by Chris Knopf
It was a good time to go to the gym and beat on something for a while. A purification ritual for brutes.
When I got there the guy who handed out towels asked me about Sullivan. I’d never heard him utter a sound, much less a word before, so it almost made me jump.
“He’s okay.” I said. “Coming around. You’ll see him in here before you know it.”
The towel guy took that in, then nodded. Satisfied with the report, a good return on the investment of breath. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to talk to him now every time I needed a towel.
Several other guys ask me about Sullivan, mostly other cops, which surprised me. Partly because I didn’t know anyone gave a shit about him, or that I’d be the one you’d want to ask if you did. Since I’d brought him in, it transferred to me all rights to knowledge of his well-being. Even Ronny got in on the act.
“So he’s comin’ around and all, gettin’ back his functionality” he said to me while I was trying to work the speed bag.
“Yeah. Can’t talk to all the functions, but the doc says he’s basically sound. Or will be.”
“What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know. If Ross does, he’s not reporting to me.”
“Ross only reports to the Planet Zircon.”
“He’s okay. He’s on it.”
“Hasn’t talked to me.”
I stopped the chattering bag with my gloves.
“Does he usually?” I asked.
“No, but the bitch of it is I seen Sullie that day. Came in late to sit in the whirlpool for an hour. Said he was tired, had pulled a time and a half, and felt like crap from eating too much the night before.”
“Doesn’t sound like a man itching to run out and get stabbed.”
“I don’t know what it sounds like, but it don’t mean nothin.”
Ronny had been a cop himself, first with the NYPD, then out in West Hampton Beach. You can be tempted watching cop shows to think there’s not a lot of difference between police and civilians. But that would be a mistake. The only people in the world who thought like cops were cops.
“He didn’t have his service revolver with him when I found him,” I told Ronny. “It was still at his house.”
“He wasn’t big on carrying off-duty I know that from the chumps who come in here armed to the teeth. I got a rule, check em at the door. Nothin’ in the locker. Kids in here ll boost it faster than you can say gangsta rap.”
“Or Mel Tormé.”
“But he’d carry if he had to. Sullivan’s a tight-ass but he’s good at being a cop. It’s hard to like him, but you got to respect him.”
“So if it doesn’t mean nothing, what does it mean?”
Ronny was also a really big man, in a tall, fleshy kind of way. Big head with a full scalp of dyed black hair. Always in a set of dark blue sweatpants and sweatshirt, though I never saw him work out or spar with anybody. Everybody just assumed since he owned the place and trained the kids that he could kick anybody’s ass he wanted to. I never saw any reason to challenge the assumption.
“Got set up. Bushwhacked. Never saw it coming.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I had to tell him. “You should tell Ross. He’d want to know.”
“Fair enough.”
“Joe got in a few rights before they knocked him on the head. Don’t tell him I told you.”
Ronny liked hearing that.
“Like I said, you got to respect him.”
He let me go back to the bag, which I got humming like an oversized bumblebee. I was always good at the speed bag, changing up rhythms and modulating the monotonous patter. There was something hypnotic about it, the blur of brown leather as backdrop to my scruffy maroon workout gloves. And it was something I could still do as I got older. Took more style than muscle. A good way to signal the hormone-crazed kids that I’d be tougher game than I looked without having to actually demonstrate it in the ring. Anything to stay the hell out of the ring.
I don’t know how long I was lost in the bag before I realized Ronny was standing there again.
“I remembered something,” he said when I dropped my gloves. “Actually it was the thing I was going to tell you when I saw you come in, only I forgot it till now. I got the short-term memory of a brain-damaged gnat.”
“I’m listening.”
“Sullivan said his wife was planning to work late and that he’d have to figure out how to feed himself. In other words, he had to find some place that’d feed him. I made some crack about the Pequot being the right choice given his intestinal situation.”
“Hodges always said whitefish has medicinal properties.”
Ronny took that briefly under consideration. “He hasn’t poisoned me yet. Though you got to wonder where some of those concoctions actually come from.”
“Far as I know Sullivan never showed up that night at the Pequot. Hodges would have told me.”
“He told me he was making a stop on the way” said Ronny “Pick somebody up. Pequot regular.”
“Regular?”
“You, actually. Said you didn’t care what you ate.”
“Only I was at a fundraiser. He wouldn’t’ve known that.”
“Fundraiser. Pretty uptown.”
“Ross never talked to you?”
“Like I said. Lost in space.”
“Tell him anyway,” I said. “It’s material.”
“Sure, if that’s what it is. Seems like it is to me. Go back to your bag,” he told me, and left me there halfway through my workout and now all the way bugged out of my concentration. I went over to a bench and sat down, resting my gloves palms-up on my thighs.
There were so many things I wasn’t good at that a full accounting would never be completed. But it wasn’t hard to list some principal failings. I could group them around general headings, like the tendency to objectify any ugly, seemingly unsolvable problem until it almost took on mass, creating a focus for my frustration and wrath. When the data points defied organization and whirled around in a crazed Brownian motion of willful disorder it was easier to see it as a living thing. I once thought I could live without uncovering a solution if I could only comprehend the problem. But that was probably another lie. Maybe what I ultimately feared was the loss of control that comes from a failure to understand.
