by Chris Knopf
The big tangle of kinky hair I’d freed from the bandage was twirling around her head from the wind gushing into the Grand Prix. It looked good on her. Reckless and unkempt.
“I’m not kidding, Sam. Sullivan should never have involved you.”
“So you’re going to go through everything Alena sends you and see if anything interesting pops out.”
She shook her head and snorted.
“You’re not even listening.”
“You’re a peach, Jackie,” I told her, but she was busy staring out the open window, wind in her injured face, O-2 in her lungs and the first hint of renewal sneaking into her consciousness.
SEVEN
EDDIE WAS SO GLAD to get outside he circled the house at a full run, then drank a little water and did it again. I opted for a gin and tonic, which I brought out to the weatherbeaten Adirondacks, which I’d pulled out from under the maples and set up just a few feet from the breakwater. When Eddied had his fill of tearing around, he lay down in front of me with his tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth. I looked in his eyes for signs of reproach, but only saw the resident look of gleeful anticipation.
I’d pulled a stack of mail out of the mailbox when I got there. Tucked between an electric bill from LIPA and a slippery, full-color promotional flyer from a home center store up island was a photograph from my daughter of a dentist in the 1920s straddling a patient and extracting a tooth with a pair of pliers. She was a graphic artist, with full access to every conceivable image to capture and reformulate into a postcard. This was the communication channel we’d settled on. I didn’t have a computer, so her preferred approach, email, was out of the question. I also hated talking on the phone, especially with her. Way too many pregnant pauses that formed after some offhand comment of mine, without the benefit of visual contact to clue me in on whatever offense I’d just committed. Years ago, at the advice of one of Abby’s friends, I tried to restrict myself to simple declarative sentences and one-or two-word questions whenever I had to speak to my daughter on the phone. With little success. I had a gift for provocation, especially with people I didn’t want to provoke. Somehow, though, brevity became the stylistic conceit of our correspondence, best expressed within the two-by-two hole of the standard postcard:
Hot water’s out, sup’s pissed. Boss a dick, hours late. Mom freaked, calls too much. City, zing. Tom, yum.
—Allison
They should study the genetic composition of provocation. I could supply the data.
I dug a chewed-up pencil out of my back pocket and found a field of white paper on the back of another utility bill.
Peconic calm, surly sky. Cash is cool, hammers fly. Back’s healed, ear, huh? Status quo, oh, no. Eddie misses you. You can tell by the way he drools on your pillow.
—the Dad
I had a backlog of these epistolary haikus scattered around the cottage written on whatever paper was handy. If I didn’t hear from her for a while I’d transfer one to a postcard and send it off. Past experience taught me to mete them out discretely. It took over four years to get to this stage, and I was grateful, but careful.
I wondered how I’d explain to her what I was actually up to besides swinging a hammer. I wondered if I could explain it to myself. Maybe if I sat there and drank for a while I’d be able to get in touch with my feelings. Clarify my priorities. Figure out just what the hell I was doing.
“What the hell am I doing?” I asked Eddie.
Part of me knew Hodges was right. I had a heretofore repressed impulse to stick my nose into this thing. Especially now that the official investigation had crapped out. At least, that’s what it looked like. Hard to tell these days if they were actually stymied or had it all solved, but for some reason had to keep quiet. Not enough evidence, political pressure, interdepartmental turf wars, all the stuff that would piss me off so much I’d probably pop a cranial artery. Which was reason enough to stay the hell out of it.
“Rule one. Don’t go looking for trouble,” I said to Eddie.
On the other hand, somebody tried to kill Jackie and me, albeit indirectly. Along with a bunch of innocent people. To say nothing of Jonathan Eldridge, who may or may not have been innocent, but probably didn’t deserve to be blown to smithereens.
The ugly blind brutality of a car bomb is impossible to appreciate until you’re up close to one of them. I hadn’t been able to sleep through the night for two months after it happened. And I still woke up a lot, freaked at little night sounds. It made me feel helpless and foolish. Powerless. And furious.
