Short Squeeze

by Chris Knopf

  “Her mind had a funny way of working sometimes,” he said. “So while it didn’t make sense to me that she was walking along County Road in the dark, it didn’t surprise me.”

  He went on to say that since she’d died he’d been thinking about how stupid he felt for all the arguments they’d had, and for all the things, formerly mentioned, that pissed him off about her. The more he talked, the more the regret grew in his voice, and the worse I felt about bothering him.

  “Are the police any closer to finding out what happened?” I asked as gently as I could.

  He shook his head.

  “They’ll never catch him now. If they don’t get you within the first forty-eight hours, they probably never will,” he said, which I knew to be true. “I don’t care, frankly. If he’s got any kind of conscience, that’ll take care of the punishment. If he doesn’t, we’ll have to wait for God to handle things. It doesn’t matter to me. Catching him won’t bring her back. And it sure won’t help me or Jeddy get over this. Just make it all fresh again and give me a name to hate rather than my own vision of some poor, suffering bastard I can even feel a little sorry for.”

  I got so wrapped up in thinking about the intricacies of mourning, forgiveness, and revenge that I almost forgot my main reason for coming to see him.

  “Ever heard of a guy named Sergey Pontecello?” I asked. “Did you or Edna know him, or anybody named Wolsonowicz?”

  He thought about it but shook his head.

  “I don’t think so. Funny names. Why do you ask?”

  “Sergey was also found dead on the road,” I said. “The cops have found a connection between him and Edna. I can’t say much more without compromising their investigation.”

  He blanched.

  “Don’t say any more. I don’t want to know.”

  No danger of that, I thought to myself. I’ve already dug a deep enough hole for myself.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Jackery. I really am. I’ll leave you alone. I just hope you’ll contact me if you come across anything that relates to these people.” I took my card back from where he had it on the table and wrote down the same information I’d given Brandon Wayne.

  “So what about that irrigation system for your place in Bridgehampton?” he asked.

  I’d already forgotten the pretense of our meeting. I mentally scrambled, which must have showed.

  “You don’t really need it is what you’re trying to say.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “Not right now. Maybe if I can grow a little more grass. If that happens, you’ll absolutely be the one I call.”

  “I’ll be there,” he said, happy to be back in the world of positive thinking.

  “By the way, where’s Edna buried?” I asked when I stood to leave. “I want to pay my respects.”

  Slim smiled the first real smile of the conversation.

  “You like waterslides? Edna was nuts for them. She was also nuts about the Catskills, where she went as a kid. So I put one and one together and tossed her ashes down the Kaaterskill Falls. Risked my neck doing it, but I didn’t care much about that.”

  “That’s nice,” I said, not knowing what else to say, though I meant it. “So you had the funeral up there?”

  “No. At Winthrop’s here in town. They get all the Jackerys. Had a nice service before the cremation. I guess they’ll get me, too, if they’re still around by then.”

  By the time I left Slim and his watering business, Ray Zander was gone. The sun had crept higher, which made the huge lawn look greener and as uniformly healthy as a putting green. I was sorry to know that evil lurked underneath such apparent perfection, worming its way through the dark dirt, planning the right moment to burst forth and devour everything in its path.

  11

  I knew it was time to go to the police. I’d already been pushing my luck way past acceptable limits. Joe Sullivan might have been overly methodical, even plodding, but he liked to be thorough and keep orderly records. Which meant he rarely missed anything and never lost a case in court over shabby procedure.

  When he wasn’t pissing me off, I admired him. He was a by-the-book cop in every way, as honest and dedicated to the truth as any person could be. And he never once even remotely tried to hit on me, which seemed like the favorite contact sport in the law-enforcement community. Some of those meatballs would say and do things to women that would get you sued, fined, or fired in half a second in the regular world.

  I arranged to meet Joe the next morning at a diner in Hampton Bays where he liked to eat breakfast. The main attraction was an all-you-can-eat special that brought out his competitive spirit. Luckily, he was big enough that I could see him over the top of his plate, which the waitress must have brought with the help of a crane.

  “The cardiology deluxe?” I asked as I sat down, waving to the waitress to bring me my usual bowl of fruit salad and yogurt, which I thought might ward off excess calories spilling over from the other side of the table.

  “We gotta go through this every time?” he asked.

  “Sorry. It’s jealousy talking. I wish I could eat like that and not look like a hippopotamus.”

  He used his fork to skewer a row of home fries and a link of sausage.

  “Let’s get something out of the way before you say another word,” he said in a dark and unfriendly voice.

  I felt all the blood in my body race to my face, which was always a little pink and now likely the color of a valentine.

  “What do you mean, Joe?”

  “There’s a state law on the books. It’s called something like ‘interfering with a police officer during the pursuit of his official duties’ or some shit like that. But it’s a real law with real penalties for people stupid enough to break it. The fines and jail time wouldn’t be the most serious problem for you. It’d be the disbarment.”

  “If I was stupid enough to break the law,” I said as calmly as I could.

  “Not so much stupid as pigheaded.”

