Hard Stop (14 page)

“Sam Acquillo,” said Sullivan, the master of caller ID.

“I need you to get here first,” I said.

“Where?” he said the word slowly, already getting the import.

I gave him the address.

“I know Vedders. What are you doing there?”

“Time is important at a murder scene, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, again stretching out the word.

“So let’s talk when you get here. Bring everything and everybody you got. You’re going to need it.”

“Shit, Sam. What the fuck.”

“Like I said, try to get here ahead of the crowd. I like Will Ervin, but I don’t want to explain myself to a beat cop.”

“I’m already moving,” said Sullivan. “I’ll call you from the car.”

Time managed to slow enough for me to get a grip on my brain. It wasn’t the specific situation I had to worry about. It was all the specific situations that had come before. These things have a tendency to pile up. When the pile gets big enough you attract the interest of law enforcement. It’s understandable. All they’re doing is working the odds. I’d been able to beat those odds so far, but I knew statistical probability as well as the next engineer with a minor in physics from MIT.

When Sullivan called I described the scene as well as I could.

“And what are you doing there?” he asked again, his tone rhetorical.

“Looking for Robert Dobson. It’s his rental. He told me to stop by anytime. I wanted to ask him a few more questions, so I took him up on his offer. When I got here I knocked on the door and thought I heard someone call to come in. The door was unlocked, so I did. I walked around the place calling for whoever I thought had called to me. I thought I heard a sound coming from the lower level, so I went down there and discovered the body.”

“You need to get that hearing checked out. Along with your brain. Hearing voices is an indicator.”

“Good advice. I’ve had a history of that sort of thing. Can we talk about the important stuff now?” I asked.

“More important than keeping your ass out of jail?”

“Actually, yeah. Somebody’s daughter is dead. This is now your thing, too. We have a situation.”

“I hate that word. Situation.”

I sat on the ground and lit a cigarette, one of the three I’d brought along for the day. It seemed an appropriate use of rations. My nervous system had been geared up for lurking around Bobby’s rental, but not for finding a dead body. Least of all Iku Kinjo.

God forgive me, my reflex thought was of my own daughter, about Iku’s age, and in my mind far more vulnerable than the hard-driving management consultant. I willed those thoughts back into their special chamber and forced a more immediate issue to the fore.

George Donovan.

I knew I had to tell him, and the sooner the better. Preferably right at that instant before the world was flooded with cops, voyeurs and reporters. I really didn’t want to do it. Not on a cell phone. Even if I could reach him on the first shot, which was unlikely.

Do I leave a message?

I gave myself time to finish the cigarette, then I dialed his number.

“Hello there,” he said, to my surprise and regret. “Kind of an awkward time. Can I call you right back?”

“No. We need to talk now. With nobody around.”

“I see. Hold on a second.”

I could hear the sound of his hand muffling the phone and some indistinct conversation. A minute later he was back.

“You’re sounding serious,” he said.

“I’ve got news,” I said. “The worst news.”

“Oh, God.”

I didn’t know how he’d want to hear it, so I just told it straight.

“She’s been murdered. I found her myself a few minutes ago. In Southampton, just a mile or two from my house. The cops are on the way.”

He made a sound that might have been the word “why.” So I tried to answer.

“I don’t know why, or by who. She was stabbed. Pretty recently. I found her in the house rented by Robert Dobson.”

“The boyfriend,” said Donovan.

“Maybe her boyfriend. I’m not so sure. Listen, George,” I said before he could answer, “I’m sorry. I really am. It’s a terrible thing.”

Now it was more obvious that he was crying. I just sat there and listened to those unnatural, animal sounds.

“I better go,” he finally forced out. “I’ve got a half dozen people waiting outside my door. Call me tonight when you know more. We have to talk.”

Then he hung up.

I heard the first sirens coming in quickly from the south. I lit the second cigarette and leaned up against a tree. As I sat there the cloud cover gave way. The sun lit up the oak trees above my head and splattered puddles of light on the ground, casting a hard glare on the hoods of the flashing police cruisers as they swarmed into the little pond-side neighborhood, its reclusive anonymity a forgotten thing.

