Two Time

TWENTY-SEVEN

ISABELLA TOLD ME over the intercom speaker at the front gate that Burton was over at the Gracefield Tennis Club having lunch. She said if I wanted to talk to him I’d have to wait till he got back, since non-members weren’t allowed to say the word “Gracefield” much less eat lunch there.

“Maybe I’ll join,” I said.

“You got the hundred thousand a year and proof your ancestors come over on the Mayflower, you maybe got a chance.”

“If they’d take me I wouldn’t want to join,” I said, invoking Groucho.

“Lucky for you. Save you a hundred grand.”

I went over there anyway and drove right up the long entrance. To either side were grass courts on which lithe figures in white cotton played tennis under the hot sun while generating no noticeable sweat. I thought, wow, that is some breeding.

I found a parking space where I could squeeze the Grand Prix between two full-sized luxury SUVs. I felt like I was in a black canyon. The reflections in the black side panels were bright enough to use as a mirror, which I did to tuck in my shirt and put some semblance of a part in my hair.

The main clubhouse was a fat old shingle-style place that looked like most of the older homes lining the shore between the ocean and Gin Lane. The cedar shakes were a dark gray, split and curled in many places, which made the bright blue-and-white-striped awnings look all the more fresh and sporty. I trotted up onto the huge porch—carpeted with woven jute and furnished in white wicker—where it was easily ten degrees cooler. A scattering of people in and out of tennis outfits were having drinks and picking melons and strawberries out of pewter baskets. As I hoped, there was a reception area just inside the main door.

“Burton Lewis, please,” I said to the guy standing there in a pink shirt and white bow tie, sleeves rolled up to the middle of his forearms.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m here to have lunch with Burton Lewis.”

He looked down at the book on his maitre d’ stand.

“Your name?”

“Sam Acquillo. He might’ve forgotten.”

He looked at me as if to say, “Mr. Lewis never forgets.”

I looked at my watch, then felt immediately idiotic because I wasn’t wearing one. The host saw the dumb move, too. Condescension began to creep into his expression.

“He’s waiting for me. Why don’t you just tell him I’m here,” I said.

“We don’t disturb our members at lunch. And if you’re not a member,” he paused to look me up and down, so we could silently agree I wasn’t, “you aren’t permitted to remain on the premises.”

I wondered if once, just once, I’d be able to enter a building and just get to see the person I wanted to see without having to manipulate, cajole, bribe, threaten or sock some mistrustful gatekeeper in the nose.

“You’re guessing that Burton wouldn’t want to see me.”

“I escort Mr. Lewis to his private dining room every Thursday. I’m afraid he would have mentioned it to me.”

“Okay but what if you’re wrong. What if he would’ve seen me but you didn’t let him know I was here. How would that go over?”

That almost worked with Ivor Fleming’s security guards, for whom the wrong call could conceivably be a matter of life and death. Granted, the Gracefield standards were probably more strictly enforced.

He wavered.

“All you have to do is go to where he’s eating and tell him Sam Acquillo is downstairs. If he says who the heck is that?’ you’re in the clear. How bad could that be?”

I was grateful that he bought the concept. I didn’t want to have sock him in the nose, which I was prepared to do right at that moment, something else I’d have to regret for the rest of my life.

He was gone just a few minutes. When he reappeared in the reception area he snuck in behind a small bar and grabbed a leather-bound menu. He handed it to me.

“The specials are inside,” he said, formally, as he led me down the hall. “The duck confit seems to be the most popular item.”

“Excellent,” I said. “I love duck. My dog ll sometimes snatch one out of the lagoon. Fry it right up.”

We went up two flights of stairs, down a hallway lined with oil paintings of seascapes, gaff-rigged racing yachts and Atlantic waterfowl and into a large, brilliantly lit room. An octagon, with windows on every side. I recognized it as the building’s tower, from a glimpse of the club you could catch over the hedges when you drove down Gin Lane. I’d been catching that glimpse my whole life. It was remarkably strange to be looking at it from the inside out.

Burton was sitting alone at a round table, carving some meager little mound of oiled foliage on his plate, an ice bucket with an open bottle of white at his right elbow.

