by Chris Knopf
And after that, I’d more or less lived around people like Ross Semple, Joe Sullivan, Danny Izard, Janet Orlovsky, and Lionel Veckstrom, and the rest of the Southampton Town Police Department, who more or less proved my theory of the universal ratio of regular humans to significant assholes within any subset of the population.
Though like Mustafa, I felt like things had changed. There was a warp in the continuum. A distortion in the fabric of the cop universe I’d never felt before. I said as much to Jackie, who agreed.
“When I was a kid, I wrote a short story called ‘The Day Everything Was Different,’ ” she said. “You walked on the ceiling, your parents told you to eat candy for dinner, the cat barked, the dog meowed, and the fish in the aquarium played Bach concertos.”
“Not Haydn?”
“That’s how it feels to me. Everything is different. But I don’t know why.”
“How did the story turn out?” I asked.
“I don’t remember. Maybe I should go back and look.”
“Let me know, because I don’t know why either.”
ON THE way I put in a call to Detective Fenton, who actually sounded happy to hear from me, even though he had nothing to report on Allison’s assault case. I told him I was bringing Jackie along and wondered if he could take some time out to talk to us. I offered beer and burgers as recompense, and he was quick to agree. Which probably explained why he was happy to hear from me.
It would be a lot cheaper than fresh oysters from the Benevolent, so I still felt ahead of the game.
Jackie was lucky enough to squeeze into a parking space on the street in SoHo a few blocks from Fenton’s chosen destination. He said they had the best burgers in the city, and we had to believe him, since it probably took him a half hour to get down there from his precinct in Midtown.
We met him out on the sidewalk and he had his usual look of a man who’d just rolled out of bed after sleeping a few days in his clothes. His happiness, already foretold, was enhanced considerably when he laid eyes on Jackie. She gave him her custom cop handshake—a straight-arm and finger-snapping grip, which only served to increase the allure. I’d been through this a lot, so I knew to maneuver him into a seat on the opposite side of the table before we sat down.
They played the usual game of Who-Do-You-Know, which was important for Jackie to establish her bona fides as a native in the legal establishment. He seemed satisfied, and she seemed genuinely charmed by his attitudes and perspective. We were off to a good start.
For about a half hour, Fenton went through Allison’s case, mostly for Jackie’s benefit. So I was barely listening, and nearly missed it when he said they’d found someone else’s DNA in the blood samples lifted off the walls of her apartment.
“You did?” I asked.
“Yeah. I don’t know how they missed it the first time, or why they went back for a second look,” he said. “I think you got to that CSI. Probably the daughter thing. She’s working it.”
“Any matches?”
“No. Though what’s interesting are the two Xs.”
“Female chromosomes,” said Jackie. “It’s a woman’s blood.”
Fenton grabbed a waitress who was passing by, alert to the diminishing state of his beer glass. We focused on another round before he told us more.
“It makes me a lot more interested in the fifty-foot-tall woman,” he said.
“He means Althea Weeks,” I told her. “Allison’s former employer, and regular provider of freelance work. She’s tall.”
“Fucking enormous,” said Fenton. “She could take me down. Probably not Sam, but you don’t know.”
“What’s the motive?” I asked.
Fenton made a “who knows” gesture.
“No motive. I’m just talking here.”
With that conversational path at an end, we reverted to regular small talk, which Jackie diverted into the area we’d come there to explore.
“Bill,” she said, as if they’d known each other forever, “you knew Ross Semple and Bennie Gardella pretty well back in the day, right?”
Fenton caught the switch in tone, but looked ready for it.
“I did. I transferred out of the Bronx before all the legendary stuff happened, but we more or less came up together.”
That was news to me, but I acted like I knew it already.
“Is it all true?” she asked. “You know, the legendary stuff.”
He nodded, reminiscence lighting up his face.