W
HEN
S
ULLIVAN ARRIVED
at Robert Dobson’s group rental he sat on the ground next to me and said it was time to catch Ross up. I knew that. Sullivan was too far out on a limb. I also needed to preserve some elbow room, especially now. The situation was way too complicated to get into a war with the cops.

So I put the call in to Jackie Swaitkowski, who was thrilled as always to hear we were on deck for a visit with the Southampton Town Police.

I’ve always had a deeper respect for law enforcement than our historical relationship would suggest. I know they have a hard job. I couldn’t do it. I don’t have the patience or the presence of mind. Or the focus.

What I’ve done to reconcile my beliefs with my behavior is make friends with cops and lawyers, thereby benefiting from both their wisdom and their largesse. While doing almost nothing to reciprocate.

An imbalance I most earnestly pledged to rectify, someday, as I sat with Jackie Swaitkowski in a windowless white room at a banged-up conference table.

Jackie was wearing a men’s button-down collar shirt with a bolo tie under a khaki suit, and a pair of cowboy boots. Lonesome lawyer of the high plains.

I was going to ask her if she had Trigger tied up outside, but decided it was better to stay friends, at least until we got through with Ross Semple and Lionel Veckstrom, the Chief of Police and the Chief of Detectives, respectively, who were sitting on the other side of the table.

Both had tried on more than one occasion to carve me up and serve me fricasseed to the wolves. Still, Ross I liked. Veckstrom, not at all.

“You’re in here so much we’re thinking of naming a new wing in your honor,” said Ross, lighting us both a cigarette and passing mine across the table.

“I didn’t know you were expanding,” I said.

“We’re not. But if we were, you’d be on the plaque.”

“It’d say ‘Asshole Numero Uno of Southampton,’” said Veckstrom.

“Bilingual,” said Jackie. “Must be handy with our new population specs.”

“You mean population Spics?” said Veckstrom.

Ross blanched.

“I’m impressed that he thinks that would bother us, because it does. Very perceptive,” I said to Ross. “Pero él todavía es un pedazo de mierda debajo los pies.”

“Speak French and I’ll be impressed,” said Veckstrom.

“Va se faire foutre,” said Jackie.

Veckstrom had been a brilliant detective in Lower Manhattan. He dressed like a dandy, disdained his fellow cops and cracked cases everyone else thought uncrackable.
He stayed on the job while going to law school at night, passed the bar, then inexplicably moved out to the Hamptons and went to work for Ross. It was harder to build a legend out here, but he’d tried hard enough by making me his special project. So far unsuccessfully, but then again, he was what he was. Another virtuoso shit who truly hated me.

“I don’t know about the three of you, but I’ve got other things to do today,” said Ross, scrounging around a soft pack of Winstons. “So what say we just get this done without all the parry and thrust.”

“No offense, boss,” said Veckstrom, “but don’t you have to thrust before you can parry?”

Ross’s look took the temperature of the room down about forty degrees. Veckstrom threw up his hands and sat back in his chair.

“So, Sam,” said Ross, lighting another Winston off the one he already had in his mouth. He shook one out for me. I took it and gave it to Jackie. Ross gave me another one and we all lit up.

“Could you people hang on there for a second while I go get an Aqua-Lung?” said Veckstrom.

“So, Sam,” Ross repeated, “what’s going on?”

“I’ve been talking to some of my old friends from Con Globe about getting back in the game. Carpentry’s honest work, but, you know, I used to drive a nice car and have a little leeway between hand and mouth.”

“Or foot in mouth,” said Veckstrom.

“Ross?” said Jackie.

“Shut up,” Ross said without looking at Veckstrom, who shrugged and sat back in his chair.

“Back in the day,” I went on, “there was this very smart young woman who worked with me on a project for my
company. We hit it off, professionally. I liked what she did and how she thought, and decided if I was going to try to get back in, I’d do what she did. Consult. Be a pro from Dover.”

“Iku Kinjo,” said Jackie, for the record.

“So I went to see her in the City, but they told me she’d basically gone AWOL. Never showed up for work one day, no word since. But they did tell me if I happened to run into her, have her call, yadda-yadda. This piqued my curiosity, of course. And you know how that goes,” I said to Ross.

“Unfortunately.”

