by Chris Knopf
“And doubly so for having sold Joyce Whithers a painting of this plucky little schnauzer sitting at a dinner table with a napkin tied around his neck, eagerly awaiting a bowl of soup with a great big silver spoon clutched in his cute little paw,” said Dione.
“She couldn’t believe the price,” said Butch. “Bragged that she stole it. Venality is so predictable.”
“How are you with Dobermans?” I asked him.
“Schnauzers, Dobermans, all Nazi dogs to me.”
“This one’s Latino. Ivor Fleming’s.”
I thought I’d finally done the impossible. Butch just stood there and stared at me, as if noticing for the first time there was an actual human being attached to the vodka and baby blue T-shirt.
“A client? Of Jonathan?” he asked me.
“Not real happily, given the results.”
Butch shook his head.
“Jonathan worked for Ivor Fleming, and screwed it up?”
“According to Ivor.”
Butch’s frown deepened.
“These both friends of yours?” he asked.
I could feel Amanda stiffen. I took the cue.
“Farthest thing. Don’t know em, don’t want to. All I know is they’re the only two people who didn’t love your brother’s advice.”
“You know a lot,” he said, his face softening again and the brilliant intensity of his eyes re-igniting.
“Not really. Just can’t help being a little interested. Having been there and all.”
“Survivor’s guilt,” said Dione, half as a question.
“I don’t know about that stuff. Too deep for me.”
We talked some more, and Butch’s mood managed to swing all the way back by the time we heard the fundraiser people take over the PA system from the jazz band and announce the start of the auction. Though the opportunity to abandon the conversation was probably welcomed. He groped Amanda some more by way of farewell.
“Look, we’re putting this thing together,” he said to her, an inch or two from her face. “At the studio. All-day Council Rock on the Giant Finger at the Institute of the Consolidated Industrial Divine. Construction strategies and logistical permutations. No pressure on the dead factory space, I promise. Not another word. Just drinks, music, ritual and action fantasies. Productive delusions.”
“Sam’s an industrial designer,” said Amanda, using my forearm to help extricate herself from his grasp. “I bet he knows something about rivets and welds.”
“No shit. Beautiful. You come, too. Remember, though, no rules. No laws. Except the law of gravity. Only thing I give Newton credit for.”
“I’m with you. Thermodynamics was a bust.”
“Beautiful. Amanda, you know where we are.”
Dione smiled at us beatifically as he led her away into the swirl of seersucker and chiffon. Their departure caused the soundproof enclosure that had formed around our conversation to disintegrate, and I suddenly felt exposed and threatened by the congregating mass of privilege and competitive fervor.
I looked around for a way out.
“We can go,” said Amanda. “I already bought something in the silent auction. One of Butch’s sculptures.”
“I hope nothing anatomical,” I said to her as I threaded a path out from under the tent and over to where I’d parked the Grand Prix. The big German sedans on either side had prudently allowed for the wide swing of the Pontiac’s doors, one of which I opened for Amanda, giving her plenty of room to slide fluidly into the passenger seat. Nobody tried to stop us from leaving, so the auction must have been a good diversion. The young guy in the black bow tie saluted as we passed by. By now it was dusk, and street lamps lit our way out of the estate section and through the Village, its sidewalks filled with a parade of summer renters who looked like they were having a nice time, or at least willing to put up a brave front.
“I’m too dressed up to go home yet,” said Amanda, after we’d cleared the estate section and it was safe to talk. “And not the Pequot, thank you.”
So we compromised by heading for a nightspot housed in the dilapidated building that used to be the Hawk Pond Yacht Club. It was next door to the marina where Hodges kept his boat. It was too early in the evening for the regular swarm of clubgoers from out of the City, so after paying a confiscatory cover charge we easily found two stools at the bar.
“Home at last,” I told the gangly African-American bartender as he mopped cocktail napkins and soggy dollar bills up off the bar in front of us.
“Welcome, son. What ll it be?”
