by Chris Knopf
“There’s no way to tell,” he said. “He could be right, he could be wrong. In the absence of corroborating evidence, even circumstantial, you have to tilt toward the single attacker theory.”
Then I told him about the interview with the DHS, but only after the bartender was down at the other end of the bar. That got his attention, as it had mine.
Having spent years managing technology development at his company, Sam had the genuine authority to address corporate espionage. He told me his former employer would only release proprietary processes after they’d been thoroughly commercialized and replicated around the world. Anything in bench test stayed in his labs under strict security.
“And we were only refining crude oil and optimizing petro-chemical plants, which has been going on for a hundred years. It’s much more serious in other industries.”
“Like what?”
He thought about it.
“Anything defense related. It could be communications, data processing, robotics, satellites, aerospace, that sort of thing.”
“We don’t make any of that stuff in the Hamptons.”
“There’s more to Long Island than the Hamptons. Like Brookhaven, for example. And Northrop Grumman. And all the crap that goes into things like that. Everyone thinks they make biological weapons out on Plum Island. Maybe they do. It’s a cinch they study ways to counter the biological weapons that might be out there. And Connecticut’s right across the Sound. They make submarines and engines for fighter jets up there. Within a hundred mile radius, you probably have the highest concentration of classified technology in the world.”
So I don’t know that much, I said to myself. Here’s to lifetime learning. I took a sip of my drink, then put my head down on the bar.
“There’s no connection to any of this. Where’s the connection.”
“Boxes and arrows,” said Sam.
“Aw, crap, not with the Zen. Not now.”
“I don’t mean physical boxes and arrows. I mean the ones you draw on a pad. It’s how you troubleshoot a process failure. Follow the flow, look for patterns and anomalies. Sketch out the whole thing in front of you.”
He pulled a pencil out of his back pocket and used it to draw on my manila envelope. He made me list all the key facts, or assumptions, about the case. There was a lot, and it took a while and ate up the whole side of the envelope. When I felt tapped out, he flipped it over and drew several boxes, which he labeled “buckets.”
“That’s what I call a locus of information. In engineering it’d be a side process or a subsystem.”
Then he drew lines between the boxes, on which he marked, in abbreviated language, shared characteristics or definite connections.
“This is how you start to build a relational database before you go near writing code,” he said. “Figure out what goes with what and how.”
I have to admit, I started to feel the way I had back in Randall’s shop when he started to jigger around with the photograph. It’s not that I didn’t find things like this interesting; I was just more interested in the outcome than in the process itself.
“So what do we know,” I said, before watching him erase and rewrite an indecipherable abbreviation in beautiful block letters for the hundredth time caused a blood vessel to burst.
“Are you familiar with attention deficit disorder?” he asked. “Do you know you’re afflicted with it?”
“Yes. You told me it correlates highly with intelligence. Just cut to the chase.”
“Three men and the fund-raiser photo,” he said, then ordered another drink.
“Excellent. You’re amazing. Case closed.”
“You asked me what we know. Clinton thinks there were three men in his store that night. The DHS interviewed you, asked about three men.”
“And a woman. And the reflections in the Delbert’s photo, if they’re real, are only two.”
“Nothing’s perfect. The fund-raiser photo has multiple interconnections. It was on Eugenie’s memory card. It lives on the photographer’s Web site. It cross-references with two people who also connect at several points, three if you count Lavigne’s wife. It was one of the four photographs shown to you by the DHS.”
“Who’s the third?”
“Benson MacAvoy. He was at the Children’s Relief Fund event where the photo was taken, and he was at the political fund-raiser you attended, as were the other people on the DHS list, including Kirk Lavigne, if you believe the DHS. He was also at Eugenie’s funeral, which gives him another correlation point.”
I looked at his boxes and arrows and saw, more or less, what he was getting at. It didn’t really give up any answers, but at least there was a little order brought to the chaos. I pointed to one of the boxes.
“What’s this?”
