Bad Bird (v5)

by Chris Knopf

  For all that, I still didn’t have admissible evidence that this guy who looked like me and had my old last name was who I thought he was. Until I got to the part in my story about Delbert’s Beachworld Deli, formerly the Peconic Pantry. When I dropped the black-and-white photo on the table, brilliant red blossoms ignited on Billy’s pale cheeks. The woman put the back of her hand to her mouth. Two mysteries solved at once.

  I tried to continue my narrative, but he cut me off.

  “I have no idea what this has to do with me,” he said.

  I took the photo off the table and put it back in my pocket.

  “Do you want to talk about this in private?” I asked, looking over at the woman, who still had her hand over her mouth. Her eyes darted at me, and widened. Then she looked at Billy and shook her head.

  “Don’t say anything, baby. Not without Ivan.” She looked back at me. “His lawyer.”

  I sat back in the wicker chair.

  “Did you know Eugenie Birkson?” I asked.

  Billy shook his head.

  “Bill,” said the woman, part warning, part plea.

  “The Peconic Pantry was pretty popular in the old days,” he said, ignoring her. “Lots of people would have photos of the place. What happened there was a long time ago. Can’t have anything to do with a plane crash. That’s a little cracked.”

  When he said that, I not only saw my father, I heard him. I hoped it didn’t show on my face.

  “I can’t help you,” he said. “Not because I don’t want to. I don’t know anything. I’d cooperate if I could.”

  That time I heard the words of a guy in the interrogation room, like the one back in Hampton Bays. The ex-con, the former perp, the one who didn’t do it, though there was plenty else he’d actually done.

  “Bill’s got a good sales job. Had the same one since he got out. He’s home every night,” said the woman, which the uninformed would think a non sequitur. I knew different. The whole dreary history was self-evident. Plenty of official types had shown up at their door. Asking questions about people and things Billy may or may not have known anything about. Submitting to unspoken threats, knowing he was doomed to the status of an ex-con, forever cursed.

  “No accusation here, ma’am. Just trying to get some information.”

  “He doesn’t have any. You heard him.”

  “Kathy,” said Billy, as if finally noticing her. “It’s okay.”

  I wanted to say, Be nice to her. She’s trying to protect your worthless ass. But I decided it didn’t matter. He didn’t matter.

  I stood up and flicked another of my business cards into his lap.

  “Just in case you actually remember anything, call the number on my card. Meanwhile, have a nice day,” I said, then walked off the porch, after giving the shoulder of Harry’s suit a sharp yank.

  I knew Harry was behind me because I could hear the crunch of his shoes as he walked across the gritty sidewalk that led to where we’d parked the Volvo. I could also feel the disapproval, even before I heard it in his voice.

  “Geez, that was a little weird,” he said as he opened the car door for me.

  “I need to get out of here.”

  We drove in silence through the ranch-house-and-shopping-center landscape of Eastern Suffolk County. When we were safely on Sunrise Highway heading back to the Hamptons, I apologized.

  “Sorry, Harry. That wasn’t me at my best.”

  “How come you didn’t tell him you’re his sister?” he asked.

  I didn’t know. Not exactly. Part of me thought I’d get more information out of him if he thought I was more of a threat. Another part didn’t know how to broach the subject, since I hadn’t right from the start. “Oh, and by the way …” Neither of which was the true answer, as I thought about it. The fact was I didn’t want it to get personal. After all those years denying his existence, I didn’t know how to kick off a new relationship. Mostly because I didn’t know what flavor it would turn out to be—good, bad, or indifferent. I felt like all three were possibilities. Maybe not good, but maybe not so bitter.

  “It’s too complicated,” I said to Harry.

  “Is that why you didn’t push him very hard for information?”

  “I didn’t?”

  “Hardly at all,” he said. “I was trying to figure out what you were thinking.”