“Over our heads,” I said. “No shit.”
I closed my eyes and tried to see Jonathan standing outside his Lexus tossing the tennis ball into the harbor. But I couldn’t hold the image. Sullivan kept coming in, floating like a pale manatee in the Jacuzzi at Sonny’s. Bullshitting with Ronny Heading home to change his clothes. Putzing around his yard for a while. Checking his watch. Getting in his Bronco and driving slowly, obeying every scofflaw speed limit as he drove from where he lives in Shinnecock Hills over to North Sea. Up to Oak Point. I’m not there, but he’s tired and edgy and really wants to talk to somebody—really doesn’t want to eat dinner on his own. Knows the door’s never locked so he goes in to say hi to Eddie, who’s usually outside. Sullivan doesn’t let him out, having the responsible cop sense to assume I had a reason for leaving him in. Grabs some of Burton’s fancy imported beer from the refrigerator. Goes out to the Adirondack chairs. Drinks the beers. Pissed off that Sam hasn’t showed up yet. Stares at the Peconic. Drinks a few more beers.
I went and told Ronny that I’d call Ross for him, that he’d probably have to follow up, but I needed to talk to him right away.
“No problem here,” he said. “I got a phone in my office. All he’s gotta do is call.”
I think he had more to say about it, but I was on my way to the shower.
—
The Town’s police headquarters was in the pine scrubs north of Hampton Bays, but closer than the nearest pay phone, so I took a chance and drove over there to see if I could intercept Ross. The woman who usually commanded the little sliding window in the reception room looked like she’d been waiting all day for me to show up. She had close-cropped curly brown hair and thick glasses. Wore a
starched blue shirt and a territorial attitude. I irritated her, which put me in familiar territory.
“I need to talk to Ross. He in?” I asked.
“And this is concerning?” she asked me.
“He knows me. Is he in?”
“I need your name,” she said, looking at me as if to say, “if you don’t tell me your name in half a second I’ll have you spread-eagle on the floor.”
“Sam Acquillo, Janet. The same Sam Acquillo you nod at when we bump into each other in the grocery store. You could save us both a lot of time if you just called Ross and told him I want to talk to him.”
“I don’t know if he’s back there.”
“Let’s check. What can it hurt?”
She didn’t like it but reached over anyway and dialed Ross’s line, keeping her eyes fixed on me. I wondered if she’d done some time on the street, and then realized that of course she had. Explained why we understood each other so well. She slid the glass window shut while she talked on the phone, then hung up and slid it open again.
“You can go back,” she said, buzzing me in, as if I’d just passed the initiation.
I was always struck by the universality of office environments. I’d been in hundreds around the world and every one was essentially the same. Whether your purpose was cracking hydrocarbons, producing movies or sending people to jail, the desks, phones, cubicles and feigned industry were all fundamentally the same. I snaked my way through the open task room to Ross’s glass-enclosed office in the back. Ross was leaning back in his chair supported by one foot stuck in an open drawer. A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray while he pulled another from a crumpled soft pack.
“I think you offended Officer Orlovsky” he said.
“Probably. I’m good at that.”
“Got to be good at something.”
“How can I get through this without offending you?” I asked him.
“Easy. Can’t offend me. And if you do, I’ll just shoot you. Kidding.”
He got the cigarette lit, so I stubbed out the one in the ashtray and pushed it across his desk so he could smoke without tilting his chair back down.
“I’m guessing forensics did a full deal on Sullivan’s shirt,” I said.
“Yeah, Staties up in Albany. First rate.”
“And you can’t tell me what they found.”
“That’s right. The DA has a little rule about discussing evidence with a suspect.”
“Suspect? You think I stabbed Sullivan?”
“No, but I don’t think you’re telling me everything I need to know. So if the DA wants to like you a little, that’s okay with me. Makes for kind of a bonding thing between us, legally speaking. Gives me the right to keep an eye on you.”
“That’s great. Thanks a lot, Ross.”
“You know my old man used to fish with yours.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Said he was a Grade A son of a bitch.”
“That’d be generous.”
“But honest. Too honest. Said whatever he thought. My dad was a cop, too. Suffolk County.”
“I think I knew that.”
“Still alive. Has a place in the Village. He remembers you. Said you were like a weird version of your old man. Tough little shit. Never knew how to back down. We pulled your sheet after that last thing. Seems like you still don’t.”
“I’m over that now.”
“Your old man told my old man he could never push you past a certain point. He liked that about you. Bragged about it.”
That was news to me. I never thought my father even noticed I was living in the same house except when I was in the way of the TV or when he wanted me to go get a tool from the shed. I tried to imagine him talking about me to other people, but couldn’t. It made me a little light-headed, so I stopped.
“What if I just asked you stuff about the shirt and you can tell me if I’m hot or cold.”
I figured that worked with the FBI.
“We’ve been on Fleming and his people like white on rice, but haven’t seen anything but Statie undercover doing the same thing. Though we did notice two of his boys were a little banged up.” He cast a conspicuous glance at my hands. I held them up.
