“More?” he asked.
“Nah. No sense pushing my luck.”
He shrugged and served it to himself.
“You are full of shit, you know,” said Hodges.
“Just full, thanks.”
“You’re dying to stick your nose into this thing.”
“No, I’m not. I’m really not. I want to work on my addition, put up a little crown molding and make a few cabinets for Frank Entwhistle, and stay out of trouble. Stay about a million miles away from anything that even remotely looks, sounds or smells like trouble. For the rest of my damn life.”
“I guess that’s what Jackie’d want you to do. Stay out of trouble.”
“She’s alive.”
“That’s right.”
“Aw, Christ.”
“All you have to do is go talk to the guy’s wife,” he said, and folded his arms.
Eddie and the Shih Tzus clattered down the dock and jumped into the cockpit of Hodges’s boat, looking at us like we were supposed to provide the next segment of entertainment.
“One thing I can do,” I told Hodges.
“What’s that?”
“Have a little more of that coffee.”
Hodges went below deck to retrieve whatever was left in the antique pot. He poured us both a cup. I took a sip and looked up at the sea gulls cruising in random patterns, cool white marks of brilliance against the deep blue background.
“Fucking hell,” I told Hodges while I tried to drink the sludge from off the bottom of his crappy old percolator.
FOUR
IT WAS GRAY AGAIN the next morning. Warm, wet air was stuffed in all the enclosed spaces, and my skin stuck to everything it touched.
My car was a
That morning I built myself an extra-large mug of Belgian chocolate nut coffee from beans I’d bought at the corner coffee place in the Village. I liked it a little better than French vanilla or caramel classic, my other favorites. I poured it into an enormous insulated travel mug with a New York Yankees logo printed on the side.
I was wearing an off-white linen suit, last cleaned and pressed in the middle of the prior decade. It was still wrinkle-free, but a little musty. I was counting on natural forces to air it out. I put it together with a striped tie and an Egyptian pima cotton shirt that cost my ex-wife Abby a hundred dollars twenty years ago. It felt like liquid silk.
It was too hot to leave Eddie in the car, so I had to lock him up in the house. I felt like a rat, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate if I was worrying about him asphyxiating in the backseat of the car.
I left the radio on for him. Morning jazz on WLIU. Plus a full bowl of fresh water and a few Big Dog biscuits, even though he was officially more of a medium-sized dog. I still felt like a rat.
The linen suit, insulated Yankees mug and I climbed into the car and spun out of the driveway. The Grand Prix was an extreme example of an absurd era of automotive engineering. Heavy as a bulldozer, powered like a jetfighter and roomy as the penthouse suite at the Waldorf Astoria. Strictly mid-twentieth-century technology gone psychotic. A good car for my father. People in the Hamptons just averted their eyes.
I don’t know why my father bought the car in the first place. He didn’t have much money and was hardly much of a sport. I don’t remember ever seeing him laugh out loud, or express a materialistic desire for anything, mechanical or otherwise. He just showed up one day driving the thing. It looked almost new, unsullied and legally registered. My mother was suspicious.
When I was the head of R&D at one of the big hydrocarbon conglomerates, I drove a string of serenely perfect European sedans. They were better cars than the Grand Prix, but none of them had a center console big enough to stow a huge mug of Belgian chocolate nut coffee.
I dug a piece of paper with the directions Sullivan gave me out of my breast pocket and spread it out on the passenger seat. I wouldn’t have to look at it until I was in Riverhead, the tired old mill town at the crotch of the North and South Forks of Eastern Long Island. I knew how to get there, but I didn’t know much about the place. It used to be where local people could shop affordably for things like groceries and Barcaloungers, but strip development up island and general prosperity had eroded that role. Now it was just a little urban barge afloat on an ocean of wealth and aspiration. Not a likely place to lodge a high-tech financial consultant.
To get there, you had to go west from Southampton, cross the Shinnecock Canal and head up Route 24, past an enormous stucco duck and through Flanders, another raggedy old town that looked like it had wandered away from somewhere in rural Alabama. When I hit town the directions sent me up an incongruous four-lane divided highway toward Long Island Sound. As I crossed the river that named the town, I looked east toward Southampton but saw only gray translucence enveloping the Great Peconic Bay.
To either side of me were flat open fields. Huge irrigation machines were spraying geysers over the crops. Banged-up pickup trunks were out there, too, throwing up dusty contrails. Before I turned off the highway I noticed it was a sod farm. But not like the ones in Oklahoma. They were growing instant lawns. Just cut it up, haul it off to Biffy and Foo-Foo’s, roll it out and the automatic sprinklers do the rest. I wondered if they also harvested cappuccino or BMW convertibles somewhere in the area.
In a few more turns I was on her street. It was an arid subdivision, sparsely developed. The curbs and asphalt were fresh, but the common areas were weedy and poorly graded. The lots had all been clear-cut, realtor signs providing the only visual relief. I felt like I’d just toured the United States and ended up on the outskirts of Des Moines. I hoped the Grand Prix didn’t frighten the neighborhood kids.
Her house was a huge white two-story colonial with black shutters, a two-car garage and a professionally manicured lawn, cut to the length of a putting green. I waited a long time for someone to answer the doorbell. I rang it twice to make sure it was working.
The door opened a crack.
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Eldridge?”
“No.”
“Is she home?”
“Who’s this?”
“My name’s Sam Acquillo. I’m here about her husband’s death.”
“She know you?”
“No.”
“You have to call the attorney.”
“I’m with the police.”
It was quiet for a moment.
“You have to call the attorney.”
The door shut softly and latched with a barely audible click. I rang the doorbell again. A few minutes later, the door opened.
“Yes.”
“What’s the attorney’s name?”
“Gabriel Szwit. S-z-w-i-t.”
