The Last Refuge

FIVE

MY HOUSE IN Stamford was in the woods not far from the northern border of town. It sat on the edge of a short cliff formed by glacial boulders. At the bottom of the cliff was a small pond that made a home for Canada geese and bullfrogs. The deck off the rear of the house was shaded by a canopy of oak and maple in the summer, and by hemlocks year round. We had a lot of freeloading birds who worked the half dozen feeders mounted off the deck and in the surrounding trees. One of the few things I enjoyed doing around the house was inventing ways to keep the squirrels out of the feeders. It was a battle of wits I never entirely won. There was one tough, mangy old squirrel who used to sit on the railing and stare at me. I thought he might be the head of engineering, sizing up the competition.

There was a wall of glass between the deck and the living room. It was so hot that afternoon I couldn’t leave the air-conditioning, so I just sat there and looked through the windows at the competing fauna. I was on my third tumbler of Absolut when Abby came home from wherever she went during the day. She didn’t expect to see me there.

“My God, you frightened me. What are you doing home?”

“Drinking.”

“Obviously.”

She dropped a handful of large plastic bags filled with merchandise on the sofa next to me and poured herself a stiff one from the wet bar in the corner of the room.

“And smoking, too, I see.”

“Yeah. You can’t quit these things for too long. It’s not good for you.”

“Yes, of course. What’s it been, twenty years?”

“About.”

Abby moved very gracefully. She flowed into a chair on the other side of the room, sat back and crossed her legs, resting her elbow on the armrest so she could hold her drink aloft, shaking it occasionally to dissolve the ice. She wore a silk blouse with large square pockets and an off-white skirt. A gold chain looped around her neck and disappeared down the open front of her blouse. Her legs were deeply tanned, nicely offset by a pair of white high heels. Her hair was still mostly natural blond, formed into elegant waves that made me think of Ethel Kennedy. Maintenance costs for hair, nails and face ran about five-hundred a month, not including yoga, health club and massage therapy. And it showed. Abby set an unachievable standard for women her age.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Are you going to tell me why you’re sitting there getting plastered? Or do I have to guess.”

“Seemed like the best course of action, all things considered.”

The ceiling in our living room was two stories high. There was a balcony above that led to three of the bedrooms. One was my daughter’s. She used to sit up there Christmas night and wait for the grownups to go to bed so Santa could make the scene. When I went upstairs I’d scoop up her limp little body and put her to bed, always wondering if she was faking it.

The house had been designed by an architect who’d been a friend of Abby’s father. She told me this guy was the only architect alive who could possibly do the job. I didn’t think we needed an architect at all. Or for that matter, a custom-designed house. She said I had no aesthetic sensibilities. I’d never seen Abby open a book, or listen to a piece of music that wasn’t on a greatest hits album, or go to a museum that wasn’t having a fundraiser or an opening everyone was talking about. In Abby’s world you defined things worth caring for by how they were classified by her parents’ social set. It was much easier than valuing possessions, vacation spots, friendships and personal beliefs on their intrinsic merits. To this day, I don’t think I could tell you what that house actually looked like. I do remember that I didn’t like living in it.

“The mall was so crowded I thought I’d scream,” Abby said to me. “The people here are so rude and pushy. I don’t know why it doesn’t bother you.”

“The people here” was Abby’s secret code for Jews, presumably plentiful in the area because of our proximity to New York. Abby had grown up in a suburb of Boston that fairly bristled with anti-Semitism. It frustrated her that I didn’t share her feelings. It forced her to keep her bigotry euphemistic, but after twenty-five years, I could interpret.

“Because I love people,” I said.

“Oh please. You hate people.”

“Not all people. Only some people.”

“Could have fooled me.”

She watched the ice swirl in the glass, then took a sip.

“No, you’re right,” she proclaimed. “You’re simply indifferent. You don’t even know there are people in the world. You have no feelings for anything. Or anybody. I can’t believe you are smoking a cigarette.”

The way she was looking at her glass I thought she might be trying to see her own reflection. Checking her lipstick.

“Camels. They come in a filter now.”

“How salubrious.”

I looked around at our living room and wondered why it looked the way it did. I paid for it all, but really didn’t understand the significance of the furniture or the decorations. Abby once told me I wouldn’t be much at interior design. She said you had to grow up with nice things to know which things were nice.

“What’re all those boxes in the back seat of your car?”

“That’s the stuff from the office I wanted to keep.”

She cocked her head like a spaniel hearing a high-pitched sound.

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, most of the stuff I threw out or just left there. But some of it I couldn’t part with. Hard to explain, but something tells you to hold on to certain things.”

She leaned forward in her chair, holding the drink in both hands.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“If you don’t take it with you, they’ll just throw it out.”

“Are you completely drunk?”

“No, not yet. It’s not that easy to do anymore.”

“You’ve had enough practice.”

“Drinking, Abby. I’ve practiced drinking, but not getting drunk. That’s a very important distinction.”

“There’s a word for people who drink all the time and never get drunk.”

“Unlucky?”

I went over to the bar and filled up my tumbler again. Abby watched me in silence. When I sat down, she asked again.

“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on or should I just go take my shower and get on with my day.”

“I quit my job.”

She sat back again, relieved.

“That’s amusing. And I got elected pope.”

“No, I actually quit. I don’t have a job anymore.”

“What are you saying?”

“I said, ‘I quit,’ and they said, ‘okay.’ More or less.”

“More or less?”

“It’s not entirely official yet. I think I have to write a letter, or sign something. I don’t know, it’s been a while since I did this kind of thing.”

I looked to see how the wildlife was doing out on the deck, but nothing was stirring. Too hot, maybe.

“What the hell …”

I waved off the question before she was through with it.

“I got called down to the board meeting. George’s got a strategic plan worked out for TSS. Pretty slick, really. Make ’em a lot of money. Short term.”

“Did you do something stupid?”

I was grateful for the fuzzy cushion provided by the Absolut, even if I wasn’t entirely drunk. I ignored her question.

