“Neither do engineers.”
Brigitte finally arrived with more ice, and oh joy oh bliss, a bottle of Grey Goose. French vodka. Of course.
The conversation took a sudden diversion when Brigitte told Churchman she’d screwed up on scheduling the next day’s tennis game, which might cut into his parasailing time. Though battered by disappointment, he took it well enough. She suggested a longer stint at the gym, but he thought they should get the mountain bikes back out of storage and check out the new trails being cut through the Northwest Woods above East Hampton.
I strived to look interested until Churchman remembered I was there and tried to get me into the conversation.
“What do you do for exercise, Sam? You look pretty fit.”
You could hear “for an old guy” hanging there in parenthetical midair.
“I hit things. Bars, nails and bags full of sand.”
“Sounds very therapeutic,” said Brigitte.
“If you want to try it out, I’ll set you up.”
A little shift in mood passed behind Churchman’s eyes. I took the hint and guzzled the rest of my second drink before he could say what he said right after that:
“Personally, I’m getting ready to hit Bobby Van’s.”
He patted his washboard stomach with a broad open hand as if to share the resonance of his hunger.
“Then you should go,” I said, standing up. The sun was mostly buried under the horizon by now and the resulting chill had caught up with Brigitte, who was trying to rub heat into her shoulders. Churchman pulled her to her feet and wrapped his long arms around her.
“Sorry, baby. Let’s get you a pashmina.”
I stood up and stuck out my hand for Churchman to shake.
“Thanks for the drink and chitchat, folks. Enjoy your dinner.”
I grabbed one of the split backstays and was about to swing myself up over the transom and across the gangplank when Churchman remembered something.
“Hey, Sam. I just remembered. I’ve got a client who used to work for Con Globe. It was a referral from Bobby Dobson, actually.”
I swung myself back into the boat.
“Really.”
“Yeah. Retired, like you. Your age. You gotta know him. What the hell’s his name?” he asked Brigitte, who looked panicked that she didn’t have the answer. “Funny name. I’m thinking black-and-white TV. Sixties?”
“Lucy?” Brigitte asked, exhausting her knowledge of the subject.
“Ricky’s dad. Went to work every day as a bandleader in a suit and tie. Made no sense.”
“Ozzie?” I asked.
“Christ, yeah. Oswald Endicott. Can you believe that?”
“Ozzie worked for me,” I said.
Churchman suddenly looked almost bereaved.
“Jesus, really? Well I’m the asshole.”
I hate self-flagellation. Especially when expressed by someone so unpracticed at it, like John Churchman.
“How come?”
“Well, you say North Sea, and I’m not thinking those big places up on the ridge.”
I sat back down on the cockpit cushions.
“Sorry, man. Not following,” I said.
“Ozzie worked for you? Weird bastard, but what the hey. Money’ll do that to you. What are you doing with yours? I do a little financial planning for my bigger clients. Just mentioning.”
“How much money? How much money makes you weird? Round numbers.”
He struggled with the answer.
“Eight figures? That usually gets you over the threshold. Ozzie’s comfortably inside the building.”
“We’re talking about Ozzie Endicott?”
He nodded, almost apologetically.
“Hey, you want another drink? Brigitte, get some more ice.”
I grabbed the backstay and hauled myself back on my feet.
“I’ve already taken enough of your time,” I said.
Churchman looked resigned to the inevitable, but still cheerful.
“Sure. Fine. Nice to see you. Stop by any time. Right, Brigitte?”
She nodded like it was her idea.
I found Amanda’s pickup in the dim light that filled in between the setting of the sun and the lighting of the big post lamps dotting the marina. I’d been planning to go into the Village to buy a newspaper, sit on a park bench on Main Street, and maybe get a burger later at one of the joints that still marginally catered to the locals. But after the visit with Churchman, the mood was lost.
This used to happen to me when I was a process optimizer. When I was on the cusp of a solution I’d suddenly start to feel nauseated. I didn’t actually have the solution itself, but I knew that I would momentarily. This would cause a physiological reaction, a feeling of nervous revulsion. I used to wonder if it was the by-product of the frenzied calculations going on in the back of my mind, my overworked subconscious.
But the trouble didn’t come from the process. It was when the conclusions being generated seemed untenable. Preposterous. Yet, like Churchman, I was ultimately a quantitative guy. In any contest between empirical data and logic and reason, the data almost always won.
I drove back along North Sea Road and stopped at the place where I’d first read Bobby Dobson’s real estate file. The same bartender was working the bar. He didn’t remember me, thankfully. When I ordered Grey Goose he looked at me like I was speaking French, so I acquiesced to whatever he had in the well.
As some of the truth about Con Globe, Ozzie Endicott, George Donovan and Iku Kinjo started to leak into my jostled mind, I said “Oh, fuck, can’t be,” to the bartender, since he was the only one within earshot.
“Always is, partner,” he said, swabbing down the space in front of me and then moving on to the prospect of a better conversation farther down the bar.
NINETEEN
HALFWAY THROUGH THE NEXT DAY I was outside working at a folding bench, hoping to put a few hours into the teak planters I’d promised Frank Entwhistle. And maybe take advantage of the fair weather and the recuperative qualities of manual labor to regain my senses.
So even though I was getting ready to make the call myself, I was disappointed when the little screen on the cell phone told me George Donovan was on the line. I looked out toward the bay, wondering if I still had the arm to go the distance. Then I answered the phone.
“I thought you would have contacted me by now,” he said.
Not if I’d been doing my best to avoid you, I said to myself.
“I was about to.”
“We need to talk,” he said.
“We do.”
“It’s happened.”
“What?”
“I’ve been approached.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“In Montauk. You can’t come here. Arlis is out with the dogs. We need a place to meet.”
I thought about it.
“You know the park at the bitter end, the one with the lighthouse? Find a comfortable place. I’ll find you.”
“You’re still honoring the deal?” he said. “I need your assurance.”