“Must have gotten into it with each other,” he said.
“No honor among meatballs.”
He settled his chair back down and propped his elbows on his desk, the smoke from his cigarette hanging about his face like a veil in the still air of the office.
“Burton Lewis thinks a lot of you, too. Otherwise you’d have a much bigger problem around here,” he said, matter of factly.
“I don’t expect you to believe me, Ross, but I got next to no interest in doing your job. What I’d really rather be doing right now is working on my addition instead of sitting here with you, no offense. I just think you oughta take a look at that forensics report and see if there’s anything other than the material of the shirt mixed into that hole. Any other kind of fibers.”
Ross’s face stopped its endless wiggling as it momentarily formed into a scowl.
“If somebody gave that up to you I’ll have his behind,” he said.
“Same stuff was stuck to his other clothing. And in his hair. Unless the hospital got to him before you could brush it out. Is that it?”
“One other place, Sherlock.”
“The abrasion on his right hand along the knuckles.”
He extracted another cigarette from the soft pack and lit it with the one he was already smoking. He offered me one and I took it.
“Joe’s not doing too good with this thing,” said Ross.
“I know.”
“No you don’t. The Hamptons aren’t exactly Fort Apache, but every cop everywhere knows there’s an everyday potential of getting hurt. You’re not the same after it actually happens.”
“Intimations of mortality.”
“There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, the earth and every common sight, to me did seem apparelled in celestial light,” said Ross, flatly, with little puffs of smoke punctuating every word.
“Nobody told me anything,” I said. “Especially Sullivan. It was just a guess.”
“Sullivan doesn’t know anything. Because I haven’t told him anything.”
“He’ll be okay. Just give him time.”
“I know he will. It’s you I’m not so sure about.”
“Come on, Ross. I’m on your side.”
“I’m not talking about me. Whoever took out Jonathan Eldridge knew what they were doing. Quite a coincidence that Joe Sullivan gets found in your front yard stuck like a pig about the time we opened the case to the whole squad. Which was about the time I find out from some lawyer over in Riverhead that you’re pestering Eldridge’s widow. If you think I don’t know what you two were up to, you’re not the brain Sullivan says you are. If Sullivan was onto something, so were you.”
Throughout the conversation Ross maintained the usual unmodulated tone in his voice that always seemed out of synch with his twitchy body. Flat, but friendly. Unthreatening. Analytical. Make a fine addition to my new engineering staff. Ross, Charles, Scott and Edgar.
“What do you want to know?” I asked him.
“Who killed Jonathan Eldridge,” he said without hesitation.
“I don’t know.”
“But you have theories.”
“Not really. I wish I had,” I said, with all the earnest conviction I felt.
“I thought you liked Fleming.”
“I do. My favorite, but far from a slam dunk.”
“Eldridge and Sullivan are connected.”
“Maybe.”
“Christ.”
“Parallel unrelated component failure we used to call it. What looks like cause and effect is just dumb coincidence.”
“Why not Fleming?”
“Can’t see what’s in it for him. Sure, Eldridge screwed up on his investments, but why the big bang? Seems like a statement, but what’re you saying? Pick better stocks? And to wh
om, your other financial consultants? You think Merrill Lynch management has a memo out to all their brokers, please be advised in handling Ivor Fleming’s account to show a positive return or take the train home.”
“His sheet has about a half-dozen suspected homicides. Not like he’s not up to it. And the State people sure seem interested. We can hardly find a place to park near his house in Sagaponack for all the plain-wrapper Fords.”
“Rackets. The bombing investigation gave them something to go on. New, or supplemental, who knows, but that’s their game.”
“You know this.”
“I do, but I can’t tell you how. I’d be giving somebody up. But it’s good information.”
“I could make you.”
“I know, but you’ll wish you hadn’t. Not because of me, because of the source. Talk to Burton. He can probably plug you in.”
It was impossible to read Ross Semple. But I thought as we talked through everything I knew, or wanted to share, including my chat with Ronny that he was feeling a little better about me. I wanted him to. Not only to get out from under his suspicious gaze, but to honor Sullivan and Burton’s faith in me. To not let them down, even in the abstract.
When we were finished he walked me out to the reception area. Janet Orlovsky was still on duty. I noticed she was wearing her service revolver. Thought she ought to arm herself with me in the building. She buzzed me back out and Ross followed me into the parking lot.
“I hope you don’t come down on Sullivan for anything that’s been going on,” I said. “Not that I’m saying he’s done anything he shouldn’t.”
“He’s done all kinds of things he shouldn’t. But I’m okay. Just keep talking to me, or I won’t be.”
“Okay.”
He followed me all the way to the Grand Prix and opened the door for me. Eddie jumped out so he could take a piss on the post that held up a sign that said “Visitors Only. Southampton Town Police.” I thought of a way to divert Ross’s attention.
“Those fibers you found on Sullivan,” I said. “I got a guess.”
Before I had a chance to say it he told me what it was.
“Burlap. Heavy weave. The kind the potato farmers have been using out here for years.”
“I thought you were concerned about the DA,” I said.
