by Chris Knopf
“What do you mean call the attorney?”
“That’s what she said, Joe.”
“Well, you don’t gotta do that. You’re the police. All you got to do is say you want to talk to her.”
“I’m not the police, Joe. You’re the police.”
“Jesus Christ. Nothin’s easy.”
“Call Szwit. Have him tell her to expect a guy named Sam Acquillo. Then call me back. I’ll wait here.”
“He might want to be there.”
“Great.”
“No big deal.”
“Don’t take too long. It’s hot.”
The station sold a brand of gasoline I didn’t recognize. A small crowd of young black kids were hanging out front, mumbling to each other and watching a skinny gray dog peel a wad of gum up off the hot tarmac. Their clothes poured down off their bodies and curled around their feet. They drank diet soda from liter bottles and stayed clear of the wiry little white guy manning the full-service pumps. Everyone was smoking cigarettes despite the pervasive gasoline vapors. So I lit a Camel. Solidarity.
The phone rang.
“Go on over. But go slow. The lady’s some kind of dipsoid.”
“What kind of dipsoid?”
“I told you. Some sort of phobiac. Afraid of the outside or some shit.”
“Agoraphobic.”
“Yeah. I think we covered this.”
“Szwit isn’t coming?”
“My wife’s afraid of birds. Scare the shit out of her. We never get to eat on the patio at the Driver’s Seat. She thinks they’re gonna get caught in the umbrellas, panic and dive into her ears.”
“Her ears?”
“Yeah. She thinks birds want to fly in her ears. This has never happened, to my knowledge, to anybody, but this is what she thinks.”
“Otherwise, a pretty normal gal.”
“Outside of marrying me.”
“So he won’t be there.”
“Who?”
“Szwit.”
“He’s on his way.”
“Okay”
“Let me know how it goes.”
The kids had melted off under the late morning sun. I looked for little puddles of denim and nylon. I bought a liter bottle of Fresca and climbed back into the Grand Prix. I was starting to lose whatever enthusiasm I’d stirred up for this whole thing. I thought about my roof rafters and tool belt. I lit another Camel and turned on WLIU to distract the whiny little voice inside my head.
It took even longer to get the door open this time. After I rang the doorbell I caught a little curtain movement from a second floor window. I was getting her attention.
The same woman’s voice came from the crack in the door.
“Yes?”
“My office called Mr. Szwit. My name is Acquillo.”
“Identification.”
Oh, Christ.
I flipped open my wallet and slid my driver’s license behind the yellowy plastic window. I stuck it up to the crack in the door for about half a second.
“Just a moment.”
The door closed again and I waited again. I was starting to get to know the door knocker. It was Colonial, like the house. Plate steel, painted flat black, with scallops cut into the surface to simulate hand forging. The kind of thing my parents wouldn’t even know how to describe.
The door swung all the way open. A short, obese woman peered around the edge and watched me enter the foyer. Her dress was a cotton sack printed with something and cinched up around an area approximating her waist. She wore an apron, stubby heels and an angry black scowl. Warren Sapp would have a tough time knocking her down.
“Wait here,” she said, then heaved herself up the stairs. Alone again.
The foyer was done in shades of off-white. The natural wood banister was the only point of relief. I strolled forward to catch a glimpse of the living room to the right. It featured the same palette, except for the love seat and a pair of high-backed stuffed chairs, which were upholstered in a muted floral pattern. It looked like everything in the house could float away on a stiff breeze. A set of louvered doors blocked the view to the kitchen. I heard voices. Then the fat lady came back downstairs. She waved at the living room.
“Go on, sit in there. Mrs. Eldridge ll be down in a sec.”
I sat on the chair that faced the stairway so I could see her come down. The air-conditioning was set low, maybe sixty-seven degrees. I warmed my hands with my breath. I wanted another cup of coffee. Something really hot in a doubled-up paper cup.
Mrs. Eldridge glided down the stairs and swept across the carpet with a soft, leggy delicacy, and before I had a chance to stand, slid into the opposing high-backed chair, where she perched like an oversized cat, her stocking feet tucked up under her butt, her hands folded prayerfully in her lap. She wore a white cashmere sweater buttoned up to her throat and black cotton slacks. Her hair was too perfectly arranged, as if fresh from the hairdresser. And black. Too black, even for a woman her age, which I guessed to be late thirties. She was like her living room. Not much color, except for the eyes, which were the most brilliant, frigid icy blue I’d ever seen.
“Well,” she said, neither a question nor a statement.
I stood up and leaned over to offer my hand.
“I’m Sam Acquillo. I was there when it happened.”
Her nails, long and perfect like her hair, were painted a deep maroon. A tangle of blue veins crazed across her wrist and the back of her hand. When I shook her hand, bony and cool-dry I was afraid I might crush it like a piece of ceramic, but her grip was blunt and to the point.
“Appolonia Eldridge. I was here.”
I retreated back to my chair.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“You knew Jonathan?”
“No. I was just having a drink. Waiting for a friend.”
“Yes. Of course.”
