Jackie was also eager to get out of there, so we got to follow the leggy blonde up the long aisle. As we walked along, Jackie saw where I was looking and gave me another hard smack on the arm.
“Un-goddamn-
——
After we left the parking lot Jackie wanted to talk about the evidence against me, examining in detail the content and style of the prosecutor’s delivery. I tried to pay attention, but all I really wanted to do was have a cigarette and feel the wind blasting in through the yawning window of the Grand Prix.
“You’re not listening to me, are you?” she said finally. “I’m listening. I’m also thinking. I can do two things at once.”
“I’m glad you’re so dismissive of the case against you,” she said. “That gives the competing advocates clearly delineated positions.”
“They have to tell you about everything they got, right? Not allowed to spring any shit?”
“It’s called discovery. We get to see their dirty details, we don’t have to show them ours. The only problem is it doesn’t take effect until after an indictment is handed up. Before that, it’s a confidential police investigation.”
“I just want to know the set I’m working with.”
“Set of what?”
“Operating conditions. The parameters. Engineering talk. Not on the English curriculum.”
“You’re already thinking something you’re not sharing with me. We can’t have that this time, Sam. Don’t do that to me.”
“Okay. Then you can come along.”
“Come along where?”
“To the scene of the crime.”
After she was finished giving me all the reasons why we had to clear it with the DA’s office, I got Jackie to give up her cell phone so I could call Joe Sullivan. He was also in his car, heading over to Bridgehampton, where a horse farm had reported a break-in.
“Just took riding gear, saddles and stirrups. Not the horses themselves,” he said.
“Probably not as easy to fence a horse.”
“Don’t put it past these bozos.”
“Say Joe, any reason why I can’t go over to that job site where Robbie got killed?”
“I can’t talk to you about the case. You know that.”
“So in other words, no problem.”
“We’re not having this conversation.”
“Excellent. Thanks.”
I hung up the phone and tossed it back to Jackie. “He said it was fine.”
It was a good day for a drive. The sun was out and making things warmer, both the temperature and color of the light.
Buds were bursting into little flowers on the trees and ornamental shrubs and the pin oaks were finally shedding their leathery brown leaves, yielding to the yellow-green nubs that would be fresh growth by late May. I turned off Montauk Highway at Southampton College and traveled north over the railroad tracks and through the Shinnecock Hills Golf Course, where the PGA occasionally held the U.S. Open. Must be a proud moment for the Indians living south of there on a reservation about the size of the golf course. I passed some of the tiny inlets and harbors that sculpted the bay shore and formed the grassy pools from which the more entrepreneurial of the persistently poor pulled a sizeable share of their daily calories.
I slowed the car considerably when we reached Bay Edge Drive. A ‘67 Grand Prix isn’t much good on sand. I alternately hugged opposite sides of the road to clear ruts and avoid scraping the exhaust system off the undercarriage. I’d installed aftermarket shock absorbers to reduce the car’s natural seagoing effect, though the stiffer suspension made for a less-than-creamy ride over the gutted surface. Jackie patted around the door and headliner in search of a handhold, eventually wedging herself into the seat with her feet pushed against the dashboard.
“Let me know when you’re going to stop so I can puke out the door,” she said.
“Almost there.”
Robbie’s project was on a narrow two-acre lot that was solid woods until you reached the bayfront. There it opened up to a yard that once comfortably held a single story bungalow not unlike my parents’ cottage, but was now filled with Robbie’s architectural grotesquerie. It had been a while since I’d seen it up close, and I was surprised at the progress. If it wasn’t for all the vans and pickups scattered around you’d think it was ready for the new owners to move in. I stopped the car and let the implications sink in.
“Where’s the yellow tape?” I asked Jackie.
“Long gone, Sam. Before you start in on me, it’s almost impossible to keep a crime scene frozen in the middle of a construction site, especially after everything’s been gone over, photographed and videotaped. As it was, Milhouser bellyached every day until it was released. Claimed financial hardship.”
“Milhouser?”
“Jefferson. Robbie’s heir. His father.”
“So that’s that,” I said. “We have to trust the cops got everything. That they got it all right.”
“Not cops, exactly. Forensics experts. They don’t usually miss anything, but yeah. What they got is all we got.”
“Interesting.”
“I’m sorry, Sam.”
“Don’t be. It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Let’s go look anyway,” I said, getting out of the car.
I was halfway to the front door, with Jackie a few steps behind, when Patrick and his sidekick from the other night came out to greet us. They were wearing loaded tool belts and were covered in sheetrock dust. Patrick held a slim tacking hammer.
“You got some kind of balls,” he said, slapping the tool on his thigh.
“If it’s gonna be hammers, let me get my sledge out of the trunk.”
He looked past me at Jackie bringing up the rear.
“Who’s the new chick?”
“His attorney, Sport,” said Jackie, moving in front of me before I could stop her. “And an officer of the court in an active homicide investigation. You’ll want to think very hard about what you’re going to say before you say another word,” she added, sticking her finger in his face, her new thing, which I preferred looking at from that vantage point.
He started to open his mouth and she moved in a little closer.
“You were saying?” she asked.
A long pause followed.
“I was saying,” he took a fake little bow, “what can I do for you folks?”
“We’re here to examine what’s left of this crime scene,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, but holding her ground. “What you can do is move out of the way. Please.”
Patrick spread his arms and backed off to the side, shoving the other guy along with him.
“Be my guest,” he said.
Jackie strode passed him and I followed, giving Patrick a friendly little nod.
The interior of the house was partially sheetrocked, which explained the dust, but far less finished than the outside. Electricians were still pulling cable and a pair of framing carpenters were ripping out a section of wall. A Vietnamese insulation crew, the only guys I recognized, were sitting in the middle of the room with a stack of woolly pink rolls waiting for instructions. A big Sub-Zero refrigerator was half-uncrated in what would become the kitchen. A cluster of copper plumbing protruded from the middle of the floor, promising a center island that I could tell by eyeball the kitchen was too narrow to accommodate.
Jackie led me to the bay side of the house, anchored by a large glass-enclosed room. Not quite a living room, but more than a porch. No plans I could see for a woodstove, daybed or busted-up pine table.
