by Chris Knopf
“Like Joe Sullivan.”
Ike frowned and glanced over at Connie.
“Don’t know the man. You know him?”
“Joe Sullivan? Don’t know him,” said Connie.
“Really. Big blond guy. Southampton Town cop. Recently irrigated with a three-inch blade.”
“Another friend of yours? Like me and Connie?”
“Yeah. He’s not a concern for Ivor, and neither am I. Tell that to Ivor. I’m committed full time to building Melinda McCarthy’s garden furniture. I’m retired from the financial business.”
Ike actually seemed to relax a little at that. Connie took his cue and stepped back a pace, crossing his arms. I went back to messing with my clothesline.
“That’s interesting information,” said Ike. “I’d pass it along to Mr. Fleming if I thought he actually gave half a shit.”
“You gotta make yourself useful somehow. He’s got a Doberman, could probably use a pair of bird dogs.”
That had less of a calming effect. Connie uncrossed his arms and moved almost all the way in. Ike looked really disappointed. He scanned the lumberyard and saw we were well away from general activity and blocked from view by the high stacks of decking timber and the side walls of the cedar shed. Which was a little disappointing to me.
“Maybe I tell him you’re a crazy old fuck who’s nothing but trouble,” said Ike.
“That’d be unconstructive.”
“Unconstructive. What the hell does that mean,” said Connie.
“Unhelpful. Detrimental to achieving a positive outcome. Counterproductive. These are all English words. Not very good words, but useful in big corporations. Maybe not in your line of work. Whatever that is. We covered watch dog and bird dog. How about lap dog?”
“How’d you get to be such an old man with that kind of attitude?” Ike asked me.
“Regular exercise?”
I noticed Ike edge closer with a little shuffle of his feet. Connie had been pretending to look around the lumberyard while we talked as if to cover his own obvious intrusion into my immediate space.
“How bout de-structive. You know that word?” asked Ike.
“Oh, of course, deconstructionists. That’s what you guys are. Why didn’t you tell me? I gotta tell you, I hate that shit. Sorry, but it’s all such nihilistic, anti-intellectual prattle parading as cultural sensitivity. Or let’s just say it’s stupid and ugly. Like the two of you.”
I don’t think Connie took that commentary in the spirit with which it was expressed, though he did take another step toward me, which is when I stuck a left jab into his Adam’s apple. This is harder to do in the ring because the glove usually won’t fit under the guy’s chin, but a bare knuckle will. It’s a real shock to the system, especially when you have no idea it’s coming. You tend to grab your throat with both hands, which Connie did, leaving me plenty of time to swivel and plant a full-out right hook on the end of his nose, the other vulnerable part of the anatomy above the shoulders. It was a good right, especially for a finesse fighter like me. It took him off his feet and into the reject pile of clear cedar I was planning to lay back on the stacks.
For a wiry guy, Ike didn’t have much in the way of reflexes. Before Connie had settled into the cedar I had him by the throat. By instinct he used both hands to grab my wrist, which allowed me to get my right leg behind his calf and shove him over on his back. A little whoof of air shot out his mouth, choked off when I planted my knee in his solar plexus. I moved my hand from his throat to the collar of his shirt, pulling his head up off the dirt so I could punch it back down again with another quick jab. Blood shot out his nose. He looked terrified.
“Sorry about the temper. I’m not proud of it,” I told him, cinching up my grip on his shirtfront and giving him one more shot in the face. He managed to get a forearm up over his mouth into which he gurgled something that sounded like okay okay, okay.
“Back to Ivor,” I said to him. “When you see him, tell him I have nothing to offer, nothing to sell. Tell him I’m sorry I bothered him at his house. I really am. If I learn he had anything to do with Joe Sullivan, that’s a different story. But for now, let’s just leave each other alone. And that includes all the tough talk. I don’t like it. Never did. If you agree, nod your head.”
He nodded.
“Good. That’s settled.”
I looked over at Connie. He wasn’t moving, but I could see him breathing wetly through his freshly broken nose. I patted around Ike’s pockets and waistband before letting go of his shirt and getting up. He rolled over and pulled himself up onto his hands and knees, watching the blood from his nose drip on the dusty gravel.
