by Chris Knopf
“It’s my mobile,” she said. “If you don’t hear from me in an hour, you call. If I don’t answer it’s because I can’t. Or won’t.”
She looked around me again and shooed me away. I did as she asked and called Jackie as soon as I reached my Jeep. It was only eight in the morning, so I knew I’d reach her.
“Wa,” she said, answering the phone.
“I’m coming over. We have to meet someone in an hour. At your office.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“Maybe in Japan. Here it’s time to get off your ass and seize the day.”
She muttered some other incomprehensible complaint and I hit the end button. I decided to give her about a half hour, time I could use to procure coffee before driving over there, a trip the summer traffic doubled the usual time to travel. I had my own circuitous short cuts, but there was no way around the painful crawl down Montauk Highway to Jackie’s home and office over the Japanese restaurant.
She buzzed me through the outside door and accepted the coffee as a peace offering. Dragging herself out of bed was hard enough, but she’d also forced herself into a semiprofessional skirt and blouse. I filled her in.
“Do you think she’ll call?” she asked.
“I do, though she’s got a bad case of approach-avoidance. Having Joshua and Rosie out of the house gives her a deadline. Might force the issue.”
We only had a little while to find out, both of us jumping when a lively rendition of “The Flight of the Bumblebee” came out of Jackie’s smartphone.
I only heard Jackie’s side of the conversation, but it was promising. Jackie used her most reassuring voice, steady and mature. She looked at me and nodded when she said, “We’ll both be here. See you then.”
IT TOOK another hour, but when Violeta got there the arrival was worth waiting for. She wore a short white dress printed with giant flowers of red, yellow, orange, and green. Her jet-black hair was coaxed into soft waves, accented by curved eyelashes and full ruby lips. Silver high-heeled mules supported shapely young legs.
Though I always had a sense she was an attractive woman, I was used to her in a black-and-white housekeeper’s uniform, deliberately designed to dissolve into the background of lawn parties and intimate gatherings in one of the Edelsteins’ many casual seating areas.
This time I thought it was okay to point out the obvious.
“Hola, Violeta. You look like a million bucks.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, as I led her up the stairs to Jackie’s office. “I never get to dress like a human being when the señor and señora are at the house. I feel sad for these clothes that just sit there in the closet.”
“Lucky for us,” I said.
When I introduced her to Jackie, we learned Violeta’s English was far better than she thought it was, which was typical of Puerto Ricans, even the less educated. English was always in the air on the island, on signs and piped in from Miami, and now streamed to computers and smartphones, entirely unavoidable.
We settled in Jackie’s client lounge, a pair of love seats facing each other within a fortress of stacked boxes and miscellaneous clutter. The women engaged in some banal small talk, each complimenting the other on their hairstyles, nail color (Jackie didn’t have any polish on, so that was easy), and choice of shoes, Violeta clearly getting the upper hand on that as well. Jackie asked how long she’d worked for the Edelsteins, how she got the job, the usual. Turned out her sister, who had a housecleaning business, had told her about the full-time maid gig. She’d been there nearly four years. Jackie went with the flow, as artful as she always was when a client was involved. When it seemed Violeta was completely at ease, Jackie gently asked her to tell us about that night at the Edelsteins’, just as she described it to the police.
Violeta tucked the hem of her sundress under her thighs before answering, still leaving an ample amount of tanned leg. Jackie didn’t swat me, like she usually did in these situations. Though she didn’t have to. I really was trying not to look.
“I was talking to the young man,” she said.
“Johnnie Mercado,” I said.
“Him,” she said. “We heard this big crash, but we couldn’t tell where it came from.”
“Where were the señor and señora, and Mr. Lewis?” Jackie asked.
She shook her head, concentrating on her memory.
“I don’t know. They were moving all around the house.”
“Running?” Jackie asked.
“Not exactly. Moving quickly. The señora always moves like a frightened rabbit. She has the energy of a thousand people. I can’t believe it sometimes. If I had that much money, I would sit in a big comfy chair and eat all day. But this is her way.”
“So you don’t know where Mr. Lewis was when you heard the crash?” Jackie asked, as if it was an incidental question.
“He ran right up after I saw the gentleman lying in the bushes. He held me and let me cry into his shirt. It was so terrible. He told me not to look.”
“So Rosie came after that,” I said.
“She did. Very soon after.”
“What did she say?” Jackie asked.
“She said, ‘Burton, what have you done?’”
“What did Burton say?” I asked.
“Nothing. He was still comforting me. He ignored the señora, like he usually did.”
“How much of this did you tell the police?” Jackie asked.
“All of it. Though I’m not sure they understand me. I was nervous and the young policeman was very . . .”
“Intimidating?” Jackie asked.
“I don’t know what that means. He was quiet, but strong,” she said to me in Spanish.
I defined intimidating in Spanish. It took a few words.
“Yes, that’s right. What Sam said.”
“What about before Mr. Darby fell,” I said. “The Edelsteins said there was a lot of yelling from upstairs. Between Darby and Lewis. Did you hear that?”