“Sam,” said Burton, getting up from the table and warmly shaking my hand, “what a pleasure.”

I had to hand it to the guy in the white bow tie. He stood calmly at attention, ready to take it like a man.

I jerked my thumb at him.

“This guy’s good, Burt. Really looks after the place. Tell management he’s a keeper.”

The guy gave a neat little bow.

“And you should know, Sam. A man of your worldliness.”

“You people have Absolut?” I asked the guy. “On the rocks. No fruit. Just a swizzle stick.” He nodded a brisk little nod and gratefully took the opportunity to spin on his heel and beat it out of there.

“This is delightful,” said Burton. “The food here is really quite good, for a club. Just stay clear of the duck. Too fatty.”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “We just need to catch up.”

He was chewing, so he twirled his fork in the air as a way of saying, “Forget about it.”

“You know this Jonathan Eldridge thing,” I said to him. “It’s messing me up.”

He nodded eagerly.

“I have some information for you,” he said. “I called you, but you weren’t there, and of course you don’t have an answering machine. Or email.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“I was about to drive over there. Meant to do it today, actually.”

He shoved the salad out of the way and took the silver cover off a plate filled with pasta, vegetables and what looked like chunks of lobster and crab.

“Here,” he said, scooping a mound of the stuff on to a dinner plate, “take this. I’ll eat off the serving dish.”

I didn’t argue with him.

“Thanks. Looks great.”

The guy in the white bow tie reappeared with my drink. Burton told him to bring another plate of what we were eating and shooed him out of the room.

“So what do you got?” I asked him.

“You can’t repeat this, but Mr. Fleming is a week or two away from a full-scale racketeering indictment. I think my theory was correct. Whatever information the State investigators pulled from Jonathan Eldridge’s computer has provided the basis for the action. They’re quite happy about it. I know it’s not your principal concern. Nothing new on the car bombing.”

“Anything come up about his relationship with Jonathan Eldridge, or his brother Butch?”

“You told us to focus on your hostiles, as you put it. Found more evidence to the contrary regarding the brother.”

“Jonathan took good care of him. I know that.”

“Oh, yes. To a fault. At least in the eyes of the State investigation.”

Burton grinned at me over the top of his pasta.

“Really.”

“You really can’t repeat this. In fact, we aren’t even having this conversation. Not for my sake, for the chap who spilled it to me.”

“I’m cool, Burt, you know that.”

He nodded emphatically.

“I do,” he said. “It seems the forensic accountants, going through Jonathan’s financial records, determined that a few days before he was killed he used substantial assets from his cash reserves at Eagle to take positions within three sub-accounts.”

“Substantial?”

“Seven figures substantial. Given that there was no other accounting irregularity, this stuck out. Apparently, Jonathan was scrupulous in his bookkeeping. Had a very straightforward, conservative methodology. Left little room for shenanigans. So, this big transfer stuck out.”

I struggled to remember Jackie’s explanation of Jonathan’s system, trying to visualize the structure in my mind.

“The cash account was a just a big pool that held all the money that flowed in and out of the sub-accounts. Just a holding tank. As long as the in and out is tracked and accounted for, doesn’t mean a thing.”

“That’s right.”

“So this big transfer could have been a routine occurrence. He was just caught between moves. If he hadn’t been killed, he would have reconciled everything. Nothing illegal in that.”

“Not at all. Especially when you consider that a sizeable percentage of that cash account belonged to Jonathan himself. With his wife. More than enough to cover the transfer to Butch. It was his money, theoretically. Could do anything he wanted with it.”

“So why did the forensic accountants think it was important?”

Burton shrugged.

“He’d never done it before. At least never with numbers that large. That’s what they look for. Anomalies. Deviations from patterns. Hiccups in the system. This was a very big one.”

“Who owned the three sub-accounts?”

“Butch Ellington for one. That I remember. The other two names are in a file back at the house.”

“Neville St. Clair and Hugh Boone.”

“Something like that. Interesting names.”

I started getting the feeling I used to get when troubleshooting process systems, that I’d solved the problem but didn’t know it yet. That my unconscious had already drawn the conclusion, and was now just hanging around waiting for the cognitive department to catch up. I drank some of the vodka to hasten the transition.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why indeed.”

