Two Time

THIRTEEN

WHEN WE GOT BACK to my house we found Joe Sullivan bleeding to death in my front yard. Or rather Eddie did. As I pulled into Amanda’s driveway I could hear him inside the house barking furiously, something he rarely did. So I stopped the car and let him out. He shot past me and ran across the lawn, where he started barking again, swiftly circling the Adirondack chairs.

At first, in the dim light of dawn, all I saw was an indistinct form slightly slumped in one of the chairs. A pale shape, clothed in pale fabrics, made even more monotone by the tight-cropped band of blond hair that upholstered the top of his head. All of which was an effective backdrop for the big round blood stain that started on his right side and flowed down over his thigh. It wasn’t until I felt his neck for a pulse that I got close enough to see it was Sullivan. Amanda ran up to me and I told her to run back to my house and call an ambulance.

I found a pulse buried under the jowly folds of his neck. I saw Amanda pop back out the door and I yelled to her to bring the flashlight hanging in the broom closet. While I waited for her I worked on quieting down Eddie. I wondered how long he’d been trying to get someone’s attention. And what form of prescience had led me to lock him in for the night.

“Oh my God, it’s Joe Sullivan. What happened?” cried Amanda as she ran up to the breakwater.

Even with the flashlight it wasn’t clear exactly where the blood had come from. I unzipped his windbreaker and peeled it back to expose an even darker wet spot on his polo shirt directly below his right rib cage. I took off my jacket and made it into a pad that I slipped under his shirt and over the wound. I knelt down and braced myself against the chair so I could maintain pressure.

“I told you to watch your ass, you dumb shit,” I said to him, though he wasn’t up to answering.

Sullivan was a big man. I hoped he held a lot of blood.

—

Ross Semple, the Chief of Southampton Town police, looked a lot more like the junior engineers I’d hired to bench test new processes or perform field service for customers and the company’s operating divisions. White short-sleeved polyester shirts, iridescent striped ties that changed color depending on the angle of observation and glasses with gigantic gray plastic frames that had gone in and out of fashion during a period roughly coinciding with the theatrical run of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. A twitchy guy, all arms and legs that seemed to function somewhat outside central control. He never looked you all the way in the eye, and often had little side conversations going with himself, chuckling at private jokes clearly out of synch with the mood of the moment.

They’d just pulled Sullivan out of the ambulance and had raced him inside the hospital. Ross was there with two or three other cops looking ready to strip off their badges and mount a posse. He pulled out a crushed pack of Winstons and lit one up with the natural movement of unconscious habit.

“If you got an opinion on this, now’d be a good time to share it,” he said to me.

I told him everything I knew about Ivor Fleming and why I knew it—beginning with his connection to Jonathan Eldridge, and maybe his murder, leading to the recent launch of my asset-salvage business courtesy of Appolonia Eldridge and Gabriel Szwit. I told him about my conversation with Joe Sullivan after the workout at Sonny’s, though I left out Sullivan’s earlier recruitment efforts, for both our sakes. Things were bad enough as it was.

Ross burned through two or three Winstons as he listened to my story, his eyes jumping around with the furtive vigilance of nocturnal prey. I don’t know how much of what I told him he believed. It didn’t really matter, as long as the story had a sturdy interior logic. Ross was professionally and temperamentally skeptical of everything and everybody, often with good reason. He just needed an excuse for why he shouldn’t start fingerprinting and seeking an indictment at that immediate moment, assuming the inevitability of both would be realized in due course.

I left him with his Winstons and went into the ER to look for Sullivan. Just as I got to the right place a swarm of serious-looking people in baby blue polyester outfits pulled the curtain around his bed and basically told me to get lost. So I went upstairs to where I’d spent a few happy-go-lucky hours two months ago getting my back sewn up. I looked around for Dr. Markham Fairchild, the Jamaican GP who ran the recovery unit. At about six-seven and 350 pounds, Markham was a hard man to miss.

“Hey der, Mr. Ahquillo. Back here on warranty?” I saw my hand disappear into his, which was about the size and consistency of an outfielder’s glove.

“Hi, Doc. A friend of mine’s downstairs with some kind of wound to the gut. They’re working on him now. Any idea where he’ll end up?”

“Trauma’s our specialty here in Southampton. Unless he need fancy shenanigans up island. We know soon.” Markham looked down at the clipboard he was carrying. “What’s his name?”

“Joe Sullivan. He just got here about a half-hour ago.”

He led me over to the nurses’ station where he asked a tired but accommodating middle-aged woman in civilian clothes to look up Sullivan’s status.

“Hey I remember dat name. He was the fella I call for you last time you were here. What are you two, Bonnie and Clyde?”

“Yeah, I’m Clyde. If he gets up here, do me a favor and try to keep him breathing long enough to have a conversation. He’s got some information I need.”

“Like I wouldn’t if you didn’t ask me to.”

The woman in front of the computer waved him over and pointed to the screen. Markham bent over to take a look.

“They move him upstairs. Not good, but not decided yet. Knife wound to the abdomen, blunt-force trauma to the head—probably got a concussion. Lost lots of blood. They know more once they get him washed up and into the OR.”

“If that’s all it is, I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Markham put his hand out and gripped my shoulder.

“Don’t worry. We fix him up. And you too, next time he bring you in. Only satisfied customers here at Southampton Hospital.”

—

I dodged Ross by ducking out a side entrance area near where I’d stashed the Grand Prix with Eddie, still somewhat freaked, curled up in the driver’s seat. When I stopped for coffee at the corner place I bought us both croissants and bottled water, though I waited to pass out the goods until we drove over to the beach access next to Agawam Beach Club where we could look at the ocean while we ate.

The sun sat a few feet above the horizon, burning off the early morning haze. A young woman in black cycling shorts, white support bra and orange headband walked unhurried across the sand, cooling down or uninspired to run, it was hard to tell from a distance. A gaggle of seagulls, careering overhead, were dropping clams on the packed sand along the water line, and then diving in to squabble over the pulverized results. As I sipped my coffee and peeled off chunks of croissant for Eddie, I noticed my hands were shaking. I had a full inventory of possible explanations, but I was too tired and brain-battered to delve. Or too afraid. Maybe that was the ultimate explanation. Fear of having to come up with one.

Instead I smoked a few cigarettes, finished the coffee and fed Eddie until he tired of French pastry and went to sleep, undaunted by the terrors of self-examination, happy to contend solely with threats apparent and unambiguous.

Watching him, a profound weariness suddenly descended on me and then, as if anointed by a blessed narcotic, I dropped like a stone into the deep well of sleep.