by Chris Knopf
“Have you lost your mind?” he asked.
“Yes. I have. You’re going to help me get it back.”
He kept his eyes on me as he backed into the couch and sat down. His face, usually tinted a faint green, had gone solid white.
“You’re going to jail,” he said as he sat down.
I pulled over one of the Hitchcock chairs.
“One of us is.”
He looked like he didn’t know whether to scream, clam up or pass out.
“You mind if I smoke?”
“Yes, I do.”
I took out a cigarette and lit it, leaning back in the Hitchcock and snatching a piece of pottery off the bookshelf to use as an ashtray.
“That’s a McCoy,” he said. “I’m calling the police.”
“Go ahead. While you’re doing that, I’ll call Appolonia.”
He stayed put on the couch, fear and fury in his eyes.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“To talk a minute.”
“You expect me to talk to you when you’re threatening me with a cudgel?”
I looked at the hammer.
“It’s a three-pound sledge. Here. You can have it.”
I tossed it in his lap. Half standing, he grabbed it with both hands and flung it to other side of the couch, as if I’d just popped it out of a kiln.
“Settle down,” I told him. “I just want to talk.”
“You could have made an appointment.”
“I just did. Does Appolonia know?”
“Know what?”
“Any of it.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You lied about Butch Ellington. You said you never met him. You’ve known him all along.”
He sat a little straighter on the couch as he regained some of his professional poise.
“Who I know, or don’t know, is my concern.”
“Fair enough. I’ll just fill in the blanks myself and check it out directly with Appolonia.”
He didn’t like that.
“She loathes her brother-in-law,” he said. “I didn’t want her trust in me clouded by that association.”
“Nothing like a big lie to build trust.”
“Jonathan never found it necessary to reveal such a trivial thing. I presumed that was his wish and have merely honored it. And no one cared more about Appolonia’s well-being than him.”
“How about Belinda? She in on it, too?”
“Heavens no. And what difference could it possibly make? Is that all this is about? You break into my office, threaten and assault me, simply because I’ve preserved a client confidence?”
“Watch the allegations, Gabe. If I’m going down for assault anyway, I might as well bash you on the head and make it worth it.”
Whatever color had found its way back into his face drained off again.
“And all that legal crap doesn’t work with me. Part of my engineering training.”
“Crap?”
“Yeah, you’re already making your case. Won’t work with Appolonia either since it won’t change the fact you’re hiding your relationship with Butch. Which I can prove, so don’t waste our time practicing jury summations. You’re busted. Concentrate on what you want to do about it.”
“Do about it?” he asked, his voice getting hoarse, as if his throat was starting to constrict.
“Answer my questions or I’m leaving now and heading directly to Appolonia’s.”
“If I do, will you leave her alone?”
“You’ve know Butch since college. BU. Maybe before. When did you meet Jonathan?”
He looked away.
“About the same time.”
“Butch is the one who had the mother committed. Needed you for the legalities. Still does.”
“The parents split up when they were young. Butch lived with the mother, so he knew how troubled she was, how she’d never function safely on her own. That she belonged where she is now. Jonathan didn’t like it, but he acquiesced. Jonathan hardly knew her. He was raised by his father. Didn’t know enough to contest the decision. But he liked me administering the details. Didn’t trust Butch to do it properly.”
“Who pays the bills?” I asked.
“The bills?”
“Who pays the Sisters of Mercy?”
He looked reluctant to answer the question, thinking about it longer than he should have.
“Arthur. Butch. He always sent the checks. I didn’t question it. No need.”
“No. I suppose not. As long as she was looked after. Butch was more her kid, if you think about it. Whatever happened to Arthur Senior?”
“Their father? I don’t know.”
“The cops think he’s dead.”
“Then I suppose he is. They should know.”
“Where’d they live, Jonathan and his father?”
Gabe finally let himself sit back in the sofa, looking a little less braced for an imminent blow.
“What difference does it make?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Just curious.”
“I think mostly around Riverhead and the North Fork. The father was an accountant. Commuted to somewhere up island. Put in long hours. Jonathan was on his own a lot. Made him very self-reliant, he claimed. Toughened him up. Although you probably know that already. You seem to know a lot.”
“I know my name is Sam and I live in a house with a dog.”
“That’s really about all you know,” said Gabe, suddenly getting up a head of steam. “You’re just fishing. Trying to bully everything out of me. It’s pathetic.”
“Did Jonathan know you were in love with his wife?”
That got his color back. Should’ve thanked me for asking him.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Come on, Gabe, you think it’s that hard to tell? He must’ve seen it, too.”
“I’m not listening to this.”
“Probably part of his calculation. He knew you’d do anything to protect her, keep her safe and secure. He’d known you for years. Knew you were a good administrator, could handle things. He spent a lot of time on the road. Needed a professional go-to guy back at the ranch. Gave you a lot of face time with Appolonia. Enough to get in deeper and deeper. But also enough to know you hadn’t a prayer of getting what you really wanted. She was completely devoted to Jonathan and he knew it. Didn’t have to worry. Must’ve made you feel extra special, if you ever let yourself think about it.”
