by Allan Retzky
The next morning as they checked out, the hotel manager told Posner that the actual thief was an Israeli boy from the neighborhood who had a recent history of such actions. The boy’s father found out and advised them early that morning, but the hotel declined to call in the police.
“His father will discipline him, and that is enough,” the manager said. At Sara’s suggestion, Posner had started to ask about the other boy, the innocent Arab boy, but thought better of raising the issue. “What good would it do?” he later asked her. “It’s a cultural thing, and innocence is not always what it seems to be.”
Ten days after Detective Wisdom’s visit, Posner sits alone in the living room of the Manhattan apartment watching television. Sara has consented to let him back in the apartment for a few days at a time, and he’s grateful she doesn’t raise the old issue of his fidelity. She asks him to sleep on the living room sofa bed. He doesn’t argue and just accepts that he must somehow gradually regain her trust.
“Television is a good way to quickly decompress,” she’s always said when they’d drink wine and watch together, but she isn’t here now, and he thinks that the glass of Merlot he sips is probably a more effective path to decompression. The show is one of the newer crime-scene spin-offs that have lately invaded the networks. A police forensic team is searching a car for evidence of an old homicide. One of the cops uses a glow-in-the-dark chemical to reveal blood traces, although the suspected crime occurred years before.
The cop’s partner remarks, “We wouldn’t even have a shot at getting these results without probable cause giving us a chance to search the car.”
The words stay with Posner long after he goes to bed. Probable cause. What does it really mean? he wonders as he tosses for several hours before exhaustion plunges him into oblivion.
As soon as Sara leaves the next morning, he checks the Internet for information. The chemical referred to in the program that glows when applied to blood is called Luminol. It’s been used for some time by crime-scene investigators to detect traces of blood. The only apparent way to avoid a positive test result is to rip out the contaminated surface in its entirety. There is scant chance of even such simple renovation of a few tiles without involving Sara, since the entrance area was redone only three years before. He used bleach to remove all surface stains from the tiles and grouting, but the blood traces are still there, an image his mind cannot release, and he begins to wonder whether he will ever be liberated.
His Internet search yields one small, but unconvincing, consolation. He uncovers a comment from a defense attorney, which suggests that Luminol can produce a fake blood positive when it reacts with other substances including vegetation and cleaning fluid.
He waits till nearly ten to call Mark Rothman, his attorney. They haven’t spoken for several months, which is a positive sign with regard to his corporate uncertainties. Still, he needs to speak to Mark. His attorney specializes in criminal law, albeit only white collar, as far as Posner knows. He realizes they could speak in privileged circumstances, but he is not anywhere prepared to share his secret. He is kept on hold for several minutes until a secretary announces that she’ll put him through.
“This is Mark,” grumbles a voice. Posner pictures the slightly built man with a pink scalp sitting in his black leather chair, feet raised on the far corner of the desk, an unlit pipe stem clutched in the corner of his mouth.
“You didn’t need to call. Nothing’s happening, and that’s good news.” Mark’s voice is clearer now. Posner imagines that the pipe has moved to Mark’s hand, or even to the desktop.
“I just wanted to check in,” says Posner. “It’s been a while.”
“Like I said, there’s no problem. Anything else I can do for you today?”
Posner feels he is being rushed off the phone, yet he realizes the man is not a friend, so he keeps his response brief.
“Oh, I was just curious about something,” answers Posner. “When the authorities want to investigate something or someone, and they need a search warrant, what does probable cause mean?”
“There’s nothing I can imagine you have to worry about on that score,” answers Mark. “As far as probable cause, shall I check the law dictionary, or can you get the short version?”
“The short version will work.”
“Okay, then. The gist of it is that if the authorities feel there are reasonable grounds for an evidence search based on the circumstances, a judge will grant the warrant.”
Posner is silent for several seconds before speaking. “I thought the phrase was probable cause, but you said reasonable grounds. What’s the difference?”
“None really, except that some decision about ten years ago seems to have expanded the authorities’ ability to search. In fact it’s not too hard now for the Feds or even local cops to get a warrant. I mean if someone’s innocent, then they have nothing to hide. Right?”
A part of Posner would like to spend more time in New York City. It is a conscious mental effort to distance himself from the accident. The city is not unfamiliar. He had worked there for years. But with Sara’s current mood, he’s forced to opt for the solitude of his house on the end of Long Island in spite of the disturbing memories that greet him whenever he opens the front door.
He prefers to think about the positive side of staying at the beach. The house is in an area that has other advantages: the broad sandy beaches, the ocean that shifts and amazes him with every tidal surge, and the sea terns that glide and swoop for prey among the small fish or mollusks along the surf. But most of all he savors those days when the weather rises up and feeds the air with the raw energy of a storm. Not a hurricane, for sure, but the wild uncontrolled release of passion that only some act of nature can bring; a happening that boils the ocean into a frenzy and diminishes the role of man who must hunker down amidst the torrent and wait to see if there will be another day. He loves all of this, but now is torn between avoiding the house and staying in New York, but this decision is now controlled by Sara. His mind foolishly tells him that by living a hundred miles away in the city, the wall of concrete and brick buildings will somehow insulate him from what rests under the ground at the Montauk Overlook.
