco tumbler again. “Not likely.”

  “He’s your friend. You’ve done plenty of favors for him. He’ll do it for you. And I’m your friend who’s done you thousands of favors.”

  Sam once saved my life at great risk to his own, the ultimate favor, which he had the good manners not to point out.

  “I’ll talk to him,” said Sam, grinning at me for no good reason.

  That’s when Eddie came over and put his head in my lap. Sam got you to do that, I said to myself, just to distract me. Then I said to myself, You can’t just tell a dog to do that. He’s a dog. Even if you could, how do you tell him without saying anything? A secret signal? Telepathy?

  “Good boy,” said Sam on his way to the kitchen to pour himself another gallon of vodka.

  4

  I like to gaze at my face in the mirror. Not out of vanity but relief.

  I’m ashamed to say the worst thing to ever happen to me wasn’t losing Potato Pete. It was getting blown up along with a table full of hors d’oeuvres when a car bomb went off outside the restaurant where Sam and I were having lunch. It was a kiss on the cheek by a big salad bowl that did the real damage, taking out my left ear and leaving me looking like the Phantom of the Opera’s little sister.

  The relief comes in two installments. If it hadn’t been for Sam, I’d be dead. And if it wasn’t for a team of wiseacre plastic surgeons, I’d be a mangled mess.

  The kicker is they improved on the product. I had all the work done at a hospital on the Upper East Side. Count the number of face-lifts they do per day versus reconstructive surgeries and follow the logic.

  We’re not talking Greta Garbo, but it could have been a lot worse.

  The bigger challenge is the hair, which I can’t even blame on the explosion. It’s called strawberry blond, which means some people think it’s red and some think it’s blond. Either way, there’s way too much of it. They say every woman hates her hair. I don’t hate my hair; I just can’t do anything with it but pretend it doesn’t look like an orange Brillo pad the cat’s been playing with.

  Or as my nurturing dad used to put it, “Ya look like an Irish Rastafarian.”

  I suppose I could cut it all the way back, slash it into submission. But then I worry about the face, still sort of round despite the clever nip and tuck.

  The morning I went over to see Eunice Wolsonowicz I brushed it out as best I could and shoved on a hair band, my go-to solution since grade school.

  The house wasn’t far from where they’d found Sergey’s body, but it took a while to find it. One problem was the mailbox. There wasn’t one. And no street number. Just a driveway interrupting a wall of tangled vines and brush that grew along the road. Halfway down the drive was a little green-and-white sign that said PONTECELLO. If you didn’t know where you were before turning in the driveway, you had no business being there.

  The house was Hamptons cedar siding with white trim and ivy climbing all over the place. The shingles were the old style—really wide and nearly black with age. But the house was only an anchor for the landscaping, the main attraction. It took my breath away. Big old trees with trunks the size of sequoias, a putting-green lawn, and mountains of flowers in every color nature and genetic engineering could connive. Arch-top gates, picket fences, stone walls, and pergolas knitted everything together, and a tall privet hedge toward the rear of a side yard surrounded a swimming pool that looked like a pond in the middle of Sherwood Forest.

  A pair of pickups with trailers was parked in front of the house. I parked alongside and went up to the door to ring the bell.

  “Not here,” came a voice from one of the trucks.

  “Oh, hi,” I said. “I’m looking for Eunice Wolsonowicz.”

  “Still not here,” said the guy in the driver’s seat, sipping from a travel mug and chomping on a wad of cinnamon bun.

  I walked back down the path and lea
ned on the door of the truck.

  “I didn’t see you there,” I said.

  “That’s ‘cause you didn’t look.”

  “You know where she is?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “When she’s coming back?”

  He shook his head.

  “What do you know?” I asked.

  He let his head drift over in my direction.

  “More’n you, apparently.”

  I reached in the window and patted him on the cheek. This is the kind of thing young women can often get away with. Usually the guy on the other end likes it, and this was no exception. He thought I was giving him a compliment, which I was, sort of. I was saying, Of all the people I’ve met lately, you are the dumbest.