“The plan was to push really hard for the next six months to show an increase in productivity, lean out expenses and stop filling jobs lost to attrition. This pumps up profitability, as you know,” I paused, she blanched a little at the obvious condescension, “which is what you want to do if you’re fattening up for a sale.”

“What kind of sale?”

“The division. Technical Service and Support. My division. Spin it off and sell it. The whole thing, lock, stock and barrel. The ultimate unbundling.”

“They’re going to sell TSS? You can’t sell a division of a major corporation.”

Abby always told people I worked for a major corporation. It made me think of the blurbs on paperbacks. “Now a major motion picture, starring …”

“That will be a big surprise to George Donovan.”

“Who could possibly want to buy a division?” Like it was a piece of real estate in a crummy neighborhood.

“Probably one of the oil companies. A major oil company. A lot of what we’ve developed supports hydrocarbon processing. Most of the big refiners are dying to get their hands on a little high tech. They want it for the same reason I thought we wanted it. To diversify and hedge against the curse of commodity manufacturing.”

“I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Even if it’s true, why does it have anything to do with your job?”

“Oh, now Abby, anybody who buys us’ll have a Technical Service and Support division of their own with a bunch of people who do a lot of the same things we do. That means probably half our guys’ll be on the street within a year—after busting their asses for six months running up the value of the spinoff. They’ll gut us like a fish, then eat what’s left.”

“Including you.”

“A definite possibility.”

Abby noticed with a start that she’d finished off her drink. She rarely had more than one a day—usually a glass of white wine. Everything but vitriol in moderation.

“That’s not what they’re telling you. You’re on the presidential track.”

It irritated her that I was just a lousy divisional VP. I’d once made the mistake of telling her my job was often a step on the way to unit president. Which is what they called the guy who looked after a bunch of divisions. This was a pleasing eventuality for Abby to contemplate, though I always thought it was silly having more than one president at a single company, even a major corporation. Reminded me of Gilbert and Sullivan. Everybody gets to be the very perfect model of a modern major general.

“This is why you quit your job? Because you think they’re going to fire you anyway? You were going to be president and now they’re selling you? I’m just trying to understand.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it. I could fill in the details, but that’s the gist.”

Something had begun to tighten up Abby’s face— probably the first signal to her brain that her life was about to careen off the highway.

“You’re serious, aren’t you.”

“You bet.”

“What do you think will happen to us if you do this monstrous thing?”

She sank way back into her chair, gripping the arms firmly enough to keep the chair from lifting off the living room floor.

“I’m tired,” I said into my drink.

She didn’t hear me.

“You’re what?”

“I’m retiring.”

“You’re forty-eight years old.”

“I’m retiring early.”

“We’ll lose the house.”

“We own the house. If I never earned another penny we could still live a thousand times better than my parents ever dreamed possible.”

“I have no intention of living like your parents.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’m not doing anything to you.”

“This is unacceptable. I want you to take back everything you just said.”

I demurred. She pressed on.

“What do you expect me to do with this? What do you expect me to tell people you’re doing? What could possibly be in your head to think it would just be peachy keen with me for you to walk away from an important position at a major American corporation, to just walk away from everything we have so you can, what, just sit around the fucking house and drink yourself into fucking oblivion? Is that what you think would be okay with me? You fucking lowlife wop bastard.”

“French.”

She sucked in a rough breath and said, “French?”

“Fucking lowlife French bastard. Just a quarter Italian. Mostly French. My mom had a little American Indian mixed in there, too, we always thought. Would explain the cheekbones.”

She stood up from her chair, smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt and picked up her empty glass, I think to provide a prop for the final flourish. She thrust it at me to emphasize each point.

“When you’re ready to stop speaking nonsense, when you get your nose out of the fucking vodka bottle, I’ll be willing to speak with you about this. In the meantime, I have things to do,” she said, and walked out of the room.

The next time I saw her was about six months later, and I haven’t seen her since.

The sun was trying like hell to break out of the early morning haze. I was in the Grand Prix heading down North Sea Road toward the Village. WLIU was playing jazz. Early Miles Davis. I had the windows open and the heat on. Eddie had both ears flapping in the wind. I was drinking a vat of straight unflavored coffee from one of the North Sea delis that catered to locals and tradesmen.

I almost had full use of my tongue. I used it to scat-sing along with Miles. He didn’t seem to mind.

I carried the Styrofoam cup with me when I rang the Lombards’ door bell. I had their New York Times stuck under my arm.

“Do you always bring a newspaper when you come to call?” Rosaline asked when she opened the door.

“Once a paperboy …”

She was wearing a sleeveless, collarless white shirt, a blue jean skirt over bare legs and moccasin slippers. Her long hair was piled up in the back and held in place with bobby pins, randomly situated. Her nose still filled up half the house.

“Did you bring me coffee, too?”

“Get a mug, we’ll split what’s left.”

“Very gallant.”

I followed her into the living room. No Arnold. She pointed at the ceiling.

“Still sleeping. Not dead.”

“I assumed.”

Rosaline settled herself comfortably in her father’s chair and offered me the couch, gesturing with both hands.

“Take a load off.”

When she crossed her legs her skirt rode to the tops of her thighs. Her legs were a pale version of Abby’s— smooth and muscular.

“I feel like an intruder.”

“What do you think you’re intruding on?”

“Your life.”

“What life?”

Then she laughed.

“I’m actually having a nice time. We weren’t that close when I was growing up. Too much of an age difference. It’s funny how you’re a better child when you’re an adult.”

“Or he’s a better parent.”

“Perhaps.”

She put her fingertips together in the prayerful way Burton liked to do. It usually meant he was thinking.

“What are you thinking?” I asked her.

“I wasn’t thinking. I was wondering.”

“About what?”

“About you. What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you quit?”

“Not following you.”

“Your job.”

“I don’t remember talking about my job.”

“You’d be amazed what you can learn on the Internet.”

“I guess I would.”

“You think I’m invading your privacy.”

“Yup.”

“But you’re willing to put up with it.”

“To a point.”

“To get what you want.”

