Further Lane

by James Brady

  Some houses were shuttered, locked, and empty. Those folks had gotten out and I didn’t worry about them. If they had damage, it wasn’t going to go away. Miz Phoebe was still at her station. The maid came to the door.

  “I hope this is important because she ain’t in a mood for trivialities. I never heard her curse so.”

  Principal among Phoebe’s plaints, that day the Sally Jessy show was scheduled to have on yet another of the O.J. trial lawyers, latest one out with his own book about those farcical legal follies.

  “I never miss one with Dershowitz. Or that Darden fellow. Or Shapiro. I can take Marcia Clark or leave her. But the others, I love to hear ’em lie. And now they say we won’t have television until maybe tomorrow. If the cable’s buried underground, why can’t I have my talk shows?” She was also concerned we might be confronted right here in East Hampton by looters. “Just mind you, what happened in Los Angeles when they acquitted those cops of beating up that poor man. Though why anyone would go into a store and come out carrying a refrigerator, I hardly know.…”

  Like Mr. Perelman, she was in a mood to sue someone.

  We went past Claire’s house, stopping at the head of the drive so as not to give her an excuse to chase us off again. The house looked okay and except for all the trees down, so did the property. Hannah sure would have been sore about what the wind had done to her roses along the fence, though. After that, we moved on to Warrender’s, Jesse in his pickup and Alix and me in the blazer. We had to leave the cars on Further Lane and walk to his house, there were so many fallen trees, and big ones, lying across Royal’s long gravel drive. Once again no one came to the door at my knock and I shoved it open.

  We found Warrender lying facedown in the great parlor that looked out through rows of picture windows onto the beach and surf and the endless Atlantic beyond.

  Alix, who for obscure reasons seemed to understand such things, moved without an instant’s delay to kneel by him with her face close to his and then with her ear upon his chest. Whatever it was she heard or didn’t hear, she set to immediately with a vigorous and apparently competent mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After a few moments, she looked up, face flushed and breathing hard but marginally pleased. “He’s alive,” she said. But that was about the extent of it. There was no power in the house and the phone, when we tried it, was dead. Jesse went out to the pickup for his cell phone and got through to Southampton Hospital. No, they couldn’t send an ambulance, not with the injuries they were handling locally. If we could get him there the E.R. was operating on a generator. No, they couldn’t send a chopper. They were all out of choppers on other chores and errands and bringing in casualties. Lingering winds from the tail of the storm, in any event, made flying chancy.

  Is there another hospital? Alix asked. When I said no, Jesse contradicted me. “There’s Mattituck. On the North Fork. Riverhead’s miles west of that but bigger. If we can get up to Three Mile Harbor and borrow a boat, we can get him over there to one of them in a lot less time than driving along the beach to Southampton.”

  His own boat was at the reservation twelve miles away and I had nothing but a canoe in the garage, and this was hardly canoeing weather, not with a heart attack victim to be transported, and who knew what we were going to find at the marina. But it seemed worth a try so we carried Royal outside and lay him down on a blanket in the bed of Jesse’s pickup and covered him with another. “I’ll ride in there with him,” Alix said.

  “The hell you will—” I began.

  “Just shut up, Beecher. I’ve trained at Saint Godolph’s as a nurses’ aide. Let’s go, Jesse.”

  “Yes, ma’am, Your Ladyship,” Jesse said, laughing out loud despite everything, a lot like he used to laugh at me when we played ball.

  Out the Three Mile Harbor Road you got an idea of what the hurricane did to the back country. It was some mess. Trees mostly and telephone poles and power lines. They don’t bury them up there the way they do on Further Lane, you know. At the marina boats, some of them big ones, forty-six-foot Bertrams and such, were tossed about and smashed like things in a children’s toy box. The first lugubrious sailors were there before us, observing the damage, with a few of them angry and mystified that their boats, apparently so snugly secured only twenty-four hours earlier, had entirely vanished. The small harbor was covered with floating debris that had once been a grand little pleasure boat fleet.

  “Hey,” Jesse called, “here’s one looks okay.”