  “What can you tell me about Sergey Pontecello?” I asked him, feeling I had nothing to lose.

  “He’s dead.”

  I wanted to pat him on the cheek again, only with a little more force. I thought better of it.

  “Before that. What was he like?”

  “Who wants to know?” he asked, looking over my shoulder as if there were a team of reporters standing behind me.

  “I’m an officer of the court,” I said, my trusty line. It’s an absolutely true statement that sounds incredibly impressive and holds zero authority out in the regular world. It just sounds like it does.

  The guy in the truck started looking more serious.

  “Mr. Pontecello was a good enough boss,” he said, as if I were recording his statement. “A little particular about some things but polite enough. More than I can say for his wife,” he added, then looked as if he regretted it. “Not that we’re talking about her.”

  “What about her?” I said.

  He looked longingly at his cinnamon bun, as if no longer authorized to eat it. “More particular than her husband, let’s just put it at that,” he said.

  “A bitch.”

  “A bitch. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

  “Any ideas on who’d want to hurt Mr. Pontecello?”

  He shook his head vigorously, as if he were warding off evil spirits.

  “No idea. Can’t imagine it. Terrible thing.”

  I leaned back from the window and looked over the beautiful property.

  “What do you do around here?”

  “Grounds maintenance. Been workin’ here for years. If it’s outside, it’s mine.”

  I nodded, impressed.

  “Plenty to do around here.”

  “Got that right. Something nearly every day.”

  “Were you here yesterday?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Yep?” I repeated. “Yep means what?”

  He pointed to the house.

  “Cleaning gutters, mostly. Lotta trees around here. Toss a lotta crap all over the house. And fixing up the rotten wood around the windows on the second floor.”

  “So you’re still on the job,” I said. “Who’s paying the bills?”

  “Mrs. W. took over where Mrs. P. left off.”

  I plucked the cinnamon bun out of his hand, tore a piece off an un-chewed section, and handed it back to him.

  “Help yourself,” he said unhappily.

  “Can you do me a favor?” I asked.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “If you think of anything at all that might shed light on Sergey’s death, call me. You can also call me when you see Eunice back at the house. I want to talk to her, too.”

  I handed him one of my business cards.

  “Part of an ongoing investigation?” he asked, proud of a line learned from TV.

  “Ten-four.”

  I started to walk away, then went back to the truck.

  “I gave you my name. Who’re you?” I asked.

  He reached out the window and pointed to a sign on the door panel.

  “Ray Zander, like it says. ‘Ray Zander Estate Management. Since 1984.’ ”

  “Good year.”

  “Me and George Orwell,” he said, turning his attention back to the mutilated remains of his cinnamon bun.

  I was on the way back to my office when my cell phone rang. I almost killed myself grabbing my purse off the passenger seat and digging around for the phone.

  “Fuck,” I yelled at the crappy little thing.

  “Love to. Name the time and place,” said the voice on the phone.

  “Who is this?” I asked, still yelling as if it were all his fault.

  “Nice to be recognized,” said Harry Goodlander, stoking my guilt before I even had a chance to feel any.

  I slammed on the brakes and pulled off the road, barely missing a big sign that said PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES, under which some charmer had written WHILE YOU PICK YOUR NOSE.

  “Harry,” I said.

  “Jackie. Long time no hear.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down, something I was never very good at.

  “Where are you?” I asked, hopefully in a level enough voice.

  “Grand Central Station. You?”

  “Half in a field of strawberries. Where else?” I said.

  For all my whining about lack of friends, I’d forgotten about lack of lovers. Though the same impediments were there. Plus, for me there was the strange problem of the dead husband. I can’t truly say he was the love of my life, but he had some redeeming qualities, mostly expressed in private situations that were hard to replicate.

  Until I met Harry Goodlander.

  “Where are you heading?” I asked.

  “Southampton.”

  It seemed fitting that Harry would call me right when I was grappling with this Sergey thing. Two flavors of emotional torment blended into one zingy cocktail.

