religious community. Probably too radical.”
I wondered what Iku thought of the whole thing. The Rothsteins undoubtedly leveled with her from the outset about her origins and identity. Probably showered her with love and support. And prayed, despite their secular ways, for her to adopt their beliefs and proclivities. None of which, I guessed, included corporate management consulting.
“Fifteen years ago. Where was Iku?”
“Fresh out of Princeton and on her way to Harvard Business School, natch, before a fast run up the consulting ladder from Arthur Little, to Bain, to Eisler. We can stipulate the girl’s wicked smart.”
I could testify to that myself, from direct experience. I’d also say assertive, bordering on aggressive. And direct, which I’d take any day over oblique or subtle or disingenuous. Donovan said she didn’t like me, so I guess she didn’t. She had a lot of company. Though I always thought she appreciated the way I dished it back at her as fast as she could dish it out, without being patronizing or calling attention to our difference in age and experience. Or gender.
“Maybe it’s good her parents didn’t live to see her become a running dog of American capitalism,” said Jackie, reading my mind.
“How did it happen?”
“Crushed by a semi on the way back from dropping their daughter off at Harvard,” she said.
“That’ll teach her to go to business school.”
“They say Jewish guilt is even worse than Irish Catholic, though my mother could give them a run for their money.”
“Not an issue if they weren’t religious.”
“My mother wouldn’t go to Mass. Blamed God for my father’s personality.”
“We’re getting way ahead of ourselves,” I said.
“You’re right. We don’t know the dynamic in the Rothstein household.”
“But her roommates at Princeton, or Harvard, might.”
There was a brief moment of silence on the other end of the line, followed by a sigh.
“I’ll let you know what I find out,” she said, and hung up the phone. I turned the phone off before going back to the crown molding. I also tried to turn off the speculation that kept percolating up from the dark hole that was Iku Kinjo’s life. I hated obsessing over quandaries made so principally by the absence of serviceable fact. I remembered the process engineer who first hired me, a born troubleshooter, standing in the control room of an oil refinery smashing his fist on the plant manager’s desk and hollering, “Data, data, data!”
I made it to the end of the work day without lousing up the job and embarrassing myself, but I was glad to unhook my tool belt and dump it with my pneumatic nailer into the trunk of the Grand Prix. On the way home I turned on the public jazz station, WLIU, and smoked my third cigarette of the day, the definition of a blessing and a curse. I still had to concentrate on keeping the ten-ton Pontiac from drifting into a tree, but that didn’t stop Iku Kinjo from jumping into my brain like an irrepressible child, demanding attention for attention’s sake.
That’s probably why I didn’t notice the dark grey Ford Crown Victoria with the wailing electronic siren and flashing blue light on the dashboard until it was halfway up my ass. I reflexively hit the brakes, which made things worse. I braced for impact, but instead the Crown Vic shot out into the oncoming lane, sped by the Grand Prix, and then swung back in front of me. His brake lights flashed on but I was already heading for the shoulder, wondering what the hell I’d done this time.
The driver’s door of the unmarked car swung open and Joe Sullivan jumped out. He hiked up his camouflage pants and adjusted his sunglasses as he strode back to my car.
“You going deaf?” he yelled, when I lowered my window. “I been on your tail for five miles.”
“Sorry. Preoccupied.”
“Thinking about dinner?”
“And maybe a cocktail, just for a change of pace.”
We agreed to meet at Paul Hodges’s place in Sag Harbor after I showered and scooped up the pup. The Pequot overlooked one of the last commercial marinas on the East End. Lobster boats and day charters, men and women in high rubber boots and wool knit sweaters. Scarred hands and beer bellies, some courtesy of the Pequot’s generous operating hours. Hodges had been a fisherman himself, among other things, so he knew the off-time habits of the trade. He ran the place with his daughter Dorothy and a dour stork of a Croatian named Vinko. It wasn’t exactly the career Dorothy had planned after graduating from Columbia, but the day-to-day management of the place had been thrust upon her after Hodges fell through a rotting deck. He’d recovered since then, but admitted the months of convalescence had made hanging around the sturdy old sloop he lived on a hard habit to break.
“Dotty grew up workin’ the tap and tossing clams in the fryolator. It’s in her blood,” he’d tell me, trying to convince himself.
Among the many charms of the joint was its liberal policy regarding dogs on the premises: restricted only when the health inspector was scheduled to visit. For his part, Eddie kept a low profile, lying quietly by my feet and suppressing his social instincts.
When I got there Sullivan was already halfway through a pitcher of beer and a mound of fried calamari.
“You know, some of those things get as big as a city bus,” I told him, pointing at his plate.
He studied the breaded wad of tentacles stuck to the end of his fork. “Yeah, and the Loch Ness Monster’s been munchin’ blues offa Jessup’s Neck.”
Dorothy already had an Absolut on the rocks and a bowl of water for Eddie on their way over. She was wearing gloves that ran all the way to her biceps. They had all the fingers cut out—a sensible practicality. Her hair color was in constant rotation. Tonight it was a simple everyday jet black, drawn and pinned at the back tightly enough to look painted on. Her face, powdered into a lovely funereal pallor, lent a stark backdrop to her lips— tonight red enough to stop traffic out on Noyac Road.
“I hear you serve food here. Principally fish,” I said to her as she dropped the vodka in front of me.
“That’s what my father claims, though I’ve never actually seen it come out of the water.”
“Really.”
“I hate fishing. Never go near a boat.”
“Seasick?”
“I feel sorry for the fish. Don’t want to know about it. When they show up in the kitchen I pretend they’ve been manufactured out of protein pulp and formed in little fish molds to look like the real thing.”
“There’s a way to whet the old appetite,” said Sullivan, as he put away the last of the calamari.
“In that spirit, bring me a bacon cheeseburger,” I told her. “And a plain one for the dog.”
“I know. No bun, just a few fries.”
“Too much potato makes him fart.”
“And don’t think about the cow,” said Sullivan.
When she left I asked Sullivan if he’d been able to chase down Robert Dobson. He looked a little offended.
“You gave me his plate number. Believe it or not, the police know how to obtain an ID from just that one little thing. As long as we’re able to use the radio and speak without slurring our words.”
“Great. Where’s he live?”
“Manhattan. Where’d you think?”
“I was hoping out here.”
“Manhattan’s his official residence. But I thought to myself, maybe that’s not his only address.”
He leaned into the table. I sat back to give his story a little room.
“This is why they made you a detective,” I said.
“I went back to HQ and started searching the tax rolls for a similar name within a fifty-mile radius of Southampton. There’re more Dobsons than you might think, though not too many to pick up the phone and call.”
“You’re kidding.”
“The direct approach. Unpopular with today’s technology, but cops find it very handy and effective.”
“So you found him.”
“On the fifth try. His parents have a house in a gated community in Southampton Village, just inside the
