Straight A’s in science, so-so in art and literature. Had a secret life from everybody but guess who.”
“Milhouser.”
“Caught me at a weak moment in the cafeteria. Started grilling me about a lecture on the environment we’d heard during assembly. Got me going on sensitive interrelationships within complex systems, hidden causalities and the law of unforeseen consequences. All the stuff that had my eighteen-year-old brain on fire. I was halfway through an immature dissertation on the paradigm shift of emerging chaos theory before I remembered I was talking to the biggest bully in school. I thought, holy shit, I must be out of my goddamned mind.”
“Fred Astaire meets Robert Oppenheimer,” I said.
“Not exactly. I think he was just sort of inspired by that lecture. The point is, he knew to talk to me. He sought me out. He had my number, but never did anything about it but have a little chat and scare the crap out of me.”
“So you didn’t hang with him.”
That amused Joey.
“I said I kept my head down, I didn’t say I was cool. You could only be cool by wearing a letter sweater, consuming intoxicants or victimizing weaker kids. None of these were appealing to me.”
“I think Robbie managed two out of three,” I said.
“You mean sports? It was generally assumed he could kick the ass of any starting lineman on the football team, so he didn’t have to play ball. Plus, he had the one thing that virtually guaranteed absolute, irrevocable coolness.”
“His girlfriend was the hottest babe in school.”
“Precisely.” He put his hand over his heart. “The only other thing that set my eighteen-year-old brain on fire. Amanda Anselma.”
TEN
I DON’T REMEMBER what murky and misguided impulse got me into boxing in the first place, but I stuck with it for the gyms. My favorite was the one in New Rochelle where I met Antoine and Walter Bick and where I could always find the comfort of anonymity and the solace of organized brutality. It had been in operation since well before the war and was appropriately dank and claustrophobic and shopworn, the walls thick with overpainting and the ceilings a tangle of exposed metal rafters. But you went there for the rummy old trainers, ambitious contenders and haunted ghetto kids. And the equipment was as good as anywhere, what there was of it. A row of speed bags, a half dozen heavy bags, jump ropes, medicine balls and a ring. Showers and a ready supply of rigid white towels you could use to either dry yourself or sand down a picnic table.
For almost twenty years it was about all I did other than work. No one at the company ever knew, except Jason Fligh, the only member of my company’s board I could say was a friend. The reason was simple enough. Back when we were both trying to raise money for tuition he saw one of my few professional fights. The first up on a triple bill in Chicago. I won, thank God. Which was how Jason remembered it the day I met him, minutes before I had to pitch the board on my division’s annual budget. We were pouring coffee at an eighteenth-century serving table they’d rolled into the boardroom. Jason described the whole night in rich detail, something people with photographic memories like his are able to do.
I was glad I hadn’t asked him to keep it to himself. He just did, knowing I’d rather not have to explain such an alien thing to the lordly, white-haired board members whose notice of boxing barely extended beyond annoyance at Muhammad Ali for changing his name from Cassius Clay.
Jason was an outside director, his regular job being president of the University of Chicago. He was the only outside director who seemed to take the job seriously, and I was the only division head who didn’t treat him like an afterthought when I had to speak before the board.
Since moving out to Southampton I’d found a shabbier version of my gym in New Rochelle, if such a thing was possible, up in the scraggly pine barren north of Westhampton. It was called Sonny’s, though the name wasn’t displayed anywhere. You knew because Ronny, the guy who ran the place, told you that was the name.
When I wasn’t killing myself in the construction trades I’d go there on a regular basis to work the bags, mess around with the free weights, sit in a tiny steam room and go comatose in one of two Jacuzzis, the pride of the establishment.
After my lunch with Joey Entwhistle this seemed like the only logical thing to do.
I was a half hour into the speed bag, which was about my limit, when Sullivan appeared a step or two outside my swing. He waited while I finished the pattern. I like the speed bag. It’s strenuous work to keep your arms up and moving like that. Unlike the heavy bag, you can hit the thing as hard as you want without hurting your wrists, and it makes a great sound. And I was good at it. Keeping up a steady rhythm on a speed bag is a lot harder than it looks. It impressed the kids who were always crowding into the place, which I hoped dampened any urge to mess with the crazy old white guy.
Sullivan was less impressed, but kept a safe distance until I stopped the bag with my gloves.
“I think it’s ready to throw in the towel,” he said.
“Not this bag. Always bounces back.”
“Haven’t seen you here for a while.”
“Been pounding on crown molding.”
“I hoped you’d be working out this Milhouser thing.”
Wearing a simple gray sweatsuit without sunglasses or a sidearm, Sullivan almost looked like a standard- issue, moderately overweight gym rat. Except for the worried look on his face.
“What,” I said to him.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you about the case.”
“Okay. I know that.”
“Did you know there’s a special immunity clause that covers steam room discussions? I think I’m gonna go sit in there for a while.”
Steam closet might have been a more fitting description. I think Ronny built it that way to conserve on the cost of making steam. The bench slats, however, were real redwood and the walls an unfinished clear cedar, which reinforced the closet sensation. We almost had to share it with a young Shinnecock middleweight, but the thought of being crammed in a hot little room with two sweaty old guys wearing nothing but scratchy towels got him out of there pretty quickly.
“Are you talking to Burton Lewis?” Sullivan asked as soon as the door shut.
“Last night.”
“He was at the station after your booking. Spent a couple hours in Ross’s office. He didn’t look too happy when he left.”
“I didn’t know about that,” I told him. “I knew he wasn’t happy.”
“I’m not either.”
“There’s strong evidence of an inverse correlation between happiness and a clear perception of reality.”
“That’s what I’m unhappy about,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
“Christ, not you, too.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you? There’s nothing that says you aren’t going down for this thing. Nothing. Not a single goddamned thing.”
“Except I didn’t do it.”
He looked straight at me, frowning.
“I’m the one who found the stapler,” he said. “I isolated the footprints and directed forensics. I’m the one who put the foundation down on this case. How do you think I felt when the County people told me who owned that damned tool? Whose shoes were all over that site?”
“You got a brain. How can I get you to use it?”
“Careful,” he said, sitting back and folding his arms.
“Joe, I can’t do this by myself. I can’t be the only one in possession of the only two irreducible facts in this whole sorry mess. Somebody killed Robbie Milhouser and that somebody wasn’t me.”
