by Chris Knopf
A few hours later, after I’d salvaged the dubious opportunity to ride in the old pickup to the Indian Trading Post, where I bought a slightly oversized version of the black and yellow checked coat, we were on our way back to Long Island, stopping at Burlington International along the way to refuel.
“Did you get what you wanted?” Claude asked me once we were settled in.
“Sort of. Maybe I got more than I wanted. I can’t tell.”
“It sounds like you have a complicated life,” he said. “I’m glad to be just the driver.”
“Do you ever get lost up here in the sky? I can imagine you might, if you’re innocently flying along and something throws you a curve.”
He didn’t answer right away, probably out of professional reserve.
“Every pilot has his or her moments. As when your eyes are telling you one thing and your instruments another. Or when you break out of a cloud and have no idea where the hell you are. But that doesn’t happen very often these days, the technology is so good.”
“So that’s how I feel. Like I just broke out of a cloud and don’t know where the hell I am,” I said. “And no GPS.”
We flew most of the way in silence, which must have been my fault, since Claude was such an effusive guy. I was trapped inside my head, wrangling facts, fears, and assumptions, none too successfully. Though I did have what Sam calls an operating theory. A logical construct that explains most, if not all, the factors on the table, even if it can’t be proven empirically. Like blaming the loss of single socks on a prankster. Sid Kronenberg and I might buy it, but not an unbiased observer.
I was able to shake myself into consciousness as we crossed back over Long Island Sound and I saw the map of the East End drawn in beautiful greens and blues. I felt the weightless descent of the plane into East Hampton, where on landing I endured a tiny death, grieving over the fact that I hadn’t flirted with the clouds like Eugenie Birkson, and a tiny celebration, since her death felt less a tragedy for having lived her life untethered by gravity or misbegotten dreams.
20
Back on the ground and safely in my office, I called Sam Acquillo on his cell phone.
“Aren’t you glad you got one of these?” I asked when he answered.
“What?”
“Cell phone.”
“I would be if people would stop calling,” he said.
“I need company.”
“Isn’t that what Goodlander’s for?”
“Not for this trip. He just looks intimidating. I need someone who actually is.”
I told him I’d pick him up around dinnertime at his cottage, giving him time to get home, clean up, and feed Eddie. He didn’t press me further about the assignment. He owed me a lot of favors. A few hundred, by rough estimate.
Sam often employs his three Adirondack chairs out on the breakwater above the pebble beach to drink with his girlfriend and dog, and one other guest, and watch the sunset over the Little Peconic Bay. I’ve spent both productive and entirely desultory hours out there, I thought as I approached, escorted to the shoreline by the bouncing, twirling mutt.
Sam’s girlfriend, Amanda, was in her usual spot, turned slightly perpendicular to Sam so they could yak without straining their necks. Her ancestry was part Italian, which showed prominently in her deep olive complexion, which would have been her most striking feature if the rest of her hadn’t been so striking. She was a little on the other side of forty, her face was clear and wrinkle-free, and her shape just shy of too thin. Her hair was a thick reddish brown, with crimson highlights and an excess of natural wave.
I didn’t like her that much, and not because of how she looked. Though always polite, she didn’t like me much either. Sam and I had never had the slightest romantic twinge for each other, which she knew, so it wasn’t jealousy. It was something less easily defined, but components included suspicion and distrust, for me earned over years of observing her behavior. Sam, ordinarily the worst cynic at the party, didn’t really trust her either, but he definitely loved her, so that was all he needed. Things were all or nothing with Sam, one of the least appealing aspects of his personality.
Though Amanda and I didn’t like or trust each other, it never stopped us from having a pleasant time whenever we were thrust together.
“We’ve brought out wine for you,” she said, hoisting a bottle out of an ice bucket, “though there’s plenty of Sam’s Absolut if you prefer.”
“Wine’s fine. Just one. I need to stay reasonably clearheaded.”
