by Chris Knopf
“He couldn’t have remembered anything.”
“That’s what the cops told him, two years after you were convicted and imprisoned. So that’s as far as the story went.”
“Explains why I never heard it. Too bad it isn’t true. I can take a lot of this, Jacqueline, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather not live that night all over again. I cut a deal with the prosecutor—a guilty plea, but no allocution, so Mom and Dad wouldn’t have to hear all the dirty details. That’s how it was then, and that’s how I want to keep it.”
“Even from your wife?”
He shook his head.
“I told you. No secrets between Kathy and me. I don’t owe the world the same deal.”
Brother or no brother, I knew a hard line when I saw one. This was Billy’s, uncrossed for thirty years. He wasn’t crossing it now, even with me. Especially with me. More pressure would only harden his resolve.
“Anyway,” he said, “this is all ancient history. Nothing to do with poor Eugenie.”
“You’re sure about that?” I asked, but he just looked at me with his moist, defeated eyes and I knew that was the end of the conversation.
So I left him with a handshake, and went back out into the sun and spring air, with Billy’s words dashing madly around my mind, one word in particular repeating itself with audible clarity. My name, my full name. Jacqueline. The only name my parents ever used to address me, heard again—spoken as they would have spoken it—for the first time since my mother died, from the lips of the brother who may as well have.
17
Before leaving the office to go see Billy I’d looked up another name and address: Dutch Andersen, Hampton Bays, Long Island. Dutch was officially Wilbur Andersen, and his wife, Sandy, officially Sancha Maria, so I didn’t get there immediately. What helped was the official Web site of the Sound Avengers, a motorcycle club whose social activities did little to substantiate the name.
Dutch had a plumbing business and installed boat toilets at a marina off the Shinnecock Canal. I reached Sandy at his office, and she told me that’s where I could find him, working hard to get his boating customers launched for the season.
I was directed to a big powerboat with a double-decker flying bridge. Dutch was below, with his head and torso bent into a deep hold in the V berth that presumably contained the waste system. Always afraid of causing injury to workingmen caught in one of my surprise visits, I was forced to wait almost ten minutes for him to emerge. And I still startled him.
“Whoa, didn’t know you was standin’ there. Why didn’t you say something?”
“Didn’t want to startle you.”
Dutch was tall, angular, and wide-shouldered, with yellow and white hair and blue eyes. The only denim he wore was a pair of jeans. His shirt was a smudge-covered checked cotton with the sleeves rolled up, exposing a tattoo of a stylized motorcycle—distilled to the essence of two wheels, handlebars, and an oversized chrome exhaust belching flames.
“What can I do you for?” he asked.
I handed him one of my cards and he confirmed that he was Dutch Andersen.
“I’m investigating Eugenie Birkson’s plane crash. You knew her. I’d like to ask a couple questions.”
He looked amenable.
“Sure, only I don’t know anything about it. We go back a ways, but she hadn’t rode with the ‘Vengers for a lotta years. Only did a few years at that, but earned her patch.”
“Good rider?”
“Fearless. And a freaking great mechanic. Had the gift. Do you want one of these?” he asked, pulling a dripping wet Corona out of a small cooler.
“Sure.”
He opened both bottles with a pocketknife. We each took a swig.
I showed him the photo of him and Sandy at Eugenie’s birthday party.
“So you know her father,” I said.
“Sure. Known him since I was an aspiring delinquent. Fenced his boosted cigarettes around the neighborhood. Made good money till I sold a few cartons to a narc. I think the fucker turned in one carton as evidence and kept the rest. Earned my V patch. Prison time, even if it was only juvie hall. Long time ago. Water under the bridge.”
I asked him if he knew the third couple in the shot, but he didn’t.
“There were a lot of people there I didn’t know. Friends of Matt’s from Up Island. For an ornery son of a bitch, the guy knows a lot of people. I got the feeling that was Matt’s party as much as Eugenie’s. Payback to his crew. Some real hard cases there that night.”