  This was the closest Harry usually came to criticizing me. Even in the days leading up to me tossing him out, which ended our first go-round together, he was relentlessly considerate and nonconfrontational. At the time, this only pissed me off that much more. But that was just Harry being Harry, which took a second time around to sink in.

  “I’m not thinking. That’s the problem. This thing with Billy just jumbles everything up. He doesn’t know anything about this. It’s just a creepy coincidence. I should’ve left well enough alone. Now I’ve got his goddamned face stuck in my head for the rest of my life.”

  He drove along without commenting. But I knew what he was thinking. If only his girlfriend could learn a little impulse control. I agreed with him. I decided I’d work on that, right after I dragged my boyfriend through another interview, this one sure to be considerably more pleasant.

  9

  It was nearly sunset when we reached Kirk and Emily’s place on Gin Lane. But it was still light enough to see the shingle-style mansion standing hard against the dunes at the end of a long, open lawn. It was built in the 1920s when the fashion was to call houses like that cottages. This to me is a nice example of how to confirm pretense by trying to hide it. Though with Kirk and Emily, you nearly bought the label. The giant house was so warm and comfortably broken in, you could almost call it unassuming. Almost.

  Kirk greeted us at the front door. He wore a baby blue sweater over a yellow shirt, which seemed to suit his natty white hair, and blue and white seersucker pants. He earned Harry’s instant esteem by letting Harry’s room-filling proportions go entirely unnoted.

  “Emily asked me to report on your relative state of hunger,” he said as he led us up to the enclosed porch on the ocean side of the second floor. “She’s poised at the refrigerator and won’t budge until I do.”

  “We’re all set. Don’t want to impose.”

  “Nonsense.” He spoke into a small black device unclipped from his belt. “I think we’re on with the fruit bowl and chocolate chip cookies.”

  “Roger that,” we heard Emily say through the trebly speaker.

  “Walkie-talkie,” said Kirk. “Comes in handy around here.”

  The porch filled an area between two exposed balconies, where it was still a little too chilly to sit in the evening. The Lavignes had bought the place furnished, seeing no reason to replace the lovingly cared-for belongings, none of which was less than fifty years old, left by the prior owners. I particularly liked the seating—art deco bamboo with cushions you could sink into up to your neck.

  I listened to the breakers down below while Kirk rustled drinks behind the matching bamboo wet bar.

  “Glad to finally meet you, Harry,” he said as he handed over a scotch on the rocks. “Jackie likes to talk about you.”

  “She quotes you,” said Emily, arriving with the promised fruit bowl and bag of locally baked cookies. “You and her criminal friend.”

  “She means Sam,” I said. “Never convicted, I might add.”

  “Thanks to you,” said Kirk.

  Emily matched her husband perfectly. Same hair, same blue eyes, same preppy clothes and tidy stature. They were the type of couple who seemed of a piece, a single unit with two complementary parts. They spoke in alternating sentences, as if they’d rehearsed their lines beforehand.

  “I’m intrigued,” said Kirk, after food and beverages had been thoroughly distributed. “Your e-mail was so cryptic.”

  “I didn’t mean it to be,” I said. “There’s just too much to put in writing.”

  “So put it in words,” said Emily.

  So I did. Harry by now had heard the story enou
gh to add in things I forgot, along with a few observations of his own. By prior agreement, we left out Billy and the Peconic Pantry. No need to muddle things with that sideshow.

  I pulled out Eugenie’s photo of the fund-raiser and gave it to Emily. Kirk moved closer to her on the bamboo settee and tilted his head back to get a clear view of the print through his bifocals.

  “We look great,” he said.

  “Though look at that dress. What was I thinking?” said Emily.

  “This is the Children’s Relief Fund summer drive,” said Kirk. “Two years ago, maybe? I’m going by the lapel pin. Remember?”

  “We were pushing the pins. I have mine on a chain. You can see it.”

  Kirk looked up at me.

  “Is this helping?”

