The Last Refuge

EIGHT

EMBARRASSMENT IS A complicated human emotion. Probably because it’s an aggregate of other emotions— shame, guilt, anger, regret—that assemble in temporary alliances to suit the particulars of the moment.

It’s also one of the few emotions truly scalable to large organizations. Like fanaticism, or hubris, embarrassment’s progenitor.

Most corporate leaders would rather be boiled in oil than embarrassed. For them, it’s an exposure of weakness, an admission of fallibility. To themselves and to the world at large.

Mason Thigpen’s staffer and two outside counsel joined me in the conference room with the two security guys who’d escorted me from the board meeting. The lawyers entering the room were fully focused on the company’s desperate desire to avoid embarrassment. This was complicated by another emotion, belonging to Mason himself, best described as vengeful wrath. Which is why the task was consigned to surrogates.

Mason’s staffer, Barry Mildrew, was young and bright, and a former middle linebacker at Boston College. I didn’t know him well, but he seemed all right. I can’t remember much about the other two lawyers, except they were uncomfortable with humor and sweated even in the climate-controlled atmosphere.

“How’re you feeling?” asked Barry as he sat across from me.

“Not bad. Yourself?”

“I’m fine, Sam.”

He waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, he said, “So, what do you think?”

“I think you’re here to work something out.”

“I’m here to talk about you, Sam. You’re my concern at the moment.”

“That’s good of you, Barry.”

“I want to do what’s best for you. And the company, of course.”

“Of course.”

He put a manila folder on the table, but kept it closed.

“We have a couple options.”

“But before we share our thinking with you,” said one of the other lawyers, “we’d like to hear your thoughts.”

“My thoughts? I have lots of thoughts every day. You want general or specific?”

“Anything you want,” said Barry, interrupting whatever the outside counsel was about to say.

“Anybody want coffee?” I asked the group. “I can go get some.”

Their discomfort was palpable.

“Maybe Lou could bring us some,” I said, pointing to one of the security guys. Everyone looked relieved.

“Sure,” said Lou. “Place your orders.”

After Lou had a chance to write down what we wanted and go off to get the coffee, Barry tried again.

“So, your thoughts.”

“I’m thinking I should have asked for double cream.”

“Tell Mr. Acquillo what we’re thinking,” said one of the outside guys. That annoyed Barry, but he pressed on.

“Our choices are limited here, but as I said, we do have them.”

“Pending a medical report,” said an outside counsel.

Barry kept his eyes on me. I knew then the other two guys were there to bird-dog Barry, not me.

“Actually, Ben,” said Barry, “that’s not a stipulation. Mason is willing to drop the entire matter. As are Mr. Donovan and the rest of the board.”

“If,” I said.

Barry smiled again.

“Come on, Sam, you and I wouldn’t be in business if we didn’t horse trade. There’s always an if.”

“That’s what we’re in? Business?”

“Don’t you want to hear the if?” he asked. “I think you’ll find it interesting.”

“Sure.”

Ben and his sidekick were eager to get my reaction. The security guys looked implacable. They were good at that.

“We want you to stay on as president of TSS.”

“I’m not a president. I’m a divisional VP.”

“See? Interesting, huh? That’s your new title. To see us through the sale.”

I think I laughed at that point. I couldn’t help it.

“I’m getting promoted for punching our chief counsel in the nose? Now there’s a company worth working for.”

Barry was the only one who enjoyed the thought.

“In front of the whole board of directors,” he added. “But that’s not why. The president of TSS will lead the transition team, and his prime role will be selling the living hell out of the idea to the buyers, our shareholders and your people.”

“Chief cheerleader.”

“After George Donovan.”

“I guess he’s more willing to overlook Mason’s nose that Mason is.”

“Mason is a team player.”

The words conjured up an image of Mason Thigpen that would never survive outside the imagination.

“So, what’s option two?” I asked.

Barry sat back in his chair and tapped the working end of his ballpoint pen on the table.

“You take a sabbatical during the sale period and refrain from commenting on the division, the buyers, the deal or anything relating to the corporation as a whole. To anyone at anytime.”

“Keeping Mason in a forgetful mood.”

“You’ll retain your full salary and benefits. After the sale, your role will be up to the buyers.”

“Is their chief counsel bigger than ours?”

Barry let that one pass. Being much bigger than me, he could afford to.

“I’ve got a third option,” I said. “Tell Donovan to go fuck himself. Mason can do what he wants.”

Ben didn’t seem to like this option, though his partner probably did. Appealed to his blood lust. Barry stayed neutral.

“Then you go to jail,” said Barry.

“One punch? No priors? I don’t think so. Be a juicy court case, though. Press’d eat it up. Meanwhile, I’d have plenty of time to work on my memoirs. All about my life running the division you’re trying to sell. Should interest the buyers.”