“Oh, yeah. The legends don’t do it justice. Those guys were totally gonzo. It’s hard to imagine today. But things were different back then. Everybody thought the whole big fucking city was going down the tubes. Extraordinary times, extraordinary measures, if you know what I mean.”
“I think I do,” said Jackie.
You could see that Fenton wanted to say more, but was constrained by tethers of the past.
“So they stepped over the line,” I said. “Occasionally.”
His ambivalence seemed to deepen, but he said, “Depends on what line you’re talking about.”
“Legal versus illegal,” said Jackie.
That got a rise out of him.
“If you mean, did they stretch the definition of proper investigative procedure, yeah. Or engage in a certain amount of operational flexibility, not entirely authorized, yes again. Did they violate the Constitution, or profit personally from any of the activities they engaged in? Absolutely not. I wasn’t there, but this I don’t believe to be true.”
I got the feeling these words had been recited before, in a very different venue.
“Honest cops,” I said.
“Honest cops,” he repeated. “Too honest for their own good.”
“Sorry, Bill,” said Jackie, “but how can you be so sure?”
He looked at her as if realizing for the first time she was a defense attorney.
“Their captain in those days is my cousin,” he said. “We grew up in the same house. There’s nothing he knows that I don’t know. Which I’ll deny under oath till the end of time. And if you’re wearing a wire, may God preserve you.”
His face, usually on the reddish side, had turned near purple. Jackie reached across the table and gently placed her hand on his forearm. The one holding the beer glass, and thus unlikely to pull away.
“Nothing like that, Bill,” she said. “We don’t know Gardella, but the only thing twisted about Ross Semple is his sense of humor.”
Fenton studied our faces, each in turn, a fresh flood of questions crossing his.
“What the hell is this all about?” he asked.
It was time to let it all the way out.
“There have been accusations. Some vague, some explicit, that something’s rotten in the Southampton Town Police. Corruption tied to a surge in the drug traffic flowing through the East End. We think it’s tied to the murders of our three confidential informants. We don’t know how, but there’s too much of a buzz around the idea to ignore it.”
Fenton’s mood swung from indignant to confused. I couldn’t blame him.
“Not Ross,” he said. “No way, no how.”
“That’s what we think,” said Jackie. “But circumstantial evidence is starting to pile up.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said, picking up his beer, then putting it down again without taking a sip. “You’re supposed to move out to the Hamptons to get away from this shit.”
There was no point in bursting that bubble by telling him that shit follows you no matter where you go. No one wants to hear that human nature transcends location, that, in fact, venality flourishes in a place where the haves have so much more than the have-nots that you begin to wonder if we come from the same species.
“Your cousin, the one who supervised Ross and Gardella, is he still on the job?” Jackie asked.
“Sure,” said Fenton. “They made him deputy inspector. Runs a precinct on the Upper East Side. I still call him Officer Gilliam so he doesn’t forget where he came from.”
“Can we talk to him?” she asked.
“Sure. How about right now?”
Like any good detective, Fenton knew how to read people, and he obviously read Jackie pretty well.
WE LEFT the Volvo in SoHo after Fenton told the traffic cops to let the meter run out and took a cab Uptown. Jackie grabbed the front seat to avoid getting squeezed between us, which unsettled the cabbie, but he acquiesced. Thus configured, it was hard to talk, so after Fenton called ahead to his cousin, everybody rode along with his and her private thoughts. Mine were back on Oak Point in Southampton, where like Ross Semple, I’d once fooled myself into thinking I’d find some sort of refuge from the ugly turmoil I’d made of my life. I didn’t try to draw any conclusions, since they were self-evident.
The precinct station was off Second Avenue and made obvious by the blue and white patrol cars crammed along both sides of the street. Fenton paid for the cab and led us into the building. He chatted up the desk sergeant who then put in the call upstairs to his boss. We didn’t wait long.
