by Chris Knopf
“Hate guns,” he said.
“My point.”
“Guns don’t kill people. People with guns kill people.”
“Not if you get there first.”
I drove back to Oak Point, where I delivered Sam to Eddie and Amanda’s considerable charms, then I went back to my office and fold-out couch, in the dark, like I’d sworn to myself I’d never do.
I eased into things by stopping at the Japanese restaurant and having another drink at the bar, a big-girl drink, not the watery white wine that Benson served. Makoto saw me and came over to say hello.
“Did you enjoy your visit with your old friend?” he asked.
“I did. Thanks.”
He nodded in a half bow. I loved talking to Makoto, because so much of it involved those lovely little bows. It’s pleasant to express respect for a person you actually respect, even knowing that’s not the only reason you do it.
“Anytime. Happy to be your conference room,” he said.
“I’ll remember that. How’re you at martial arts?”
“I can break an egg with one hand. Other than that, my ninety-eight-year-old mother would be a more effective fighter. Though you’d say she hardly looks ninety-two.”
“One more of these, if you don’t mind,” I said, holding up the glass.
Before I went through the door leading up to my office, I took the Glock out of my purse. Then I put the purse strap over my head so I could hold the gun with two hands, the way you’re trained to do. I went up the stairs and down the hall to my door. I partly wished one of the surveyors would come out so I could stuff the muzzle in his face, but instantly rejected the thought as unworthy and likely to screw up whatever good karma I had left. I punched in the alarm for my office door, opened it, and reached in to flick on the light, standing away from the door with the gun held next to my face, pointing at the ceiling.
Nothing happened, so I walked into the office with the Glock held straight out, finger inside the trigger guard. Nothing. I kicked the door closed and threw on the dead bolt. I pulled all the shades, then checked the bathroom and kitchenette, which were windowless, and the coat closet, my least favorite part. Nothing.
Still jittery, I rushed out of my clothes and into a sweat suit to allow for maximum freedom of movement, then spent an hour clearing a space into which I dragged my desk, so when I was on the computer I could face the door and have my back in a corner, away from both windows.
Then I flopped down onto the pull-out bed, in its upright and locked sofa position, and listened to my heart trying to thump its way out of my chest.
I can’t do this much longer, I said to myself. I’ll die of paranoia poisoning.
21
I felt the earth move all night. The same thing happens to me when I spend time on a sailboat. The random motion of the plane had transferred itself to some strange part of my mind that would replay the sensation for at least a day afterward.
I got up and put on my robe, sat down and turned on the computer. Then I got back up and made coffee so I’d have an excuse to light a cigarette. By then the computer had booted up and was ready for action.
I launched Randall’s secret software and searched Matthew Birkson Jr. I got a birth notice from Southampton Hospital, June 10, 1960. Included were the parents, his weight, hand- and footprints. I continued the search, which yielded the usual things, like sports reports in local newspapers, and some less usual, like arrests for drunk and disorderly, speeding, and assault and battery. All raps he avoided doing time for by a hair’s breadth, to the credit or discredit of my questionable profession.
I did the same for Eugenie Birkson, which added considerably to the stuff I’d already uncovered and downloaded. Then I did some crosschecking, going back to Matthew Birkson Jr. and looking up his Social Security number, something only Randall’s software would be able to do. To my pleasant surprise, a scan of his application was in the file. I strained to read the blurred, handwritten information, though what I ultimately saw was clear enough. It was at the top of the form, after the request for the applicant’s name.
Matthew Eugene Birkson Jr.
I skipped the shower, getting away with a splash of water on my face, brushed my teeth, and put on whatever clothes were within reach. I poured the rest of the coffee into a travel mug, slipped a small bag over my shoulder, and headed out.
When I was in the car I called Randall Dodge, waking him up.
“Oh, it’s Jackie Swaitkowski,” he said, his voice thick with exhaustion. “The person most responsible for this scourge of sleep deprivation.”
I told him what I hoped he’d be able to do with his double-secret software, in purely theoretical terms, since as an officer of the court I could hardly ask someone to commit an illegal act.
“I’d do it myself, but I’ve never used that part of the application, and I can’t afford the time to learn. And if I got caught, I could get disbarred. If you get caught you’ll have me as your lawyer, so nothing to worry about.”
“I won’t get caught,” he said. “They’ll never know I was there.”
“Right, the tracking mastery of the Native American warrior. Moving through the forest like a ghost. I can totally dig that.”
He promised to call my cell if he had anything to report, assuming he could wake up enough to find the On button on the computer.
I was heading east toward Springs, so the rising sun was frequently in my face. The mist that often clothed the mornings out here in gray gauze moderated the effect. It also stuck to the windshield, forcing me to use the wipers and the defroster to see where I was going. Traffic was starting to build from the daily migration of tradesmen, waitstaff, retail clerks, and the rest of the working population priced out of the local real-estate market. It was nearly bumper-to-bumper through downtown East Hampton but eased up after I veered off Montauk Highway and headed toward Springs.
