by Chris Knopf
“Okay But only after I tell you I’m glad you’re okay. Your well-being never seems to matter to you, but it matters to me. That makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it?”
“A little.”
“Why?”
“Not sure.”
“You can still tell me you appreciate it.”
“I do.”
“Okay Let’s go find Burton.”
Soon after that Isabella had us set up in lawn chairs, way out on the lawn as it turns out, with a trolley full of refreshments and a stainless steel bowl for Eddie to drink water out of. Burton still wore a paint-spattered madras shirt and white cotton shorts, but looked grateful to be diverted from his task. I was more than grateful for the Absolut on the rocks.
“Ross Semple called here before you arrived,” said Burton. “He wants you there in about two hours. You’re meeting at the DA’s office, with the East Hampton investigators, people from the State and two FBI agents. I’m coming along, too.”
“You are?”
“To look after you. As Ms. Swaitkowski’s proxy.”
“Thanks, Burt. I appreciate it.”
“He told me a few other remarkable things, but I’d rather hear your version.”
“So who killed Jonathan?” Amanda asked.
It took a few minutes to explain that it wasn’t Jonathan Eldridge who got blown up in the Lexus, but an Italian named Osvaldo Allegre. And then about an hour to explain that the killer was Jonathan Eldridge himself. Sort of.
“A split personality. Like Sybil,” said Amanda.
“No, people like her are unaware of their multiple selves. Eldridge was not only conscious of Butch and Jonathan, he reveled in his creations.”
All children pretend they’re imagined characters at one time or another. For about a year my daughter wanted us to call her Madame Pele, a character out of Hawaiian folklore that for some reason had captivated her. It was almost predestined that a brilliant and inventive child like Butch would be moved to create entirely different personas to fit the contrasting lives he led, simultaneously pleasing his accountant father while protecting his growing psyche from the consequences of his mother’s illness. An illness that ebbed and flowed, but ultimately overwhelmed her, taking permanent hold. By then, his father was gone, and with Lillian safely ensconced with the Sisters of Mercy, there was nothing to thwart the development of Butch’s parallel personalities.
As time passed, the dual lives became more entrenched. In perfect contrast to the dutiful, tidy young man who spent peaceful nights with the erudite Appolonia, his other self also flourished—the wildly clever, charismatic, artistically courageous self. The alter ego that was allowed to become the bigger ego, allowed to be protean and abundant, evolving further as Butch Ellington, even more grand and audacious, but also darkly treacherous. And devoted to his mad mother, who reinforced by her very nature the seductive possibilities of a dissociated identity.
Her behavioral, and likely genetic, legacy to her son.
“Being two people allowed him to live at both ends of the personality scale at the same time,” said Burton.
“Impulsive, creative, sensual and charismatic at one end. Compulsive, professional, coolly detached and analytical on the other. Eldridge got to act out both extremes of human behavior.”
“Each complete with a wife,” said Amanda.
“The ultimate two-timer.”
I threw a chunk of ice as far as I could so Eddie would have something to chase. I hoped he’d find it before it melted. Otherwise I’d never get him back in the car. Persistence was an Oak Point affliction.
“You owe Ivor Fleming an apology,” said Burton.
“I wish I could say I knew that all along, but I didn’t. I only started doubting when I talked to Ike and Connie. They aren’t smart enough to lie convincingly. And they knew what I looked like. They wouldn’t have jumped Sullivan, even if they hadn’t known he was a cop. No reason to. It had all the markings of an amateur screw-up. Butch’s place had been a potato farm, even when the family who owned it before had diversified into auto repair. The barns were always full of bundles of burlap. But old, half rotten. Not that hard for Sullivan to punch his way through. I thought of all that, but even after Burt told me about Osvaldos legal trouble, I couldn’t quite believe it. To paraphrase Burton’s professor, just because you think it’s true doesn’t mean you aren’t full of crap.’
