He pointed at my chest.
“If I know you there’s a pack of cigarettes in there,” he said. “They’re worth a lot more in here than out there.”
I took out an almost full pack and tossed it to him. He put it in his pants pocket with no further comment.
“So, you here to get me sprung?” he asked.
“The parole hearing’s only six months away,” said Jackie. “I’m very optimistic.”
“I’d rather hear you’re dead certain.”
“There’s nothing I know of that could get in your way,” she said in a flat voice.
“I’m a model inmate. From day one. All the white-collar guys are. The guards treat you better. But don’t buy that stuff about country club prisons. If this is a country club, the club rules were written in hell.”
“Then I’m sure we’ll do fine.”
“So, what’s up? If you’re looking for a loan, I’m probably not in the best position to help,” he said with an empty smile.
“I think we have a mutual acquaintance,” I said to him.
“We probably have a number of those,” he said.
“Patrick Getty. Where’d you meet him? Doing laundry, having lunch? Selling cigarettes?”
The brown eyes behind his prison-issue glasses showed little reaction.
“We don’t get many oil millionaires in here.”
“Different branch of the family. This one’s into larceny and assault.”
He shrugged.
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” he said.
“Jackie, how closely do they monitor associations people make inside prison?”
“Every move, every wink, every nod,” she said.
Roy looked down at the table where he was kneading the beanie like a hunk of dough.
“I know a lot of people in here,” he said. “I can’t remember all their names.”
Roy had grown up when you could be poor and still have a Southampton address. He’d lived with his extended alcoholic family in what used to be called a beach colony, a romantic term for a cluster of shacks built on pilings, barely heated and rotting at the edges, a mile or two from the beach. Roy was the only one of the clan to make it out of there alive. A college education and a career in banking providing the wherewithal to put a thousand miles between him and the drag of his past, until he tried to add a few light years.
“Do you remember Robbie Milhouser?”
He looked up again, the left side of his mouth forming half a grin.
“Sure. Big man on campus. Let you know it every chance he got. Every class has one. Stupid intimidator. You were one of those in your day, right Sam?” he asked.
“No. I kept to myself. Like you. Had bigger plans.”
“Too bad they didn’t work out. For either of us.”
We let that hang in the air for a moment. Then Jackie spoke.
“Did you know he was dead?” she asked.
He looked at her with faint surprise.
“Really? No kidding. I didn’t know that. I guess if you make enough enemies one’ll finally get you.”
“I didn’t say he was killed. Just that he was dead.”
His little half grin formed into a smile.
“If he wasn’t killed you wouldn’t be here asking me about it,” he said. “Is that other fella dead, too? The oil guy?”
“Patrick Getty,” I said. “He worked as a carpenter for Robbie’s building business.”
“You think he killed Milhouser?”
“Do you?” I asked.
He raised his hands, briefly releasing the tortured beanie.
“I don’t know about any of that stuff. How would I know that?” he asked Jackie.
“It’s just an interesting coincidence. That you knew a guy in here who’d end up out in Southampton working for another guy you knew,” I said.
“So it’s a national secret that carpenters can find work in the Hamptons?”
“You knew his father, too, didn’t you?” Jackie asked.
“Long-time Southampton people all know each other,” he said. “You’d know that if you hadn’t grown up with the potato farmers in Bridgehampton.”
“I grew up in Bridgehampton with the professors of civil engineering,” she said dryly.
“She meant back in the old East End Savings days,” I said. “Didn’t Jeff Milhouser have a little deal with a wrinkle or two?”
He sat back in his chair, but still left one hand in contact with the beanie.
“Oh yeah, that was sweet,” he said. “My boss was the one who signed off on that loan. Fantastic. They had to can him to keep the banking commission from lowering the boom. Guess who got his job?” he asked, pointing at his chest.
Rosaline Arnold said I’d been up to my neck in corporate politics back at my old company. I don’t know why she thought that. I understand that politics is a word applied to mass behavior, whether the mass is two people or ten thousand. It’s what people do when operating within an organization, rigid or chaotic. The really good corporate politicians know how to manage up, focusing their energies on deceiving or pleasing their superiors as a means of advancement, often but not always at the cost of the people alongside or in lower layers. I knew from the beginning I didn’t have that kind of temperament.
My mind was drawn to the technical core, the processes and machines, the tangibles that formed the basis of the company’s reason for being. So the only people I cared about were those in my immediate vicinity. Men and women who were my peers and later I had to manage. I held many of them in high regard, though few were anything like me. But we had plenty of common ground on which to operate, and a culture that suited me, one dedicated entirely to the work. Some liked to socialize with each other, but mostly they all went home at the end of the day to their spouses and children and the presumption of a simple life.
I knew those privates lives were actually brimming with anxieties and troubles, dysfunctions and heartbreak, as well as occasional contentment and prosperity. But that was out of view, and when I led the group, that’s where I wanted it to stay. If someone came to me for help, I gave it eagerly, but you’d never catch me asking how things were going at home with the wife and kids.
That same myopia extended to office politics. I didn’t want to know about it, and my colleagues were glad to keep me in the dark. I was often surprised by the outbreak of hostilities between individuals or groups, learning that the conflict had been festering for months or years.
So I had little training in divining the motives of the human heart when I ran the company’s R&D. That’s why I was an easy mark for a guy like Roy Battiston, with the warm and convincing manner of a congenial salesman, cloaking rapacious venality and aching ambition.
But like Roy, I could be a pretty fast learner.
“Lucky for you,” I said. “Must have been a good job.”
“Luck is the intersection of opportunity and preparation,” said Roy, something the old can-do Roy would have said, only now it sounded more like Jack Nicholson than Dale Carnegie.
“Jeff Milhouser’s taken over Robbie’s building business. So now Getty’s working for him,” said Jackie.
“I used to tell people it was impossible to lose money in Hamptons real estate. Maybe Jeff will prove me wrong,” said Roy.
“Don’t think much of him, huh?” I asked.
“Don’t think of him at all. Don’t care.”
“He just lost his son,” said Jackie.
“Don’t care about that either. I lost my life, only I had to keep breathing. If you think the world’s worse off without Robbie Milhouser you’re a bigger hophead than I thought.”
“Careful,” I said.
“Hophead, boozehound. You two are made for each other. Oh, that’s right, you aren’t exactly a couple. Sam’s
