The Last Refuge sahm-1

by Chris Knopf

  “The files are here?”

  “In the basement. My father is loathe to discard such things.”

  “I have a feeling he’d know right where to find it.”

  “A minute ago you thought he was off his rocker.” It was my turn to shrug.

  “And now you’d like him to find what you need.”

  I did, of course. She looked at the memo pad again.

  “I do have other things to do,” she said, studying the slip of paper as if it held the secret meaning of my mind. She handed it back to me, then opened the old Hotpoint dishwasher and got out mugs for the tea. The way she bent over the dishwasher made it hard to avoid noticing she was female. I kept my eyes on the mug while she poured the tea.

  “Do you have any children?” she asked me.

  “I have a daughter living in the City.”

  “Did she go to school in Southampton?”

  “No, Connecticut. Why?”

  “I work at the high school. Thought maybe I knew your kids. That’s usually how I get a fix on people.”

  “She got out sometimes in the summer.”

  “With you and your wife.”

  “Yeah. Now ex.”

  “Oh. But your daughter still comes out.”

  “No. She exed herself as well.”

  “Sorry. Certainly not forever.”

  I had a hard time not looking into those sad, patient eyes.

  “Yeah. Hope not forever.”

  “I have an ex, too. No kids.” I thought about the old crows back at the coffee place.

  “Happens.”

  “All too often. Mostly miss all that regular sex. You?”

  I laughed. “Not regular enough to miss.”

  “There you go,” she said, resonating again to some private frequency. “What happened to your face?”

  I guess women with big noses and pretty blue eyes get to pry into anything they want.

  “A rock-hard Filipino middle heavyweight named Rene Ruiz got me to look over my shoulder for a second. Caught me when I turned back.”

  She nodded. “Boxer.”

  “We called ourselves fighters. ‘Boxer’ seems kinda refined. Too removed from the actual endeavor.”

  “Which was to beat the hell out of each other?”

  “Basically.”

  I resisted the urge to touch the right side of my head where my hair covered the stitches. I knew she’d make me explain.

  “You only fight Filipinos, or did a few demons creep into the ring?”

  “I’m too tough for demons,” I said, showing her I’d learned to duck from Rene Ruiz.

  She took a slow sip of her tea, looking up at me over the rim.

  “Yes, I’m sure you believe that.”

  “What do you teach?”

  “I’m the school psychologist. What did you study?”

  “Avoidance. Graduate level.”

  She toasted me with her mug and drifted back out of the kitchen. I followed her toward the living room, but she made a right turn before getting there and went down a narrow basement stairway. I followed her. The basement was filled with musty wet air and exhausted clutter. The file storage, about twenty Bankers Boxes, was in a corner lit by a pair of hundred-watt utility lamps.

  Everything was organized by date, and then coded by account numbers and some other designation I didn’t understand. It was very tidy and clearly labeled, but the scale was daunting.

  “Sure your dad isn’t looking for something to kill the time?”

  “Long as the air down here doesn’t kill him first.”

  “Not as fast as an easy chair.”

  “Leveraging my concern for my father to facilitate your project?”

  “Yeah, something like that. A little leverage is good for an old guy—taken in moderation.”

  I got her to laugh an honest little laugh. She stuck an index finger into my sternum and gave it a shove.

  “What was your name, again?”

  “Sam.”

  “Rosaline.” She put out her hand.

  I gave her mine, then had a little trouble getting it back again.

  “When I get a chance I’ll look through the files. See what I can find.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “I know you do, because you should. Let’s go have another cup of tea.”

  She flicked off the big lights and we swam back out of the dead time that had settled under the house like a stagnant pool.

  Sonny’s Gym was wet with ambition. Lots of tough, mostly stupid young guys and older guys who hadn’t wakened to the realities. They strutted or lumbered around scratching their nuts and looking nervous or fierce depending on their confidence. All wanted to prove something, to make their time on earth count, at least within the arc of their circumscribed lives. All I wanted to do was maintain a decent heart rate, hold down the fat and maybe hone whatever reflexes I had left. And at this point, maybe regain some of what I lost since getting my ass kicked.