She looked away, toward the shrouded bay windows, as if the conversation had just concluded. I felt myself disappearing, until she returned her gaze, then I was back in the room.
“The retired engineer. And the young lady lawyer. Jacqueline Swaitkowski. She was badly injured, but you saved her life. And your own.”
“You read the report.”
A suggestion of a smile teased her face.
“You feel I shouldn’t have?”
“No. Of course not. I’d have memorized it by now.”
“You look too young to be retired.”
“Didn’t retire.”
The blocky woman who’d opened the door came plodding into the room holding a silver tray and tea service. Appolonia looked a little startled. The woman thrust the tray under her nose.
“It’s your tea, girl. You haven’t had it yet.”
Appolonia looked at me with mild exasperation.
“Honestly, Belinda.”
Appolonia was forced into the ritual of pouring the tea into a cup, dropping in sugar and squeezing the lemon. It seemed to take about four hours.
“We haven’t offered Mr. Acquillo any tea?” Appolonia asked.
Belinda looked over at me like I’d just broken into the house. I held up my hand.
“I’m all set, thanks.”
“Not a tea drinker, I surmise.”
“Coffee. And vodka. Not usually at the same time.”
Belinda plodded out of the room with the tea tray. The room struggled to regain its state of repose.
“I’m at a bit of a loss,” Appolonia said over the lip of her teacup.
“On why I’m here.”
“Yes.”
“Me, too.”
“So maybe we should start with that,” she said, helpfully.
One of the trainers who helped teach me to box used to say fights were won with the legs, not the fists. Balance and movement put you where you were supposed to be, or kept you away from where you weren’t, like that killing zone between the inside clutch and the full extension of the other guy’s reach. But sometimes, for no reason at all, the canvas fel
t like it was full of bumps and ridges, and ripples that undulated and shifted and screwed up your balance. Your feet got all tangled up and you lost your sense of where you were supposed to be. I’d been feeling that way ever since I’d driven up Mrs. Eldridge’s street.
“They’re afraid of you.”
She cocked her head and widened those crystal blue eyes.
“Who?”
“The cops. They don’t know how to talk to you. They aren’t used to this kind of thing. They spend ninety percent of their time with dumb hard cases, or routine stuff that’s safe and predictable, and that’s how they like it. This is all way too weird for them.”
“As am I. Way too weird.”
“Not what I meant.”
“Well, you said they were afraid of me. That’s awfully silly, if you think about it.”
“I agree. Any ideas?”
“Ideas?”
“About who killed your husband?”
She smiled at me.
“Ah, this is why they sent you. Your diplomacy.”
“Sorry.”
“What exactly did you retire, or whatever you did, from?”
“R&D. Hydrocarbon processing.”
“Jonathan wanted to be a scientist.” She sipped her tea. “No. No ideas.”
“I know this is hard.”
“It’s all right. How’s your hearing?”
“Most of it came back. Jackie’s not so lucky.”
“Jonathan had to sleep with a sound machine. It was set for crickets and rain. He said the house was too quiet. He had ears like a spaniel.”
That reminded me.
“What was the poodle’s name?”
“Pierre. He’s fine. They fished him out of the water. Belinda knows where he is. I didn’t like him. I’m sorry. Jonathan was the dog person.”
Her dead husband was right. The house was too quiet. No clocks, no creaks. No sound intruding from outside. It was clenched within a white, funereal stillness. A busy little poodle would have been like the sound machine—a little blast of chaos, a connection with the living.
“He wanted to be a scientist, but became an investment adviser,” I said.
“It’s no less intricate than the hard sciences, but the money’s better.”
“He did pretty well?”
“It would appear that way from the proceeds of the will.”
She looked down at her hands.
“Mr. Acquillo.”
“Yeah?”
“Jonathan lived his own life. I knew very little about his business or the people he worked with. We never discussed those sorts of things. Never, not one single, solitary word. We never entertained or traveled together. That would have been impossible. He wanted to leave his job back at the office, and find some relief from it all here. With me. He was gone at least half the time. He traveled all over the country, all over the world, visiting companies his clients might have an interest in. That was one of his specialties, fieldwork. Few advisers ever bother to visit the companies they recommend, but he believed it was the reason for his success. They were technology companies, applied science. So science did find its way into his career. And that, sir, is the sum total of everything I know about Jonathan’s work life.”
“How long have you had it?”
“What?”
“Agoraphobia.”
Her shoulders slumped a little, but she still looked stiffly amused.
“It’s an anxiety disorder. I don’t know if agoraphobia is exactly the right term. And I don’t relish discussing it, I’m afraid.”
“Sorry I’m just thinking it must be difficult.”
“It’s a bitch, Mr. Acquillo. That doesn’t make me one.”
“’Course not.”
“Or some terrifying creature.”
I jerked my head toward the back of the house where we could hear Belinda rattling around.
“You’re not the one I’m afraid of,” I said.
That loosened her up a little, or so I imagined from an almost imperceptible shift in the way she sat in her chair.
