By the time we hit the third place, a dance club called the Playhouse, the early autumn nightlife had gained some traction. The house system was at close-to-full roar and a quorum of happily scrubbed and perfumed young aspirants were executing arrhythmic contortions on the dance floor. The men, anyway. The women moved much more fluidly, their eyes on each other, or the ceiling, or otherwise disengaged from their partners so as not to betray their amusement or horror at the situation they’d put themselves in.
I waited until we were hard up against the bar before showing around Iku’s picture. Safe haven.
“Sorry, man. Haven’t seen her. Friend of yours?” was the usual response.
“Sister.”
After a long string of blank faces, Amanda decided to take over. As if the beauty of the investigator determined the results.
“Oh yeah. My favorite look,” said the second guy she approached. A bartender.
“But did you see her?”
“Oh, yeah. Love the multiracial thing. In a thousand years we’re all gonna look like Halle Berry and Tiger Woods. It’ll be Earth Beautiful. Until some recessive ugly gene takes over and we’ll have to mix it all up again.”
“So you know her.”
“Not really. Campari and soda is all I remember. Always came in with two other women and a guy. I see those three all the time. Live together at a share. All strictly Caucasoid.”
“When was the last time they were here?” I asked.
“Labor Day weekend, I think.”
Amanda stuck her thumb at me.
“Any chance they’ll be here tonight?” I asked.
“Anything can happen, chief,” said the bartender.
“I guess we’re forced to wait here at the bar,” I said to Amanda.
“No sacrifice too great.”
We ordered gin and tonics and took a position where we could watch people coming through the door. We filled the time talking about the houses Amanda was knocking down and rebuilding on Oak Point and around the corner on Jacob’s Neck. I worked for Frank Entwhistle, but occasionally consulted for Amanda. For no charge, unless you counted frequent use of her pickup truck and outdoor shower.
The Playhouse slowly filled to near capacity and the volume finally overwhelmed our ability to converse, neither of us inclined to shout over the noise about Sheetrock crews and building permits. So we settled on watching the pulsing throng on the dance floor and the people standing around and drinking, the couples entangled or ill at ease, the packs of men in baseball hats and baggy pants trying to look nonchalant as they surreptitiously scanned the crowd for targets of opportunity.
The bartender who’d seen Iku sidled up to me at the bar and put his hand on my forearm.
“There’s the dude,” he said. “Over there next to the pole. White shirt. Heineken.”
I watched him for a while. He was apparently there alone, leaning on the pole and looking out on the dance floor, but otherwise disengaged. He had short brown hair and a few days’ growth of beard. He was slight, just shy of delicate—Iku would have been close to his height in her bare feet. But he wasn’t a bad-looking archetype of the generic young professional class.
“What do we do now?” asked Amanda, shouting in my ear.
“I don’t know,” I yelled back.
The guy stayed put through a half dozen musical segments—I don’t know what else to call them—strung together with the non-stop thump of the underbeat. Then he put his empty bottle on a table and headed for the men’s room. I told Amanda to save my seat and followed him.
A short line formed at the door. I stood behind him until we were through and waiting for vacancies at the urinals along the wall. It was a good time to take out the picture of Iku and hold it in front of his face.
“Hey, Bobby.”
He whipped around.
“Get away from me,” he said in a strained whisper. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for your girlfriend. What are you doing?”
He pushed past me and plunged back into the crowd. I followed him across the club floor to the main entrance. He maneuvered his way through the oncoming flow and shot through the door. When I got outside he was already partway through the parking lot. I ran after him.
“Hey, just want to talk,” I called, which had the effect of shooting him into a full run. I saw him point something at a row of cars and the lights inside a Volvo sedan lit up. By the time I got there he was in the car with the engine running, his headlights blinding me as the car pulled out of the parking space and tore down the lane. I turned around and ran for the entrance to the lot, zigzagging through the rows of cars, hoping to cut him off at the pass.
Which I didn’t quite do, but as he squealed out onto the street the headlights from the other cars lit the rear of his car and I could make out the license plate. I pulled a pen out of my shirt pocket and wrote the number on the inside of a pack of matches.
A man and a woman I’d nearly plowed over on my way across the lot came up behind me.
“What was all that about?” the woman asked me.
“That guy hit my car when he was backing out. Didn’t even bother to look.”
“Fucking Volvos,” said the man, as if that explained everything.
When I got back to the bar Amanda asked me how it went.
“It went out the door and down the road. In a big hurry,” I shouted in her ear.
“Interesting.”
“You think?”
“Did he say anything?”
I told her what he’d said, as best I could above the noise.
“Odd,” she said.
“I got his plate number. I think.”
“So what do we do now? All this shouting is hurting my throat.”
I looked around the inside of the club, which was now filled with young bodies and energetic foolishness.
“We dance,” I told her, pulling her out on the floor and holding her in a traditional slow dance embrace, contrary to the pace of the music. It was the only kind of dancing I knew how to do, though empirically speaking, it was also the best.
We left after that, which I was happy to do. I was never much for nightclubs, and they made even less sense at this stage of the game. Amanda always looked great to me, but looked best when I could hear her speak, when she was animated by the conversation, whatever the content.
I cashed in my rain check for the outdoor shower before we went to bed. Cleansed by the steaming water, the pinprick stars overhead and the proximity of the sacred Little Peconic Bay, I slept hard. For once the swarm of bitter wives, alienated daughters, conniving plutocrats and light heavyweight contenders stayed out of my normally snarled dreams. Held at bay by the surge of gratitude that com mingled with the scent of Amanda’s thick brown hair and filled my mind as I let go and yielded to the night.
FIVE
I CAUGHT UP TO SULLIVAN the next day at the boxing gym in Westhampton, as I often did in the late afternoon, both of us preferring to go there after work. He was riding the stationary bike, a towel around his neck and a scowl on his face.
“I’m still unhappy about cutting that stupe loose,” he said as I approached.
“I know. I appreciate it.”
“Ross never heard anything. I hope he never does.”
Ross Semple was the Chief of Southampton Town Police. Sullivan’s boss.
“He won’t from me,” I said.
“You’ll be thanking me the rest of your life for that one.”