Perhaps the city would be easier to take if things between him and Sara were more normal, but this isn’t the reality of their relationship. It also seems that she can only tolerate his New York presence in small doses, as if her forgiveness of his presumed betrayal can only be earned in similar micro measures. He accepts this as the only way to heal their relationship. The consequence of this arrangement is that he’s really left with no choice at all about where to spend most of his time.
He constantly thinks about the late spring rains. He checks the weather daily in the papers and on the Weather Channel. When heavy rain is forecast across the eastern end of Long Island, and especially over the isolated area where Heidi’s body rests, his chest falls away as the prospect grows that the water will slowly erode his secret.
He imagines the topsoil washing away, until someone, a hiker, or his dog, even a fox or deer pulls away at one end of an exposed end of plastic bag until some appendage is exposed. He has a compelling urge to drive back to the overlook and walk through the brush to see if his secret is still safe, but he has so far resisted such impulse.
“There was a message for you on the tape,” Sara says. This is his second day back on this visit and it is a rare recent incident of direct interaction. She speaks as she sits at a small desk in the living room opening her order from the Vietnamese take-out. Amos sits across the room on a couch that faces the muted sounds from a flickering television. This arrangement is typical of their recent physical separation whenever they are both in the apartment.
Posner has spent the day at the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue staring at the erotic drawings of an Austrian artist named Egon Schiele who only lived until he was twenty-eight. There was boldness in the artist’s renderings. Women subjects unflinchingly part their legs to reveal crimson labia, and al
l of it makes Posner uncomfortable as he imagines some connection between these provocative poses and Heidi.
“A Detective Wisdom from the East Hampton Police asked you to call him back. What’s that all about?”
Her sudden interest is a change from the recent past and catches him off guard. He raises a glass of wine to buy time. He sips the burgundy liquid and leans back. He must tell the smallest part of the story now, and he isn’t sure how to do it. The words finally come out as if he were another person speaking.
“Oh, there was this person on the Hampton Jitney that went missing some time ago. A woman. She was on the same bus I took, so the town police wanted to know if I could help them.”
“Did you already speak to them?’
“Yeah. About a week or two ago. The detective I spoke to said he’d probably have a few more questions. No sweat.”
Sara doesn’t comment. She just turns away from him with apparent disinterest and digs her chopsticks into a container of spicy chicken with cashew nuts.
Wisdom answers on the first ring.
“This is Amos Posner. You left a message for me to call.”
“Thanks for getting back so fast. Not everyone’s so good about responding.”
Posner pictures Wisdom sitting at a battered metal desk in a dingy room filled with smoke, and then catches himself in mid-thought. There is a brand new police department building in East Hampton. The desks are likely all new and smoking has surely been banned.
This is not some old film or television image.
“How can I help you?”
“I have a few more questions you might help us out with. Can I ask when you plan to be back in Amagansett?”
“I’m really not sure,” answers Posner. “Give me a second.”
He realizes that a hundred miles cannot separate him from this matter. Nor a thousand. Seconds of dead air follow. He sighs, but is sure Wisdom doesn’t hear him.
“The day after next,” he says.
“Can I come over about ten in the morning?” asks Wisdom. It is a formality, which Posner readily agrees to. There is no other option. He must play out his story to the end. He tells Sara he is going back to Amagansett the next day.
“Whatever,” is all she says, but her shrug reveals indifference. Still, he feels that even her verbalized apathy seems to be an improvement.
“Did you notice if the woman had a cell phone?” asks Wisdom.
The detective is dressed in similar clothes to those he wore on his first visit. Posner absently wonders if the man has multiple similar outfits, or whether he never changes his clothes. He opts for the former, but the idea brings a smile to his lips, which he cannot disguise.
“Something funny about the question?” asks Wisdom.
“Sorry,” answers Posner. “Something unrelated. I apologize.”
Wisdom grunts and pulls a pad from his coat pocket.
“What about it? Did you see her with a cell phone?”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t,” says Posner. “We only spoke for a few seconds. You’re not supposed to use a cell phone on the Jitney.”
Wisdom nods. Something in his manner makes Posner definitely realizes the man is a long way from some bumbling cop. He is more like that shrewd, yet modest, television detective he watched years ago. That’s it. Colombo. Except that Wisdom has neither a cigar nor a raincoat.
“It seems she made a call to her boyfriend. Another doctor. A guy named Henry Stern sometime that afternoon. The day she disappeared. Said she was calling from some nice house in the area with ocean views.”
Wisdom puts his notepad down and his eyes rise to see through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Lots of houses out here have ocean views,” is all Posner thinks of saying, but it is the right comment.
“You’re right about that,” says Wisdom and returns his gaze to his notebook.