“It isn’t much of a life, you know, but it was infinitely better knowing that, at least some of the time, it could be spent with Jonathan. We would sit, right here in this room, and chat. About just about everything. I read the newspaper every day, and watch a little CNN—you have to be careful not to watch too much, it’s habit forming. And I have a group on the computer with whom I converse. And Belinda, she’s out and about a bit. You can keep up very well if you try a little. And, of course, Jonathan lived in the whole world. He knew so much. But then, you know, we didn’t just discuss current affairs. He really wasn’t the big stiff people thought he was. If you knew him as I did. You can’t imagine what it means to me to have him taken away”
“I can. I can imagine, but that’s all. I’ve lost a lot of people, but not like that.”
Her composure began to waver. She put her teacup down on the tray as if the weight of it was suddenly impossible to bear.
“I still can’t quite understand why you’re here.”
I shrugged.
“One of the cops investigating the case asked me to talk to you.”
“Very curious.”
“He’s actually a friend of mine. Since I was there when it happened, he thought maybe you’d be more likely to talk to me.”
“I have nothing to hide. I’ve told them everything.”
“So, no theories.”
“No. And I don’t care.”
“Pardon?”
Having regained her strength, she scooped the teacup off the table. She looked right at me.
“It’s absolutely immaterial to me. He’s gone, and nothing will change that.”
“With all due respect—”
“Please, Mr. Acquillo, understand. There’s nothing I can do about this. I’m here, in this house. Jonathan left me enough to live on—my God, enough for me to live a thousand years. But I’m hardly up to a crusade. I can barely imagine a trip to the grocery store, so how am I to hunt down my husband’s killers? Isn’t that for the police? Foolish me, I always thought that’s what they did. Not send over retired engineers. With all due respect.”
She looked over my shoulder. When I turned around I saw Belinda standing in the foyer.
“I changed my mind,” I told her. “I’ll have some of that tea after all.”
Belinda looked over at Appolonia for permission.
“Please, Belinda,” said Appolonia. “It’s quite good.”
Belinda spun on her heel and left abruptly enough to stir the air.
“She’s really a doll once you know her,” said Mrs. Eldridge.
A few hundred comebacks leapt to mind, but I managed to shove them back down.
“You’d like my friend, too. Joe Sullivan. The cop who asked me to talk to you. He’s new on the case. He’d be here himself, but he thought it’d be too much for you.”
“I’m sturdier than I look, Mr. Acquillo.”
“Sam.”
“Okay Sam.”
“I believe that.”
“Because of your powers of perception?”
“Yeah. Engineers are big on deductive reasoning.”
“I’ve heard that. I studied abnormal psychology. Surprise, surprise.”
“Doctorate.”
“Boston University.”
I pointed to myself.
“MIT. Just across the river. Though I once lived in a BU frat house. In the attic with the mice.”
“This is why your friend thought I’d speak with you? You’d know the secret handshake?”
“Must’ve been tough to go to class.”
“I was better then. But yes. It was.”
“And Jonathan was at Harvard Business School. When you met him.”
“You must have quite a file.”
“Just guessing, based on the dates.”
“That’s right. I trust you aren’t interested in the exact circumstances.”
“Maybe a little. If I�
�m not prying.”
She smiled and looked toward the window, which was shrouded in tissue-thin, translucent sheers. Her skin was very pale in the diffused light, though you could see tiny wrinkle lines around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. It was the kind of face that wouldn’t age well. Too undernourished.
“That’s all you’re doing,” she said, then after a bit of a pause, “We met when Jonathan was in a clinical study. Nothing exotic, I can’t even remember the point of the research. I was helping verify the data with follow-up interviews. The sort of statistical drudgery advisers delight in visiting on graduate students. But, luckily, the subjects came to me. At my house. I lived with my parents.” She added, anticipating the question, “I grew up in Boston. Brookline.”
“So did my ex-wife. Newton, actually.”
“Jonathan grew up out here.”
“Me, too.”
“Curious.”
“But irrelevant?” I asked.
“Possibly.”
“Wow. Too subtle for me.”
“I thought you were the subtle one. Subtle enough to talk to the crazy lady.”
“Or crazy enough.”
She saluted me with her cup of tea.
“Touché.”
“Not trying to cross swords, Mrs. Eldridge.”
“Appolonia.”
“Just trying to learn more about your husband.”
“Ever consider there are some things you can never know?”
“Sure.”
“Though you know a lot already, don’t you.”
“Not really.”
“More than you admit.”
“Engineers are trained empiricists. You only know what you see.”
“At least you know how to duck.”
“Learned that from Rene Ruiz.”
“Engineer?”
“Prizefighter.”
“Explains the nose.”
“Courtesy of Rene.”
“So you didn’t duck in time.”
“That’s what I learned from Rene. Timing is everything.”
“Like when you jumped behind the big table.”
“So you got a file of your own.”
“It didn’t say.”
“What?”
“Why you jumped behind the table.”
“To keep from getting blown up.”
“At that point it was just a fire. It didn’t say why you jumped behind the table. No theories?”
“No theories. Certainties.”
