Hard Stop

ELEVEN

I KILLED THE REST OF THE DAY walking around the docks of Sag Harbor looking at sailboats. With the likelihood of my buying one on par with a flight to the rings of Saturn, I’d never narrowed my preferences. Big boats, little boats, racers, cruisers, ketches, sloops, schooners and yawls, it was all the same to me. Equally desirable and equally out of reach.

But a thought struck me one day when I was working in my shop. What if I just built one myself? How hard would that be?

Impossible. Though maybe I could restore some miserable old derelict dredged off the bottom of the sea, or salvaged off the rocks after a hurricane. In that case, I’d need to get a little focus, clarify my priorities. This meant careful research of the type I was doing in Sag Harbor, walking around and looking at boats, with Eddie on a leash to avoid municipal sanctions and spare the resident waterfowl.

The process was easier than I thought it would be. The only boats I really liked were akin to Hodges’s Gulf Star—forty-something-foot, beat-up old live-aboards.

I didn’t want to race, I didn’t want to sail around the world. I wanted to sit with Eddie in the cockpit in a quiet harbor. I wanted to grill off the transom and listen to Miles Davis. And drink my vodka ration and smoke my Camel ration, then sail to another quiet harbor and drink whatever vodka was left over from all the dumb rationing. If I wanted, I could bring Amanda along and she could drink wine. There were any number of other things we could do on a boat if we put our minds to it.

This is a want, I said to myself. I want something. It had been so long since I’d felt that sensation it was hard at first to identify. But there it was. An unrequited yearning for an entirely unnecessary object of desire.

While still in the thrall, I drove Eddie back to Oak Point, where I let him out so he could wait in the backyard for Amanda to get home. Then I headed back toward the ocean.

On the way I called Sullivan, but his phone kicked me into his voice mail again. So I left another message, sticking to the facts, leaving out all speculation, conjecture and phantom sailboats.

Dune Drive was as good as its name, a curvy, two-lane road running parallel to the dunes and the shoreline. Scattered atop the dunes were oceanfront houses built mostly in the late twentieth century, a catalog of architectural triumph and catastrophe. The pampered landscaping had flourished in recent years, making it harder to see the houses, but Angel’s place was easy to spot. You’d probably find it in a magazine or academic text described in terms to inflame the imagination of design students and critics, but to me it was just a three-dimensional rectangle on stilts.

There was a square white gate with an intercom stuck to the gatepost. I pushed the button.

“Mr. Acquillo?” asked an accented voice a few registers above Valero’s.

“Yup.”

As the gates swung in I half expected the guy to say, “Enter ye, if thou darest.”

The cobblestone drive curved around plantings of dune grass and wild roses and formed a large parking area in front of the gleaming white staircase leading to the first floor of the house. Across the parking area, partly filled with the customary Jaguars, Porsches and Mercedes Benzes, was a white picket fence. Farther back were two smaller versions of the main house. Guest house and pool house by my astute reckoning.

When I got out of the car a woman in a minute, buff-colored bikini and a pair of Roman-style sandals with wide ribbons laced up her calves passed through a gate and strolled over to my car.

“You’re on time,” she said. “That’s rare these days.”

“Precision is an engineer’s curse.”

“A poetic engineer. Follow me,” she said, pivoting and heading back to the gate. It wasn’t the hardest thing anyone’s asked me to do.

Inside the gate she picked up a Siamese cat that was trying to twine itself around her ankles.

“Meet Opium,” she said, holding the cat out so I could scratch its ears.

“She’s such a greeter.”

Holding the cat under one arm, she continued the trip down a curvaceous path paved with grey bricks and lined with cultivated tufts of grass and purple and yellow flowers.

“No trouble finding the place?” she asked.

“I just looked for a big gift box.”

“A gift from Angel to himself,” she said.

When we got to our destination I could see why he’d said “down at the pool.” It was settled into a hollow inside the dunes, open to the ocean on one end and encircled by more grey pavers and yellow and purple flowers. There were enough white chaise lounges and deck chairs to seat a pool party, but only two were filled—another girl and a giant, barrel-chested, pot-bellied guy, both wearing only bikini bottoms and baseball caps.