A big tern glided gracefully down to perch on the edge of the breakwater. Eddie looked at it like, man, you gotta be kidding me. He gave the bird a second to settle in before launching an attack across the lawn. The tern took flight with as much dignity as haste would allow.
I watched Eddie cut across the bay frontage, then make an unexpected right turn to leap over the rosebush and picket-fence border between my property and the house next door. It was a gray and white bungalow that shared the tip of Oak Point with me. An old lady named Regina Broadhurst used to live there. It had been empty since she died the year before, so it gave me a jolt to see a gray Audi A4 parked in the driveway. Or maybe the jolt was because I knew who owned the Audi.
So did Eddie, which is why he was there barking at the side door. It was opened by a woman in a white silk dressing gown and bare feet. She had long, thick auburn hair that matched the dark reddish brown of her complexion. When she bent down to pet Eddie’s head her gown opened up, revealing enough breast to identify a tan line, even from a few hundred feet. She scratched his ears, then tossed him a treat of some kind. He caught it, did a quick spin, then ran back over to me. The woman followed him with her eyes until she saw me sitting in the Adirondack. Then she backed slowly into the house and shut the door.
Eddie ran up to me with a Big Dog biscuit in his mouth, his favorite. He dropped down in front of me to eat, showing off the prize. As he crunched away I had a chance to get in touch with feelings of another sort.
“Goddammit,” I said, in the direction of Reginas house.
EIGHT
THE NEXT MORNING I wasn’t working on my addition like I’d sworn I would. I was driving back over to see Appolonia Eldridge and her lawyer. Earlier I’d reached Joe Sullivan on his cell phone.
“So you really didn’t learn shit,” he said after I relayed what I learned.
“I don’t remember seeing Ivor Fleming in any of the reports.”
“The Feds said they checked out all his customers.”
“You don’t think we should talk to him?”
“You’ll need a good reason to go back at a money guy like Fleming.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. Get a reason.”
“What?”
“Not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”
“Talk to me.”
“I want to try something out on Mrs. Eldridge. Just let me do it without all the explanations.”
“Don’t fuck me up.”
“Never on purpose.”
He wanted more, but I’d rushed him off the phone. It was like that with Sullivan. Too much information was rarely a good thing. He was better with faits accomplis.
After Sullivan I’d called Gabe Szwit, whom I thought would be a hard sell, but after I gave him my idea he surprised me.
“Let me call Appolonia,” he told me, “and see if we can meet again at her house.”
So I was in the Grand Prix heading over to Riverhead again. Only this time I had Eddie in the backseat where he belonged. It was cooler, and I just couldn’t leave him in the house again. Dogs have to be out in the air. Or the wind, in Eddie’s case, his head stuck out the window, ears swept back, tongue flapping out the corner of his mouth.
“If you catch anything, it counts against dinner,” I told him.
When I got to Appolonia’s I rolled the windows up just enough to discourage him from jumping out of the car.
“Try to keep a low profile,�
� I told him as I walked away from my inconspicuous ’67 Pontiac Grand Prix.
A pair of kids in hockey gear watched from the street. A mailman hopped from mailbox to mailbox down the perfect, flat black asphalt. Two doors down a woman was trying to adjust her sprinkler without getting wet, unsuccessfully. I listened for other dogs that could set off Eddie, but all I heard was the distant sound of a powerful motorboat starting a run across the Great Peconic Bay.
Belinda answered the door. As friendly and welcoming as always. Appolonia and Szwit were waiting in the living room, equipped with tea and a pot of coffee for me. I felt like one of the gang.
“Hello, Mr. Acquillo.”
“Thanks for seeing me again.”
Appolonia was dressed in a men’s oxford-cloth shirt and gray slacks. She looked like a starving arctic bird. Gabe was still in a suit, but felt secure enough to leave his briefcase on the floor. Progress.
