“Who’s Seymour?”
“Seymour Glass.”
“Don’t know him.”
“Hell of a carpenter.”
“Work alone, does he?” Sullivan asked.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Maybe he could help.”
“This is the only hard part.”
“What, framing the house?”
“Setting the ridge plate. Confounds even the most subtle minds.”
“Not the guys I used to work with. Dumber’n shit. Could still set a ridge plate.”
I tapped the side of the rafter into perfect position with the ridge and checked it with the framing square. The joint at the plate still had a big ugly gap.
“Done some building?” I asked Sullivan.
“All over the Island. Set a lot of ridge plates. Never did it by myself.”
“It’s simple engineering. It’s all in the numbers. A few calculations and about a hundred years of fiddling around and she’s in there, dead nuts.”
“I’d come up there and help you but I’m on duty”
“Sure, hide behind the badge.”
“You wouldn’t let me anyway.”
“Probably not.”
“Too pigheaded.”
“There’s beer in the refrigerator.”
“I can help you with that.”
“On duty?”
“They encourage it.”
He disappeared into the original part of the cottage. I was working on an addition off the back. Improving my place in the world. I’d drawn it up, and so far had done all the work myself, shy of pouring the concrete. My father had dug the hole for the original building with a pick and shovel and laid up the foundation out of cinder block. It was more necessity than heroics. He had very little money. Made up for it with grim determination.
“I got you one,” Sullivan called up from just outside the rear door.
I slid the hammer into the holster on my tool belt and lowered the unraised rafter down to the floor deck. Maybe the whole roof system would work itself out while I was having a beer with Sullivan. Sometimes lumber would do that if you left it alone long enough.
“What’s it gonna be?” Sullivan asked me as I was climbing down the ladder.
“What?”
“That.” He pointed with the neck of the beer. “What’re you building?”
“Bedroom. Bath. Little storage upstairs. More shop room in the basement.”
He took a long drink.
“Why don’t you plow the whole thing under and build a new house?” His gaze wandered out on the bay as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “You gotta great lot here.”
“How’s that beer?”
“Cold.”
I unbuckled the tool belt and let it drop to the ground. It was an electrician’s belt, but I liked it for carpentry, too. Lots of clever little pockets and a sturdy, built-in hammer holster. I took off a separate nail apron and pulled up my terry cloth sweatband so I could wipe the bottle across my forehead. The heavy wet heat made it a bad day to toss around Douglas fir and dimensional calculations. Sullivan, Eddie and I walked over to the two handmade Adirondack chairs I kept under a leafy Norway maple. Eddie spread himself out on the grass. Sullivan and I took the chairs.
I liked all the seasons here at the edge of the Little Peconic, but the extremes of summer and winter were a little less likable. In dead winter you had howling, salt-filled winds blowing through secret cracks in the walls and down the front of your foul-weather gear. In deep summer the air would often come to a dead stop, letting all that drippy, cottony heat glob up your cardiovascular system and dull your mental functions.
“How’s your ass?” he asked me.
“Beg pardon?”
“I heard they pulled about a hundred glass splinters out of your ass.”
“Less than fifty Out of my back. Nothing in the gluteus.”
“So no big sweat.”
“All the little cuts are sealed over, but I’m still sleeping on my stomach. Got back seventy percent in my right ear, eighty percent in my left. Jackie’s right came all the way back. Her left is gone forever. Funny break.”
Sullivan still wore a smirk, but it slipped a little.
“Yeah. Luck’s an odd thing. You’re lucky you’re alive.”
“Don’t get metaphysical.”
“No problem there. You’re not my type.”
I tried to keep part of my mind calculating the rafter cuts, but it wasn’t happening. I stared up at the precariously placed ridge plate and waited for inspiration.
“Don’t you ever wonder why?” Sullivan asked.
“All the time.”
He nodded like I’d just won him a private bet.
A windsurfer came into view. He was long and muscular, wearing a small blue tank suit and gripping the boom with a lanky confidence. His hair, long enough to fall down his back, was pressed wetly between his shoulder blades. There wasn’t nearly enough wind to give the guy much of a ride. I wondered what my father would think of windsurfing and jet skis and parasailing and the other modes of modern recreation that flew by on the bay. Not that he ever paid much attention to all the salt water sitting there outside his front door. Except for the occasional trip out to catch bluefish for dinner, he was a land guy—all grease, earth and dust.
“They’re not getting anywhere,” said Sullivan.
“I figured.”
“Not what they’re telling everybody, of course. They’re calling it an ongoing investigation, which means they got squat. I ran into the lead guy over at Bobby Van’s. Having dinner with his wife. She didn’t want him talking shop, but you could tell he was fed up with the whole thing. He used to think it was a ticket to Hollywood. Big high-profile thing. Now two months later it’s an embarrassment. Even I’m embarrassed for him.”
“You’re an empathetic guy, Joe.”
“Embarrassed, empathetic, it’s all the same to me. Adds up to nothin’ for the prosecutor, nothin’ for the press. Nothin’ for the grieving widow.”
“Nothin’ for the innocent bystanders.”
“Yeah,” he said, “that, too. Not a happy place.”
He seemed pensive. Almost philosophical. Even empathetic.
“So, you got a deadline on this thing?” Sullivan asked, looking up at the addition.
“What do you mean?”
“You work on it every day?”
“When I’m not working for Frank.”
“A lot of work doing a whole addition. Especially doing it yourself. Lotta work.”
“Yup.”
“I know. I’ve done it. It’s tough.”
“Definitely.”
“Hard work.”
“Yeah.”
We sat in silence for a while, then Sullivan let out a noisy sigh to fill the dead air.
“Of course, I’m the only one officially working,” he said.