I rounded the pool following my guide. Angel watched us approach through a pair of dark green aviator’s glasses. I stood next to his chaise and waited.

“You’re Acquillo?” he finally asked, not offering his hand.

“Sam Acquillo. You can call me Sam.”

“You can call me annoyed.”

He put his hands on the armrests of the chaise and lugged himself to his feet. He was about the height of Zelda Fitzgerald and outweighed her by several orders of magnitude. He stood slightly too close to me for comfort, but I held my ground. His breath smelled of the red wine he and the girl were drinking out of little plastic bowls. When he plucked his off the armrest he saw me notice.

“It’s the pool. Can’t have glass anywhere near. You like Shiraz?”

I looked up at the sky.

“It’s too light out for wine. How ’bout a gin and tonic?”

He pointed at the woman who led me in and jerked his head at a pink bamboo dry bar wheeled up to the side of the pool.

“Jesse, get the man his daylight drink.”

He took the pressure off my personal space and pulled over a couple of chairs and a round side table. I took the one that kept the girls in view. What the heck.

“This Gelb. You know him?” he asked, settling his bulk into the painted rattan chair.

“Only to coerce.”

“He says you want to make a run at me.”

He sliced the air with a slab of hand, as if to underscore the preposterousness of the idea.

“I don’t know what that means,” I said. “I just want to talk to you about Iku Kinjo. You were an important client. You might be able to shed some light.”

As with Zelda Fitzgerald, his sunglasses did a lot to contain his thoughts. But there was something said in the long pause in the conversation.

“She’s dead. What other light do you need?”

“The illuminating kind,” I said.

“That’s redundant,” said Jesse, now in a chaise of her own, reading a weathered copy of The Agony and the Ecstasy.

Angel ignored her.

“What’s your part in this?” he asked.

“Finder of the body.”

He made a grunt deep enough to be felt through the grey pavers.

“There’s no legal standing in that.”

“Since when did legalities trouble you?” I asked, taking a second sip from my drink. The first tasted like pure, lime-flavored gin. Jesse wasn’t much of a bartender.

Angel pointed at me. “How’s that mouth of yours served you so far? In life?”

“Intermittently.”

“I’ll bet.”

“So, any thoughts on what happened to Iku? If what I hear is correct, you had a close working relationship. They’re suggesting now it might be suicide. Any sign she was preoccupied? Or depressed?”

“No. But I am. By this conversation.”

“You’re a sensitive guy, Angel. I’ll try to soften the edges for you.”

Jesse was sitting behind him, so he couldn’t see the intimation of a grin pass over her face. I kept my gaze fixed on him so I wouldn’t give her away.

“Like you said, I had a working relationship with the woman. I didn’t know anything about her personal life. It’s all business with those Eisler people. It’s a mentality. Just get it done. Straight down the middle. Hired brains. No life, no heart.”

“So, nothing suspicious right before she died?” I asked.

He slid down in his chair and downed his bowl of Shiraz. He wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm.

“Even if there was, I wouldn’t know. I was in Europe at the end of the summer. No reason to talk to her. For that matter, no reason to talk to you. So why am I?”

“Because you’re a people person?”

I think Jesse liked this one, too. But it went right by the topless girl. In fact, she never looked up the entire time I was there. Can’t please everybody.

Angel took off his baseball cap and wiped his forehead. The move dumped out a large ball of wavy black hair. It took him a few moments to get it all stuffed back under the hat again.

“Gelb told me you were locked up in a loony bin for a while,” he said. “I’m understanding now how that could be the case. Because you got to be fucking crazy to talk to me like that.”

“I don’t suppose you’d want to tell me about the last deal you two were working on.”

As if realizing there were other people within earshot, Angel twisted around in his chair and looked over at Jesse.

“Can you believe this shit?” he asked her.

She held up her book.

“Not paying attention, darling,” she said.

“Whether somebody killed Iku Kinjo or she did it herself, there’s a reason it happened,” I said. “Given your close association, I’d think you’d be curious about that. I’m curious that you’re not.”

He leaned as forward in his chair as the medicine ball of a stomach would let him.

“Why all the curiosity?” he asked.

“I was looking for her. Until I find out why she’s dead, I haven’t really found her.”

