Two Time (8 page)

Alena looked at me.

“Is she with you?”

“You bet, toots,” said Jackie. “Actually he’s with me.”

“What my colleague means,” I said, as I draped an arm over Jackie’s shoulders, “is there must have been occasional disappointments felt by Jonathan’s clients when certain recommendations inevitably missed the mark. Some people might’ve had some serious losses, which might’ve caused a little rancor.”

“He means thoroughly pissed off,” said Jackie, helpfully.

“I know what he means. Yeah, sure, not everybody loved everything we did. Though only a couple had a beef. People like Ivor Fleming.”

“Ivor Fleming?”

“Investor. Nasty stubby little jerk from up island. Made it in scrap metal, for Chrissakes. Pissed off at the world, I think. Anyway, only guy Jonathan ever fired. You know, stopped working for. Said he caused too much stress. You got that right.”

“Lost money on Jonathan’s recommendations?” I asked.

Alena looked down at her CRT, then off toward the one lonely, dirty window in the lightless office.

“Yeah, though I couldn’t entirely hundred percent tell you why. I managed the office stuff, ran the trades, made nice nice to clients when Jonathan was out of town, did research online. I said I handled everything, but there were things Jonathan did on his own. He didn’t exactly report to me on every conversation. I usually knew what was what, but I wasn’t always privy.”

Which hurt her feelings, obviously. Even Jackie let a little sound of sympathy escape her lips.

“Anyway” she said, rebounding, “he did his shit, I did mine, everybody was happy. Hard to believe, maybe, seeing this dump, but we were, you know, actually happy here in our little world.”

The canned air in the office sat heavily for a few moments, then Jackie struck out on a new tack.

“Are all his records still here?” she asked.

Alena looked around the room, as if for an answer.

“No, I don’t think so. After he got blown up the cops, serious cops in suits and earphones, came in here and swept everything away. All I got is the same administrative stuff I always had.”

“Names of clients?”

“I still got that. Names, addresses and phone numbers. I copied it all for the cops. Everything I had. Including stuff on Ivor, though they never asked me about him. They spent a lot of time messing with my computer, but finally gave it back to me. Good thing, since it’s all I had to settle everything out.”

“Can you copy that for me?” I asked. “The names, addresses, phone numbers?”

“And email addresses? You bet. Why the hell not.”

Jackie jerked her head toward the other computers in the room.

“What about those?”

Alena shrugged.

“If you want to anchor your boat, or need a doorstop. Cops took out the hard drives. You can knock, but nobody’s home.”

“For good?” asked Jackie.

“I don’t know. Ask the cops. I’m heading for the City. You can take it from here.” Alenas attention was back on to her computer screen. “Where should I send the information?”

Jackie slid her business card across Alenas desk. She knew I didn’t have a computer.

“What about phone records?” I asked, suddenly remembering my ostensible purpose for the visit. “Cell phone records? Calls to and from?”

“Fascinating,” said Alena.

“Really.”

“Yeah. Nobody ever asked me for Jonathan’s personal phone records. I kept expecting it. You’d think.”

“Probably didn’t need to. Get everything directly from the phone company.”

“Probably,” said Alena, unconvinced.

She opened a deep drawer and pulled out a stack of phone bills.

“Good old paper. All in chronological order, of course, cross-tabbed to accounts payable and the general ledger. Just like Jonathan wanted them.”

She used the stack of bills to point to a copier machine in a far corner. Jackie took the hint and went to make copies. While the machine whirred I sat there wondering whether to admire or be depressed by the drab orderliness of Jonathan
Eldridge’s office, his profession and his life. I respected anyone who had a zeal for research and analysis—like Appolonia said, engineering and finance weren’t all that different when you thought about it. Lots of data, fundamental formulas, tricky little puzzles. Though never entirely controllable, both ultimately manageable pursuits. Maybe that was what troubled me about Jonathan. It seemed as if control was the prime objective. Financial analysis was merely the medium, the vehicle.

I always knew my edge as an engineer was a taste for chaos, for the unruly aspects of problem solving, a prejudice toward intuition over methodology. I knew how to crunch numbers. I just didn’t like it very much. Made me edgy, irritable.

“If you could sort those client names by friendly and unfriendly, it’d help,” said Jackie.

Alena looked at me as if to validate the request. I nodded. She nodded back. Transaction complete. Jackie sighed.

“That’ll take a little longer, but it’ll be in your email when you get back to the office,” said Alena. I sensed in her an air of poised competence. I wondered how Jonathan regarded the obvious. I wondered what he thought looking at her across the broad desktops. Did he recognize that appearance was irrelevant in a world run on email and voice messaging?

“How’d Jonathan get along with his wife?” I asked, as abruptly as the question occurred to be. Alena pulled her eyes away from her screen.

“Mad about her. Just mad. Never said one word to me on the subject, mind you, but you could tell when he talked to her on the phone. Friendly, nice, not all gooshy but kind. That’s really what I always thought. Kind. Not like you’d normally describe a lovesick couple. But it was there. Real grown-ups.”

She turned her head back to the computer.

“I don’t like to think about it,” she said.

“Sorry. Had to ask.”

“I know. Co-victims and all that.”

Jackie had already thanked her and was gathering to leave the office when I had one more thought.

“Do you know the names of the cops who took the hard drives? Feds, Staties?”

She spun around in her chair and pulled open the top drawer of the adjoining desk. She took out a business card and handed it to Jackie.

