Amagansett (21 page)

The main danger now was that Gayle would return, catch them in the act, and have to be won over. Fortunately, as they later discovered, she had chosen to go home with the handsome but dull copyright lawyer who’d been making a play for her at the dinner dance.

As instructed, they kept to the back roads until clear of Southampton. Soon after, they telephoned Richard at the house. He gave them the address of the gas station in Jamaica Bay, where they were met by the two men.

Manfred waited a couple of days before informing the garage
that housed and serviced the Chrysler that it had broken down on the outskirts of the city, by which time he had received details of where it could be found. The Chrysler was duly towed back into the city, its bodywork as new, but with a clogged carburetor.

As long as they all stuck to the story, there was no reason it shouldn’t hold up. No one could attest to Manfred and Lillian’s presence in East Hampton during the critical, incriminating early hours of Sunday morning; and the temporary absence of the Chrysler could now be convincingly accounted for.

That was pretty much the last they heard of the matter. A few weeks later, Justin was visited by a local cop following up on the case, working his way through the guest list for the Devon Yacht Club dinner dance. Justin confirmed that Manfred and Lillian had visited him a little after nine on the Saturday night in question, returning to their house on Further Lane less than an hour later—well before the time of the girl’s death.

And that had been that; at least until Lillian had started behaving strangely. Now the ghost of Lizzie Jencks was back to haunt him in yet another guise—that of a local fisherman—only this time it just didn’t make any goddamn sense.

‘It doesn’t make any goddamn sense,’ said Manfred, lighting another cigarette off the first, not wanting to mess around with matches in the stiff breeze coming off the ocean and rustling the leaves above their heads.

‘It makes sense, we just can’t see it yet.’ Richard paused, thoughtful. ‘How does he know? Either you told him, I told him, or Justin did.’ He paused. ‘Or he heard it from Lillian.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying he wasn’t there when it happened; otherwise why wait till now to say something?’

Richard paced back and forth for a while, as he often did when working through problems.

‘Yes. Why wait till now? That’s the key. Because he’s only just found out. But how?’

‘All I’m hearing is more questions.’

Richard ignored him, pacing, pacing, head bowed. He stopped abruptly and looked up.

‘You know, I doubt he really knew for sure, just enough to bluff it out of you.’

‘I didn’t admit to anything. I didn’t
say
anything.’

Not true. He had messed up with that line about hurling accusations around.

Richard must have read the lie in his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘He would have known from your look when he sprang her name on you.’

Manfred stared at the ocean. ‘Christ, what have we done, Richard?’

‘No more than we had to. It’ll be all right.’

‘I’ll pay you whatever it takes.’

A cloud of disappointment passed across Richard’s face. ‘It’s not about the money, Manfred. It never has been.’

Richard looked away suddenly, as if embarrassed by his words.

‘I need time to think this through,’ he said, ‘find out more about this Conrad Labarde.’

‘He’s a veteran, I can tell you that.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He’s got a regimental tattoo on his arm, some kind of arrowhead, a red arrowhead.’

‘Are you sure? A red arrowhead?’

‘Yes I’m sure. Why?’

‘It’s nothing,’ said Richard, not wholly convincingly.

Conrad knew something was wrong when Rollo failed to show for work first thing Monday morning. He was never late. If anything, he was early. Conrad would often wake to find him sitting on the deck, waiting patiently, whittling a piece of driftwood or just staring into the distance.

Maybe he was ill. Unlikely. Conrad couldn’t remember the last time he’d been sick.

The answer arrived as he was finishing his breakfast. Two trucks pulled up beside the house. Four men got out. And Conrad knew immediately that he was in for a hard time.

He nodded at Rollo’s father. ‘Ned.’

‘Conrad.’

The other men cast their eyes around the buildings. None of them had visited before now; they’d never had reason to. Cap’n Jake Van Duyn showed particular interest in the barn, which was hardly surprising, seeing as his brother had sold it to Conrad a little over a year before.

‘Looks okay,’ he said.

He was a kindly man, blunt-spoken and fiercely proud of his Dutch origins. When he was in liquor he still railed against the politicians back home who had sold his ancestors down the Hudson River, trading New Amsterdam to the English for a handful of spice islands in the East Indies.

