Deep Dive

by Chris Knopf

  “Look, Galecki, you got what you wanted. Let’s go back to our corners and declare a draw.”

  He gestured for me to come closer still, which I did, until I was nearly within his long reach.

  “You’ll give me the bag,” he said. “And I will still take everything you have. Because that is what I do.”

  There wasn’t time to discuss human nature, in any language, nor trade parables on the eternal contest between good and evil, so I just gave him the bag. Meaning I swung it into his face with all the velocity inherent in a stack of lead weights, which I’d brought along instead of the files and hard drives, which were safely in the hands of the FBI.

  The blow stunned him as much as the surprise, though he stayed on his feet, raising his fists, yelling obscenities, I think in Polish, and telling me to stand and fight, but I had a better idea.

  I turned and ran.

  Sprinting was never my thing, but I was a good longdistance jogger and hoped I could get far enough ahead to pull out the automatic and get off a shot. Unfortunately, sprinting was one of his talents, and he caught me after less than a hundred-yard dash.

  He pushed me between the shoulder blades and I went down hard on the ground, breaking the fall with my face and sliding to a stop against a rotting tree stump.

  He had about six inches of height on me, which is a lot when you think about how that scales up to the rest of a human being. To prove the point, he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and seat of the pants and tossed me into a clump of untamed forsythia. It was an easy landing. The hard part was getting clear of the thick cluster of stems and back on my feet.

  I made it just in time to get a brawler’s haymaker right to the face, which sent me another few feet away from the forsythia, but now unsure of which way the world was turning, where was up and where was down.

  I’d been a professional boxer, and I knew what it was like to take a punch, I just never thought it would have the force of an industrial crushing machine. Though I was still able to find my feet, and dance backward, trying to focus on the plodding mass before me.

  I ducked the next punch, and the one after that. This gave me hope that Galecki’s fighting style was all brutality and no finesse, until he crouched into a perfectly proper fighter’s posture and shot a right jab directly into my face.

  I caught it pulling back, so it could have been worse. I danced quickly to his left, which surprised him, and he stumbled a bit trying to bring an awkward left fist into play. I blocked it and scored my first hit to his nose. It wasn’t my best shot, but it clearly hurt enough to make him take a step back and bring his fists up to protect his face. So I planted one in his midriff, which was a lot worse for my hand than his stomach. He smiled at the attempt.

  I was still afraid to pull out the gun, thinking it was too easy for him to grab it. Instead I searched around for a weapon, but the groundskeepers had done a nice job of keeping things tidy for their dead clientele. Galecki took advantage of that moment’s distraction to throw another pile driver at my head, but I was quick enough to get out of the way, though he nicked the end of my nose, and I could feel the wind stirred up by his fist passing by.

  This was the terrible disadvantage guys in my weight class always had against the big men. The only way to do any damage was to get inside their reach, but then it had to work, because otherwise you were locked in, and in a street fight, there were no refs to break up the clinch.

  So I did what all smaller, quicker fighters do. I danced around and tried to find an opening. He just grinned at me, a sight made more horrifying by the giant red welt on the side of his face. We both knew where this was headed, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  He stepped in and threw a hard right into my chest. I’d blocked it with my forearm, but it didn’t seem to matter. The blow took me off my feet and I went sprawling into the tall grass. I thought for a moment that my heart had stopped, but it was just the raw pain of newly bruised sternum and ribs. I struggled to breathe, but got back up on my feet, knowing that it was keep moving or die.

  With that in mind, I turned and started running again. When I heard him quickly catch up behind me, I stopped and took a pen out of my shirt pocket. I fingered off the cap, and when he grabbed my arm, I swiveled around and stabbed him in the cheek. He cursed and dropped back a step, dabbing at his face. This gave me a chance to throw a left-right combination at his nose, which was already bleeding from my first score.

  He stopped smiling, and the next punch came out of nowhere, catching me in the rib cage, right above the kidney. The kind of punch that doesn’t look like much to a boxing audience but can drop you to your knees. Which was what happened to me.

  I hugged myself and tried to get my breathing under control, sitting back on my heels. He stood over me, I assumed picking the right spot to smash me into oblivion. I shook my head and he let me stagger up to my feet.

  I put my hand over my heart and whispered a few words in French. He said he couldn’t hear me. I said to come closer, which he did, lowering his fists.

  “You think you’ve won, but just look up there,” I said, pointing at the sky.

  Sometimes the oldest tricks are the best. He looked and I slammed my right fist directly into his Adam’s apple. A lot of complicated little webs of flesh and cartilage gave way. A startled rage lit up his face and both hands went to his throat. I kicked him in the balls, which didn’t seem to have much effect, so I kicked him again. This time he backed away to gather himself.

  Even if I was the doomed one, I took some satisfaction that he was the one with the bloody face. Though I hardly lingered over it, turning again and running hard to gather some distance.

  I took a chance and looked over my shoulder, seeing him just a few long strides away from catching me. Still running, I dug out the automatic, spun around, and started firing while running backward. I got off the fourth shot as he barreled into me, already off balance, so I hit the ground under all the force of his weight.

