The East End

by Jason Allen

  Gina managed to hold him upright until they reached the edge of the driveway, but with their first steps onto the beach stones he encouraged her to let him stand on his own.

  “Give me a minute,” he said. Mired in self-pity, he heard the crunching of tires on the driveway and gazed to his left. He squinted at the beams and needles of light gleaming against a chrome bumper, and then, more forcefully than he’d meant to, he shirked Gina’s hand from his forearm as the tall iron gates began swiveling closed and the limo pulled ahead.

  Oh Jesus, no. He’d forgotten to call Pete and cancel Henry’s pickup.

  “Excuse me a moment, Gina.” He left her there, and with awkward steps ambled down the center of the shale-and-pebble-covered drive, the morning sun too bright to see beyond a fierce haze, his hands raised with palms out to signal for Pete to stop the car. As soon as his driver pressed the brake, Leo picked up his pace and made it to the side window before Pete could step out. Leo turned and saw Gina walking over and then turned back to the window as it powered down.

  “Hell, damn it,” he said to Pete, “I’m so sorry, I should’ve called. My guest decided to meet friends for breakfast and he’s going to stay with them for the weekend. I feel awful that you made the trip all the way out here for no reason. And on a goddamned holiday weekend no less.”

  “Oh, that’s okay, sir. My apologies for getting here late. I should have planned for the extra drive time with so many people on their way out on the LIE. It would have made a lot more sense to take you up on your offer to put me up in a motel for the night out here.”

  Leo tried to grin. “You’re on time by my watch.”

  “Not quite, sir. You asked me to be here over an hour ago to pick up—”

  “It’s fine,” Leo said. “Really.” Then he glanced at Gina, who’d been standing beside him and had obviously overheard that a guest had been at the house last night.

  “Well, I hope your friend wasn’t inconvenienced,” Pete said. “I could have at least driven him wherever he’s staying for the weekend. I left three hours ago, but apparently so did half of Manhattan.” He leaned to the side, looked past Leo and added, “Nice to see you, Gina. How are things?”

  She rested a hand on Leo’s shoulder as she answered, “All’s well. Should be a great weekend here. Just making the final preparations before the rest of the guests arrive.”

  Leo reached out to steady himself against the front quarter panel. Her hand slid from his shoulder. Calling her and leaving that pathetic message had been a huge mistake. She hadn’t asked about the guest, hadn’t even given him a sideways look, but she knew him well enough to see through his lie, and now that she knew someone else had come out with him from the city she’d think more about his cryptic call and scrutinize his head wound even closer. Although she and Pete had minimal knowledge about the events of the night, much more limited than Angelique and the faceless person who’d knocked him out, at least four people already knew of Henry’s existence at the estate. And Leo had no alibi. Not even a plausible cover story as to why Henry had come here in the dead of night, or where he went.

  The limo’s black paint radiated furnace heat into his palm, the morning already much hotter than a typical Memorial Day weekend and humid as hell. He faced east, blinded by the sun blazing directly in his line of sight. He needed a shower, and three or four Valium, and then ten or twelve hours of comatose sleep, and then—most of all—a feasible plan to move Henry. A string of questions, many of which he’d grappled with throughout the night, suddenly hit him like buckshot. If he hadn’t given Henry so much coke and all that booze, would he still be alive? Had the person who’d knocked him out done something to Henry first? How could he transport Henry’s body off the property without anyone noticing? Where could he take him? His palm was melting, his knees buckling. He needed Gina to let him stay here rather than go to the hospital, and for his driver to turn the limo around, and to leave. Why was Pete staring at him like that?

  “Are you all right, Mr. Sheffield?”

  “Fine. Why do you ask?”

  “You’re pale, sir. And sweating.”

  Pete’s words resonated with a mild echo. Leo removed his hand from the limo, intending to walk with Gina toward her car after a final exchange, and then, hopefully, find the magic words to wriggle out of the trip to the hospital.