“Lower-order locus. People with criminal records. Conklin, Matt Birkson, and Billy O’Dwyer. By the way, three men.”
“There’s only one line connecting it to the other boxes,” I said. “What’s BV mean?”
“Benson MacAvoy. He bridges the fund-raiser photo and the ex-cons.”
“Hm. I guess I should pay a little more attention to Benson. He’d like that, attention hound that he is.”
“That’s what I would do,” said Sam, holding up his glass so the bartender could grab it as he passed by.
“Would you flirt with him?”
“Probably not.”
“He’s an impossible flirt.”
“That’s a good thing?” he asked.
“Sometimes. I spend so much of my life around cops, cons, and thugs like you, it’s nice for someone to notice you’re a girl once in a while.”
“You’re a girl?”
“Jesus Christ.”
I took the manila envelope with me when I left the bar, shocked at how sunny it was outside. I called Randall, who told me he needed more time. I offered to bring him anything he wanted, but he said the pizza had arrived and was already half-consumed. He said to stay tuned and hung up.
I finally made it back to my office after that, and found it clear of threateners, rapists, or other hostile action, if you didn’t count the surveyor passing me in the hall without making eye contact. Before opening the door I bent down and checked the hair I’d stuck to the bottom of the jamb like I once saw in a James Bond movie. It was intact. I entered with confidence.
I took the Glock and my laptop out of my giant feed-bag purse and stripped off all my clothes. Then I ran through all the other rituals that ramped up to my first wine of the day, and settled in for the night in front of the computer.
This was interrupted somewhat by a decision to smoke a joint, which led to a nap on the sofa that ended after nightfall, so when I woke up I didn’t know where I was for a few moments. Panic erupted as I jumped up and cleared a table of papers in search of the Glock. When my hand felt its smooth, warm, polymer-framed body, I dropped down into a corner and leveled the barrel at the door, and waited.
What happened next was a return to sanity as I remembered where I was. As consciousness reconstituted, I also remembered the dream I’d been having, one in which I lay in bed over on Brick Kiln Road and heard the sounds of footsteps moving down the hall outside my door.
“Crap,” I said into the darkness, though I stayed put until I was utterly certain I was alone above a row of shops and restaurants in Water Mill.
“Sorry, I lied,” I told the darkness. “I’m not okay. Not in any way.”
Counting the nap, I slept over ten hours that night. I was astonished at how remarkably refreshed I felt as a consequence. I fairly bounded out of bed and dove into my morning routine, skipping the shower. Then I threw myself into the credit fraud research project for most of the day. For me, therapy comes in many forms, and demanding professional work is often the most effective, short term. Plus you get a feeling of accomplishment, and if you’re lucky, you get paid for it.
Late in the afternoon, I finally took my shower and geared up for the night work. I ate a bagel while I let my
hair dry enough to give the hair dryer a sporting chance, then, using a single finger, I Googled MacAvoy and Partners, saving the results to my hard drive, then jotting down the address and phone number on a piece of paper I could bury in my purse.
Choice of clothes was the main struggle. There were so many approaches I could take. The cowboy was out, as was the castrating lady lawyer I’d shared with Homeland Security. I was wearing my funeral outfit the last time I talked to Benson, but that was clearly a big not.
I decided on a blue oxford button-down shirt, a khaki skirt, and nearly sensible heels. And a brown leather flight jacket. Preppy with flair, not unlike Benson himself.
Studying myself in the mirror, I freed an extra button on my shirt, just to slightly modulate the impact.
The evening was a repeat of the one before, though noticeably warmer. I cracked the window of the Volvo and let the manufactured wind stir up the dust on the dashboard and flutter papers around on the backseat.
Contravening my established strategy, I called ahead to make sure he’d be in his office. Since he spent much of his life in airplanes, this wasn’t an unreasonable precaution. I also thought he’d actually want to see me, which wasn’t usually the case with other people, though that might have been an unjustified compliment to myself.
Turns out he actually did.
