Ice Cap: A Mystery (Jackie Swaitkowski Mysteries)

by Chris Knopf

  “That’s horrible,” I said. “How did she recover?”

  Paulina looked around the muddled room for the right answer.

  “I’m not sure. She just gradually went from eating to moving around the house to going outside. I was so busy myself in those days that I didn’t keep that well in touch. Papa’s father didn’t know what to do with her, and with the mother gone, he had his hands full with the farm. The only thing I remember is her going to work at Tad’s place, where she’s been ever since.”

  “Really.”

  Paulina nodded. “You bet. It was a big farm back then, and he had a mess of hands. She was just one of a dozen. Wasn’t till he built the big house that she started in with the housekeeping. Cooked, cleaned, did all that for Tad, who was a confirmed bachelor.”

  “She told me she trained to be a psychiatric nurse,” I said.

  Paulina looked amused.

  “Never got to use it. Though it must’ve come in handy with this family,” she said.

  She got up from her uncomfortable chair and walked over to a big vase sitting on the floor. It looked like it had been poured into place, its glossy sheen and gaudy colors creating a tower of gelatinous concretions. She turned it a half turn, then went back to her seat.

  “There we are,” she said. “Just right.”

  “Thanks for doing that,” I said. “It was bothering the heck out of me. So when did Freddy appear on the scene?”

  “I don’t remember, but it has to be about ten years ago, long after Saline started at Tad’s. He was a hand on the farm, before it was mostly sold off. Wild drunk, was the story, but Saline made him give it up as a condition of marriage. Turned him into a better man.”

  She looked around the room again, in search of irregularities only she could detect.

  “And she never took to her bed again?” I asked.

  Paulina tried to recall.

  “If she did, I’d have known it. We talk, you know.”

  Oh, yeah, I thought, you do indeed.

  “How did she feel when Tad brought Zina back from Poland?” I asked. “Must have been hard after running the house all those years.”

  Paulina lit up with what you could only call an evil grin.

  “The first he says to Zina after they walk in the door, was something like, ‘This here’s Saline. She runs this place. That ain’t changing. You got issues with her, you talk to me.’ Can you believe it? Though it was still a little hard, having another person to clean up after.”

  And I wondered how hard it was without Tad there to discuss any issues.

  “Did she ever tell you what happened the night Tad was killed? Did she or Freddy have an opinion?”

  This put Paulina in an awkward situation. Two forces pulling her in opposite directions: protecting things said in confidence, and the irresistible urge to spill the beans. It was a short fight.

  “Saline swore me to secrecy,” she said.

  All well and good, I thought, until she has to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  “I won’t tell anybody if you don’t want me to,” I said, telling about as big a whopper as a person could tell.

  She looked from side to side, just to make sure no one was standing nearby trying to listen in. It was so serious an effort, I almost looked myself.

  “Tad wasn’t really out there to check on the woodshed, like Zina told the police. He was out looking for her,” she said, nearly whispering. “He was in a rage. Just a rage. He’d found out about her and Franco the Casanova, finally, and was yelling and screaming and saying he was going to kill them both. And then he left the house and that was the last she saw him alive.”

  She sat back in her chair, smugly satisfied to have delivered yet another version of that night, unaware that it had plenty of competition.

  “So she didn’t know how he found out,” I said.

  Paulina shook her head. “Didn’t say. What difference does it make? You find out your wife’s a whore, that’s all that matters.”

  Maybe not to Zina, I thought.

  * * *

  As it had been with Saline, it was a huge relief to get away from Paulina. There was something about their sensibilities, their perspective on reality, that I found dispiriting. I nearly dashed from that garish apartment, leaving repeated thank-yous and gracious refusals of homemade chocolate and exotic cookies behind in my wake, my first full breath taken when I reached the Volvo in the poorly plowed parking lot.

