“I don’t know. Just curious.”
“I think mostly around Riverhead and the North Fork. The father was an accountant. Commuted to somewhere up island. Put in long hours. Jonathan was on his own a lot. Made him very self-reliant, he claimed. Toughened him up. Although you probably know that already. You seem to know a lot.”
“I know my name is Sam and I live in a house with a dog.”
“That’s really about all you know,” said Gabe, suddenly getting up a head of steam. “You’re just fishing. Trying to bully everything out of me. It’s pathetic.”
“Did Jonathan know you were in love with his wife?”
That got his color back. Should’ve thanked me for asking him.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Come on, Gabe, you think it’s that hard to tell? He must’ve seen it, too.”
“I’m not listening to this.”
“Probably part of his calculation. He knew you’d do anything to protect her, keep her safe and secure. He’d known you for years. Knew you were a good administrator, could handle things. He spent a lot of time on the road. Needed a professional go-to guy back at the ranch. Gave you a lot of face time with Appolonia. Enough to get in deeper and deeper. But also enough to know you hadn’t a prayer of getting what you really wanted. She was completely devoted to Jonathan and he knew it. Didn’t have to worry. Must’ve made you feel extra special, if you ever let yourself think about it.”
Gabe was probably a pretty good lawyer. Had the poker face for it. But if you shook him up a little and looked closely, you could see it written into his countenance. The frustration and anger. Bitterness and resentment, or maybe desperation. The curse of an intelligent man who wanted to live with a delusion, but his intelligence wouldn’t let him.
“Must be nice now to have her all to yourself,” I said. “Kind of.”
He looked about to answer that, but stopped himself. Instead he just stared, occasionally darting his eyes over toward the phone on his desk.
“Nothing’s really changed,” I said. “You still got plenty of face time, but you’re no closer to the prize. Was it worth it?”
“You’re not suggesting?”
“Should I be?”
He actually smiled and wagged a finger at me.
“Now you’re really overreaching, Mr. Acquillo.”
“How come you didn’t sue Ivor Fleming after he stiffed Butch? You had a good case. Did you work out a deal?”
“Now who’s making false allegations? Not going to work,” he said.
“We could try it out on Ross Semple. See what he thinks.”
What was left of Gabe’s smile faded away.
“He’ll want to talk to Appolonia,” he said. “You promised to leave her out of it.”
“I didn’t, but I will. For now.”
I stood up and picked my sledge up off the couch, making him blanch again.
“Not leaving it here,” I said. “Might need it again.”
“It won’t do you any good. You’re a fool if you think it will.”
“What do you mean?”
He pointed at me.
“That’s what I mean. You have no idea what you’re doing. And no amount of brutality will change that.”
Looking down on him sitting in the couch he looked small, but defiant, assuming a posture he’d likely learned in childhood, fighting with his parents over finishing his carrots and peas. I’d pushed him as far as he could be pushed, at least for now. I knew that about smaller, physically weaker men, especially the smart ones, who’d had a lot trouble in the schoolyard. They usually had a reservoir of indignation, compensated for by a panoply of intellectual weaponry, not the least being a particularly vicious form of subterfuge. A penchant for the sneak attack, the shiv in the back.
“You should repair my door,” he said. “But I’d prefer if you didn’t come back again.”
I left him in his office, alone again to think thoughts I wished I could read, though only from a safe distance.
TWENTY-SEVEN
ISABELLA TOLD ME over the intercom speaker at the front gate that Burton was over at the Gracefield Tennis Club having lunch. She said if I wanted to talk to him I’d have to wait till he got back, since non-members weren’t allowed to say the word “Gracefield” much less eat lunch there.
“Maybe I’ll join,” I said.
“You got the hundred thousand a year and proof your ancestors come over on the Mayflower, you maybe got a chance.”
“If they’d take me I wouldn’t want to join,” I said, invoking Groucho.
“Lucky for you. Save you a hundred grand.”
I went over there anyway and drove right up the long entrance. To either side were grass courts on which lithe figures in white cotton played tennis under the hot sun while generating no noticeable sweat. I thought, wow, that is some breeding.
I found a parking space where I could squeeze the Grand Prix between two full-sized luxury SUVs. I felt like I was in a black canyon. The reflections in the black side panels were bright enough to use as a mirror, which I did to tuck in my shirt and put some semblance of a part in my hair.
The main clubhouse was a fat old shingle-style place that looked like most of the older homes lining the shore between the ocean and Gin Lane. The cedar shakes were a dark gray, split and curled in many places, which made the bright blue-and-white-striped awnings look all the more fresh and sporty. I trotted up onto the huge porch— carpeted with woven jute and furnished in white wicker—where it was easily ten degrees cooler. A scattering of people in and out of tennis outfits were having drinks and picking melons and strawberries out of pewter baskets. As I hoped, there was a reception area just inside the main door.
“Burton Lewis, please,” I said to the guy standing there in a pink shirt and white bow tie, sleeves rolled up to the middle of his forearms.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m here to have lunch with Burton Lewis.”
He looked down at the book on his maitre d’ stand.
“Your name?”
“Sam Acquillo. He might’ve forgotten.”
He looked at me as if to say, “Mr. Lewis never forgets.”
I looked at my watch, then felt immediately idiotic because I wasn’t wearing one. The host saw the dumb move, too. Condescension began to creep into his expression.
“He’s waiting for me. Why don’t you just tell him I’m here,” I said.
“We don’t disturb our members at lunch. And if you’re not a member,” he paused to look me up and down, so we could silently agree I wasn’t, “you aren’t permitted to remain on the premises.”
I wondered if once, just once, I’d be able to enter a building and just get to see the person I wanted to see without having to manipulate, cajole, bribe, threaten or sock some mistrustful gatekeeper in the nose.
“You’re guessing that Burton wouldn’t want to see me.”
“I escort Mr. Lewis to his private dining room every Thursday. I’m afraid he would have mentioned it to me.”
“Okay but what if you’re wrong. What if he would’ve seen me but you didn’t let him know I was here. How would that go over?”
That almost worked with Ivor Fleming’s security guards, for whom the wrong call could conceivably be a