  “Immensely. So you think it was about two years ago, and the event was for the Children’s Relief Fund? Can you identify the other people in the photo? Here.” I handed them a pen and a notepad to write down the names, left to right. Kirk took the pad and pen, then both he and Emily arched back to focus on the shot. I could have sworn their lips pursed at the same time, in the same way.

  “Archie Milenthal, of course,” said Emily.

  “Of course. Lizzy Witherspoon. Real name, no joke.”

  “Judge Andrews, Felicity Hunt.”

  “Akim Sharadze, Benson MacAvoy.”

  “Decker Daggit, Janie Wilson.”

  “Peaches the Pomeranian.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, right there, peeking out from under the table.”

  “Cute.”

  They looked up at me.

  “How’d we do?” asked Kirk.

  “Brilliant. Can you write all that down?”

  We spent the rest of the evening listening to the Lavignes present the biographies of the people in the photo, to the best of their knowledge. Most of the commentary revolved around the usual vacuous and, for me, skin-crawling society conventions of boarding schools, trust funds, and stints in rehab. Kirk and Emily were able to deliver it all like anthropologists—observant, but with no particular allegiance to the observed. They had grown up together in a town just beyond the suburbs of Philadelphia, married after graduating from high school, put themselves through college on ROTC scholarships, and survived the Vietnam War—Kirk as an infantry officer and Emily with the Army Nurse Corps.

  People unlikely to be impressed by the fancies of the seaside gentry.

  By the end of the evening I’d begun to focus on two of the people in the photo, Janie Wilson and Benson MacAvoy. The criterion was simple. Both lived in Southampton year-round. Which meant I didn’t have to go into New York City to talk to them. I loved the city, but I just didn’t have the time. My secret investigative technique: expediency.

  Janie was part of a family who’d run a nursery business in Bridgehampton for several generations. She’d acquired some modest fame by hosting a gardening show on the local public radio station. Enough to earn the dubious honor of an invitation to the Children’s Relief Fund charity event.

  I should have identified Benson MacAvoy long before the Lavignes pointed him out. We’d had a moment a few years before at a political rally in support of a doomed knucklehead running for Congress against the lucky and, in my opinion, thoroughly corrupt knucklehead who eventually won. I’m in no way a political girl, but I had nothing else to do that night. MacAvoy was the master of ceremonies, meaning he had the mic most of the evening, and though I’d heard about his compelling antics for years, I was unprepared for just how compelling those antics could be.

  So when the night was winding down, I made the mistake of approaching him at the cash bar. I remembered his large face, with a deep scar that distorted his upper lip and prominent chin. His hair was dirty blond, long and wavy and thick, flowing back from his temples like a flag in the wind. His fingers were meaty, but manicured, unlike Sam’s or Ed Conklin’s; their hands looked like they’d been stored at the bottom of a toolbox.

  I remembered the exchange of a drink or two, or three, a fair amount of banter, which I recalled as witty though it was probably ridiculous, some gazing into each other’s eyes, an attempt on his part to extract a phone number by asking to borrow my cell, and on mine, a successful, yet somewhat reluctant, withdrawal.

  “So no interest in Peaches the Pomeranian?” asked Harry.

  “I’ll get to her in due course.”

  Kirk and Emily escorted us to the door when it was time to leave. Hugs and kisses and handshakes were passed around, ending with Kirk slapping Harry on the shoulder, which took some extension of his right arm to achieve.

  “You caught a good one,” he said.

  “I know, sir,” said Harry.

  “Just keep an open mind.”

  “I do, sir,” said Harry.

  By then I’d had enough wine and good company to let that one just pass on by.

  I drove home after picking up my car where I’d left it at Harry’s, after doing as much as I could to express my appreciation for his having kept me company that day (shy of staying the night, which greatly expanded my repertoire of ways to show appreciation).

  When I got there, a pickup was parked halfway in the woods and Ed Conklin was sitting on my doorstep.