Fenton’s cousin was named Joshua Fenton Gilliam. Though there wasn’t much of a family resemblance. Gilliam had a slight, fit frame and a face like a tropical bird, accentuated by a pair of silver wire-rimmed glasses. He looked more like a newspaper editor than a precinct commander, though after Ross Semple, I’d long ago shed cop stereotypes.
They hugged in an unabashed way as Bill asked Gilliam if he’d lately busted any french poodles or heiresses for having nonregulation manicures. Gilliam took it like he probably always did, with easy humor. We got introduced and Gilliam took us upstairs to his office.
If Semple’s office was a toxic waste dump, Gilliam’s was a Buddhist shrine. It was a nice departure for me, though I guessed Jackie would feel out of place. We sat at a round steel and glass conference table and Gilliam had his adjutant bring in coffees.
“How is Ross these days?” Gilliam asked us. “Still quoting Cicero?”
Jackie did a good job of describing the chief, how he ran his department and what everybody thought of him. Gilliam said that’s how he remembered him, though they hadn’t been in touch for many years. He asked about Mrs. Semple and I admitted I’d never seen the woman, much less spoken to her.
“Too bad,” said Gilliam. “Talk about idiosyncratic.”
Detective Fenton, likely mindful of his cousin’s time pressure, got to the point of our visit. As he set up the situation, Jackie filled in the details, adding some of our experience with prior cases, tactfully leaving out the time I’d been charged with murder. Gilliam listened with a focused intensity that reminded me of Father Dent. When we got to Ross asking Jackie and me to help out, ex-officio, with the investigation into Alfie Aldergreen’s death, he made us repeat the story, pressing us for nuances and opinions of Ross’s behavior.
“Odd,” he said, when we finished the briefing.
“That’s what we thought.”
“More than odd,” he said. “Entirely nonstandard, even for Ross.”
Given his reaction, I went ahead and told him we had a similar deal with Edith Madison, the Suffolk County DA. At that, he jerked his head back and his eyes went wide, as if startled by a sudden loud noise.
“You’re sure about that,” he said. “She actually asked you to inform on the police?”
“There was no ambiguity in the request,” said Jackie.
“Mother of God,” said Gilliam, which seemed fairly nonstandard for him.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” said the other Fenton.
“We felt similar things,” said Jackie, “though you seem particularly stunned. Are we missing something?”
The cousins looked at each other, exchanging unspoken thoughts. As the silence grew, Jackie scowled, like me, feeling our candor deserved freer reciprocity.
“Come on,” she said. “Give it up.”
Gilliam looked at her, more like a bird of prey than a parakeet.
“You probably wouldn’t know this,” he said. “But Edith Madison is one of my best friends. She took me to the Metropolitan. I went to Yankees games with her husband. Their apartment is about two blocks from here.”
“What are you sayin’, Josh?” said Fenton, doing Jackie and me a big favor.
Gilliam tried to get more comfortable in his chair, a tactic I’d seen before used by people stalling for time. Jackie started to breathe in a way you could hear. I knew what was coming.
“You better just share with us now, sir,” she said. “It won’t get any easier.”
Gilliam moved his head from side to side, another familiar tic of people under pressure.
“It would be preferable if that particular can of worms stayed closed,” he said. “I’m talking about Edith’s husband’s death. Given her political situation, the last thing she needs is that sad story dredged up and plastered all over the reprehensible press.”
Everyone thinks large-scale engineering is only about dynamic systems adhering to inviolate natural laws. And it is, mostly. Though sometimes something goes wrong, even though all the instruments, tolerances, and specifications say it shouldn’t. Back when I had my corporate job, figuring that stuff out was my specialty. Since everyone I worked with had a near religious faith in the infallibility of quantitative analysis, I didn’t admit my approach had much more to do with gut instinct and decidedly nonanalytical reasoning.
Einstein said that imagination was more important than knowledge, but he was Einstein and could get away with saying things like that.
He also knew that even intuitive leaps had their own logic, a certain symmetry that you felt even before you could describe how all the component parts fit together.
