by Chris Knopf
“So, Ed,” I said, “what’s the deal?”
“I’m goin’ a little crazy.”
“That’s evident.”
“Can we talk?” He looked over at Sam. “You and your friend?”
“Let’s go back here,” I said, leading them around the side of the house to the brick patio where I’d recently spent some contemplative time. I wasn’t going to let Conklin into my house, but he was still my client, and I needed to hear him out. We sat at the picnic table under the harsh downward light that came from a pair of security floods tucked under the eaves. Sam sat next to Conklin; I sat across the table.
“I’m sorry about the prison thing,” said Conklin. “Keepin’ all that a secret gets to be a habit. I know I shoulda spoke up.”
“You shoulda,” I said.
He put his elbows on the table and rubbed his hands together.
“Whatever I tell you is private between us, right? Attorney-client thing?” He looked over at Sam.
“Yes. Completely confidential. That includes Sam, who’s my investigator, and therefore covered under the same privilege.”
Sam didn’t know that what I’d said was approximately true, but he played along anyway.
“Lips are sealed, pal,” he said.
Conklin closed his eyes, as if that made it easier to squeeze out the information.
“Eugenie’d been acting odd lately, in ways she’d never acted before.” He opened his eyes again. “Tense and kind of fussy. When I tried to talk to her about it, she told me I was full of crap and to lay off. That wasn’t like her, either. We’ve had our go-rounds, but at least the reasons would be there out in the open. This time there was something secretive going on. Husbands can always tell these things. The wives just think we’re too dumb to notice,” he added, looking at Sam.
Who said, “You got that right.”
“How long had you been feeling these things?” I asked.
“Six months, maybe. Maybe a little more. It came on gradual. I didn’t want to say anything to the cops about it. I mean, she’s dead and all, but I couldn’t help being protective.”
“So you’re assuming Eugenie was up to something she shouldn’t have been?” Sam asked.
Conklin looked even more pained.
“That’s the problem with this. I did. She was hidin’ something. I still have that ex-con’s radar. Of course, any husband might be imaginin’ all sorts of things. Even if you don’t want to. But that’s not where I was going with this. If she was steppin’ out on me, she was drinkin’ the greatest love potion in history, ’cause that part ain’t never been better.”
I could have told him it wouldn’t be the first time a cheating spouse discovered renewed ardor back home, but no purpose would be served.
“So now you’re wondering if there’s a connection to her death,” I said.
“That’s the torment,” said Conklin. “Even if I spill the goods, the only proof I got is a feeling. They’d think I was nuts.”
“Nothing else?” I asked.
He thought about it.
“Fuel consumption,” he said. “I started noticing the Cessna was burning more fuel than usual. More than what she’d normally need to get from, say, East Hampton to Sikorsky in Connecticut. I asked her about it, but she’d say, You’re the mechanic; you figure it out. I’d check that plane from prop to tail, and never found a thing.”
“Like an unscheduled diversion to some other landing field,” said Sam. “Where she couldn’t refuel.”
“Yeah, something like that,” he said, quietly. “Sometimes she burned less fuel than she should’ve. Might lead you to the same conclusion.”
“So there’s no record of where she went.”
“Not official. Just our logs, which she kept.”
I knew what Sullivan would be asking right about now, if he was there. I could hear him ask it.
“So how’s the money situation been with you two?” I asked. “Things going all right?”
“Not bad,” he said, without hesitating. “Never what you want, but enough to get by.”
“Did Eugenie have any expensive habits?” Sam asked. “Handbags, ponies, blow?”
This time it took Conklin a little more time to answer. He was trying to decipher the question. When he finally did, he almost laughed.
“Hell no. Are you kidding? She dressed like a slob, so forget the pocketbooks. Didn’t even like to shop. Bought everything out of a catalog. If she’d picked up a gambling or drug thing, she hid it pretty good. I guess it’s possible, but I just can’t imagine it. Wouldn’t be the Eugenie I knew.”
Most addictions, almost by definition, were secret. The spouse is often the last to know.
But again, I kept that thought to myself and moved off in another direction.
“What about your father-in-law?” I asked. “Matt Birkson. I hear he did a little time himself.”
“Nice family Eugenie’s got, eh?” He gave a little shrug. “The guy’s a grade A son of a bitch, I’ll grant you that, but he never bothered me. Raised Eugenie on his own after the wife abandoned them. Can’t say she had much feeling for the old man, but can’t say she was abused or anything either. She lived with her aunt part of the time, when Matt was in stir. I think that balanced things out. But as far as I know, she hadn’t had much to do with either of them for years.”
I couldn’t see Conklin all that well in the glare of the floodlights, but what I saw didn’t tell me much one way or the other. I pushed a bit more on the older Birkson, but that was all I got.
“So no ideas,” I said. “You just knew something was up, but you didn’t know what.”
“That’s about it.”
We talked for a little while longer, but nothing of further substance emerged. However tipsy Conklin might have been before, he seemed perfectly sober now. More sheepish than anything. Sam gave him one more bit of advice on staying away from my house, then we walked him back around to the driveway in front of the house and watched him drive away.