“On a hunch I thought she might be hiding out in the Hamptons, so I started looking around for her. Nothing else to do, why not? Then I got a few leads, tracked down a friend of hers, went to call on him, and here we are.”

I sat back, leaving the hand with the cigarette on the table to flick ashes into the ashtray.

“What a crock,” said Veckstrom to Jackie.

Jackie looked at Ross.

“Do we always have to endure this charade of hostility?” she asked him.

“No charade,” said Veckstrom, convincingly.

“Any time you want, we can settle this outside,” said Jackie.

“I’m not afraid of the old rummy.”

“I’m not talking about him,” she said.

Ross liked that. He smiled and lit new cigarettes for everybody but Veckstrom, who looked half-asphyxiated already.

“Mr. Acquillo and Ms. Swaitkowski are here voluntarily, detective. We’re just havin’ a good old chat.”

Ross liked to affect what he thought was the manner of a pre–
Brown v. Board of Education
Mississippi sheriff, which was unconvincing from an overeducated, lifetime Long Islander.
None of Ross’s attempts at theatricality did anything but make him appear exactly as odd and ill-at-ease with social discourse as he truly was.

“I know the drill, boys,” I told them. “I’ll be available whenever you want to talk. If I think of anything else, I’ll call. If I learn anything that might help the case, I’ll call. Otherwise, I keep my nose out of it.”

“Huh,” said Ross.

Veckstrom looked skeptical, as did Jackie, which I hoped the other two didn’t notice.

“Okay?” I asked, stubbing out the cigarette and getting out of my chair.

“Just one thing,” said Ross, gravely.

I sat back down again. Jackie studied his face, holding her breath.

“What?”

“Tickets to the Police Ball. You have yours yet?” he asked Jackie.

“Christ, Ross. You know I do.”

“What about him?”

“Put two more on my tab,” said Jackie. “That’s the limit before a charge of official misconduct kicks in.”

We left Ross and Veckstrom in the interrogation room and cruised through the noisy squad room and back out into the intimidation-free air. I took a deep breath.

“Is Veckstrom a dickless prick or what?” Jackie asked.

“I think that question carries an interior contradiction.”

“Does this mean Sullivan’s already off the case?”

Joe and Veckstrom were Southampton’s only plainclothes-men, Sullivan being the junior partner. There was little love lost within the Detectives Unit.

“Nah. Ross always brings in Veckstrom for our little chats. It’s his good cop–dickless cop technique.”

“You need to be careful,” she told me. “Ross doesn’t like it when you lie to him.”

“I’m not lying. I’m just not sharing all the facts. I will when I can.”

“You’re not stopping, are you? How come? You did what Donovan asked you to do.”

She was right. That was the deal I insisted on with Donovan—that all I had to do was find Iku, dead or alive. But that was when she was just a memory of an ambitious young kid, compelling in her intelligence but hardly likeable. And then when Donovan talked about her, the memory turned into an abstraction, almost a fiction, as I tried to put the two of them together in my mind. The photo from Eisler’s annual report reinforced the illusion that she wasn’t quite real, that she was just an artifice conjured by the mind of an aging plutocrat and Randall Dodge’s computer wizardry.

It wasn’t until I saw her dead, now truly and irrevocably lost, that she became real. Lying there in her own blood, still a kid in my eyes, still ambitious and impatient, desperate to get to the next big thing.

I found a dead overachiever, an orphan, a tragic victim, but I still didn’t find her.

“It used to be about money,” I told Jackie. “Now it’s not.”

“What’s wrong with money?”

“Money’s good,” I agreed. “Sometimes.”

“If I heard your tape right, you’ve got some coming from George Donovan.”

“I told him about Iku. He wanted me to call later, but I can’t right now. We need time to figure out what happened.”

“We?”

I tightened her bolotie, then left her outside the station and went back to Oak Point and the Adirondacks on the
breakwater at the edge of the lawn. Eddie was glad to be out running around the place again, working out the kinks. I wished Amanda was there to sit with me, but she was busy with her construction projects and had enough on her mind without all this.

So I lay my head against the wooden slats and closed my eyes, feeling the faltering sun of early fall and the shifting winds off the bay. And then, for some strange and miraculous reason, I fell asleep. Something I almost never do in the middle of the day.