  The soggy sweat smell was worse than usual, in contrast with the scrubbed luminescence outside. I wrinkled my face at the towel guy, but his sense of smell had dimmed long ago. His nose had a big black mole with a hair about the size of a three-penny nail growing out of the middle. He sat on a short stool with his inflated midsection pouring over the top of his shiny polyester pants. He moved in a steady one-eighty swing from counter to hamper, handing out towels the size of cocktail napkins and with the delicacy of medium-grade sandpaper. I was impressed that Ronny knew to hire an authentic towel guy, just like they had back in the City. Maybe they had to. Maybe towel guys have a union that sets the standard. Maybe I’ve spent too many years hanging out in boxing gyms.

  “Smells like a beer fart in this place,” I told him.

  The towel guy ignored me, looking past my shoulder at the fix on reality he’d established out there in middle space.

  I went into the locker room and pulled all my stuff out of the old canvas duffel bag that once belonged to my father. That shrink I had to see told me I started boxing because my father was beaten to death. He thought this was a brilliant insight. I said, yeah, I started boxing because my old man was beaten to death. Wouldn’t you?

  When I was younger, I was mostly afraid my father would be the one doing the beating. Which never happened, that I remember, but he sure threatened a lot, and yelled a lot, and came close a few times. All out of sheer meanness. What I remember mostly was the back of his hand, raised in sudden threat. I think, under those circumstances, you either get some confidence or you wrap yourself up in fear and let your insides die an early death. I don’t know. Maybe I should get another shrink to explain it to me.

  Whatever the motivation, I was there at Sonny’s trying not to understand how I felt. About anything except my sore ribs. I started with some stretching, did the rope, did the light bag, then did a little on the big bag. I got so absorbed in everything I didn’t notice Sullivan standing there again, like he seemed to do whenever I worked the big bag. I stopped and held it still with both gloves.

  “Hey.”

  “You ready for that?” he asked.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Memory getting better?”

  “About the guy?”

  “Yeah. About the guy.”

  I shook my head.

  “Not yet, but it could improve with time.”

  “I’m sure.”

  I did a few more patterns, but it’s hard to talk and whack a big leather bag full of sand at the same time.

  “I got Regina buried,” I said.

  “Andre told me. What about the estate stuff?”

  “No big deal. Waiting for some information.”

  He stood silently with his arms crossed. Irritated.

  “I’m waiting, too,” he said.

  “For what?”

  He uncrossed his arms and gestured with both hands the way you do when guiding a car into a parking space.

  “Cough it up. What are you thinking?”

  “You think
I’m full of crap.”

  “I do. I still want you to talk to me.”

  I went back to the bag. But it’s no easier to think than to talk when thus engaged. So I gave in.

  “Joe, you like to drink?”

  “Off duty.”

  “Let’s go get a drink.”

  “Long as you’re buyin’.”

  Sullivan was familiar with the Pequot. Like everybody else around town he’d done some time as a kid crewing on the charter fishing boats that ran out of Pequot Harbor. Mostly the job was to schlep stuff on and off board, clean the catch and kiss the customer’s ass. Dotty set us up with beers and menus, then left us alone.

  “Ever heard of Bay Side Holdings?” I asked him.

  He shook his head.

  “Own a lot of property in North Sea. Maybe other places, too. Don’t know.”

  “What about ’em?”

  “Own Regina’s house.”

  “Really. Shit bad luck for Jimmy.”

  “Yeah. But he knew about it. Knew his aunt was a renter. Only I don’t think she paid any rent.”

  “That I doubt.”

  “Doesn’t make sense. But there’re no bank records. No cancelled checks.”

  “Ask Bay Side Whatever.”

  “Bay Side Holdings. I did. I mean, I went to their business address, which turns out to be a house in Sag Harbor, owned by this guy Milton Hornsby, who’s the only name I have connected to Bay Side, and he won’t talk to me. Sent me to his lawyer.”

