Hard Stop

FOURTEEN

I REMEMBER THOSE SCIENCE CLASS analogies of the sun as a basketball and the earth as a pea. It’s the same for the Hamptons and New York City. We have more room out here, but the City is a whole lot bigger.

To say people in the Hamptons have mixed feelings about the colossus next door would be to understate the matter by an appropriately vast degree. Even for people who work in town and live here when they can. No matter what you want to believe, the Hamptons are an adjunct of the Big City—an appendage. We’re in her orbit, her gravitational pull, and utterly in her thrall.

Which is one of the reasons I like driving into town. To see the big girl in all her arrogant glory. The only question was how I drove—or more precisely, in what.

“You’re thinking of taking the Audi, aren’t you,” said Amanda.

“Why would I think that?” I lied.

“I’ll drive the pickup.”

“Nah. I’ll drive the pickup. If you need to haul a few tons of stuff, you can use the Grand Prix,” I said.

So I ended up in Amanda’s little red truck, with Eddie next to me in the passenger seat, heading into New York City. It was a compromise, admittedly. It wasn’t easy for me to accept help from anyone, least of all my rich girlfriend. But driving the Grand Prix over the lunar landscapes of Manhattan was getting to be a hit-or-miss proposition, and I could do without the added stress.

I’d booked a hotel in Tribeca that allowed dogs. “Pet friendly” is how they put it, which sounded more like a predilection than a policy. The ad in the Times noted that the hotel bar featured the widest selection of vodkas in New York City. Providence like this demanded a reservation.

I had the rough edges of a plan. I’d drive in before rush hour, settle Eddie into the room, take my daughter out to dinner, then figure out the rest of the plan while testing the legitimacy of the bar’s claim.

I executed everything but the figuring out part.

The best I could do was wake up early enough to walk Eddie, bring him back to the room and haul myself up to the West Side in time to catch Bobby Dobson getting ready for work.

As I pushed the button on the panel outside his building, I was still waiting for a bolt of inspiration.

“Who’s there?” said a male voice over the scratchy intercom.

“It’s Jerome,” I said, my inflection pitched to Westchester by way of Brighton Beach. “We need to talk. Let me in.”

Seconds trudged by. Then the door buzzed.

I took the elevator to his floor, still wondering how I was going to beat the inevitable peephole in the door. But my luck and Dobson’s stupidity caused him to open his door when I was only a few paces away, allowing me to shoulder my way into the apartment before he knew what hit him.

What hit him actually was the door, hard enough to knock him off his feet, which I really didn’t mean to do. This left me standing over him as Elaine Brooks stepped into the hallway wearing only a terry cloth bathrobe, which in the excitement she’d neglected to tie closed.

I squatted next to Dobson.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said, “but I’m here to help you.”

“I’m calling the cops,” he said, leaning on his elbows.

“You can do that, but that’ll force me to tell them how you’ve been lying about Iku Kinjo.”

“Bobby?” said Elaine from down the hall, now more properly pulled together.

“It’s okay, baby,” he said, still looking up at me, “we’re just talking here.”

“It doesn’t look that way to me,” she said.

“All I want to do is talk,” I said to Bobby. “Honestly. We keep getting off on the wrong foot. My fault. I want to make it up to you. If you’d rather fight me, I’ll have to fight back. I’d hate that. And so would you.”

He slowly got to his feet, feeling around a red spot on his cheek. He waved me into an area that served as a combination living room and kitchenette, where he cracked ice cubes out of a tray to put on his face. All the while Elaine was whispering at him furiously, to which he responded with semi-articulate grunts.

Feeling stupid standing alone in the living room, I went over to the kitchen and introduced myself to Elaine. She was examining Bobby’s cheek, which had again caused her to lose control of her bathrobe. Her body was plenty nice to look at, but I was embarrassed for both of us. I looked away as I offered my hand.

“Sam Acquillo, miss,” I said. “I’m really sorry to bother you.”

She clutched her robe to her neck, which helped a little, and offered her free hand.

“You got a weird way of showing it.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s Iku’s murder,” I added. “Makes me a little crazy.”

Elaine took the bait.

“Oh my God, is that horrible or what?” she said.

I saw Bobby let out an inaudible sigh.

Looking over at the gigantic coffeemaker on the kitchen counter, I said, “Can we sit down? Have some coffee?”

Their sitting area was mostly office space, with a tiny loveseat and two swivel chairs, a desk with a PC and bookcases with swayback shelves crammed with stacks of paper and miscellaneous clutter.

They plopped down in the loveseat and I took one of the swivel chairs. Now that I was familiar with Elaine’s more essential qualities, I studied her face. It was broad, large featured and pretty in the way old-fashioned writers called handsome. Her hair was dark brown, her chin square and her eyes, also brown, wide-set. There were dimples in her cheeks deep enough to grow crops and her smile was an orthodontist’s billboard.