He sat back in his chair again and put his hands on the armrests, preparing to haul himself to his feet.

“I got something to show you.”

He got up and waved for me to follow. We walked over to another gate in the white fence, one leading out to a patio area with round wrought-iron tables and chairs, umbrellas and a view of the ocean through a cut in the dunes. He opened the gate and ushered me through. I walked out on the patio and looked at the ocean, which was relatively calm and blue in the fading light of the sun coming in over our shoulders from the west. It threw our shadows out from our feet, which should have told me Angel was a little too close behind.

It was an embrace to take your breath away. Literally. I looked down at his arms crossed over my chest, one hand holding the other wrist, and the contours of his arm muscles swelling with the effort. The pressure increased steadily and rapidly, until I felt my ribs about to collapse. I gathered what breath I could and held it while straining against the relentless compression.

“You fuck with me,” he whispered in my ear, “and it’ll be the last fucking crazy thing you do.”

I think he said a few more threatening things, but I don’t remember. I was preoccupied by the blood being squeezed up into my head and the popping sensation behind my eyes. It wasn’t the ideal state of mind for working out a defensive strategy, but I had the advantage of panic and desperation.

I hadn’t troubled to dress up for the visit, so all I had on my feet was a pair of worn-out Timberlands. Worn, but with a good enough heel to dig into Valero’s toes where they stuck out of his sandals. This had less effect on his grip than I hoped, though he stopped talking and started growling in my ear.

I used the other heel to kick him in the shins, forcing him to look down to see where he’d placed his feet. This gave me the chance to tap him in the face with the back of my head. I caught him in the mouth, cutting my scalp on his teeth, but the move loosened up his bear hug. I probably should have stopped with the head butts, given my neurological issues, but it was the only weapon I had available. And it was working. The growling stopped and his breath was coming faster, more seriously as he tried to twist clear of my hammering skull.

With all the butting and Valero’s maneuvering, I’d been able to turn a little to the right, which caused my hand, pressed into my side, to come in contact with the impressive package Angel had stuffed into his swimsuit. He had a split second to ponder the wisdom of allowing this configuration to evolve before a slight bend in my elbow allowed me to have both polyester-covered testicles firmly in hand.

This was a first for me, and I imagine for Angel as well.

I’d spent the last several years swinging a hammer and throwing around bundles of lumber. So my grip was probably as good as ever. I gave those boys of Valero’s a pretty lusty squeeze.

He must have thrown his head back to bellow, because when I butted him again I caught the edge of his chin. He lost the hold when he tried to grab my wrist. I didn’t give him another chance. I spun out of the hug and danced back out of his reach, on my toes with my fists up where they belonged.

I didn’t know how a guy my size would do against a human bull, but I was done wrestling.

Angel was leaning forward, gripping himself around the midriff. I stepped in and planted a right jab in his face, snapping his head back, which made a nice target for the following left. He was still upright, but wavering. So I threw another neat combination. This seemed to have little effect, but before he could get his big arms up to protect his face I shot a right straight into his mouth. I was very happy to see this drop his ass down on the patio, where I was even happier to see it stay.

“I never cuddle on the first date,” I told him.

By now he’d let go of his balls and was holding his face.

“You’re a dead man,” he said into his hands.

“We all get there eventually,” I said as I circled back around to the gate, keeping my eyes on him the whole time.

Jesse opened it for me.

“Well,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Thanks for the drink. Next time I’ll take it with tonic.”

“I’m sure there’ll be a next time.”

I took one more glance at the blonde before walking up the grey path to the outer gate, where Opium was sitting licking her ass, and out to where the Grand Prix stood staring down the German performance cars scattered around Valero’s driveway.

When I got to Dune Drive I tried to take a full breath, with little success. I didn’t think anything was broken, but I’d bruised ribs before and knew I was in for a long hurt.

The visit hadn’t turned out exactly as planned. All I’d done was make an enemy, in record time, out of a wealthy and ruthless son of a bitch. I’d fully exposed my own intentions without learning a thing about his, or about anything else for that matter, and ruined any chance for future discussion or cooperation. And all I had to show for it was a sore chest and a cut on the head.

