Plum Island

CHAPTER 3

Everyone needs a hangout, at least guys do. When I'm in the city, I hang out at the National Arts Club and sip sherry with people of culture and refinement. My ex-wife had trouble believing that, too.

When I'm out here, I frequent a place called the Olde Towne Taverne, though I usually avoid places with that many silent "e's." I think the government should allocate one thousand silent "e's" to New England and Long Island, and when they're used up, no one can have any more. Anyway, the Olde Towne Taverne is in downtown (or downetowne) Mattituck, which is about a block long, and really charming. The OTT is okay, the motif is sort of early ship, despite the fact that it's a town tavern and a mile from the water. The wood is very dark and the floor is oak planking, and the thing that I love is the amber glass lanterns that cast this really mellow, mood-altering glow over the whole place.

So there I was in the OTT, and it was getting on to ten p.m., and the Monday night crowd was watching The Game — Dallas vs. New York at the Meadowlands. My mind was hopping between the game, the double murder, my food, and the waitress with the NordicTrack ass.

I was more nattily dressed than earlier, having changed into evening attire of tan Levi's jeans, blue polo by Ralph, genuine Sperry Top-Siders, and Hanes all-cotton briefs. I looked like an ad for something.

I was sitting on a stool at one of those chest-high tables near the bar, and I had a good view of the TV, and I had my favorite meal in front of me — cheeseburger, french fries, stuffed potato skins, nachos, buffalo wings, and a Budweiser; a good balance of brown and yellow things.

Detective Penrose of the county police department sort of snuck up on me from behind, and the next thing I knew she was sitting on the stool facing me, a beer in her hand, and her head blocking the screen. She regarded my dinner, and I saw her eyebrows arch.

She turned her attention back to me and said, "Max thought I might find you here."

"Would you like some french fries?"

"No, thank you." She hesitated, then said, "I think we got off on the wrong foot back there."

"Nonsense. I don't mind having my own gun pulled on me."

"Look, I've been speaking to Max, and I've been thinking… if the town wants you as a consultant, that's okay with me, and if you wanted to pass on to me anything that you think is useful, feel free to call." She handed me her card, and I read, "Detective Elizabeth Penrose." Beneath that it said, "Homicide," then her office address, fax, telephone number, and so forth. On the left was the Suffolk County seal with the words "Free and Independent" around a fearsome-looking bull. I commented, "Not a very good likeness of you."

She stared at me, her jaw sort of clenched and her nostrils flared as she took a long breath. She kept her cool, which is admirable. I can be annoying.

I leaned across the table until our noses were about a football apart. She smelled good, sort of soapy and healthy. I said, "Look, Elizabeth, cut the crap. You know that I knew the Gordons and that I've been to their house and I went out in their boat, and maybe I've met their friends and their co-workers, and maybe they opened up to me about their work a little because I'm a cop, and maybe I know more than you or Max put together, and maybe you're right about that. So, you realize you pissed me off, and Max is pissed at you, and you came here to apologize, and you give me permission to call you and tell you what I know. Wow! What a terrific opportunity for me. However, if I don't call you in a day or two, you'll have me down in your office for a formal interrogation. So let's not pretend I'm a consultant, your partner, your bud, or a willing informant. Just tell me where and when you want to take a statement from me." I sat back and turned my attention to the potato skins.

Detective Penrose stayed quiet awhile, then said, "Tomorrow, my office" — she tapped her card — "nine a.m. Don't be late." She stood, put her beer down, and left.

New York had the ball on their own thirty with third and six, and this idiot of a quarterback throws La Bomba fifty yards into the frig-gin' wind, and the ball hangs there like the Goodyear blimp, and the three pass receivers and three Dallas guys are all under it with their arms flapping, hopping around like they're praying for rain or something.

"Excuse me."

"Sit down."

She sat, but it was too late, and I missed the interception. The crowd at the stadium and in the OTT were going nuts, and the guys at the bar were yelling, "Pass interference!" though there were no yellow flags out there, and the Dallas guy ran it back to the fifty. I watched the replay in slow motion. No pass interference. Sometimes I wish I could replay parts of my life in slow motion like that. Like my marriage, which was a series of bad calls.

She said, "I'm going back to the scene now. Someone from the Department of Agriculture is going to meet me at about eleven. He's coming in from Manhattan. Would you like to be there?"

"Don't you have a partner you can annoy?"

"He's on vacation. Come on, Detective, let's start all over." She put her hand out.

I reminded her, "Last time I took your hand, I lost my gun and my manhood."

She smiled. "Come on, shake."

I shook hands with her. Her skin was warm. My heart was on fire. Or maybe the nachos were causing reflux. It's hard to tell after forty..

I held her hand a moment and looked at her perfect face. Our eyes met, and the same piggy thought passed through both our rninds. She broke eye contact first. Someone has to or it gets geeky.

The cute waitress came over, and I ordered two beers. The waitress asked me, "Do you still want that bowl of chili?"

"More than ever."

She cleared some of the dishes and went to get beer and chili. I love this country.

Detective Penrose commented, "You must have a cast-iron stomach."

"Actually, my whole stomach was taken out after I was shot. My esophagus is attached to my intestine."

"Do you mean your mouth is connected directly to your asshole?"

I raised my eyebrows.