“The Feds have released all those assets. Who picked up the shortfall?” I asked.

“Jonathan’s estate. As I said, he had more than enough to cover the delta.”

Some time during the conversation another mounded plate of pasta and seafood appeared in front of me. I only noticed it when I caught myself pulling on the edge of the tablecloth so hard I was dragging everything across the table.

“Who authorized that?” I asked, though I already knew.

“The lawyer for the estate. Szwit. Gabriel Szwit. Has an office in the Village. A good litigator, they say. He’s done some pro bono for this little effort I set up with the public defenders office in Suffolk County.”

I got up from the table and walked over to the window that faced the ocean. A warm damp sea breeze was drifting in through the screens. The ocean looked docile, with only tiny breakers staggering in to shore. A good day to be on the beach. Comatose in a lounge chair, under an umbrella, mind blank, heart at rest.

I asked him what else he had, and we went through some complicated machinations the investigators had used to look for other blips in Jonathan’s behavior patterns, only to come away admiring his skill and honesty.

“Accounting involves a lot more gray area than most people would want to think. There’re conservative and aggressive ways to go about things. Jonathan was very clever, but completely honest.”

“Or would have been if he hadn’t been a complete fraud.”

“Precisely. Completely baffled the investigators.”

I went back to the table and sat down.

“There’s something else I find interesting,” said Burton, “but I’m not sure why.”

“Okay”

“Do you know how an Internet search works?”

“Not exactly.”

“It’s very useful, but somewhat random. Odd items pop up, simply because the word or words you’re searching for appear in an online database.”

“I’m already lost.”

“If you do a search on Arthur Eldridge, the brother, you’ll see he was a witness in an open court proceeding, duly recorded and logged on the court’s website. It was a bail hearing involving an Italian national.”

“Osvaldo.”

Burton looked pleased.

“That’s exactly right. I have the file at the house, but as I remember his full name is Osvaldo Allegre. At issue was a complaint that Mr. Allegre had molested a teenage girl. Arthur and Dione Eldridge were listed as witnesses, though all testimony was sealed, given the girl’s age. But you can surmise it was good enough to charge the Italian, because the judge set a trial date. Which never happened, because about a week before the trial Allegre jumped bail and disappeared. The case was referred to the INS, but that was the end of that.”

I got up again and went back over to the window. The ocean was still there, still calm. The few clouds that had been over the horizon had dissolved away.

“You find that interesting, too,” said Burton. “Or else you’ve been drinking too much coffee.”

“You can’t drink too much coffee, Burt,” I said, still looking out the window. Then I asked him, “Didn’t you once tell me, just because you think it’s true doesn’t mean it isn’t?”

“Yes. Quoted from a former law professor.”

“What if everything you think is true, isn’t? Is that the corollary? What if everything you thought was wrong?”

“At least you’d be consistent.”

I hung out with him until we finished lunch. By then the conversation had moved off Jonathan Eldridge and on to baseball. Neither one of us would watch a game on television, so we agreed on the need to go to Yankee Stadium to see for ourselves the performance capabilities of some recent trades we’d read about in the Times. Burton said he’d call me with some options on dates and match-ups.

“I’ll keep my calendar clear,” I said.

“Splendid.”

We walked out together and I dropped him off at his car, a white, early 1980s Ford Country Squire with fake wood paneling. The rear seats were folded down and the back was filled with garden tools, bags of topsoil and a tray of red and yellow chrysanthemums that Burton was apparently going to plant in some remote corner of the estate reachable only by station wagon.

“I hope I was helpful,” he said as he climbed into the car.

“You always are, Burt,” I said. “At the very least you keep me fed.”

“You seem better, in general, than you’ve been,” he said, squinting against the bright sun, “but specifically out of sorts.”

I leaned on the door panel.

“I’ve been on a program of self-improvement.”

“Has anything improved?”

“Just my appreciation for the stupidity of self-improvement programs.”

“So there you are. Progress.”

—

I waited until he was all the way off the grounds and onto Gin Lane before going back into the clubhouse to call Joe Sullivan. They’d released him from the hospital to convalesce at home, but I knew there was an odds-on chance I’d catch him at his desk at police headquarters.

