people my age had gained access to opportunity playing college football. He’d been a running back at Penn and was almost as fit in his current job as president of the University of Chicago. He told me if I met his faculty I’d understand why.
I never had a chance to test my inflated self-regard with the divisional VPs, though I did break the chief corporate counsel’s nose, thereby abruptly truncating what had been a relatively seamless rise through the corporate matrix. I don’t remember actually popping him one, though I know I did it from the sting on my knuckles and the subsequent commotion.
That one episode notwithstanding, I far preferred engineering to boxing. Though I never lost the habit of going to the gym and jumping rope, sparring and hitting the bag. A habit that had once developed into a near obsession, leading me to spend hours during the week and big chunks of the weekend at a boxing gym in New Rochelle.
In retrospect it’s easy to understand why. Gave me a place to go that wasn’t my house or office. And a way to exhaust some of the toxic wastes thrown off by my nervous system and accreted around my heart during the day.
Soon after moving into my parents’ cottage I found a crappy little boxing gym just inside the charred pine barrens north of Westhampton Beach. There weren’t any real fighters out of there, it was only a workout joint, though a few of the young Shinnecock Indians looked capable of getting serious if there’d been anyone to teach them how. The other guys were mostly municipal types—cops, road crews and volunteer firemen. I was the only one who actually knew how to work a bag or even throw a proper punch. Most of them would break their wrists before they had a chance to do any real damage. Not that I let anyone try on me. I never sparred with amateurs without serious supervision from the corners. Too easy to get out of hand, for tempers to ignite when the poor dopes realize they keep getting socked and never seem to land one of their own.
The gym was called Sonny’s and it was started by an ex-cop named Ronny who thought the area needed a place for poor African-American and Shinnecock kids to hang out and have a legal way to beat the crap out of each other, and occasionally get a shot at a cop outside his patrol car, stripped of ordnance and imperial invincibility. Which is more or less how it worked out, to Ronnys credit. Or Sonny’s, whoever he was.
Sonny’s was up in the woods above West Hampton, on the periphery of the pine barrens, just inside the area caught in a huge fire a few years ago. Never a pretty looking place, the pale green cinder block building now stuck out against the charred pines and bright green second growth like a post-apocalyptic architectural fantasy. Not that it would threaten the aesthetic sensibilities of the clientele.
Sullivan often worked out there in the morning, so I forced myself out of the house in time to pick up a cup of hazelnut at the coffee place in the Village and still get there before he staggered into the showers.
I found him bludgeoning the sandbag with little effect.
“You ought to keep your elbow a little higher with that right hand,” I told him. “It’ll put more shoulder into the jab.”
“Not interested in any of that Marcus of Queensberry shit.”
“Tough talk with Marcus out of town.”
“Stinkin’ French.”
“Some of my best friends have been French.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Three out of four grandparents. Though to be fair I only met my old man’s mother once or twice. Hard woman. Could have shown Marcus a thing or two.”
Sullivan stopped slogging at the bag and held it with both gloved hands, steadying himself.
“You want to crap all over the Irish for a few minutes so we can call it even?”
“I want to talk about Jonathan Eldridge. After I get a little time on the bag. Now that you got it softened up.”
“Have at it.”
I caught up with him about an hour later at a diner on Montauk Highway in Hampton Bays. When I was growing up it was open twenty-four hours, making it a prime late-hour destination, a way station for teenagers and husbands to sober up a little before sneaking into the house. Now it was going the way of all local joints within striking distance of the beach, serving Belgian waffles with strawberries along with the standard greasy eggs and ham. I mostly went for the French roast coffee served in a china cup and saucer.
“I wondered when you were going to turn up,” said Sullivan, squeezing himself into the booth.
“Frank asked me to do some trim work. But I talked to some people before that.”
“Yeah? What do you think?”
The waitress came by so I had to wait while he ordered a few tons of carbohydrates with a side of ham.
“Be still my heart.”
“All that bag work, man. Gotta feed the engine. So, what do you think?”
“I think we’ll never know who killed Jonathan Eldridge.”
“There’s the old can-do spirit.”
“Jackie told me we were in way over our heads. She’s right. The best investigators in the world were on this thing when it was still hot. They got nowhere and now it’s ice cold. The whole thing has the stink of professionalism.”
“In your educated opinion,” said Sullivan.
“Yeah, actually. All the reports you gave me said it was a car bomb. That’s what your people concluded. Unless the Feds and Staties are blowing smoke up Ross’s ass, that’s what they think, too.”
“Tell me what I’m missin’ here, but I think a car actually blew up. With plastic explosives.”
“Much later. Maybe twenty, thirty seconds after the fire.”
“What fire?”
“Read my witness report. First there was a fire inside the car. A very hot fire. Explosive, though not all the way to the boom stage. That’s a very difficult thing to achieve, even in a controlled environment, like an industrial furnace or kiln.”
“You told em that?”
“I thought the explosion was caused by whatever started the fire, after the windows gave out and a flood of oxygen was introduced. I didn’t know about the C-4 until I read the files. Makes a lot more sense, given the force of the blast.”
“I’m already confused.”
“Jonathan gets in his car and shuts the door. A fire erupts inside the car that instantly reaches super-hot temperatures. Consumes all the oxygen in the passenger cabin, feeds off whatever air the subsequent vacuum sucks in through the ventilation system, gets hotter, finally hot enough to melt the glass in the windows, causing a burst of flames that sets off the C-4. At least that’s what it looked like to me.”
“You know this from looking?”
“You really want the technical version?”
Sullivan used both hands to ward off the thought.
“No, that’s okay. Science shit is your deal.”
“This is very sophisticated stuff. Not beyond the forensic capabilities of the FBI, but unless they’re holding something back, I don’t think they found evidence of anything beyond the C-4, which leaves a pretty distinct marker. Or they just ignored my statement. Who the hell am I.”
“You talked to his wife. The whack job.”
“Appolonia. And it’s an anxiety disorder. Your instincts were right. You shouldn’t bother her. I’m in there for now, but I’m on thin ice. She’s not opening up to any cop. Or any kind of authority.”
“Guilty conscience?”
“Fear. Lots and lots of it. More than you can imagine. But she did agree to let me pose as a guy valuating Jonathan’s business. For estate purposes. Gives me an excuse to bother people.”
Sullivan sat back in the booth so the waitress could drop a small mountain of eggs, toast and hash browns in front of him. Then she poured a glob of their regular burnt-bean coffee on top of my French roast. And they tell you service isn’t what it used to be.
“Never needed an excuse before,” said Sullivan.
I was never very good at getting along with people. At least not according to ordinary rules of engagement. I