We took a few moments to drink the beer.
“So you know Ed Conklin, Eugenie’s husband,” I said, wiping my mouth with my sleeve.
“The Bubbie? Sure. That’s him there.” He pointed to Conklin where he stood turned away from the camera. “Him and his idiot albino.”
“Idiot? How so?”
Forthcoming till then, Dutch looked sorry he’d said that. I helped him along.
“This is all confidential, Mr. Andersen. Nothing you tell me will get back to anyone you don’t want it to get back to.”
“Ed Conklin’s a quiet dude, but he almost killed a man with his bare hands. He don’t see what others see in Brian. Fathers usually don’t.”
I had to agree with him there.
“Ed will hear nothing about Brian from me,” I said, hoping I could keep that promise.
Andersen thought some more, then said, “He’s a hater. He was a probie in the club for a while. Got in on the strength of his parents’ cred and her bike, which we heard he had, but never saw. Turned out she’d sold it a long time ago. Brian just had this crappy rice rocket. We’re pretty flexible in the ‘Vengers, but the sound of that thing.… Fuckin’ sewing machine.”
“What’s the hater part?”
He polished off his beer.
“The Sound Avengers aren’t what you’d call the most liberal group of people, but we’re not a bunch of rednecks. Some get worked up over all the Hispanics and spout off some right-wing crap, but only a few. We got three black guys wearing patches, been with the club from the beginning. And we got our own don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy, if you know what I’m saying.”
“I think I do.”
“Not all the guys haul around an old lady. It’s not that hard to figure out. Unless you’re some dumb shit like Brian Conklin who gets drunk around the bonfire and starts talking about ridin’ over to Fire Island and bustin’ heads. Just for the sport of it. If it weren’t for his old man, you know whose head would’ve been busted that night.”
I’d forgotten what Brian had said at Eugenie’s funeral. Or put it out of my mind, out of respect for his losing another mother. There wasn’t that much to like or dislike about the guy, but in retrospect, he did seem a little off-center, maybe unbalanced by forces stirring just below the surface.
I’d seen it before. Hate cases were among the few I refused to accept, if I thought there was the remotest chance the defendant was guilty. I know that’s not what defense attorneys are supposed to do, but I wouldn’t do the work if I couldn’t draw some lines.
I thanked Andersen for the beer and reassured him that his confidences would be preserved. We shook hands, but before I left I asked him about Matt Jr.
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“Not really. His dad would drive him around in his truck, but he never let him out of the cab. Probably didn’t want him to know what was going on. Not that it did any good. The kid turned hellion anyway, and got out of Dodge at the first opportunity. Said to be another freak with a bike, like his sister. Never got a chance to ride with him.”
I left after that. The chat with Dutch was going to make it harder to visit Ed in his repair hangar on the chance that I’d have to talk to Brian, and it had done little to advance progress on the Eugenie case. But as wiser people than me have said, all information means something to somebody, somewhere.
By the time I made it back to Southampton, the sun was sinking toward the horizon and I’d had about as much as I could take of
ex-cons, errant children, biker chicks, and busted lives. I needed a dose of benevolence and decency, uncompromised by ill-concealed malice or reckless disregard for the welfare of innocents. And I needed it in a big package.
“Harry,” I said when he answered the phone, “this is Jackie. Do you remember me?”
“I do. Reddish blond hair, or is it blondish red? With a figure cambered in all the right places and a pleasant natural fragrance.”
“Nothing about my mind?”
“I was getting to that,” he said.
“Don’t bother. I’ve only got a few brain cells left.”
“You want to finish them off?” he asked.
“Gin and tonic. Lots of ice. Lime. Tall glass. Start mixing. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
I got there in more like fifteen, which was par for the course. Harry had anticipated this, and was just dropping in the limes when I rang the doorbell.