I knew the feeling, which often resembled an attack of vertigo.
“He jumped,” I said, the words escaping before I had a chance to stop them.
And Edith’s great, good friend Gilliam just stared at me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The only one in the room who didn’t immediately grasp the full implication was Detective Fenton, who scanned all our faces and said, “What? What?”
His cousin chose his words carefully.
“Our investigators determined that Mr. Madison’s death was an accident, based on the testimony of Mrs. Madison, who stated that the family’s cat had a habit of walking out on the ledge, and that her husband frequently retrieved the cat. On this occasion, he overreached and fell to his death.”
Jackie shook her head as if to dislodge the rush of thoughts crowding her mind.
“Of course,” she said. “If that was Edith’s statement, then your conclusions were well founded. Obviously there’s no evidence that would contradict her testimony,” she added, looking at me.
“Not as far as I know,” I said. “I’m just thinking hypothetically.”
Gilliam looked equal parts annoyed and relieved.
“So what if he did jump?” said Fenton, catching up with the conversation. “If she can survive getting grief counseling, she can survive a little change in the cause of death.”
“You’re not thinking this through,” said Jackie.
“I’m not?”
“While some may feel Edith should have revealed seeing a psychiatrist, the reason was understandable, and even laudable, and easily excused under the category of personal privacy. The difference that Sam is suggesting is that Edith made a sworn statement that her husband’s fall was an accident. If he committed suicide, she’s filed a false police report that was material in a police investigation, which is a crime. At least a misdemeanor, possibly a felony. It would at the very least end her candidacy.”
“Isn’t it wonderful to have an attorney present to advise us on matters of the law,” said Gilliam.
“I missed it, Josh,” said Fenton. “Don’t go bustin’ on the lady.”
Gilliam looked unhappy with the reprimand, but let it go.
“To get back to our reason for being here,” said Jackie, “I don’t think Edith would be pleased that we revealed her request for our help.
We’d appreciate that staying between us.”
“Of course,” said Gilliam, though I wasn’t sure what he actually meant. “And meanwhile, if you do uncover malfeasance within the Southampton Town Police force, with evidence that would stand up in court, I can aid in alerting the proper people.”
“We appreciate that,” said Jackie.
“I don’t care where it goes, how far up the food chain,” he said. “Personal relationships have to be incidental when upholding the law.”
The words had the gloss of a sound bite for the press, but I felt like he meant it. And he wasn’t only talking about Ross and Bennie Gardella.
“We understand,” said Jackie, again using the first person plural to signal me this would be our shared position. Which she did a lot, not always successfully.
We sat through some more family talk between the cousins, with Fenton thanking Gilliam for letting us barge in on him. Gilliam assured him he was glad we did.
“Good discussion,” he said. “Help us be prepared if the shit hits the fan.”
You mean “when,” I thought, but kept my mouth shut to maintain solidarity with Jackie Swaitkowski.
“IF YOU’RE right about Edith’s husband, she’s sunk and Veckstrom’s got the job,” she said, when we were back in the Volvo and heading east.
“I had a professor at MIT who said, ‘If you think it’s true, it probably is.’ ”
“What did he teach?”
“Zen Buddhism.”
“You do have a reason why you think her husband jumped,” she said.
“I do, but it’s part of a bigger idea that isn’t fully formed.”
“I knew it. You have a theory you’re not sharing with me.”
“Not a theory, just a guess. Of very recent vintage. Give me a chance to think about it.”
Luckily the day had worn her out and she didn’t have the energy to press me. Instead she let me divert her with an assessment of the year’s baseball season, a subject about which she had neither knowledge nor interest, so it was safe territory for both of us.
I CONVINCED Jackie to stick around when we reached Oak Point. Allison, Amanda, Nathan, and Joe Sullivan were out on Amanda’s patio enjoying the north-northeast breeze that often delivered perfect summer evenings to the Little Peconic Bay.