Connie had his eyes open by the time I had him frisked, but wasn’t ready to try standing up. While I tied off my load I kept a steady eye on both. Connie lay there gingerly touching his nose and throat and wiping blood and tears off his cheeks. Ike by now was just sitting on the ground, propped up by one arm. Neither said anything or tried to move until I was in my car driving away. I watched Ike in my rearview stand up and help Connie to his feet. I gave the checkout guy at the gate his copy of the receipt and left the yard like all I’d done was load up on a bunch of expensive semi-hardwoods. He might have been tempted to make a wisecrack about my car, like they usually did, but I busied myself lighting a cigarette so I didn’t have to work out a comeback.
I had the rest of the day to set up my outdoor shop using a pair of folding sawhorses and some old luan hollow-core doors. I had a flimsy shed my father built for lawnmowers, rakes and outboard motors, where I could break down and store everything at night. It made for extra steps, but I didn’t mind. It was nice to be out in the sun where the breeze off the Peconic could keep the air clear of sawdust. I had a moment when the aftereffects of excess adrenaline caused a little nausea, but it passed quickly as I applied myself to ripping and cutting a bundle of cedar to the proper dimensions, pre-drilling and coding for assembly according to Frank’s plans.
The work was interesting but simple enough to give me a chance to brood on the preordained nature of cycles, manifest in personal habits, good and bad, forever recurring like the waves and troughs of the sea. And my discussion with Ike and Connie on the interplay between awareness of mortality and the thirst for human connectedness. Is it that one leads to the other, or are they inextricably bound together, each reinforcing the other until you surprise yourself by wanting to stay alive, and wanting to believe in the myths of kinship and love?
I didn’t know, but I was new to the whole concept. Might take some getting used to.
EIGHTEEN
IT WAS DEEP IN JULY, when the air out on the East End hung like hot, wet gauze, and the sun was busy charring the epidermals of investment bankers, administrative assistants and trophy wives, and irrigation systems drew down the aquifer to convert three-acre flower gardens into simulated rain forests and maintain the water level of organically shaped gunite pools surrounded by tumbled marble pavers and teak recliners with built-in cupholders drenched in the condensate of crystal-decanted, lime-choked gin and tonics. Even then, the weather could turn capricious and redirect the jet stream to flood the atmosphere with oceans of cool, sharp, dried-out air delivered directly from the sainted upper latitudes of Canada. I think I was the only one who wasn’t surprised by this. Maybe because I’d made note of the phenomenon in the past, as a bored child searching for a mystery to divine, relishing every time my secret expectation was fulfilled.
That cool morning air rushed across the bay, setting the view of the North Fork in sharp focus and sweeping stale air and insects aside as if with a casual brush of the hand. Eddie really dug it. He took summer stoically, metering his bursts of energy and visiting his water bowl more often, but it wasn’t his favorite time of year. For him, the cool wind was an intoxicant. He busted out of the side door and ran the perimeter of the property like a dog possessed, stopping every few minutes to bark at me where I’d settled into the Adirondacks with a cup of hazelnut, as if insulted by m
y lack of appreciation for the change in meteorological circumstances.
I’d finished prefabbing the main components of Melinda McCarthy’s garden extravaganza the day before, when it was still hot and humid, but that was all right. The blessed change was part of my reward—deferred compensation. I took advantage of the air to take a run over to Hodges’s boat. The parallel tracks in the sand road that ran along the bay were worn down to the rocky substrate by the summer traffic heading out to the waterside cottages, and now the occasional behemoth crammed into every square inch of building envelope after the original shack had been bulldozed and carted away. I stayed on the grassy median and worried about twisting my ankle. Eddie crisscrossed in front of me, occasionally disappearing into the underbrush to flush out a bird or disrupt the tranquility of the amphibian population.
I could smell breakfast half a mile before we got there. It was the specialty of the house. Some sort of indefinable multicolored protein swirled around a cast iron grill. Though unfortunately mostly all consumed.