Gabe was probably a pretty good lawyer. Had the poker face for it. But if you shook him up a little and looked closely, you could see it written into his countenance. The frustration and anger. Bitterness and resentment, or maybe desperation. The curse of an intelligent man who wanted to live with a delusion, but his intelligence wouldn’t let him.
“Must be nice now to have her all to yourself,” I said. “Kind of.”
He looked about to answer that, but stopped himself. Instead he just stared, occasionally darting his eyes over toward the phone on his desk.
“Nothing’s really changed,” I said. “You still got plenty of face time, but you’re no closer to the prize. Was it worth it?”
“You’re not suggesting?”
“Should I be?”
He actually smiled and wagged a finger at me.
“Now you’re really overreaching, Mr. Acquillo.”
“How come you didn’t sue Ivor Fleming after he stiffed Butch? You had a good case. Did you work out a deal?”
“Now who’s making false allegations? Not going to work,” he said.
“We could try it out on Ross Semple. See what he thinks.”
What was left of Gabe’s smile faded away.
“He’ll want to talk to Appolonia,” he said. “You promised to leave her out of it.”
“I didn’t, but I will. For now.”
I stood up and picked my sledge up off the couch, making him blanch again.
“Not leaving it here,” I said. “Might need it again.”
“It won’t do y
ou any good. You’re a fool if you think it will.”
“What do you mean?”
He pointed at me.
“That’s what I mean. You have no idea what you’re doing. And no amount of brutality will change that.”
Looking down on him sitting in the couch he looked small, but defiant, assuming a posture he’d likely learned in childhood, fighting with his parents over finishing his carrots and peas. I’d pushed him as far as he could be pushed, at least for now. I knew that about smaller, physically weaker men, especially the smart ones, who’d had a lot trouble in the schoolyard. They usually had a reservoir of indignation, compensated for by a panoply of intellectual weaponry, not the least being a particularly vicious form of subterfuge. A penchant for the sneak attack, the shiv in the back.
“You should repair my door,” he said. “But I’d prefer if you didn’t come back again.”
I left him in his office, alone again to think thoughts I wished I could read, though only from a safe distance.
TWENTY-SEVEN
ISABELLA TOLD ME over the intercom speaker at the front gate that Burton was over at the Gracefield Tennis Club having lunch. She said if I wanted to talk to him I’d have to wait till he got back, since non-members weren’t allowed to say the word “Gracefield” much less eat lunch there.
“Maybe I’ll join,” I said.
“You got the hundred thousand a year and proof your ancestors come over on the Mayflower, you maybe got a chance.”
“If they’d take me I wouldn’t want to join,” I said, invoking Groucho.
“Lucky for you. Save you a hundred grand.”
I went over there anyway and drove right up the long entrance. To either side were grass courts on which lithe figures in white cotton played tennis under the hot sun while generating no noticeable sweat. I thought, wow, that is some breeding.
I found a parking space where I could squeeze the Grand Prix between two full-sized luxury SUVs. I felt like I was in a black canyon. The reflections in the black side panels were bright enough to use as a mirror, which I did to tuck in my shirt and put some semblance of a part in my hair.
The main clubhouse was a fat old shingle-style place that looked like most of the older homes lining the shore between the ocean and Gin Lane. The cedar shakes were a dark gray, split and curled in many places, which made the bright blue-and-white-striped awnings look all the more fresh and sporty. I trotted up onto the huge porch—carpeted with woven jute and furnished in white wicker—where it was easily ten degrees cooler. A scattering of people in and out of tennis outfits were having drinks and picking melons and strawberries out of pewter baskets. As I hoped, there was a reception area just inside the main door.
“Burton Lewis, please,” I said to the guy standing there in a pink shirt and white bow tie, sleeves rolled up to the middle of his forearms.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m here to have lunch with Burton Lewis.”
He looked down at the book on his maitre d’ stand.
“Your name?”
“Sam Acquillo. He might’ve forgotten.”
He looked at me as if to say, “Mr. Lewis never forgets.”
I looked at my watch, then felt immediately idiotic because I wasn’t wearing one. The host saw the dumb move, too. Condescension began to creep into his expression.
“He’s waiting for me. Why don’t you just tell him I’m here,” I said.
“We don’t disturb our members at lunch. And if you’re not a member,” he paused to look me up and down, so we could silently agree I wasn’t, “you aren’t permitted to remain on the premises.”
I wondered if once, just once, I’d be able to enter a building and just get to see the person I wanted to see without having to manipulate, cajole, bribe, threaten or sock some mistrustful gatekeeper in the nose.
“You’re guessing that Burton wouldn’t want to see me.”
“I escort Mr. Lewis to his private dining room every Thursday. I’m afraid he would have mentioned it to me.”
“Okay but what if you’re wrong. What if he would’ve seen me but you didn’t let him know I was here. How would that go over?”
That almost worked with Ivor Fleming’s security guards, for whom the wrong call could conceivably be a matter of life and death. Granted, the Gracefield standards were probably more strictly enforced.