Amanda ordered again for both of us, then slipped off the barstool for a trip to the ladies’ room. Before leaving she stood behind my stool and put her arms around me, resting her head on my shoulder. There must have been an airborne narcotic mingled with the smell of her hair, because a single whiff almost gave me vertigo. I steadied myself by brushing her thick hair back from her face and kissing her forehead, much more gently than Butch Ellington had.
“I missed you, Sam,” she said, from someplace far away. “I need you to forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive.”
“Yes there is, and you know it,” she said.
“We just met, remember?”
“I still need you to forgive me. You have to say the actual words.”
“I forgive you. Trusting you is another matter.”
She squeezed a little harder.
“Okay I’ll take that for now.”
She took in a deep breath and sighed it out again. Then she went to the ladies’ room, leaving me and the bartender to shrug at each other in commiseration.
“Tell me about it,” he said, dropping the icy vodka down in front of me.
I’m not sure what all happened in the nightclub after that, except it involved more drinking and a few terrifying forays on to the dance floor, a place I’d only been once before in my life, with Amanda, coincidentally. This time, though, I got through the whole experience without causing a fistfight or unsettling disturbance of any kind, unless you count my dancing. When the place finally filled up with the usual slithery mass of sweaty hope and brainless expectation, Amanda agreed to make a run for it.
The velvet air outside almost felt cool after the heat of the crowded club. We walked over to the docks that shot out from the southeast shore of Hawk Pond. The moon was close to full, producing a pale illumination that added to the harder light from electric lanterns spaced evenly along the gangways. I picked out Hodges’s boat, but his lights were out.
Amanda took my bicep with both hands and led me toward the waterfowl reserve directly adjacent to the club.
“Let’s go this way. I know a good spot.”
She slipped off her shoes when we reached the end of the docks, defined by the transition from wooden planks to a narrow sandy path. I followed her into the grassy foliage that grew along the banks of the pond. The glow of the moon slowly took over for the artificial lights of the marina, guiding our way over little dunes and through runoffs filled with rounded pebbles and slippery driftwood.
“Watch your step,” she told me, taking my hand to steady herself.
About a hundred yards into the reserve the path led to a small clearing intended as an observation post, with a heavy teak park bench and a little Plexiglas-encased placard mounted on a stand meant to instruct people on the difference between ospreys and cormorants and how to spot Monarch butterflies on their way back from Mexico. It also had a great view of the pond, and the sparkle coming from little North Sea shacks lined up along the western shore, remnants of my father’s time, ramshackle and relaxed.
I sat on the bench and lit a cigarette. Amanda dropped her shoes in the sand and walked out to the edge of the pond. You could hear the pulse of the subwoofers in the nightclub shouldering their way through the dune grass and scrubby plant life, laying down a low bass rhythm under the chatter of insects coming from the marshes surrounding us on three sides.
I watched Amanda, now just a silhouette against the dark wa
ters of Hawk Pond, walk out to just above her knees where she scooped salt water up in her hands to splash on her face and run through her hair.
I must have lost track of her for a few minutes after that because I was surprised to see her suddenly back at the bench, standing in front of me with her hands on her hips.
“Not a bad location,” I said to her.
“It’ll do.”
She reached down with crossed hands and gathered up the hem of her dress. Then she pulled the whole thing up and over her head and sat down on my lap, facing me, knees to either side of my legs. As we kissed she unbuckled my pants.
I slid my hands over her thighs and up her long, smooth back, meeting nothing but Amanda along the way.
“Don’t say anything,” she whispered in my ear.
I couldn’t have anyway. Too absorbed, all the way gone.
—
I think we both fell asleep after that, at least for a little while, because I don’t remember anything but awakening to a chilly breeze out of the north, the feel of goosebumps across her naked back and a dull glow in the east, harbingers of days to come, irredeemably altered.