Bobby was still his nervous, pale little self.

“So, Elaine, you guys knew Iku at Princeton, right?” I asked.

Her expression, seasoned with vague alarm, stayed in place.

“She was a Fast Track,” she said.

“A what?”

“A Fast Track,” said Bobby. “YIT. Yuppie-in-training. Mover and shaker. If you can’t help my career, get the fuck out of my way. I was in Economics with her. Awesome focus.”

“But very cute,” said Elaine.

Bobby blanched. Not a big blanch. A very slight, barely noticeable blanch. “She was a babe. With a mysterious kind of look. Different,” he said. “But she didn’t seem to care about herself. You never saw her outside class. I think she skipped the social part.”

“So how did she end up staying at your place?” I asked.

Elaine looked to Bobby to answer.

“I ran into her at the Playhouse,” he said. “I didn’t know her that well, like I said, but enough to chat it up. She was looking for a place to stay. We had an extra room. She paid the whole freight for the summer through to Christmas. So that was that.”

I swiveled back and forth in my chair, feeling the painful lack of a coffee cup in my hand. It made me a little irritable.

“When are you going to stop lying to me?” I asked.

Bobby stared, unsure.

“The thing is, man,” I said, “you’re not that good at it. All this does is aggravate the person you’re lying to. With me, it doesn’t mean much, even though I hit you with the door—not intentionally. But it means a lot to the cops, who are not as loving as I am. Worse for you, the cops are friends of mine. If I say you’re dirty, you’re dirty. They’ll escort you to a session at the cleaners—a good washing and drying. Do you hear what I’m saying to you? Do you understand?”

“That’s very threatening language,” said Elaine.

“No, it’s not. It’s informative. Iku didn’t just want a place to party for the summer, she wanted a hideout. You made it appear, to some people at least, that you were romantically involved with her, which clearly you weren’t. How come? Unless you wanted to give her some cover.”

Elaine was studying my face while I talked, intent on grasping what I was saying. When I stopped, she turned her attention to Bobby, with the same concentration. Assessing point and counterpoint.

“You ever been to a place where people are hooking up?” Bobby asked. “Probably not. It’s a fluid dynamic. If Iku wanted to hide out, that was her business. And as far as me being her boyfriend, I can’t help what people think. I’m Elaine’s boyfriend. I think,” he added, looking at her. She nodded her head at me, with a look I can only describe as chipper.

“He better be,” she said. “Or I’ll kill him.”

I looked at Elaine.

“You knew Iku was Eisler, Johnson’s golden girl,” I said. “Must have been a teeny bit weird for Bobby to have somebody with a pass card to the top floor sleeping in the basement.”

I let the awkward silence fill the room.

“You said she was a worker bee,” Elaine said to Bobby.

“She did a little consulting for Angel Valero,” he said, answering her, but still looking at me. “This guy thinks that matters.”

Realizing she might have breached their unified front, Elaine snapped back into character. “I don’t know anything about business stuff,” she said. “I just sell art.”

“That’s right,” I said. “You’re only in it for the culture.”

She smiled, still holding her ground.

“What difference does it make who introduced who to who?” asked Bobby. “We ran into Iku, had a few drinks, invited her to rent one of the empty bedrooms. So what? What’s your point?”

“Who else beside Iku was on the Internet?” I asked.

“Who wasn’t,” said Elaine.

Bobby liked her answer.

“We also talked on telephones. Again, what’s your point?”

I didn’t exactly know what Sullivan wanted to keep confidential, but I was backed into a corner. So I said it.

“Iku’s computer wasn’t recovered. It’s missing.”

Scorn flashed across Bobby’s face.

“Those cops could fuck up a wet dream.”

I tried to imagine how Joe Sullivan would have answered that.

“So, you think they lost it? Dropped it down a hole on the way to the car?”

He shrugged. “Who knows. Their problem.”

Bobby looked like he was teetering between outrage and terror. I gave him a shove.

“No,” I said, “yours. As soon as I throw you to those cops you hold in such contempt.”

He stared at me, scraping together his meager shreds of courage.

“This’s got nothing to do with me,” he said.

“Give me the computer and I won’t tell Joe Sullivan you were withholding evidence. I’ll say I found it in the woods.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only computer I have is over there.” He nodded toward an overflowing desk. “And you won’t find it very interesting, unless you love financial analyses. I should let you take it home with you as punishment.”

The computer was the only thing in the apartment that looked new, which was made more apparent by its disheveled surroundings.

“So, no theories,” I said.

“About what?” said Bobby.

“The computer. Where it went.”

“The killer took it. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.”