“Oh, my God, yes,” she said, folding her hands primly in her lap. “They sounded very angry with each other.”
Jackie frowned, which I didn’t want Violeta to see, so I grabbed her attention.
“Could you tell what they were actually saying to each other?”
She nodded.
“Mr. Lewis said that Mr. Darby was a sick pervert, that I remember. Mr. Darby called him a hypocrite. He used another word along with hypocrite, but I think you know what I mean. He said Mr. Lewis couldn’t hide behind his money forever. That the world would know soon enough just what sort of man he really was. Mr. Darby was very excited, I think you would say.”
The cloud over Jackie’s face got even darker.
“What did Mr. Lewis say to that, if you remember?” she asked, through nearly clenched teeth.
“He said, ‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’ A little while longer, we all heard the big crash.”
Violeta looked over at me, as if seeking my approval. I gave her a big indulgent smile, which she seemed to like. She smiled back for a moment, then cast her eyes down to her lap, as if catching herself in an indiscretion.
“And this is what you told the Southampton police?” Jackie asked.
“Of course. You cannot lie, isn’t that true?”
She looked at me again, as if I was her reliable validation. I nodded, because she was right. You cannot lie.
She asked Jackie if she could have a cup of coffee. Light, with no sugar. Jackie jumped up as if shot from a spring, realizing she’d never offered any. She apologized all the way to the office kitchenette with its oversized drip-brewed coffeepot. While Jackie was on this mission, Violeta asked me in Spanish if she was still doing the right thing. I said she was.
This seemed to make her more relaxed. She sat back in the love seat and let her dress pull up and legs spread just enough for me to see a pair of cotton panties. I probably shouldn’t have been looking in that direction, but it’s what I saw. I pretended I hadn’t, but Viole
ta looked at me like it was a sealed deal.
Just in time, Jackie came back with a tray full of coffee and a selection of decorated sugar cookies.
“Did you notice anything uncomfortable between Mr. Lewis and Mr. Darby before the event?” Jackie asked. “How did they get along?”
Violeta thought about that.
“They were just talking,” she said. “But now that I think about it, Mr. Lewis only spoke to the señor and señora, while Mr. Darby tried to speak to him. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, because Mr. Lewis was the important man, and Mr. Darby was just a worker. The señora tried hard to keep Mr. Darby in the conversation because she could tell he was unhappy. They were very good friends.”
“Darby and Rosie Edelstein?” Jackie asked.
Violeta lost some of her composure.
“Here I go again, like I told Sam, I talk about things I shouldn’t.”
Jackie nearly fell off her chair assuring her she could share anything she wanted with us.
“Many times when the señor was in the city, Mr. Darby would come to visit the señora.”
It took Jackie and me a few moments to process that.
“Visit, as in come over to say hi, or, you know, visit, visit?” Jackie asked.
She looked at the floor.
“He didn’t always leave until the next day.”
“An omnivore,” I said.
Violeta looked confused, so I gave her a rough translation.
“Mr. Darby was a very energetic and reckless man,” said Violeta. “He let his interest in me be known, as well, but I wish it had been his boyfriend.”
“Johnnie Mercado,” Jackie said.
She smiled.
“A very handsome man. Mr. Lewis might have ignored Mr. Darby, but he definitely talked to Mr. Mercado. He asked me to make sure Mr. Mercado’s drink was always full. I was happy to do this.”
She sat back in the love seat, pleased with this recollection. Not so Jackie.
“So you’re telling us that Mr. Lewis was paying special attention to Mr. Mercado throughout the evening,” she said.
“Oh, yes. Who wouldn’t?”
We asked her to think about what else might have happened that night that struck her as odd, or worth mentioning, but that was all she had. As far as I was concerned, it was plenty enough. Jackie thanked her, and then asked if she would repeat all of this in court. Violeta took a deep breath and said she would do whatever she should, because even if people acted like she was a foreigner, she was a citizen.
We both thanked her again, and I walked her down the stairs.
“I like Miss Swaitkowski,” she said, before leaving. “She seems like a very calm, reasonable person.”
I said she certainly was, and went back up the stairs to confront anything but.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A few days later I was sitting in the cockpit of my boat, the Carpe Mañana, which was berthed next to Paul Hodges’s big motor sailor, close enough to toss incisive commentary and uncleaned fish between the vessels.
Hodges was chopping vegetables and drinking from a German beer stein big enough to hold a small keg, and I was just drinking. It was well past dinner time, but I wasn’t hungry, or just impatient to get underway with the nightly obliteration of memory and good sense. Hodges had a grill mounted off the stern of his boat smoldering with red coals, the destination of the hacked-up beans, peppers, onions, and carrots on the cutting board.
“I figure two cups of veggies counter the negative effects of about a half pound of steak, if taken in close chronological proximity,” he said.
“I think there’s a lot of solid science to support that.”
“I actually like eating plant life,” he said. “Of course, I also got fat on rations over in Vietnam. So I suppose I can eat almost anything.”
“Anything?”
“I draw the line at raw octopus, which is a delicacy among certain Far Eastern connoisseurs. It’s a consistency thing.”
