Hard Stop (24 page)

“Don’t be so sure, Mr. Samuel,” she said, in an even lower voice. She gripped my forearm below my rolled up cuffs and squeezed.

“Mr. Sam. My mother thought ‘Samuel’ was too formal. Putting on airs.”

I pushed the rest of the way past her and got out of the apartment, down the elevator and out to the street where I’d left Eddie to guard Amanda’s pickup. He was barking out the window at a passing Pomeranian, who could have cared less.

I was eager to get away from that unsettling apartment but I needed to give Eddie a chance to sniff the crazy City smells and pee on interesting new things. A few blocks down the street I spotted another parking space and stopped.

It was still early, so after Eddie did his thing we were through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and halfway down the Island before the sun got above the smoky horizon. It was good to be driving counter to the commute, though I felt a
little guilty as I watched opposing traffic creeping toward another day of boredom and triumph and everything in between. I knew for sure that would never again be me.

As I drove along the Long Island Expressway, most of my mind was wondering around the life and death of Iku Kinjo and all the people who might have aided in one or the other. One little part of me was keeping track of the other cars on the highway until the persistent presence of a large black SUV in the rearview mirror made itself abundantly clear.

I instantly regretted leaving the Grand Prix at home. It wasn’t much of a car by modern standards, until you wanted sudden excessive acceleration on the open highway. Something the little red pickup could only do in its microprocessor-driven mechanical dreams.

So I took the opposite tack. I waited until I was approaching an exit ramp. Then I slipped up into the far left lane, with the SUV following me, and let off the accelerator, slowing the pickup to about forty-five miles an hour. This being the Long Island Expressway, where hurtling speed was the norm, order quickly deteriorated. Cars piled up behind the SUV, tail gating and beeping and otherwise expressing outrage, finally forcing the SUV to shift over to the right lane and pass.

I watched it race ahead, followed by the pent-up demand. As everyone roared by, I took the exit.

I drove the garish strip streets of Nassau County in a roughly westerly direction until I saw a sign for an on-ramp for the LIE. As further insurance, I stopped to get a cup of coffee and gave Eddie a chance to explore the native terrain. He never understood the point of a leash, and he looked at me disapprovingly whenever I pulled him back from a possible hazard, as if to say, “What do you think, I’m stupid?”

I just couldn’t take the chance he’d spot some exotic Nassau County creature, like a house cat or raccoon, and then we’d be off to the races.

When I got back to where I’d parked the pickup, Honest Boy Ackerman was sitting in the driver’s seat. The engine was running and the doors were locked. He opened the window a crack.

“What do you think,” he said, “I’m stupid?”

“Not entirely. You going to take my truck?”

“Only if you start hitting me.”

“I’m not going to hit you.”

“How do I know that?” he asked.

“I can’t punch through safety glass.”

That alarmed him.

“I’m not getting out if you’re going to hit me.”

I pulled out my cell phone, which Fate had directed me to put in my pocket before I got out of the truck. The same Fate who forgot to tell me not to leave my keys on the floor mat.

“Does 9-1-1 work on cell phones?” I asked as I poked at the keypad.

“Aw, Christ, don’t do that.”

I studied him through the window.

“What’s the deal, Honest Boy?”

“I just want to talk.”

I held up the cell phone.

“That’s what these are for,” I said. “In polite society we don’t stalk or steal the trucks of people we want to talk to.”

He huffed.

“Polite? Coming from you?”

“Actually, I can punch through safety glass.”

“You can?”

“It’s my girlfriend’s truck. It’d be hard to explain. But I’ll do it if you don’t get out of there in the next ten seconds.”

I gripped the door handle with my right hand, pulled back my left fist with the index finger in the air and said,

“One.”

“Don’t, don’t,” he said, ducking down his head and opening the door.

I let him out. Eddie jumped up and down, wagging his tail with the joy every new encounter brought. I still wanted to pop Ackerman one, as a matter of principle. Instead I leaned across and felt around the ignition for the keys. There were none.

I grabbed him by the jacket.

“Switch it off.”

Self-satisfaction galloped across his face.

“You don’t know how, Big-Time Engineer?”

I shook him.

“Switch it off.”

He pulled a little plastic cylinder out of his pocket. At one end was a button, which he pushed. The engine stopped. Then he pushed the button, and it started again.

“Over a hundred yard range,” he said.

I took it out of his hand, killed the engine and reached past him to open the hood. It was easy to see the fresh wiring running from a proverbial black box into the electronic ignition. I yanked it out.

“Cool, huh?” said Ackerman.

I wanted to smack him with it, but he looked like a kid more excited about making a bomb than sorry for blowing up the basement.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“I want to talk to you. I was about to wave you over when you started playing stall ball.”

“You just happened to follow me out of Manhattan. Coincidence.”

He smirked.

“Hell, no. I’ve been following you since we first met. Took you long enough to notice.”

“That doesn’t make me happy,” I said.

“’Course not. Why would it?”

“Fucking Judson.”

“That’s what I want to talk about. Fucking Judson. I’m sick of living like a mushroom. Kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’ve been following you, but I haven’t been reporting anything back. Not exactly. I make it up. Like when you went to visit Angel Valero, I said you were sitting in a bar in the Village. Judson’s always willing to believe you’re sitting in a bar.”

“How come?” I asked.

“You drink a lot.”

“How come you’re not reporting the truth?”

He ran a hand over his slicked-back hair, then over his face, stopping to rub his mouth. An extravagant gesture of ambivalence.

“I don’t know, Marve’s okay, I guess. He told me we’re a team. It’s just hard to play on a team when you don’t know what the game is. I got a brain, obviously,” he added, pointing to the tangle of multicolored wires in my hand, “but all he wants from me is muscle, which in your case is a little ridiculous, I think you’d agree.”