Barry listened without giving up anything. He had plenty of poise, I’ll give him that.

“So,” he said, “I guess we got our horses out of the barn where we can see ’em.”

He kept smiling and tapping the pen on the table, which got to be so annoying I finally reached over and held his wrist. When I let go he stuck the pen in his pocket and folded his arms over his chest.

“Sorry. Nervous habit.”

“Understandable. But calm down. I know what we’re doing.”

That cheered him.

“Good. Let’s hear it.”

“It’s simple. I quit. I’m quitting because I’m against the sale. Why I’m against the sale is nobody’s business but mine. Not another word from me on the subject. Unless Mason puts up a stink, then all bets are off. You writing this down?” I asked Ben. He reflexively grabbed a pen and started writing.

“Put it in proper language,” I said, “but nothing fuzzy. We’re only doing this once.”

“I’ll have to go back and see how this flies,” said Barry.

“Do what you want. I really don’t care. I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care what happens to your company. I cared about my division, but that’s gone. Everything’s pretty much gone. I’ve got nothing to lose.”

Ben had stopped writing while I talked.

“Hurry up with that. I want to get the hell out of here.”

He looked at Barry who nodded his head. Ben drafted something and slid it over to Barry, but I caught it halfway. The wording was close. I borrowed a pen from one of the security guys and made a few edits. Then I gave it to Barry.

“I just simplified a little,” I told him.

Barry read it over several times.

“It’s clear, I just don’t know if they’ll agree.”

I swiped Ben’s pad and wrote out a fresh version without all the scratch-outs. Then I wrote out a copy. I signed both.

“Here’s yours, I’ll keep this. I’ll pick up my stuff on the way home. Unless you don’t want me to, in which case, you keep it.”

I looked at my watch.

“This time of day I should get there in about forty minutes.”

Then I stood up to leave. The two security guys stood up like a shot and looked over at the lawyers.

“You guys should see me out,” I said to them, then left. They followed a few seconds later. The elevator played Haydn on the way down. I tried to talk to them about baseball, but they maintained their implacability. They stayed with me all the way to my car, then watched me leave the parking garage. When I reached the street I dropped all the windows and let the steamy, malodorous air of the City bust into the car. I stopped at a bodega and bought my first pack of cigarettes in twenty years, a six pack of beer and a fifth of vodka.

I sang along with the radio on the way up to White Plains until the vodka kicked in. Then I wept like a baby. It was strange to be in a company car driving eighty miles an hour, in the middle of the day, with the windows down, smoking cigarettes and drinking warm vodka out of the bottle. Wiping tears and snot off my face with the sleeve of my pima cotton dress shirt.

All those bridge abutments along the Saw Mill River Parkway looked so alluring, but for some reason I didn’t have the courage to accept their embrace.

Since I was already in the big parking lot in the Village it was quicker to go to a bar I knew that fronted on Nugent Street than schlep all the way to the Pequot in Sag Harbor. I got there quick—it was only about a hundred feet away—and ordered a double Absolut on the rocks, no fruit.

“Want to run a tab?”

“Sure.”

Some bartenders are especially prescient—I had two more singles after that. As a result my mind wasn’t as clear as I’d planned, but at least my heart had stopped thumping in my ears. I ordered some bar food to slow the effects.

“Tough day?” the bartender asked.

“Had tougher.”

The place was warm, dark and full of varnished walnut. The waiters and waitresses wore white shirts and black pants. They were all young and slender with the feel of Manhattan in the way they styled their hair and the look in their eyes. Only doing this till the real thing turns up. Gray-haired regulars lined the bar. Mostly overweight and vaguely desperate, just like the guys at the Pequot only better financed. I always got myself in trouble in places like that. I resolved to be polite and keep my opinions to myself.

I had my Regina file with me. I pulled out the yellow pad, and as I munched on some calamari and salad, wrote everything up with boxes and arrows.

I was happiest in my working life when I was trouble-shooting big process systems. I liked laying out the process as a whole, then climbing into the complexities, searching out those points in the design that weren’t behaving as predicted, or hoped for. I often divined the presence of a system failure the way astronomers discover celestial bodies, not by direct observation but by studying their effects on local energy and mass.

Though I always started a project with well-organized and precise documentation, I’d get swept up as the chase quickened, and become lost in the pursuit, my mind continually reviewing the data and cycling through the possibilities until the answer leapt out of the chaos. Then I had to back-document so I could present a coherent diagnosis to the other engineers.

Starts here, moves this way. First this, then that. When this happens, this follows. Interconnecting data points, process dynamics. A flow scheme, just like I’d do before turning a final design over to the applications people, the engineers and draftsmen who’d input the CAD/CAM servers and render it all in beautiful graphic formats and 3-D models.

