The Last Refuge sahm-1

by Chris Knopf

  Sobol still hadn’t raised his voice, but his pitty little face finally had some color in it. Suited him better.

  “I still don’t know your deal,” he said to me, patiently.

  “I’m the administrator.”

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “When my neighbor Regina died, she didn’t have much of a family, so the County named me administrator to clean up her worldly affairs. That’s all. I’m just trying to clean things up.”

  He thought about that for a few moments. Sizing up the situation.

  “I don’t know what you think you know, but if you think that bag of shit Battiston’s a problem for me, you’re a bigger whack job than I thought.”

  I snorted out a little laugh. I couldn’t help myself.

  “Roy’s not your problem, Bob. I’m your problem.”

  Sobol had something else to think about, so he stalled for time by looking around Barbara Filmore’s backyard.

  “It’s not bad livin’ here,” he said, “but I’d like a little more property. I need elbow room.”

  “Not me. I’ve been scaling back.”

  “You know what this little joint’s worth? Like, two million bucks. What’s with that? I lived in this town twenty years ago. Back then you could buy any of these places for about $50K. Now it’s like all the rich fucks decided nobody like me’s allowed in. Everything’s jacked up to the stratosphere. It’s unnatural.”

  “The coffee’s gotten better.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. What am I thinkin’.”

  “You might just have to look somewhere else, Bob. Set your sights on another horizon.”

  “Not goddammed likely.”

  “Just trying to help.”

  “You keep saying that, but I’m not hearing anything that sounds like it.”

  “Fair enough, Bob,” I told him. “You’re right about sticking my nose in your shit. Trust me, I know your shit inside and out. Everything, every step of the way. So, the tip I’ve got for you, if you will, is more like a proposition.”

  The word “proposition” seemed to register with him.

  “You don’t talk to Amanda Battiston. In fact, you don’t talk to anybody. You clean out that little hole you’re living in and scurry back to wherever you came from. Whatever Roy gives up on you can’t be helped. Otherwise, I keep your shit to myself.”

  Bob wasn’t immediately receptive to the idea. In fact, it caused him to crack a little bit of a smile.

  “Unless I’m imagining things, I think I just heard a threat,” he said.

  “More of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

  “Yeah. A threat.”

  “Okay, a threat. Have it your way.”

  “Nobody threatens me.”

  “I just want you gone. When you consider the alternative, not a bad deal.”

  “You don’t have anything,” he said.

  “I got everything. Hell, Roy’ll get me most of the way there, all I got to do is push it over the edge.”

  He was back to his staring thing. I broke away from the deadly gaze long enough to light my second smoke of the conversation. Nothing like a cigarette to give your hands something to do. Only, it’s a good idea not to forget they’re supposed to be guarding a Glock automatic.

  Sobol snatched it up, checked the clip, slammed it back in and had a round racked in front of the hammer before I had a match fully ignited.

  “Some fucking mongoose,” he said, pointing the barrel directly at my chest.

  The gun had so much of my attention I almost burned my fingers, but I finally got the cigarette lit. Another way smoking can get you killed.

  “That’s not going to solve your problem,” I told him.

  “Yeah, well, what the fuck. Just say it’ll make me feel better.”

  I hadn’t seen the barrel of a gun from that vantage point since those carefree days after leaving Abby. The experience hadn’t gained any allure. It was a strange feeling, otherworldly. You think you’d imagine the impending impact of a .40 caliber round ripping into your body, but you mostly think about all the dumb stuff you did that led you to the situation you’re in. It must be some sort of denial. Otherwise, you couldn’t think at all.

  This time, though, mostly what I thought about was my daughter. After the divorce the only asset I had that was worth anything, beyond the cottage, was a gigantic, paid-up life insurance policy. I’d been able to drop Abby as a beneficiary, so it would all go to my daughter. It had some symmetry. She’d be done with me and set for life in one fell swoop.

  “I don’t care,” I said to Bob Sobol.