  “I had a fall last night,” he said. “Gina thinks I should get the once-over from a doctor, and she was about to drive me to the ER to see if I need stitches, but I’ll be fine. Thanks for asking. Sorry again for the mix-up this morning.” He pulled his billfold from his front pocket and peeled off two hundred-dollar bills and held them out. How much had he given Pete the night before? Five hundred? A thousand? More? That part of the night remained a blur. “Please take this for your trouble.”

  “No need for that,” Pete said. “But I’d be happy to drive you to the hospital.” He nodded at Gina. “You can stay. I’ve got him.”

  “I may have to wait, though,” Leo said, wincing as a bead of sweat came rolling down from his forehead into his eye. “Could be hours before a doctor sees me.”

  “That’s what you pay me for,” Pete said. “No sense in taking her away from whatever she would be doing here.”

  “You’re sure?” Gina said. “I don’t mind taking him.”

  “Positive. Hop on in, Mr. Sheffield.”

  The weekend hadn’t even begun and Leo already preferred the idea of lying down beside Henry in the woods and never getting up. Sheila would be arriving much too soon, as would Andy and Clay. Tiffany had slept through all the drama last night, otherwise she wouldn’t still be asleep now in her bed; but Angelique might tell his daughter sometime today exactly why she’d fled, and then what? Yet another awful what-if to worry about, whether his daughter would know anything of last night’s insanity and confront him today. And then, of course, in the evening the guests for the first dinner party would be decked out and chatty, trickling in two-by-two like animals boarding the ark. How could he keep them from venturing around the property? He couldn’t. And they’d all be buzzed, some of them drunk. What if someone wandered into the woods?

  Leo tucked his denim button-down into his khakis, squinting with his hand up to shade his eyes, thinking he must look as wrung out and wrecked as he felt. What if instead of the hospital he went to the airport? He could hop on a plane and disappear. Not to one of his vacation houses or condos in Hawaii or Coconut Grove or out on the Cape, though. To truly vanish he’d have to avoid any place where he owned property. He’d pay cash for everything, grow a beard, buy a new identity. He could try Fiji, maybe Thailand, or what the hell, Morocco. His name could dissolve in any one of those places easily enough, right? Plus, he had accounts down in the Caymans that no one knew about, plenty of money to live well for ten lifetimes. But whichever spot on the globe he chose, it had to be a country without extradition. He’d make sure to check on that. Otherwise he might live out the rest of his life in a cell.

  “Sir?” Pete reached out from the car window and tapped his arm.

  “Sorry, I’m a bit overtired. You were saying?”

  “We should get going.”

  “I’d hate to take up any more of your day waiting around for me for God knows how long in a hospital parking lot,” he said, blinking more to keep the sweat from trickling in. He didn’t want to leave the property with Henry laid out in the woods only twenty or thirty yards from that stretch of the lawn out there, and dreaded the idea of spending the next hour or two or more in the ER. “Gina, I’m not sure we even need to do this right now.”

  “Not another word out of you,” she said, placing a hand on his back and edging him over to the limo’s side door. “Arguing with me on this is pointless.”

  With Leo inside, she thanked Pete, and then kept her arms folded as the car swung around the lot, offering a quick wave at the tinted glass when they passed. Pete drove alo
ng the driveway at roughly one mile per hour, with the divider down, and Leo sat on the black leather bench seat in back facing the windshield, on edge to begin with since he and Henry had ridden together in this very same compartment less than twelve hours ago, then even more tense when he saw an older model pickup pulling forward through the open gates, effectively blocking the drive.

  Leo gripped his knees and bent forward, his teeth grinding. He’d been here plenty of times since he and Henry started up, coming down from the coke, but this degree of discomfort was altogether new. His thoughts turned to the detox nightmares of unfortunate strangers, a swell of empathy for the addicts who panhandled outside his office building and all the other drug users who couldn’t hack this part, the coming down. Then came a sudden surge of understanding for Henry, and all the other suicidal ones. They’d felt as he felt today. He understood their impulse to end it all, which rose up in him now as a desperate wish to feel nothing. He needed to get it together, snuff the sullen line of thinking and get through the goddamned trip to the goddamned hospital and then get through the rest of the goddamned day.