‘You know Jacob, Francis, Edwin,’ said Ned.

‘Sure.’ Though not well enough to call them by their Christian names. The familiarity of the introductions had an ominous ring to it.

‘You want some coffee?’

‘We’ll not stay long,’ said Ned.

‘Coffee would be good,’ said Cap’n Jake.

‘Why not?’

‘Sure.’

Ned wasn’t happy about being overruled, but he didn’t protest.

Conrad felt curiously detached serving coffee to the headmen of the oldest Amagansett clans. The Kemps, Paines, Songhursts and Van Duyns were known as the First Four. It was their forebears who had settled the village, dividing up the land amongst themselves, land that would prove to be the mainstay of their families’ enduring wealth and influence.

If the Gardiners—with their island out in the bay, a manor held by royal grant since the earliest days of settlement—represented the aristocracy, then the men sitting around Conrad’s table were the gentry of Amagansett. Other families had come and gone over the centuries, some even challenging their ascendancy, but they had ridden out the years ahead of the herd.

There was nothing overt about the hold they exercised over the village. Like the wind that turned the blades of the artesian wells and twisted the weathervanes, you couldn’t actually see it, but you knew it was there. It percolated the village, touching councils, committees, the schoolboard, even the Ladies’ Society of Busy Workers.

And like the wind, if it turned on you, if it really turned on you, there was nowhere it couldn’t reach.

‘You have any idea why we’re here?’ asked Ned.

‘Sure he does.’

Conrad looked Frank Paine hard in the eye. He was known for chewing cloves to hide the smell of alcohol on his breath. He was doing it now.

‘The girl who drowned,’ said Ned. ‘Rollo’s got it stuck in his head it don’t add up.’

‘Yeah?’

‘That’s what he says. Says she couldn’t have drowned where they say she did and ended up off the beach here. Says the set was too strong, she’d have been carried a ways down.’

‘The ocean can do strange things,’ said Conrad. ‘Remember Elsie Bangs.’

Elsie Bangs was a neighbor of Sam Ockham’s down at Lazy Point who’d gone clamming at the mouth of Napeague Harbor one evening a few years before the war. Her family went hungry that night. It was assumed that she’d lost her footing near the edge of the deep channel and gone under. She certainly drowned. Two weeks later her badly decomposed body was washed ashore at Dead Man’s Hole on the back side. She was identified by a stocking garter stitched for her in school by her daughter.

Once people had overcome their surprise at the idea of Elsie wearing stockings to go clamming, they began remarking on the extraordinary journey her body had taken. Against the prevailing currents she had traveled east, past the Montauk fishing village at Fort Pond Bay, rounding Montauk Point and bearing west along the ocean shore, hugging the bluffs, before being cast up at Dead Man’s Hole, a distance of some fifteen nautical miles from where she’d disappeared.

‘It ain’t often the ocean plays tricks like that,’ said Edwin Songhurst, old but not yet stooped, still husky and raw-boned.

‘Take your brother,’ added Ned. ‘He showed up right where we said he would.’

Not exactly true. One small part of Antton—an arm, one shoulder and his head, all still attached to each other, but barely—had been washed ashore a little to the east of the area they’d been searching in.

‘Why’d you go at Charlie Walsh over them earrings off the girl?’ asked Frank Paine.

Conrad turned to him. ‘What would you have done? Pocket them yourself?’

‘Let’s keep this civil,’ said Ned. ‘We know you knew her, Conrad. Rollo saw you two together.’

Conrad tried to think straight, but failed, his thoughts collapsing in on themselves.

‘When?’ he asked.

‘It don’t matter when.’

‘He’s no cause to lie.’

‘And nor do you.’

It can’t have been rehearsed, but it worked—a gentle yet firm assault on all fronts, each chipping in their bit, having their say.

‘Yeah, I knew her.’

It explained a lot, Rollo knowing. It explained his reaction when they’d pulled Lillian from the ocean—silent, shrinking, living Conrad’s horror. It explained his blind fury when he came to Conrad’s aid in the parking lot at Oyster Hall, and his attentiveness in the following days. It explained a lot he should have picked up on before, but hadn’t, and he wondered what else he’d missed.

