over.“
We got up from the table and I glanced at the clock on the wall to see that it was almost two in the afternoon.
Mike and Wally were sitting in the sunshine on the deck off the kitchen, feet up on the railing, keeping themselves out of our way. Wally probably hadn’t had a fresh, captive audience like Mike in years and was undoubtedly telling him all the local news and island crime stories.
Luther and Wally thanked us for our help and we made arrangements to be in contact during the week. I saw them to the front door and waved good-bye as each car headed out the gate.
“Don’t tell me you’re leaving me for Luther,” Mike said as I headed back out onto the deck. 'That is one huge blast of hot air.“
“How come you didn’t ask me if I did him? You left me alone in there with him for almost two hours.”
“Nah. I figure Wally’s more your type. You got a real thing for those sweet old guys. I can see you living up here, married to Wally, running the local jailhouse, or maybe a saloon like Miss Kitty while he rids the island of all the vermin who sail in from the mainland.”
“You guessed it, Chapman. C’mon, I’ve got to call the office and check my messages. I’m sure you do, too.”
“Then you have to buy me some lunch – I’m starving. I’m dying to hear what you got from J. Edgar Waldron – Wally was easy as pie.“
Laura answered my phone on the first ring. She expressed her usual concern for me and told me that it had been a relatively quiet Friday.
All calls from police officers and witnesses had been transferred to Sarah Brenner. My mother had phoned to get Laura’s opinion about how I was holding up (just fine) and whether I was really in any danger (of course not). Nina wanted me to call her when I got back to the city. Dinner invitations from Joan Stafford and another friend, Ann Moore (Tell them thanks but I’ll be exhausted. Rain checks). And Jed called from Paris see you tomorrow.
Mike checked in with his office and then turned back to me.
“Okay, Coop, I’m ready. Who’s got the best fried clams on the island? I’ve got a craving.”
“That’s simple – the Bite. Grab a couple of cold beers and let’s go.”
A seven-minute car ride from my door was the best joint for fried clams in the world. It’s a tiny wooden shack on the side of the road in Menemsha – a stone’s throw from the commercial fishing dock with only two picnic tables next to it. But Karen and Jackie Quinn turned out thousands of the most lightly fried clams from late morning through late night in season, which was only from the Memorial Day weekend through Columbus Day.
I turned the ignition key on in our rented car as Mike asked, “Who’s Luther wound up about?”
“He’s so rigid, he didn’t give a lot away. He’s got Richard Burrell, the ex-husband, in his sights.”
“Sound right to you?”
“Not really, especially if he’s off the coke. But there’s no question she was with him in Boston last weekend, so who knows if he followed her here. And Wally?”
“Wally says they’re trying to find an old boyfriend who was sort of a loose cannon. An actor or stunt guy named Johnny Garelli. Ever hear of him?”
“Shit, I should have thought of him, too. Isabella used to call him Johnny Gorilla. Remember when she did one of those Tom Clancy movies, about gun runners and dope dealers in some Central American country? Johnny was a great-looking, brain-dead ex-Marine who had a bit part in the movie, and they had an affair during the filming. Hit all the tabloids and supermarket magazines.”
“I must have missed it.”
“It worked fine for three weeks in the jungles of Guatemala, but once she got him back to Bel Air, he had trouble holding up his end of the conversation.
“Anyway, she came to New York for a shopping trip without the gorilla and we met for brunch at Mortimer’s on Sunday morning. The place was packed, everyone there knew who she was, and in the door comes this wild- eyed, oversized madman who’d gone straight from the red-eye to her hotel, where the concierge who had put Isabella in a cab directed him to the restaurant.”
“What did he want?” Mike asked.
“He just raged at her for leaving him behind. The usual stuff of a B-movie – she thought she was too good for him, she thought she could buy him off, comments about her sexual interests. I was halfway under the table and he wasn’t talking about me but she just took it in great style, put down her bloody mary, rose to her full height, told me she’d be right back, and walked him out to the sidewalk. The people in the front half of the restaurant – the ones who count – watched as she hailed a yellow cab and put him inside, then left the taxi door open as she came back in to whisper an apology to me. As she started for the door again, she turned and smiled at ten or twelve of us within hearing range and announced, ”Let this be a lesson to you, girls – always fuck your own rank.“ I sat there dumbfounded until my friends Joan and Louise, who were at the next table, stopped laughing long enough to invite me to finish my salad with them.”
“And the gorilla?” Mike asked.
“He hung on for a while. Could still be an occasional one-nighter for all I know. I don’t think she’d brag it about to me after the episode I witnessed. She’s made a lot of mistakes like that with her personal life. While they’re looking for Johnny they’ll find ten more just like him. Isabella desperately wanted respectability – a man who was solid, not show biz, not drug-involved – there just weren’t a lot of them in her orbit. She never stopped searching for one, though.”
I nosed the car onto the dirt shoulder of the road just before we reached the Bite. Karen saw me first and practically squealed with excitement.
“Alex, what are you doing here? You told us you wouldn’t be back till the weekend we close.” She realized as soon as the words were out that she knew the connection.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Isabella Lascar was staying at your place. I’m so sorry.“
“Thanks, Karen. We’re up here trying to help Wally. This is my friend – Mike Chapman.”
“She was here, Alex. She was here on Wednesday.”
“Isabella?” I should have known I could get a pretty good scouting report from the Quinn sisters. They were enthusiastic, hardworking young women who loved celebrities, and if they trusted you with the information, they could tell you when Vernon Jordan or Billy Joel or Mike Wallace or Princess Di had his or her last order of clams and oysters.
“Yeah, did you send her to us?”
“Well, of course, you’re on the top of my list, Karen, and I would have sent her here, but I actually never got to speak with her on Wednesday.”
Mike casually began to ask for more details.
“Do you remember what time she was here?” was how he started, and when he found out it was between two and three in the afternoon, he moved on to whether or not she was alone.
Jackie had joined in the conversation, too, and both were quick to respond that Isabella had been with a man. No, he didn’t seem at all familiar to them, and yes, they had both checked him out, simply because they assumed he might also be a movie star.
“He was a looker,” Jackie offered. Taller than Mike, also with dark hair, and probably in his forties.
“They had a medium order of clams with some fries, and both of them had bottled water.”
“Did you happen to hear anything about where they were coming from or what they were up to?” I knew from lots of experience here that the deep-fryers were against the windows, right over the picnic table. My father once came close to bringing the girls to tears, unintentionally, by sitting below that window and grousing that there were too many potatoes and too few clams in the chowder. So I tried to make it easier for them to admit an overheard by urging, “It’s really important, girls. It could really help us a lot.”
Karen was eager to be useful.
“It sounded to me like they were on their way to the ferry. He had to be somewhere else and she was going to stay on the island. I’m telling you, she was all over him. I’m pretty sure she was driving him to the ferry, or maybe it was the airport. But they were in a hurry and they ate pretty fast.”
“Thanks, Karen. I’m going to ask Wally to come up and take some more details from you, okay?”
“Sure.”