“Really? So the killer cared about what was on it. Is that what you think?”

Bobby didn’t like that.

“That’s not what I’m saying. Maybe he just wanted it.”

“Pretty selective thief. Did you report anything else stolen?”

“We didn’t report anything,” said Elaine. “They won’t let us back in the house.”

Bobby liked that more. He looked proud of his girlfriend. He jumped to his feet. “Listen, we gotta get ready for work,” he said, and walked out of the room.

Elaine stood up and said, “Well?”

I shrugged and got up to follow her, but on the way to the door she turned and used her shoulder to wedge me against the wall. The maneuver caused more revealing disruption to her bathrobe, which by now was getting to be old hat.

“What makes you think we won’t have you arrested? Or worse?” she asked in a low voice.

“You would have done it by now if you thought you could,” I said.

“Don’t be so sure, Mr. Samuel,” she said, in an even lower voice. She gripped my forearm below my rolled up cuffs and squeezed.

“Mr. Sam. My mother thought ‘Samuel’ was too formal. Putting on airs.”

I pushed the rest of the way past her and got out of the apartment, down the elevator and out to the street where I’d left Eddie to guard Amanda’s pickup. He was barking out the window at a passing Pomeranian, who could have cared less.

I was eager to get away from that unsettling apartment but I needed to give Eddie a chance to sniff the crazy City smells and pee on interesting new things. A few blocks down the street I spotted another parking space and stopped.

It was still early, so after Eddie did his thing we were through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and halfway down the Island before the sun got above the smoky horizon. It was good to be driving counter to the commute, though I felt a little guilty as I watched opposing traffic creeping toward another day of boredom and triumph and everything in between. I knew for sure that would never again be me.

As I drove along the Long Island Expressway, most of my mind was wondering around the life and death of Iku Kinjo and all the people who might have aided in one or the other. One little part of me was keeping track of the other cars on the highway until the persistent presence of a large black SUV in the rearview mirror made itself abundantly clear.

I instantly regretted leaving the Grand Prix at home. It wasn’t much of a car by modern standards, until you wanted sudden excessive acceleration on the open highway. Something the little red pickup could only do in its microprocessor-driven mechanical dreams.

So I took the opposite tack. I waited until I was approaching an exit ramp. Then I slipped up into the far left lane, with the SUV following me, and let off the accelerator, slowing the pickup to about forty-five miles an hour. This being the Long Island Expressway, where hurtling speed was the norm, order quickly deteriorated. Cars piled up behind the SUV, tail gating and beeping and otherwise expressing outrage, finally forcing the SUV to shift over to the right lane and pass.

I watched it race ahead, followed by the pent-up demand. As everyone roared by, I took the exit.

I drove the garish strip streets of Nassau County in a roughly westerly direction until I saw a sign for an on-ramp for the LIE. As further insurance, I stopped to get a cup of coffee and gave Eddie a chance to explore the native terrain. He never understood the point of a leash, and he looked at me disapprovingly whenever I pulled him back from a possible hazard, as if to say, “What do you think, I’m stupid?”

I just couldn’t take the chance he’d spot some exotic Nassau County creature, like a house cat or raccoon, and then we’d be off to the races.

When I got back to where I’d parked the pickup, Honest Boy Ackerman was sitting in the driver’s seat. The engine was running and the doors were locked. He opened the window a crack.

“What do you think,” he said, “I’m stupid?”

“Not entirely. You going to take my truck?”

“Only if you start hitting me.”

“I’m not going to hit you.”

“How do I know that?” he asked.

“I can’t punch through safety glass.”

That alarmed him.

“I’m not getting out if you’re going to hit me.”

I pulled out my cell phone, which Fate had directed me to put in my pocket before I got out of the truck. The same Fate who forgot to tell me not to leave my keys on the floor mat.

“Does 9-1-1 work on cell phones?” I asked as I poked at the keypad.

“Aw, Christ, don’t do that.”

I studied him through the window.

“What’s the deal, Honest Boy?”

“I just want to talk.”

I held up the cell phone.

“That’s what these are for,” I said. “In polite society we don’t stalk or steal the trucks of people we want to talk to.”

He huffed.

“Polite? Coming from you?”

“Actually, I can punch through safety glass.”

“You can?”

“It’s my girlfriend’s truck. It’d be hard to explain. But I’ll do it if you don’t get out of there in the next ten seconds.”

I gripped the door handle with my right hand, pulled back my left fist with the index finger in the air and said,

“One.”

“Don’t, don’t,” he said, ducking down his head and opening the door.

I let him out. Eddie jumped up and down, wagging his tail with the joy every new encounter brought. I still wanted to pop Ackerman one, as a matter of principle. Instead I leaned across and felt around the ignition for the keys. There were none.