“What do you think?” I asked Sam.
“That you still have some vodka left from the last time I was here.”
“Excellent chance of that. I have better use for lighter fluid than drinking it on the rocks.”
Once I had him settled on the couch with the drink and an ashtray, he told me what he thought.
“Never trust a con,” he said.
“That’s what I’m thinking. But do you believe him?”
“Almost. The guy’s pretty busted up, that’s for sure. Could be the shock of it, could be guilt. For doing something, or not doing something.”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” I said.
“Well, good. You were paying attention.”
“Like I usually don’t?”
“I’m not up on my light aircraft, but internal combustion’s the same for everything. You got oil under pressure, contained at dozens of different points around an engine. Gaskets and seals, pumps, lines. Plenty of opportunities for something to go wrong on its own, or for someone to engineer a leak. The incidence of pure mechanical failure that drastic is so low you can hardly measure it. But it happens. Planes usually crash because of a combination of events no one has anticipated. People don’t want to know this, but it’s impossible to anticipate all the possible combinations. The fact is, planes hardly ever go down, which is the good news. It’s just so scary when they do.”
“So you don’t think it was sabotage,” I said.
“Didn’t say that. I don’t know much about airplanes, but I can think of a hundred ways I could cause an airplane engine to fail, where and when I wanted it to.”
“Keep ’em to yourself.”
“I intend to.”
“So, all we know is that the plane crashed,” I said. “But we don’t know why and likely never will.”
“That’s it in a nutshell.”
The next morning Sullivan woke me up with news that the NTSB was planning to declare the crash an accident.
“I’m fucking not. They’re still ass-deep in the rubble, but the head guy told me he saw nothing that said it wasn’t a simple mechanical breakdown. Happens in a car, you pull over. Happens in a plane, you die. Any reason why I shouldn’t let it stand at that?”
“I don’t know, you tell me. You’re handling the investigation.”
“I am. Me and my shadow.”
As his shadow crawled all the way out of a deep sleep, she found herself splitting in half. One part of me was relieved for my client Ed Conklin, who would now be totally in the clear. No prosecutor would bother with a case already settled by the NTSB. As his defense attorney, this made me happy. On the other, without a client to defend, I had no legitimate standing to pursue my own suspicions, only made stronger by Ed Conklin’s nocturnal admissions.
“I love it when I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” I said.
“How would I feel if I knew what you were talking about?” Sullivan asked.
“Equally conflicted.”
“So why don’t you just tell me. I’ll give you immunity from further hassle.”
So I did, more or less. I told him I’d been following the photo trail, for no other reason than it felt right. The very randomness suggested something to me—that it really wasn’t random. That it was a collection, with specific meaning. I told him about challenging Dr. Johnson’s skills at regional botany, likewise Kirk and Emily on the subject of society fauna and flora, and, after negotiating an expansion of his amnesty offer, about Ed Conklin’s unscheduled visit to my house.
Though I hated to reinforce his theory of Eugenie the drug runner, I thought Conklin’s story might help set the hook.
“I knew it,” said Sullivan.
I pulled myself up into a sitting position and tried to scratch the night out of my eyes.
“You don’t know anything other than her husband had suspicions,” I said. “Everything else is supposition.”
“Oh, sure. Give me something, then take it away.”
“Sorry. You’re right.”
“What’s it to you anyway, counselor? For that matter, what’s it to me? Apparently, we got no crime here, so no perp. We have theories of a drug operation, but even if they’re true, that operation’s gone up in smoke. I don’t know about you, but I have plenty of real live crimes with honest-to-God criminals to deal with.”
I wanted to say, Because you didn’t see Eugenie’s face seconds before she died a terrible death. You didn’t see her elbow open her side window and toss out that camera case. You didn’t track a piece of evidence back to your brother, who’d basically sent a missile into the heart of your childhood. You’re not invested in this. You’re not the obsessive-compulsive who not only chews the bone, but also rips the hand off anyone who tries to take it away.
“I understand, Joe,” I said. “It makes sense to let this one go. I’m just gonna poke around a little more. And you won’t have to worry about busting me for interfering in an investigation, since now there isn’t any. I’m sure that’s a great comfort to you.”
I didn’t know if that would irritate him, but it was still too early in the morning to completely care.
“Stay in touch,” was all he said. Part offer, part threat. Then he hung up.
Two hours later I was driving east from Bridgehampton to East Hampton Village, and from there toward Springs, a place I hadn’t seen since I helped the daughter of a famous novelist force her next-door neighbor to move a stockade fence that he’d run through the middle of her garden.
I was going unarmed and unescorted into hostile territory. This wasn’t because I was brave, or foolhardy. It was a rational calculation: I wouldn’t be able to ply my trade as a defense attorney if I was afraid to talk to people connected to the case at hand. No matter how intimidating. And I wouldn’t be able to preserve my sense of self if I depended on others, mostly formidable men like Harry and Sam, to keep my butt out of trouble.
On the other hand, sometimes I like to have them along anyway. They’re my best friends, and sometimes my butt needs to be kept out of trouble.