  “About what?”

  “If you shoot.”

  “Everybody cares.”

  “No, I really don’t. Haven’t for years. Actually, I’m glad you thought of this. You’ll be solving both our problems.”

  “More head-game shit. It doesn’t work with me.”

  “Typical engineer.”

  “fuckin’ right. Villanova. Three point eight average.”

  “At least you put it to good use.”

  “What, like you? Pathetic, burned-out whack job.”

  I couldn’t think of much to add to that. I wondered what my father said when he fully realized his big mouth would finally get him killed. I wanted to think he kept it up anyway, right to the end.

  “You’re actually going to do this,” I said to Sobol.

  “I actually am.”

  “So whatever I say really doesn’t matter.”

  “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  “Okay, then let’s just say, fuck you, Sobol. You’re a dick.”

  “Last words?”

  “Last words.”

  “Okay.”

  And he pulled the trigger.

  The sound was really loud. The air filled with an acid gray smoke, blood spray and tiny pieces of Bob Sobol. Not much of which reached me, miraculously. The concussion made my brain bang around inside my skull and my ears ring for days afterward, but all the destructive force went in Bob’s direction. It seemed to kick him up and back, till he was clear of the table and splashed out across the grass. Somehow the bowl of cigarette butts got in the act, so when I bent over him lying there on the lawn I was more struck by the ugliness of all that tobacco ash than the sight of the shattered slide from the top of the automatic sticking out of his forehead. Those murky little eyes were still open, staring up through bright red blood at the clean blue October sky.

  “Thing about a mongoose, Bob,” I told him, “is they never come at a rat straight on.” But he was past listening.

  I promised Sullivan I’d go to see Ross Semple that day, so I just left Sobol there on the ground and drove over to Hampton Bays. I figured it was better for Barbara Filmore to call it in after she got home, but as it turned out, she didn’t find him until the next morning. That got me tied up again with Sullivan and Ross for the better part of the next day, but I spent that evening productively, drinking Absolut cut with a little orange soda and tossing tennis balls across the lawn without getting out of the Adirondack chair. Eddie liked me to show a little more effort, but did his part anyway, retrieving the yellow balls from off the beach and dropping them at my feet.

  The Peconic was all worked up over something, even though the sky was moonlit and clear and the prevailing winds out of the south-southwest were only slightly more gusty than usual. Whitecaps were springing up all over the bay and a herringbone pattern was etched across the surface of the water. The bay turned out to be a harbinger, as it often does, as bigger, northerly winds swept in on the heels of roiling dark gray clouds and colder air, filled with a frigid mist. The evening slowly darkened into night, so we were finally forced to give it up and head into the house.

  The fresh wind from out of the north was icy, but I thought it also had the faint hint of redemption mixed in with the salty spray and bitter brine from off the sacred Little Peconic Bay.

  TEN

  IN FEBRUARY, the Little Peconic is painted in subdued shades
of silvery gray. The sun struggles to clear the horizon before retreating again just a few hours later behind the green hills of the North Fork. The soft southwesterlies that soothe the summer months turn into brutish, sodden gales that rush down from the north to beat furiously against the wood-frame storm windows my father installed as winter protection for the screened-in porch.

  The woodstove keeps the living room livable as long as it’s fully stoked, and if I put a little window fan on the floor facing out the connecting door, I can almost warm the porch enough to hold a book or light a cigarette. This allows me to stay out there through the winter. If I don’t monitor the Peconic at all times I might miss something important. Like a passing ocean liner, or the sudden appearance of a plesiosaur.

  Eddie seems indifferent to the cold, especially when outside touring the grounds, but once inside he’s drawn to the braided rug in front of the woodstove.

  “You look like an L.L. Bean catalog,” I tell him, but he’s unfazed. It’s all in the breeding.

  That afternoon in February he jumped up and barked when he heard a knock at the door, but you could tell it was mostly for show. Looking after his franchise.