“So, how’re you feeling?” I asked when he answered the phone.

“I’m breathing.”

“You working regular hours?”

“Ross said I could do half days. Still putting in a whole shift.”

“So you could leave anytime you want? You could say you felt crappy and needed to go home?”

“Is that what I’m going to do?”

“Instead of going home, meet me at my place. It’ll take me about a half-hour to get there.”

“Anything else you want to tell me?”

“Are you allowed to carry?”

“No reason why I shouldn’t,” he said, defensively.

“Bring it,” I said, then hung up on him so he wouldn’t keep asking me questions.

On the way home I drove through the parking lot behind Gabe’s office, but his Jag was gone. I went up the stairs to double-check, but the outside door was secured with a hasp and a beefy combination lock. I couldn’t see through the glazed window pane, so I left.

Probably halfway to Argentina by now.

I stopped at the corner place to get some hazelnut coffee to counteract the two Absoluts I’d had with Burton. The shop was full as it always was that time of year with graceful young women in translucent sarongs and distracted-looking middle-aged couples fresh off the beach, eating a late lunch or scanning the real-estate flyers for hopes and dreams. It took me a while to get to the counter.

The tiny Central American lady who’d been serving me for over five years asked how I was doing. A first. I guess she was feeling a little homesick for the off season. I answered her in Spanish which made her perk up even more. I apologized for my lousy grammar. She said I spoke like they did in Madrid, only not as well.

“Es sólo importante tratar,” she said, handing me my change.

“It is,” I agreed, “and that’s what I’m going to do.”

—

Joe and Eddie were waiting for me out in the Adirondacks when I got to the cottage. Sullivan was drinking one of my beers in more or less the same position I’d found him in the last time, only less bloody and apparently wide awake.

I stopped in the kitchen to get a beer of my own. Leaning against the screen door was an envelope from an overnight delivery service. I brought it out with me to the Adirondacks.

“I didn’t know they delivered all the way out here,” said Sullivan, nodding at the envelope.

“Yeah. Causes quite a stir in the neighborhood.”

I pulled out a stack of papers with a postcard on top.

Your lawyer is sweet. How did that happen? What’s up with this stuff? You owe me big time. I’m cashing in next week. Tell Eddie to get the hell off my pillow.

Jackie’s search had produced more material than I needed, so I had to shuffle through a lot of extraneous paper until I found what I was looking for.

“What’s all that?” Sullivan finally asked, his patience wearing thin.

“Census data. They collect it in big surveys once every decade. Mandated by the Constitution.”

“So that’s why I’m over here? You gonna survey me?”

“Drink your beer and give me a minute.”

At the top of one of the census reports was a note from Jackie via Allison:

Alena gave me addresses and phone numbers.

The addresses are post-office boxes. The phone numbers go to answering machines. Alena said they conducted business entirely through back-and-forth messages. I see what you’re getting at. It pisses me off when you don’t share anything until after the fact. By the time you get this I’ll be heavily sedated. Don’t wake me up.

There was more in the envelope that might have been interesting, but I had enough. I had what I wanted.

I put my hand on Sullivan’s forearm.

“Can you just stay put for a few minutes while I go talk to Amanda? I’ll get you another beer.”

He frowned at me.

“I can get my own damn beer. Go ahead. I’ll still be here. Especially if somebody stabs me again.”

“You have a cell phone?” I asked him.

“Who doesn’t?”

“What’s the number?”

I whistled for Eddie to follow me over to Amanda’s house. Her car was in the driveway, but she wasn’t out on her chaise. I rang the bell and she answered wearing a terry cloth bathrobe.

“Well, hello,” she said. “I was about to get dressed. Should I not bother?”

“Not in front of the dog,” I said, walking past her into the house. “Actually, what I’d like is for you to take the dog and drive directly to Burton’s house. Stay there until I call. Tell him I’m with Sullivan and to keep you safe until he hears from me.”

“You’re frightening me,” she said.

“Sorry. Just a precaution.”

“Where are you going?”

“To test a theory.”

“That clears that up.”

“Can you go?”

“I guess. Just don’t wait too long to call. Burton’ll be worried. I’ll be worried. I’m worried now.”