  Alix was still up there in the pickup with Warrender. “He’s breathing,” she reported, “and that’s all I can say.” I joined Jesse on one of the spindly docks that somehow had ridden out the storm and at the end of which a white fishing boat, a twenty-foot Shamrock, was still securely tethered.

  “Richard Ryan’s,” Jesse said. “That Richard, he’s a man knows how to secure a boat, he does.”

  He was on board and already tinkering with the inboard engine, trying to figure out the best way to hot-wire it.

  “Maybe you ought to call Richard on your cell phone first,” I offered.

  “Time is of the goddamned essence, Beech,” he replied, and kept right on tinkering until the engine coughed a few times and began to hum. Jesse was awfully good with machinery, handy with almost anything, but he kept getting in trouble. Hot-wiring someone else’s boat was not looked upon at Three Mile Harbor as a very neighborly act but, as Jesse said, Royal Warrender didn’t have the luxury of time.

  There was a stiff chop but nothing worse, and with Jesse up forward warning of wreckage ahead in the water, I helmed Richard’s boat while Alix cradled Warrender’s head in her lap and sort of cooed to him soothingly where he lay on the blanketed deck. I don’t believe Royal heard a bit of it but she had an awfully nice lap and she was really fine at cooing as well. When we got past the breakwater and swung west into Gardiners Bay, a much bigger body of water, it was more open and we got real waves now and some pretty good swells. Too big a sea, Jesse and I agreed, to make our way straight across Peconic Bay, not with this small a boat and with Warrender so bad. So we altered course to swing due west, skirting the shore, and making our way to Southampton by water rather than by road. At least the wind was going down fast and we made good time passing Shelter Island to starboard. There were choppers up now buzzing overhead and the sun beat down strong out of a cloudless sky. When it was still blowing it was as if the hurricane was going to last forever; now that it was over, you wondered at how quickly it had gone.

  A guy in a pickup gave us a lift from where we pulled in near the North Road of Southampton and ran us down to the hospital. The Montauk Highway was impassable but a few of these local roads were okay if you picked your way. The hospital folks at the E.R. were fine. Harassed by the storm but with generators working, somehow they coped. It was a cardiac, all right, a bad one. I gave them as many particulars as I could about family and so on and my phone number and address; then it turned out Royal’s billfold was in his pocket so we got the paperwork done and got out of there. No one was yet saying if Royal Warrender was going to make it. But we three had done our job.

  Back at the marina Richard Ryan was on station and we all had what might be called a “spirited” discussion about the ethics of hot-wiring his boat but in the end Richard said we’d done the right thing and he offered to stand us drinks at The Blue Parrot unless I thought ten in the morning was a bit early for that. Richard had been driving around town and gave us his damage assessment. No casualties among people we knew. But then, all the precincts hadn’t yet reported in.

  “No one’s seen Leo Brass yet this morning. Damn fool, I hope he wasn’t out there pulling lobster traps last night.”

  Brass missing? And might Claire Cutting be with him?

  THIRTY-ONE

  A series of terrible tidal waves sweeping over East Hampton …

  Driving back into the village we passed those yellow East Hampton municipal trucks with gangs of men wielding chainsaws and tugging at downed trees and limbs. It was some m
ess. At the Parrot, Roland the manager was tidying up. The big awning out front was in tatters and outdoor tables and chairs thrown about, but beyond that and some rainwater around the windows, the place looked pretty good. Lee the owner was down at Montauk checking his boat and Billy Joel had apparently deserted us. But a few girls came in and so did Morgan Rank, who owns the gallery of primitive art. After that Toni Ross, daughter of the late Steve Ross, arrived, giving the bar a certain tone; she owns Nick & Toni’s with her husband, Jeff. Then in came Dave Lucas the lawn-care king and most of Sid Felton’s entourage, including the O’Leary twins, driven from their accustomed perch at the sidewalk café by the wind. We all introduced ourselves and Alix looked impressed to have met a moviemaker like Felton and wide-eyed at the sheer physical presence of the O’Learys. “Have you done any acting, Your Ladyship?” Felton was asking, slyly, I thought. By now Roland’s white dog was begging for tortilla chips so, considering all things, it was pretty normal. Maybe we should have brought the poodle along, as well. Then we all had a beer, even Alix, who wanted a margarita but the blender wasn’t working, so she had a Pacifico too. And Sid Felton was recalling tidal waves at Malibu and what famous movie stars had attended his parties.