“Love to see you, Jackie. You’ve never been to my office, right? You’ll love the view. I’m right on Sag Harbor Bay. I can’t believe you caught me here. I just got back from D.C. Before that, Dubai. Now that’s a nutty place. Nice, though, if you can take the heat. I bought a James Brown CD from a street urchin. Been listening to it on my iPod ever since. Do we love James Brown or what? Can’t sing like Wilson Pickett, but had a much better band. His own boys. The Famous Flames. Maceo! You like funk? I think you do. I can tell by the way you walk. Got a good rock and roll.”
I had to pretend I was losing the signal to get him off the phone. Not that I didn’t want to talk to him, I just had to fortify myself after a day alone. It’s hard enough to switch into social mode with normal people.
As described, his office was on the second floor of a small commercial building, like mine, only his had a balcony that overlooked the inner waterways of Sag Harbor Bay.
Before climbing the stairs I put on fresh lipstick and tried to use the rearview mirror to check my hair, which I guess worked out well enough.
“Hey, Jackie. Look at you,” said Benson, swinging open the door and gathering me into a bear hug. I hugged him back.
“Look at me. I’m in your office. How ’bout that?”
It was a single room, with a seating area of big overstuffed couches anchored by a glass coffee table, a wet bar off to the left, and a desk made from a huge slab of mahogany mounted on thick black metal legs. The desk sat in front of a wall of windows and sliding glass doors that exposed the balcony and the bay beyond. The floor was stained oak, mostly covered by antique Persian rugs. The right wall was all black bookcase, composed of boxes set on the diagonal, as were the discreetly placed books inside.
Benson wore a pink shirt, open at the collar, and white pants, with a blue and gold fabric belt that should have clashed but on him looked authorized by the head buyer at Brooks Brothers. On his feet were extremely Italian yet entirely busted-up loafers worn without socks, which I caught myself admiring at the same time he was looking at my pumps.
“Espresso?” he asked. “With a twist? Or Cognac. That’s all I have.”
“Espresso sounds fine.”
It was more like a tiny tub of thick, bitter tar, but still surprisingly good. As he worked at the espresso machine he told me how he’d fallen in love with the space, beaten the landlord into submitting to his rental offer, and done all the decorating himself with the scant help of his mother, who hadn’t set foot in the place because she simply despised ticky-tacky tourist Sag Harbor, in her words.
“So what’s the occasion?” he asked once we were submerged with our espressos a few feet into his soft leather couches.
“The rumor is the NTSB is going to declare Eugenie’s crash an accident,” I said. “Her husband, Ed, doesn’t buy it, and neither does her stepson. You knew her pretty well, maybe as a customer in ways they didn’t. I was wondering if you had an opinion.”
“Loved Eugenie,” said Benson. “And don’t think I haven’t thought about being in that little plane with her over a lot of miles, that I could’ve been there again at the wrong time, in the wrong place. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not just thinking about myself, but you got to admit, it’s a little freaky.”
“Did she ever get into trouble when you were on board?”
He downed his espresso and, with some effort, put the empty cup on the glass table. Then sank back into the sofa. He scratched his mane of hair with both hands.
“Not that I was aware of. I was just the passenger. Those little planes can get pretty bouncy sometimes, but she’d tell me it was SOP and to sit back and enjoy the massage. So I did. So no, I never had a moment when I felt I wasn’t safe. You look great in heels, by the way. Have I told you that already?”
I wanted to get a picture of Clinton Andrews and put it side by side with Benson’s and label them, respectively, smile and grin. Where Clinton was soothing, symmetrical perfection, Benson was all jagged edges, crooked incisors, and crow’s-feet. The resurrected prince versus the rambunctious boy.
“I do look good in heels. Glad you noticed. You look good in pink. In a masculine way.”
“I think that Cognac would be a delightful second course,” said Benson.
“Agreed.”