  Dead weight, it turned out.

  I CALLED Judy Paolini and got her admin. I said I needed to talk to Judy immediately. The admin started to do her little bureaucratic dance, so I just yelled, “Put her on the fucking phone!”—an approach that worked, making me think I should have tried it before.

  I told her the FBI could have Mikolaj Galecki, though not in the form they’d likely hoped for. I gave her a sketch of what happened and told her where Galecki and I would be waiting for the responding officers.

  They got there pretty quickly, fortunately State Police, who knew how to secure the scene, keep the local cops away, and wait resolutely for the FBI to get there. I was almost honored to see Judy Paolini among the contingent, wearing a blue suit and a pair of aerobic workout shoes. Since I was lying on the ground at the time, I felt it only right to drag myself up to my feet.

  “They said you refused medical treatment,” she said.

  “I’m wicked sore, but nothing’s broken. I really just want to give my statement and get the hell out of here.”

  “You know our immunity agreement doesn’t cover this.”

  I did, but she knew how we got there, and was willing to let me off on my own recognizance, at least for the time being. I told her Jackie knew nothing of this specific meet up with Galecki, and that I really shouldn’t say a lot more before consulting with her.

  “I’d suggest she assert self-defense and justifiable homicide,” she said. “That’s what it looks like to me.”

  “I’ll pass that along.”

  ONCE I was on my way back to Southampton, pain in my side, chest, forearm, nose, and left cheek began to ramp up and would steal the show in a few hours.

  I really didn’t care, welcoming the pain like an old friend, appreciating that it was far better than being dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  A week later, a New York Times headline announced the federal indictments of a half-dozen Worldwide Loventeers’ executives and board members, prominently Ruth Bellingham
and Arthur Reynolds, on charges including fraud, embezzlement, and misappropriation of the organization’s funds, money laundering—and most shockingly—human trafficking.

  Other indictments were expected to follow, though Rosie and Joshua Edelstein, and Milton Flowers, were not on the list, to my vast relief. Also unindicted, due to being dead, was Elton Darby, though he was cited as one of the principal players in the long-running illegal operation. An aside noted that billionaire Burton Lewis was awaiting trial for Darby’s death, though there was no known link between that incident and the NGO scandal.

  No mention of Mikolaj Galecki.

  THE DA was generous in giving us as much time as we needed to prepare Burton’s case. It didn’t hurt that he and Burton had a long, if not particularly close, personal relationship. Jackie and I agreed we’d take all the rich, white privilege we could get if it helped save Burton.

  The irony was we didn’t really need all that time. The facts and testimonies had solidified, and nothing we’d uncovered promised to change that. Our only hope was that time would shake something loose that would open things up, but that became seemingly unlikely.

  Eddie and Amanda eventually moved out of Burton’s house, but Sullivan stayed on as security, and Burton admitted, good company. In this way summer capitulated to fall, and the case began to feel like a free-floating malaise versus full-blown fever. I was grateful for the slower tempo, needing those weeks to allow my bruised ribs to go from searing pain to nagging ache. Over that time, everything calmed down.

  Jackie kept her big whiteboard at the ready, and whenever I was over there, I’d wheel it out and stare at it with a yellow legal pad in my lap, and the various statements given by the witnesses, looking for cracks in continuity and consistency.

  At the sound of Darby crashing through the window, Joshua, Rosie, and Violeta were on the first floor, in different places, but within close enough proximity to call to each other when they heard the crash. In our scenario, Burton was on the front walk heading for his car.

  Rosie sent Violeta outside. That’s why Violeta got to Darby first, then Burton, then Rosie. Then Joshua.

  Johnnie Mercado was heading their way when Rosie stopped him and pulled him back into the house, not wanting him to see Darby’s body.

  If Burton was the killer, did he have time to toss Darby out the window, then get down to the first floor and outside ahead of Rosie, though not Violeta? Had anyone seen Burton running down the stairs? No, something in Burt’s favor, but the Edelsteins’ house is big enough to have three separate staircases. One out of three chances they’d see each other.

  I remembered many long hours in bland, industrial conference rooms with junior engineers anguishing over a seemingly insurmountable problem. The system wasn’t working, even though all the component parts were operating according to spec. It made no sense, and engineers don’t believe in black magic, so they were thrown into a type of existential cognitive dissonance.

  I didn’t believe in magic either, so I usually said to them, “Pick a spec and change it. See if that yields the results we’re getting. If it doesn’t, pick another one.”

  I also remember Ross Semple saying to me after initial interviews with the witnesses:

  “They’re all lying.”

  I knew Burton’s lie, or at least evasion, so that left the rest of them.

  When Jackie came into her office to attend to her work, I said this to her.

  “Joshua, Rosie, and Violeta are lying.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because that’s the only explanation. Mercado might have lied as well, but we can’t know that. Though we do know Burton is telling the truth, so his version of events is what we base everything on, and question anything that contradicts it.”

  She put the stack of files she was holding down on her desk.