Instead he offered up a few chunks of fried chicken hash brought home from the Pequot and the usual bucket of wretched coffee, served in a cracked plastic mug swiped from the Chowder Pot Café, Wildwood, NJ.
“Salt and pepper are over there. Season to taste.”
“Not sure the word taste’ applies in this context.”
“Drink plenty of coffee. Takes some of the sting out.”
He took a handful of dog biscuits and threw them into the scrub woods on the other side of the docks, occupying Eddie and the Shih Tzus and giving me a little peace and quiet so I could eat.
After a while, I asked him.
“Say Hodges. You know a guy named Ivor Fleming? Owns a scrap-metal business up island.”
“Don’t know him. Heard of him. Gangster.”
“Everybody but me knows about this guy.”
“Not a made guy. What we used to call a punk. Not connected but runs the same kind of deal. Got his own corner of the market. At least that’s the story. Could be all talk.”
“Whose talk?”
“Guys chartering boats. From up island, Nassau County. Like to chat up the tough stuff. Most of it’s bullshit.”
I told him about my visit to Ivor’s house in Sagaponack. And the escort Ike and Connie gave me off the property. I left out our little dance at the lumberyard.
“Well, shit, Sam, that’s what I’m talking about. Be careful. Guys like that always have something to prove.”
I let it drop at that and concentrated on getting through the over-spiced conglomeration on my paper plate. Hodges watched me attentively.
“If I’d known you were coming I’d have saved some eggs Benedict.”
“Chicken’s great. You can keep your traitorous eggs.”
“If you’re thinking Benedict Arnold, that’s a myth. It was actually a secret recipe of the Benedictines. The monks. The ones in France.”
“I thought they were into brandy.”
“Made it to wash down the eggs.”
The northwesterly breeze, concentrated by the narrow channel that led into the marina, was strong enough to flip Hodges’s baseball cap into the water, which he deftly retrieved with a dock hook. All the sailboats, laying perpendicular to the breeze, were heeled slightly to starboard. Unfettered halyards smacked against the masts, laying down a syncopated rhythm over which a low, steady whistle played through the shrouds and stays. Down in the semi-protection behind the dodger the wind cooled the sweat off my forehead and combed stylish waves into the black-and-white manes of Hodges’s frantic Shih Tzus, who’d rejoined us in the cockpit. Eddie went out to the bow to stare at the water in an effort to conjure up a swan.
“I think that Polish girl’s in a lot better shape,” said Hodges. “She was all over that goofy secret agent.”
“She’s Irish. Ig’s FBI.”
“That’s just my impression, technicalities aside.”
Eddie trotted back down the deck, poking his head through the lifelines to check for infiltration along the freeboard. I tossed a hunk of chicken into the water to see if I could stir up a little action.
“She brought him around again the other night. Said it was his idea, which definitely plays in his favor.”
“That’s good. I’m glad.”
“New customers always welcome.”
“For her. You got all the trade you can handle.”
“True. It’s important to keep at least half the seats available at all times. In case a bus tour comes through.”
The swans didn’t go for the bait, but a family of Canada geese came out of nowhere, snaking along in single file, a string of furry gray-brown goslings bookended by their parents, the showy male in the lead, the female, unadorned but attentive, bringing up the rear. Eddie grumbled and snorted, but was clearly ambivalent about the prize. Like me, he fared poorly with upended expectations.
“How’s her face?” I asked him.
“She’s going in for another round. The last one, supposedly. Somewhere in the City.” He looked at his watch. “Sometime this week if I remember right.”
“Didn’t tell me.”
Hodges arched his oversized eyebrows at me.
“Why would she tell you?”
“I don’t know. Give her a pep talk.”
“Which is why she didn’t tell you.”
“She might even look better when it’s all over with. I could tell her that.”
“Yeah, that’d buck her up.”
I scooped the rest of the chicken off the plate and tossed it at the Canada geese.
“How’s that coffee?” he asked me.
“Still expressing its unique character.”
“The secret’s in the beans.”
“I thought it was the presentation.”