Then it went to bench testing, but I never doubted the outcome. In the secret life of my mind I was flushed with arrogant pride. Let them have their algorithms, diagrams and data organized in endless columns and spreadsheets. I had something better.

When I looked at what I’d drawn up on the yellow legal pad I knew it was time to call Jackie Swaitkowski.

“Attorney Swaitkowski’s office.”

“Is she there?”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Sam Acquillo.”

“Of course it is. She’s been expecting you.”

“I’m at a pay phone.”

“Does it have a number?”

“Yeah.”

I gave her the number.

“Hold your ground. She’ll call in a second.”

I hung up. Thirty seconds later the phone rang. It startled the bartender and hostess who were standing only a few feet away.

“Holy shit.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s for me.”

Jackie burst onto the line.

“It wasn’t there.”

I looked out into the restaurant like the whole place was sitting there waiting for me to break the bad news. But they were all concentrating on their endive salads and baked pork tenderloin.

“Goddammit.”

“Hornsby was pretty organized, which doesn’t surprise me. Your cop friend said to call him when I was done and left me there for like twenty minutes. I went through everything.”

“Maybe I’m chasing a ghost.”

“I didn’t say it doesn’t exist. I said it wasn’t there. Where are you anyway?”

I told her.

“Getting smashed?”

“Trying.”

“Order a cosmopolitan in about ten minutes. I’ll be there in fifteen. The bartender’s an artist.”

“He pours a mean Absolut on the rocks.”

“Make sure you can still read when I get there.”

I went back to the bar to wait. I told the bartender about the cosmopolitan right away. Better his memory than mine. Then I worked on my flow scheme, adding a few details. It seemed time for a cigarette. I asked for an ashtray. The bartender directed me to the front stoop.

“Or, you can go to the patio out back. Bring your drink. Has a nice view of the parking lot.”

I chose the stoop in case Jackie showed up on time. I was halfway through the smoke when her Toyota pickup careened up to the curb.

“Gimme one of those,” she said, pointing to my cigarette.

She was back in civilian clothing—cotton shirt, blue jeans and leather jacket. With a manila envelope stuck under her arm. She handed me the envelope. I handed her a Camel.

“Well?”

“Let’s go sit on the patio. We can drink and smoke and who knows what else,” I said.

I got Jackie situated and went in to retrieve her cosmopolitan and a fresh vodka for myself. When I saw what a cosmo actually was, I recruited one of the waitresses to handle transport.

“Be a lot easier to carry that thing in a milk glass,” I told her.

“Sure, and so romantic, too.”

I waited until we were alone before pulling out the envelope. There was a piece of paper torn from a note pad Scotch-taped to the cover. It said, “This is the Living Trust of Carl Bollard Senior and Carl Bollard Junior, dated March 18, 1948. Addendum November 4, 1960, prepared by Milton Hornsby, Attorney at Law, Trustee. Addendum October 24, 1961, prepared by Milton Hornsby, Attorney at Law, Trustee.”

Inside the envelope were a printed pamphlet from the New York Bar Association on the general subject of trusts and trust preparation, a few inconsequential notes to Hornsby from “CB, Sr.” and a tissue carbon copy of a cover letter that must have accompanied the trust when it was first presented. But no trust.

“Somebody took it out of here,” I said.

“I searched all his files. It wasn’t there.”

I looked across the parking lot at the back of Harbor Trust. It was built in a colonial style, though clearly from another time, probably the twenties or thirties. It was big for Main Street, but not too big. The architects probably thought the bank’s customers would feel more secure putting their money in a place that looked like it belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Four square and filled with enlightenment.

And as solid as Fort Knox.

“Of course it’s not there,” I said. “What a dope.”

“Who’s a dope?”

“I’m a dope.”

“Okay, I’ll go with that. How come?” she asked.

“If I told you that—”

“You’d stop pissing me off.”

“It’s better I just buy you another cosmopolitan.”

Night had completely fallen. With the darkness I could see that all the lights on the second floor of the bank, the offices and conference rooms, were lit. Working late.

Jackie said something, but I didn’t hear her.

“Hey,” she said, “are you listening? Hello in there.” She turned around. “What are you looking at?”

She said something else, but I didn’t hear it, because I was watching Amanda go down the back stairs of the Harbor Trust building and walk up to her silver Audi A4.

“Give me your keys,” I said to Jackie, digging mine out of my pocket.

“What?”

“Quick.”

She gave them to me. I gave her mine.

“What the hell?”

“I’ll call you. I already paid for the cosmo. My car’s right over there. Hope you can drive a stick.”

“A stick? In that fucking thing?”

Jackie was still yelling to me as I ran around to Nugent Street where she parked her little truck. Amanda was already at the light on Main Street. I pulled up behind her as it turned green. The Toyota had a notchy 5-speed with a long throw, but it was tight and easy to maneuver, despite its age and hard duty. It smelled like Jackie. I checked the ashtray and found a half-burnt roach. I lit it up.