  “You remember they changed their stories between Cermanski’s first interview at the scene and when Joshua got hauled in for a grilling,” she said. “It felt like their efforts to shield Burton had broken down once they fully realized the implications of lying, or even evading, the truth. The wages of perjury.”

  “Yeah, but what if they just needed time to get their stories straight. Coordinated, settled into a realistic narrative.”

  Jackie tapped out a rhythm on the desktop with her pen.

  “But why?” she asked.

  “Because they know who actually killed Elton Darby, and they’re willing to let Burton Lewis go to jail to keep it hidden.”

  She changed up the pen tapping, moving into a three-four-time signature.

  “We got distracted by the Loventeers,” she said.

  “We did. All that really matters is what happened that night. Why can be answered later.”

  “What do you think we should do?” she asked.

  “Change the specs.”

  I KNEW a place that sold salvaged building materials, nice stuff, like moldings, architectural detail and windows and doors. It was in an area north of Bridgehampton in an old farmhouse whose fields had long ago been overrun by scrub pines and pin oaks.

  It took some looking through dusty rows of windows leaning up against the wall of the barn to select the right size and configuration, as close as I could remember. I stuck them inside the Jeep and up on the roof and took them back to Oak Point.

  When I got there, I built a two-by-four structure next to the shed at the back of the property that allowed me to set the windows into a freestanding, rigid frame. I put on my cold-weather jumpsuit, made of a heavy cotton and polyester weave, the type worn by year-round construction workers in Northern New England. Then called Amanda, who’d recently driven down our common driveway.

  She showed up with a wine glass, Eddie following along.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m curious.”

  “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to stand here, and you’re going to put everything you have into shoving me through that window.”

  “It’s a six-over-six,” she said. “Lots of wood frame.”

  “I know. But you really want to send me through it.”

  “I think I know where this is going.”

  “Just put down the wine glass.”

  I stood there and watched her prepare herself.

  “Not sure I can give it my all,” she said. “What’s my motivation?”

  “I’m a fucking slimy piece of shit who has done you terrible harm. And I made you drink that white wine with boeuf bourguignon.”

  She let out a banshee scream and charged into me. We both went through the window, which I hadn’t anticipated, but it somewhat proved the point. We got cut up a little bit, but no arteries were slashed in the process.

  As we lay there amid the splintered wood and glass shards, assessing our wounds, I asked if she thought she was stronger than Rosie Edelstein.

  “I am, though she has at least twenty pounds on me. When you’re shoving someone through a window, a little heft will make up the difference.”

  “So she could have done the deed.”

  “In my nonexistent forensics experience, yes. Especially if she was sufficiently pissed, which imparts herculean strength.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anytime, Sam. It was kinda fun.”

  “You seemed pretty enthusiastic.”

  “I have my own motivations.”

  PEOPLE WHO visit Southampton and gobble up all the glossy magazines littering the sidewalk might think fund-raisers are the only thing we do. That’s far from true, though certain wealthy people do a lot of them, and they’re well promoted in digital and traditional media.

  People like me would rather be found dead than at one of those fund-raisers, though we have our own version for sick kids of construction workers, or Latino day laborers with burned-down houses, so I never paid much attention to the breathy commentary. But luck made me look at the local paper one morning, and I saw that Rosie Edelstein was co-chair of an event benefitting a historical house in the village,
with hopes of sustaining it into the future. Most of the local builders would be hoping they’d get the job of doing the actual preserving and sustaining, so there was a chance I’d see some of my friends there lapping up cocktails and finger food.

  The cost of entry was a modest two hundred bucks, which I went online and paid, getting tickets for both me and Amanda. I told her she had to dress up, but also that I was stalking Rosie, so to dress appropriately.

  “Then I’m thinking that claw-proof Kevlar number,” she said.

  “Perfect.”

  She actually wore something I wanted to immediately take off, but that happened all the time, so I kept my deviant thoughts to myself.

  The event was in the estate section directly south of the Village center. We drove Amanda’s Audi to blend into the crowd of cars overtaxing the valets. I took another approach, parking on the street a few blocks south so we could control how we got out of there, even if it meant a short sprint toward the ocean.

  It was a strange experience to hand over legitimate tickets, having mostly crashed these absurd events over the years. I noted that to Amanda and she said it made her proud.

  “Movin’ up in the world, Acquillo.”

  Walking into the crowd with Amanda’s light touch on my arm caused a little burst of euphoria. While everyone around me was trying to advance their social station, I just luxuriated in the feel of her moving next to me and delighted in looking at her and making stupid faces, getting a subtle smile as reward.

  “So what’s your plan, Sam?” Amanda asked.

  “Whenever Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op wanted to break up an investigative deadlock, he’d do some random thing that would set new patterns in motion. Shake the can.”

  The backyard of the historic house was a relatively small space for so many people, so it was a challenge to locate and take advantage of the bar. Amanda was good in these situations, having the skill to advance our position with minimal cause for offense along the way.

  It was an open bar, with top-shelf liquor, so I thought maybe I’d be able to make up the ticket investment with a little enterprise. I started off with a double and the best label I could identify for Amanda.