one fell swoop.
“I don’t care,” I said to Bob Sobol.
“About what?”
“If you shoot.”
“Everybody cares.”
“No, I really don’t. Haven’t for years. Actually, I’m glad you thought of this. You’ll be solving both our problems.”
“More head-game shit. It doesn’t work with me.”
“Typical engineer.”
“fuckin’ right. Villanova. Three point eight average.”
“At least you put it to good use.”
“What, like you? Pathetic, burned-out whack job.”
I couldn’t think of much to add to that. I wondered what my father said when he fully realized his big mouth would finally get him killed. I wanted to think he kept it up anyway, right to the end.
“You’re actually going to do this,” I said to Sobol.
“I actually am.”
“So whatever I say really doesn’t matter.”
“No, I guess it doesn’t.”
“Okay, then let’s just say, fuck you, Sobol. You’re a dick.”
“Last words?”
“Last words.”
“Okay.”
And he pulled the trigger.
The sound was really loud. The air filled with an acid gray smoke, blood spray and tiny pieces of Bob Sobol. Not much of which reached me, miraculously. The concussion made my brain bang around inside my skull and my ears ring for days afterward, but all the destructive force went in Bob’s direction. It seemed to kick him up and back, till he was clear of the table and splashed out across the grass. Somehow the bowl of cigarette butts got in the act, so when I bent over him lying there on the lawn I was more struck by the ugliness of all that tobacco ash than the sight of the shattered slide from the top of the automatic sticking out of his forehead. Those murky little eyes were still open, staring up through bright red blood at the clean blue October sky.
“Thing about a mongoose, Bob,” I told him, “is they never come at a rat straight on.” But he was past listening.
I promised Sullivan I’d go to see Ross Semple that day, so I just left Sobol there on the ground and drove over to Hampton Bays. I figured it was better for Barbara Filmore to call it in after she got home, but as it turned out, she didn’t find him until the next morning. That got me tied up again with Sullivan and Ross for the better part of the next day, but I spent that evening productively, drinking Absolut cut with a little orange soda and tossing tennis balls across the lawn without getting out of the Adirondack chair. Eddie liked me to show a little more effort, but did his part anyway, retrieving the yellow balls from off the beach and dropping them at my feet.
The Peconic was all worked up over something, even though the sky was moonlit and clear and the prevailing winds out of the south-southwest were only slightly more gusty than usual. Whitecaps were springing up all over the bay and a herringbone pattern was etched across the surface of the water. The bay turned out to be a harbinger, as it often does, as bigger, northerly winds swept in on the heels of roiling dark gray clouds and colder air, filled with a frigid mist. The evening slowly darkened into night, so we were finally forced to give it up and head into the house.
The fresh wind from out of the north was icy, but I thought it also had the faint hint of redemption mixed in with the salty spray and bitter brine from off the sacred Little Peconic Bay.
TEN
IN FEBRUARY, the Little Peconic is painted in subdued shades of silvery gray. The sun struggles to clear the horizon before retreating again just a few hours later behind the green hills of the North Fork. The soft southwesterlies that soothe the summer months turn into brutish, sodden gales that rush down from the north to beat furiously against the wood-frame storm windows my father installed as winter protection for the screened-in porch.
The woodstove keeps the living room livable as long as it’s fully stoked, and if I put a little window fan on the floor facing out the connecting door, I can almost warm the porch enough to hold a book or light a cigarette. This allows me to stay out there through the winter. If I don’t monitor the Peconic at all times I might miss something important. Like a passing ocean liner, or the sudden appearance of a plesiosaur.
Eddie seems indifferent to the cold, especially when outside touring the grounds, but once inside he’s drawn to the braided rug in front of the woodstove.
“You look like an L.L. Bean catalog,” I tell him, but he’s unfazed. It’s all in the breeding.
That afternoon in February he jumped up and barked when he heard a knock at the door, but you could tell it was mostly for show. Looking after his franchise.
“Christ, Sam, I thought this place had central heat,” said Burton, reaching down to pat Eddie’s head after stripping the tan kid-leather gloves from his hands.
“Not as long as there’s North Sea scrub oak. God’s own fuel source.”
“And to warm the inner man?”
“Vodka or bourbon, though God’s role in either is debatable.”
“Pour it anyway, for heaven’s sake.”
His coat was camel hair and his scarf a grade of cashmere so fluid you could pour it into a bottle. Both were smudged and slightly threadbare, as if he wore them to chop wood or haul stuff to the dump, which he probably did.
I poured us both Maker’s Mark on the rocks in my best jelly jar mugs. He pointedly sat in the easy chair next to the woodstove in the living room, so I took a spot on the sofa where I could make polite conversation while keeping an eye on the bay. It was still a somber battleship gray, though the waning sunlight put a faint gloss on each of the little bay waves. A stalwart seabird swung in loose circles over the water, seeking prey numbed to distraction by the cold.
“I just came from a nice long chat with Ross Semple,” said Burton, after an appreciative slurp of the single malt.
“How’s he feeling?”
“Skeptical, I’d think you’d say.”
“Important quality in a police chief.”
“Indeed. He wanted to talk to me about Bob Sobol.”
“Too bad about Bob. But nothing to do with you.”
“Never met the man. Though we had a mutual acquaintance.”
“Last to see him alive.”
“Ross made the same observation.”
“How’s that bourbon?”
“Delightfully smooth. And subtle, like the company.”
“Not me. I’m an open book.”
Eddie tried to reclaim the braided rug, but Burton’s feet were in the way, so he jumped on the sofa and made a spot for himself by shoving me out of the way. I gave up as much territory as my dignity would allow.
“Ross wanted to know if I thought he should declare the death accidental. The County is badgering him to close out the case.”
“He asked me the same thing.”
“I said no other interpretation was plausible, given the facts at hand.”