  Inside the car, I collected myself. I dug around the half-dozen depleted packs of Marlboro Lights until I found an unsmoked cigarette, and I lit up, running the engine to make heat to battle the cold coming in the big crack in the window required to let out the smoke.

  As I sucked on the cigarette, I pondered. I took it as a matter of faith that no one in any criminal case—client, witness, cop, or victim, if still living—ever tells the complete truth. Only bits of it. Our job as legal professionals was to mix and match the stories and interpret, to mine the known facts and build logical composites out of the assorted, partial truths.

  Which left a lot of room for subjective judgment, which could be a bad thing, depending on who did the judging.

  As to the Buczek case, everyone who survived that night was lying, in one way or another. Some of the stories overlapped, but there was no central narrative and only one agreed-upon fact: Tad went out into the snowstorm sometime during the evening. Everything else was up for grabs.

  Lies aren’t all bad, however. When there’re a lot of them, it means there’s something in need of being lied about. Two versions of the same story is a tension point, what Harry would call a “leveragable opportunity.” A term that always made me think of Archimedes shifting his fulcrum around until figuring out how to move the earth.

  I thought I could finish the cigarette, drive, and ponder at the same time, so I backed out of the space and carefully drove through the crowded parking lot to the street, where I made a right-hand turn to go back to my office in Water Mill. With the regular four lanes of Montauk Highway reduced to one and a half per side, I was feeling especially cautious, frequently looking from side to side and checking in my rearview mirror. Which is how I noticed the black Chrysler 300, not an unusual car in the Hamptons by any means, but more notable by the look of the driver and his passenger.

  My negative guardian angels.

  My heart gathered revs until it sounded like a tom-tom drum inside my head. I ignored that, as well as the adrenaline ripping through my veins, and concentrated on the reality behind me.

  It was broad daylight. I was on Montauk Highway, a busy thoroughfare. I knew they were there and felt somewhat sure they didn’t know I knew. So I forced myself to drive in a perfectly normal way, though I wondered what my normal driving looked like.

  I drove on the highway until a left turn presented itself, a road that headed north toward Seven Ponds and, beyond that, North Sea. I took it as calmly as I knew how. The Chrysler fell in behind. At least then I was sure, although less secure, since the road was lightly traveled and ran through some thinly populated areas. I kept my speed down despite urgent signals from my more primitive parts, the ones charged with opting for fight or flight. I rejected both and kept on driving.

  I took out my phone and called Sam. He didn’t answer, of course.

  I headed up that way anyway, gradually gaining speed. I continued to redial Sam, on the off chance he’d finally answer. I hit a long straight stretch of road and let my speed creep up over the limit. The Chrysler kept its distance, maintaining a steady five car lengths between us. Soon after, I was on North Sea Road, heading north. This was a much more heavily traveled route, even in this weather. I had to nudge the speed up even more to keep pace with the cars and trucks. The Chrysler tucked in behind me to keep others from getting between us.

  I called Sam again and cursed his misanthropic ways when he didn’t answer. Then I started to question my strategy. Why not just call in the cavalry, Joe Sullivan
and his indomitable beat cops? Those sworn to serve and protect, paid for with my own tax dollars.

  Because that would be that. The cops would stop them, hold them, and release them after their lawyer showed up, because all we’d have is my testimony and identification via security cameras, which the worst lawyer in the world would be able to contend well enough to bust them out of jail, and I’d never see them again. Two others would take their place.

  I didn’t know what Sam and I could achieve on our own that would be better, but I wanted to give it a try.

  My phone rang. It was Sam.

  “They’re behind me!” I yelled. “In a black Chrysler 300. It’s them, I’m sure. I’m heading toward Oak Point.”

  “Do you have the Glock?” he asked.

  “Are you kidding? Of course I have the Glock.”

  “Stay on the line.”

  I could hear the sound of him running, crunching over snow, telling Eddie in stern terms to go back to the house and stay. Good luck with that, I thought. Then the sound of a car door opening and shutting with a thud, a change in the tone of the background noise.