“I’d like what you have on Bay Side Holdings. It’d be a good deed.”

She uncrossed her legs and stretched them out in front of her, knees together and toes pointed, like a dancer.

“That’s supposed to be adequate incentive?”

I didn’t answer her. She kept her legs outstretched, partly supported by her hands gripping her thighs.

“Mr. Acquillo.”

“Sam.”

“You have far greater powers of perception than you seem willing to demonstrate.”

“I perceive you’re a woman of intelligence with uncertain, probably conflicting, desires.”

She pointed at me.

“There, you see? I knew you could do it.”

She dropped her feet to the floor and recrossed her legs slowly enough for me to catch a glimpse of the dark triangle and pink folds between her legs. She reassumed Burton’s prayer posture.

“I’m having it done after he goes,” she said.

“Done?”

She used a forefinger to trace the impressive arc of her nose.

“I can see why.”

“Honesty. Excellent.”

“Your father thinks nose jobs are an affront to God.”

“Right again. Give the man a cigar.”

“I think you should. Then you can face your shortcomings and insecurities like the rest of us, without an excuse looking out at you from the mirror.”

“My. Brutal honesty. Take back that cigar.”

“In the meantime, who gives a shit? You got a swell body and loads of sex appeal, and a nose that makes a great conversation starter. Consider it a gift.”

She sat up straight in her chair.

“Can I get you some coffee?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She stood up demurely, took my hand and led me into the kitchen. She poured us both coffee from an ancient percolator and had us clink the mugs in a toast.

“To honesty. Brutal or otherwise.”

I clinked with her. As I sipped the coffee she picked a stuffed number ten envelope off the kitchen table.

“Names, addresses and phone numbers of everyone who leased or rented a house from Bay Side Holdings— up to 1983 when Daddy retired. At that point, it was all passed over to the Sinitars, who bought up Daddy’s business—whatever was buyable, anyway. Plus whatever correspondence I could find with Bay Side’s office in New York, plus a photocopy of the ledger sub-account that records how Daddy received and distributed rental proceeds. I had it ready the day after you were here. I wondered if you’d be back.”

She handed me the envelope.

“Thanks.”

“Some people thought you lost your mind. Blew up your whole life.”

“Don’t believe everything you read.”

“I don’t believe anything I can’t see with my own eyes.”

“An empiricist.”

I stuffed the envelope into the inside pocket of my jean jacket.

“You’re not gonna check it?”

“I trust you.”

She put down her mug and gathered a handful of my jacket, pulling me toward her. I leaned into the kiss, which was long and warm and filled with promise. As she kissed me she felt around the front of my pants.

“You act so sure of yourself, but you’re not,” she said, pulling back far enough to see past the bridge of her nose.

“I’m not.”

Still holding me with one hand, she adjusted a lock of hair that had fallen across my forehead and tidied the area around the big scab on my head.

“Then it’s a good act. Maybe you can teach me how you do it.”

She put both hands on my chest and gently pushed herself away. That’s when I heard sounds upstairs, and the raspy wet croak of an old man clearing his throat. She gripped my arm, then went upstairs to see her father. I let myself out.

I drove directly to a picnic table in the park behind Town hall and opened Rosaline’s envelope. I put the list of names and addresses she’d prepared on top of the stack of papers. Then I got out Jackie Swaitkowski’s map, unrolled it and held down the corners with a mug and three stones I picked off the ground.

Next to the map I put an extended plot plan I’d picked up from Bonny Martinez at the Town tax collector’s office. It showed the borders and street addresses of every taxable piece of property in North Sea owned by Bay Side Holdings. They were all contiguous. Lombard’s records carried the same plot designation as Jackie’s map, so I could easily cross-reference between the three documents.

My fourth data point was a telephone directory I’d dug out of the trunk of the Grand Prix.

First I matched up the Oak Point street addresses on the tax map with Lombard’s records, which corresponded to the highlighted sweep of territory that started with Regina, curved around Oak Point following the waterline of the cove, washed across the WB grounds and over to the next peninsula, where it also followed the water about three-quarters of the way up the coast. Regina’s house, 18 Oak Point, was labeled number thirty-three. Next was lot thirty-five, Herbert and Louise Radowitz at 16 Oak Point, who’d rented for about ten years, followed by John and Martha Glenheimmer. Then Edward and Sherry Feldman, then Eric Fitzsimmons, and so on. I was a little disturbed to realize that Regina Broadhurst was the only name I recognized on my own street.

I checked all the names in the phone book. Only Ed and Sherry were still in their Bay Side house. The others were somewhere else in town or gone completely.

At least half the houses in the highlighted area on Oak Point weren’t on Lombard’s list. I wondered if the same held true on the other side of WB. That section was part of a much bigger area called Jacob’s Neck. That neighborhood was unfamiliar, so it took a little longer for me to get all the paperwork organized.

The first number was lot fifty-two, Gary and Elizabeth Richardson. Then fifty-four, Mary Fletcher. Then John and Judy Eiklestrum. Then Wallace and Dolores Weeds. That stopped me. I knew the name, and the house. I was now oriented with a mental picture of the neighborhood.

Wally Weeds was known to my father. I hadn’t thought of the name in years, but I could hear it now, spoken in my father’s voice. I also knew he’d been dead for a long time. I could almost remember the exact day it happened. The day my best friend Billy Weeds woke up somewhere in the woods of Connecticut and found his father shot in the face with his own shotgun.

As with Oak Point, most of the highlighted properties weren’t on Lombard’s list. There were only two more after the Weeds place. Number seventy-three, George and Janice Fitzhenry, and at the end of the line, the house opposite Regina’s, the last house at the extreme end of the Bay Side sweep.

Lot number seventy-eight. Julia Anselma.