The really confusing thing was that Harry Goodlander was never far from my mind. Even though this privileged brat with the wild hair, motorized mouth, and wolfish mug had a way of flicking on little switches that I didn’t even know I had.
He handed me a snifter that was only about half the size of my head. We clinked.
“How long did you know her?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Eugenie.”
“Gee, a lotta years. My dad discovered her air taxi when he was looking for a faster way to get up to Boston than trudging across the sound on the ferry and driving up I-95. He’s a management consultant. Makes a lot of money asking to see your watch, then telling you what time it is. Dumped my mother five years ago for a Greek slut. How do I know she’s a slut? I introduced them. Is this too much information?”
It was, but how do you say that?
“Sorry,” is what I came up with.
“Don’t be for me. Business is great; I got a nice office, an expensive car, and zero sexually transmitted diseases. As of less than two weeks ago, and I’ve been a monk the whole time.”
“Your dad can’t be a kid,” I said, eager to refocus the conversation.
“Seventy-five. Looks fifty. In great shape. Tennis, bourbon, and Viagra, I believe, is the magic formula. My mom, on the other hand, looks worse than my grandmother did at her wake. Man years are different from woman years. It’s not fair. Though you’ll do fine. You’ve got good bones. Like your brother. Pale skin, thick hide.”
A tiny electric current thrilled up the back of my spine.
“You knew my brother?”
He jerked back his head and scrunched up his face like he’d just been assaulted by a foul odor.
“You pulling my leg? Best buds. I thought you knew that. You mean you talked to me just for me? I was in your house a bunch of times. I remember you sitting on the kitchen floor with your legs stuck out, playing jacks. Your mom hated me; I don’t know why. Your old man wasn’t much better, but he liked talking fish. I’d crewed on a shark boat out of Montauk, which he thought was pretty cool. It was pretty cool. Billy went out with me a few times. Geez, I can’t believe you didn’t know all this. Sorry.”
Why would I know? I thought. That was thirty years ago. I was a little kid. I remembered lots of guys tramping through the house. They were generic older boys, more than ten years older than me. May
as well have been from another planet. They had nothing to do with me. I had my own world, my own wracking fears and disappointments. Billy got to dine with royalty. I was in steerage, just trying to keep my head above water.
“I didn’t know,” I said, softly, looking into my snifter.
“Aren’t I the insensitive shit,” said Benson. “I’m really sorry. I’m sure that whole thing with Billy was wicked hard on you. And your parents. He was my best friend, but it’s not the same as being related. I know that. I wanted to go to the trial, but my mother put her foot down, and I was trying to keep from flunking out of my first semester at Yale, and to be honest, I was a tad disappointed with Billy. No offense. I know about innocent till proven guilty, but he did confess, after all.”
“Why would that be offensive?”
“Heard recently he was in Port Jeff selling shit over the phone.”
“Who told you that?”
“Don’t remember. Too much stuff to keep track of. I think I just screwed up.”
Benson looked thoroughly pained. I felt a bit pained myself for whatever role I’d played in putting him there. The only way to shake it off was to throw myself back at the task at hand.
“So you can’t imagine who’d want to hurt her,” I said. “Eugenie, I mean.”
“We didn’t talk much about our private lives. She seemed nuts about her husband, Ed. Not so much about her stepson, but nothing major, not that I knew of. I’m a stepson now myself. Pretty weird. Alexandria is younger than me. I saw her drape her skirt over the head of some guy at a club in Manhattan, make out with a famous actress in the back of a limousine, and do shots of ouzo until they poured out her ears. Now she’s the hostess at my dad’s Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a good thing she’s not my type. Life’s complicated enough.”
The sun had dipped well behind Shelter Island, turning the light in Benson’s office a dim red. I wanted to turn on a lamp, but the Cognac was starting to pin me to the leather couch, which had adhesive properties of its own.
“Benson, you’ve been around. Level with me,” I said, though not as crisply as I wanted. “Did you ever see, or suspect, Eugenie of doing anything illicit? As in illegal shipping and receiving?”