  “You still there?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “Are they still there?”

  “They are. At a respectful distance,” I said.

  “Do they know you’ve spotted them?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so. But how would I know?”

  “If they follow you onto Oak Point Road, don’t turn in my driveway, go all the way to the end.”

  Sam lived at the tip of Oak Point, a peninsula that thrust into the Little Peconic Bay. His driveway, which he shared with Amanda, was the last turn before the road went through some marshy wetlands and then through a narrow dune above the pebble beach.

  “Okay. Do you have a plan?” I asked.

  “Stop at the beach, pull the Glock, and stay behind the front of the car. Bullets don’t go through engines.”

  “Good tip. What’ll you be doing?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Play it as it lays.”

  “You’ve never played golf in your life.”

  When I reached Oak Point Road, I slowed and turned, like it was the most normal thing on earth to do. My eyes, welded to the rearview mirror, saw the Chrysler turn behind me.

  “He’s still there,” I said to Sam.

  “Stick to the plan. Keep your cell on speaker so we can communicate.”

  Oak Point Road had barely enough room for two passing cars in the best of circumstances. With all the snow, it barely had one, which made me wonder how you dealt with oncoming traffic. I slalomed my way past the little houses on either side of the road, most of which had unplowed driveways, a testament to second-home status. The Chrysler was still back there.

  I drove past Sam and Amanda’s driveway and around a gentle turn to the end of the road, delineated by a sturdy crossbar. I made a quick turn, took the Glock out of the sack I called a purse, opened the door and, police-style, rested the barrel on the hood of the Volvo.

  I saw the Chrysler approach, pass Sam’s driveway, then slow at the sight of my car parked perpendicular to the road. They stopped. Then Sam’s 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix shot out of his driveway behind the Chrysler, completely blocking it in. The driver of the Chrysler put his car in reverse and tried to do a three-point turn, but immediately got the rear wheels stuck in a snowbank. Now they were broadside to me and barely thirty feet away.

  I took a deep breath and, letting it out slowly, shot out the Chrysler’s front tire. Then, remembering the cop’s advice back at the range, took my time with the second shot, which blew out the back tire as it spun in the snow.

  I looked up at the driver just in time to see the blur of a big automatic swinging toward me through an open window. I dropped down behind my car and heard two thuds, accompanied by two pops that echoed in the near distance.

  I hoped Sam had something in mind beyond pure improvisation, not thinking I could survive an all-out gunfight. I tried to calm myself and get comfortable with the two-handed grip on the Glock.

  I heard one more thud/pop and then a scream of startled rage and pain. I heard Sam yell my name, and I stuck my head around the front of the grille. I saw Sam pulling the driver out of the car with one hand, with a small baseball bat in the other. The automatic was on the ground. Sam kicked it in my direction.

  The driver was Yogi, the taller one. Sam had him by the scruff of the neck, and every time the guy tried to twist around, Sam whacked him on the head with the bat. Boo Boo by now was coming around the front of the car, a gun of his own pointed at Sam and Yogi as they slowly backed up.

  “Go ahead and shoot your friend!” Sam yelled at Boo Boo. “Then Jackie will shoot you and we’ll be done for the day.”

  “Why don’t I shoot you instead?” said Boo Boo.

  “No!” yelled Yogi.

  “Go ahead and try,” I called. “You’re still a dead man.”

  Boo Boo’s head turned in my direction, with his gun still pointed at Sam.

  “Drop the gun and you can walk away from this,” said Sam.

  He tapped Yogi on the head again.

  “Drop it, for chrissakes!” Yogi screamed.

  “And live another day,” said Sam.

  “More than I can say for you,” said Boo Boo, tossing the gun into the snowbank to his right.

  “Hands on your head,” I said to Boo Boo as I came around the Volvo, my gun still trained on his chest. Sam patted around Yogi’s overcoat and down his sides to the ankles and back again. Then handed the idiot off to me. He walked over to Boo Boo and frisked him with one hand, keeping the bat at the ready with the other. Yogi held his right forearm, his hand dangling in an unnatural way. His pale, oily face was clenched tightly.

