—Allison
They should study the genetic composition of provocation. I could supply the data.
I dug a chewed-up pencil out of my back pocket and found a field of white paper on the back of another utility bill.
Peconic calm, surly sky. Cash is cool, hammers fly. Back’s healed, ear, huh? Status quo, oh, no. Eddie misses you. You can tell by the way he drools on your pillow.
—the Dad
I had a backlog of these epistolary haikus scattered around the cottage written on whatever paper was handy. If I didn’t hear from her for a while I’d transfer one to a postcard and send it off. Past experience taught me to mete them out discretely. It took over four years to get to this stage, and I was grateful, but careful.
I wondered how I’d explain to her what I was actually up to besides swinging a hammer. I wondered if I could explain it to myself. Maybe if I sat there and drank for a while I’d be able to get in touch with my feelings. Clarify my priorities. Figure out just what the hell I was doing.
“What the hell am I doing?” I asked Eddie.
Part of me knew Hodges was right. I had a heretofore repressed impulse to stick my nose into this thing. Especially now that the official investigation had crapped out. At least, that’s what it looked like. Hard to tell these days if they were actually stymied or had it all solved, but for some reason had to keep quiet. Not enough evidence, political pressure, interdepartmental turf wars, all the stuff that would piss me off so much I’d probably pop a cranial artery. Which was reason enough to stay the hell out of it.
“Rule one. Don’t go looking for trouble,” I said to Eddie.
On the other hand, somebody tried to kill Jackie and me, albeit indirectly. Along with a bunch of innocent people. To say nothing of Jonathan Eldridge, who may or may not have been innocent, but probably didn’t deserve to be blown to smithereens.
The ugly blind brutality of a car bomb is impossible to appreciate until you’re up close to one of them. I hadn’t been able to sleep through the night for two months after it happened. And I still woke up a lot, freaked at little night sounds. It made me feel helpless and foolish. Powerless. And furious.
A big tern glided gracefully down to perch on the edge of the breakwater. Eddie looked at it like, man, you gotta be kidding me. He gave the bird a second to settle in before launching an attack across the lawn. The tern took flight with as much dignity as haste would allow.
I watched Eddie cut across the bay frontage, then make an unexpected right turn to leap over the rosebush and picket-fence border between my property and the house next door. It was a gray and white bungalow that shared the tip of Oak Point with me. An old lady named Regina Broadhurst used to live there. It had been empty since she died the year before, so it gave me a jolt to see a gray Audi A4 parked in the driveway. Or maybe the jolt was because I knew who owned the Audi.
So did Eddie, which is why he was there barking at the side door. It was opened by a woman in a white silk dressing gown and bare feet. She had long, thick auburn hair that matched the dark reddish brown of her complexion. When she bent down to pet Eddie’s head her gown opened up, revealing enough breast to identify a tan line, even from a few hundred feet. She scratched his ears, then tossed him a treat of some kind. He caught it, did a quick spin, then ran back over to me. The woman followed him with her eyes until she saw me sitting in the Adirondack. Then she backed slowly into the house and shut the door.
Eddie ran up to me with a Big Dog biscuit in his mouth, his favorite. He dropped down in front of me to eat, showing off the prize. As he crunched away I had a chance to get in touch with feelings of another sort.
“Goddammit,” I said, in the direction of Reginas house.
EIGHT
THE NEXT MORNING I wasn’t working on my addition like I’d sworn I would. I was driving back over to see Appolonia Eldridge and her lawyer. Earlier I’d reached Joe Sullivan on his cell phone.
“So you really didn’t learn shit,” he said after I relayed what I learned.
“I don’t remember seeing Ivor Fleming in any of the reports.”
“The Feds said they checked out all his customers.”
“You don’t think we should talk to him?”
“You’ll need a good reason to go back at a money guy like Fleming.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. Get a reason.”
“What?”
“Not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”
“Talk to me.”
“I want to try something out on Mrs. Eldridge. Just let me do it without all the explanations.”
“Don’t fuck me up.”
“Never on purpose.”
He wanted more, but I’d rushed him off the phone. It was like that with Sullivan. Too much information was rarely a good thing. He was better with faits accomplis.
After Sullivan I’d called Gabe Szwit, whom I thought would be a hard sell, but after I gave him my idea he surprised me.
“Let me call Appolonia,” he told me, “and see if we can meet again at her house.”
So I was in the Grand Prix heading over to Riverhead again. Only this time I had Eddie in the backseat where he belonged. It was cooler, and I just couldn’t leave him in the house again. Dogs have to be out in the air. Or the wind, in Eddie’s case, his head stuck out the window, ears swept back, tongue flapping out the corner of his mouth.
“If you catch anything, it counts against dinner,” I told him.
When I got to Appolonia’s I rolled the windows up just enough to discourage him from jumping out of the car.
“Try to keep a low profile,” I told him as I walked away from my inconspicuous
A pair of kids in hockey gear watched from the street. A mailman hopped from mailbox to mailbox down the perfect, flat black asphalt. Two doors down a woman was trying to adjust her sprinkler without getting wet, unsuccessfully. I listened for other dogs that could set off Eddie, but all I heard was the distant sound of a powerful motorboat starting a run across the Great Peconic Bay.
Belinda answered the door. As friendly and welcoming as always. Appolonia and Szwit were waiting in the living room, equipped with tea and a pot of coffee for me. I felt like one of the gang.
“Hello, Mr. Acquillo.”
“Thanks for seeing me again.”
Appolonia was dressed in a men’s oxford-cloth shirt and gray slacks. She looked like a starving arctic bird. Gabe was still in a suit, but felt secure enough to leave his briefcase on the floor. Progress.
“I filled Mrs. Eldridge in on your idea as well as I could,” he said. “I thought it had merit.”
“I thought it did, too,” said Appolonia. “But why don’t you go through it again.”
“Okay I don’t think I can learn any more about your husband’s murder than the cops, the Staties, the FBI, Homeland Security, etcetera. But I can’t see how it’ll hurt if I poke around a little. Only thing is, I’m just a guy. An unofficial guy. I can’t, I won’t, go around pretending to be a cop or a PI. That feels stupid, and looks stupid when I’m exposed. I need some official reason to be talking to people.”
“Your police friend Officer Sullivan seems to think you’re official enough.”
“He shouldn’t. I need genuine cred.”
“Cred?” said Appolonia.
“He means credentials. Street patois,” said Gabe, looking at me like, hey man, I know some shit, too.
“Which you can give me,” I said to Appolonia.
“Me?”
“Yeah. You own a business. Might be a business now in name only, but it’s still a legal LLC, with assets and