“Too rubbery?”
“Consistently tastes like shit.”
I looked around our little marina, still lit by the fading day, but cooling as the sun fell behind a stand of big maple trees. A gentle breeze was a nice touch—warm, but vigorous enough to stir the water in the channel and the hearts of us sailors confronting dusk and another indecisive slice of existence. The American flags up on masts and mounted on sterns and pulpits flapped their irregular rhythms.
“Nice night,” I said.
“That’s what the weather people are claiming. Good till the weekend, when with any luck, the rain will come and drown the summer people.”
“You don’t really mean that,” I said.
“I don’t. They pay the bills out here. I only wish they’d just send over their money every spring and leave us alone to spend it as we wish.”
“On beer, steak, and chopped vegetables?”
“That’d be my plan.”
Eddie and I came over to the boat after seeing Amanda pull out of our shared driveway in her little Audi, wearing a dress I’d last seen on one of the rare occasions we’d gussied up to eat dinner at an overpriced seafood restaurant less than a mile up Noyac Road. I only saw the top of her, but it was enough to spark the memory. I remembered how the dress delineated all her curves and contours. And the look on her face when she came downstairs, enjoying my unabashed appreciation.
All I got this time was a glance of her passing down the drive, dust from the unpaved surface flowing behind the Audi like a dingy contrail.
Whatever brooding concerns I might have had at that moment, Eddie’s only agenda was challenging the seabirds flying around the marina to life-or-death combat, without many takers. He’d been throwing down the same gauntlet for several years, and they were used to it by now.
I looked up and saw him staring down at me from the cabin top. I realized that even if I wasn’t hungry, he probably was, not enduring the same existential angst, his hopeless competition with the water fowl aside. I kept a few cans of dog food onboard, so the situation was easily remedied.
“What’s this thing with Burton Lewis and some fancy gentleman getting tossed out a window?” Hodges asked. “You involved in that?”
“First off, fancy gentleman sounds like a pejorative, and Dorothy would kick your ass if she heard you say it. If I don’t get there first. Secondly, Jackie’s defending Burton in this thing and I’m helping, and no, he didn’t do it.”
Hodges sat silently for a few minutes, then said, “Got nothing against them.”
“Good. Then don’t say fancy gentleman.”
“Can I call you a fucked-up drunk?”
“Yes, but only under certain circumstances.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“When I’m sober.”
He left me alone for a while after that, until he said, “That sophisticated man with the sweater tied around his neck, who I would never describe as being all that fancy, had a pretty big dog looking after him.”
“Bigger than me.”
“Bigger than you and me put together. Glad there wasn’t any trouble.”
“Me too,” I said. “He could have done some damage.”
“Not likely. Dottie had her hand on the shotgun the whole time he was there.”
“Explains the lousy service.”
“Nah, that’s standard of the house.”
I took Eddie’s dog bowl full of food up to the bow so he had plenty of room to eat. He growled at a family of Canada geese nosing around the sea grass on the other side of the channel.
“Relax, handsome. They got better things to eat than this.”
Then he turned toward the dock, his tail wagging. A guy in a priest’s collar was standing there waving.
“Sam Acquillo?” he called out.
“That’s him,” said Hodges.
I walked through the standing rigging to the stern of the boat where it was pulled up to the dock.
“Do you have a couple minutes?” the priest
asked.
“More than a couple, depending on what you have in mind.”
“Just a message to deliver,” said the priest.
“Not from God, I hope,” said Hodges.
The priest smiled.
“Not directly, though you never know.”
“Come aboard,” I said, and watched him navigate the dock ladder and step across the transom, tentatively, as if expecting the boat to suddenly toss him overboard. I gripped his sleeve and helped him into the cockpit.
A little younger than me, with brown unkempt hair, extravagant eyebrows, and an oversized moustache, laugh lines radiated from the corners of his eyes, amused at his own unease.
“Not used to the world shifting under my feet,” he said.
“That’s the norm out here on Hawk Pond,” said Hodges.
He introduced himself as Jeremiah Swanson, though I could call him Jerry. I asked him if he’d like a drink, and he pointed to my plastic glass.
“One of those would be great if it’s what I hope it is.”
I took him down below where it was warmer, but out of interference range of Paul Hodges. Jerry said it was remarkably cozy. I turned on a couple fans and built us some vodkas on the rocks.
“I suppose you could take a boat this size around the world,” he said.
“People do, all the time. I’m happy taking it around the Little Peconic Bay. So what’s up?”
He sat on one of the settees in the salon and I sat across from him.
“I was sent here by an acquaintance of yours. My message for you is pretty brief, but I’m on strict instructions to keep it that way.”
“Heard it in confession?” I asked.
“We handle confessions in the Episcopal faith without the special furniture, but the same basic rules apply.”
“I know who was doing the confessing,” I said.
Jerry took an appreciative swig of the vodka.
“I imagine you do, though I can’t confirm it.”
“So what’s the message?” I asked.
“‘Puerto Rico.’”
“That’s it?”
He nodded.