“What the hell,” I said to the inside of the Toyota, “been a rough day.”

Despite my success following the trained bear, I really didn’t know how to tail a car without giving myself away. I wished I’d read more crime fiction or watched more TV.

She took Hampton Road out of the Village and headed east on Montauk. Even in October there was plenty of traffic. I let one car get between us and prayed it would keep pace. The three of us were in solid formation all the way through Water Mill, and most of the way to Bridgehampton. Right after the big shopping center outside Bridgehampton Village she took a hard left and zinged into the night. I followed as aggressively as I dared, losing sight of her taillights until I got to the next decent straightaway. I realized Jackie’s pickup would have trouble staying up with a rocket sled like Amanda’s A4.

She flew past a long row of white horse-farm fencing, but had to stop before turning right on Scuttle Hole Road. I took a chance and ate up all the slack as she waited to turn. When she turned right, I followed close behind.

She hit sixty-five miles per hour on Scuttle Hole, forcing me to back off again. At the Bridgehampton–Sag Harbor Turnpike she hung a hard left.

I fell in behind and followed her into Sag Harbor.

She turned right at a light a few blocks from the center of town. I let her get some distance, then followed. The street ended in a T. You could go left or right, or straight through a private entranceway. It was framed by a grand wrought-iron gate, capped with a large metal cross. Maybe it was the gates of heaven. Amanda shot straight across the intersection and disappeared through the hole.

“Okay,” I said, and after waiting a decent interval, followed her into paradise.

Just inside the gate was a small sign.

“Conscience Manor Retreat. Private.”

The grounds were deep and dark, filled with huge old shade trees. There was no general lighting, but you could see evidence of several buildings from lit windows peeking through the thinning foliage. I killed my lights and looked for Audis. Nothing.

I followed the crushed seashell drive up to a large stucco Victorian house that looked like the main building. Most of the windows were lit. There were two main stories plus a third built into an elaborate roof structure. A deep porch, partially obscured by sculpted yews, wrapped around the entire first story.

Amanda’s car was stopped at a small structure adjacent to the parking lot. I dodged around a row of cars and parked at the other end of the lot.

Her lights went out and she left her car and went into the little building. As my eyes adjusted to the ambient light the building took shape as a small chapel, with a high-pitched slate roof and a cross molded into the gable end. The door had an arched top and the windows were leaded glass through which a low light suddenly sprung.

The big medieval door opened more easily than I expected. The inside was dimly but uniformly lit, so I could easily see the interior detail. It was a rectangular room with an oval, molded wood bench in the middle. The outside walls, which you faced when sitting on the bench, were lined with square raised-panel drawer fronts, most of which had a small brass plaque, engraved with a name, date and simple message. Amanda sat on the bench, which up close looked more like a pew, or the curved oaken seating you see in old train stations, with her hands clasped in her lap and her head bowed.

I walked over and sat down next to her. She was directly across from the drawer labeled “Monica May Anselma. 1991–1996. My light, my dream, my hope.”

Amanda looked at me with swollen eyes. Then she looked back at the wall.

“I should have known you’d figure it out,” she said, quietly.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say.

“You’re such a good figure-outer.”

We sat silently for a very long time. Amanda had her head lowered and seemed to be having trouble breathing.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“You drove by and sucked me into your tailwind.”

She nodded as if that was a fair explanation.

“I tried to tell you,” she said.

“I guess you did.”

“You didn’t let me.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t want to know. That’s what you told me. You didn’t want any old baggage. Well, there’s mine, right there. My little baggage.”

“I don’t mean to intrude,” I said. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“I bet you do.”

We sat quietly for a while.

“Do you want to know?” she asked.

“About your daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

“What else is there to tell?”

“Other stuff. It can wait.”

I looked up at the exposed rafters. They were mortised and tenoned and shaped into pseudo-Gothic arches. Tiny low-voltage quartz fixtures cast a clean but pale incandescent light. Torchieres mounted on the wall drew shadows across the orderly drawer fronts. Small bouquets were placed randomly along the floor. A larger arrangement anchored the far end of the room.

“You didn’t know. About Monica.”

“No.”

She looked at me.

“So why are you here?”

“Bay Side.”

“Oh that. You figured that out, too.”

“Maybe. Not sure.”

She took a deep breath to force the quaver out of her voice.

“You ever live in the City?”

“For over ten years,” I said. “We left when my daughter was born. Abby wanted her to have a yard.”

