by Chris Knopf
So instead of thinking about all the stuff I didn’t want to think about I spent the next two weeks putting trim, baseboards and crown moldings in Melinda McCarthy’s new house. She’d picked some fairly simple molded poplar, easy to work with and destined for paint, so it wasn’t a hard job. The painters were right behind me, plugging holes, caulking and sanding over my lapses in concentration. They were Spanish guys. Central American, as were most of the Spanish people moving into the hard labor jobs on Long Island. Worked like bastards. Kept their heads down, trying to be invisible to administrative threats. Friendly enough, amused by my mangled Spanish. I thought about asking them how to say “be a good Doberman and go bite your little shit of an owner” but never got around to it.
When I was done with the job I took part of my pay and invested it in a case of Absolut and a harvest of fresh fruits and vegetables from the fancy green grocer in the Village. Countervailing forces. I was just settling into one of my rotting Adirondack chairs with a plateful of celery and the first vodka of the evening when I caught some movement over at the place next door. Eddie was already trotting across the lawn in that direction.
The evening was warm, but a fresh westerly was doing a good job of sweeping the languid haze of the day off the beach so the magic-hour light of the sun could saturate the dune grass and hydrangea growing along the breakwater. It looked good on Amanda, too, as she strode across her lawn to meet Eddie and toss him another Big Dog biscuit. She had the type of skin that looked slightly tanned even in the dead of winter. But it was July, and she was a deep reddish brown, contrasting sharply with her pale yellow dress. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but I could tell she was looking at me. I was about to look away when she waved. I waved back. No self control.
“I have a nicely chilled bottle of white,” she called to me, holding it aloft. “But I could use a place to sit.”
While I was working on a response she crossed her yard, stepped carefully over Reginas wildflower garden and the collapsed split-rail fence that divided the properties, and completed the trip to my Adirondacks. She usually had a way of hiding behind her thick auburn hair, but the freshening breeze off the water was brushing it aside, bathing her face in the evening light. Up close, the dress looked like some kind of rayon that flowed around her legs and painted itself across her midriff and breasts. She stood in front of my chair holding the wine bottle by the neck, tapping it distractedly against her thigh.
“And a glass,” she said.
“And a corkscrew. Unless you’re planning to use your teeth.”
“And an invitation would be nice.”
“You’re already here.”
She used the bottle to point to the other chair.
“To sit. You could say, Have a seat.”
I stood up and took the wine bottle out of her hand and brought it into the house. I pulled the cork and brought the bottle back with a wineglass. It was meant for red wine, but it was all I had. When I got there Amanda was in my chair, legs crossed with an espadrille dangling from her toe. Overall, you’d have to say Amanda was a beautiful woman, but her legs, now mostly on display, could stop your heart. She tapped on the arm of the other chair.
“Here, take a load off”
I poured her wine and lit a cigarette. She took a sip and leaned her head back in the Adirondack. I was grateful she didn’t want to clink glasses. Instead we just sat there and worked on our drinks for a few minutes, pretending to be hypnotized by the restless splendor of the Little Peconic Bay.
“I have to admit I was a little surprised you never wanted to talk to me again,” Amanda finally said, easing right up to the crux of the matter.
I was grateful to have the Peconic to look at, though I’d have been happier if a distraction like the Loch Ness monster or a flying saucer had suddenly presented itself. Instead I had to be content with the coming sunset lighting up the edges of the miniature bay waves, throwing off a warm glint in contrast with the cool blue of the troughs in between.
“Didn’t have that much to talk about.”
“Takes a lot of reticence to fill up eight months.”
“You had a lot to work out.”
“Alone, as it turned out. It’s common knowledge that women love to go through wrenching personal experiences on their own, with no help or support from people they thought cared about them. It’s a female characteristic. Steely resolve to go it alone. Take it like a man, so to speak.”
“I told you I always end in disappointment.”
“You did. And you never lied to me,” she said.
“I never did.”
“But I lied to you,” she said. “That’s what you’re saying.”
“It’s not what I’m saying. Though you did lie to me, since you mention it.”
She had been looking at me, but now got distracted by the Little Peconic Bay.
“The last time I saw you was in the courtroom,” she said. “Roy was giving his statement. He kept looking over the prosecutor’s shoulder, at the back of the room. I followed his eyes and saw you.”
Roy Battiston was Amanda’s ex-husband. He’d tried to scam her out of her inheritance, among other things, but I got in his way. Amanda might have been mixed up in those other things, I never worked it all out. Roy would have given her up, probably, but the deal I cut with him made that impossible. I don’t know why I played it that way, exactly. I never worked that one out either.
“I had nothing else to do that day” I told her. “Too much time on my hands. That’s why I started working for Frank Entwhistle. That and no money”
“You left without a word. I waited outside the courthouse for an hour, thinking you’d just gone off to buy a pack of cigarettes and you’d be back.”
I couldn’t help my eyes from drifting over to her bare ankle, which was connected to an agreeably fashioned calf and long muscular thigh, and then on up to her face, still partially concealed behind a pair of wraparound sunglasses.
