“That house has the best view in the area, except for yours. She can live anywhere she wants now that she’s divorced Roy. Him defrauding her providing adequate grounds, I guess. Not that you need anything like that in New York.”
“How’s that beer?”
“You’re not going to talk about it. You’ll never talk about it.”
“I want to talk about Ivor Fleming.”
“Man, you’re a pigheaded bastard.”
I had Ivor’s file open in my lap.
“So Fleming’s an alchemist,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Scrap-metal baron. Turns iron into gold.”
“Apparently at least from what Alena said. Came from Brooklyn. Has a big processing plant up island. Sells recycled steel, mostly to car manufacturers, here and overseas. That’s all I know till I do some research.”
“Tough business. All rust, heat and sharp edges.”
“My guess is Ivor’s no pussycat.”
“Don’t mention cats around Eddie. Gets him worked up.”
Jackie hung around with me for another beer, then left me to finish up the rest of the rafters. She didn’t press me about Amanda, my new next-door neighbor, for which I was grateful. Like I told Appolonia, I’d been trying hard to avoid trouble in any form, and there was nothing about Amanda Battiston that didn’t feel like trouble.
NINE
SAGAPONACK IS a sprawling billionaire preserve along the ocean in the Town of Southampton. A lot of stupid big houses were built there in the eighties and nineties, and development was still going strong in the new century. When I was a kid I used to ride through the area on my bike. Then it was mostly farmland with an occasional summer bungalow, but I’d long since given up those associations, as if my childhood had taken place in another part of the universe.
I was driving over to Ivor Fleming’s house with the windows down to mix some air in with the cigarette smoke and smell of Viennese cinnamon from the coffee place on the corner in the Village. I missed having Eddie to run back and forth between the two rear windows searching for ground threats, like summer people walking miniature purebreds, but it was still too hot to leave him in the car. I’d actually snuck out the basement hatch so I wouldn’t have to endure him looking at me with that what-the-fuck look on his face.
Not surprisingly, Ivor’s house was oversized and foolishly conceived in the fashionable dormer-ridden, cedar- shaked, postmodern vernacular of the times. It had a full length porch along the front of the house and a big circular driveway to allow maximum display area for indigenous and foreign luxury cars.
It was Saturday, so I thought the chances were good I’d catch him at the house. I parked behind a shimmering black Mercedes, climbed the porch steps and rang the doorbell.
A Doberman answered the door. Or, at least tried to knock it down from the other side. I looked back over my shoulder to plot an escape route. Then a woman’s voice, speaking urgently in Spanish, quieted the dog. I was glad I’d left Eddie at home. He’d scratch the hell out of the Grand Prix trying to defend my honor. Doberman or not.
“’Ello?” said the little Spanish woman who opened the door.
I held up the letter Gabe had drafted for me.
“Is Mr. Fleming home?”
“He know you coming here?”
I shook the letter.
“I just need to ask him a few questions. He’ll want to see me.”
“He not tell me you’re here.”
I slipped Gabe’s letter through the door opening.
“I’ll wait.”
The door closed and I could hear the woman drag the Doberman across the tile floor. A lot of time went by, so I sat in one of Ivor’s big white caned chairs. Victorian, with a high back. Not too comfortable, but sturdy. Creaked when you shifted around, which I did a lot while waiting for Ivor.
“I already talked to the police,” a man’s voice said through the closed screen door. I stood up.
“I’m not the police. I represent the firm.”
“The firm?”
“Jonathan Eldridge Consultants. His company.”
The door opened and out stepped a pasty little guy in a slippery nylon shirt two sizes smaller than him, which was an accomplishment. The color was indefinable. Maybe shiny rust, or diluted magenta. His hair was too thin to completely cover his head, but what was left was died black and smeared over his skull from ear to ear. He wore heavy black-framed glasses that exaggerated his bony little face. He looked at least part Asian. Maybe Filipino or Indonesian.
“You’re talking about this at my house?”
“Sorry. Just trying to expedite.”
He was reading the letter I’d shoved at the Spanish lady. Like me, he probably had trouble understanding Gabe Szwit’s legalese.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m doing a valuation on the firm.” I pointed to the part of the letter I thought might have the relevant language. “Not easy with a closely held entity. Lots of intangibles.”
Ivor looked up at me like he was having trouble believing his ears.
“This has got nothing to do with me.”
The Spanish lady who’d answered the door popped out on the porch and asked him something in Spanish. I tried to follow it, but the words zipped by too quickly. She had an eye on me while she talked, gauging my reaction.
“Si, si,” said Ivor and shooed her off with the letter. Then he flicked it at me. “Sit down.”
I sat.
“I’m sorry the man’s dead,” said Ivor, joining me in the adjacent porch chair. “But I don’t have anything to say about him or his business. This is what I told the people who investigated this thing. We did business over the phone. I hardly knew him.”
“Good will is a big part of a valuation. I’m interested in assessing his client relationships. How was yours?”
Ivor looked out over his soulless acreage as if seeking divine guidance. It let me get a better look at his face. He’d had cosmetic surgery—you could tell from the stretched translucent skin around his eyes. Explained the Ferdinand Marcos grimace.
He looked back down at Gabe’s letter.
“What the hell are you talking about? There’s nothing to value. Just this one guy giving investment advice. Who’s dead.”
“So you’re probably unaware of the methodologies Mr. Eldridge used in assessing investment potential. His proprietary tools.”
Ivor looked neither surprised nor impressed.
“For what, losing money? I can do that all on my own.”
“So things didn’t work out that well with Jonathan’s advice.”
“Not so good, but that’s the game. I hire guys like Eldridge all the time. Some of em hit it, others don’t. I don’t know why I bother. Odds’re about as good at the casino.”
“Most of Jonathan’s clients seemed satisfied.”
“Suckers. Rather lose their shirts than admit stupidity.”
Ivor sat back in the big white wicker chair and slid down like a teenager watching T V, his dark little body
