by Chris Knopf
“Want to run a tab?”
“Sure.”
Some bartenders are especially prescient—I had two more singles after that. As a result my mind wasn’t as clear as I’d planned, but at least my heart had stopped thumping in my ears. I ordered some bar food to slow the effects.
“Tough day?” the bartender asked.
“Had tougher.”
The place was warm, dark and full of varnished walnut. The waiters and waitresses wore white shirts and black pants. They were all young and slender with the feel of Manhattan in the way they styled their hair and the look in their eyes. Only doing this till the real thing turns up. Gray-haired regulars lined the bar. Mostly overweight and vaguely desperate, just like the guys at the Pequot only better financed. I always got myself in trouble in places like that. I resolved to be polite and keep my opinions to myself.
I had my Regina file with me. I pulled out the yellow pad, and as I munched on some calamari and salad, wrote everything up with boxes and arrows.
I was happiest in my working life when I was trouble-shooting big process systems. I liked laying out the process as a whole, then climbing into the complexities, searching out those points in the design that weren’t behaving as predicted, or hoped for. I often divined the presence of a system failure the way astronomers discover celestial bodies, not by direct observation but by studying their effects on local energy and mass.
Though I always started a project with well-organized and precise documentation, I’d get swept up as the chase quickened, and become lost in the pursuit, my mind continually reviewing the data and cycling through the possibilities until the answer leapt out of the chaos. Then I had to back-document so I could present a coherent diagnosis to the other engineers.
Starts here, moves this way. First this, then that. When this happens, this follows. Interconnecting data points, process dynamics. A flow scheme, just like I’d do before turning a final design over to the applications people, the engineers and draftsmen who’d input the CAD/CAM servers and render it all in beautiful graphic formats and 3-D models.
Then it went to bench testing, but I never doubted the outcome. In the secret life of my mind I was flushed with arrogant pride. Let them have their algorithms, diagrams and data organized in endless columns and spreadsheets. I had something better.
When I looked at what I’d drawn up on the yellow legal pad I knew it was time to call Jackie Swaitkowski.
“Attorney Swaitkowski’s office.”
“Is she there?”
“Who may I say is calling?”
“Sam Acquillo.”
“Of course it is. She’s been expecting you.”
“I’m at a pay phone.”
“Does it have a number?”
“Yeah.”
I gave her the number.
“Hold your ground. She’ll call in a second.”
I hung up. Thirty seconds later the phone rang. It startled the bartender and hostess who were standing only a few feet away.
“Holy shit.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s for me.”
Jackie burst onto the line.
“It wasn’t there.”
I looked out into the restaurant like the whole place was sitting there waiting for me to break the bad news. But they were all concentrating on their endive salads and baked pork tenderloin.
“Goddammit.”
“Hornsby was pretty organized, which doesn’t surprise me. Your cop friend said to call him when I was done and left me there for like twenty minutes. I went through everything.”
“Maybe I’m chasing a ghost.”
“I didn’t say it doesn’t exist. I said it wasn’t there. Where are you anyway?”
I told her.
“Getting smashed?”
“Trying.”
“Order a cosmopolitan in about ten minutes. I’ll be there in fifteen. The bartender’s an artist.”
“He pours a mean Absolut on the rocks.”
“Make sure you can still read when I get there.”
I went back to the bar to wait. I told the bartender about the cosmopolitan right away. Better his memory than mine. Then I worked on my flow scheme, adding a few details. It seemed time for a cigarette. I asked for an ashtray. The bartender directed me to the front stoop.
“Or, you can go to the patio out back. Bring your drink. Has a nice view of the parking lot.”
I chose the stoop in case Jackie showed up on time. I was halfway through the smoke when her Toyota pickup careened up to the curb.
“Gimme one of those,” she said, pointing to my cigarette.
She was back in civilian clothing—cotton shirt, blue jeans and leather jacket. With a manila envelope stuck under her arm. She handed me the envelope. I handed her a Camel.
“Well?”
“Let’s go sit on the patio. We can drink and smoke and who knows what else,” I said.
I got Jackie situated and went in to retrieve her cosmopolitan and a fresh vodka for myself. When I saw what a cosmo actually was, I recruited one of the waitresses to handle transport.
“Be a lot easier to carry that thing in a milk glass,” I told her.
“Sure, and so romantic, too.”
I waited until we were alone before pulling out the envelope. There was a piece of paper torn from a note pad Scotch-taped to the cover. It said, “This is the Living Trust of Carl Bollard Senior and Carl Bollard Junior, dated March 18, 1948. Addendum November 4, 1960, prepared by Milton Hornsby, Attorney at Law, Trustee. Addendum October 24, 1961, prepared by Milton Hornsby, Attorney at Law, Trustee.”
Inside the envelope were a printed pamphlet from the New York Bar Association on the general subject of trusts and trust preparation, a few inconsequential notes to Hornsby from “CB, Sr.” and a tissue carbon copy of a cover letter that must have accompanied the trust when it was first presented. But no trust.
“Somebody took it out of here,” I said.