“You look good.”
She tore herself away from the Peconic and shook her head at me.
“I’m trying to talk to you about the most difficult and painful things imaginable and you tell me I look good. You never told me that before.”
“I didn’t. But I thought it. So that’s kind of like a lie. A lie of omission.”
“It’s my nice yellow dress.”
“The dress is doing its part,” I agreed.
“That’s why I bought it.”
“Good choice. Fashion standards are high out here on Oak Point.”
“You’re avoiding and deflecting. Again.”
“I think the grandifloras almost all the way in bloom. Early this year.”
I whistled to Eddie, who was out on the breakwater asserting dominance over the local waterfowl. He trotted over and sat down in front of Amanda, looking expectantly.
“Your fault,” I said to her.
“Must be love.”
“Stomach love.”
He stood and wriggled up close to put his head in her lap, challenging further the capacity of the yellow dress to conceal the tops of her thighs.
“Hay que perro tan bueno,” I said to him.
Amanda mussed around with his ears.
“I tried to reach you at the hospital after they blew you up. But they said you didn’t want any calls.”
“I wasn’t blown up. Just blown around a little.”
“You and your lady friend.”
“Jackie Swaitkowski’s her name and she’s my lawyer.”
“I thought Burton was your lawyer.”
“He’s my friend. Jackie’s my friend and my lawyer. Come to think of it, Burton’s your lawyer.”
“Only because of you. To get me through the divorce and estate settlement. You can imagine how complicated that was. He did it because you wanted him to look after me.”
“I never told him to.”
Eddie caught sight of something moving out on the pebble beach and bolted after it. Amanda go
t up and followed him, bringing along her wineglass. I stayed put so I could watch the way the breeze brushed her thick hair all the way to one side and messed around with her dress. I remembered the first time I saw her walk across a beach, coming toward me against the wind. It was the first time I saw her whole face. Something about it dislodged a critical component inside in my brain. My better judgment, maybe, but that’s what happens when your brain dislodges.
“I’m a fool for coming here,” she said, back from the breakwater and standing in front of me.
“Too late for that.”
“Too late?”
“Regret and self-incrimination. They’re disallowed. Oak Point regulations. You’re permitted to avoid and deflect. Even lie by omission. But you’re not allowed to come out here, looking like that, and move in like you own the place, even if you do, and start angling for sympathy and understanding with idiotic throwaway lines like that.”
She whipped the last mouthful of wine on the ground and pointed the glass at me, anger gathering around her eyes.
“Can I refill that for you?” I asked before she could say what she was about to say. She stood frozen for a few moments, then relented. I picked up the bottle as she held out her glass.
“It’s easy to see why people stay clear of you,” she said.
“I’m working on that. Trying a little self-improvement.”
“Let me know if it takes,” she said, sipping her wine and slowly lowering herself back into the Adirondack.
We put our heads back and silently watched the evening settle like a velvet blanket over the bay. The conversation from there was blessedly superficial and free of disturbing undertones, and the drinks blunted whatever ambition either of us had to journey into more treacherous territory, so when the sun finally dropped below the horizon she went back to her house and I went into mine to get some sleep, however tortured with remorse and tangled in conflicting impulses it would have to be.
ELEVEN
WHEN I HEADED UP research and development for one of the world’s largest industrial companies, I took some adolescent comfort in knowing I could kick the ass of any other division head. To say nothing of senior management and the board of directors, with the possible exception of Jason Fligh, who like many brilliant black people my age had gained access to opportunity playing college football. He’d been a running back at Penn and was almost as fit in his current job as president of the University of Chicago. He told me if I met his faculty I’d understand why.
I never had a chance to test my inflated self-regard with the divisional VPs, though I did break the chief corporate counsel’s nose, thereby abruptly truncating what had been a relatively seamless rise through the corporate matrix. I don’t remember actually popping him one, though I know I did it from the sting on my knuckles and the subsequent commotion.
That one episode notwithstanding, I far preferred engineering to boxing. Though I never lost the habit of going to the gym and jumping rope, sparring and hitting the bag. A habit that had once developed into a near obsession, leading me to spend hours during the week and big chunks of the weekend at a boxing gym in New Rochelle.
In retrospect it’s easy to understand why. Gave me a place to go that wasn’t my house or office. And a way to exhaust some of the toxic wastes thrown off by my nervous system and accreted around my heart during the day.
Soon after moving into my parents’ cottage I found a crappy little boxing gym just inside the charred pine barrens north of Westhampton Beach. There weren’t any real fighters out of there, it was only a workout joint, though a few of the young Shinnecock Indians looked capable of getting serious if there’d been anyone to teach them how. The other guys were mostly municipal types—cops, road crews and volunteer firemen. I was the only one who actually knew how to work a bag or even throw a proper punch. Most of them would break their wrists before they had a chance to do any real damage. Not that I let anyone try on me. I never sparred with amateurs without serious supervision from the corners. Too easy to get out of hand, for tempers to ignite when the poor dopes realize they keep getting socked and never seem to land one of their own.