“I filled Mrs. Eldridge in on your idea as well as I could,” he said. “I thought it had merit.”
“I thought it did, too,” said Appolonia. “But why don’t you go through it again.”
“Okay I don’t think I can learn any more about your husband’s murder than the cops, the Staties, the FBI, Homeland Security, etcetera. But I can’t see how it’ll hurt if I poke around a little. Only thing is, I’m just a guy. An unofficial guy. I can’t, I won’t, go around pretending to be a cop or a PI. That feels stupid, and looks stupid when I’m exposed. I need some official reason to be talking to people.”
“Your police friend Officer Sullivan seems to think you’re official enough.”
“He shouldn’t. I need genuine cred.”
“Cred?” said Appolonia.
“He means credentials. Street patois,” said Gabe, looking at me like, hey man, I know some shit, too.
“Which you can give me,” I said to Appolonia.
“Me?”
“Yeah. You own a business. Might be a business now in name only, but it’s still a legal LLC, with assets and liabilities.”
“The liabilities are trivial. And Jonathan was the only asset.”
“Not really. There’s a client list I bet other guys like Jonathan would love to get their hands on.” I didn’t mention that Alena had already handed it over to me with hardly a thought. “Took him years to develop, and by definition, every name is a prospect.”
Appolonia blanched a little at the implication of that, but nodded thoughtfully.
“Sam thought he could be assigned the task of assessing the quality of the list—this is the part that appeals to me—as a means of putting a value on the operation as a whole. We might be able to sell the company, Appolonia, not simply liquidate.”
“I have plenty of money, Gabe.”
“I know, but why leave anything on the table? I want you to have all you can out of this terrible tragedy.”
He said it like he really meant it. It struck me that Gabe had more than a professional interest in his client. Which was okay with me. I wanted the best for her, too.
“So, what do we need to do?” she asked.
“Simple,” I said. “Hire me as a consultant. You don’t have to pay me, just confirm I’m working for you if anyone calls. Tell them I’m transitioning Jonathan’s business. That’s the kind of thing consultants do. Transition things.”
“I also like the part where we don’t pay him,” said Gabe, attempting a little joke.
“Okay?” I asked.
Appolonia looked at me in that calm but studied way she had.
“You don’t think you’ll learn anything about Jonathan’s death. But you want to try, is that right? It’s not about financial gain for any of us.”
“Don’t forget they almost killed me, too. And messed up my friend Jackie. If I don’t try I’ll feel like a bum. That’s all.”
“I wouldn’t want you to feel like a bum.”
“Good. So that’s it. Gabe ll handle the paperwork. I’ll let you know what I find out, either way”
“I don’t suppose there’s any harm in it.”
“So it’s settled,” said Gabe, reaching for his briefcase to pull out some forms for me to sign. Johnny-on-the-spot.
“Just one question for you, Sam,” said Appolonia.
“Sure.”
“Why so long? This happened months ago. Why the new interest?”
I didn’t have a good answer for that, but I tried to answer truthfully, the best I could.
“I’ve had some trouble in my life. I don’t need any more. In fact, avoiding trouble has become my life’s vocation. Then this thing happened. I guess I tried to pretend it didn’t matter, but it does.”
“A. knight errant.”
“Oh, no. Don’t make me into a nice person. I’m not. I’m doing this for my own reasons.”
“I could say the same thing about myself.”
“Good, then we’re square.”
“We’re square,” said Appolonia as she rose from her chair and floated out of the room, leaving me with Gabriel Szwit, who watched her with the eager hope I’d seen in the eyes of devoted retrievers. I felt sorry for him. He didn’t know how hopeless it was for him.
Not yet, anyway.
—
I spent the rest of that day cutting bird’s mouths into rafters to finish framing out the roof of the addition. It was warm, but a cloud cover held back the worst of the sun. I drank a lot of water and worked at a steady, deliberate pace. Eddie hunkered down under the grandiflora hydrangea by the breakwater and kept watch. I tried to clear my mind of everything but dimensions and construction theory, but it was hard to do. Jonathan Eldridge had a way of creeping onto the site and slowing progress.