I decided to spend the rest of that day cracking golf balls across the yard so Eddie could shag them out of the flower garden and off the pebble beach. My father’s three-quarter Harmon Killibrew bat was ideally suited to the purpose. Eddie probably had a little retriever in him, since he liked to retrieve. But he often got distracted mid-run and peeled off to track down heretofore undetected evidence of who-knows-what. This gave me the chance to sit down in one of my two exhausted redwood lawn chairs and look at the Little Peconic over an Absolut on the rocks. I didn’t have a strict rule about drinking during the day, just a general guideline—no hard liquor before noon. I had all the material I’d gathered up pertaining to Regina’s estate organized and waiting for me on the table on the screened-in porch. The urge to start in on it again had thus far eluded me. So I drank instead. And brooded.

Eddie would always complete the cycle, no matter how long the detour, running back without apology, the golf ball hidden in his mouth.

I’d just hauled myself out of the lawn chair so I could smack the ball out toward the bay when I noticed a sailboat coming in close to shore. Boats of any kind were far less common on the bay in October, even though it was an ideal month for sailing. The air was cool, but there was almost always a breeze, either a prevailing south-southwesterly or a seasonal northwesterly, clean and dry, riding down from Canada. It was a decent-sized sloop, probably around forty-three feet. I thought it was going to tack when I saw the sails fluttering in the wind, but then I saw the big head sail disappear into a roll. Though it’s hard to judge distances across open water, I thought his depth might have been about fourteen feet, judging from the boat’s proximity to the green buoy that marked the entrance to the cove bordering Regina’s property. After the jib was rolled as tight as a joint, the mainsail fell to the boom. The wind was mostly out of the west, so the boat’s beam drew parallel to the shore. It looked like some type of fast cruising boat, with lots of sharp angles, but also a lot of equipment hanging off the transom and mounted to the mast.

I saw a lone figure dressed in white run out to the bow to drop an anchor mounted off the base of the bowsprit. The boat swung gently at the end of the anchor until settling nose to the wind. A few minutes later an inflatable dinghy busted out of the cockpit and dropped overboard right off the back of the boat.

The guy in white descended a swim ladder into the dinghy with a small outboard on his shoulder, which he mounted at the transom, and soon after he was heading across the bay directly toward shore.

Eddie was also looking out at the dinghy motoring in our direction. I tucked the bat under my arm and went out to the beach to help whoever it was make a dry landing. Eddie stood and waited with me at the edge of the water.

The dinghy slowed as it approached, and you could hear the revs from the outboard rise and fall as the operator tried to calibrate the proper speed for hitting the beach. By now it was close enough that I could see his face.

“Hi, Burt.”

“Grab the bow and give a good pull, would you?” he said as the inflatable nosed into the beach and he killed the outboard, nimbly tipping the prop up out of the water. I dragged it up on shore.

We shook hands.

“Expecting pirates?” he asked, pointing to the bat.

“Just shaggin’ balls with Eddie. Though you never know.”

“Well, I’m unarmed. And thirsty.”

I led him up to the cottage and sat him down in a lawn chair. I went in to put together drinks, leaving Eddie to pester him into hitting out another ball.

“I called ahead but no one answered,” said Burton. “You know they’ve developed answering machines.”

“I got a phone. That’s as far as I go.”

By now it was beginning to cool off. The sky had mostly cleared up and the westerly that Burton had fought all the way from his mooring in Sag Harbor had picked up a few knots. I got us both sweatshirts so we could stay outside and watch the sunset. Burton told me he’d designed his boat mostly himself, with a little help from Sparkman and Stephens, who’d produced designs for several generations of Lewises. I knew just enough about sailing to follow his story, having crewed for friends of Abby she’d acquired during childhood summers in Marblehead. I had to transfer my own childhood experiences on the Peconic in busted-up, clinker-built dories and cat boats to the graceful Herreshoffs and Hinkleys the poshes in Massachusetts raced off the coast. I learned a lot, but I didn’t like the people. Though I sure loved their boats.

As the red ball of a sun burned it’s way into the horizon, lighting up the bottoms of the few remaining clouds in electric shades of pink and yellow, I caught Burton up on what I’d learned about Bay Side Holdings.

“Mr. Lombard is an astute man,” said Burton, when I was finished.

“A captive.”

“A wholly-owned subsidiary of Willard and Bollard, Incorporated.”

“Willard and Bollard.”

Burton had been holding the Harmon Killebrew bat. He used it to point over my shoulder at the clump of woods across the entrance to the cove next to Regina’s house.

“WB,” I said.

“The manufacturing arm. Bay Side was set up to manage the real estate owned by the company. The buildings and the land it sat on. Great tax advantages, then and now, if you do it right.”

As far as I was concerned, the old WB factory was as old as the Peconic itself. It had always been just there, invisible from land or sea, accessible only to the people who used to work there every day, whose numbers steadily dwindled until the gates closed and the rust and sumac took over. I never knew what the initials WB stood for.

“Son of a bitch.”

Burton reached under his sweatshirt and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

“An e-mail, courtesy of our research department.”

He started to read.

“‘If you go all the way back to the original owners of the site, you’re in the nineteenth century, when they held a sizable chunk of North Sea, including farms and woodlands. Willard Wakeman and Carl Bollard bought the place in 1908, and ran a fairly successful business for the next thirty-four years. They specialized in sporting goods—camping gear, volleyballs, quoits, whatever people played in those days.’”

He looked at me.

“No Rollerblades or windsurfing, I’d imagine.”

“Rafts,” I said. “My father always said they made rafts for the war.”

“Right. Rafts and rubberized tents for the Pacific. If you notice, everything they manufactured was at least partly rubber, or some kind of synthetic material that was tough and waterproof. Perfect for rafts.”

He read the rest of the e-mail, skipping ahead since I’d scooped part of the report.

“‘From its peak in about 1896, the WB landhold was reduced through normal attrition, and as an important capitalization tool for the core manufacturing business, leaving the last important segment—the peninsula adjacent to Oak Point—with its access to the Little Peconic and, subsequently, to Greenport and on to the sea. In order to preserve free use of the two inlets on either side, they retained all the shore property. Plus a few large tracts across Noyack Road, which were sold off in the 1960s.

