Ice Cap (2 page)

Almost a half hour later we reached the intersection of Montauk Highway and David Whites Lane. I asked Dayna to give me a few minutes to clean the ice pack off my wipers and the congealed snow and road grit out of the grille. It took longer than I hoped, hampered as I was by icy needles being driven into my face. I knew there were buildings on three corners of the intersection, but with night completely settled in, they only looked like ghostly shapes within the blustery haze. I made it back into the car thinking it may not ever be safe to emerge again.

“They're saying it's the blizzard of the century,” said Dayna over my exotic new smartphone, a type that provides everything short of teleportation. “Could get three feet, not including drifts. The governor's shut down the whole island. Nonessential travel's forbidden.”

“Sorry if this gets you in trouble.”

“I'm essential, honey. Which means you're also protected. It's like diplomatic immunity.”

“I know the cops around here pretty well,” I said. “Good luck with that one.”

Even with her heavy four-wheel-drive truck, knobby tires, and snowplow it was slow going. Every so often the load in front of the plow grew so large she had to increase the angle of the blade and shove it off to the side. Then we'd back up a little and take off again—her easing along what she hoped was the road surface, now completely obliterated by a blanket of deep snow, and me transfixed by the two red lights on her tailgate and the pale light over the truck's license plate that read
WOODCHIK.

I never would have made it without her. No way, no how.

“Wood Chick, you're the aces,” I told her over the phone, deciphering the vanity license plate.

“Now I'm embarrassed.”

“Don't be,” I said. “I'm just trying to be nice.”

“My own fault for plastering that name right on my ass. With encouragement from people I'd be better off ignoring.”

“I know people like that.”

“Tad's place is getting closer,” she said. “During the day we'd have a visual by now.”

She meant we could have seen one of the towering metal sculptures that comprised the loony installation Tad had created and named Metal Madness. The sculptures, mounted atop Tad's ersatz mountains, were built from twisted sheets of steel welded into abstract shapes that thrust high into the sky. And consequently, they are the latest cause for neighborhood angst and costly legal maneuvering, which I was grateful to leave behind, safe within my current career as a full-time criminal attorney.

Seven Ponds wasn't even a place name; it was just a few roads of the same or similar names that crisscrossed a semirural swath north of Southampton Village. And by my reckoning, there was only one pond named Seven Ponds, which must have been either an act of clever misdirection or the product of some ancient real-estate broker's imagination.

These days I'd call the area mixed use, with farms like Tad's mostly developed, and the remaining open land, preserved in land trusts, slowly succumbing to natural reforestation. The few auto-repair shops, roadside markets, and tractor dealers from back in the day were also taking on a disintegrating, superannuated hue.

Tad's place was at the northernmost limit of that area, describable as the foothills of a little forested ridge that runs down the spine of the South Fork. This meant that Dayna and I had a hard fight up a relatively modest grade, with lots of starting and stopping, punctuated by fruitless spinning of wheels, just as my surly father warned me about.

“A little less torque might help,” I said to Dayna over the phone. She grunted and proceeded slowly but relentlessly, with or without my advice. I followed in the same spirit.

After what felt like hours, because it almost was, we finally reached the head of the driveway that led into Tad Buczek's place and were heralded by the words
METAL MADNESS
punched out of a slab of aluminum that hung above the entrance.

“At least it's downhill from here on,” said Dayna after making a tentative run at the top of the driveway. “You ready?”

“I've waited all my life.”

“I could chain us together again, which might keep you from getting stuck, or just pick my way along in the hope you can keep a safe distance and stay under way.”

“That's what I've been doing,” I said.

“This is different. There're no road markers. I'll be driving blind.”

“Unchained sounds more like me,” I told her.

“Okay. Here we go.”

Dayna dropped the plow and turned into the driveway. It was the deepest snow we'd yet encountered, undisturbed by traffic of any kind. I could see all four wheels of the pickup throwing up tiny wakes, half spinning, half digging in. It wasn't a slow passage—Dayna needed the velocity to attack the heavy snow, some in drifts that crested over the top of the plow.

