“I can’t help you. I don’t know.”
“Who besides Milton Hornsby?”
“You still haven’t given me a sense of this alleged criminality.”
“He’s the only one you know? Him and Jackie?”
He lifted his hands, resigned to his state of ignorance. We sat quietly for a moment, letting a little dead air fill the room. Stalemate.
“Who’s your friend?” Johnson asked, finally. “With the free advice?”
“Burton Lewis. You know him?”
Johnson actually sat up a little in the tall leather chair. It made me feel bad to use Burt’s name, but I knew he wouldn’t mind. Though my soul didn’t feel much improved for it.
“Big-time indeed.”
I started to gather up my stuff.
“I appreciate your fitting me in. I’m sure you’re busy.”
He watched me stand without getting up himself. His expression, always neutral, gave a little.
“You realize I’m constrained by the same attorney-client privilege as Ms. Swaitkowski,” he said.
I stopped messing with my stuff and sat back down.
“Sure.”
“As is Mr. Hornsby. It’s an essential ethical principle.”
“I’m getting that.”
“In fact, it’s about the highest level of trust imposed on all legal representatives. On par with the fiduciary duty required of a trustee, though that person needn’t be a lawyer. The law is very clear on the magnitude of that responsibility.”
“Okay.”
“So, if, for example, Mr. Hornsby were both an attorney and a trustee, you might say he’s in a double bind. It would explain perfectly, if that were the case, why he’d be unwilling to discuss anything related to Bay Side Holdings with you. Or anyone else. If that were the situation he faced, which I’m not suggesting it is.”
“It’s a hypothetical.”
“Call it a lesson in law, which my partners would feel better I dispensed gratis than actual advice.”
“That’s really interesting. I still like learning things, even at my age.”
“If there was any question over Mr. Hornsby’s competence to do his job, to preserve the body of the trust, there’d be grounds to take some action on the part of the beneficiaries.”
“Whoever they are.”
“Or, civil authorities could intervene on the beneficiaries’ behalf, if there was clear evidence the fiduciary duty was being neglected or abused.”
“Hypothetically.”
“In Mr. Hornsby’s case. We’re simply discussing the issue in global terms.”
“As part of the lesson.”
“Exactly. Mr. Lewis would tell you the same if you asked.”
“Got it.”
He looked at his watch.
“And that’s about all the legal training I can afford to put in today. Unless there was something else.”
“That’s up to you.”
“I think I’ve exhausted my ability to help.”
“I appreciate it.”
I stood up again and went through the routine of gathering my papers. As before, Johnson kept his seat.
“As I recall,” he said, “you had something to show me.”
He nodded at the papers I was stacking together.
“I did?”
“The envelope?”
On my way out that morning I’d grabbed a handful of unopened mail off the kitchen table. I hadn’t bothered to look at the one I’d picked for a prop. I flipped it over. It was my monthly statement from Harbor Trust.
“Oh, this.”
I dropped it face up on the table. He reached over and picked it up.
“Cute.”
Not really, I was about to say, when he said, “I get the point.”
“Not too subtle?” I asked, hoping the point would come to me as well in the next few seconds.
He looked amused.
“Well, I’ve never known a financing source who wasn’t a ball of nerves over a big development. Could give you some leverage with Mr. Hornsby. Not that I’m suggesting that.”
“Another lesson?”
“Not in ethics. Their interest is strictly money. No moral conflicts there.”
“I guess you’d consider the Bay Side plan pretty big.”
“For Harbor Trust. At least for the branch office in Southampton. Huge would be a better word.”
“Impress the hell out of the home office.”
“Oh yeah,” said Johnson, finally getting up to steer me back out of his office and, with any luck, out of his life. “Roy Battiston would sell his soul to get that thing back on track.”
I was tempted to stop at a place I knew in Tribeca that had been there since before the revival, where I knew they’d welcome dogs who had the right introduction, but I also knew I’d get to talking and probably drink too much, and probably insist on driving home, then maybe kill us both or somebody else on the way back to the East End. It didn’t seem fair to Eddie to risk it. So instead I retrieved the Grand Prix and beat it out of there before the really big commute got underway. I followed the same route home, which was fairly unimpeded after dropping down to the Southern State and making a beeline for the Sunrise Highway.
Night fell before we made it to the cottage. Eddie was ecstatic to be back on
For some reason, I felt all jammed up around my chest and throat. I was hoping the vodka would loosen things up. It was a prodigal feeling, one I remembered from the past but hadn’t felt for years. I didn’t like it. Too close to home, too much like everything I never wanted to feel again.
The wind off the Peconic was sharp on my face. Only eighty miles from Manhattan, but the climate was ten degrees colder and heavy with wet, salty air. The water was black slate, not a trace of color. The wind blew from the west, but the surf was moving straight into it from the east. The resulting collision clipped the tops off the little bay waves, shooting foamy white water off the crests in little bursts of spray.
“Goddammit,” I said to the Little Peconic, who offered nothing in return.
SEVEN
I’D FALLEN ASLEEP in the Adirondack chair, so it took me a while to figure out where I was, much less realize there was somebody using a flashlight to poke around Regina’s house. Eddie was standing next to the chair, growling.
I put Eddie in the house, closed the basement door and retrieved the Harmon Killebrew bat from next to the side door. Then I opened the trunk of the Grand Prix and took out my big Mag light, a club in itself. I tucked the white collar of my shirt down into the RISDE sweatshirt and strolled over toward Regina’s.
The tumbler of Absolut was clogging my brain and weighing on my limbs. I shook my head to clear it out. I stopped for a second to make sure I had my balance. Good enough. I got a firm grip on the bat and walked as quietly as I could toward the house. The lights were out in the neighborhood, but there was plenty of moonlight. My