When I got to Matt Birkson’s, Guthrie was out in the yard and, when I picked my way up the driveway, seemed pleased as punch to see me. I didn’t have time to get all the way out of the car before he jumped up on me, leaving some impressive paw prints on my pants and the front of my shirt.
“Nice going, sport,” I said, pushing him down with encouragement to stay there.
He accompanied me to the front door, which the more dangerous dog in the place opened only after some fairly persistent knocking.
“You again,” said Birkson, answering the door in a gold-colored jumpsuit.
“I’m sorry to bug you, sir, but it’s very important.”
“Important to who?”
“To a lot of people, not least of all you,” I said.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Do we have to have all our conversations with me on the front stoop and you holding the door?”
He looked behind him into the house.
“I’m not exactly prepared for visitors,” he said.
I looked around the property, spotting a pair of bent-up aluminum beach chairs.
“How ’bout over there?” I said, pointing. “It’s warm enough.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said. He closed the door, and I didn’t hear anything for about five minutes. I was about to start knocking again when the door opened and he came out with a blue goose-down vest over the jumpsuit. He walked past me and sat in one of the chairs. I sat in the other.
I’d rehearsed on the way over how I’d ease into this, as much as I rehearse anything, but looking at Birkson’s hard-bit face and impatient eyes, I decided it wasn’t worth it.
“I know about Eugenie,” I said.
His squinted at me, not to see better, but to take stock.
“What’s that supposed to mean.”
“Any minute now I’m going to get a phone call that will confirm it beyond dispute. We could go through the motions of assertion and denial, but it’s still going to come around to the same conclusion.”
He sat silently, studying me.
“First make the
assertion, then we’ll see about the denial,” he said.
Guthrie reestablished the relationship we’d begun by pressing up against my right leg. I dropped my hand down to pet him.
“She was Matt Jr., or Matt Jr. was Eugenie. However you want to put it. They were the same person.”
He nodded slowly, not to affirm what I’d said, but more to acknowledge the topic of conversation.
“You say you got proof of that?” he asked.
I pulled out my cell and called Randall, apologizing for being a nudge, but he said it was okay, that he had what I wanted.
“Conclusively,” he said.
I clicked the phone shut and nodded.
“Instead of graduating from high school, Matt left home. But not to ride the rails, or run away to sea, or any of that,” I said. “He went and made the switch.”
Birkson looked down at his hands, now clasped over his belly.
“Who else is making these accusations?” he asked.
“Right now, it’s only me and people I work with,” I said. “I can’t promise it won’t go any farther than that, but I’ll do what I can. Depending on what you’re willing to tell me.”
He grinned a humorless grin.
“Plea bargain?” he said. “You can tell you’re a lawyer.”
“Come on. I came to you first.”
He made a sigh that ended in a sort of growl.
“Most people are born equipped like a boy or a girl. But some others end up more or less in between,” he said. “Some of these’re more like girls, some more like boys, either in their heads or in the way they’re put together. And sometimes they’re all scrambled up. Matty’s body kinda leaned toward boy, but in his head, he was all girl. You can imagine what kind of a torment that’d be.”
“I can’t imagine,” I said.
“Matty was a wild one, that’s for sure. Everybody figured it was because of my bad influence, but nobody knew the truth, except me and his mother, who really couldn’t handle it. So she eventually left with her suitcase and her coke habit and I had to figure out what to do with him.”
“But then you went to prison.”
“Ida took him in, and I couldn’t fairly keep it from her. Honestly, it was the best thing. You wouldn’t think this, but I really wanted the kid to be whatever he wanted to be. I told him that more than once. But having a woman to talk to was the clincher. She helped him figure out how to be a girl, all the particulars, which he kind of took to, in a sort of transitionary way as this made-up sister, Eugenie. Then one day he decides, This is what I want to do, and I call him from the joint and say, Okay, I’ll pay for it, and that was that. He leaves town for a few years, and by the time I’m done with my program, he’s back as Eugenie, now a girl in every way, and nobody’s the wiser.”
“Is that true? That nobody’s the wiser?” I asked.
He went back to studying me.
“That’s what I believed. Never heard anything different.”
“What about Ed?” I asked.
“I have no idea. That was between them. It wasn’t the kind of thing I was going to discuss with my daughter.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just sat there with my mouth shut, an unnatural state. Birkson saved me.
“Eugenie had a gift for all things mechanical. Always did. Hookin’ up with Conklin made a life for her she could truly love. More than most people are able to say.”
Guthrie must have noticed a disturbance in the emotional climate, because he left my side and went over to Birkson and shoved his muzzle into the old man’s lap. I took it as a cue to let it go and just get out of there. There was more I wanted to know, but I couldn’t bear to bring forth another ounce of sorrow.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Birkson,” I said, and got up and walked over to my car and drove away. Through my rearview mirror I looked back at him scrunching around with Guthrie’s muzzle and shaking his head, in disagreement or bewilderment. I was too far away to tell.
