I never saw them speak to each other. I only remembered the day my father told me to go over there and apply for a job. That was when Milhouser told me my father said I was handy with cars. Last year Ross Semple told me my father bragged to his father that I was a tough fighter. He hadn’t said these things to me, and never would. In fact, he never said anything to me I could remotely construe as a compliment, or even a criticism, right up to the day he died, beaten to death by a couple of punks in a men’s room at the back of a bar in the Bronx.
Consequently, I never really knew what he thought of me. Maybe now that he’d been dead for a few decades I’d start to get new information. I just had to keep my ears open and listen for echoes from across the divide.
SEVENTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING Burton called me on his cell phone. It was early enough to catch me en route to the outdoor shower with a big mug of cinnamon hazelnut in my shower-safe New York Yankees mug. Eddie had been asleep on the braided rug, but the phone startled him into action. Which amounted to a stiff, yawning stagger into the kitchen. He looked at the coffee like he’d consider giving it a shot.
“Forget it, you’d be up all day.”
Then I picked up the phone.
“Yeah.”
“What an eloquent salutation,” said Burton.
“Social niceties don’t start around here until after nine.”
“Niceties being a relative concept.”
“I guess you got the message.”
“Yes. Very interesting. I’m on the Long Island Expressway and expect to be at the house in less than an hour. What say we meet there? Isabella will arrange for breakfast.”
“Fine with me. Just tell her to keep the vitriol out of my eggs.”
“Certainly. Niceties are standard at the Lewis residence.”
The weather looked eager to repeat the performance of the day before. Most of the morning mist had burned off and the bay was etched with wavelets that were barely ripples. The breeze was decidedly south-southwest, mild and kindly. The maples along the back of the property were freshly regaled in light-green baby leaves, and the lawn—a refined blend of native grasses and invasive flora—expressed an exuberance that it seemed uncivil to restrain with anything as pitiless as a lawn mower. At least not this early in the season.
Eddie followed me out on the lawn, where he stopped and shook himself out. Then he trotted on, crossing the end of Oak Point Road and disappearing into the wetlands where he usually went in the mornings for purposes unknown. It might have been a way to vary his diet, or maybe it was just a dog’s version of the morning paper. Catching up on events of the night before.
I saw something move out of the corner of my eye and turned to see Amanda waving from her side door. I held up my mug and motioned her to join me, which she did, resplendent in a terry-cloth bathrobe, a headband holding back her unbrushed hair.
“Burton called from the highway,” I said, handing her a filled mug and leading her to the Adirondacks at the edge of the breakwater. “He wants us to come see him when he gets here, in about an hour.”
The rising sun warmed our necks and threw our shadows down over the breakwater and across the pebble beach. Even with the light air there were two or three sailboats plying the shallows off the south shore of the North Fork. Serious sailors impatient for a change of season, happy just to be out there feeling the glare of the sun off the water and sniffing at the nascent south-southwesterly. Hodges might have been one of them, having endured the battering winter firmly tied to the dock aboard his old Gulf Star. He’d been known to take an occasional winter sail, feeling his way past the unmarked shoals just to demonstrate to himself that it was smarter to stay hunkered down in the teak-lined warmth of the cabin and wait for spring like everybody else.
Amanda cupped her coffee with two hands, her long slender fingers, with freshly polished nails, linking gracefully as if in prayer.
“I have to apologize again,” she said.
“Oh, hell.”
“I know you hate apologies.”
“They’re a waste of breath,” I told her.
“I feel like I can’t continue with you unless I can have recurring and ongoing forgiveness.”
“You do. Glad that’s settled.”
“It’s not only what I’ve done. It’s how I’ve been.”
“You got reasons to be a little edgy.”
“You think I’m edgy?” I laughed.
“Don’t try that trap on me, Miss Anselma. I used to be married. Learned all the tricks.”
“Edgy would be nice. I was thinking I’ve been hysterical and neurotic.”
“Yeah. With an edge.”
“And paranoid. I’m definitely getting paranoid.”
“What, just because somebody burns down your house and your development project’s sounding like a Superfund site?”
“Not funny.”
“No, the funny part is the anonymous tipster whose information was convincing enough to get the DEC to get a TRO out of a sympathetic judge. PDQ.”
“So you’re saying I should be paranoid?”
“No. Paranoia’s delusional. You should be suspicious.”
“Big downgrade from paranoia.”
“Burton will ask you how much you knew, if anything, about those cellars,” I said. “Don’t get offended. He has to ask.”
“What do you think? About how much I knew?”
“You didn’t know anything. Otherwise, you’d have checked them out well before the phase-one inspection. To do otherwise would be both foolish and immoral.”
“Qualities I could tack on to edgy and paranoid.”
“Don’t forget,” I said, “I didn’t know they were there, either. And we’ve been over that place pretty thoroughly.”
“Thank you. I’d forgotten that.”
“But if it’ll help, I’ll cop to it. What’s a little environmental racket on top of a murder charge?”
“That’s so sweet.”
“My first nicety of the day.”
I’d seen the original drawings of the WB facility, but never a cellar elevation. They had the same identification box in the lower-left corner as the ones Ned showed us. I didn’t remember the exact date they were drawn, but it was sometime in the early twentieth century. I’d never forget such a thing, even with my degraded frontal lobes. If nothing else, I’d remember they were built with stone and not the prevailing brick of the complex. Stone wasn’t used much on sandy Long Island, and certainly not for large industrial construction. As far as I knew, all the WB buildings were built on thick, raised slabs, better to stand up to heavy equipment and avoid water infiltration. They were, after all, adjacent to a lagoon.
“Have you accepted my apology yet?” she asked. “I’ve lost the thread.”
“I accept whatever it is you want me to accept. Unconditionally, and in perpetuity, so we don’t have to keep going through this.”
“Does that preclude occasional pleas for reassurance?”
“Yup. You’re all set, for life. Imagine the time saving.”
With bold concepts like this, you wonder why my relationships with women were often less than entirely successful.
For the sake of efficiency I convinced her to take her shower with me in the outdoor stall, which turned out to be a fun idea for everybody. It meant that we were an hour later than I’d promised Burton, but he assured us Isabella didn’t mind watching her homemade Belgian waffles and cheese omelets cooling on the serving trolley. Our guilt was soothed by the fact that Burton and Hayden had already downed two platefuls, along with a bowl of fresh