The gym was called Sonny’s and it was started by an ex-cop named Ronny who thought the area needed a place for poor African-American and Shinnecock kids to hang out and have a legal way to beat the crap out of each other, and occasionally get a shot at a cop outside his patrol car, stripped of ordnance and imperial invincibility. Which is more or less how it worked out, to Ronnys credit. Or Sonny’s, whoever he was.
Sonny’s was up in the woods above West Hampton, on the periphery of the pine barrens, just inside the area caught in a huge fire a few years ago. Never a pretty looking place, the pale green cinder block building now stuck out against the charred pines and bright green second growth like a post-apocalyptic architectural fantasy. Not that it would threaten the aesthetic sensibilities of the clientele.
Sullivan often worked out there in the morning, so I forced myself out of the house in time to pick up a cup of hazelnut at the coffee place in the Village and still get there before he staggered into the showers.
I found him bludgeoning the sandbag with little effect.
“You ought to keep your elbow a little higher with that right hand,” I told him. “It’ll put more shoulder into the jab.”
“Not interested in any of that Marcus of Queensberry shit.”
“Tough talk with Marcus out of town.”
“Stinkin’ French.”
“Some of my best friends have been French.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Three out of four grandparents. Though to be fair I only met my old man’s mother once or twice. Hard woman. Could have shown Marcus a thing or two.”
Sullivan stopped slogging at the bag and held it with both gloved hands, steadying himself.
“You want to crap all over the Irish for a few minutes so we can call it even?”
“I want to talk about Jonathan Eldridge. After I get a little time on the bag. Now that you got it softened up.”
“Have at it.”
I caught up with him about an hour later at a diner on Montauk Highway in Hampton Bays. When I was growing up it was open twenty-four hours, making it a prime late-hour destination, a way station for teenagers and husbands to sober up a little before sneaking into the house. Now it was going the way of all local joints within striking distance of the beach, serving Belgian waffles with strawberries along with the standard greasy eggs and ham. I mostly went for the French roast coffee served in a china cup and saucer.
“I wondered when you were going to turn up,” said Sullivan, squeezing himself into the booth.
“Frank asked me to do some trim work. But I talked to some people before that.”
“Yeah? What do you think?”
The waitress came by so I had to wait while he ordered a few tons of carbohydrates with a side of ham.
“Be still my heart.”
“All that bag work, man. Gotta feed the engine. So, what do you think?”
“I think we’ll never know who killed Jonathan Eldridge.”
“There’s the old can-do spirit.”
“Jackie told me we were in way over our heads. She’s right. The best investigators in the world were on this thing when it was still hot. They got nowhere and now it’s ice cold. The whole thing has the stink of professionalism.”
“In your educated opinion,” said Sullivan.
“Yeah, actually. All the reports you gave me said it was a car bomb. That’s what your people concluded. Unless the Feds and Staties are blowing smoke up Ross’s ass, that’s what they think, too.”
“Tell me what I’m missin’ here, but I think a car actually blew up. With plastic explosives.”
“Much later. Maybe twenty, thirty seconds after the fire.”
“What fire?”
“Read my witness report. First there was a fire inside the car. A very hot fire. Explosive, though not all the way to the boom stage. That’s a very d
ifficult thing to achieve, even in a controlled environment, like an industrial furnace or kiln.”
“You told em that?”
“I thought the explosion was caused by whatever started the fire, after the windows gave out and a flood of oxygen was introduced. I didn’t know about the C-4 until I read the files. Makes a lot more sense, given the force of the blast.”
“I’m already confused.”
“Jonathan gets in his car and shuts the door. A fire erupts inside the car that instantly reaches super-hot temperatures. Consumes all the oxygen in the passenger cabin, feeds off whatever air the subsequent vacuum sucks in through the ventilation system, gets hotter, finally hot enough to melt the glass in the windows, causing a burst of flames that sets off the C-4. At least that’s what it looked like to me.”
“You know this from looking?”
“You really want the technical version?”
Sullivan used both hands to ward off the thought.
“No, that’s okay. Science shit is your deal.”
“This is very sophisticated stuff. Not beyond the forensic capabilities of the FBI, but unless they’re holding something back, I don’t think they found evidence of anything beyond the C-4, which leaves a pretty distinct marker. Or they just ignored my statement. Who the hell am I.”
“You talked to his wife. The whack job.”
“Appolonia. And it’s an anxiety disorder. Your instincts were right. You shouldn’t bother her. I’m in there for now, but I’m on thin ice. She’s not opening up to any cop. Or any kind of authority.”
“Guilty conscience?”
“Fear. Lots and lots of it. More than you can imagine. But she did agree to let me pose as a guy valuating Jonathan’s business. For estate purposes. Gives me an excuse to bother people.”
Sullivan sat back in the booth so the waitress could drop a small mountain of eggs, toast and hash browns in front of him. Then she poured a glob of their regular burnt-bean coffee on top of my French roast. And they tell you service isn’t what it used to be.
“Never needed an excuse before,” said Sullivan.