“And drinking on the job.”
“Long as we’re not out of beer.”
He dragged himself out of the Adirondack and lumbered into the house. While he was gone I busied myself thinking about the geometry and load distribution of roof rafters. And my high school girlfriend Sylvia Granata’s jawline, which I’d always admired as one of God’s acts of architectural perfection. Sullivan rolled back across the lawn and flopped into the chair, disrupting the image I’d almost formed in my mind. He handed me a Sam Adams and kept the microbrew from a case my friend Burton Lewis gave me the last time he was over. Sullivan never let his working class roots drag down his finer sensibilities. Especially when I was buying.
“What do you know about the guy that was blown up?” he asked.
“Papers said he was some sort of securities broker. Up island.”
“Close.”
He dug a small notepad out of his back pocket. It was covered in a cramped but orderly script.
“Investment adviser. With a broker’s license. Had one office, in Riverhead. Spent part of the time there, the rest on the road. Specialized in high tech. IPOs. LBOs. SOBs, that kinda stuff.” He looked over at me. “Typical smart young prick, like we got out here a dime a dozen.”
“Along with all the smart old pricks.”
“BMWs and cigars. Usually with a nitwit model or nose job JAP.”
“Sometimes both.”
“Only this guy was married. And local, too, if you think about it.”
“Riverhead. Close enough.”
“Yeah, right.”
Sullivan pulled himself to the edge of the chair so he could lean into his story.
“That’s all there is on this guy. There’s nothing else to say about him. Had a little shit office, traveled all over hell checking out high techs and start-ups. Worked through cell phones and fax and email—basically a one-man money machine with zippo overhead, and zippo contact with the rest of humanity.”
“Tech’s had its ups and downs.”
“Not an issue for this guy, from what they tell me. Up, down, middle, didn’t matter. Got paid comin’ or goin.”
“No friends or family?”
“No friends that they know about. Mother’s in a home in Riverhead. Off her rocker. Been there forever. A brother in Southampton. Some hippie artist. Can’t find the father, presumed dead. No other relatives. No record, no arrests, no press clips. No nothing. Very low profile.”
“Pretty interesting.”
“You think so?” he asked.
“Well, yeah. An invisible guy somebody thought interesting enough to blow to smithereens.”
“Yeah, totally. Nothing left. They said the car was wired with more explosives than that suicide thing in DC that killed, like what, thirty people? Dug a deeper crater.”
“Hamptons are always topping everybody.”
“Made the national news.”
The windsurfer flipped up over a wave made by the wake of a big sport cruiser and landed with the sail flat on the surface of the water. I watched until I saw the guy pop back up again with his hand on the boom. Wind filled out the sheet and shoved him off in another direction—out of harm’s way.
“Well, who knows,” I said, looking back at Sullivan. “The wrong advice from a broker, or an adviser, can lose you a lot of money. Can piss people off”
“Like how much? I mean, like how much can you lose?”
“Well, geez, I don’t know. Millions. Jillions.”
“That’s what I keep telling these guys in East Hampton. They don’t get the dimensions of this thing.”
“Aren’t there State and Federal people mixed up in this?”
“There were—two months ago when it happened. I think the FBI interviewed his clients. Didn’t come up with anything they liked. The Staties gave a lot of forensic help and stuff, but they’re too busy setting speed traps and polishing their holsters.”
“Sounds like Smokey envy.”
The second beer killed whatever carpentry ambition the sun hadn’t already baked out of me. I took a bigger swig and leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes and tried to redraw Sylvia’s jaw in my imagination.
“At least it’s not your headache,” I said to him.
“Well, it’s not like it’s anybody’s headache, exactly. It’s like our job.”
“East Hampton’s.”
“Well, not really. Now that it’s all screwed up everybody’s got a piece of it.”
I opened my eyes again and saw him staring down the neck of his beer. Sullivan wasn’t always the easiest guy to read. Probably because he often concealed what he was actually thinking. When he actually knew what he was thinking in the first place.
“Things have been sort of slow for some reason,” said Sullivan. “Even with all the summer people pulling their usual crazy shit. Ross got us all together this morning and handed out copies of the file—had witness interviews, including yours, and the names of State and Federal people whore still officially assigned. Who’ll be happy to have somebody else to blame for turning up a big goose egg.”
“Should keep you out of trouble,” I said, lofting my beer.
The bottle felt cool in my right hand, and I thought I felt a little breeze coming in off the bay. I slumped down deeper in my seat and put my head back against the wooden slats of the Adirondack. Trying to achieve a momentary state of perfect relaxation.
The windsurfer took a sharp turn to the left in the freshening breeze and headed straight toward the big gray-green buoy I’d been watching bob around out there for the last fifty years. I hoped he knew it was there. He wouldn’t be the first gentleman sportsman to plaster himself all over its battleship-grade plate steel hull.
“So, Sam, how busy’re you with that thing?” said Sullivan. “You got a deadline or anything?”
“What thing?”
He pointed at the addition.
“That thing. What you’re building.”
“I don’t know. Close it in before winter, maybe.”
“Yeah. You gotta do that.”
“Get the roof on.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Windows, siding.”
“Still have plenty of time to go talk to the guy’s wife,” he said to me, offhand.
“The guy’s wife?”
“The dead guy. The guy that got blown up.”
“I’m talking to his wife?”
“Well, somebody’s got to. They took her testimony, or whatever you call it. But they didn’t get shit out of her. She’s a doctor, but not the medical kind, some kind of PhD. Ed Lotane, the lead guy in East Hampton, told me she was loony, couldn’t go out of the house. Acraphobic or something like that. Afraid of the whole freaking world.”
“Agoraphobic.”
“That’s it. Plus, she’s kind of skinny and sickly, and has a big house, so naturally the cops think she’s got some heavy juice. Even though she only lives in Riverhead, and was married to a local guy, for Christ’s sakes, which shouldn’t bother those yokels in East Hampton. But, for whatever reason, this broad’s statement is about half a paragraph, and made’a nothing.”
“What has this got to do with me?”
“Aw, geez.”
He tossed an imaginary object to the ground and stood up. His blue polyester uniform strained at the midriff, revealing a T-shirt at his belly button. Two shirts and a leather harness. Just the thing for July.
“What’s the big deal?” he asked. “You just go up there and talk to her. I’ll tell you what I need to know. It’s
