comparable to the other night, even stone sober in the full, though fading sunlight. I lent her a flannel shirt and pair of sweatpants to spare her the journey overland to retrieve clean clothes. I let her make a meal, enduring commentary on my kitchen organization, so we could eat something with our drinks out in the Adirondacks, which I’d bleached back to new, covered with cushions and dragged to the edge of the breakwater.
Amanda waited until the plates were empty and we were on our second round to broach the subject.
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” she said.
Of course there were any number of subjects that leaped to mind that I didn’t want to talk about, though asking her which she meant might have been more perilous than just saying, “I don’t mind.”
I braced myself and said, “I don’t mind.”
“So how is he? Joe Sullivan.”
“Awake, but not exactly alert. And like Markham said, doesn’t remember a thing past the night before when he ate a hundred pounds of pasta at La Maricanto. He woke up thinking he’d just had a wicked case of food poisoning. It’s a good thing they got him full of sedatives. Soon as he realizes somebody tried to whack him there’ll be hell to pay”
“If he discovers who.”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea who, and unless he’s forgotten the last few weeks, he will, too. Proving it’ll be the problem, particularly for Sullivan, being sworn to uphold the law and all.”
“He’ll want to skip the due process part.”
“Though he won’t, no matter what. His cop head is hardwired. One of the things I like about him.”
“You never said you liked anything about him.”
This was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping we weren’t going to talk about. But it could have been worse.
“He cares what happens to the people he’s paid to look after. That’s good enough for me. How’re the hands?”
“Sore, but happy. So what are you going to do about it?”
“Band-Aids?”
“Joe Sullivan.”
“Consult your lawyer.”
“My lawyer?”
“Burton Lewis.”
“I’m sure there’s a connection.”
“Everything connects to Burton one way or the other.”
“And we’re doing this when?”
“As soon as you decide if you want to change your clothes or go as you are.”
“As if.”
“When you’re ready,” I said, working my way deeper into the chair so I could catch the last act of the sunset, when the crimson orb dips below the line of hills over on the North Shore and shoots a fan of pink and lavender light back up into the sky. “I’ll be waiting.”
—
I first met Burton Lewis when he hauled me up into the cockpit of his forty-foot sailboat, moored in the middle of the congested harbor off Marblehead, Massachusetts. He’d just thrashed the entire New England racing fleet in a boat with the hailing port of New York City NY, written across the transom. Whatever regional animosity this might have engendered, none was directed toward Burton, whose awkward good nature and unflagging civility made all forms of rancor seem ridiculous. In fact, Abby’s family, who would have achieved a heroic shallowness were it not for the depth of their self-importance, fairly fell over one another to offer him obsequious congratulations. Which was maybe why, as the last guy to clamor over the coaming, and the only one announcing his yacht club allegiance as Yankee Stadium, I hit it off with the lanky young billionaire.
At the time Burton had a criminal law practice run out of a storefront in the Alphabet District on the Lower East Side. Like other very rich people who were rich through inheritance, he could have easily devoted his life to philanthropic ventures with little notice, but instead found a way to put time in at a law firm his grandfather had founded that specialized in corporate tax law, which under his subsequent management had became one of the largest practices in the world.
“You get bored defending indigents day in and day out,” he’d tell me. “A. person needs a little something different once in a while to stimulate the mind, stir the juices. Dashing off Schedule M-3s, petitioning for changes in capital structure, tasty audit-driven litigation and compliance hearings, that sort of thing.”
Burton’s house was built on a foundation that had supported the two previous Lewis mansions, built by his grandfather and father respectively. When Burton downsized from forty-six to twenty-four rooms he retained the original footprint, so the building tended to flow across the grounds in a disorienting sprawl that made you grateful for the people assigned to guide your way.
Amanda and I drew Isabella, a Cuban refugee and Burton’s chief of staff, who’d been on the job since her husband dropped dead while serving subpoenas on behalf of Burton’s criminal practice. Burton had only meant to help her over the initial stages of her loss, but somehow she’d managed to co-opt enough responsibility to make herself indispensable. Or at least provide that illusion.
“Be careful when you go into the room,” she told us. “He’s painting.”
The room was a long rectangle lined on three walls with tall arch-top mahogany doors. The floor was tiled with glossy red ceramic squares and the ceiling rose up into a series of vaulted domes, which Burton was in the act of painting a brilliant white. He stood on a rolling scaffold and was leaning backwards in what looked like a painfully contorted position.
“Missed a spot,” I called up.
“And to think what Michelangelo had to contend with.”
“Had a tough client.”
“Not an issue here. All I battle is sniffing from Isabella.”
“Doesn’t like white?”
“What is it with you men and scaffolding,” said Amanda.
“I think old Mick did it all from a recumbent position,” said Burton, wiping a glob of paint off his forehead.
“We should probably let you work,” Amanda said.
“Not offering to help?” I asked her.
“Not unless it involves a power nailer.”
“Stay put,” Burton called down. “I’ll order up refreshment.”
Before climbing down from the scaffold Burton called Isabella on his cell phone to ask for drinks and a side of soap and water. Then he led us out one of the big doors to a slate patio furnished in wrought iron and shaded by an enormous dark green market umbrella under which were suspended tiny electric globes. As we waited for a staffer to bring refreshments, Burton dragged a garden hose out from behind a Japanese andromeda to do some preliminary rinsing. The night air was soft, but cooled by a breeze coming from the ocean, which you could hear as a low rumble washing around the neighboring estate on the shoreline side of Gin Lane, and through the privet hedge at the distant edge of the yard.
I’d lost track of Burton for a few years after I’d screwed up my job and left Abby who’d been our common link. If you asked her, she’d say Burton belonged to her, declaring the supremacy of social parity, never noticing he actually preferred me to the empty-headed gentility that often gathered on his lawn to sip Campari and play one- upsmanship with each other. He was younger than me, now maybe forty-five or forty-six, but looked like a well- preserved older version of himself. Perpetually tan, his faced was creased and gaunt, offsetting a full head of light brown hair that fell in a French curve across his forehead.
Over the first round of drinks Amanda endured a thorough examination of the current and prospective fortunes of the New York Yankees, which led to general agreement on the inevitable four-game sweep of the World Series. Back when I had a job I’d often duck out of the office to meet Burton down in the Bronx where we’d take our chances on general admission or patronize one of the resident scalpers with whom Burton had an ongoing business relationship. It was fun, but I admit I liked basketball season better in his private box at Madison Square Garden, which looked a little like the inside of his law offices on Wall Street, complete with a full bar and a happy Romanian