  “Who said?”

  “Haven’t seen her yet. Called her. Left messages. Thinking of going over there.”

  “Where?”

  “Bridgehampton. It’s Jacqueline Swaitkowski.”

  “Yikes.”

  He looked amused.

  “So I heard.”

  “Fucking whack job.”

  “Why’d a guy like Hornsby hire her?”

  “Fucking brilliant whack job. And connected. Husband was Peter Swaitkowski. Potato field money. Political. Master of the Universe till he stuck his Porsche in an oak tree.”

  “I remember that.”

  “Went to high school with her. Jackie O’Dwyer. Summa Come Loudly.”

  “A friend of mine, another lawyer, said I can’t compel Hornsby to talk to me. But why wouldn’t he? It’s his goddam house.”

  “He’s Bay Side Holdings?”

  “I don’t know that either. My friend’s finding out.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Burton Lewis.”

  “Rich fuck. Rich fag fuck.”

  “Friend of mine.”

  “I didn’t know you ran in them circles.”

  “My ex-wife’s circles. But Burt’s okay.”

  “He’s asshole buddies with Chief Semple,” he said, then caught himself. “Not literally. Lewis is a sure mark for Semple’s fundraising. They’d mixed it up a bunch of years ago over this black kid we busted up in Flanders. He was going down till Lewis stuck his nose in it. Could have been bad for the Town, since apparently the kid’d been tuned up a little, and probably wasn’t actually guilty of the crime. But then, you know, everybody gets in a room and backs are gettin’ scratched, and dicks are gettin’ jerked, and before you know it the kid’s out, the Town’s clear, Semple’s smilin’ and your buddy Burton Lewis is payin’ for open bars and fireworks.”

  “Doesn’t sound like the worst deal.”

  “I guess.”

  Sullivan wasn’t going to press it. He also wasn’t going to give up his local allegiance, his bigotry against all things Manhattan.

  “So that’s where it’s at. Besides Burton, I’m gathering up what I can on Bay Side from real-estate records. The Surrogate’s Court still has to have a hearing on making me administrator, but I can keep going. Should be a slam dunk unless Jimmy Maddox wants to make trouble, which I don’t think’ll happen.”

  Sullivan drank some more of his beer and looked around the inside of the Pequot. The midday regulars were hunkered around the bar trying to hold coherent conversations with Dotty. Hodges was in the back rustling up Fish of the Day for the guys coming off boats that’d been out since four in the morning. Sullivan looked like he wanted to say something.

  “What.”

  “It bothers me,” he said.

  “What bothers you.”

  “I’m responsible for the safety and well-being of all the people and property inside about a five-square-mile chunk of Long Island. You’re put in charge of something like that, and everybody has to pretend that it’s actually possible to do the job. But it’s really not, at least not the way everybody wants you to. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just you gotta act out this fantasy that we’re all some kind of superman. But that’s okay. I do the job anyway, my way, as best I can. Only my way makes it hard to buy into the bullshit. I can’t help havin’ a mind of my own.”

  “What’s your mind telling you?”

  “Nobody gives a shit about dead old ladies. And I don’t even blame ’em. There’s so much shit going on all the time, there’s so little money to ever get it all done. Out here you got homegrown idiots stealing shit and selling drugs, and shootin’ each other, you got all kinds of crazy evil shit coming out of the City, especially during the season. You got all these people along the water who act like they own the world, because, basically, some of ’em do. Then there’s the people in the court system you have to keep happy. You got County people, State people, fucking Feds if you think about it, all doing nothin’ but figurin’ out ways to make your job harder. The last thing any of ’em wants you to do for Christ’s sake is say, ‘I know this is what you think happened, but it ain’t that way, it happened like this.’ That’d mean paperwork. Time away from other shit that’s already more than they can handle. That’d mean somebody’d have to say, oh, I guess I fucked up a little bit on that one.”