Cool to my lips, the drink brought warmth to my heart and soul. As did the sight of Harry, in a white shirt big enough to use as a mainsail, baggy linen pants tied at the waist with a rope, and leather sandals. My hopes for that moment were utterly fulfilled.
“Throwing you out of my house was the best thing I ever did,” I said.
“It didn’t seem that way at the time,” he said, rising to my offered toast.
“Since you moved back to town you’ve never once disappointed me, pissed me off, or hurt my feelings,” I said. “Whatever isn’t ideal about this relationship, from my point of view, is entirely my responsibility. I know that now for certain, so I wanted you to know it, too, before I get distracted by something and forget what I was going to say. This is very tasty. Blue Sapphire? Who won the Yankees opener? I remember the Yankees. They play a type of game, with a ball. What was your name again?”
“Tough day?”
“I went to see my brother.”
“Oh.”
“If in the next half hour I tell you everything I’ve recently learned, can we then talk about something slightly less terrifying and gut-wrenching? Like the economy or deforestation?”
He preserved his record of agreeableness so I could go through everything. It took more like an hour and a half, but as usual, he’d already adjusted for the time parameters. He asked a few questions and clarified a few details, but mostly he listened with keen attentiveness. Without me noticing what he was doing, he also made dinner and set the table, so just as I was wrapping up, he was lighting the candles.
“Where’d all that come from?” I asked, pointing at the spread on the table.
“The food fairies. I have them on retainer.”
When we sat down to eat he asked, “So, no conclusions?”
“No, but I have a theory,” I said.
“Good.”
“A testable hypothesis.”
“That’s better than untestable,” he said.
“Or detestable. I haven’t figured out the test method yet, but that’s what a succulent dinner and a good night’s sleep is all about.”
“We specialize here in restful sleep.”
“I was thinking back at my office. With you,” I quickly added. “I’m expecting a package, and besides, I have an alarm and video monitors. A bodyguard would nicely fill out the panoply.”
I really didn’t want to sleep alone, and I especially didn’t want to go back to the office in the dark. I couldn’t face that after such a lovely respite from disquiet and fear.
“The office it is,” said Harry, continuing his winning streak.
We formed a Volvo station wagon motorcade of two, me in front, Harry bringing up the rear. The trip was uneventful, and the lack of drama continued at the office. I picked up the package delivered by the courier, punched in the alarm code at the door and in we went.
Harry’s face fell a bit when he saw the pull-out bed, looking fairly petite in sofa mode. He had reason to be concerned, but there was nothing I could do but blithely pretend there wasn’t a problem.
I fussed over Harry and ignored the package filled with Ed Conklin’s family photos as long as I could bear it. Finally I said, “Hey, let’s sit on the sofa and look at this thing together!”
It was pretty much a disappointment. As Conklin had said, pages of vacations and get-togethers with family and friends. Some aerials of New York City, Boston, wooded New England hills, and Long Island waterfront. No overlap with the photos on the memory card, which I didn’t know was significant or coincidental.
Only two black-and-white photos stood out. One of a Harley-Davidson straddled by a teenage boy, and a shot labeled “Matty with Mom.” It was easy to see the family resemblance between Eugenie and her brother, who I assumed was also the kid on the Harley, though camera shake had blurred his features somewhat.
“How much do photographs illuminate and how much do they misinform?” asked Harry.
“That’s way too weighty for me right now,” I said.
“But germane.”
So I thought about it.
“You’re right. We can’t know without the context. I could argue either way with any given photograph.”
I looked at the two black and whites of Matty with this thought in mind. Then I took them over to the printer/copier/scanner and scanned them in. I downloaded a set to my laptop, then sent the others to Randall with a note that said, “I hope these illuminate rather than misinform.”
Harry quietly watched the whole procedure, which I only realized when I pushed the e-mail Send button.
“Obsession is one of your disappointments in me, isn’t it,” I said.
He shook his head.
“It used to be, but I’ve learned it’s not a zero-sum game. Your maniacal devotions don’t reduce your attention to me. They’d happen anyway. It’s who you are. If you want to add me in, I’ll take it.”