I put my arm around her shoulders and gave a squeeze.

“What’s to worry?” I asked.

“I know the risks you take.”

“I’ve got Sullivan with me. Nobody’s stupid enough to mess with a cop.”

I left her and Eddie and went to retrieve Sullivan before Burton’s expensive beer put him to sleep. Though first I had to stop at my house to make a phone call.

A man answered the phone.

“Neville St. Clair?” I asked.

It was quiet on the other end of the line for what seemed a long time.

“Or do you prefer Hugh Boone?” I asked.

“Who is this?”

“Sam Acquillo.”

There was some more silence.

“What do you want?” he said, flatly.

“To meet. Talk about it.”

“Tell me now.”

“You’ll have to meet me.”

“Where?”

I told him to go to Appolonia’s. He didn’t need directions.

“Why now?” he asked.

“Sorry, but it’s a one-time offer. Now or never.”

It was silent again for a moment.

“So you’re saying I haven’t a choice.”

“Not really.”

He hung up the phone. I didn’t know what that meant, so I let it go at that and went out to get Sullivan. I was able to pile him into the Grand Prix and get underway before I had to tell him where we were going.

“To see the spooky lady who’s afraid of the whole world. Appolonia Eldridge.”

“Now I know why I needed the piece.”

“Not for her, it’s the housekeeper you have to worry about.”

I had an approximation of a plan, though I didn’t think it would work. Way too many variables dependent on luck. And timing I couldn’t control. Very incompatible with an engineer’s precise calculations. Though it didn’t have to work all the way. No matter what, something would happen. The fuse was already lit.

The day was getting hotter; the breeze had died off and it felt like vapor was rising from the scorched ground. Sullivan was coming to grips with the Grand Prix’s lack of air-conditioning. Luckily there was so much wind noise inside the car I didn’t have to listen to him bitch about it.

We went out to Route 27, then up Route 24 past the big white duck, the pride of Flanders, then on to the incongruous four-lane road whose original purpose was probably lost in the misty legends of the Department of Transportation. From there over to Appolonia’s barren, treeless neighborhood. We were the first to get there, assuming anyone else would show up. At least I could be reasonably sure Appolonia was there, so we’d have somebody to talk to. Before we rang the doorbell I gave Sullivan a five-minute version of what I thought could happen, and why.

“You’re telling me this now?” he asked.

“I could have left you out. I thought you should be here.”

“I’m supposed to thank you.”

“Unless I got it wrong, in which case, you’re here to arrest me, so it won’t be a total waste of time.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said, hauling his sore gut out of the Grand Prix.

Belinda answered the door, peering at us under the security chain.

“You didn’t call,” she said.

“Sorry. But we need to see Mrs. Eldridge.”

“You can’t come in unless you call.”

Sullivan held up his badge and ID.

“I’m a police officer, ma’am. We’re here to see Mrs. Eldridge. It’s important. May we come in?”

That had an impact on her, but she wasn’t ready to cave.

“I need to talk to the lawyer.”

“No, you don’t,” I said, in a voice loud enough to hear in downtown Riverhead. “You need to tell Mrs. Eldridge that we’re here, and you need to do it now.”

“Belinda, for pity’s sake, let them in,” I heard Appolonia call from the living room.

The door shut, then reopened with the chain off. Belinda backed in as she opened the door. I kept Sullivan between us. He had the gun.

Appolonia was where I’d last seen her, perched more than seated in the high-backed stuffed chair, a book open in her lap. She was wearing a light coral cashmere sweater, clasped at the neck with a tiny silver chain, and black slacks. Her feet were tucked up under her butt.

“Mr. Acquillo. And?”

“Officer Joe Sullivan. Southampton Town Police.”

She shook his outreached hand.

“Nice to meet you,” said Sullivan. “Thanks for letting us in. Nice house.”

“Sam told me about you. Said I’d like you.”

“You have a good memory,” I told her.

“Not hard when it’s so little taxed. What’s the occasion?”

“I’m sorry to just bust in on you like this, but there’re some things we have to talk about.”

“Sounds rather grave. Does that explain the reinforcements? Come, sit.”