“I searched all his files. It wasn’t there.”
I looked across the parking lot at the back of Harbor Trust. It was built in a colonial style, though clearly from another time, probably the twenties or thirties. It was big for Main Street, but not too big. The architects probably thought the bank’s customers would feel more secure putting their money in a place that looked like it belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Four square and filled with enlightenment.
And as solid as Fort Knox.
“Of course it’s not there,” I said. “What a dope.”
“Who’s a dope?”
“I’m a dope.”
“Okay, I’ll go with that. How come?” she asked.
“If I told you that—”
“You’d stop pissing me off.”
“It’s better I just buy you another cosmopolitan.”
Night had completely fallen. With the darkness I could see that all the lights on the second floor of the bank, the offices and conference rooms, were lit. Working late.
Jackie said something, but I didn’t hear her.
“Hey,” she said, “are you listening? Hello in there.” She turned around. “What are you looking at?”
She said something else, but I didn’t hear it, because I was watching Amanda go down the back stairs of the Harbor Trust building and walk up to her silver Audi A4.
“Give me your keys,” I said to Jackie, digging mine out of my pocket.
“What?”
“Quick.”
She gave them to me. I gave her mine.
“What the hell?”
“I’ll call you. I already paid for the cosmo. My car’s right over there. Hope you can drive a stick.”
“A stick? In that fucking thing?”
Jackie was still yelling to me as I ran around to Nugent Street where she parked her little truck. Amanda was already at the light on Main Street. I pulled up behind her as it turned green. The Toyota had a notchy 5-speed with a long throw, but it was tight and easy to maneuver, despite its age and hard duty. It sme
lled like Jackie. I checked the ashtray and found a half-burnt roach. I lit it up.
“What the hell,” I said to the inside of the Toyota, “been a rough day.”
Despite my success following the trained bear, I really didn’t know how to tail a car without giving myself away. I wished I’d read more crime fiction or watched more TV.
She took Hampton Road out of the Village and headed east on Montauk. Even in October there was plenty of traffic. I let one car get between us and prayed it would keep pace. The three of us were in solid formation all the way through Water Mill, and most of the way to Bridgehampton. Right after the big shopping center outside Bridgehampton Village she took a hard left and zinged into the night. I followed as aggressively as I dared, losing sight of her taillights until I got to the next decent straightaway. I realized Jackie’s pickup would have trouble staying up with a rocket sled like Amanda’s A4.
She flew past a long row of white horse-farm fencing, but had to stop before turning right on Scuttle Hole Road. I took a chance and ate up all the slack as she waited to turn. When she turned right, I followed close behind.
She hit sixty-five miles per hour on Scuttle Hole, forcing me to back off again. At the Bridgehampton–Sag Harbor Turnpike she hung a hard left.
I fell in behind and followed her into Sag Harbor.
She turned right at a light a few blocks from the center of town. I let her get some distance, then followed. The street ended in a T. You could go left or right, or straight through a private entranceway. It was framed by a grand wrought-iron gate, capped with a large metal cross. Maybe it was the gates of heaven. Amanda shot straight across the intersection and disappeared through the hole.
“Okay,” I said, and after waiting a decent interval, followed her into paradise.
Just inside the gate was a small sign.
“Conscience Manor Retreat. Private.”
The grounds were deep and dark, filled with huge old shade trees. There was no general lighting, but you could see evidence of several buildings from lit windows peeking through the thinning foliage. I killed my lights and looked for Audis. Nothing.
I followed the crushed seashell drive up to a large stucco Victorian house that looked like the main building. Most of the windows were lit. There were two main stories plus a third built into an elaborate roof structure. A deep porch, partially obscured by sculpted yews, wrapped around the entire first story.
Amanda’s car was stopped at a small structure adjacent to the parking lot. I dodged around a row of cars and parked at the other end of the lot.
Her lights went out and she left her car and went into the little building. As my eyes adjusted to the ambient light the building took shape as a small chapel, with a high-pitched slate roof and a cross molded into the gable end. The door had an arched top and the windows were leaded glass through which a low light suddenly sprung.
The big medieval door opened more easily than I expected. The inside was dimly but uniformly lit, so I could easily see the interior detail. It was a rectangular room with an oval, molded wood bench in the middle. The outside walls, which you faced when sitting on the bench, were lined with square raised-panel drawer fronts, most of which had a small brass plaque, engraved with a name, date and simple message. Amanda sat on the bench, which up close looked more like a pew, or the curved oaken seating you see in old train stations, with her hands clasped in her lap and her head bowed.
I walked over and sat down next to her. She was directly across from the drawer labeled “Monica May Anselma. 1991–1996. My light, my dream, my hope.”
Amanda looked at me with swollen eyes. Then she looked back at the wall.
“I should have known you’d figure it out,” she said, quietly.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say.
“You’re such a good figure-outer.”
We sat silently for a very long time. Amanda had her head lowered and seemed to be having trouble breathing.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked.
“You drove by and sucked me into your tailwind.”