“It wasn’t until Allison got me all the stuff Jackie had pulled off the Internet, including census data showing only one kid living with either Eldridge parent at any given time, and a copy of Butch’s senior picture from BU, with his black, straight, neatly combed hair, that I knew it had to be.”
“You owe me one, too,” said Amanda. “For scaring me half to death.”
“Sorry It was all I could think of at the time. I was afraid I might have already tipped off Butch when I went after Gabe Szwit. As it is, I’d burned up a lot of time after leaving him at his office. Stupid of me.”
“He may or may not have alerted Butch,” said Burton. “It doesn’t explain why he agreed to meet you at Appolonia’s. He must have known it was a trap.”
“He came because he knew I had him. Neville St. Clair and Hugh Boone were characters in a Sherlock Holmes story. Both the same man, one a distinguished gentleman, the other an ugly beggar with a talent for street theater. Butch told me he’d studied Conan Doyle. When he needed client names for two phantom accounts he’d set up to suck money out of Jonathan’s consulting business he couldn’t resist the temptation, the parallels were too compelling.”
“The Man with the Twisted Lip,” said Burton.
“That was the other thing Jackie had in the package. She came across the story on the Internet after doing a search on the names. This whole thing would’ve been solved a long time ago if me or the FBI were more conversant with the inventions of the twentieth century.”
—
I was glad for that time I spent with Burton and Amanda. I knew I’d need it before going in for the grilling later that night. I’d been through similar things before, and this one was no better. Though one saving grace was seeing Webster Ig again. He’d spoken to Jackie’s nurses, who said she was doing well, that the plastic surgeons were sure she’d come out as good as new.
And it was nice to have Burton along. Helped keep the discussion on a civil plane. Ross’s mood also helped things along. Joe Sullivan, and consequently the Southampton Town police force, would get credit for the collars. If high-profile arrests are the coin of the realm in law enforcement, Southampton had discovered El Dorado.
It was well after midnight when I finally got to sleep. Out on the screened-in front porch with Amanda in the bed and Eddie on the braided rug. They were both breathing steadily by the time I drifted off, my mind strangely blank, and feeling something akin to peace for the first time since deciding on that second drink on the Windsong deck.
TWENTY-NINE
IT WAS STILL DARK when I woke up and decided to take a run. I left Amanda sleeping and crept out on the front lawn carrying my running shoes, shorts and T-shirt. Eddie heard me and came out to see what was up. He yawned, stretching his front paws forward and sticking his butt in the air. I hadn’t looked at the clock on my way out, but it was probably a little after five judging by the faint glow forming along the eastern horizon.
I took my northern route that started behind Amanda’s house and followed the shore of the Oak Point Lagoon, on which launches, fishing boats and shoal draft sailboats drifted languorously in the calm water at the end of bulky mooring lines.
I wasn’t looking to make a big run of it. I just wanted to get as far as a sandy bluff I knew where a chunk of glacial rock stuck out partway down the hill, giving you a good place to sit and watch the sun slowly light up the bay as it rose over your left shoulder.
Eddie was always a little iffy about the whole thing, reluctant to make the short slide from the edge of the bluff down to the outcrop of stone, but he always did it anyway.
And always landed where he was supposed to, though a clean miss would have been far from fatal. Might even like it. Climb back up the hill and do it again.
I just needed a place to think. Where distractions were at a minimum. Where you could do little but brood and brace yourself against an unplanned tumble down the sandbank to the bay shore. When I had a job troubleshooting engineered systems I picked out a few of these places within a short driving distance from the office in White Plains. Parks, coffee shops, bars, congenial habitats where you could be anonymous and unmolested for a brief period, enough to sketch out an answer to a puzzle on a yellow legal pad, or simply tick through all the points of contention.
I took it as a matter of faith that any problem could be solved eventually if you only put the right amount of thought into it, if you only had the time and mental capacity to focus on a solution. I was wrong about that. Startlingly wrong, but I didn’t know that then.