That’s when I shut down all the office equipment, including my cell phone, and shut down my mind as best I could so I could devote every watt of emotional energy to Harry, struck dumb as I was by his kindness and generosity, and feeling all other fleeting attractions disintegrate and disappear into nothingness.
Early the next morning I was beckoned by Randall Dodge.
“You killed my night when you sent those black and whites,” he said. “I was about to go home and put cold compresses on my eyeballs. Now I think I’ve gone blind.”
“You found something.”
“Not sure. But it’s worth a trip over here. You need to look on the big monitors. Bring coffee and glyceride-laden carbohydrates. Then I need to go to bed.”
Harry and I caravanned back, stopping at the corner place for the requested provisions. The lady behind the counter said we must have a lot of hungry mouths to feed. I pointed at Harry and said, Just two of these.
Randall looked like hell. His face gleamed with dried sweat, and his eyes were as red as Rosemary’s baby’s. His clothes looked as slept-in as they were, the wrinkled mattress on the floor in a distant corner further proof. As was the aroma in the back room, never floral, now cutable with a dull knife.
“I feel bad,” I said. “I didn’t mean to put you through all this.”
“Yes you did,” said Randall. “That’s okay. I love a challenge. Sort of. Gimme the coffee. Hi, Harry. She’s sorry to put you through this, too.”
“No I’m not,” I said.
We let Randall go wash his face, put on a clean sweatshirt from a box of promotional logo wear—the words “I ate at Good to the Last Byte” on the front with a picture of a CD covered in cream cheese. We waited while he downed a large hazelnut coffee and two of the croissants we brought, enhanced by grape jelly and Grey Poupon mustard from the shop refrigerator.
“Okay,” said Randall, licking a glob of mustard off his fingertips, “let’s do it.”
A single click brought up the images on his big LCD monitor. Several dozen thumbnail photos filled the screen. He clicked on the first one.
“Here’s where I started. The photo with the two guys reflected in
the deli window that you found on Eugenie’s memory card. It took me a few hours, but I finally determined you were wrong,” he said, looking up at me.
“Shit.”
“It wasn’t two guys. It was a guy and a gal.”
“Really.”
“Look,” he said, clicking on the next thumbnail. It was a close-up of the reflection of the person who’d snapped the shot, processed through Randall’s image-enhancement software. He pointed to a specific spot on the image. “See these bumps on her chest? In my culture we call them tits, or knockers, sometimes boobies. That makes her a girl.”
He went back to the original photo, zoomed in on the shooter’s chest, then switched back and forth with the enhanced image. It was obvious.
“This would stand up in federal court,” said Randall. “For all the time it took me, I did relatively little manipulation. You got this flair at the hips. It’s a female.”
“Eugenie?”
“Maybe,” said Randall. “But her face is completely obscured by the camera. Nothin’ nobody can do about that.”
“What about the guy?”
“That’s the interesting part. Let’s take a look at the Chronicle’s motorcycle rally series.”
He opened and closed the sequence of news photos taken at the Peconic Pantry that Roberta and I had dug out of the Chronicle’s archives.
“I’m only doing this to simulate in tiny time increments the immensely tedious process I went through to study each of these photographs, driven as I was by the black and whites you sent over of the young guy sitting on the Harley, also as a little kid with his mother, who I could have sworn I saw at the motorcycle rally. And I did,” he said, slowing the pace of the frames along with his words. “Right here.”
He stopped on one of the news photos. Then he zoomed in on a particular bike and blew it up. The image softened dramatically, but then he brought up the motorcycle shot I’d sent him and put them side by side.
“What works best with these programs is to have a version of the thing you’re trying to enhance. If this little cluster of pixels looks like this when fuzzy, it should look like this when clear.”
He clicked back and forth between the shot I’d sent him and the one from the motorcycle rally, calling up a string of saved images that allowed us to see hours of labor unfold in seconds.