As Wisdom studies his notes, Posner’s memory fixates on the cell phone. The incessant ringing on the front seat of his car, until the last chimes die away, and his ultimate race the next morning to a local beach where he finds a stone and pummels the amalgam of plastic and metal into tiny bits; and then the drive to the town recycling center later that day to scatter the remnants, then little more than powder, amidst the piles of nonrecycling garbage; the chicken bones, orange peels, and assorted household waste that have become man’s footprint.
But the cell phone only rang sometime after seven that evening, he remembers. She must have called Henry earlier. From his house. It had to be from his house. When she was in the bathroom, but she used her cell phone, not his house phone. That’s good. Very good. So there is no further basis to connect him with Heidi except that his house has an ocean view, but as he explains to Wisdom, such a vista is far from unusual in the area.
Wisdom rises to leave. Thanks him again for his time and help. There is no hint of nausea this time when Wisdom moves across the tile floor toward the door. Posner begins to believe he is getting past all of this, and that he is not only in the clear, yet beyond any evidence to remotely connect him to Heidi. He breathes deeply and goes upstairs. He pours a glass of wine. That night he sleeps deeply and late into the next morning. He has two weeks of such mindless solitude.
And then he gets a visit from Dr. Henry Stern.
CHAPTER 4
Dr. Henry Stern is a tall man, over six feet, with straight brown hair and green eyes. He is thirty-two when he first meets Heidi at a hospital Christmas party a year before.
“Do you celebrate Christmas?” she asks her voice throaty and European accented, as she sips a glass of eggnog.
They stand with two other staff members in white coats and a well-dressed man who announces he is in administration. Stern shakes his head slightly.
“No. I’m Jewish. By the way that’s not spiked, you know,” he says pointing to her glass as she looks up at him, her dark eyes wide as globes.
“Spiked?”
“I mean there’s no booze in it. No liquor at all. Can’t have the hospital pushing alcohol during business hours.”
The others all laugh, and he did mean it as a joke, since business hours equaled a twenty-four-hour day, but her eyes seize his and stop his own laughter. That’s when he turns away, as he feels a flush creep across his face. He drifts across the room and joins two other radiologists, but for a change he doesn’t feel like discussing shadows on x-rays; the indications of something ranging from either benign to inoperable. He has learned to control his emotions when he speaks with patients and their primary physicians. He has built up a wall of false bravado during such conversations, always faking the positive, which will give them a tortured future of discomfort and occasional pain as well as hope.
He doesn’t know her name, but steals looks across the room for the next half hour until he sees her standing alone near the door. He summons some hidden reserve of courage and approaches.
“Leaving so soon?” he asks and feels the flush return to his face. When she looks at him again with those black eyes, he begins to sense he is lost. Utterly lost or bewitched, it doesn’t matter.
They go to a neighborhood bar a few blocks away. Tiny Santa dolls share space on the shelves alongside gin and Scotch bottles. All-too-familiar Christmas songs are piped through a pair of speakers at the front of the room. A tiny tree at the end of the bar winks red-and-green lights. They laugh at the juxtaposition of Santa and the alcohol, and she wonders how he can safely drive a sled with a drinker’s red nose. They laugh some more and keep walking until they reach an empty booth in the back. He asks for a beer, and she takes a glass of red wine. They both order burgers.
“I thought Muslims don’t eat meat?” he asks referring to her cultural disclosure during their walk.
She cuts the air with a wave of her hand.
“That’s a Hindu thing, but I do many things Muslim women don’t do.” She stares intently at him, and then goes on.
“Beef should be all right for Muslims if the slaughter is ritual and c
lean. We are also not supposed to eat pork. The same as Jews, part of halal or Muslim dietary rules. It’s the high level of uric acid in the pig that is of concern. But I confess I do like wine. Alcohol is discouraged, but one can’t be perfect.”
She sips her wine before she adds, “Adultery is also forbidden, except that I’m not married.”
Then she laughs and her cackle overrides the dim Christmas music that floats from the front of the room. She describes how she is a blend of three cultures; her parents’ Iranian background, her years growing up in a rather strict Austrian world, and the much more laissez-faire American world, especially in New York.
“And which do you prefer?” he asks.
His earlier disorientation, for that’s what it was, has gone. He is now the consummate successful New York male his ego has constructed. And she knows nothing about him, with or without his private medicinal blanket, a condition he isn’t about to tell her. He wants to gain this woman’s serious interest. He hesitates to speak to avoid making dumb comments, yet when she reaches out and touches his hand, his voice all but disappears.
“I think I prefer it here,” she says, her accent deeper than before.
He stares at the generous hint of brown cleavage that rises above her scooped sweater neck, and calls for another round to mask the sound of blood rushing through his body. He wonders if she can hear the pumping. All his training tells him she can’t, yet she must see his fingers shake slightly as they grasp the new beer glass. She must see the white foam spill over the rim as he raises his glass.
“Prosit,” she says. “That’s how we toast each other in Vienna.”
Later he trembles when she takes his hand and leads him into her studio apartment only a block from the hospital. A bed, a small sofa, a table wedged against the wall. She says it’s enough space.
“What do you like to do?” she asks, as the sweater rises above her head and flies away.