“Are we headed to the house?” she asked over the cell phone. “If so, we'll have to make a hard left very soon.”

“Let me make another call and I'll tell you.”

I hung up and tapped Franco's number from the list of recent calls. It rang a few times before he picked up.

“I see two sets of lights,” he said. “Is that you?”

“It's me and a plow. Where are you?”

“In front of the big pergola. Tell the plow not to run me over.”

I hung up and did just that. I told Dayna the pergola was halfway between the upcoming left and the main house. She said, “Roger that,” and slowed down to take the left. I crept up behind, praying I had the momentum to stay stuck to the slippery road surface and still make the turn.

We both made it around, and I saw the lights mounted above the truck's plow kick up to high beams. I tucked up closer to her rear bumper, feeling more secure at the slower pace she'd chosen. It was still fast enough to cause the snow to explode out from the front of the truck and wash into me from either side and above. My windshield wipers, already compromised, soon surrendered, and I picked up the phone to tell Dayna I had to stop when I heard her voice over the speaker.

“There's a guy waving at me,” she said.

“Stop there.”

She actually drove a little past him so he was at my passenger-side door when I stopped. I rolled down the window.

“So Franco, what up?”

I assumed it was Franco based on the prominent nose and thin black mustache and goatee, which were the only identifying features. The rest was a snow-covered wool coat and baseball cap. When he greeted me, in his Italian-inflected English, more a lilt than an accent, I was sure it was him.

I got out of the car and stumbled around to the other side. Dayna approached and asked if I was all right. I introduced the two of them and they peeled off their gloves to shake hands. Franco gave a neat little bow.

“Jackie, I need to show you something. Ms. Red, you better wait here, if you don't mind.”

“I'd rather come,” she said.

“She can come,” I told him, not knowing exactly why. I had nothing to fear from Franco, but you quickly grow connected to people, even strangers, who deliver you through dire circumstances. I wanted her nearby.

“Suit yourself,” he said, turning and then tromping under Tad's giant pergola through the deep snow, guided by a bright flashlight made less so by the tiny snowflakes that streamed down through the woody vines and open beams of the structure above. I cursed the lack of a hat.

It wasn't a long walk, blessedly, as I quickly grew weary of the trudge, a misery compounded by the slippery soles of my cowboy boots. We were at the far end of the pergola, in an area that was partially covered by a hard roof, under which Tad had a wooden table for al fresco dining. On top of the table was a long white mound, at the fringes of which I could see the edge of a blue tarp. Franco waited for us to come up to him, then took a piece of the tarp in his gloved hand.

“Uh-oh,” Dayna said under her breath.

“You wanted to come,” Franco said to her, then flipped the tarp over the mound, sending the covering snow flying into the air, where some of it was blown back and hit me in the face. I wiped my eyes and followed Franco's flashlight as it outlined the prone figure of a large man, finally stopping at the red-and-gray mash that used to be the defiant and hard-headed skull of Tadzio Buczek.

 

2

“I know, I know,” said Franco. “I shouldn't have moved the body.”

“You moved the body?”

“I know I shouldn't've. He was out there in the middle of the field. I had to get him somewhere out of the snow, it was coming down so fast. I dragged him on the tarp.”

“Whoa, back up,” I said.

Franco's body quaked from the cold. He lifted one foot, then the other, swaying side to side.

“I'm about to die here myself,” he said. “Been out in this crap for hours.”

“I have blankets in the truck,” said Dayna.

“Get 'em, if you don't mind,” I told her. She turned and left.

When she was out of earshot, I said, “Give it to me. All of it, and straight down the middle. This is no time to bob and weave.”

