household. He was a mechanic, and the caustic smell of refined petroleum still reminded me of emptiness and cruelty.
I was about to stroll over to Amanda’s when Honest Boy Ackerman’s SUV rumbled into my driveway. Eddie bounded up to greet him with his usual “Oh, boy, company!” elan. I bounded up, too. Less convivially.
I put both hands on the driver’s side door before Ackerman had a chance to open it.
“What’s up?” I asked, when he rolled down his window.
“New assignment.”
“I thought Joe Sullivan escorted you out of town.”
“That’s why I’m here,” said Ackerman. “I’m hoping you’ll call him off.”
“That’s not up to me. It was all I could do to get him to let you go.”
“I’m just trying to earn a living,” he said.
“It’s a big world. I’m sure George Donovan could send you somewhere else.”
“He did. Right out of my job.”
Amanda picked this moment to stroll across the stretch of lawn and over the tumbled-down flower beds that separated our properties. She wore a loose aquamarine dress and white sandals and carried an ice bucket stuffed with a bottle of white wine. I forced my attention back to Ackerman.
“Explain,” I said.
“Donovan fired me, but Marve Judson hired me back. As an independent contractor. All on the q.t. He was mightily pissed that Donovan left him out of the loop. You can’t do that to Judson. Can’t fuck with him like that. He’s gone batshit trying to figure out what Donovan’s up to.”
“Hello,” said Amanda, as she tossed a curious glance at Ackerman.
“I’d introduce you but he’s not going to be here long enough to make it worth the trouble.”
“Hey,” said Ackerman.
“Charming, isn’t he?” said Amanda.
“Like a root canal.”
I wanted to sock him in the mouth again to illustrate my approach to dental health, but instead took a deep, cleansing breath. I knew, despite myself, that Ackerman was a complication not easily done away with. Certainly not the way I’d like to.
“Say, Honest Boy,” I said. “You like red wine or white? Or would you rather have a cocktail?”
Ackerman just sat there and looked at me, hunkered into his surly defensiveness. For good reason. I tried again.
“Or a beer? I’ve got some fancy microbrews in the basement.”
“Beer’s okay,” he said tentatively.
Amanda gently moved my hands off the truck’s door and opened it up.
“Come along, sir,” she said. “I won’t let him hurt you.”
“One beating’s the limit here on Oak Point,” I said, taking him by the arm and starting him off toward the bay. “If you survive, you’re invited to join in native rituals. Starting with carrying the ice bucket.”
I took it out from under Amanda’s arm and passed it to him. She took his other arm and escorted him out to the Adirondack chairs that I keep at the edge of the breakwater above the pebble beach. Eddie followed, sniffing at his heels, still entranced by the novelty of a fresh visitor. I stopped at the cottage to grab my tumbler out of the kitchen and a six-pack from the fridge in the basement—the pricey stuff from Burton’s private stash.
I dragged another Adirondack to the edge of the breakwater so we’d all have a seat and a nice view of the Little Peconic Bay, now turning a blue-tinted dark grey, like the gunmetal of Ackerman’s forfeited automatic.
“Mr. Ackerman has been sharing his point of view,” said Amanda as I sat in my chair. “He said it was a misunderstanding.”
“More than one. But who’s counting.”
I handed him the beers. He looked grateful.
“Okay, Honest Boy,” I said, “let’s start from the top.”
He said as soon as Sullivan cut him loose he headed back to his office in White Plains. Donovan had given him voicemail service so he could leave him messages, but it was discontinued. That was the first hint something was amiss. At the office was the second—a pair of security guards waiting for him with his belongings already packed in boxes and stacked on a handcart. He said he just turned on his heel without a word and led them to his SUV. Then he did more or less the same thing I did when faced with similar circumstances: he killed a fifth of bourbon.
Despite the resulting hangover he got up early enough the next day to interrupt Marve Judson’s morning jog along the wooded lanes of Pound Ridge.
He’d guessed right. Marve knew nothing of the termination. And nothing about the special project that preceded it. Ackerman was pleased at how interested Marve was in his story, which he told in detail as they sat next to the swimming pool drinking coffee served by Marve’s wife.
While they were still by the pool Marve called a contact he had with an outside investigation firm and asked them to take on Ackerman as a freelance operative and bill back his fee under the firm’s name. Ackerman got the feeling the guy on the other end of the line was a good friend of Marve’s, and it wasn’t the first time there’d been such an arrangement.
Marve told Ackerman that his responsibility was to Con Globe’s Board of Directors, and not to any one board member, even the chairman. That was the kind of thing Marve would say, having a decided bent toward the bombastic and self-righteous. I felt like telling Honest Boy that Marve’s dearest responsibility was always to the personal agenda of Marve Judson, but that would have served little purpose.
“So Judson told you to come back out here and talk to me?” I asked.
“Basically.”
“You’re wasting your time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do.”
Ackerman shook his head.
“With all due respect Sam, that’s kind of a crock. People still talk about your flame-out at Con Globe and all the wild shit you got into after that. You had that towheaded Captain America imprison me on a freaking boat overnight, and then cut me loose without hardly a fare-thee-well. I don’t need security training to know that wasn’t just fun and games. As fun as it was.”
Amanda had been following the conversation intently. She looked at me after Ackerman’s last comment as if to say
“How’s the beer?” I asked.
“It’s very good,” said Ackerman, graciously.
“About that flame-out, as you call it.”
He gave sort of a sympathetic smirk.
“Yeah?”
“The severance agreement dictated that I cut all contact with Con Globe employees, in particular those in middle or senior management, forever. Even the slightest violation of that provision would be very bad for me.”
“Me breaking into your house wasn’t your doing,” said Ackerman. “They can’t hold that against you.”
“Oh, yes they can. Even if I’m in the right, the legal fight alone would ruin me.”
“And we know Sam hates a fight,” said Amanda.
“Could’ve fooled me,” said Ackerman.
“So after a long talk with a lawyer friend of mine, I decided to just let it go. Discretion being the better part of valor.”
“I never understood what that meant,” said Ackerman, “but I get the idea. And it’s still a crock. I don’t know what sort of vegetable wagon you think I just fell off of.”
“Turnip is the standard, I think,” said Amanda.
“Anyway, that’s my story for Marve Judson,” I said. “Too bad if he doesn’t like it.”
Ackerman looked unhappy.
“Man, you don’t make anything easy.”
“I think some truffle pate and a wedge of Fromage d’Affinois would be just the thing right now,” said