  “Christ, Sam, I thought this place had central heat,” said Burton, reaching down to pat Eddie’s head after stripping the tan kid-leather gloves from his hands.

  “Not as long as there’s North Sea scrub oak. God’s own fuel source.”

  “And to warm the inner man?”

  “Vodka or bourbon, though God’s role in either is debatable.”

  “Pour it anyway, for heaven’s sake.”

  His coat was camel hair and his scarf a grade of cashmere so fluid you could pour it into a bottle. Both were smudged and slightly threadbare, as if he wore them to chop wood or haul stuff to the dump, which he probably did.

  I poured us both Maker’s Mark on the rocks in my best jelly jar mugs. He pointedly sat in the easy chair next to the woodstove in the living room, so I took a spot on the sofa where I could make polite conversation while keeping an eye on the bay. It was still a somber battleship gray, though the waning sunlight put a faint gloss on each of the little bay waves. A stalwart seabird swung in loose circles over the water, seeking prey numbed to distraction by the cold.

  “I just came from a nice long chat with Ross Semple,” said Burton, after an appreciative slurp of the single malt.

  “How’s he feeling?”

  “Skeptical, I’d think you’d say.”

  “Important quality in a police chief.”

  “Indeed. He wanted to talk to me about Bob Sobol.”

  “Too bad about Bob. But nothing to do with you.”

  “Never met the man. Though we had a mutual acquaintance.”

  “Last to see him alive.”

  “Ross made the same observation.”

  “How’s that bourbon?”

  “Delightfully smooth. And subtle, like the company.”

  “Not me. I’m an open book.”

  Eddie tried to reclaim the braided rug, but Burton’s feet were in the way, so he jumped on the sofa and made a spot for himself by shoving me out of the way. I gave up as much territory as my dignity would allow.

  “Ross wanted to know if I thought he should declare the death accidental. The County is badgering him to close out the case.”

  “He asked me the same thing.”

  “I said no other interpretation was plausible, given the facts at hand.”

  “Me, too. Or something like that. But you’re the expert. Mean more coming from you.”

  “The presence of solder in the barrel of the gun is the only aspect left unexplained. I’d call that a question of engineering, more your bailiwick.”

  “Yeah, I can’t explain that either. Sobol was an engineer himself, maybe he tinkered where he shouldn’t have.”

  “That’s my sense,” he said, looking at me with eyebrows arched in that way only guys with Burton’s pedigree could get away with.

  “Indeed,” I said, one of Burt’s favorite words.

  I lifted my jelly jar to the light. “Well, I’m ready. What do you say?”

  I went back out to the kitchen to get us each a refill. When I came back Eddie had staked out a dominant spot on the sofa, but I fought back a share.

  “Pain in the ass.”

  “And it looks like Roy Battiston is pleading out,” said Burton.

  “That’s what Jackie told me,” I said, after getting resettled.

  “Rather forthcoming of her.”

  “She’ll tell you anything if you catch her at the right moment.”

  “He’ll only do a little jail time, but that’s irrelevant,” said Burton. “His life is over. At least the life he wanted to live.”

  I didn’t know exactly what to say about that, so I didn’t say anything at all. I sat there and sipped the bourbon, scratched Eddie’s head and pretended to be contemplative. Burton finally saved us all by filling in the dead air.

  “You’ll never guess who I’ve taken on as a client.”

  “I didn’t think you did that anymore. Unless you’re talking about Spielberg, or General Motors.”

  “Mrs. Battiston.”

  “Really. Interesting.”

  “I thought so. She came to me. Apparently because of you.”

  “Not my idea.”

  “Indirectly. She said you only had nice things to say about me.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t say you took clients. Like, what the hell for?”

  “She’s filing for divorce,” said Burton. “Apparently sufficient grounds.”

  “I guess.”

  “She asks about you every time I see her. Tells me to tell you to call her. She won’t call you, I suppose. Can’t imagine why. You have a phone, or at least you did at one point.”