“Sam told me you need to borrow him this evening. You will bring him back?”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
“Good. He’s agreed to fix the latch on the cabinet above my stove. I can’t go another day with crockery falling into the soufflé.”
“I like a little ceramic in the soufflé,” said Sam. “Gives you something to crunch on.”
I was also depending on Sam being reasonably clearheaded, which he always seemed to be, no matter how much vodka he downed. I once asked him about that and he said, “Practice makes perfect.”
“Tell that to your liver,” I said.
“Already have. It’s on board.”
While I had my glass of wine we watched the sky light up in purply red and gold, which was reflected on the nearly still waters of the Little Peconic. I’d noticed that the best of the sunset, the finale, comes right after the sun dips completely below the horizon. That night was no exception. The show then gradually slid into denouement, the brilliance fading to a gentle glow. Sometimes I believe that’s all the beauty God thinks we can take.
“Come on, Sam,” I said. “Time to go. Thanks for the wine,” I said to Amanda, who waved as if we were already halfway across the lawn.
I briefed Sam while we drove to Sag Harbor. I brought him up-to-date with what I’d learned, and gave him my hypothesis. I used that exact word, because that’s the kind of word he liked to use.
“So we’re going to his house?” Sam asked.
I pulled the printout from MapQuest off my dashboard and handed it to him.
“You navigate.”
Sag Harbor is a densely packed old whaling town that people discovered about twenty years ago had more than its share of colonial charm, side by side with a certain artistic and bohemian attitude, disappointing the people who’d discovered twenty years before that it was also an unpretentious and affordable place to live in the Hamptons. No longer. Still loaded with charm, it had succumbed to the same tidal wave of urbanity and property inflation that had swept over the rest of the South Fork.
Just outside the village proper were bigger lots with bigger houses, a few on Sag Harbor Bay, a name that always seemed redundant to me. Benson MacAvoy owned one of those, just to the west before you crossed over a bridge and dropped into town. He also had a dock, he’d told me, with its very own seventy-foot Hinckley Sou’wester sloop, which might have cost about the same as the house.
Our timing was flawless. Just as we approached the head of his driveway he turned in front of us in a battered Mercedes station wagon. We followed him down the drive and up to a parking area paved with white pebbles. His house was classic modern, which sounds like an oxymoron, but people out here would likely know what I mean—houses designed in the 1950s and ’60s to look like boxes so people living in them could feel superior to those stuck in the same old shingle-style colonials with big gables, deep eaves, handsome twelve-pitch roofs, and wraparound porches supported by ionic columns.
This was an enlarged version of the former, two stories with decks everywhere and a big slab of painted concrete that looked like Kubrick’s 2001 monolith soaring above the boxes, presumably a chimney designed to serve multiple fireplaces.
Benson jumped out of his car and ran over to meet us.
“Hey, Jackie. Wassup? Who’s your friend?” We got out of the Volvo and Sam walked around to shake hands. Benson said, “Benson MacAvoy, political adviser.”
“Sam Acquillo. Carpenter.”
/> “He’s being modest,” I said. “He also builds kitchen cabinets.”
“Come on in.”
We followed him through a flat-panel door and up a flight of stairs to a large open room that encompassed the kitchen, dining area, and living room, divided by the black slab, which in fact allowed for fireplaces facing several directions. The wall across the room was solid glass, not unlike the one in Benson’s office, only there was a lot more of it. The view was better as well—Sag Harbor’s town docks, marinas, the yacht club, and the mooring field directly outside, already filling up with boats for the season.
“Love going to work; love coming home,” said Benson. “Bar’s over there.” He pointed to one end of the living room. “Help yourself while I shed the work duds.” Sam complied without further prompting, pleased as punch to find a giant bottle of Grey Goose. I accepted a white wine with a single ice cube.
We soaked in the view until Benson reemerged wearing jeans, a Yale sweatshirt, and brown leather Top-Siders. He made himself a martini in the traditional glass, an approach I wanted to enjoy, though I always found it hard to take the first sip without feeling an icy rivulet stream down my forearm.