I grabbed him by the jacket.

“Switch it off.”

Self-satisfaction galloped across his face.

“You don’t know how, Big-Time Engineer?”

I shook him.

“Switch it off.”

He pulled a little plastic cylinder out of his pocket. At one end was a button, which he pushed. The engine stopped. Then he pushed the button, and it started again.

“Over a hundred yard range,” he said.

I took it out of his hand, killed the engine and reached past him to open the hood. It was easy to see the fresh wiring running from a proverbial black box into the electronic ignition. I yanked it out.

“Cool, huh?” said Ackerman.

I wanted to smack him with it, but he looked like a kid more excited about making a bomb than sorry for blowing up the basement.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“I want to talk to you. I was about to wave you over when you started playing stall ball.”

“You just happened to follow me out of Manhattan. Coincidence.”

He smirked.

“Hell, no. I’ve been following you since we first met. Took you long enough to notice.”

“That doesn’t make me happy,” I said.

“’Course not. Why would it?”

“Fucking Judson.”

“That’s what I want to talk about. Fucking Judson. I’m sick of living like a mushroom. Kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’ve been following you, but I haven’t been reporting anything back. Not exactly. I make it up. Like when you went to visit Angel Valero, I said you were sitting in a bar in the Village. Judson’s always willing to believe you’re sitting in a bar.”

“How come?” I asked.

“You drink a lot.”

“How come you’re not reporting the truth?”

He ran a hand over his slicked-back hair, then over his face, stopping to rub his mouth. An extravagant gesture of ambivalence.

“I don’t know, Marve’s okay, I guess. He told me we’re a team. It’s just hard to play on a team when you don’t know what the game is. I got a brain, obviously,” he added, pointing to the tangle of multicolored wires in my hand, “but all he wants from me is muscle, which in your case is a little ridiculous, I think you’d agree.”

“So, what’re you proposing?” I asked.

“I just want to know what’s going on. Tell me and I’ll go away forever. Tell Judson to take this job and fuck himself with it.”

While we were talking, Eddie had leaped up into the pickup and was lying down on the seat, bored with the whole thing.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just looked at Ackerman’s pale, sweaty face and downturned, close-set eyes, fleshy cheeks and boneless chin.

“Okay, here’s what I know,” he said, as if that’s what I wanted him to say. “Somebody whacked Iku Kinjo, the consulting babe from Eisler, Johnson, and you found the body. The cops grilled your ass but cut you loose, so you’re not a suspect. For a change. Since then, you’ve been working people who knew her, so I’m figuring you want to find the whacker. What I don’t know is why Judson’s so damn interested. Nobody else at Con Globe seems to give a shit. Though maybe they should. Who knows what the Jap girl was up to. Except for senior management, which doesn’t include Judson, no matter what he thinks.”

“Japanese-African-American. A little respect, please.”

He tossed his head, like he was shaking a bug out of his ear. “Sorry. You’re right. Tragic thing.”

I dug a restaurant receipt out of my pocket and wrote the Pequot’s address on the back.

“Meet me here tonight at seven-thirty. We’ll talk. Meanwhile, stay out of my rearview mirror.”

He nodded as he studied the receipt.

“Absolutely. You’ll never see a thing. I’m a ghost.”

He backed up, waving his hands in front of him, conjuring his shield of invisibility. I watched him until he’d turned and waddled furtively—if such a thing is possible—across the parking lot and around the other side of the coffee shop.

“Sun Tzu,” I said to Eddie. “Friends close, enemies closer. If you’re not sure, take ’em out to dinner.”

He perked up at the word “dinner,” so I tossed him the last of the Big Dog biscuits I’d brought along and got underway. When I reached the highway, I called Sullivan.

“I have Elaine Brooks’s fingerprints,” I told him.

“On what?”

“My arm. If that’s too technical a challenge, I also have her china coffee cup.”

“I’ll take the cup.”

Traffic thinned as I cleared Nassau County and the western reaches of Suffolk. The day had started out grey and dispirited, but lightened up considerably as we crossed the pine barrens, still partially charred from a big fire several years before. Fresh green growth clustered around acres of burnt stalks that would likely stand until the next fire.

When I was a kid my father would try to search out ways around the two-lane tedium of the Sunrise Highway, then the standard route out to the South Fork, by heading north, inevitably plunging us into the pine barrens. I knew this was a fruitless strategy, having actually looked at a road map, something my father was determined never to do. In those days that area was so devoid of life I’d imagine we were sailing over a dark sea on the way to the Hampton Islands.

According to my sister, the trip in and out of the City was a regular thing, though I barely remember my father’s apartment in the Bronx. She thinks I blocked it out. If so, all the better.

What I did remember was more than enough.