She said, "I'm sorry — that was crude. Shall we start yet again?"

"It wouldn't do any good. Turn around and watch the game."

She turned around, and we watched the game and had a beer. At halftime with a 7-7 tie, she looked at her watch and said, "I have to go meet this Department of Agriculture guy."

If you're wondering about this Department of Agriculture thing, Plum Island is officially a Department of Agriculture installation, and they do things with animal diseases, anthrax, and all that. But rumor has it that it goes beyond that. Way beyond. I said, "Don't keep the Department of Agriculture waiting."

"Do you want to come along?"

I contemplated this invitation. If I went along, I'd get deeper into this thing, whatever it was. On the pro side, I like solving murders, and I liked the Gordons. In the ten years I've been with homicide, I've put twenty-six murderers behind bars, and the last two guys are eligible to take advantage of the new death penalty law, which adds another whole dimension to homicide cases now. On the con side, this was something different, and I was way off my turf. Also, a Department of Agriculture guy, like most government bureaucrats, wouldn't be caught dead working at night, so this guy was most probably CIA or FBI or Defense Intelligence or something like that. It didn't matter, and there'd be more of them later tonight or tomorrow. No, I didn't need this case at a buck a week, or a thousand bucks a day, or at any price.

"Detective? Hello?"

I looked at her. How do you say no to a perfect 10? I said, "I'll meet you there."

"All right. What do I owe you for the beers?"

"On me."

"Thanks. See you later." She walked toward the door and with the game at halftime, the fifty or so guys in the OTT finally noticed that there was an incredible babe on the premises. There were a few whistles and invitations to stick around.

I watched a little of the halftime stuff. I wished they had taken my stomach out because it was pumping acid into my ulcers now. The chili came, and I could hardly finish the bowl. I popped two Zantac, then a Maalox even though the gastro-doc said not to mix.

In truth, my health, once robust, had taken a decided dip since the April 12 incident. My eating, drinking, and sleeping habits were never good, and the divorce and the job had taken their toll. I was starting to feel forty-something, starting to feel my mortality. Sometimes in my sleep, I remember lying in the gutter in my own blood, lying on a storm drain and thinking, "I'm circling around the drain, I'm going down the drain."

On the upside, I was starting to notice things like the waitress with the NordicTrack ass, and when Elizabeth Penrose walked into the bar, my little meat puppet sat up and stretched. Truly, I was on the road to recovery, and for sure I was in better shape than the Gordons.

I thought a moment about Tom and Judy. Tom was a Ph.D. who didn't mind killing his brain cells with beer and wine, and he cooked a good steak on the grill. He was a down-to-earth guy from Indiana or Illinois or someplace out there where they have this sort of twang. He was low-key about his work and joked about the danger, like last week when a hurricane was headed our way, he said, "If it hits Plum, you can call it Hurricane Anthrax, and we can kiss our asses goodbye." Ha. Ha. Ha.

Judy, like her husband, was a Ph.D., a Midwesterner, unpretentious, good-natured, spirited, funny, and beautiful. John Corey, like every guy who met her, was in love with her.

Judy and Tom seemed to have taken well to this maritime province in the two years since they'd been here, and they seemed to enjoy power boating and had gotten involved with the Peconic Historical Society. In addition, they were enchanted by the wineries and had become connoisseurs of Long Island wine. In fact, they had befriended some of the local vintners, including Fredric Tobin, who threw lavish soirees at his château, one of which I attended as the Gordons' guest.

As a couple, the Gordons seemed happy, loving, caring, sharing, and all that 1990s stuff, and I really never noticed anything amiss between them. But that's not to say they were perfect people or a perfect couple.

I searched my memory for something like a fatal flaw, the kind of thing that sometimes gets people murdered. Drugs? Not likely. Infidelity? Possible, but not probable. Money? They didn't have much to steal. So it came down to the job again.

I thought about that. It would appear on the face of things that the Gordons were selling superbugs and something went wrong, and they were terminated. Along the same lines, I recalled that Tom once confided to me that his biggest fear, aside from catching a disease, was that he and Judy would be kidnapped right off their boat one day, that an Iranian submarine or something would come up and snatch them away, and they'd never be seen or heard from again. This seemed a little far-fetched to me, but I remember thinking that the Gordons must have a lot of stuff in their heads that some people wanted. So maybe what happened was that the murder started out as a snatch job and went wrong. I thought about this. If the murders were related to the job, were the Gordons innocent victims, or were they traitors who sold death for gold? Were they killed by a foreign power or were they killed by someone closer to home?

I mulled this over as best I could in the OTT with the noise, the halftime crap, the beer in my brain, and the acid in my tummy. I had another beer and another Maalox. Gastro-doc never said why I wasn't supposed to mix.

I tried to think of the unthinkable, of handsome, happy Tom and beautiful, bouncy Judy selling plague to some nut cases, of water reservoirs filled with disease, or maybe aerial crop sprayers over New York or Washington, of millions of sick, dying, and dead…

I couldn't imagine the Gordons doing that. On the other hand, everyone has a price. I used to wonder how they could afford to rent that house on the water and buy that expensive boat. Now maybe I knew how and also why they needed a high-speed boat and a house with a private dock. It all made sense, and yet my instincts were telling me not to believe the obvious.

I overtipped Ms. NordicTrack and returned to the scene of the crime.