  It was too bad, but Hodges picked that moment to come over and say hi. Sullivan stood up and shook his hand. They ran through a bunch of names looking for connections, which wasn’t hard. Sullivan dredged up some nice things to say about Hodges’s joint. Hodges pledged admiration and support for all boys and girls in law enforcement. All of which was fine, but I wanted to find out where Sullivan was heading. Which I couldn’t do until much later, back out in the parking lot.

  As soon as we were outside I said, “So, Joe, what were you saying in there?”

  He dug around inside his jeans pocket for the keys to his old Bronco.

  “Broadhurst might’ve been a lousy old bitch, but she was my lousy old bitch. My beat, my neighborhood. I don’t care if you’re full of crap. Until I can prove to myself one hundred percent that you’re full of crap, I’m interested in this. Let me know what you’re doing.”

  He walked over to his truck, carrying the extra weight around his middle with obstinate dignity. I went home to feed the dog and nurse my wounds.

  There were little clouds of gray-blue mist rising up from the harvested potato fields when I drove out Scuttle Hole Road on the way to Jackie Swaitkowski’s place in Bridgehampton. It was mid-morning and you could see the clear sky above waiting for the sun to dry out the air. Despite the mist, everything looked sharp and scrubbed clean, even through the Grand Prix’s pitted windshield. Ribbons of fresh white fencing separated cropland from pasture, where dressage horses grazed and tried to look indifferent to their status. Huge piles of postmodern architecture and partially submerged potato barns broke up the slow curves of the landscape. To the north were short hills covered by forests of red oak and scruffy pine. Jackie was somewhere up in there, if I’d read my map right. Her answering service said she’d be there all morning. The woman I spoke to said not to bother with an appointment.

  “Go ahead up there. I know her, she won’t mind.”

  “Really.”

  “She’s bored. She’s been stuck on this brief for a bunch of people trying to run this poor guy off his gas station. They say it’s a blight on the neighborhood.”

  “Not if you need
gas.”

  “People are so touchy about property values.”

  “Because they’re so valuable?”

  “That’s the thing. Everything’s so expensive. Hey, got another call. Say hi to Jackie. Tell her not to work too hard.”

  I called for an appointment anyway. The answering service was right. Jackie Swaitkowski longed for distractions.

  “Sure, come on over. Ring the bell,” she said before I’d given much of an explanation.

  Once in the woods, the atmosphere changed abruptly. Enclosed by tall oaks, the air was cool and the light was splattered patternless across the ground and up the sides of thick tree trunks. The iridescent red and orange fall foliage betrayed the deep green of scrub pines and hemlocks and wild mountain laurel. A few more weeks and all the leaves would be on the ground and the forest would give in to the gray gloom of winter.

  Jackie’s house was the kind of flimsy, unadorned wooden box real-estate people called a Contemporary. It was built into the side of a hill at the end of a long dirt drive. Jackie, or whoever owned the place, wasn’t much of a landscaper. A rusty Toyota pickup with oversized tires and welded metal racks was in front of the garage.

  Next to the front door were two buttons—one labeled “Jackie Swaitkowski, attorney-at-law.” The other said “Jackie Swaitkowski, Private Citizen.” I rang the lawyer.

  She had a long, thick crop of strawberry-blond hair and a lot of freckles splashed across a reddish tan complexion. Her face was wide open and pretty, and could have been used to promote Irish tourism. She had a nice figure stuffed into a yellow cotton jersey dress and flip-flops on her feet. Maybe thirty-two, maybe more. It was getting harder for me to tell.

  “Hi.”

  “Attorney Swaitkowski?”

  “Jackie.”

  “Sam Acquillo.”

  “Like the saint?”

  “That’d be Aquinas.”

  “Right. Missed that catechism.” She walked away from the door and invited me in with an exaggerated wave of her arm. I followed her into a sloppy, cheerful living room furnished with two dirty white couches and a coffee table made from a gigantic slab of cross-cut timber. It was buried under heaps of magazines and catalogs. She walked across the table and dropped down cross-legged into one of the couches. I took the other.