  “Are you just coming here or are you, like, here here for a while?” I asked.

  “Here here forever, I hope.”

  “I didn’t think I’d hear from you again,” I said.

  “You told me not to call.”

  I put my hand on my forehead, a gesture I hoped he’d see over the phone lines.

  “I said, ‘Don’t call,’ ” I said. “But then I said, ‘Call when you get back.’ ”

  “I must’ve forgotten the second part. But I did anyway, so there.”

  “I meant, ‘Call when you get back next week.’ Not ‘When you get back two years from now.’ ”

  “When were you ever on time?” he asked.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. So I just sat in the silence.

  “I miss you,” said Harry, finally.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “I want to see you.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “Friday night. I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Great. I’m really looking forward to it.”

  “Bye-bye,” I said, and hung up.

  Shit, shit, I said to myself.

  The phone call from Harry must have stirred my imagination, because a few minutes later I had a nice hunch. Even if it didn’t pan out, it was an excuse to call Burton Lewis, a friend of Sam’s and legal backstop par excellence.

  I do a lot of work for Burton’s criminal practice, especially on the cases he picks up on the East End. For him personally it’s all pro bono, but he pays his staff, most of whom work out of a storefront in Manhattan. I’ve worked on every cat and dog case he’s ever thrown at me, no matter how busy I was at the time. Lawsuits, divorces, parole violations, B and E, child custody, probate, foreclosures. Representing arborists, tennis pros, car mechanics, haberdashers, investment bankers, cross-dressers, you name it, I’ve worked it. “Take every Burton referral” is one of my few inviolate principles, right behind “Always work off the client’s money.”

  Burton’s an incredibly elegant guy, graceful and decent in every way. I always want to give him a hug and mess up his hair, even though he hates it when people invade his personal space. He’s also richer than stink and gay as the day is long, which is fine with me. Takes that man-woman thing right
off the table from the get-go.

  I called him on his cell phone.

  “Lewis,” he answered.

  “Swaitkowski. How’re you doing?”

  “Splendid, Jackie. Who’s been arrested?”

  “Nobody I know.”

  “There’s a turn for the better.”

  “I’m looking for a rich old lady named Eunice Wolsonowicz.”

  “Tony W.’s widow,” he said without hesitating.

  “See. I knew you’d know.”

  “Though I don’t know where you could find her,” he said.

  “She’s a member of the Gracefield Club.”

  “I believe you’re right,” he said. “The membership’s been in the family since before the professor, her father.”

  “I wonder if she’s there now.”

  “Perhaps. I could call.”

  “God, I can’t ask you to do that. Sure, okay, why not. You’re a prince, Burt.”

  “Perhaps you could tell me what this is all about.”

  I summarized the situation, describing Sergey’s death and related details while trying not to babble on too much, which is something I often did with Burton. I blamed that on him. Too easy to talk to.

  After that, he made the call.

  Coming back on the line, Burton said, “Apparently she’s having lunch right now.” I took both hands off the wheel so I could give a proper cheer, but only for a second. The Toyota hadn’t been aligned since the last century.

  “Man, I’m a genius,” I told Burton.

  “Indisputably.”

  “Can you get me in there?”

  “Already arranged,” he said. “Go to the front desk in the main building and ask for Marcello. He’ll take it from there.”

  “Burton, you are a prince.”

  “Not at all, darling.”

  Getting into the parking lot was the easy part. To avoid suspicion all you needed was a Benz or a Rolls-Royce, or a beat-up pickup truck like the help drove. Just don’t try it in a new Chevy station wagon.

  The main building looked like any of the older mansions built along the shoreline. White trim, monster blue hydrangeas, millions of gables and dormers, and cedar siding so gray with age it was almost black. A porch deep enough to hold a square dance ran across the front of the place. It was furnished in white wicker, of course, arranged on Oriental carpets with wicker coffee tables holding bouquets of fall flowers and copies of Impossibly Wealthy and Obscenely Privileged Quarterly.