“It’s what Ross calls a directional indicator.”
“Jesse would say that’s redundant.”
“Who’s Jesse?”
“One of Valero’s assistants,” I said. “A bikini specialist.”
“Bikinis are redundant?”
“Sometimes.”
In our ongoing spirit of collaboration I told him my plans for the evening, which were highly dependent on Amanda scoring a reservation on short notice at Roger’s.
“I could see me putting that one through expenses,” said Sullivan.
“I’ll let you know what I learn.”
“Find out if their fries come with ketchup.”
I told Amanda the key to successful undercover operations was to blend into the environment. Since Roger’s was often patronized by beautiful women in revealing evening wear, it was clear what had to be done.
Luckily, Amanda was always game for a challenge.
“Great looking nightgown. But what are you wearing to dinner?” I asked when I picked her up.
“You need to carry my lipstick. As you can see, no pockets.”
“No nothing.”
We took her Audi Avant. The Grand Prix had a lot more room to spread out, but for some reason you always left the passenger compartment covered in dog hair.
Roger’s was in an eighteenth-century house set about twenty feet in from the edge of Montauk Highway and about two miles east of Bridgehampton. It had been a restaurant for over sixty years, and after destroying the lives of several owners had settled in nicely with Roger Estay, a chef from Baltimore who’d come to the Hamptons hoping to recover from a nervous breakdown by exposing himself to dire financial risk.
Roger consistently dished out the best food and most breathtaking checks on the East End.
Amanda hadn’t only nailed down a reservation, it was for the best table in the joint. The one on the outside patio under the spreading arms of an antique copper beech. We were led to it by a blonde woman in a tubular silk dress that she shouldn’t have been able to walk in. Three good-looking young men wearing white shirts, black pants and expressions you often see on devoted evangelists were waiting for us when we reached the table.
“Pulled strings?” I asked her, quietly.
“Threw money.”
Before the blonde had a chance to pass us off to the choirboys I asked her if she was Sylvia Shandy.
It took her aback.
“I am,” she said, with an up-speak lilt suggesting she might not be Sylvia Shandy if that was the safer answer.
I put out my hand, which she shook with the same reservations.
“I’m Sam Acquillo. This is Amanda Anselma. I was a friend of Iku Kinjo.”
She dropped my hand like it last held Iku’s corpse.
“Jesus what an awful thing,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Sylvia was either a bottle blonde or a champion tanner. Even in the low light her coloring looked mismatched, though she herself looked pretty good. Small proportionate features, large wide-set brown eyes with lashes you could comb your hair with. Her fingers were long and slender, ringless, with fingernails painted a pearlized white.
“Do you get a break?” I asked. “I’d like to talk a little about Iku.”
She shook her wrist until a watch attached to a loose silver chain worked its way into view.
“Maybe in an hour,” she said. “Though I don’t know what I can tell you. I hardly knew the girl.”
“I know,” I said. “If you could just give me a few minutes.”
She smiled an artificial smile.
“Maybe a minute.” She stood back as the waiters passed out menus. “Most people start with the coquilles, but I’m big on the ceviche. Roger says it tastes like a Jamaican sunrise.”
As we watched Sylvia vamp through the patio tables back into the restaurant, Amanda asked, “Do you put that dress on or have it applied?”
“Let’s get one and find out.”
With nothing else to do, we focused on ordering food and explaining to the waiters why a chunk of fruit has no more business in a glass of vodka than a Jamaican sunrise in Vladivostok. The menu looked like it was hand- lettered, which must have been hard work, because they gave up before adding in the prices. It was nominally in English, though I only recognized about half the words.
“My mother told me never eat anything I can’t pronounce,” said Amanda.
“Probably saved you from a diet of ceviche and coquilles St. Jacques.”
The lighting out on the lawn, mostly from strings of little pin lights draped around tree limbs and stretched overhead, made everybody look better than they deserved, which meant Amanda looked ridiculously great. Her bountiful auburn hair, parted in the middle, cascaded over her shoulders and the liquid satin of her dark blue dress.
“What,” she said, catching me staring.
“You look ridiculously great.”
“Even if I’m not blonde and shrink-wrapped in polyester?”
“Even if you were,” I said. “You can’t help it.”
“I think we’re talking ‘eyes of the beholder.’”
“The beholding comes later. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
By mutual consent, we launched into a game called “blissful ignorance.” The object was to talk only about things we knew nothing about, which meant we couldn’t talk about our work, our past, our social, economic or political views or how many games the Yankees were out of first place. This is harder than you think, but virtually guarantees the avoidance of painful, emotionally challenging conversation. Since both parties are blissfully ignorant of the subject at hand, you spend a lot of time speculating on things, like how often Buddhist monks wash their robes or the chemical composition of Neptune’s atmosphere.
Post-game fact-checking was entirely permissible, though I never did. “The basic geopolitical unit of local Texas government has got to be the county. The place is too damn big to organize around municipalities,” I offered up.
“Is that why it’s legal to shoot people in broad daylight, provided it’s a fair fight?”
Thus contentedly engaged, we were slightly disappointed when Sylvia catwalked back across the patio to our table.
“Hey, guys,” she said. “I gotta few. Can I sit?”
Amanda waved her into an empty seat.
“Before you get all interested in what I have to say you should know a guy just came in who actually knew Iku, like intimately.”
“Really,” I said. “Big guy?”
“Yeah. Angel Valero. Ya know him?”
“Intimately.”
“Love your hair, by the way,” Sylvia said to Amanda. “I could manage the color, but it’s hard to get thick outta Clairol.”
“Did Angel ever visit Iku?”
“Hell no. She made us swear we wouldn’t tell anybody she was there. She just talked about him all the time. Called him the Evil Troll. Or just plain Fucking Angel Valero. Can’t support that opinion one way or the other. Not the friendliest guy in the world, but he’s a good tipper.”
“So what did you think of Iku?” I asked.
She looked like she was calibrating the politics of her answer.
“Work bitch. Not like a bitch bitch, but a fiend for the job. You know what I mean. The City’s crawling with them. Stress bunnies, Carl calls ’em. So wired up they can’t stop hopping around. Not my cup of tea, to be honest with you. Who doesn’t like money, but really, what’s the point?”