Sullivan looked like he’d have been a lot happier standing, but sat anyway on the edge of the Victorian love seat. I took the other high-backed chair.

“I don’t have a lot of time to get into long explanations, not now anyway,” I said to her. “I’m sorry for that.”

If this was alarming her, it didn’t show, beyond the simple gesture of closing her book, after carefully marking her place with a slip of paper, and putting it on a side table.

“Very well. Should Gabe be here?” she asked.

“Well, that’s the first thing. You’re going to have to fire him.”

“Really. How so?”

“He’s been defrauding you and misrepresenting himself. For starters.”

“You know this?”

I looked over at Sullivan. He nodded convincingly.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid so.”

“Dammit.”

You couldn’t get any whiter than Appolonia, so she wasn’t turning white. But maybe a little pink was creeping up into her cheeks. Probably good for her.

“You have worse news than that?” she asked.

“I don’t know if worse’ is the word. Different.”

She put her fingertips up to her mouth.

“You know who killed Jonathan.”

“I have a theory.”

“Yes, of course. You’re the scientist.”

“But I need your help to prove it out.”

I realized that Belinda was in the room with us. Had likely been there all along, only now she was close enough to hear the conversation. I pointed to her with my thumb.

“Belinda should be out of the room, and out of the foyer. Another person should be arriving shortly. Officer Sullivan needs to answer the door.”

“Who on earth would that be?” asked Appolonia.

By now she’d realigned herself on her chair, leaning forward, her bare feet side by side on the Chinese rug. I saw her as a young girl, self-conscious and withdrawn, but aware of the world. Amusing herself with an internal monologue, satirizing and excoriating people she knew—teachers, aunts and uncles, nannies—people unaware of her gift for insight, her busy contemplative mind. They wouldn’t know because she’d never allow them to. For Appolonia, thought by definition must be private. Contained and secure within a sealed chamber. A safe haven where both the fruits of perception and passion could be allowed full expression.

Her parents’ death may have been the deciding event in condemning her to complete isolation, but only in hastening the inevitable. Serving up a ghastly, but welcome rationale. An objective, identifiable cause for the foregone effect.

Because Appolonia gloried in the ice castle of her mind. A luminous, precisely organized mind that should have been able to recognize that no one can separate themselves entirely, and forever, from the hot and messy, chaotic reality just outside those castle walls.

“Jonathan Eldridge. Your husband.”

Appolonia clamped a hand across her mouth and lurched back into her chair, drawing her feet up off the floor as if the rug had just burst into flames. Her eyes opened to the whites. I sat quietly, waiting for her to catch her breath. She slapped her hand down to her lap.

“You are very cruel. How dare you say such a thing.”

“You didn’t know,” I said, not as a question, but an answer.

“He was killed.”

“Lots of people were killed. And one was damaged in a way that she’ll never fully recover from, even after they put her face back as close as they can to what it used to look like.”

And somebody else would never be the same. Me, as it turns out. I’d have to live with the sight of the orange flames consuming the interior of that black Lexus with its desperate and agonized human cargo, and the jolt of horror when my somnambulant brain finally processed what was happening, the desperate hope clutching my heart as I threw Jackie across the big table, and the regret later that maybe I’d saved her life, but that was all I could save. Only her, and not the four innocent people who were only having a pleasant cocktail on an outdoor deck, and the waitress whose only thought was keeping our drinks filled and picking out which of us was most likely to leave a decent tip. And the manager of the place, counting the till, trying to calculate the size of the impending dinner crowd. All those people who were atomized and sprayed across the harbor shore because I only had time to save a single person.

And myself.

Appolonia nearly jumped out of her chair when the doorbell rang. Sullivan stood up quickly and pulled his Smith & Wesson out of the holster under his arm. He took Belinda by the elbow and propelled her out to the foyer and into the kitchen. I stood up, too, between the door and where Appolonia was sitting. I could hear her behind me, making little breathing sounds and whispering words I couldn’t make out. Sullivan opened the door with his right hand, stepping back and covering the entrance with the gun held in his left.

“Hands where I can see them,” said Sullivan. “Step forward slowly. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I never do anything stupid,” said Butch Ellington as he walked into the living room. “Insane, maybe, but never stupid.”