  Poor impulse control or not, I knew better than to just leap out of the car. My house is deep enough in the woods that in summer the only lights I see are in the sky. I’m a single woman and there was a convicted felon who’d almost killed a guy with his fists sitting in the dark, waiting for me. Most people would say the prudent thing would be to back out of the driveway and go spend the night somewhere else.

  I considered that for a moment, then I leaped out of the car.

  “Hey, Ed. What’s up?” I asked, standing behind the open car door with one foot on the floor mat and one hand on the wheel.

  He squinted into the bright headlights.

  “Miss Swaitkowski? Got a minute to talk?”

  “I’m pretty flex on most stuff, Ed, but it’s better you call ahead. This is my house. I see clients in my office.”

  “Sorry. I just wandered over here. I know I shoulda called.”

  “How’d you know where I lived?” I asked.

  “I got a computer. Tells you everything.”

  Live by the sword, die by the sword.

  “Have you been drinking?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

  “A little.”

  “Here’s the thing, Ed. I can’t be okay with this as it currently stands. But if you’re willing to sit there for a bit, and agree to another person being present, we can talk. About anything you want. Otherwise, we’re done here. We all have our rules. My number one rule is the house is off-limits. You dig?”

  My front stoop is low to the ground, so he wasn’t very comfortable sitting there, his knees up in the air and his hands in the pockets of a baggy Windbreaker. Pockets big enough to hold anything, lethal or otherwise.

  “I need to talk,” he said, moving his face away from the Volvo’s headlights. “Do it any way you want.”

  I dropped back into my car, closed the door, and flicked on the door locks. I slipped the shifter into reverse and put my foot on the brakes to hold the car in place. Then I called Sam.

  “Yeah?” he said, in the charming way he usually answered the phone.

  “I need you at my house. Now. Come prepared. No time to talk.”

  The phone went dead.

  I flicked my cell phone shut and settled in to wait, one hand on the shifter and the other on the wheel, my foot on the accelerator.

  A few minutes later I started to think about cigarettes. I’ve been able to hold my intake to three or four a day, but times like this were designed for something far more engaged. I wondered about the glove box. Was there a pack in there, or was that just my hungering imagination?

  This is how I occupied myself until Sam showed up, a few minutes after I remembered there were three Marlboro Lights in the console beneath my elbow, stuck there last month for a reason I couldn
’t explain until now.

  Just in case.

  The meager orange glow from the headlights of Sam’s ’67 Grand Prix did little to illuminate the scene. I didn’t care, I was so vastly relieved to see that absurd land yacht sail down my driveway. I left the Volvo and waited for him to pull up behind me so I could jump into the passenger seat.

  “Scary client,” I said to Sam, as fast as I could get it out. “Husband of the dead girl pilot. Sitting on my doorstep.”

  “Guns?” he asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “So we haven’t called Sullivan,” said Sam, rolling down his window to get a better look at the situation. “We don’t want the dope busted. We just don’t want to be killed for our kindness.”

  “In a nutshell, yes.”

  I tossed him one of the Marlboro Lights I’d brought along and lit up both of us with a very shaky hand.

  “You’re worried about this,” said Sam.

  “You think?” I said, sucking down half the cigarette with a single draw.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Before I could stop him, he opened the door of the big car and walked over to where Ed was sitting on my doorstep. I was too far away to hear what they were saying, but I could read the body language, more or less. Sam was presenting the organizational chart to Ed, and Ed was showing enough resistance to cause Sam to settle into that pose I’d seen before—the one immediately preceding an explosion of lunatic violence.

  Though, thank God, none of that happened. I saw Conklin’s shoulders sag, giving up the fight, resigned. I saw him stand so Sam could frisk him. When Sam waved to me, I got out of the car and strolled across my gravel driveway, loose and unconcerned, like this particular scene played out here on Brick Kiln Road every day.