“I really couldn’t afford to be there, but I was determined to make it work. My mother was so mad at me for leaving home. She didn’t understand you can’t be born, live and die in just one place. Even a place like Southampton. Especially a place like Southampton—it’s so unreal in so many ways. Kids have to get out in the world and live a little. I was only a few hours away, but she rarely came to see me. To her, I might as well have moved to Calcutta. It was a matter of pride that she’d never been up the Empire State Building, or rode the boat out to the Statue of Liberty. She surely never set foot in Times Square. My God, she’d have had a coronary.”

“My mother didn’t like it, either. I think my dad built the cottage so he had a place to keep her outside the City.”

I noticed tears falling as she talked. She stopped occasionally to wipe her nose.

“I was the secretary for the editor of this semi-scholarly technical magazine. I worked my way up to editorial assistant. I was a biology major at Southampton College, but I was also good with grammar and spelling. I proofread the articles and worked with all the authors. There were only a few of us in the office. It was nice and friendly. And the work felt like it meant something. Didn’t pay much, but enough to live on, to pay rent on my apartment. I had to move a few times till I scored a semi-permanent sublet in the west seventies from this young guy who’d been transferred to Japan. I even published a few of my own articles. My boss encouraged me to write. It would take me months to research and compose. I’d agonize over it like you wouldn’t believe. But they were patient with me, him and the other editors. Like those guys in My Fair Lady, you know? Help the ignorant girl make something of herself.

“If they only knew what I did after work, which was mostly go out and fuck myself all up. You’re young, you’re pretty, you get a lot of attention. You go to the disco.”

She said it with a feigned French accent.

“You dance like a crazy person and feel like a beauty queen. You snort a lot of coke and bring home handsome young assholes in flowered suspenders who tell you about possessions you never even heard of, and want to fuck you before you’re even up the stairs to the apartment. One of these guys left me with a little present, but unlike every other girl I knew, I didn’t want to go to the clinic and zip-zip, ‘take care of it.’ I wanted to keep it, whatever it was. So I did, and the guys at the magazine were totally cool and never asked me anything or made me feel weird in any way. Instead of hassling me, they gave me two months maternity and an apartment full of kid stuff. I think they loved me, in a really nice way.”

The tears were now rolling out in full flow. She didn’t bother to wipe them off her face.

“It’s not very easy to raise a kid in the city, especially when you’re a single mom without a lot of money. But, I loved my little baby with every particle of my being. She was my light and my dream and my hope.”

She stopped to wipe her face and take a breath.

“You don’t have to,” I started to say.

“Yes I do,” she said, through her teeth. “And you have to listen.”

“Okay.”

“She was so smart—her dad was this really sharp professional guy, I think. Cute as hell, and destined for great things. I never tried to find out for sure, or pull any paternity stuff. I didn’t want that kind of thing to spoil what I had with Monica. It’s hard to explain, but some people understand. We had our own little universe, and I didn’t know if I could let anyone else in. But oh man, the cost of a nanny in New York. There were plenty of nights when I’d lay in bed and daydream about money and apartments with lots of rooms and Monica’s daddy bringing her toys and sending her to private school. I didn’t have a daddy of my own, but Mom did what she could. Whenever she had a spare twenty or something she’d slip it into some ridiculous Hallmark card and send it to me. I showed her pictures when we came home. She even forced herself to come to the City a few times. She’d fuss over Monica like you wouldn’t believe. And I was doing it, by God.

“Monica was just starting first grade. I was cutting back my hours so I could be there when she got home, and making up for the lower pay by writing articles at night. My nanny already had her next thing lined up. Getting rid of that expense more than compensated. She was a sweet woman, really. She knew what raising a kid on your own was like. She had a son. I didn’t see him much—he was in fourth or fifth grade at the time. She had him with her that day when she went out for a second to buy some milk and cereal. I’d forgotten to get any, and Monica needed breakfast. I didn’t know this, until later.

“They called me at my office. Monica was in the hospital. The nanny was too hysterical to talk to me, so I didn’t know anything till I got there. Apparently, Monica was hungry and fussy and threw a little tantrum. The nanny’s kid was alone with her, and thought he’d get her to stop crying by hitting her on the head. And then, after she was unconscious, he thought he’d hit her some more, which he did until she suffered massive, irreversible brain damage.

“I was seriously thinking about swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills, but I was afraid to leave Monica alone. What I really couldn’t do was support myself now that I had this crazy huge expense. I came home to Southampton hoping my poor mother, bless her, could look after both of us. But look, you can’t expect a person to care for somebody in a state like that. Especially an elderly woman. I might have been young and healthy and crazy with grief, but I couldn’t do it all either. Monica couldn’t do anything on her own. There was nothing there.”

She pulled some more tissues out of a box on the side table and wiped her face.

“I had to keep her in the City to stay on Medicaid. They all made it clear I should pull the plug. All the doctors and Medicaid people. I can understand why. The rest of the world shouldn’t have to pay for one little vegetable. But she was my daughter. I loved her with all my heart. How could I do that, Sam?”