The current, for one. If Conrad knew her body should have been carried further eastward by the longshore drift, then Rollo certainly did. He could read the waters off the back side better than anyone.

‘Where’s Rollo?’ he asked.

‘He’s okay,’ said Ned. ‘A little upset is all.’

‘How’s that?’

‘I had to work it out of him. He’s been acting odd for a bit now; was worse than ever Saturday after you two went tuna fishing.’

‘Yeah?’

‘He thinks you’ve got a problem with the girl’s brother.’

‘Her name’s Lillian.’

‘Do you?’ demanded Cap’n Jake.

Conrad felt a sudden urge to unburden himself, but as he looked into their eyes he saw what he already knew: that they hadn’t come here for him, they’d come here for themselves.

‘Yes, I knew Lillian Wallace,’ he said. ‘As for the rest, I couldn’t say; you’ll have to take it up with Rollo.’

‘What passed between you and this…Lillian is your business,’ said Cap’n Jake. ‘Anything else is ours too.’

Conrad got to his feet. ‘Are we done here?’

‘Not if that’s your attitude,’ said Frank Paine.

Conrad fastened his eyes on him. ‘You don’t understand. I’m asking you to leave.’

Glances were exchanged, but what could they do? A man was entitled to call the shots in his own home.

Conrad made a point of holding the door open for them. Ned lingered while the others headed to the trucks.

‘I done some asking,’ he said. ‘They’re rich folk them Wallaces, powerful folk, with pull. You think we don’t already have us enough problems with that bill comin’ up in Albany?’

‘This isn’t about fishing.’

‘You’re a fisherman. You do anything rash, we all look bad. You know that.’

In the last year there’d been a marked rise in hostilities between the local fishermen and the recreational anglers, who had taken to dumping scrap iron in the favored dragging spots so the nets got hung up and torn. Gear left on the beach overnight would be sabotaged. Any kind of retaliation had the sports racing for the State Assembly in Albany, like the school bully running to teacher with a bloody nose. Just the month before, Seth Tuttle had taken a knife to the tires of a surfcaster’s sedan. The lawyers pushing for the bass bill were all over it still.

‘They’ll bend it any way they like if you give ‘em the excuse,’ said Ned.

‘They don’t need an excuse. One thing I’ve learned: money takes what it wants then comes back for more.’

‘We’ll beat them.’

‘This year, maybe. Next, too. But they’ll keep coming back, they’ll win in the end, they always do.’

Ned glanced over at the others waiting in the trucks.

‘I’m sorry for the girl,’ he said, looking back. ‘I am. But if anything happens to Rollo, you’ll have me to answer to.’ He paused. ‘You put a mark on my word, you hear me?’

Conrad nodded.

‘He won’t be pitchin’ up for work no more. If he shows, you turn him away.’

The moment the trucks left, Conrad felt the strength drain out of him through his boots. He set about tidying away the cups, but found himself reaching for a chair and slumping into it.

Rollo was the closest thing he had to kin. He was alone—the way it had to be, he knew that—but he hadn’t seen it hitting so hard. At least it had come from Ned, at least he’d been spared the task of driving Rollo off. His plan had been to lie, fall back on the ribs as an excuse, to suggest they take a break for a week or so while he fully recovered, by which time it should all be over.

He had played the scene with Rollo in his head, but he hadn’t thought about how it might hit him. There was no solace in the seclusion, just one scrap of comfort: Rollo was safe now; he couldn’t be damaged by the misfortune that seemed intent on dogging Conrad, circling him, sparing him while picking off those around him, almost in mockery.

He had never discussed it with anyone, fearing that his words would only breathe more life into the specter. It was the men of his Company in Italy who had first forced the issue into the open.

He wasn’t the only one to survive the grueling assault on Monte la Difensa—their first bitter taste of combat in Italy—but few who had been in the thick of the fight had emerged completely unscathed. Twice he’d been lifted clear off his feet by the vacuum of a shell from an enemy 88 snapping past his head. He had cowered like all the others as lead from the MG-42s tore into the icy rock around them, but not once had he been so much as nicked by one of the lethal shards of flying granite. He had seen the aluminum fin of an enemy shell embed itself in the forehead of a man crouching beside him in a German slit trench they’d only just occupied; and against all apparent logic he’d witnessed a good friend disappear in a plume of scarlet vapor when the fellow was standing further from the mortar burst than himself.