  A glare from one of the bronze chess pieces summoned Leo’s attention to the left. Then he saw something altogether inexplicable—Angelique standing next to one of the pawns, staring at his car. His mouth hung open. He rubbed his eyes, hoping he was hallucinating.

  “No,” he said, cringing at his own shredded voice.

  Pete looked up into the rearview mirror and answered, “I’m sorry, sir?”

  Leo cleared his throat and wiped sweat from his brow before answering. “No—I was saying, what I mean to say is, there’s no way you’re not taking something extra for this.”

  “Really, sir—”

  “You don’t want to argue with me on this, Pete.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With his driver still eyeing him from the mirror, he clumsily poured four fingers of Scotch and slugged it in one gulp before his focus returned to Angelique. She’d been his daughter’s closest friend for years. She’d come to the apartment and the estate hundreds of times. But what must she think of him now? Last night he’d been a madman, a monster. He’d scared her and she’d screamed. She’d seen Henry floating limp and lifeless in the pool. After all that, why would she return here now? For Tiffany? To tell her in detail about the whole awful mess? To try to convince her to leave with her? She should have run away, stayed far away...called the police. Come to think of it, God only knew how Tiffany hadn’t awoken... Or how none of the neighbors had heard Angelique pleading for help, or if they had, why they hadn’t done anything in response to a girl screaming in the night. Could it have been a neighbor who’d struck him from behind and left him unconscious on the lawn? Fucking hell, how many people knew about Henry?

  He felt sick, a tuning fork effect vibrating along his arms and legs and his skull pounding as his finger pressed a button on the side console and the tinted window lowered halfway. Twenty, maybe twenty-five yards from him, Angelique stood as still as the bronze pawn beside her. Leo sat frozen in his seat, stunned by the sight of her, mystified as to why she was standing barefoot and alone on that section of the north lawn. They stared at each other, locked in that tension like animals at a watering hole—one predator, one prey, but who could say which was which now? Angelique was a few paces too far away for him to decipher her expression, though close enough to trigger a resurrection of the memory—the bright moon, Leo looking up and discovering her on the balcony, her hands gripping the railing, her mouth open in disbelief while she looked down at him waist-deep in the shallow end of the pool, holding Henry by the waist, his arms splayed and floating Christlike on the water.

  The unexpected sight of her had sparked so much more paranoia. This girl on his property could ruin everything. She’d seen too much. While he dreaded the idea of even looking her in the eye, no way around it now, he had to get back from the hospital as soon as possible and deal with her today.

  EIGHTEEN

  Ten minutes earlier Corey had pulled over beside the hedge wall a few yards down from the Sheffields’ driveway and held Angelique’s hand, doing his best to reassure her while the engine idled and she listened intently with her knees up and her arms clasped around her shins.

  “Just remember, he’s not going to hurt you,” he said. “And I’ll be here to make sure you’re okay, so try not to worry too much. He’s shitting himself right now about everything that happened last night, so really—you have all the power.”

  “I know,” she said. “I think it’s just hitting me that we didn’t sleep at all. My eyes aren’t focusing.”

  He touched her arm so she would look at him, meaning to convey that they’d both get through this and the hard part would be over soon. They leaned closer and Corey kissed her cheek, hoping to calm her fidgety hands when he took them in his and lightly squeezed, and for another minute or so they kept their foreheads pressed together, the lack of sleep taking its toll on them both.

