“I do. But it’s full of holes.”
“Me, too.”
“You know what might be happening here.”
“I do. It’s just hard to believe.”
“One of my law professors had a maxim. Just because you think it’s true, doesn’t mean it isn’t.”
“Must have shaved with Occam’s razor.”
“Sharpest blade in the drawer.”
We went back to the NBA after that, which was a big relief to me. I knew and Burton knew that the best thing to do at this point was to hand it all over to him, so he could hand it all over to the people officially responsible for this stuff. He knew and I knew I didn’t want that. I had my teeth in it now and I didn’t want to let go till I had it worked out. I just didn’t. Can’t explain it.
“I hate to owe people, you know that. But I’m glad for the help,” I told him before I got up to leave.
“Piffle,” he said, and took me on the long walk to my car.
I headed back to the cottage with both windows open to help fuel my brain. The cool, soggy October air was uncomfortable, but extra oxygen helped me focus. It was a practice I learned young. Get in a car, open all the windows and drive fast enough to fill the passenger compartment with a private hurricane. I could think better when other things overwhelmed my senses. Sometimes I’d drive home from work like this, even in the dead of winter, and when I reached my driveway I’d keep driving and use up an hour or two buffeting my brain into submission.
Abby never asked where I’d been. She was never concerned when I failed to show up, or when I worked through evenings and weekends. Her indifference to my presence was one of the things I most appreciated. It gave me the freedom to distract myself with aimless open-air driving, or raging, drunken road trips across Greater New York with my sparring partners from the gym, or obsessive attempts at mastering some arcane scientific principle, or months of near catatonia, in which I’d descend into my own customized well of despair. Through it all Abby tended the house, maintained the proper social connections, shopped and calmly raised our daughter.
I skated across the years of my marriage like an ice sled—moving at blurred speed, barely touching the surface. The weeks were filled with boiling tension and anxiety, the weekends lost on fatuous conversations and alcohol. Through it all I never once felt like my wife knew who she was married to. As she surrounded us with a gaggle of nitwit acquaintances, I was condemned to an ugly loneliness of the mind.
I stopped at the cottage to check on Eddie. He was sleeping on the landing at the top of the side-door steps. He wagged his tail without bothering to get up.
“Calm down there, boy, you’re gonna hurt something.”
I made a pot of coffee, gathered up my Regina file and spread it out on the porch table. The air was cool, but the coffee kept my fingers warm as I leafed through the papers.
I was looking at all the words and notes, the real-estate documents and other stuff I’d collected, but it wasn’t registering. I wasn’t really reading, just scanning with my eyes. What I wanted to know wasn’t there, so it felt pointless to look. But I looked anyway, out of habit, an engineer’s obsession with data gathering.
Eddie made himself comfortable on the bed. I tried to talk it out with him, but he wanted to sleep. All I got was an occasional raised head and a wagging tail. No analysis or conclusions.
At the bottom of the file were the old photographs I swiped out of the display case at the old WB. One was an eight-by-ten-inch black and white print. The setting was ambiguous, maybe a conference room at the plant, or a meeting room at a local restaurant or hotel. There were about ten men standing shoulder to shoulder. The shot was a little overexposed, and sepia tinted with age, but you could easily make out everyone’s face. I was intrigued by the conformity of their clothes and haircuts, the homogeneity of their skin, the sureness in their eyes.
On the floor was a banner, mounted on rigid backing so it could stand supported at their feet. It read “WB Bomb Squad.” Then underneath, in much smaller type, “Management Defense Team.”
The word management caused me to flip it over and look at the back. Neatly penned along the bottom were the names and titles of all the men in the photo. Beginning with Carl Bollard Junior, President and CEO. To his left was Milton Hornsby, Exec. V.P., Chief Financial Officer. All the way at the other end was Robert Sobol, Q.C. Director. A red stamp from the photo processor showed the date to be 1970.
I looked at the back of the bowling photo, but it was unmarked except for the processor’s stamp with the date, 1972.
“Attorney Swaitkowski’s office.”
“You must be Judy.”
“The same.”
“Is Jackie around?”
“She is. You want to talk to her?”
“I do.”
“Okay, so give me your number, I’ll have her call you back.”
“Interesting.”
“It’s how she likes to do it. She’s got her quirks, but she’s cute, don’t you think?”
“Cuter than me.”
“Send me your pictcha. I’ll decide for myself.”
I gave her my name and number, then hung up and waited for Jackie to call me back, which she did, about ten minutes later.
“He won’t talk to me,” she said as she came on the line.
“Who?”
“Milton Hornsby. I called him a few times, sent over a registered letter, even went and rang his bell. Nothing.”
“But he was there?”
“He was there, he just told me to go away. I think it was something like, go away or I’ll have you prosecuted for harassment, or something like that. So I thought, what am I doing here? I was going to call you, but you didn’t give me a number.”
“What are you doing right now?”
“Talking to you.”
“Want to take a ride?”
“Where we going?”
“I’m going to Hornsby’s house. I can’t wait anymore. I think it’d be better if you were there. For his sake and mine.”
“You going to tell me why? No,” she answered for me.
“He might have fired you, but he’ll want you there when I talk to him, which I’m doing even if I have to yell through the door.”
“I was actually heading to the courthouse. Can it wait an hour?”
“I’m going now.”
“You could use a little more give.”
“I’m sorry, you’re right. I’ll be at Hornsby’s house in about forty-five minutes. Hope to see you there.”
“Man.”
Eddie heard the jingle of keys and ran to the door. I felt like a heel leaving him, but I needed my concentration and Jackie Swaitkowski was distraction enough. I closed the basement door so he couldn’t use the hatch. I needed to know someone in this world was safe, at least for a few hours.
Forty-five minutes was more than I needed to get to Sag Harbor, but it gave Jackie a little leeway. I took my time heading north on Noyack Road and chose the long way to town, following Long Beach as it curved gracefully around the east side of Noyack Bay.
The signs of late afternoon were already in the sky. A cluster of thick clouds along the western horizon were lit from below in a soft gold that reminded me of Maxfield Parrish. The water was roughed up by a steady westerly breeze, the air cold and wet coming off the bay, contrasting with the deep color saturation from the lowering sun. Time was running out on the season.
Construction was underway on the Sag Harbor bridge, so I had to wait in a line of cars before I could cross.