THIRTEEN
WHEN WE GOT BACK to my house we found Joe Sullivan bleeding to death in my front yard. Or rather Eddie did. As I pulled into Amanda’s driveway I could hear him inside the house barking furiously, something he rarely did. So I stopped the car and let him out. He shot past me and ran across the lawn, where he started barking again, swiftly circling the Adirondack chairs.
At first, in the dim light of dawn, all I saw was an indistinct form slightly slumped in one of the chairs. A pale shape, clothed in pale fabrics, made even more monotone by the tight-cropped band of blond hair that upholstered the top of his head. All of which was an effective backdrop for the big round blood stain that started on his right side and flowed down over his thigh. It wasn’t until I felt his neck for a pulse that I got close enough to see it was Sullivan. Amanda ran up to me and I told her to run back to my house and call an ambulance.
I found a pulse buried under the jowly folds of his neck. I saw Amanda pop back out the door and I yelled to her to bring the flashlight hanging in the broom closet. While I waited for her I worked on quieting down Eddie. I wondered how long he’d been trying to get someone’s attention. And what form of prescience had led me to lock him in for the night.
“Oh my God, it’s Joe Sullivan. What happened?” cried Amanda as she ran up to the breakwater.
Even with the flashlight it wasn’t clear exactly where the blood had come from. I unzipped his windbreaker and peeled it back to expose an even darker wet spot on his polo shirt directly below his right rib cage. I took off my jacket and made it into a pad that I slipped under his shirt and over the wound. I knelt down and braced myself against the chair so I could maintain pressure.
“I told you to watch your ass, you dumb shit,” I said to him, though he wasn’t up to answering.
Sullivan was a big man. I hoped he held a lot of blood.
—
Ross Semple, the Chief of Southampton Town police, looked a lot more like the junior engineers I’d hired to bench test new processes or perform field service for customers and the company’s operating divisions. White short-sleeved polyester shirts, iridescent striped ties that changed color depending on the angle of observation and glasses with gigantic gray plastic frames that had gone in and out of fashion during a period roughly coinciding with the theatrical run of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. A twitchy guy, all arms and legs that seemed to function somewhat outside central control. He never looked you all the way in the eye, and often had little side conversations going with himself, chuckling at private jokes clearly out of synch with the mood of the moment.
They’d just pulled Sullivan out of the ambulance and had raced him inside the hospital. Ross was there with two or three other cops looking ready to strip off their badges and mount a posse. He pulled out a crushed pack of Winstons and lit one up with the natural movement of unconscious habit.
“If you got an opinion on this, now’d be a good time to share it,” he said to me.
I told him everything I knew about Ivor Fleming and why I knew it—beginning with his connection to Jonathan Eldridge, and maybe his murder, leading to the recent launch of my asset-salvage business courtesy of Appolonia Eldridge and Gabriel Szwit. I told him about my conversation with Joe Sullivan after the workout at Sonny’s, though I left out Sullivan’s earlier recruitment efforts, for both our sakes. Things were bad enough as it was.
Ross burned through two or three Winstons as he listened to my story, his eyes jumping around with the furtive vigilance of nocturnal prey. I don’t know how much of what I told him he believed. It didn’t really matter, as long as the story had a sturdy interior logic. Ross was professionally and temperamentally skeptical of everything and everybody, often with good reason. He just needed an excuse for why he shouldn’t start fingerprinting and seeking an indictment at that immediate moment, assuming the inevitability of both would be realized in due course.
I left him with his Winstons and went into the ER to look for Sullivan. Just as I got to the right place a swarm of serious-looking people in baby blue polyester outfits pulled the curtain around his bed and basically told me to get lost. So I went upstairs to where I’d spent a few happy-go-lucky hours two months ago getting my back sewn up. I looked around for Dr. Markham Fairchild, the Jamaican GP who ran the recovery unit. At about six-seven and 350 pounds, Markham was a hard man to miss.
“Hey der, Mr. Ahquillo. Back here on warranty?” I saw my hand disappear into his, which was about the size and consistency of an outfielder’s glove.