  “You ready?” he said, and she nodded slowly. They both looked out the windshield at two landscaping company trucks leaving the estate, and just after they’d driven out of sight Corey eased the truck ahead along the edge of the road and parked beside one of the lions. She opened her door and stepped out, typed the code on the keypad and the gate began to swing inward, the hinges whining while she ran back, pulled his sweatshirt over her head and handed it to him through his window. “I’ll find you in a little while,” she said over her shoulder, already hurrying through the opening and over to the right, following the first step of the plan, which was to skirt the perimeter of the lawn and make it back inside while staying relatively out of sight. Her safety from Mr. Sheffield, he figured, would be that much more assured once she met up with Tiffany.

  After waiting long enough that he’d imagined her already entering the house, he pulled ahead and retyped the gate code. A few yards along the driveway a glare coincided with an extra layer of sound, the crunch of other tires, and in a flash he saw the limo’s front bumper rounding the curve beside the hedgerow. The driver applied the brakes, and Corey did as well. He briefly considered driving onto the lawn to let them pass, but then shoved the gearshift into Reverse. Although Angelique had had about a ten-minute head start, for some reason she still stood in clear view over by the chess pieces, close enough for Corey to assume that if Leo Sheffield happened to be riding in the limo he’d already seen her.

  He backed his truck out, paused briefly to look both ways and reversed over to a patch of grass across the street. Parked there, he waited with his head down, staring at his hands. He didn’t want Leo to see him in profile if he passed by with his window down, definitely didn’t want to make eye contact—the moment when Corey had swung the stone cherub and cracked the rich man’s skull suddenly so alive in his mind. While the limo drove past, his knee bounced anxiously. He cracked his knuckles one by one and counted to ten before lifting his head and looking into the side-view mirror. The brake lights engaged as the car swung around the bend. He exhaled just after it disappeared, wondering if Mr. Sheffield had been inside.

  A few minutes later he entered the kitchen to the sounds of a vacuum cleaner in the distance and low-volume jazz on the radio. He found Michael hunched over a large shiny mixing bowl, whisking something when he looked up to meet Corey’s eyes. The noise from the other room cut out, and soon after Josie came bounding in from the elbow-shaped hall that connected the kitchen to the dining room, carrying the vacuum under one arm. Her face hardened when she saw him in the doorway.

  “Your mom wants you to wipe down all the wicker furniture and to carry the cushions out from the sunporch. She wasn’t happy when she got here.”

  “Why isn’t she happy? I’m not late, am I?”

  “Checked your phone at all?”

  Josie didn’t wait for his answer. She cut him off by simply depositing the vacuum in the corner and leaving the room. Michael kept his head angled tow
ard the mixing bowl, but with his eyes up, whisking away with that metallic scraping sound, and like Josie, without any hint of a smile. The jazz saxophone spiraled on behind him. Corey had known them both for years and had liked them well enough, but today he resented them. They’d judged him as soon as he walked in, must have been judging him even before he got here. If they only knew a fraction of what had gone down overnight...

  He left the kitchen with a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle full of the all-natural citrus cleaner that Sheila Sheffield preferred for the outdoor furniture. Passing through the living room, he stopped beside one of the screen doors to the porch when he heard his mother speaking in a hushed tone and saw her outside through the windows. “No, I promise. I won’t drink,” she said. Silence followed before she answered the person on the phone. “I will.” Another pause, then she ended the call, saying, “Thanks again. You, too.”

  She entered the living room as though blown in by a strong wind, stopping short as soon as she saw him. “So, you made it,” she said, hands on her hips. “I called you three times this morning.”

  “Yeah, sorry. My battery died.”

  “You had me worried, Core.” He noticed her eyes were red and watery. She ran a finger under each one and then crossed the room and hugged him, and after an awkward moment when he let go but she didn’t, she spoke over his shoulder. “Where were you last night? You never came home.”

  “Just out with friends.”

  Gina kept on holding him there with a tight grip until he started to feel self-conscious.

  “Ma,” he said, gently breaking the hug, “you okay?”

  “I’m just relieved you’re all right.”

  “Who were you on the phone with just now?”

  “I feel like I haven’t seen you for weeks.”

  “I’ve been out a lot, I know.”