  He looked around the room inquisitively.

  “It’s in the kitchen,” I told him. “Good old Western Electric.”

  “So, what should I tell her?”

  I really do like Burton Lewis. I’m always happy to see him. Though sometimes I wish he had a better instinct for things I like to talk about and things I don’t.

  “That she’s got the world’s best lawyer.”

  “One skilled in pursuing evasion.”

  Not knowing exactly how to respond to that, I got off the sofa and went out to the porch to get a better angle on the bay. All clear. Cloud cover was still a uniform, low-altitude gray, but you could see some clearing along the western horizon. A harbinger. I went back to my guest, hoping he hadn’t noticed I’d been gone for a few minutes.

  “So how’s everything else, Burt? Isabella keeping you in line?”

  “I suppose since Mrs. Battiston owns Regina’s property, that makes you, technically, next-door neighbors.”

  “Amanda. Soon to be Amanda Anselma. Owns almost everything around here, which means she could be a neighbor of yours before you know it.”

  “Do you know what she plans?”

  “No idea. Haven’t talked to her in four months. And I don’t want to know. She could own the whole fucking world and it’s not going to interfere with my nine-tenths of an acre.”

  “Just curious.”

  “Indeed.”

  “About your social inclinations. Planning to hole up again?” He took another sip from the bourbon and looked at me in anticipation. “Do you want to go out on the porch again before answering?”

  Whenever I did a mental accounting of friendships past and present I tended to draw a line between pre-and post-Billy Weeds, demarcated by the day I learned he’d died in Vietnam. I’d always thought of him as my best friend, though in retrospect, I guess he was the only friend I had. So after he died I had trouble attaching that label to any subsequent relationship. Even to people I liked, like Burton Lewis or Jason Fligh. Or Paul Hodges. That made it easier, maybe, to ignore them. To invest almost nothing in sustaining connections with other human beings, so I could devote all my attention to doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing as an adult. Achievi
ng, producing things, solving puzzles and developing octane enhancement technologies. And avoiding deadly threats, like human kindness and affection. The deadliest of all.

  “Geez, Burt, and here I am buyin’ you a drink.”

  “Just asking.”

  “Jesus.”

  “So you’re in the mood to be sociable.”

  “What the hell do you think I’m doing? You know, we are sittin’ here talking, for Chrissakes.”

  “So I can ask her in. Probably getting cold in the car.”

  “You got somebody out in the car? What the hell for?”

  I started to stand up, but he waved me down. Eddie jumped up and looked around, on alert.

  “I promised her I’d check the temperature in here first. Soften you up.”

  I sat back down on the sofa.

  “What are you doing, Burt? You know I hate that shit.”

  “I know. That’s why I had to talk her into coming. But now that she’s here, try to act like a civil human being. She is your only daughter, after all.”

  When he left with Eddie to go out to the car I made a full retreat to the farthest end of the porch, where I had a miserable old oak drop-leaf kitchen table, brass pole lamp and assorted ashtrays. I sat down and looked out at the water. That rise in the cloud cover to the west had already made its way to about twelve o’clock high, opening a band of pale blue sky.

  So I sat there and waited, fortified by bourbon on the rocks and the pallid white glare of the winter sun as it lit up the wave tips dashing across the sacred Little Peconic Bay.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  HEARTFELT THANKS TO Literary Agent Mary Jack Wald. Thanks to the following for contributions factual, practical and literary: Randy Costello, Cindy Courtney, Nancy Dugan, Sean Cronin, Mary Farrell, Whit Knopf, Anne-Marie Regish and Rich Orr.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHRIS KNOPF is a principal of Mintz & Hoke, a marketing communications agency. A native of Philadelphia, educated in the U.S. and London, Knopf lives with his wife and their two wheaten terriers in Avon, Connecticut and Southampton Village, Long Island. The Last Refuge is his first novel.

  VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2006

  Copyright © 2005 Chris Knopf