  “Pigheaded, sure. I can be pigheaded.”

  He shoveled a lumpy red-and-yellow glob into his mouth.

  “Confess,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Confess everything. Tell me every fucking thing you’ve done, everything you’ve said, heard, or thought as it relates to the Pontecello case and do it right now.”

  He dropped his fork on the table and took a sip of coffee, looking at me over the brim.

  “I hear you,” I said.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  So I told him everything I could think of, as he’d asked. Everything but how I got Edna Jackery’s name, because that might expose Sam and I wasn’t going to do that. That left a big hole in the story, but there was nothing I could do about that. He took out a beat-up leather-bound casebook and took some notes. His face was a blank sheet.

  “That’s it?” he asked when I paused for a sip of coffee.

  “All I can remember right at this moment,” I said. “I might’ve forgotten something. I can’t help you holding that against me, but nobody can remember everything.”

  He studied his notes in the casebook, then looked up at me.

  “I can’t dedicate my life to any single case, no matter how much fun that would be,” he said.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “So anybody willing to put in the time can get out ahead of me.”

  “Sure.”

  “Only they don’t know how easy it is to fuck up a criminal investigation. They don’t know about due process or chain of evidence or the rights of the accused. And that makes them reckless and dangerous,” he said.

  “It really does.”

  “But that wouldn’t describe you,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Oh, no. Absolutely not. That would not describe me.”

  “Because you know that you have to keep the lead police investigator fully informed of everything you learn, do, or say. In real time. Or else that investigator will have your law license hanging in his famil
y room and will make sure the only job you’ll ever get again is in this place, dishing ham and eggs.”

  He gathered up a shovelful of said ham and eggs and shoved it into his mouth.

  “I hear you,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “This is the last time we have this conversation. I like you, Jackie, but not enough to have it again.”

  “I really hear you,” I said. “I really do.”

  I’d completely lost my appetite at this point but forced myself to eat more of my yogurt anyway. I knew he was right, and I was grateful that it hadn’t gotten worse, so in an odd way I was relieved. I’d dodged a bullet, though I felt the breeze as it passed by my butt.

  A few minutes later, he said, “I got your message. The Pontecellos did have a personal banker. I’ve got the woman coming in tomorrow.”

  “Great. I hope you get something useful out of that.”

  “You can sit in.”

  I stared at him for a minute, thinking maybe aliens had kidnapped Joe Sullivan and replaced him with an unconvincing impersonator.

  “Really?”

  “You said you wanted to help. Here’s your chance.”

  “Can I look at the file?” I asked.

  “Not fucking likely.”

  “Okay.”

  “You probably know Eunice Wolsonowicz has a lien on the house. Probate’ll have to work out who inherits, but the A.D.A. is telling me Eunice has a clear claim.”

  “Only because Sergey’s dead,” I said.

  “All she had to do was call in the note and he’d have to turn over the keys. No reason to kill him for it,” he said.

  “Evictions can take a long time in New York.”

  “Still no reason. She could afford to wait. She can afford anything. There’s no financial motive.”

  “Maybe he could’ve paid off the note,” I said.

  “You believe that?”

  “No. I believe Eunice, who said they were broke.”

  “Me, too,” said Sullivan.

  I let him get in a few more mouthfuls before asking, “Ever wonder what happened to it?”

  “To what?”

  “The money.”

  “Yeah, I wonder. Though I bet I’m going to find out right now.”

  “ ‘Bet’ is a good choice of words,” I said.

  “Gambling?”

  “Yeah. The casino. No quicker way.”

  “You know this?” he asked.

  “Speculation based on secondhand eyewitness testimony. But I know how to find out for sure. Or rather, how you can find out. Correlate withdrawals from the bank with their trips to Connecticut. Hotel and ferry reservations will give you that.”

  He nodded as he carved a crater in his mountain of eggs.

  “You’re thinking, Jackie.”

  “Like I usually don’t?”

  “That’s something my wife would say. I don’t like it any better coming from you.”

  I concentrated on my fruit salad and yogurt while he plowed through the rest of his meal. The place was filling up fast with tradesmen diverted from the river of traffic pouring in from the west.

  “Anything else you want to tell me while you’re in such a genius mood?” he asked as he used a piece of toast to complete the conquest of his breakfast.

  “I appreciate getting in on the banker thing. I really do,” I said. “But is there anything else I’d like to hear?”

  “Probably lots of things. I’ve actually been investigating this case myself, you know, between rounds of golf.”

  “You never played golf in your life.”

  “I’ve got another reason for the Pontecellos’ financial issues,” he said.

  He waited for me to ask.

  “Okay, Joe. What other reason was there?”

  “The broad was a klepto. Liked the good stuff, of course. Designer clothes, jewelry. In Southampton Village, mostly, though we got a complaint from a leather place in Bridgehampton. Cost Sergey a bundle in legal fees and court-enforced therapy to keep her out of jail.”

  “No shit,” I said.

  “No shit. The last time was about five years ago.”