She was crying now in a solid, steady kind of way. I took her hand and she squeezed hard. With her other hand she pulled out a few tissues and blew her nose. She looked at me.

“Then she made it easy for her mommy. She just left.”

It took a long time for her to catch her breath.

“I’m so sorry, Sam.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

“Oh yes there is.”

She shook her head and a long sweep of auburn hair fell in front of her face.

“It’s about Roy. I knew him in high school. We dated a little. He was nice enough, but, you know, not very interesting. Not for a girl like me who was burning to get outta town. Roy had no such desire, though he had a real thing for money. His father died when he was little and his grandparents basically raised him with his mother. They never had anything. I bet you always wondered who lived in those houses along the dump road. One of them was Roy’s grandparents’. You wouldn’t believe how they lived, so close to so much.

“But Roy was going to change all that. He was going to make money, goddammit, and he did. He did really well for himself. Paid for his own college, went to business school, joined the bank, worked his way up. I was very impressed with him, really I was. Proud of him for actually doing something he said he was going to do. It’s hard, you know it is Sam, to be around all this money out here and not have any of your own. It can twist you all up, if you let it. But Roy was never like that. He just did it the hard way, working his ass off and doing what he had to. For years he supported his whole family. Now he’s got me, and—”

She looked at the mute wall of ashes, lowering her voice to a near whisper.

“I could have never afforded this place. Even this tiny little place for my baby girl. Roy paid for it all.”

She looked over at me for the first time. Beseeching or questioning, I couldn’t tell.

“He tried to ask me out from the get-go, when I came back from the City, but I couldn’t face anybody. Finally, I went to dinner with him a few times. Invited him over. He was very sweet to my mother. He’s not a bad man, he’s just who he is. And he loved me. He told me he always had, and that when I left for the City it was the saddest thing that ever happened to him. I didn’t even know he felt that way. He was so shy and self-conscious.

“But then he made some pretty good money—you know, he started a whole commercial lending operation out here for Harbor, and did great—it gave him some confidence. It was nice. And easy, and I was so tired and lost. When he offered to marry me I felt like an angel had come along and plucked me off the tracks. He saved me, he really did.

“I knew this wasn’t what I wanted, but it was far better than killing myself, which I strongly considered, oh, maybe a thousand times. But then I thought about my mom, and what I was going through over Monica. So we got married and it all happened like he said it would. I didn’t love him, but I appreciated what he’d done. I tried to hold up my end, and I think I did pretty well. He was always patient with me. He liked to control things, and I was so sick inside, I liked letting him do it.

“And then you. You. You. You.”

She swatted me on the shoulder.

“All busted up yourself. Big sad eyes and crunched-up nose. Flirting with you wasn’t a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but it was the only pleasant thing happening to me. I prayed I wasn’t being too obvious, so I wouldn’t scare you away. But you kept coming in every once in a while, and I’d look forward to it. I could tell you liked me. I wasn’t that far gone. And I knew I would really like you if you’d only let me in a little. Then you starting asking me about Regina and that made me think of my mother, and before I knew it we were spending time together. It made my heart just leap right out of my body.

“But you know what the problem was?” she asked.

“Roy knew.”

“No, worse than that. Oh, God.”

She’d stopped crying when the story moved off her daughter, but then she started again.

“It was his idea,” she said, ripping out the words through her tears, “Roy’s.”

I waited till she was ready to get back on track.

“Soon after we were married, Roy came home from work more excited than I’d ever seen him. He said we had the opportunity of a lifetime. A big real-estate deal, the biggest in the Hamptons, he said, our ticket to the ball. You should have seen him. Roy’s a very positive person on the outside, but he worries, and broods a lot when nobody else is around. Nobody but me. This was so different. He was like a little boy. He went on and on about it, though I had a hard time following everything. I love science and technology, but all this financial stuff, it bores me.”

“Not a good thing for a personal banker.”

“The bank would handle financing, and Roy was going to take a position personally, which was the main thing, but we’d also make out because my mother’s house would be part of the plan. That upset me a little, which I know is silly. But, what the heck, he was so happy, and it seemed like a long way off. I don’t know.

“The next year was wonderful. Roy was crazy busy at the bank, especially with this big project. He worked late a lot and went into the City at least once a week, which was very nice for me. It gave me a little break. People also came out from the City to talk to him, to help with the Town, I guess, and other things. I admit I didn’t pay much attention to it all.

“Then something happened. It wasn’t all at once, but slowly Roy got more and more nervous. Distracted. Something was going wrong with the project, but he didn’t want to talk about it. Not at first. Then he told me there was a snag with Environmental Protection. Nothing real, just a bunch of regulations that could stall progress and endanger the deal.