“‘WB was strictly manufacturing, working to specs from brand marketers, or in the case of the war effort, government contractors. Postwar they continued with the same mix of products, but sales apparently declined steadily until 1976 when they closed down the shop permanently. Since private companies have minimal reporting requirements, this information has been derived from various secondary sources, including Dunn and Bradstreet, and should not be regarded as definitive, but rather directional.’ We’re going deeper into some other databases that take a little longer, but I thought this might give you a start.”

“So Bay Side Holdings is all that’s left of WB.”

“Bay Side Holdings is WB, since there’s nothing related to the corporate entity but real estate. All of it right here, by the way.”

“So who owns Bay Side Holdings?”

“That’s the interesting part,” said Burton, handing me the e-mail printout, “we have no idea.”

“Really.”

“Not that we won’t find out, but it won’t be automatic.”

“For you guys?” I had a mental image of Burton’s big building down there on the Street.

“For anybody. It’s in a trust.”

“Really.”

“For which there’s no public record. Bay Side is a privately held C corp, chartered under the laws of New York State, all of whose assets are held by the eponymously named Bay Side Trust.”

“And we’re not allowed to know who owns what?”

“By ‘we,’ if you mean the general public, yes and no. The creators of a trust have no obligation to publish the names of the beneficiaries as a matter of course, but they can be compelled to do so under certain civil actions. Beneficiaries have to be named in the trust document itself, which in certain circumstances will end up in the public record. But there’s no legal requirement to do so just because. Ninety-nine percent of the time, these are all tightly controlled, personal things that have little effect on anyone beyond the principals, unless there’s a contested estate, or a tax dispute, or a legal claim. That’s the next place we’re going to look.”

Eddie had heard enough and decided to trot off to the beach to check for encroaching sea life. I found myself looking over at WB as if the dense tree cover was about to open up and disclose another stunning revelation. You think you know a place.

“So who’s got the trust document?”

“I’m guessing Milton Hornsby.”

“I’m back to him.”

“I’m afraid so. But don’t be discouraged. We’ll find everything out, eventually.”

He took a sip of his drink.

“One more thing. Regina Broadhurst. No assets we can find, unless you consider Social Security. There’s so little on her, she almost doesn’t exist. Hasn’t filed a tax return to the IRS, or to New York State, since 1976. The last year she received a W-2. There are two points of interest here, in my mind.”

“She worked.”

“That’s point one. She did indeed. As a floor supervisor. Essentially a foreman, watching over manufacturing, assembly or materials handling.”

“In a factory.”

“Yup.” He gestured again with the Harmon Killebrew bat.

“WB?”

“Yup.”

“How ’bout that. Walked to work.”

“Nineteen hundred seventy-six was the year they closed down. Never got another job. At least, nothing she shared with the IRS.”

“I’m trying to remember her husband. What he did.”

“You’ll be trying a long time.”

“Meaning?”

“Regina got her Social Security number in 1938, when she was 16. Under the name Regina May Broadhurst. Just to be sure, the researcher found her in the Suffolk County birth records. Born at Southampton Hospital, June 5, 1922. Regina May Broadhurst.”

“There was no Mr. Broadhurst.”

“We’ll keep looking. You never know.”

“You’ve already done too much.”

“So get me another drink.”

We moved on to other topics while we drank and gazed out at the waning sunset and the steel blue water, now uniformly roughed up by the freshening winds. His boat looked great, now a backlit shape rocking comfortably at anchor and casting a shadow across the water, a formless reflection of the dark blue hull and towering mast.

The sun was just starting to light up the oaks and scrub pines of North Sea. I’d started running before dawn, and had already covered about ten miles. I’m not very fast, but I can run a long way when I’m in the mood. I’d been up to Long Beach and back, toured the sea fowl refuge on Jessup’s Neck and stopped at a deli for coffee. The day was cold and overcast, a sample of the coming November. On the way back I ran along the bay coast up to the WB peninsula. I cut back inland and ran along the sand road that ran parallel to WB’s cyclone fence. At one of the sharp turns in the road, I ran straight for it and leaped. I stuck about halfway up and climbed the rest of the way. I pulled a pair of wire cutters I’d brought along out of the back pocket of my shorts and snipped the barbed wire. Then, very carefully, slipped over the top and dropped into the WB grounds.

The landscape had completely reverted to weedy grass and first growth—pin oak, cedar and sumac. But the asphalt driveway looked almost new. Evidence of teenagers was piled next to rusted machinery that lined the driveway. I trotted up to the main entrance and tried the door. Locked. I circled the building looking for unboarded windows. I found a busted-out basement window half obscured by broken bricks and cinder block. I cleared a space and shimmied through into an icy black depth. I had a miniature Mag light, but it barely cut through the darkness. I felt my way along while my eyes adjusted enough to see glimmers of light above me. I searched, and finally found, a staircase up to the ground floor. The door opened.

I was in a corridor. The walls were a faded pale green and the woodwork clear pine stained to simulate mahogany. Behind the doors, some of which were paneled with translucent glass, were office groupings—a block of four with secretaries in the middle. Little departments. At one time they’d been identified by removable placards that slid into chrome holders mounted to the wall. Most had been removed.

I moved methodically from office to office, opening desk drawers and file cabinets. There was almost nothing there. A few empty hanging folders. Cracked and stained coffee mugs. Empty steno pads and a rusty hole-punch.

I found what looked like a common area. There were two linoleum-topped folding tables with a few chairs, and an area for vending machines. There was a bulletin board with some yellowed safety posters and a few regulatory notices. On the other wall was a glass trophy case, long smashed into particles and stripped of its trophies. Still stuck to the disintegrating cork-board were three curled and yellowing eight-by-ten-inch black and white photographs of bowling teams and softball players. I popped them off and stuck them in the rear waistband of my shorts.

I worked my way through the rest of the offices and out to a shop floor. Attached to the ceiling were long I-beam rails that supported sliding chain hoists used to transport raw materials and assembled parts. Huge incandescent lights were caged overhead at the end of galvanized conduit. In the center were a half dozen benches, each about forty feet long, lined up in neat parallel rows. Around the perimeter were machine tools and pressure vessels of various shapes and sizes. It looked naked without the distributed control equipment—computer automation—that I’d been working with for the last twenty years. No sensors, controllers, activators, big red coil cords, keyboards or CPUs. None of the signposts of late-twentieth-century manufacturing.