  I’d never met the woman, but I had no trouble seeing an image of her in my mind. My Web search said she’d worked in the East Hampton library for almost twenty years. Extrapolating from Sergey’s manners and her sister’s pretensions, she must have had a straight posture and attitude to match. I’d known a few compulsive crooks from my Burton Lewis spillover practice. I knew it was an equal-opportunity pathology. Rich people just got in deeper than those with lesser means. The same was true of compulsive gambling. Everybody was eligible to join the club. The rich ones had farther to fall, but they could get there just as fast.

  “Gee, Joe. That’s excellent information. I really appreciate it.”

  He toasted me with a mug of coffee.

  “Now you want the bad news?” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, back on alert.

  “The trace chrome on the rear bumper of your pickup was so generic we couldn’t isolate it closer than Zimbabwe, where they mine the stuff. We didn’t find anything else. No tire tracks, paint, nothing that would help identify the vehicle. And no witnesses we can find. Deadest of dead ends.”

  That was a troubling thought but not the most troubling.

  “You do believe me, don’t you, Joe?” I asked slowly, looking straight into his eyes.

  He looked annoyed.

  “Christ, Jackie, if I didn’t believe you, I’d be an asshole. You calling me an asshole?”

  “I’d never call you an asshole,” I lied, having on at least a few occasions used that exact word to express my feelings toward Joe Sullivan, which were admittedly somewhat complex.

  “Good. So let’s leave it there. I’m not giving up on finding the guy, I just want you to know we don’t have much to go on.”

  I had another thought.

  “He also caught a piece of my right rear fender.”

  “I know. All we got was chrome.”

  “But he’d have my paint, right?” I said. “And that we can match.”

  “To a high degree of certainty, as the A.D.A. likes us to say.”

  “Okay, then start examining every truck on Long Island. You got nothing else to do.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’ll get right on that.”

  Feeling stuffed by proxy, I lumbered out of the diner and joined the migration east. I didn’t mind the slow pace. It gave me time to think. I was cynical enough to be unsurprised by Betty’s secret perfidy. In my experience, rich people are at least as capable of criminal behavior as the next guy, maybe more so, since they have the delusion of invulnerability. But it didn’t exactly fit with my sense of Sergey. This I also knew to be a delusion, that a few minutes’ conversation could open a window into a person’s soul.

  The more I thought about it, staring at the ass end of a beat-up dump truck as we crawled through downtown Hampton Bays, a better explanation emerged.

  Sergey had things to hide. As a classic old Euro fop, he was fluent in the language of discretion. It was designed to say things without saying anything, a useful skill for a man whose pretensions outstripped his means. A man who hoped to defend his position in life at all costs.

  All costs. That was pretty inclusive.

  I called Goodlander GeoTransit and asked for the president of the company.

  “You always go right to the top?” Harry asked.

  “Time is money, boss. It’ll take us at least an hour to get to the ferry, and who knows how long after that to drive to the casino.”

  “We’re going gambling?”

  “Life’s a gamble, Mac. You gotta go for the gusto. Get the hay in the ground while the sun’s shining. Chow down on them early worms. Make dust or eat dust.”

  “Carpe casino?” he asked.

  “You’re a fast study, bub. Hope you’re just as fast with a suitcase. It’s a there-and-back, so pack light. Just don’t forget to bring lady luck.”

  �
�So it’s a threesome. I thought you’d never ask.”

  “In your dreams, tiger. I’m fifteen minutes away and closing fast.”

  The Twin Forks of the East End of Long Island are usually described as the flukes of a whale’s tail, which never made any sense to me at all. Maybe if you looked at Long Island as a big fish, with La Guardia Airport as the eyeball. I always saw it as an alligator with its tail cut off, with the Twin Forks a set of jaws chomping down on a big rock.

  The big rock was Shelter Island, home of Wendy Wolsonowicz and dozens of ospreys, piping plovers, and other lucky birds.

  It felt good to cross over the island with Harry via the little ferries on the way to the big ferry that left from the tip of the North Fork for the shores of Connecticut.

  I was glad for the company. It’s one of the things I ping-pong around about. Whether to go it alone or with another human being, be it a trip to the deli or for the rest of my life. Harry told me that was my biggest problem the day before I packed his stuff and set it out on my doorstep, an event we’d thus far silently agreed wasn’t worth revisiting.

  The weather was in on the conspiracy, so we had lots of sunshine to warm us while we stood outside the car and soaked up the breeze. Once on the North Fork, the trip through the little New England–like towns of East Marion and Oysterponds was an unexpected delight.

  The big ferry wasn’t as romantic, but it was a lot bigger. And colder. I’d underpacked, though of course Harry hadn’t, so I spent the trip in the luxury of an XXL sweatshirt from Penn State.

  I’d never been to any kind of casino, ever. I didn’t know what you did in casinos. The only mental image I could work up was from the James Bond movies, where they all wore evening gowns and tuxedos with black ties and white jackets.

  This is definitely not what we found in Connecticut.

  “What’s the point of this again?” I asked Harry as we stood on the threshold of a huge room filled wall-to-wall with noisy, glittering machines.