“‘The neighbors,’ is what he kept saying. ‘Amanda, the neighbors could ruin the whole thing.’ He always insisted we keep everything hush hush. He said if one word of this got out, other players could elbow their way in. Investors would come out from the City and he’d say, ‘Don’t even act like you know them. People will put two and two together.’”

“Bob Sobol,” I said.

She looked impressed.

“That’s right. The creep. Always trying to knock me off balance. I wouldn’t give him the pleasure.”

“He brought the deal to Roy.”

“No, it was Roy’s deal, all the way. Bob Sobol and this guy in Sag Harbor are investors. Or front the real investors, I can never figure out which, though frankly, I don’t care. I don’t like either one of them.”

“Milton Hornsby.”

She swiveled over on the bench so she could get a clear look at me.

“You know him?” she asked.

“A little.”

“What an unpleasant person. He always looks like he’s swallowed a frog or something. No sense of humor. How did you know he was involved?”

“It’s a long story, too.”

“So I guess you know they’re old friends, Bob Sobol and Milt Hornsby. Or something. Can’t honestly say Hornsby was friendly with anybody. Bitter old bastard.”

“So Roy was worried about the neighbors.”

“He said there’d be public hearings and that some people with adjoining properties might put up a fight. He was mostly concerned about you.”

“No kidding.”

“Oh, you were a big topic at the dinner table for a while there. He said you were a retired executive with a reputation as a first rate SOB, his words not mine.”

She smiled for the first time.

“Though you can be difficult,” she said.

“So I’m told.”

“It was obvious you liked me. Roy told me to pal around with you. Find out what you were thinking.”

“Mata Hari.”

“Hardly. All I wanted was to kid around and have a nice time. Who cares about Roy’s dumb project? And you made it easy. Even when I tried to tell you the truth.”

“What did you report?”

“I told him you were upset about Regina Broadhurst, which wasn’t big news. You’re the executor of her estate.”

“Administrator.”

Her eyes shifted away from me and she looked at the floor. Quiet suddenly. I thought she might be about to cry again, but then I realized her face had hardened into a mask.

“I didn’t know about Buddy until that night at the Playhouse,” she said, almost through her teeth. “I didn’t know Roy was capable of such a thing.”

“Bodyguard.”

“Thug. Friend of Sobol’s. Fucking gumba. Pardon the language. But I’m allowed to say that, I’m Italian.”

“Me, too. About a quarter.”

“I told Roy if that bastard laid another hand on you I’d leave him. I can’t have a person’s death on my conscience.”

“But he’s still around?”

“He and Sobol come out a lot. They’re meeting Roy at the bank tonight. Another big to-do. I don’t know what it’s about this time. Roy was all worked up. I thought it was a good time to slip away and visit Monica.”

She looked over at the wall, as if saying her daughter’s name broke some sort of spell.

“My precious baby.”

I thought about my own daughter, beautiful and accomplished and living like a princess in New York City. I knew what she did for work, and where, but I didn’t know if she liked it or not. I knew her address and phone number by heart, but I hadn’t ever called her because she told me not to. I knew she was a huge social success, but I didn’t know any of her boyfriends. What kind of guys they were, or what kind of life they would make for my only daughter, my only child. I knew almost nothing except I loved her as much as Amanda loved Monica, and that I constantly asked God, a God I didn’t want to believe in, to please keep my daughter safe. Take whatever you want from me, but please keep her safe.

“I’m so sorry I lied to you,” she said. “You have a right to hate me.”

She was rubbing her hands together, the way I saw her do at the cottage. Warming the climate of her mind.

“You never knew your father?” I asked her.

“No. He died when I was too little to remember.”

I was really tired. The combination of everything— the shock of Hornsby lying in his garden, the stress of working on Jackie and Sullivan, all the vodka, the chase across Bridgehampton and the lingering effects of the concussion courtesy of some asshole named Buddy, as it turned out—had begun to take its toll.

I wanted to go to sleep.

“I’m sorry to bother you here,” I said. “Not the right place to talk about these things.”

She shrugged and looked around.

“They can’t hear us.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“How much sorry do we have to have, and for how long?” she asked.

“People die.” I said. “You can’t do anything about it. It’s not your fault.”

Amanda crossed her arms over her chest and squeezed, as if trying to keep her heart contained within her body.

“Is that what you tell yourself?”

I sat with her until all the tears were exhausted. Then I left her alone in the little mausoleum. There wasn’t anything else I could do, and there were people I had to call. And a dog to let out.

As I drove the bouncy little Toyota pickup around the hairpin curves of Noyack Road I wondered how long it would take to pay all my debts to Jackie Swaitkowski, mounting by the minute.