There were three other interconnected areas where things were made. It looked like WB was ready to make almost anything, and probably tried to in its relentless pursuit of market redemption. I was able to identify compressors, hydraulic lines, conveyors, centrifugal sorters, parts bins and machines that cut, stitched, folded, wrapped, stacked and packed. There were large empty spaces where equipment was once bolted to the floor. Either salvaged or purloined long ago.

I went back outside, squinting in the hazy sunlight. There was one building left to look in. It was red brick like the others, but unattached. I jogged across the overgrown lawn and looked for a way to get inside. The front door was locked, but there was an open window on the east side. I jumped up and grabbed the sill, and pulled myself over. I dropped into a janitor’s closet. It was still stocked with buckets, mops and assorted cleaning utensils. Nothing worth pilfering. The door was locked, but gave away easily with a solid kick. On the other side was a big open warehouse. I waited for my eyes to adjust again to the dim light. As expected, the room was almost empty. There was one rusted-out wreck of a forklift, stacks of splintered skids, a lot of metal shelving racks and a few dozen ten-gallon drums. Plus a lot of seagull shit and the mildewed smell of a dark, damp place.

I’d worked up a sweat during my run, so my body temperature dropped quickly as I walked around the cold rooms. I needed to start running again, so I scaled the main fence and took up my regular route where I’d left off. By now the day was fully underway, though the diffuse sunlight did little to warm things up.

I began to picture hot coffee and toasted sesame seed bagels.

And the way Amanda Battiston looked that day walking away from me across the sand, her hair blown off to the side, her back straight and her face filled with thwarted plans and threadbare expectations.

She called me when I was in the shower. I stood in the kitchen with my parents’ Western Electric handset at my ear watching the water puddle at my feet.

“Roy’s in the City and it’s my day off,” she said.

“Really.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“Go to the 7-Eleven.”

“That’s where it’s happening?”

“That’s where I’ll pick you up.”

“How will I identify you?”

“Gray hair, bent nose.”

“What time?”

“Half an hour.”

“What should I bring?”

“Suspended disbelief.”

I thought I should shave and put on a clean shirt. I worried about the Grand Prix a little. I’d cleaned the blood off the back seat, but it hadn’t done much to reduce the dog smell. Eddie liked to lie around in the car even when it was parked in the driveway. Hearing the jingle of car keys always threw him into a frenzy of joyous anticipation.

“Okay, but you got to sit in the back.”

Amanda stood on the sticky sidewalk outside the 7-Eleven in a blue windbreaker, yellow skirt and Reeboks. Her hands were clasped in front and she was looking out into the world as if expecting something wondrous to suddenly appear. All she got was me and my dog. I pulled up and she hopped quickly into the Grand Prix. I noticed for the hundredth time her lovely tanned legs.

“Right on time,” she said.

“Had all morning to practice.”

She reached back and ruffled up Eddie’s ears.

“Guard dog?”

“Freeloader.”

She looked very bright and enthusiastic. I felt the need to catch up.

“Coffee?”

I’d had a thermos filled at the corner place.

“Sure,” she said, like I’d offered her a ride on my private jet.

“You’re in a good mood, Mrs. Battiston.”

“I’m not at the bank. That’s enough to put anyone in a good mood.”

“I thought you liked your job.”

“I love my job. It’s just Wednesdays are so nice.”

I felt her presence fill up the inside of my car. She poured us coffee.

“Where to?”

“Where thou goest.”

I took her up to North Haven where we caught the South Ferry over to Shelter Island. For a few hours I just let the Grand Prix rumble around the easy hills and shady curves of the island, pausing for a spell at the wildlife preserve so Eddie could flush out endangered species. Then we stopped at Ram’s Head to see the last and hardiest cruisers of the season anchored out in Coecles Harbor. Then finally worked our way over to Sunset Beach, where we ate lunch at the rooftop place.

When the salads arrived I finally got around to asking her.

“So, where’d you live when you grew up out here?”

“North Sea,” she said, without hesitation. “I thought you knew that.”

“Maybe I did. Memory’s not what it used to be.”

“North North Sea. Almost Noyac. Right near you. Why?”

“Maybe that’s why we get along. Shared North Sea sensibilities.”

“More sensible than the rest of Southampton, if you ask me.”

“Did you sell the house?”

She shook her head while she chewed on a mouthful of salad.

“No, Roy thought we should try renting it. He’s been good about it, though. He hasn’t pushed. I have to clean it all out and I can’t face that yet.”

“I shouldn’t be reminding you.”

“That’s okay.”

We got off on other things over the rest of lunch. But after the check came, she had an idea.

“We drove right by there on the way up here,” she said. “Want to go look?”

“It’s not upsetting?”

“I’d like to see it. Someday soon it’ll all change forever. Everything does.”

“Entropy.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. MIT.”

The ferry loaders were a little challenged by the scale of the Grand Prix, but managed to get it on board. All that sheet metal can intimidate a younger person. I thought they might try to charge me a premium for the effort. The guys in the electrician’s vans and pickups were more appreciative.

“389?”

“400. Quad, posi, Hurst 4-speed. Out of a ’67 Goat.”

“Yowza.”

Amanda seemed to enjoy the attention.

“No one ever slobbers over my little Audi.”

“Not until they see the driver.”

I was a little unsure about the right turn off Noyack Road. So was Amanda.

“Yes. No. A little further. Turn. Wait a minute. Okay, go down that way.”

I drifted up to the single-story white house. There was a short white pebble and gray gravel driveway, but no garage. The siding was the old-style asbestos shingling formed to look like cedar. There were some gangly old yews planted along the foundation, a slate path to the front door and no mailbox. I braked and crunched up into the drive.

“What do you think?” she asked me.

“A North Sea classic. Could use a little fix-up.”