I was about to go down the ladder to get a beer when Jackie Swaitkowski pulled into the driveway. She was in Bobby’s claptrap Toyota pickup. She got out and waved at me with a manila envelope.
“I got your message about the client list,” she said as I led her to the chairs and beer cooler. “It’s all here. Alena divided it into hostile and non-hostile, an easy task since there’re only three hostiles listed.”
We sat down, and after digging out Heinekens for both of us, I read through the papers. There was a name, address, email and dates of engagement for each client. Only eighteen of them. That surprised me.
“Me, too,” said Jackie, reading my mind. “Pretty exclusive club. Smells like big money, not just investors, but PE types.”
“PE?”
“Private equity. Large individual investors. Guys looking for unconventional opportunities, large positions, start-ups, that stuff. I emailed Alena, who said as much. Jonathan was paid a fee, a percentage of assets invested, to uncover opportunities and vet companies clients might already be looking at. Sounds like fun.”
“You’d hate it.”
“Probably.”
“So, Ivor Fleming’s a hostile. And a woman. Joyce Whithers.”
“Owns a restaurant in Watermill. Alena just said ‘rhymes with rich.’”
“And a guy named Butch Ellington.”
“Jonathan’s brother.”
“Ellington?”
“Real name’s Arthur Eldridge. Changed it just to piss off his brother, according to Alena. A play on Butch Cassidy and his mother’s maiden name. For reasons unknown.”
“But he was a client.”
“As Alena put it, blood and water and all that.’ They managed his retirement account. She said Butch had plenty of money. Successful artist. But pretty whacked out, which I guess goes with the territory. Nothing like Jonathan.”
“The wonder of genetics.”
“Ivor Fleming’s got a house out here, in Sagaponack. Alena gave me an address and a phone number.”
“Have you tried to reach the Fed who took all the computer files?”
“Warming up to it. Need a good shtick.”
I told her I’d been retained to valuate Jonathan’s business. She could play my lawyer.
“I thought I was your lawyer.”
; “My financial consultant lawyer.”
“It’ll take about a half a second for him to tag us as the only survivors of the bomb blast. He won’t like it.”
“Then show him a little tit. That always works.”
“Okay Good idea.”
We drank our beers for a while in silence, watching the sailboats out on the Peconic try to make some headway in the turgid summer air. Then Jackie noticed the gray Audi A4 parked in Reginas driveway.
“Hey somebody move in?”
“I hope not.”
“That’s neighborly.”
“Hate crowds.”
“That looks like Amanda’s car.”
“It is.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s her house now. Actually, it’s her peninsula. And the peninsula next door and all parts in between.”
“Not this part.”
“You knew this could happen.”
“Happen?”
“That house has the best view in the area, except for yours. She can live anywhere she wants now that she’s divorced Roy. Him defrauding her providing adequate grounds, I guess. Not that you need anything like that in New York.”
“How’s that beer?”
“You’re not going to talk about it. You’ll never talk about it.”
“I want to talk about Ivor Fleming.”
“Man, you’re a pigheaded bastard.”
I had Ivor’s file open in my lap.
“So Fleming’s an alchemist,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Scrap-metal baron. Turns iron into gold.”
“Apparently at least from what Alena said. Came from Brooklyn. Has a big processing plant up island. Sells recycled steel, mostly to car manufacturers, here and overseas. That’s all I know till I do some research.”
“Tough business. All rust, heat and sharp edges.”
“My guess is Ivor’s no pussycat.”
“Don’t mention cats around Eddie. Gets him worked up.”
Jackie hung around with me for another beer, then left me to finish up the rest of the rafters. She didn’t press me about Amanda, my new next-door neighbor, for which I was grateful. Like I told Appolonia, I’d been trying hard to avoid trouble in any form, and there was nothing about Amanda Battiston that didn’t feel like trouble.