Like most serious joggers, I brought a pack of cigarettes along with me to assist in the focusing process. I lit one and leaned up against the sandbank. I missed the adjoining cup of coffee, but there’s only so much you can haul in a pair of nylon jogging shorts.
I slid further down the bank until I could look up at the blue sky emerging from the silver-gray of early morning. I waited for enlightenment to drift effortlessly into my mind, but all that happened was the urge to go back to sleep. I don’t know what I thought I should be thinking about, only that there was an unresolved issue floating freely somewhere inside my consciousness, one that had been obscured by the clamorous thoughts of the last few weeks, and was now asserting itself.
I waited for more inspiration until the sun had the Little Peconic bathed in a pale new light and Eddie, uncharacteristically, began to whine with impatience.
“All right, all right,” I said to him, carrying him back up the sandbank and dropping him down on the trail so we could jog back. I took an extended route, though it was still early when I got back to the cottage to find Amanda, wrapped in a blanket, out in the Adirondacks drinking coffee. I swung by my kitchen to pour a cup for myself and joined her.
“You must be tired,” she said. “You didn’t get much sleep.”
“Sometimes tiredness will do that to you.”
We sat quietly for a while, sipping the coffee and watching big seabirds skim along barely a foot above the still water, searching for breakfast.
“I’m moving out in a few days,” said Amanda.
“Really.”
“I’m thinking I might even leave the area. I’ve been here for a long time. And now I can be anywhere I want.”
“That’s true.”
Another silence settled in for a while. As I cooled down from the run I realized the air was not as warm as it had been, and drier, so you could easily see the houses on Nassau Point across the bay. Yet the winds were calm. That wasn’t a typical combination, and I wondered what it meant.
“How come?” I asked.
“How come what?”
“You want to leave?”
“I’m not sure it’s what I want. I just don’t want to go through it again.”
“Through what?”
She’d been looking out at the bay the whole time, but now she rolled up on her shoulder so she could look at me.
“Now that there’s nothing forcing you into the world, you’ll head back into hibernation. That’s where you’d prefer to be. Alone with yourself. You did it before, you’ll do it again.”
“I had a reason.”
“What, because I damaged you? You thought no more damage was possible, and just like that, it happened anyway.”
I thought about that.
“It’s more than that.”
She didn’t say anything, waiting for me.
“You hate this, don’t you?” she said, finally.
“I hate the fact that there’s something I’m suppose to say that will cause you to change your mind, but I’m not sure what it is.”
“You would if you truly wanted me to change my mind,” she said, rolling back in the chair so she could refocus on the bay.
This was exactly the thing I was trying to noodle out that morning by running over to the rock stuck in the sandbank. It was what I first started to contemplate that day in the lumberyard during my discussion with Ike and Connie. It had something to do with the awful possibility that first choosing to live, and then choosing to live among people, exposed you to more than the danger you’d actually become attached to some of them.
If you weren’t careful, you might even start to love somebody. Worse than that, you could love somebody you’d never be able to trust. Not completely. Not ever. No amount of denial, repression or avoidance would ever change that.
Amanda started to get up from her chair.
“If I tell you I love you will you sit back down?” I asked.
She sat back down.
“Yes.”
“Good. Now try to stay put while I get some more coffee.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Eternal thanks to Literary Agent Mary Jack Wald, and Judy and Marty Shepard, without whom I’d be writing this in my imagination. Bob Willemin for investment management advice—if I got any of it wrong, trust me, it’s my fault. My brother Whit and sister-in-law Adele for Spanish translations. Treasured reader Randy Costello for advice in English and Español. Rich Orr on legal affairs. Editorial wisdom from Anne Collins at Random House, Canada. Meagan Longcore, who can make anybody look good, literally. Mary Farrell for everything.
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2007
Copyright © 2006 Chris Knopf
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