  “Golly,” Alix said, “Tom Cruise. Fancy that!”

  Then Claire Cutting arrived.

  Sweet as could be and looking pretty good, the wire-rim glasses finally traded in for some outsized shades that must have been prescription lenses because she wasn’t hunched forward squinting the way she once did. And those tight, faded jeans did no harm nor did the pink tanktop she wore without any evidence of a bra. I mean, a skinny young woman like Alix could bounce around without a bra and not frighten onlookers. But when you were solid and curvy as Claire who took after her mother in that department, well …

  I recalled what Jesse said about her strength, hauling lobster pots with Leo, those strong brown arms ending, dramatically, in white hands. It was the trademark look of the serious East Hampton gardener, forever wearing cotton gardening gloves—we had by the score here in East Hampton—not only Claire but enthusiastic gardeners like Pam Phythian. Whatever, Claire looked good. Felton was looking her over, wondering who she might be, and Richard even moved down one barstool to give her drinking room. “Hi, Beecher,” Claire said, “you folks get hurt at all?”

  Last time I’d seen her she was telling me to get the hell off her place. Now she was inquiring after the wife and kids.

  “No, we’re fine, Claire.”

  Alix, who didn’t like her, then said disarmingly, “How did that nice Mr. Brass come through the storm? He’s not been seen this morning yet, I take it.”

  Claire sensed sarcasm in the question and started to anger, then bit it back. “I’ve no idea,” she said coolly, and then turned to Richard to ask empty questions about his boat. Mr. Felton, having been told who Claire was, hunkered down, which was unlike him, maintaining a discreet and uncharacteristic silence. Maybe he was trying to figure out if Claire’s dead mother was yet in the public domain or if in making his film Bittersweet he might be required to pay royalties to the family. You had to say this about Felton: he was a professional who knew about costs, below and above the line. While he mulled over the possibilities, Sid ate a few Kleenex. We all had the one and then a second. Then Jesse and Felton had their heads together briefly.

  “He asked me to be a technical adviser on the movie,” Jesse whispered. “Move out to Los Angeles for a time. Become acquainted with female movie stars.”

  And? “I told him I’d consider it.”

  Then Jesse went off on various errands and Alix and I returned to the gatehouse where, it being noon and the sun high, we went back to bed, unclothed this time. “D’you want me to keep my sneakers on, Beecher? Might be rather kinky.” You had to like the way her mind worked.

  She also wanted to know something else.

  “Beecher, I’m confused.”

  “About what?”

  “The O’Leary sisters and Mr. Felton.”

  “Seems plain enough to me.”

  “No, I mean, do you think Mr. Felton sleeps with them both at the same time or enjoys them seriatim?”

  Primly, I said I had no idea. But while we were making love she returned again to the theme, asking if I’d ever slept with two girls at once and was it stimulating or simply complicated? I shut her mouth with mine and retreated into a silent wonderment as to whether her father the Earl knew how his daughter went on and just what Oxford was teaching young people these days.

  Afterwards Alix called Random House to inform them she was still alive and, yet again, hot on the trail of the elusive manuscript. And that for the first time, she could guarantee it hadn’t been destroyed or anything, and surely it was merely a matter of hours now. I roamed the kitchen where she was using the phone, looking into cupboards and aligning coffee mugs, self-conscious and embarrassed at the growing ingenuity of her lies, which by now were colorfully describing a series of terrible tidal waves that washed clear over East Hampton, sweeping away houses and inundating roads and marooning isolated farmers and lobster fishermen, and which terrified even the redoubtable Indian sachem and war chief Jesse Maine.

