‘What’ll you do?’
‘I’ll find something.’
‘You’re staying around?’
‘Yeah.’
Hollis handed him two envelopes. ‘I took these from your place before they went through it.’
He had found the envelopes propped up on the desk against a water glass. One was addressed to Rollo, the other to someone called Sam Ockham.
Labarde looked at them, but didn’t take them. ‘You can throw them away.’
‘You sure you won’t be needing them?’
Labarde didn’t reply.
‘I’ll try and keep them off your back for a bit,’ said Hollis, ‘but there’s a stack of people want to see you.’
‘I guess.’
‘There’s been talk of a man, a man sent to kill you. Seems he turned up dead in the Wallaces’ pool with a bullet in his head.’ ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’
‘That’s the story to go with,’ said Hollis. ‘Just make sure you stick to it. The DA’s blood is up right now, he’s capable of anything.’
‘Thanks.’
‘There’s another thing. Manfred Wallace is saying Lizzie Jencks stepped into the road in front of the car.’
‘How does he justify killing his sister?’
‘I think he’s telling the truth.’
He’d been sworn to secrecy, but Labarde was the one man who had a right to know. Besides, Hollis needed his advice.
He told him what he’d learned from Joe the time he drove out to Springs: how a girl from a poor Bonacker family would have had little choice, how the Jenckses and their kind had been in the thrall of the wealthy Amagansett clans since the very earliest days, reliant on them for work, charity even, during tough years. It was a relationship open to abuse, and there’d been plenty over the years. Joe said he could list a whole load of them, payment taken in kind from families with nothing else to offer besides their womenfolk. He said he could point out the sons and daughters of gentry fathers brought up in Bonacker homes. He said Hollis was sitting across from one, although he didn’t go into details.
Hollis protested that that was then and this was now. Girls didn’t go around giving themselves to men just because they demanded it.
‘It’s 1947, for Christ’s sake.’
‘No need to bring him into it,’ said Joe sternly.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I know things move slow out here.’
‘Did her parents know?’
‘Not till after. The brother did, he was the one pushed her to it. He liked the cards more’n they liked him. He needed work fast, the cash kind. His pa near killed him when he found out.’
Well, that explained why Adam Jencks had gone south.
‘It’s one of them things, is all,’ said Joe. ‘Ain’t nothin’ going to bring her back. It’s all arranged now.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Put it this way, the Jenckses ain’t makin’ the payments on the house right now.’
‘Oh, that’s great, everyone’s happy.’
‘I ain’t sayin’ that.’
‘Who was it, Joe?’
‘I ain’t sayin’ that neither.’
Labarde had listened in silence to Hollis’ account of the conversation. ‘Well…’ he now said.
‘You know who it is, don’t you?’ said Hollis.
‘No.’
‘But you’ve heard something.’
‘No.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘You don’t understand. There’s those who’ve been here for ever. Then there’s the rest of us.’
‘None of this would have happened if Lizzie hadn’t been out that night. It all springs from that. I believe Manfred Wallace. She stepped in front of his car.’
‘You caught him. Be happy with that. It’s enough.’
Labarde closed his eyes. ‘I’m tired,’ he said.