“So, what’re you proposing?” I asked.

“I just want to know what’s going on. Tell me and I’ll go away forever. Tell Judson to take this job and fuck himself with it.”

While we were talking, Eddie had leaped up into the pickup and was lying down on the seat, bored with the whole thing.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just looked at Ackerman’s pale, sweaty face and downturned, close-set eyes, fleshy cheeks and boneless chin.

“Okay, here’s what I know,” he said, as if that’s what I wanted him to say. “Somebody whacked Iku Kinjo, the consulting babe from Eisler, Johnson, and you found the body. The cops grilled your ass but cut you loose, so you’re not a suspect. For a change. Since then, you’ve been working people who knew her, so I’m figuring you want to find the whacker. What I don’t know is why Judson’s so damn interested. Nobody else at Con Globe seems to give a shit. Though maybe they should. Who knows what the Jap girl was up to. Except for senior management, which doesn’t include Judson, no matter what he thinks.”

“Japanese-African-American. A little respect, please.”

He tossed his head, like he was shaking a bug out of his ear. “Sorry. You’re right. Tragic thing.”

I dug a restaurant receipt out of my pocket and wrote the Pequot’s address on the back.

“Meet me here tonight at seven-thirty. We’ll talk. Meanwhile, stay out of my rearview mirror.”

He nodded as he studied the receipt.

“Absolutely. You’ll never see a thing. I’m a ghost.”

He backed up, waving his hands in front of him, conjuring his shield of invisibility. I watched him until he’d turned and waddled furtively—if such a thing is possible—across the parking lot and around the other side of the coffee shop.

“Sun Tzu,” I said to Eddie. “Friends close, enemies closer. If you’re not sure, take ’em out to dinner.”

He perked up at the word “dinner,” so I tossed him the last of the Big Dog biscuits I’d brought along and got underway. When I reached the highway, I called Sullivan.

“I have Elaine Brooks’s fingerprints,” I told him.

“On what?”

“My arm. If that’s too technical a challenge, I also have her china coffee cup.”

“I’ll take the cup.”

Traffic thinned as I cleared Nassau County and the western reaches of Suffolk. The day had started out grey and dispirited, but lightened up considerably as we crossed the pine barrens, still partially charred from a big fire several years before. Fresh green growth clustered around acres of burnt stalks that would likely stand until the next fire.

When I was a kid my father would try to search out ways around the two-lane tedium of the Sunrise Highway, then the standard route out to the South Fork, by heading north, inevitably plunging us into the pine barrens. I knew this was a fruitless strategy, having actually looked at a road map, something my father was determined never to do. In those days that area was so devoid of life I’d imagine we were sailing over a dark sea on the way to the Hampton Islands.

According to my sister, the trip in and out of the City was a regular thing, though I barely remember my father’s apartment in the Bronx. She thinks I blocked it out. If so, all the better.

What I did remember was more than enough.

I
HAD TO WAIT ALMOST
an hour at the coffee shop for Sullivan to show up. I killed the time reading a book Randall gave me called something like
Computers for Aging Morons
. The subject had come up way too often lately to ignore. The content wasn’t that challenging, but the terminology had changed a lot in the last ten years. At least it was a decent distraction from all the noisy coffee drinkers.

Randall’s book made me feel like a monk leafing through the
Kama Sutra
. “You can do that?” I kept asking myself, in amazement.

“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” said Sullivan, dropping down into the seat across the table.

“I could’ve used one of these back in the day,” I said, holding up the book. “Would’ve saved a lot of time.”

Sullivan scoffed.

“The more of this shit people have, the less time they got.”

“The law of unintended consequences.”

“Oh, it’s intended all right. Get everybody strung out on something that costs you more every year. Worse’n crack.”

I slapped the book shut.

“Whew,” I said. “That was close.”

He pointed at my coffee.

“Is that the cup?”

“It’s in the truck.”

I got up from the table, forcing him to follow. We scooped up Eddie and found the pickup.

“While I got you in a good mood,” I said, after giving him the cup, “I’m hoping you can let Honest Boy Ackerman back into town.”

The storm clouds behind his eyes darkened another shade.

“That chump.”

I told him about the encounter up island and the subsequent conversation.

“And you believe him?” he asked.

“I don’t know. But I can’t see the harm. I don’t have to tell him anything I don’t want to.”

He just walked away, shrugging his meaty shoulders.

“Come to dinner with us,” I called to him. “At the Pequot. Seven-thirty. You and Honest Boy can catch up on old times.”

I think I heard him say something like, “Yeah, maybe. We’ll see,” but I wasn’t sure. Though I felt a gentle stir in the vibe currents left in his wake, telling me to secure a big enough table for the three of us and the inevitable incursions of the proprietor and his idiosyncratic daughter.

I killed the rest of the day in my shop trying to stay ahead of the projects I’d promised Frank, and had to hustle over to Sag Harbor so I wouldn’t be late to meet Ackerman for dinner.
I was afraid to leave him alone with the regular Pequot clientele without an introduction.

The parking lot was full of pickups and ragged Japanese compacts, but no black SUVs. I let Eddie clear the lot of invisible antagonists, then lead the way into the restaurant. While he hit up the usual suckers for clams and French fries I grabbed a table next to the kitchen. Save Hodges a few steps.

“Did you know they flavor this stuff now? Lemon, orange, raspberry,” said Dorothy as she dropped my Absolut in front of me. “The salesman just talked my father into buying a case of each.”

“I thought you had a shotgun behind the bar.”

“That’s for mortal threats.”

“Exactly.”

I told her to bring an extra menu for a guy recently canned from the security department at my old company. She stood there waiting for me to flesh out the story, but after thinking about it, I didn’t know how.