I'd inherited Franco, born in Milan and educated at Duke University, as a client when I took over the East End branch of Burton Lewis's pro bono law firm, which specialized in defending the poor, disenfranchised, and occasionally innocent. I'd been on the job about a year, after Burton saved me from my old real-estate practice, which was already succumbing to an unplanned and financially disastrous slide into criminal law. Now that Burton, one of the Hamptons' certified billionaires, was paying me, I could afford to give in and complete the transition, for better or worse.

Franco had been convicted of manslaughter and was doing time up at Sanger Penitentiary. After reviewing the case, I was able to knock off almost half the original sentence, which led to an early release. This made Franco a very grateful man, and even more so when I got him a job with Tad as a general handyman, the felony conviction having put a slight dent in his banking résumé.

This probably encouraged him to think I'd be willing to do anything for him, including driving my blessed Volvo through blinding snow, subzero temperatures, and gale-force winds.

Franco shoved his hands even deeper into his pockets and looked up at the pergola, gathering his thoughts.

“Zina called me from the house, telling me Tad had gone out to check on the main woodshed,” he said. “It's got a pretty flat roof, something we built last fall, not expecting this kind of ridiculous snow. Roofs are collapsing all over the place, so this was a logical thing to do. Only, a ten-minute checkup turned into an hour and a half, which was a little out of the ordinary, even for Tad.”

“And you said you'd go look?”

“Sure, absolutely. Our shack is closer to the woodshed than the main house, so no prob. And you don't say no to Zina.”

Zina was Katarzina, Tad's wife. Or, like most people thought of her, his mail-order bride, having arrived from Poland only two years before. With high cheekbones, slanted eyes, and a coarse shock of nearly blond hair, Zina was a legitimate beauty, thirty years younger and a hundred pounds lighter than her homely American husband.

“So you found him,” I said, throwing the tarp back over.

“On the way to the shed. At the base of Hamburger Hill. I stepped on him and fell right on my face. I thought it was a hay bale or something. Lucky I took the trouble to look back. It just about stopped my heart, seeing him there. Probably why I lost my mind and dragged him over here. Fuck, it's cold.”

“Dayna's bringing blankets. So what did you do after you brought him here?” I asked.

He looked disappointed in me.

“Called you, what do you think? As soon as I realized my massive stupidity. They're gonna hang me for this, aren't they? Convicted felon. Killer of men. Stupid Dago puts the gun in the hands of people who'd be just as happy to shoot him.”

He hung his head in abject remorse, although a little more theatrically than served his purpose.

“Hey, stop talking like that,” I said. “Nobody's persecuting Italians.”

He nodded, again a bit too contritely.

“You're right. I'm sorry. And way too paranoid.”

“Stupid Dago … with a degree in economics. Jeez.”

I studied him, with meager result. The weather was too stormy, it was too dark, and he was too buried inside his clothing to get a reliable read off his face. I liked Franco, mostly, and trusted him, somewhat, so I'd have to go with that for the time being.

“Did you touch anything with your bare hands?” I asked him.

He put both gloved hands in front of his face and shook his head. “No. Never. Had gloves on the whole time. Too cold not to.”

I dug my phone out of its holster and held it up to him.

“I'm calling Southampton Town Police. Anything else you want to say before I do?” I asked.

I looked at him without speaking for a few moments, in case there was something else in there yearning to come out, but it didn't happen.

“‘Or forever hold your peace'?” said Franco. “I've heard you say that before.”

“I still mean it.”

“No. That's all there is.”

I didn't completely believe him, but I called anyway, knowing that clients come and go, and although I was both morally and legally bound to put their interests first, I had another constituency to care for: the local police, without whose trust and goodwill I'd be out of business faster than a snowflake dissolves on the tip of your tongue.

Not surprisingly, I had Detective Joe Sullivan's cell phone on speed dial.

“This can't be good,” said Sullivan, answering the phone.

“That's nice. Just assume the worst. Okay, it's not good.” Dayna showed up with a flashlight of her own and a stack of blankets, one for each of us. From what I could see of Franco's face, he looked grateful. “I have a DB laid out on a picnic table. Tad Buczek. Big-time trauma to the head.”