“I didn’t know it still showed.”
“I’m observant. So what happened?”
“I ran into a wrecking ball.”
“Really?”
“Just felt like one.”
“Which means none of your business.”
“Means it’s a long story.”
“It sort of suits your face.”
“That’s what they said at the hospital.”
Her attention suddenly became unmoored and started to drift away. She looked out the window for a while, then around at the disarray in the living room as if unsure how it got that way.
“Okay,” she said, looking back at me, “what can I do you out of?”
“I was wondering if you could tell me anything about Bay Side Holdings. Milton Hornsby.”
The air inside the room dropped about ten degrees.
“Who did you say you were with?”
“I didn’t. I’m the administrator of an estate. Regina Broadhurst. According to the real-estate and tax records, she was living in a house owned by Bay Side Holdings. I went over to Sag Harbor to tell Milton Hornsby and he basically threw me off his property. Your name was on some documents submitted to the Town appeals board. So here I am.”
“Do you have any identification?”
I got out my wallet and tossed her my driver’s license. I also tossed her a death certificate and the Surrogate’s Court paper naming me administrator.
“Are you an attorney?” she asked, looking up from the court papers.
“Industrial designer. And the old lady’s next door neighbor.”
She got up from the couch to hand back my license and the Surrogate’s Court document. She left the death certificate on the table. She scooped up her coffee mug and took a sip, standing over me.
“You’re aware of attorney-client privilege,” she said.
“Yeah, of course. I’m only here because Hornsby won’t talk to me. All I want is to give him back his house. After I clear up whatever might be hanging, and get her stuff out of there. That’s all.”
“Industrial designer?”
“That’s what I did. I’m an engineer.”
“What you did?”
“Don’t do it anymore.”
Somebody threw another switch in her head and she tossed herself back into the couch, sprawling out across the entire length. She put her forearm up to her head.
“I was sane until those assholes drove me crazy. Honest, Doc.”
“Define crazy.”
She looked over at me from her swoon.
“You shrinks are all alike. All talk and no cure.”
I drank some of my coffee. It was just a little more viscous than the transmission fluid I used in the Grand Prix. I sat back, therapist style.
“Maybe if we started with your childhood.”
“Nah, too depressing. Anyway, I was fine until I got handed that dumb case.”
“I could use some help on this. If it doesn’t violate attorney-asshole privilege.”
Jackie hooted.
“Where’d you get the act?”
“MIT. Comedy’s part of the curriculum. Everyone knows that.”
“My dad was an engineer.”
“I knew you’d drag your childhood into this.”
She rolled over on her side and flipped off her flip-flops. She let her hand fall to the coffee table so she could fiddle with a bunch of rose-colored glass grapes.
“I guess I’m not much of a lawyer,” she said, much in the way people do when they want you to disagree with them.
“You’re probably great when you feel like it.”
That was the right tack.
“Hey, affirmation. I like that. Yeah, I’m actually pretty good at the job itself. I’m just really bad at being a person. Really fucks up the career.”
That sounded like me. Maybe Jackie and I should start a club.
“This is getting awfully heavy for people who just met each other,” she said, abruptly launching herself off the couch. “Let’s find another venue. All I gotta do is see a couch and I start baring my soul. You oughta see me in a furniture store. It’s like Pavlovian.”
I followed her out to a glassed-in porch that had been converted to office space. There was Masonite paneling below the windows and indoor-outdoor carpet on the floor. It smelled like a greenhouse. She dropped into an expensive-looking ergonomic desk chair, spun around once and put her bare feet up on the desk. I cleared a space for myself on a long wooden bench.
“Bay Side Holdings, is that where we’re at?” she asked.
“Trying, anyway.”
“Okay,” she said, “I can tell you I was young and stupid. Stupider, anyway. I was hired by the lead, Milton Hornsby, who’s general counsel for Bay Side Holdings, as you know. He wanted me to come in as consulting on a big zoning appeals case. Hornsby paired me up with this city guy named Hunter Johnson, believe it or not. He was like incredibly gorgeous, intelligent, rich, witty and handsome. Did I mention athletic and a good cook?”
“And an asshole?”
“Not at first. No, not ever, really. It’s not like they did anything, it’s more like what they didn’t do. Which was actually try to get the funky job done. When you’re going for a variance and you hit a little resistance, you’re like supposed to at least
“I didn’t know Hornsby was a lawyer. He didn’t tell me. So I guess he failed to take your counsel.”
“Yeah, I guess. They wanted to completely reconfigure a whole slew of properties over in North Sea. Here, it’s in here somewhere. I’ll show you. Though I shouldn’t.”
She spun around again and pulled open a deep legal-sized drawer. She curled her feet around the base of the chair to keep from falling into the file cabinet.
It was a copy of the aerial map I’d pulled from the Town records. Each lot was outlined with white ink over the black-and-white photographic image. They were all numbered, though several, about a dozen, were marked with a yellow highlighter. Only this one had a transparent overlay, which showed an alternate configuration of the lots. Through various combinations and border adjustments, my neighborhood had become an entirely different animal. Maybe twelve properties were converted to five, all bordering the bay or the deep harbor inlet that formed the east coast of Oak Point. The largest of these was at the center of the plan, marked “common area.” Which put it right in the middle of the WB site. A similar reformation was repeated opposite WB’s other shore on Jacob’s Neck. The entire development was enclosed by a green line labeled “privet.” A hedge. The way it was roughed in, the hedge ran down the middle of my side yard. And there was a question mark, also in yellow marker, right on top of my roof.
“This ain’t some third rate pre-existing, non-conforming, switch-a-couple-things-around-all-approved-thank- you-very-much-have-a-nice-day kinda shit here. This is big-time surveys and wetlands hearings and bulldozers. You’d think a little due diligence mighta been in order.”