“What’s the occasion?” he asked, waving us over to a set of squared-off, suede-covered couches that were surprisingly firm on the butt. “Not that I mind. Always good to see Jackie S. How did you find my house? Oh yeah, on the Internet. The end of privacy as we know it. Not that I don’t take advantage myself when sniffing out political donors. I go on Google Earth and look for the biggest swimming pool, then cross-reference with the longest boat under registration and the frequency of outraged posts to the right blogs, and bingo. An invitation to personally impose on my candidate is in the mail.”
“A search-and-impose operation,” I said. “Sounds like what I spend half my life doing.”
“So, Sam,” said Benson, “are you friend or bodyguard?”
He said it with a smile, making a joke.
“Bodyguard,” said Sam.
“So you’re drinking on duty,” he said, still in joke mode.
“It’s in the contract.”
Not sure where to go from there, he said to me, “Speaking of political donations, we’re having an intimate get-together for you-know-who”—he held up a Time magazine lifted off the coffee table with one of our senators on the cover—“this weekend at you-know-who’s house on Georgica Pond.” He held up a copy of People magazine. “Would you like to come?”
“Who knows?” I said.
“Funny. No donation necessary. You’ll be my date. Just supply the wit and good looks. For that I recommend what you were wearing at Eugenie’s funeral.”
“Can’t do that,” I said. “That’s only for funerals.”
“Now there’s a waste.”
“As for the date, I just got engaged to my boyfriend. Otherwise, I’d be all over it. Preening and grandiosity are my two favorite spectator sports.”
“I’m not doing anything this weekend,” said Sam.
“Too bad,” said Benson, still trying to lock up my eyes. “But realize, never-say-never is my middle name.”
“Names,” said Sam. “They’re your three middle names.”
Benson gestured at Sam with his drink.
“So Jackie’s not the only wit in the house. She brought along a supporting cast.”
“Who’s supporting whom?” said Sam.
“I was wondering why you said you didn’t know Eugenie very well,” I said, after sitting back on the hard couch and taking a sip of wine, “even though you’ve known her since you both were teenagers.”
Benson’s grin was truly a radiant and overpowering thing. When you had him in a room, even one this large, it felt like half room, half grin, so potent was its blinding glare. No wonder politicians and plutocrats paid so much to listen to his advice. The delivery alone was worth the price.
“Jackie, everybody who went to high school here in those days knew everybody else. There weren’t that many of us. You assume it. I was one of the few whose fathers worked in the city. My mom wanted me to go to public school because she went to public school, even though her father could have bought all the private schools in town.”
“You didn’t just know her. You were good friends with her brother. And my brother, too. The three of you were, in your words, ‘best buds.’ None of which you thought worth sharing with me.”
He bobbed his shoulders up and down and looked beseechingly around the room, as if petitioning an invisible audience.
“What, am I on This Is Your Life? We was kids.” He said that last bit with a theatrical attempt at Jewish inflection. “I had some good friends. So the fuck what? They weren’t my best buds, actually. I had some better buds. By the way, I like the played-down look, Jackie, but the outfit the other night? Much better.” He used two hands to draw imaginary cleavage on his chest. “Don’t tell Mr. Mountain,” he added, looking at Sam.
“What’s the cabin in Bedard for?” I asked.
Benson’s grin flicked off.
“Bedard? Sounds like ‘retard.’ ”
“It’s a town in Vermont,” I said.
“That explains it. Too much inbreeding up there.”
“Why did Eugenie fly you up there?” I asked.
“She told you that? No, of course not. She’s dead.”
“She didn’t tell me in words,” I said. “But she told me. And it’s admissible. That’s legal talk, meaning I can prove it.”
Benson kept up the bewildered, put-upon act.