She leaned toward the windshield to get a better look.

“It does. The lawn’s been cut, but none of the shrubs have been trimmed in a while. My mother and I planted that dogwood in front.” She put out her hand. “It was like this tall. Look how big it’s gotten.”

Next to the drive was a white gate with a curved top covered with ivy and exhausted strands of clematis. In the backyard were rose vines that looked like tangled netting tossed over a split-rail fence.

“Let’s go take a look.”

Amanda jumped out of the car and ran up to the front door. There she stood stymied. I called to her from the car.

“Keys?”

“Of course not.”

She followed me as I walked around to the back of the house. Another little stoop led to the back door. It had a window, so you could see into the kitchen. Amanda made a tunnel with her hands and looked through the glass.

“Looks exactly the same,” she said. “I don’t know why it wouldn’t.”

On impulse I tried the doorknob. Locked, of course.

“My key’s at the house,” said Amanda.

Next to the back stoop was a metal Bilco hatch. I tried that and it opened. The door at the foot of the stairs had a lock, but it didn’t look like much. Designed more for an interior door. I took out my keys and stuck one of them in the keyhole. The lock mechanism was loose, but wouldn’t give it up. So I took out my Swiss Army knife and selected the slot-head screwdriver, bottle-opener feature. Amanda wasn’t saying anything, but I could hear noises coming from her repressed concerns. The lock quickly surrendered to the Swiss Army.

“Why it’s good to bring an engineer.”

“For breaking and entering?”

“This is your house. You’re allowed to break in.”

She followed me into the damp basement. It smelled like a compost heap. I found a light switch and snapped it on. It made both of us jump. I had to remind myself, and her, that nobody was home.

I took her hand and led her up the stairs. Her grip was sure and strong, her palm smooth and dry. She let me pull her along without resisting.

We poked around like a pair of homebuyers The kitchen was straightened, but oddly lived in. There were dishes and non-perishables in the faux colonial cupboards and drawers. The refrigerator was turned off. The counters were covered in textured, lime green Formica. The kitchen had been thoroughly cleaned, though the house smelled like an empty house. We went out into the living room and I found the thermostat. I put it up to seventy degrees and the boiler came on. I turned it back down to shut it off.

I followed her down a narrow hallway that led to the bedrooms. I had to flick on the hall light to see where I was going. It took me a while to find the switch. Amanda was standing so close to me I’d hurt her if I moved too quickly. From where we stood you could see doors to four tiny bedrooms.

“Which was yours?”

It was painted pale blue and crammed with furniture and dolls and stuffed animals. Some looked almost new.

“You liked a lot of friends around?” I asked her.

“My mother was the doll fanatic. Come see.”

One of the bedrooms had been converted into a small sewing room. In the center was an ironing board. An iron lay flat on a piece of gingham fabric. There were tables and cabinets lining the walls. All the horizontal surfaces of the crowded little room were covered with large fabric dolls in various states of finish. The strange quality of all those grinning lifeless faces caught me unprepared.

“Gosh.”

“See what I mean?”

Amanda picked up one of the dolls and looked it over, brushing back its hair and pulling at the tiny outfit.

“She was very talented. Most of these were probably going to charity, but when I was growing up it helped feed us. You’d be surprised how many adults collect dolls.”

“She didn’t have another job?”

“WB. Didn’t everybody? At least till it shut down.”

“Your father, too?”

“That’s what my mother said. I don’t remember. I was too little when he died.”

I thought of Jackie’s aerial map showing my cottage at the tip of Oak Point, right outside the invisible walls that enclosed the WB domain. Invisible to me, because there was never any reason for me to know it was there. It wasn’t my world.

“This is where I found her,” said Amanda. “Right there on the floor. Not surprising, I guess, since this is where she spent all her time.”

On impulse I picked up the iron and smelled it.

“A heart attack?”

“That’s what they thought. We could have done an autopsy, but Roy didn’t like the idea. What difference does it make, he said, how she died?”

I took a closer look at the old iron. It was very old and heavy. The cord was covered in black fabric with white hash marks. The plug at the end was of the same vintage, so you could see how it was wired just by looking at the bottom.

“Did you ever see your mother test the iron to see if it was hot?” I asked her.

She pondered for a moment

“Well, I guess she must have.”

“Held it with her right hand, wet her left index finger and tapped the underside of the iron like this. Psst.”

Amanda nodded as she played the visual in her mind.

“Why?”

“My mother always did that. It seemed so reckless. But that’s what our parents’ generation did. Learned it from their mothers, who heated irons on the stove.”

“I let the cleaners worry about all that. That’s what my generation does.”

She led me back out to the living room where she spent a few minutes looking around and picking things up off tables and the bookshelves on either side of the fireplace. I hadn’t kept any of my parents’ stuff. I thought I would before my mother died, but then when it happened, I just wanted it gone.

“You’re right about your mother,” I said to her.

“What do you mean?”

“I would have liked her.”

“You would have. Everybody did.”

“Everybody but Regina.”

“Everybody but her.”

“You ready?”

“I’m ready.”

We went back out the kitchen door.

“You go ahead. I’ll lock up.”

I let Eddie inspect the yard for a few minutes while Amanda settled back into the Grand Prix. She slid down in the old leather bucket and let her head fall back against the back rest.

“I was fine until we went outside. Now it’s all sort of attacking me.”

“I’m thinking about something clear in a glass. With ice.”

“At least.”

Oriented once again, I quickly found my jogging route behind WB. The Grand Prix tracked along the deep grooves of the sand road like a railcar. We were back at my cottage in about five minutes.

I equipped myself with a vodka on the rocks. Amanda opted for gin and tonic.

“Kinda past season, but who’s counting.”

She dug a bottle of tonic out of a kitchen cabinet and promptly dropped it on the floor. Before I could stop her, she’d scooped up the plastic bottle, gripped it under an arm and twisted off the cap, shooting off a foamy spray of tonic that soaked the top half of her body and most of my kitchen.