  We got up about five and showered together, which wasn’t such a great idea. Not only with the electricity down was the water ice-cold, we very nearly went back to bed again, and if you weren’t at the Parrot by six, you stood a gaudy chance of finding a barstool. Leo Brass was still among the missing. He wasn’t the only one but there were plausible explanations for the others; not Leo. East Hampton had its first two fatalities that we knew about. An old lady in Springs had a heart attack trying to pull a big tree limb off her deck. And a body was found down by The Gut where Georgica Pond empties into that channel cut through the beach to the ocean at times of heavy rain and overflows.

  Poor devil, someone said, must have drowned in the storm surge. A few of us lifted a Pacifico in solemn tribute.

  No, said Roland from behind the bar. That was the odd thing. The body was that of a man with a terrible stab wound of some sort through his chest. Or so went the rumor.

  I borrowed The Blue Parrot’s cell phone, the one they hang up beneath a copy of Joe Heller’s latest book and the scrawled love note to the place from Christie Brinkley, and called Tom Knowles at the police station. He was out checking storm damage with the rest of them but they’d page his car and get him to phone me at the Parrot. So we had another round of Pacificos. When Tom called back, I didn’t even have to ask the question.

  “Same damn wound, Beecher. Just like Hannah’s. Once again, the killer left the weapon behind. Privet hedge. A stake sharpened with a knife and then honed and hardened in flame. Not milled like the one you got slugged with. They’re checking for prints as we speak. No I.D. yet. I haven’t been over there to see the body because of the roads. I’ll get back to you.”

  I paid up and got Alix out of there, over her objections.

  “I say, Beecher, this is the jolliest spot in town, and I dote on that Richard Ryan chap. And without power and no lights, what’s the point of going home so early?”

  I repeated what Tom told me about the stake of privet hedge through the dead man’s heart.

  “Golly!”

  We drove around the village looking at damage and checking with a few of my friends not seen since before the storm, all the while wrestling with who might be the man dead in Georgica Pond (Ron Perelman, who lived there and had ruffled feathers? Leo Brass who boasted about “taking care of” The Gut himself? “The Walter”? Jerry Della Femina? Parties unknown?) and what was the significance of a second murder in little more than a week by sharpened privet hedge through the heart.

  “Cold heart,” Alix corrected me. “All the best writers of policiers use a good adjective and do it that way. If this were Miss Marple it would always be ‘through his (or her as the case may be) cold heart.’”

  “I’m sure,” I said, not being a Miss Marple expert.

  We drove along Lily Pond Lane
to see if Mort Zuckerman’s place or Jerry Delia Femina’s dune house had been swept out to sea. Neither had. Martha Stewart’s lovely garden had been trashed and there was a big maple down and what looked like a copper beech. We drove past Ken Auletta’s and then Ben and Sally Bradlee’s house, the old “Gray Gardens” that they bought from Jackie’s crazy cousins—and then had to have the exterminators in before the decorators. They, too, seemed to have come through. We swung back and drove down Highway Behind the Pond to the beach, where old Mrs. Lawrence built what Vanity Fair called “the house from hell,” but which I thought of as resembling the TWA terminal. The monstrosity, unfortunately, was still standing as well. Then we saw Lee Radziwill, who lived next door and never had forgiven Mrs. Lawrence, or her architect, that rogue!, striding past, walking a couple of skinny dogs on leashes, so we knew Lee was okay.

  “Whippets,” I said, not terribly sure. Alix looked narrowly at me.

  “Borzois,” she said briskly. “It’s amazing the voids Harvard left in your education, darling.”

  The “darling” made up for unwarranted attacks on Harvard.

  And now Alix turned philosophical.

  “You know, Beecher, I’ve been asking myself just who’s the real villain in all this, and when we talk to people who knew her, it seems to come up more often than not to be Hannah Cutting. As if she’s to blame for her own death. Being such a bitch and all. Over and over we hear of her appalling ways and lack of manners. And I’ll have to admit she cut me there on her own lawn. But now someone else is dead as well, and was that Hannah’s fault too? I think we’re shortchanging her, y’know; to have accomplished all she did, to come out of nothing and become someone, she couldn’t have been all bad.