drugs, and shootin’ each other, you got all kinds of crazy evil shit coming out of the City, especially during the season. You got all these people along the water who act like they own the world, because, basically, some of ’em do. Then there’s the people in the court system you have to keep happy. You got County people, State people, fucking Feds if you think about it, all doing nothin’ but figurin’ out ways to make your job harder. The last thing any of ’em wants you to do for Christ’s sake is say, ‘I
It was too bad, but Hodges picked that moment to come over and say hi. Sullivan stood up and shook his hand. They ran through a bunch of names looking for connections, which wasn’t hard. Sullivan dredged up some nice things to say about Hodges’s joint. Hodges pledged admiration and support for all boys and girls in law enforcement. All of which was fine, but I wanted to find out where Sullivan was heading. Which I couldn’t do until much later, back out in the parking lot.
As soon as we were outside I said, “So, Joe, what were you saying in there?”
He dug around inside his jeans pocket for the keys to his old Bronco.
“Broadhurst might’ve been a lousy old bitch, but she was my lousy old bitch. My beat, my neighborhood. I don’t care if you’re full of crap. Until I can prove to myself one hundred percent that you’re full of crap, I’m interested in this. Let me know what you’re doing.”
He walked over to his truck, carrying the extra weight around his middle with obstinate dignity. I went home to feed the dog and nurse my wounds.
There were little clouds of gray-blue mist rising up from the harvested potato fields when I drove out Scuttle Hole Road on the way to Jackie Swaitkowski’s place in Bridgehampton. It was mid-morning and you could see the clear sky above waiting for the sun to dry out the air. Despite the mist, everything looked sharp and scrubbed clean, even through the Grand Prix’s pitted windshield. Ribbons of fresh white fencing separated cropland from pasture, where dressage horses grazed and tried to look indifferent to their status. Huge piles of postmodern architecture and partially submerged potato barns broke up the slow curves of the landscape. To the north were short hills covered by forests of red oak and scruffy pine. Jackie was somewhere up in there, if I’d read my map right. Her answering service said she’d be there all morning. The woman I spoke to said not to bother with an appointment.
“Go ahead up there. I know her, she won’t mind.”
“Really.”
“She’s bored. She’s been stuck on this brief for a bunch of people trying to run this poor guy off his gas station. They say it’s a blight on the neighborhood.”
“Not if you need gas.”
“People are so touchy about property values.”
“Because they’re so valuable?”
“That’s the thing. Everything’s so expensive. Hey, got another call. Say hi to Jackie. Tell her not to work too hard.”
I called for an appointment anyway. The answering service was right. Jackie Swaitkowski longed for distractions.
“Sure, come on over. Ring the bell,” she said before I’d given much of an explanation.
Once in the woods, the atmosphere changed abruptly. Enclosed by tall oaks, the air was cool and the light was splattered patternless across the ground and up the sides of thick tree trunks. The iridescent red and orange fall foliage betrayed the deep green of scrub pines and hemlocks and wild mountain laurel. A few more weeks and all the leaves would be on the ground and the forest would give in to the gray gloom of winter.
Jackie’s house was the kind of flimsy, unadorned wooden box real-estate people called a Contemporary. It was built into the side of a hill at the end of a long dirt drive. Jackie, or whoever owned the place, wasn’t much of a landscaper. A rusty Toyota pickup with oversized tires and welded metal racks was in front of the garage.
Next to the front door were two buttons—one labeled “Jackie Swaitkowski, attorney-at-law.” The other said “Jackie Swaitkowski, Private Citizen.” I rang the lawyer.
She had a long, thick crop of strawberry-blond hair and a lot of freckles splashed across a reddish tan complexion. Her face was wide open and pretty, and could have been used to promote Irish tourism. She had a nice figure stuffed into a yellow cotton jersey dress and flip-flops on her feet. Maybe thirty-two, maybe more. It was getting harder for me to tell.
“Hi.”
“Attorney Swaitkowski?”
“Jackie.”
“Sam Acquillo.”
“Like the saint?”
“That’d be Aquinas.”
“Right. Missed that catechism.” She walked away from the door and invited me in with an exaggerated wave of her arm. I followed her into a sloppy, cheerful living room furnished with two dirty white couches and a coffee table made from a gigantic slab of cross-cut timber. It was buried under heaps of magazines and catalogs. She walked across the table and dropped down cross-legged into one of the couches. I took the other.
Hardly seated, she bounced up again and asked if I wanted anything, like coffee or tea. I said coffee and she disappeared for a few minutes to rustle some up.
While I waited, I looked around at the overflowing bookcases and poster art plastered on every scrap of wall space. There were probably thousands of books and CDs, but no TV. On a side table was a stack of used dinner plates and there was a roach in the ashtray.
“I’m actually kind of glad to be getting away from this god-awful case,” she said as she came back in with two mismatched mugs.
“So I hear.”
She huffed.
“That’s Judy, she’s such a pain. We talk all the time, of course. She should be paying me, I’m so entertaining.”
She climbed back into the couch, slumped down and put her feet up on the coffee table. Her legs were pinky brown and freckled like her face. They’d seen a lot of beach time. She held the mug with two hands and blew the steam off the top.
We talked about Southampton past and present and tried to find common ground. It was the kind of conversation you have on a barstool or at a checkout counter. With a little prompting, she talked enough to hold up both our ends.
“Always practiced out here?” I asked her.
“What, does it show? Yeah, of course. Born, raised and so on. Except for law school. Even married a Polish potato boy. He’s dead,” she said quickly, before I could comment. “Sold the farm, then bought the farm, so to speak. Stuck that cute little car about halfway up the side of a great big oak tree. Right out here on Brick Kiln Road. Perfect, huh?”
“Sorry.”
She set down the coffee and sat back, throwing her arms across the back of the couch. “Hey, what am I doing here telling you my life’s story.”
“I got you started.”
“That’s right, you did.”
She looked me over a little more carefully.
“You gonna tell me what happened?”
“To what?”
“Your head.”
“Oh.”
I reached up to feel the wound. I’d actually forgotten it was there. Maybe those cumulative effects had begun to accumulate.
