“Here in Riverhead?”
“In the phone book. That’s why I spelled it.”
The door closed again. I spun on my heel and walked back to the Grand Prix with an air of cool self- possession. I didn’t want the neighbors to see me sweat. That’s okay, Mrs. Big Shot Widow. Just wait. I’ll be back.
I drove to a phone booth on a far corner of a gas station in Flanders and called information. Mr. Szwit was in Southampton Village. I called Sullivan.
“What do you mean call the attorney?”
“That’s what she said, Joe.”
“Well, you don’t gotta do that. You’re the police. All you got to do is say you want to talk to her.”
“I’m not the police, Joe. You’re the police.”
“Jesus Christ. Nothin’s easy.”
“Call Szwit. Have him tell her to expect a guy named Sam Acquillo. Then call me back. I’ll wait here.”
“He might want to be there.”
“Great.”
“No big deal.”
“Don’t take too long. It’s hot.”
The station sold a brand of gasoline I didn’t recognize. A small crowd of young black kids were hanging out front, mumbling to each other and watching a skinny gray dog peel a wad of gum up off the hot tarmac. Their clothes poured down off their bodies and curled around their feet. They drank diet soda from liter bottles and stayed clear of the wiry little white guy manning the full-service pumps. Everyone was smoking cigarettes despite the pervasive gasoline vapors. So I lit a Camel. Solidarity.
The phone rang.
“Go on over. But go slow. The lady’s some kind of dipsoid.”
“What kind of dipsoid?”
“I told you. Some sort of phobiac. Afraid of the outside or some shit.”
“Agoraphobic.”
“Yeah. I think we covered this.”
“Szwit isn’t coming?”
“My wife’s afraid of birds. Scare the shit out of her. We never get to eat on the patio at the Driver’s Seat. She thinks they’re gonna get caught in the umbrellas, panic and dive into her ears.”
“Her ears?”
“Yeah. She thinks birds want to fly in her ears. This has never happened, to my knowledge, to anybody, but this is what she thinks.”
“Otherwise, a pretty normal gal.”
“Outside of marrying me.”
“So he won’t be there.”
“Who?”
“Szwit.”
“He’s on his way.”
“Okay”
“Let me know how it goes.”
The kids had melted off under the late morning sun. I looked for little puddles of denim and nylon. I bought a liter bottle of Fresca and climbed back into the Grand Prix. I was starting to lose whatever enthusiasm I’d stirred up for this whole thing. I thought about my roof rafters and tool belt. I lit another Camel and turned on WLIU to distract the whiny little voice inside my head.
It took even longer to get the door open this time. After I rang the doorbell I caught a little curtain movement from a second floor window. I was getting her attention.
The same woman’s voice came from the crack in the door.
“Yes?”
“My office called Mr. Szwit. My name is Acquillo.”
“Identification.”
Oh, Christ.
I flipped open my wallet and slid my driver’s license behind the yellowy plastic window. I stuck it up to the crack in the door for about half a second.
“Just a moment.”
The door closed again and I waited again. I was starting to get to know the door knocker. It was Colonial, like the house. Plate steel, painted flat black, with scallops cut into the surface to simulate hand forging. The kind of thing my parents wouldn’t even know how to describe.
The door swung all the way open. A short, obese woman peered around the edge and watched me enter the foyer. Her dress was a cotton sack printed with something and cinched up around an area approximating her waist. She wore an apron, stubby heels and an angry black scowl. Warren Sapp would have a tough time knocking her down.
“Wait here,” she said, then heaved herself up the stairs. Alone again.
The foyer was done in shades of off-white. The natural wood banister was the only point of relief. I strolled forward to catch a glimpse of the living room to the right. It featured the same palette, except for the love seat and a pair of high-backed stuffed chairs, which were upholstered in a muted floral pattern. It looked like everything in the house could float away on a stiff breeze. A set of louvered doors blocked the view to the kitchen. I heard voices. Then the fat lady came back downstairs. She waved at the living room.
“Go on, sit in there. Mrs. Eldridge ll be down in a sec.”
I sat on the chair that faced the stairway so I could see her come down. The air-conditioning was set low, maybe sixty-seven degrees. I warmed my hands with my breath. I wanted another cup of coffee. Something really hot in a doubled-up paper cup.
Mrs. Eldridge glided down the stairs and swept across the carpet with a soft, leggy delicacy, and before I had a chance to stand, slid into the opposing high-backed chair, where she perched like an oversized cat, her stocking feet tucked up under her butt, her hands folded prayerfully in her lap. She wore a white cashmere sweater buttoned up to her throat and black cotton slacks. Her hair was too perfectly arranged, as if fresh from the hairdresser. And black. Too black, even for a woman her age, which I guessed to be late thirties. She was like her living room. Not much color, except for the eyes, which were the most brilliant, frigid icy blue I’d ever seen.
“Well,” she said, neither a question nor a statement.
I stood up and leaned over to offer my hand.
“I’m Sam Acquillo. I was there when it happened.”
Her nails, long and perfect like her hair, were painted a deep maroon. A tangle of blue veins crazed across her wrist and the back of her hand. When I shook her hand, bony and cool-dry I was afraid I might crush it like a piece of ceramic, but her grip was blunt and to the point.
“Appolonia Eldridge. I was here.”
I retreated back to my chair.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“You knew Jonathan?”
“No. I was just having a drink. Waiting for a friend.”
“Yes. Of course.”
She looked away, toward the shrouded bay windows, as if the conversation had just concluded. I felt myself disappearing, until she returned her gaze, then I was back in the room.
“The retired engineer. And the young lady lawyer. Jacqueline Swaitkowski. She was badly injured, but you saved her life. And your own.”
“You read the report.”
A suggestion of a smile teased her face.
“You feel I shouldn’t have?”
“No. Of course not. I’d have memorized it by now.”