“Hi, Doc. A friend of mine’s downstairs with some kind of wound to the gut. They’re working on him now. Any idea where he’ll end up?”
“Trauma’s our specialty here in Southampton. Unless he need fancy shenanigans up island. We know soon.” Markham looked down at the clipboard he was carrying. “What’s his name?”
“Joe Sullivan. He just got here about a half-hour ago.”
He led me over to the nurses’ station where he asked a tired but accommodating middle-aged woman in civilian clothes to look up Sullivan’s status.
“Hey I remember dat name. He was the fella I call for you last time you were here. What are you two, Bonnie and Clyde?”
“Yeah, I’m Clyde. If he gets up here, do me a favor and try to keep him breathing long enough to have a conversation. He’s got some information I need.”
“Like I wouldn’t if you didn’t ask me to.”
The woman in front of the computer waved him over and pointed to the screen. Markham bent over to take a look.
“They move him upstairs. Not good, but not decided yet. Knife wound to the abdomen, blunt-force trauma to the head—probably got a concussion. Lost lots of blood. They know more once they get him washed up and into the OR.”
“If that’s all it is, I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Markham put his hand out and gripped my shoulder.
“Don’t worry. We fix him up. And you too, next time he bring you in. Only satisfied customers here at Southampton Hospital.”
—
I dodged Ross by ducking out a side entrance area near where I’d stashed the Grand Prix with Eddie, still somewhat freaked, curled up in the driver’s seat. When I stopped for coffee at the corner place I bought us both croissants and bottled water, though I waited to pass out the goods until we drove over to the beach access next to Agawam Beach Club where we could look at the ocean while we ate.
The sun sat a few feet above the horizon, burning off the early morning haze. A young woman in black cycling shorts, white support bra and orange headband walked unhurried across the sand, cooling down or uninspired to run, it was hard to tell from a distance. A gaggle of seagulls, careering overhead, were dropping clams on the packed sand along the water line, and then diving in to squabble over the pulverized results. As I sipped my coffee and peeled off chunks of croissant for Ed
die, I noticed my hands were shaking. I had a full inventory of possible explanations, but I was too tired and brain-battered to delve. Or too afraid. Maybe that was the ultimate explanation. Fear of having to come up with one.
Instead I smoked a few cigarettes, finished the coffee and fed Eddie until he tired of French pastry and went to sleep, undaunted by the terrors of self-examination, happy to contend solely with threats apparent and unambiguous.
Watching him, a profound weariness suddenly descended on me and then, as if anointed by a blessed narcotic, I dropped like a stone into the deep well of sleep.
FOURTEEN
JACKIE SHOWED UP at the end of the next day with a stringy, straight-faced kid in a black baseball hat, sunglasses and a dark gray suit. I was in the outdoor shower, or more precisely, just emerging while I toweled off my hair, so I didn’t immediately know they were there.
“I’ve been seeing a lot of you lately,” said Jackie. “More than I ever wanted to.”
“That explain the bodyguard?” I asked, wrapping the towel around my middle.
“Sam, this is Agent Webster Ig.”
The kid had been leaning over to pet Eddie’s head. He stood up straight and offered me his hand.
“That’s two letters,” he said. “I and G. Ig.”
“I called, but nobody answered,” said Jackie. “Did you know you’re the only person left on the planet without an answering machine? So don’t blame me.”
“Agent? For the government?”
“FBI. Nice dog,” he said, yielding to Eddie’s persistent attention. Jackie stood back slightly, rolling her eyes and pointing at the guy while mouthing the word “cute.”
I let them follow me into the cottage so I could get dressed and put together my first drink of the day. I’d wanted to stay completely sober to hear that Sullivan was dead, but he didn’t die. He was still unconscious, but Markham thought he’d come most of the way back.
“I told his boss to give it a few days, though, before he start bugging him,” Markham had told me. “And not be surprised if he don’ remember anyt’ing. That’s usually the case with head trauma and blood loss.”