Matt Birkson’s house was easy to identify. It was a two-story colonial box covered in those oversized asbestos shingles that were all the rage right after World War II. Ugly as hell, but whatever promise of durability was made by the asbestos shingle salesmen had proven to be understated. Their presence disguised the actual age of the house, but I thought it could be a hundred years plus. To get to the place you had to wend your way through several rusted-out auto bodies, heaps of brush and rotting piles of firewood, a bulldozer, lawn chairs, a clothes dryer, other heaps covered by blue plastic tarps, a thirty-gallon drum (which I guessed was used to burn things), a crumbling vine-entangled pergola, and the one thing I really hated seeing in that type of environment. A doghouse.
I got as close as I could to the front door and waited in my car. I didn’t know if Birkson was home, since I never call ahead. Calling ahead usually cuts the odds that you’re going to see the person by about 50 percent. Much better to just show up and knock on the door. It’s harder to tell someone to go away when you’re standing there face-to-face.
Since the sound of my car pulling into the driveway hadn’t roused any slobbering, rabid people killers, I decided to get out of the car, walk up the dirt path, and ring the doorbell. Which I did, and that’s when I heard the bark.
It was a deep bark, the kind you hear partly through the soles of your feet. I backed away and was about to make a quick dash to the car when the door swung open.
“What,” said a tall old guy with a thin ball of curly white hair and the kind of beer belly I always think looks better on pregnant women. He wore black jeans and a flannel shirt. His cheeks were round and red as apples, dwarfing a nose far too small for his face. His eyebrows were in keeping with the white coif, and nicely accented a pair of half-lidded, bloodshot eyes. I’d seen that face before, but not in person. It took a second to realize that he was one of the people in Eugenie’s photographs, the one taken in the hard-luck bar.
Grappling with that recollection slowed me down, so when I finally held up my card and gave him the good old officer of the court routine, the effect was less than hoped for.
“Get the hell out of here,” he said.
Right then a large black nose poked between his knees. Based on the bark, it should have been at his torso. You can’t tell a whole lot from a dog’s expression, but I usually know the difference between “I want to rip out your throat” and “Let’s play!” This one clearly expressed the latter.
I pointed at the dog.
“That’s it? Heck of a bark on that one.”
Birkson reached down and got his hand under the dog’s collar, then stepped aside so it could move further into the doorway. It was all head, perched on a long body supported by stubby legs and covered in long reddish brown fur.
“Got a lot of mutt in him,” said Birkson. “Including shepherd, I’m thinking from the bark. Must’ve been a shepherd that sang bass in the choir.”
Without asking I squatted down and used both hands to scratch the dog’s face. He liked it well enough, based on how he tried to lick the skin off my face.
“Do you sing bass?” I asked the dog. “I think you do. I think you sing and play a little guitar when your daddy’s not looking. What’s his name?” I asked, looking up at Birkson.
“Guthrie. Wasn’t up to me. That’s what the tag said when he showed up at my door, half starved. That’s all the tag said, so that’s why he’s still here.”
I stood up.
“Couldn’t be because you like dogs,” I said.
“Dumb furballs,” he said, but didn’t really argue the point.
“Mr. Birkson, I’m investigating your daughter’s accident,” I said.
“Ah, shit. I’ve had enough of that,” he said, and reached for the door.
I put my hand on his, always a risky g
esture, but usually effective. He looked at me, both confused and annoyed.
“I know how hard this is for you,” I said, “but if you could give me a few minutes, I’d really appreciate it.”
“I already told the local bulls everything I could think of. And then a bunch of dickheads from out of town show up and I got to do it all over again. None of it worth shit for their purposes.”
He didn’t reach for the door again, but he looked like he was ready to.
“I don’t care about all that,” I said. “I want to know what you didn’t tell those other guys. I don’t want any facts. I got ’em already.” A lie. “I want to know what you think in your gut.”
You wouldn’t call Matt Birkson a handsome man, but he had a presence, something hard to pin down. He was too ugly for it to be charisma, but it wasn’t hard to imagine him running a criminal gang. You could sense the executive skills, if you could look past the long stares and lack of affect.
“Wasn’t an accident,” he said, finally.
“Why do you say that?”
“Who the hell are you again?”
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” I asked him.
He reached for the doorknob, this time with determination, and I expected him to shut the door in my face, but he just used it to steady himself. He let go of Guthrie, who leaped out onto the landing and rubbed up against my leg. I reached down and stroked his side.
“When Eugenie was a kid, she tried to use a sheet to fly off the roof of the house,” said Birkson. “Flying is what she wanted to do. That and racing motorcycles, which for her was pretty much the same thing. This is what she knew how to do.”
“You two were okay?” I said.
“I hadn’t talked to her much in the last few years. But we were okay; she just had a lot going on,” he said, moving an inch or two closer to where I stood than I usually preferred.
“What do you think of Ed Conklin?” I asked, stepping forward myself, thus violating some of his own personal DMZ. He stepped back.
“Ed’s okay. She coulda done worse.”
“So no marital conflict,” I said.
