“Can I use your phone?” I asked her.
She looked disappointed.
“You’re brilliant, Rosaline,” I said when I realized why. “But you know that. You did an amazing thing. And you didn’t even have to.”
Her face lightened up again.
She stood up and ran her fingers down my cheek. Then went inside to get the portable phone. Eddie jumped up, too, but I told him to relax. I finished off my drink and poured a fresh one over the dwindling ice and stared some more at the Milhousers.
I couldn’t remember Sullivan’s direct line, so after Rosaline brought me the phone I went through the cumbersome process with the switchboard. I paced around the garden to help speed things up. He eventually came on the line.
“Got me just in time, Sam. Ready to head home.”
“How’d you do with those phone records?”
“Not sure. They might be in the fax bin. When do you need them?”
It was one of the things I missed about a hyperproductive, anxiety-fueled corporate environment. Everyone knew you wanted everything immediately all the time. Even when you didn’t. I took a breath.
“Sooner better than later, Joe. I’m sort of snuggin’ up to an indictment here.”
“Yeah, Veckstrom said it could be any minute. Who told you?”
I felt a sharp tug in my chest.
“Nobody told me, Joe, I hadn’t heard. But you can see why I’d be feeling a little urgency.”
“Let me go check.”
A hundred years later he came back on the line. “Yep, I think it’s all here. Expedited, by the way. Don’t think I just was sitting on my hands.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Nah, I’m here with Will Ervin. He’ll drop ’em off at your house. Courtesy of the Town of Southampton, Department of Public Safety. To schlep and protect.”
I thanked him in a way I hoped he’d know was genuine.
“Do you have your computer turned on?” I asked Rosaline.
“No, but it doesn’t take long. What do you want to know?”
“If you can pry around in my personal life, I’m assuming you can do that with anybody,” I said.
“Depends on the person.”
“Show me.”
Eddie peeled off to explore more of the condo while she took me to her office in the second bedroom. Like the rest of the place it expressed a comfortable, cheerful wear.
She brought a kitchen chair with her to set next to her office chair so I could watch the action. I’d spent a large part of my working life staring at computer screens, though the displays looked nothing like you see today. Just a lot of data stacked in rows against white or dark green backgrounds. I was aware of the Web in the last years of my career, but I was too involved in other things to pay much attention. It was now a few years into the twenty-first century and I was about to get my first close-up look.
“Okay,” she said, her hand poised on the mouse. “Who’s the target?”
“Zack Horowitz.”
“Can you narrow that? Dates, places?”
“Long Island. Fifteen years back to today.”
The whole world knows now how this stuff works, but it was a shock to me how fast things came up on the screen, and how nice everything looked. And how much information there was. All of this amused Rosaline.
“Did you know that TV is now in color?” she said.
The path was a little jagged, but we could follow Zack’s life backwards from his current role as Assistant Regional Director of the New York State DEC through a stint as Head of Environmental Affairs for a tech company in Bethpage, several years as a staff consultant and then as a specialist in governmental contract compliance with the Long Island office of a Big Five accounting firm, a period of private practice, and finally arrived at his gig as Treasurer for the Town of Southampton.
Buried in the middle of a brief profile of Zack was a piece of biographical chaff that appeared nowhere else, which Rosaline insisted was pure chance.
“Everyone commands the Web. No one has control.”
That didn’t matter to me. Just that it was there: “While serving as Director of Lending at the Southampton branch of East End Savings and Loan, Zack was elected Town Treasurer, beginning a long, successful career bridging the professional worlds of private enterprise and community-based public service …” And from there it blathered into self-serving corporate propaganda, which surprisingly made no mention of Zack’s intimate involvement in Jeff Milhouser’s attempts to bridge public service with commercial fraud.
As interesting as this was, it didn’t distract me from Rosaline’s hand resting on my thigh, slowly sliding toward the inside. I put my hand on top of hers to halt the progress.
“Sorry, Sam,” she said. “It’s the proximity.”
I knew what she meant. This close in you can easily get caught in a cloud of scent-borne pheromones.
“It’s a nice thought,” I said.
“But.”
“But I don’t know. There’s some sort of life at the tip of Oak Point. Can’t see past it right now.”
“I know. I’ll print this stuff out while you go back to the patio. Unless you want to try a cold shower for two.”
I opted for another vodka instead. By now the sun was hugging the horizon and cooler air was riding in on lengthening shadows. I settled into my wicker chair, in no hurry to leave. It wasn’t just Rosaline’s comfy aromatic apartment. I wanted to wait for the cover of darkness, an ambiance more conducive to both love and ruin.
Reflecting the mood on the patio, she came out in a linen dress and sandals, carrying a platter of munchies and a handful of printouts. She asked if Eddie could have some cheese.
“If you can stand all the adoration.”
“So what’s with Zack Horowitz?” she asked as she tossed hunks of cheddar in the air for Eddie to catch. “If you want to tell me, which you probably don’t.”
“You know as much as I do,” I said. “Except that he was Roy Battiston’s boss back at East End Savings when Jeff Milhouser was caught mishandling Town assets. The Town’s treasure, you could say. And, as you know, Zack was also the Town Treasurer.”
“Lovely,” she said, popping a chunk of peppercorn cheese in her mouth.
I could have said the same thing about her. She’d never believe me, but I liked the nose. A clever joke on God’s part. Build a softly sensual, brainy woman with a nearly perfect physique, then throw in a prominent irregularity and see what happens. For me, it just made the rest of the package that much more appealing. A handy point of contrast, always in evidence.
I had a habit of seeing the same divine sense of humor manifest in lots of people’s lives, in those random intersections where luck not only meets opportunity and preparation but other forms of luck, both good and bad.
Even as I rode the waves of destruction, I couldn’t think of myself as unlucky. I had experiences and warehouses filled with memory. I didn’t have the grace to attribute that to good luck. I held those achievements as mine alone. Along with all the responsibility for what followed. I wouldn’t allow fate a role in any of it. Fate was a disinterested bystander, preoccupied with the work of elevating and devastating other people’s lives. But never mine.
That was the arrogance of defeat. That it was all my fault.
I wondered if that same habit of thought plagued the mind of Zack Horowitz. Or if he’d tried to banish history through selective amnesia, concentrating on a life of service, built on atonement and rationalization. Either way, none of it amounts to a hill of beans when fate comes to call.
I spent another hour watching night fall with Rosaline. She let me move the conversation onto other things, so the time spent was even more agreeable than it had been, making it harder to pull away.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it, Sam, but I don’t want to add to your burdens,” she said. “I know it wouldn’t