At night, the time when they did most of their work, it was as if an invisible hand was swatting away the tracer bullets arcing through the darkness towards him, like shooting stars fallen to earth. One time, returning from a raid, he had been bounding over the rocks back to his lines when he collided with an enemy soldier
coming in the opposite direction. Thrown to the ground, they both spilled their weapons in the darkness. The German was first to react, snatching up the nearest gun, which happened to be Conrad’s M-1, beating him to the draw. The M-1 jammed. The German’s Schmeisser didn’t.

‘You’re one lucky sonofabitch,’ Dexter had remarked one night during a welcome lull between barrages. By now they had secured the summit, repelling numerous German counterattacks, and were preparing for an assault on the saddle below so the British could have a crack at the peak of Monte Camino. It was a cold night with a light sleet falling and they were hunched beneath their ponchos, spread out in foxholes along the first line of defense.

‘I want her number, Labarde,’ called Crane.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Your fairy godmother.’

‘Me, I got a lucky rabbit’s foot,’ came another voice.

‘Not so l-l-l-ucky for the goddamn r-r-r-abbit.’

The laughter built quickly along the line until they were all creased up—young men; boys, most of them—finding a vent for their confusion and fear.

Maybe the German forward observers heard them, maybe not, but the mortars started landing again. They really worked them over this time. When it was done, the joker in the night—the stocky lumberjack from Wyoming with the stammer—had bought it from a direct hit.

Dexter hurried over to his foxhole to check on him. ‘He’s like God.’

‘You mean
with
God,’ said someone.

‘I mean God is everywhere.’

Not long after, with their combat casualty rate nudging sixty per cent, they were pulled out of the mountains and assigned to the thirty-two-mile-long stalemate that was the Anzio beachhead. Caught unawares by the amphibious landing deep behind their lines, the German army had soon retrenched and began throwing everything they had at the Allied forces, intent on driving them back into the sea. Penned in like cattle in a narrow corral, they
were strafed and bombed from the air. Long-range 88mm and 170mm artillery shells rained down on them day and night, as did the flak from their own anti-aircraft guns, almost as deadly.

That first month, shell fragments accounted for almost all of their casualties. When a lone shell burst killed the three Canadians with whom Conrad was playing a game of horseshoes one dismal gray afternoon, the other men in the outfit began avoiding him.

No one ever voiced it straight to his face. They didn’t need to; it was clear what they were thinking. In its apparent eagerness to spare Conrad, Death seized those around him instead. Even the young, poorly trained replacements shipped in to bolster their dwindling ranks knew of his reputation and kept their distance.

Only the Professor sought out his company, and then only in order to play chess. Driven below ground into the warren of trenches and dugouts by the constant aerial assaults, they relieved the torpor of static warfare by rigging radio sets from razor blades, using pilfered tank headsets to tune into ‘Axis Sally’s’ broadcasts. They made light of her taunts, while being strangely drawn to the sultry lilt of her voice. They speculated about her looks, settling on a pleasing confection of Jeanne Crain and Lana Turner—part girl-next-door, part smoldering temptress—and they described in salacious detail exactly what they would do if given a few hours alone with her in the suite of a top hotel. Above all, though, they tuned in to her because of the music. You might be huddled in a damp hole on the edge of the Pontine marshes, but thanks to Sally you could still listen to the very latest songs from back home. Their standing as a commando force to be reckoned with had been secured by their successful assault on Monte la Difensa, where the US 3rd Infantry, the 36th, and the British 56th had all tried and failed before them. They now raised that reputation further on both sides of the front line with their deep-penetration night raids out over the Mussolini Canal, stepping gingerly through the minefields, employing a little psychological warfare of their own, leaving calling cards on the foreheads of their unsuspecting victims emblazoned with the message: DAS DICKE ENDE KOMMT NOCH!—The Worst is Yet to Come.