“Prove what? What are we talking about here? This is nuts. Are you her adult supervisor?” he said to Sam. “What’s this, inmates’ night out? What’s with you? Okay, it’s the Inquisition. That’s why you brought along the enforcer,” he said, looking at Sam. “So you could intimidate me. Not happening.”
“Not my intention,” I said.
“You know where I got this scar?” said Benson, pointing at his lip and looking over at Sam, who said, “Badminton?”
“Middleweight intramural boxing champion, Yale. Actually happened when I slipped and slammed into the post. Took twenty stitches to sew her up.”
Sam raised his hand without lifting his arm from the armrest.
“Light heavyweight contender, the Bronx and contiguous venues. Five years amateur, two professional. Don’t even think about it.”
Benson scowled, his political skills beginning to fray.
“So what’s this all about, Jackie,” he said, turning back to me. “Seriously, you’re freaking me out.”
“You first. Why didn’t you tell me you knew Eugenie and her brother since high school? And why didn’t you tell me you knew my brother? In any normal conversation, when people meet, these are the first things you bring up.”
“I don’t know. Who knows? Didn’t seem important.” Benson sat very still on his suede couch. “You need to tell me where you’re going with this.”
“To the FBI. I got ’em on speed dial,” I said, holding up my cell phone. “Oh, and by the way,” I said, flipping the phone open, “this little bugger keeps a record of every call, going back months. Date and time of day—or night, in this case. You weren’t trying to get my phone number at that political event. You were sending what you thought was an untraceable signal. Just like you did at the Lavignes’. And I’ll bet every other fund-raiser you’ve been to with Janie Wilson. Excellent ploy, sort of, since you’re about to go down for it.”
“For what?” he asked, his exasperation turning the word “what” into two syllables.
“Selling a corporation’s proprietary technical information to another corporation,” said Sam. “Few in law enforcement much care about that sort of thing usually, unless the information is thought to be vital to our national security. And then they care very much indeed.”
“And you know this from making kitchen cabinets?” asked Benson.
“You’d be amazed,” I said.
“You really think I’d do something like that? That is s
o bizarre,” said Benson.
“You’re a skill guy,” I said. “You told me yourself. Sell to the highest bidder.”
Benson took a sip of his martini, a trick made even more difficult by the slight tremor in his hand.
“If you actually believe all this blather, why am I talking to you and not the FBI?” he asked.
“Where is Matt Birkson Jr.?” I asked.
He used both hands to drum his fingers on the arms of his chair.
“Maybe you already know the answer to that and you’re baiting me,” he said. “You might be a lawyer, but I’ve been in politics my whole life. I know a sandbag when I see one about to drop on my head.”
“You’ve got twenty-four hours to deliver Matt Jr.”
I checked my wrist for dramatic emphasis, a gesture undermined somewhat by my not actually having a watch.
“Or what?” he asked.
“Twenty-four hours,” I said.
I downed my wine, stood up, and gestured at Sam to do the same. Which he did, looking wistfully at his empty glass.
I led the way out of the house and over to my car. Sam lit a cigarette and handed it to me after we climbed aboard, then lit one for himself. I rolled down the windows and drove off.
“You implied that if he gave you what you wanted you wouldn’t drop a dime on the industrial espionage,” said Sam.
“I did. I lied. The Supreme Court has ruled that cops can lie their heads off in the course of an interrogation if the intention is to yield truthful testimony. I’m adopting that same privilege for myself. For naught, I’m sure, but I needed him to know I was on his ass. A little pressure can often squirt out some useful behavior.”
“Like somebody killing you,” he said, tactful as ever.
“What makes you think that?” I asked, slightly alarmed.
“Someone’s already tried it; rape was just a bonus. If you’re right about this guy, it could be him, or his agent. They’d likely ramp up the effort.”
“Let him try. I’m ready.”
“You should let me stay with you,” said Sam.
“We’ve been over this already. Not gonna happen. Anyway, what good are you? Can’t shoot for shit.”