“The fishing crews really go for it. It’s an important topic of conversation around the bar. I try to tell em the principles behind the ideal coffee bean, but I lose them somewhere between soil composition and sub-equatorial temperature oscillation.”
“I can always spot a premium coffee by the inflated price. You might consider that. Goes directly to the bottom line.”
Hodges pursed his lips in thought.
“I’ll take it up with Dotty. She’s the one who buys the shit. God knows where.”
“Or consult Joyce Whithers. I can get you an introduction.”
He looked mildly surprised.
“Isn’t that a little uptown for you, no offense?”
“I’ve been helping with her fig tree.”
“Figs, coffee beans, nobody knows more about food.”
“Really.”
“The price of a meal is about my gross take for the whole weekend, but they say it’s worth it. Can’t testify from personal experience.”
I told him about her connection to Jonathan and Appolonia Eldridge.
“So she’s a friend of Appolonia’s? Hard to imagine,” he said.
“How come?”
“The waitstaff calls her the Queen of Darkness. Apparently isn’t much better with the customers. I’m trying to picture her as somebody’s chum.”
“I think it’s a socioeconomic thing.”
“Could be, though by my lights, a bitch is a bitch.”
“So I guess a date is out of the question.”
“Only if she helps out in the kitchen.”
I caught him up on meeting Jonathan’s brother Butch and his wife. I tried to replay the conversation, but the full sense of it resisted easy description. He listened carefully, working his teeth with a snapped-off kabob skewer to aid concentration. The wind tugged at the bunches of steel gray hair that sprung from under his baseball cap and rippled the slick white fabric of his warm-up jacket.
“I used to play cards with that artist over in Springs,” he said. “They called him a genius, though to me he wasn’t much more than a nasty drunk. Got so fucked up he could hardly talk. Actually, could hardly talk even when he wasn’t all fucked up. Some of the guys we played
with were itching to slap him upside the head, but other guys said, lay off, he’s got his brains all churned up from doing art. So you had to give him a pass, something like innocent by reason of insanity. I was never in favor of slapping people upside the head, so that was fine with me. Insane or not, I just thought he was an asshole. Finally managed to wrap his car around a tree. Killed two women. And himself in the bargain, which I guess was the least he could do.”
“Killing yourself is good for sales, but it puts a cap on future production.”
“Sure wasn’t making it playing cards. Hard to be much good when you’re half-stewed all the time.”
“Unlike Walter Whithers, who Burton said was a first-rate poker player.”
“Way out of my league,” said Hodges.
“Don’t sell yourself short. That game in Springs is taught in art school.”
“If you met Joyce you can understand why Whithers needed to get out of the house. Probably motivated his card skills. Which I heard were considerable.”
“You did?”
“The Spoon’s been open for about twenty years. Used to be a regular game there. Serious. All whales.”
“As in the prince or the big fish?”
“Casino talk for high rollers. Big bet boys. At least that’s what you heard from the people who worked there, parking cars, serving drinks, muscling drunks out the door. When you work in the restaurant business, nothing’s private. By the way, whales aren’t fish. They’re mammals. Descended from herbivores. Used to walk on land. Weren’t as big then.”
“Still probably couldn’t fit em in a fry pan.”
I heard some rustling feet up toward the bow and looked in time to see Eddie launch into hysterics over a pair of swans who’d finally decided to glide into view. I don’t know what it was about the big white birds, but they really pushed his buttons. Maybe because, unlike other victims of Eddie’s belligerence toward all things feathered, swans were inclined to fight back, rearing their long necks and spitting out a deep wet hiss, which scared the crap out of me even if it didn’t deter him.
Hodges’s Shih Tzus joined in the clamor, Eddie’s supporting cast, heedless and vocal, black-and-white balls of reckless frenzy. Hodges stood up in the cockpit and yelled something at the swans, who must have understood, because they quickly turned and slid back around the stern of the hulking houseboat next door. Eddie looked like he was about to give chase, but I told him to cool it, so he sat down on the bow of the boat and stared at the water, ready for the next encounter. The Shih Tzus fluttered back into the cockpit so Hodges could acknowledge their audacity. He had a hand for each, to scratch behind their ears.