When I reached Bridgehampton, on the way back to Water Mill, I cut north and drove to my favorite horse pasture. The horses were out, and my favorite Certs addicts came galloping up with a great deal of excitement. I gave them a roll or two and apologized sincerely for my long absence.
In the middle of the pasture was a wide circle of fresh grass enclosed by a green wire fence. There was no other evidence of what had so recently happened there. I was glad the horses weren’t thinking, Hey, remember the last time that woman showed up?
I looked at the sky and saw only the tiny, distant gleam of a commercial jet, safe in the air above, free from the corruption and duplicity down here on earth.
The last time I’d stood there I was confused about something, though now I couldn’t remember what it was. I was still unsure about many things, but no longer confused over the essentials, at least as they related to the fate of Eugenie Birkson.
I peeled the wrapper off the last roll of Certs and chucked the little white disks out onto the grass. Then I got in my car and headed west toward Coram.
———
Harrison & Flynn TeleSales was still open for business when I got there. I had to go through the same receptionist gauntlet, and the chubby little nebbish put up the same feeble attempt at deterring me, which quickly withered in the face of my ferocious impatience, and soon enough I was waiting in the same comfy conference room with a cup of tea and a chest so tightened around my heart I wondered if I was about to stroke out.
Billy wasn’t happy. He stormed into the room, his face red with exasperation.
“You can’t keep doing this, Jacqueline,” he said. “I need the work.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s the last time. Just give me a few minutes.”
He dropped like a bag of sand into one of the nice conference room chairs, unbuttoned his shirt collar and loosened his tie. I was sitting across from him. I put both forearms on the table and clasped my hands. I dipped my head toward the table surface, took a deep breath, then picked up my head and looked him right in the eye.
“Benson MacAvoy, Matty Birkson, and you were all there that night at the Peconic Pantry,” I said, in as flat a voice as I could muster.
Billy sat in his chair like a lump, the implications of what I’d said pulling him downward, toward the earth.
“Says who?”
“I do. You were the Three Musketeers. Best buds. I don’t know what happened, but I can guess. Matty was a wilding, an emotional powder keg. Angry, confused, who knows what. He loses it, gets into it with Clinton. Things get out of control. He hits Clinton with something. Maybe out of misconceived self-defense, maybe for the thrill of it. You all run, but not until after you dump out the register, grabbing the cash and the single check under the drawer, which you try to cash, to no good end. How am I doing so far?”
His face had that traitorous glow that comes with a ruddy complexion. Makes it hard for people like us to hide what we feel.
“You don’t think I’m actually going to respond to that, do you?”
“I don’t care if you do or not,” I said. “You’ve been married to your story so long you might even believe it yourself.
“That’s right. For twenty years I’ve kept it all buried underground. And you keep trying to dig it up. Why? I don’t get the obsession.”
I ignored that and pressed on.
“You’re the one who gets busted, because you’re the dumb ass who tries to cash the check. Now what? You could implicate your cohorts, but to what end? You’re totally screwed, so why screw them, too? No point. I know that stubborn, Irish Catholic code of honor. You cleave to it even if nobody else does, because that’s what you do.”
He looked around the room, seeking escape. But I had him pinned to his chair with my eyes—my angry, inquisitional glare.
“It’s ancient history,” said Billy.
“Eugenie Birkson recently died over your so-called history. So no, it’s anything but ancient.”
“You’re the one who thought th
ere was virtue in stubbornness,” said Billy. “I’d say black and your first thought was, How can I prove it’s white?”
“Did you know?” I asked.
“Did I know what?”
“About Matty. That he was a girl in boy’s clothing? You knew him all through childhood. You and Benson knew there wasn’t a sister named Eugenie, until suddenly there was. Did you know Benson was selling industrial secrets, and that Eugenie was an accomplice, flying him up to Vermont, where they could spirit the goods over the Canadian border?”
I’ve made a study of interrogations, and concluded there are plenty of things that don’t work, but no single technique that works every time. The only common denominator is the ability of the interrogator to interpret the facial expressions and body language of the interrogated. If you can read the cues, you can direct the flow.
Far less capable people than me would have read the shift in mood on Billy’s face.
“I know nothing about that,” he said.
“I think Benson knew the feds were closing in on him. He had to narrow his exposure, the greatest being Eugenie, who knew everything. I think he figured out a way to sabotage her plane so it would fail in flight. Take one variable out of the equation.”
Billy pulled his head back as if I’d just reached across the table and slapped him.
“I think Brazen Bennie killed her,” I said. “That’s what ultimately became of the people you’ve protected all these years. Congratulations.”
Billy shook his head with his whole body, like Stevie Wonder at the keyboard. Somewhere deep inside me sympathy tried to surface, but the rest of me, the animal on the hunt, slapped it out of the way.
“Eugenie’s dead and you did the time. Only Benson gets away scot-free. It’s time for the truth to come out,” I said. “Come on; it’ll be good for your soul.”
I actually stood up and reached across the table and socked him gently in the chest, then sat down again. He looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I’d just done that.
“Next time’ll be the real thing,” I said, smiling, like I didn’t mean it, though part of me did.