“Brilliant,” I said, pulling a smashed cigarette out of my shirt pocket, seeing if a little jolt of carcinogen would do something for the aching ribs and eroding self-regard.

That night I finally got through to Joe Sullivan. I’d called him at home on my cell phone from a table at the Pequot. He’d been tied up with the DA for a few days, and his wife, whom I’d never met, was none too delighted by my intrusion. He used a clever ploy to hustle me off the phone—the promise of a full forensics briefing, delivered at the crime scene.

Mollified, I went back to The Wealth of Nations, a single, abridged volume I’d bought from the library when they were clearing out their stock.

“The root of all evil?” I asked Dorothy Hodges, holding up the book.

“Not to me, and I’ll ignore the stereotyping,” she said, dropping my drink on the table as gracefully as you could with three-inch-long black fingernails.

“I’ve got Das Kapital back at the cottage. I’m going to put them in the middle of the room and let them fight it out.”

“They did that already. Smith won.”

“They taught you that at Columbia?”

“Marx belongs in the fantasy–science fiction section. Lovely dreams.” She used one of the black daggers at the end of her fingers to scratch her head through greased orange hair. It wasn’t my favorite Dorothy look, though it was hard to pin down what was, since it changed almost by the day.

“Maybe I won’t bother reading either of them and you can just explain it to me,” I said.

“Easy. People yearn for community, but they’re biologically hierarchical. Trouble is, hierarchy’s defined in two ways. Brawn and brains. Brains run the kitchen, but they need brawn at the front of the house. It’s a natural symbiosis. And the rest of us have to eat whatever they dish out.”

“The Pequot Theory of Economic Interdependency?”

“Money doesn’t suck. Not having money sucks. Using money for stupid things sucks.”

“Like the time you bought tropicalbirds.com at fifty bucks a share?” said her father, sliding a chair into the conversation. “Don’t get me wrong. Dotty’s a hell of a stock picker.”

“Not really,” said Dorothy, though clearly pleased with the compliment. “I’m just a mid-cap index kind of a girl with a taste for the occasional social-conscience buy. Which do very well, by the way, most of the time.”

“There’s so much about the world I don’t understand,” I said with deepest sincerity.

“You don’t think we could live on what comes out of the till, do you?” Hodges asked me as we watched Dorothy disappear back into the kitchen. “A restaurant’s a cash business. If you play it right, you get to hold the suppliers’ money just long enough to put it to work without pissing ’em off. Dotty’s been floating the delta since she was in high school.”

Back when I was married and had a regular paying job I handled all the family finances. My wife Abby resented this, and from this remove I can see why. It was an implicit insult to her financial acumen, entirely untested and perfunctorily rejected. I wasn’t a bad money manager but I wasn’t exactly Warren Buffett, or Angel Valero. I was exactly like my father. Afraid to let the money out of my sight and have it all taken away like in the Depression, thirty years before I was born.

So what did I do? Lost it all anyway.

“You can’t know everything, Sam,” said Hodges. “That’s what we have trust for. To fool us into giving ourselves over to specialists who know more about something than we’ll ever know even in a thousand years.”

“You can trust Dorothy.”

“That’s what we have children for.”

On the way home I called and left a message for George Donovan. I told him Mason Thigpen and the people at Eisler, Johnson were aware I was nosing around about Iku Kinjo. They had no reason to suspect anything but the obvious—that finding her body had drawn me into the case. I said I thought things were going to heat up, but there was no need to worry as long as he played it tight to the vest, something he surely knew how to do.

I was glad to leave a message. If I reached him directly I didn’t know what he’d say. This really wasn’t up to him anymore, and while his secret would die with me, I didn’t need the interference.

When I got to the cottage I found Amanda and Eddie sleeping on the screened-in porch. Eddie was on the braided rug and Amanda was face down on the daybed, still dressed and snoring. Likely a performance piece meant to undermine my tendency to idolize.

I poured my nightcap ration and sat at the pine table to watch her snore. Seeing that I’d abrogated my rightful place, Eddie jumped up on the daybed and lay next to her, settling himself down with a puff of breath through his long snout.

I went back to Adam Smith, thinking I ought to write a book like this of my own. Call it The Wealth of Undeserved Blessings.