She nodded as if that was a fair explanation.
“I tried to tell you,” she said.
“I guess you did.”
“You didn’t let me.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t want to know. That’s what you told me. You didn’t want any old baggage. Well, there’s mine, right there. My little baggage.”
“I don’t mean to intrude,” I said. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
“I bet you do.”
We sat quietly for a while.
“Do you want to know?” she asked.
“About your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Only if you want to tell me.”
“What else is there to tell?”
“Other stuff. It can wait.”
I looked up at the exposed rafters. They were mortised and tenoned and shaped into pseudo-Gothic arches. Tiny low-voltage quartz fixtures cast a clean but pale incandescent light. Torchieres mounted on the wall drew shadows across the orderly drawer fronts. Small bouquets were placed randomly along the floor. A larger arrangement anchored the far end of the room.
“You didn’t know. About Monica.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“So why are you here?”
“Bay Side.”
“Oh that. You figured that out, too.”
“Maybe. Not sure.”
She took a deep breath to force the quaver out of her voice.
“You ever live in the City?”
“For over ten years,” I said. “We left when my daughter was born. Abby wanted her to have a yard.”
“I really couldn’t afford to be there, but I was determined to make it work. My mother was so mad at me for leaving home. She didn’t understand you can’t be born, live and die in just one place. Even a place like Southampton. Especially a place like Southampton—it’s so unreal in so many ways. Kids have to get out in the world and live a little. I was only a few hours away, but she rarely came to see me. To her, I might as well have moved to Calcutta. It was a matter of pride that she’d never been up the Empire State Building, or rode the boat out to the Statue of Liberty. She surely never set foot in Times Square. My God, she’d have had a coronary.”
“My mother didn’t like it, either. I think my dad built the cottage so he had a place to keep her outside the City.”
I noticed tears falling as she talked. She stopped occasionally to wipe her nose.
“I was the secretary for the editor of this semi-scholarly technical magazine. I worked my way up to editorial assistant. I was a biology major at Southampton College, but I was also good with grammar and spelling. I proofread the articles and worked with all the authors. There were only a few of us in the office. It was nice and friendly. And the work felt like it meant something. Didn’t pay much, but enough to live on, to pay rent on my apartment. I had to move a few times till I scored a semi-permanent sublet in the west seventies from this young guy who’d been transferred to Japan. I even published a few of my own articles. My boss encouraged me to write. It would take me months to research and compose. I’d agonize over it like you wouldn’t believe. But they were patient with me, him and the other editors. Like those guys in My Fair Lady, you know? Help the ignorant girl make something of herself.
“If they only knew what I did after work, which was mostly go out and fuck myself all up. You’re young, you’re pretty, you get a lot of attention. You go to the disco.”
She said it with a feigned French accent.
“You dance like a crazy person and feel like a beauty queen. You snort a lot of coke and bring home handsome young assholes in flowered suspenders who tell you about possessions you never even heard of, and want to fuck you before you’re even up the stairs to the apartment. One of these guys left me with a little present, but unlike every other girl I knew, I didn’t want to go to the clinic a
nd zip-zip, ‘take care of it.’ I wanted to keep it, whatever it was. So I did, and the guys at the magazine were totally cool and never asked me anything or made me feel weird in any way. Instead of hassling me, they gave me two months maternity and an apartment full of kid stuff. I think they loved me, in a really nice way.”
The tears were now rolling out in full flow. She didn’t bother to wipe them off her face.
“It’s not very easy to raise a kid in the city, especially when you’re a single mom without a lot of money. But, I loved my little baby with every particle of my being. She was my light and my dream and my hope.”
She stopped to wipe her face and take a breath.
“You don’t have to,” I started to say.
“Yes I do,” she said, through her teeth. “And you have to listen.”
“Okay.”
“She was so smart—her dad was this really sharp professional guy, I think. Cute as hell, and destined for great things. I never tried to find out for sure, or pull any paternity stuff. I didn’t want that kind of thing to spoil what I had with Monica. It’s hard to explain, but some people understand. We had our own little universe, and I didn’t know if I could let anyone else in. But oh man, the cost of a nanny in New York. There were plenty of nights when I’d lay in bed and daydream about money and apartments with lots of rooms and Monica’s daddy bringing her toys and sending her to private school. I didn’t have a daddy of my own, but Mom did what she could. Whenever she had a spare twenty or something she’d slip it into some ridiculous Hallmark card and send it to me. I showed her pictures when we came home. She even forced herself to come to the City a few times. She’d fuss over Monica like you wouldn’t believe. And I was doing it, by God.
“Monica was just starting first grade. I was cutting back my hours so I could be there when she got home, and making up for the lower pay by writing articles at night. My nanny already had her next thing lined up. Getting rid of that expense more than compensated. She was a sweet woman, really. She knew what raising a kid on your own was like. She had a son. I didn’t see him much—he was in fourth or fifth grade at the time. She had him with her that day when she went out for a second to buy some milk and cereal. I’d forgotten to get any, and Monica needed breakfast. I didn’t know this, until later.