He wavered.
“All you have to do is go to where he’s eating and tell him Sam Acquillo is downstairs. If he says who the heck is that?’ you’re in the clear. How bad could that be?”
I was grateful that he bought the concept. I didn’t want to have sock him in the nose, which I was prepared to do right at that moment, something else I’d have to regret for the rest of my life.
He was gone just a few minutes. When he reappeared in the reception area he snuck in behind a small bar and grabbed a leather-bound menu. He handed it to me.
“The specials are inside,” he said, formally, as he led me down the hall. “The duck confit seems to be the most popular item.”
“Excellent,” I said. “I love duck. My dog ll sometimes snatch one out of the lagoon. Fry it right up.”
We went up two flights of stairs, down a hallway lined with oil paintings of seascapes, gaff-rigged racing yachts and Atlantic waterfowl and into a large, brilliantly lit room. An octagon, with windows on every side. I recognized it as the building’s tower, from a glimpse of the club you could catch over the hedges when you drove down Gin Lane. I’d been catching that glimpse my whole life. It was remarkably strange to be looking at it from the inside out.
Burton was sitting alone at a round table, carving some meager little mound of oiled foliage on his plate, an ice bucket with an open bottle of white at his right elbow.
“Sam,” said Burton, getting up from the table and warmly shaking my hand, “what a pleasure.”
I had to hand it to the guy in the white bow tie. He stood calmly at attention, ready to take it like a man.
I jerked my thumb at him.
“This guy’s good, Burt. Really looks after the place. Tell management he’s a keeper.”
The guy gave a neat little bow.
“And you should know, Sam. A man of your worldliness.”
“You people have Absolut?” I asked the guy. “On the rocks. No fruit. Just a swizzle stick.” He nodded a brisk little nod and gratefully took the opportunity to spin on his heel and beat it out of there.
“This is delightful,” said Burton. “The food here is really quite good, for a club. Just stay clear of the duck. Too fatty.”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “We just need to catch up.”
He was chewing, so he twirled his fork in the air as a way of saying, “Forget about it.”
“You know this Jonathan Eldridge thing,” I said to him. “It’s messing me up.”
He nodded eagerly.
“I have some information for you,” he said. “I called you, but you weren’t there, and of course you don’t have an answering machine. Or email.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“I was about to drive over there. Meant to do it today, actually.”
He shoved the salad out of the way and took the silver cover off a plate filled with pasta, vegetables and what looked like chunks of lobster and crab.
“Here,” he said, scooping a mound of the stuff on to a dinner plate, “take this. I’ll eat off the serving dish.”
I didn’t argue with him.
“Thanks. Looks great.”
The guy in the white bow tie reappeared with my drink. Burton told him to bring another plate of what we were eating and shooed him out of the room.
“So what do you got?” I asked him.
“You can’t repeat this, but Mr. Fleming is a week or two away from a full-scale racketeering indictment. I think my theory was correct. Whatever information the State investigators pulled from Jonathan Eldridge’s computer has provided the basis for the action. They’re quite h
appy about it. I know it’s not your principal concern. Nothing new on the car bombing.”
“Anything come up about his relationship with Jonathan Eldridge, or his brother Butch?”
“You told us to focus on your hostiles, as you put it. Found more evidence to the contrary regarding the brother.”
“Jonathan took good care of him. I know that.”
“Oh, yes. To a fault. At least in the eyes of the State investigation.”
Burton grinned at me over the top of his pasta.
“Really.”
“You really can’t repeat this. In fact, we aren’t even having this conversation. Not for my sake, for the chap who spilled it to me.”
“I’m cool, Burt, you know that.”
He nodded emphatically.
“I do,” he said. “It seems the forensic accountants, going through Jonathan’s financial records, determined that a few days before he was killed he used substantial assets from his cash reserves at Eagle to take positions within three sub-accounts.”
“Substantial?”
“Seven figures substantial. Given that there was no other accounting irregularity, this stuck out. Apparently, Jonathan was scrupulous in his bookkeeping. Had a very straightforward, conservative methodology. Left little room for shenanigans. So, this big transfer stuck out.”
I struggled to remember Jackie’s explanation of Jonathan’s system, trying to visualize the structure in my mind.
“The cash account was a just a big pool that held all the money that flowed in and out of the sub-accounts. Just a holding tank. As long as the in and out is tracked and accounted for, doesn’t mean a thing.”
“That’s right.”
“So this big transfer could have been a routine occurrence. He was just caught between moves. If he hadn’t been killed, he would have reconciled everything. Nothing illegal in that.”
“Not at all. Especially when you consider that a sizeable percentage of that cash account belonged to Jonathan himself. With his wife. More than enough to cover the transfer to Butch. It was his money, theoretically. Could do anything he wanted with it.”
“So why did the forensic accountants think it was important?”
Burton shrugged.
“He’d never done it before. At least never with numbers that large. That’s what they look for. Anomalies. Deviations from patterns. Hiccups in the system. This was a very big one.”