When I emerged from the tree cover I could see the moon, almost full, high above the Little Peconic. The air was clear, but the water was being churned up by a stiff northeasterly. An unusual wind for that time of year. Unless there was a storm on the way, or passing off the coast.

I stopped at the mailbox and pulled out a stack of envelopes and junk mail. The moon was so bright you could clearly see the cottage, my yard and Regina’s place, lit only by the porch light I kept on since my night with Jimmy Maddox. Probably the only reason I saw the car pulled into her driveway. It was backlit by the porch light, but as my night vision improved I could make out the contours. A series-seven BMW.

I saw a black shape explode out from behind a stand of trees just in time to throw my arms up over my head and duck. The blow landed on my right shoulder with enough force to knock me off my feet, but it wasn’t very damaging. It gave me an opportunity to roll away and get back on my feet and face him head on. For a change.

I set my stance and danced to the right. Buddy just walked toward me, his long coat open to the breeze, the chains around his neck reflecting the bright moonlight. He used both meaty hands to point to his stomach.

“Hey, fucker,” he said, “check it out.”

There was the butt of a big automatic sticking out of his belt.

“You going to shoot me?”

His mouth was a wide, humorless grin.

“Fuck no, I’m gonna beat you to death.”

He made a quick little move inside my reach, then backed out again. It caused me to dance back to my left, which I never liked. He tried to meet me with his right, but I leaned out of the way and he missed. Not a good tactical fighter, but fast for his size. And very big.

He came straight in, trying to catch me on a turn. I closed and tried out a combination left jab and right undercut to the body, but it didn’t do much against the mass of fat and muscle around his waist. It also left my own less-protected gut exposed.

Buddy caught me on the right side at the bottom of my rib cage. I felt the air phoof out of my lungs. I had to roll back sharply and drop my arms so I could catch my breath. Buddy just kept moving forward, steadily, deliberately, eager for a chance to close again.

I rotated to the left as I moved backwards to keep my right side protected. I was afraid of his longer reach, and I couldn’t risk clinching—he outweighed me by half a guy and I’d never win a wrestling match. My only hope was to get in and out fast enough to hurt him before he could get those gorilla arms into play. But I didn’t know how. The moon was so bright I could easily see his face. He was really enjoying himself.

I heard Eddie in the house, barking his head off. That gave me an idea. I turned around and ran as fast as I could toward the Peconic.

“Run if you want, asshole,” he called to me in his dumb trained-bear voice. “You’re a dead motherfucker.”

I ran straight up to the front of the cottage. Then I turned and stood at the front door. Buddy loped up behind with his fists clenched and the tails of his leather coat flapping back behind his arms. Before he could reach me I cut left and ran around to the side of the house.

“Stand and fight, pussy,” said Buddy, almost cheerfully, as he followed me around the shrubs and into the side yard. I leapt on the landing and stood facing the side door, listening for him to get closer. I made a rough guess at timing, took a deep breath, wrapped my right hand around the handle of the Harmon Killebrew bat and swung around backhand with everything I had.

I misjudged the distance by a few inches. The tip of the bat caught him in the front teeth. They snapped off, spraying my hand with spit, blood and little white splinters. His hands flew to his face and I swung again, this time like a baseball player, with both hands.

The bat cracked across his temple, but his fingers were in the way and took some of the edge off the blow. He spun away and bent down, covering as much of his head as he could with his hands. I stepped into the breach and, taking careful aim, put my whole body into the swing. This one connected well. His hands flew away and his head snapped back. He staggered as he tried to regain his balance, arms flapping. Blood gushed from his forehead, blinding him. I held the bat with my left hand and plucked the automatic out of his waistband with my right. I tossed the gun into the bushes, then stuck a right jab into the red pulp that used to be his mouth. He fell back further, swatting open handed at the air.

“Motherfucker!”

I dropped the bat and hit him again with my right. I didn’t measure out the punches the way the trainers always told me to do. I didn’t care if I kept my balance, stayed up on my toes or exposed my right kidney. I didn’t have to care. The bear was through. I hit him with a combination. His knees began to bend and he had to spread his feet to stay upright. He was mumbling something, but I couldn’t hear him through the roar in my ears. I brought my foot up between his legs and felt the splash of soft tissue. He doubled up and fell headfirst into the grass. I kicked him in his bloody face and went back to get the bat.

I scooped it up off the ground and walked over with it held slightly off my right shoulder. I stood over him, picking a spot. He wasn’t moving. The last kick had rolled him over on his back. The mass of crushed tomatoes that now composed his face stared up at the moonlit sky. He was still breathing, rasping wetly through the blood in his mouth. I let the bat down slowly. I nudged him with my toe. Still didn’t move.

I pulled the automatic out of the bushes, found the release and dumped out the clip. I put the gun in the big inside pocket of my jean jacket and the clip in my pants pocket.

Then I went inside to call Joe Sullivan.