  I stuck my gun barrel into the side of his head.

  “Did I mention that these things can just go off on their own?” I asked in a calm, even voice.

  He stood quietly, immobile, his eyes fixed on Sam as he brought Boo Boo over to where we were standing.

  “Here’s the deal,” I said, taking the gun away from Yogi’s head. “We know who you are and who you work for. We want to know why the interest in the Buczek case. Why’s it so important?”

  Yogi let out a dry chuckle.

  “Not happening,” he said.

  “What’s your connection to Ivor Fleming?” I asked. The two heavies looked at each other. “What is it?” I repeated.

  “If you know who we work for, you know we ain’t talking,” said Boo Boo.

  I knew he was right. Whatever level of coercion required was way beyond what Sam or I were willing to do. We really had no leverage.

  “Okay, you don’t have to tell me. I already know,” I said. “I’ll just make sure Fleming learns I heard it from you.”

  Boo Boo smirked.

  “Big whoop,” he said. “Who cares about that little Chink.”

  “You care enough to do business with him,” said Sam, catching my drift.

  “The boys in Brooklyn do business with a lot of people,” said Yogi. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with. They’ll do shit to you nobody can imagine.”

  “You’d think Tad Buczek would know better,” I said.

  “Tadzik was like this to us,” said Yogi, using the friendly diminutive of Tadzio and resting a closed fist on his chest. “Our brother. It was your Guinea that killed him. This cannot stand. You just need to get him a jolt upstate. We’ll take it from there.”

  “What if he didn’t do it?” I said. “What’re you, working for the DA?” Yogi finally turned his head to look at me. “I know for a fact it wasn’t Franco,” I said. “Don’t you care who actually did it?”

  Yogi looked like he was coming to grips with a shifting paradigm, though he likely wouldn’t know what that meant.

  “Some people might,” he said.

  “Then let me find out and quit trying to terrify me to death,” I said, jabbing him in the side with my gun. “Tad was family. Do you think I give a
crap about his killer? You can have him as soon as I’m sure I got the right guy.”

  Their silence seemed to indicate a new perspective.

  “See, fellas,” said Sam, “we’re actually on the same team.”

  “We’ll be talking to you later,” said Yogi.

  “Great. Love a good conversation.”

  I kept the two of them covered while Sam retrieved their guns. Then, using a thick rope out of the trunk of his old Pontiac, Sam pulled the Chrysler out of the snow and cleared a way for me to drive by. Which I did once we had the two of them back in their car, Boo Boo now in the driver’s seat.

  I parked the Volvo behind Sam’s house and joined him in the Grand Prix, which he backed into the driveway so we could watch the road and wait for the tow truck I called to come haul away our new friends.

  “What did you mean by ‘Go ahead and try’?” he asked me when I climbed into the preposterous car.

  “I didn’t think he was good enough to hit you,” I said. “But if you don’t take risks, how do you get anything done?”

  “Nice job with the tires, speaking of which.”

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling a surge of exhilaration, realizing in the relative calm of the car that I was nearly dizzy with it, my bloodstream so saturated with adrenaline I could feel it seeping out of my pores.

  I shared this with Sam.

  “Winston Churchill said, ‘There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.’”

  “I was motivated,” I said.

  “Did we learn anything?” he asked.

  “Did we ever.”

  “Really.”

  That was when I fully grasped why my heart was soaring up in the clouds. Those dumb, vicious thugs who’d hang their own mothers before letting one scrap of useful information pass their lips had graced me with a wonderful gift. The one scrap that completely reshuffled the deck.

  “The playing field’s getting rearranged,” I said, giving voice to my thoughts. “The paradigm is shifting. Can you feel it?”

  He put his hand on his stomach. “I thought it was just gas. What I get for eating right before a brawl.”