“Oh shit, oh shit.” She put down the bottle and went to wash her hands. “Do you have something to clean this up with? I’m so sorry. I’m soaked.”

I handed her a dish towel, and while she dried off her hands I mopped up the devastation with a roll of paper towels.

“I hope this thing’s waterproof,” she said, looking down the front of her windbreaker. She unsnapped the snaps and I helped her slide out of it. Her yellow blouse was unscathed. Underneath, her breasts moved freely, unfettered.

“I need to rinse this off.”

“I should make a fire.”

“You stoke, I’ll rinse.”

I had the woodstove going by the time Amanda came out to the living room holding her wet windbreaker and hard-fought gin and tonic. I hung the jacket over the back of a chair and slid it up close to the fire. Amanda curled up next to the arm of the sofa, I sat on the floor.

“That was a wonderful day,” she said.

“It’s still a day for another hour or two.”

“I should go after this.”

“Your windbreaker has to dry.”

“After that.”

She’d rolled up her sleeves and bent up the collar of her yellow blouse. And unbuttoned a button. She noticed me noticing.

“I don’t mind,” she said.

“What?”

“If you look.” She unbuttoned another button and spread open the yellow blouse just enough to expose the faded tan lines. “At least it tells me you’re interested.”

“I’m interested.”

“But that’s all?”

“More than interested.”

“But.”

“There’s Roy …”

“That’s why?”

“Probably not. Though he doesn’t make much sense for you. But, then again, that can’t be a good enough reason.”

“Good enough to date?”

“Yeah. Good enough to date.”

I was grateful that she left it alone after that. I didn’t want to have to explain myself any more than I had to. Mostly because I didn’t really have an explanation. I knew there was one, I just didn’t know how to get at it. Or I didn’t want to try. Anyway, it had been a long time for me. Maybe I was just afraid. Maybe that’s what I didn’t want to explain.

I took her back to the 7-Eleven in her dried-out windbreaker. We didn’t talk much on the way over there, but it felt nice just to drive along in silence. I smoked a cigarette, she closed her eyes and sat there looking like female perfection. Luckily it was too late to turn around and go back to the cottage.

“I like you, Sam,” she said to me, getting out of the car. “Any way you want it.”

“I’m not sure what that is.”

“Then let’s play it by ear.”

“I might be tone deaf.”

She laughed, then leaned back into the car across the seat and kissed me.

“That’s already well established.”

On the way back to the cottage I swung past Amanda’s mother’s house. I went back through the kitchen door, which I’d left open, and grabbed a plastic bag out of the broom closet. I made a quick trip to the sewing room. I picked the iron up off the ironing board, curled the cord and dropped it in the bag.

Then I went down to the basement to look for the electrical panel. I found late vintage circuit breakers mixed in with the original fuses. One circuit breaker was thrown. I switched it back and it held. I got out my Swiss Army knife and unscrewed the faceplate from the box. I thought about how badly I needed reading glasses to do close-in work, especially in low light. When I was done picking through the wiring I screwed everything back together again. Then I traced one of the lines from the box, across the ceiling to a location somewhere among the bedrooms. Before I left the basement I unlatched the basement door at the bottom of the hatch. I locked the kitchen door.

I tossed the iron into the trunk. Then I went home and hit tennis balls around for Eddie until it got dark. I was glad to finally have the night to sit inside while I drank and watched the whitecaps dance across the Little Peconic as the southwesterlies gave in to the harder, colder winds from the north. I wanted to think things through, but instead I fought off images of wild-eyed dolls and smooth, olivy tanned skin, the touch of silk and the smell of possibility.

In the morning I retrieved the iron from the Grand Prix’s cavernous trunk and took it down with a cup of coffee to the basement where my father built a small workbench with a big drafting light. I put on my reading glasses.

The iron could have been almost forty years old. The handle was made of heavy black plastic, reminiscent of Bakelite. The inset Phillips head screws that held the base to the handle were slightly peened over. It had been opened up at least once, probably recently given the bright metal scratches on the screw heads. I unscrewed them and pulled the handle section up off the chrome base so I could look inside. The smell of burned insulation I’d noticed before was now far stronger. I pulled the drafting light down a little closer and deconstructed the little wiring harness that fed power through the switches and rheostat, and ultimately into the iron base, whose only job was to get real hot and boil some water for release as steam through a row of little vent holes. A fairly heavy piece of Romex copper wire had been neatly introduced into the system, connecting the ground lead from the power cord to a little threaded column soldered to the base that secured an inset Phillips head screw from the plastic handle. The original wiring and the new piece of Romex were partially blackened, but not burned through. The manufacturer’s logo and instructions for operating the iron were printed on a heavy metal plate, probably aluminum, screwed to the black plastic directly below the handle itself. I dug around inside with my long screwdriver until I identified where another new piece of wiring was soldered to the threads of a screw holding down the plate.

I reassembled the iron, sat it in the upright position and plugged it into an outlet which had a dedicated fifteen-amp circuit to run the bench and the basement lights.

I had two large screwdrivers with plastic handles. I wrapped them with old scraps of inner tube to provide an extra layer of insulation. I held one screwdriver to the logo plate and brought the other to the base of the iron.

Pop.

Even with the insulation, fifteen amps was enough to jolt my arms clear of the iron, and make a noise loud enough to set off Eddie. In the gray diffuse light from the basement windows I could see smoke curl out of the vent holes at the base of the iron.

I unplugged the iron, lit a cigarette and drank some of my coffee. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light.

I threw the breaker back on and went upstairs. Then I went outside to hit a few more tennis balls around for Eddie. A hurricane somewhere out in the Atlantic was sending twenty- to thirty-knot winds across the East End. The Little Peconic was a roiling stew pot of gray-black water and off-white foam. The winds were warm and smelled of their tropical origins, all wrong for the autumn light and red-yellow days of October. A windsurfer was out on the bay skimming across the chop like a lunatic water bug. I envied his foolish abandon.

That afternoon I took a long run. I needed the oxygen, and the endorphins. And whatever blessings the windswept Peconic was willing to bestow.