“Take it. I already wrote down the info. In case I need it again. In my next reiteration.”

“If you think of anything else,” Jackie started to say.

“I know,” said Alena. “Heard it all before. Will do. No prob. Even if you aren’t the nicest co-victim I ever met. No offense,” she added, looking at me.

“Sorry” said Jackie. She pointed to her head. “Brain damage.”

“No prob,” said Alena, again, though by now she was engrossed in whatever was playing across her computer screen. Back swimming in the stream of data, negotiating currents, shooting the rapids. I escorted Jackie out the door while the fragile peace was still intact.

“Sorry, Sam,” said Jackie when we got outside. “I don’t know what got into me.”

“A little of the old Irish fire, by my accounting.”

“Old Irish idiot.”

She swung open the Grand Prix’s gigantic door and dropped into the passenger seat. Wet heat poured out of the car and washed over me. I was glad I’d left Eddie home again, though I feared it was starting to piss him off. Hard to explain the dynamics of heat exhaustion to a gung ho mutt like Eddie. Maybe if I showed him a video.

“All right. But you feel better for it. Admit it.”

“Picking a fight is good therapy? You’d think that.”

“As long as you win the fight.”

“You’re a peach, Sam.”

“So what’d we learn?”

“We’re ridiculously over our heads and have no business prying into this investigation.”

“That’s what I told Sullivan.”

“It’s one thing to chat with people like Ms. Fright Wig in there, or poor Mrs. Eldridge, it’s another to search through the guy’s client records for material evidence, or ask the FBI to share the fun with us. They’ll think you’re a dangerous lunatic and try to get me disbarred.”

“Both propositions have been advanced before to little effect.”

The big tangle of kinky hair I’d freed from the bandage was twirling around her head from the wind gushing into the Grand Prix. It looked good on her. Reckless and unkempt.

“I’m not kidding, Sam. Sullivan should never have involved you.”

“So you’re going to go through everything Alena sends you and see if anything interesting pops out.”

She shook her head and snorted.

“You’re not even listening.”

“You’re a peach, Jackie,” I told her, but she was busy staring out the open window, wind in her injured face, O-2 in her lungs and the first hint of renewal sneaking into her consciousness.

E
DDIE WAS SO GLAD
to get outside he circled the house at a full run, then drank a little water and did it again. I opted for a gin and tonic, which I brought out to the weatherbeaten Adirondacks, which I’d pulled out from under the maples and set up just a few feet from the breakwater. When Eddied had his fill of tearing around, he lay down in front of me with his tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth. I looked in his eyes for signs of reproach, but only saw the resident look of gleeful anticipation.

I’d pulled a stack of mail out of the mailbox when I got there. Tucked between an electric bill from LIPA and a slippery, full-color promotional flyer from a home center store up island was a photograph from my daughter of a dentist in the 1920s straddling a patient and extracting a tooth with a pair of pliers. She was a graphic artist, with full access to every conceivable image to capture and reformulate into a postcard. This was the communication channel
we’d settled on. I didn’t have a computer, so her preferred approach, email, was out of the question. I also hated talking on the phone, especially with her. Way too many pregnant pauses that formed after some offhand comment of mine, without the benefit of visual contact to clue me in on whatever offense I’d just committed. Years ago, at the advice of one of Abby’s friends, I tried to restrict myself to simple declarative sentences and one-or two-word questions whenever I had to speak to my daughter on the phone. With little success. I had a gift for provocation, especially with people I didn’t want to provoke. Somehow, though, brevity became the stylistic conceit of our correspondence, best expressed within the two-by-two hole of the standard postcard:

They should study the genetic composition of provocation. I could supply the data.

I dug a chewed-up pencil out of my back pocket and found a field of white paper on the back of another utility bill.

I had a backlog of these epistolary haikus scattered around the cottage written on whatever paper was handy.
If I didn’t hear from her for a while I’d transfer one to a postcard and send it off. Past experience taught me to mete them out discretely. It took over four years to get to this stage, and I was grateful, but careful.

I wondered how I’d explain to her what I was actually up to besides swinging a hammer. I wondered if I could explain it to myself. Maybe if I sat there and drank for a while I’d be able to get in touch with my feelings. Clarify my priorities. Figure out just what the hell I was doing.

“What the hell am I doing?” I asked Eddie.

Part of me knew Hodges was right. I had a heretofore repressed impulse to stick my nose into this thing. Especially now that the official investigation had crapped out. At least, that’s what it looked like. Hard to tell these days if they were actually stymied or had it all solved, but for some reason had to keep quiet. Not enough evidence, political pressure, interdepartmental turf wars, all the stuff that would piss me off so much I’d probably pop a cranial artery. Which was reason enough to stay the hell out of it.

“Rule one. Don’t go looking for trouble,” I said to Eddie.

On the other hand, somebody tried to kill Jackie and me, albeit indirectly. Along with a bunch of innocent people. To say nothing of Jonathan Eldridge, who may or may not have been innocent, but probably didn’t deserve to be blown to smithereens.

The ugly blind brutality of a car bomb is impossible to appreciate until you’re up close to one of them. I hadn’t been able to sleep through the night for two months after it happened. And I still woke up a lot, freaked at little night sounds. It made me feel helpless and foolish. Powerless. And furious.

A big tern glided gracefully down to perch on the edge of the breakwater. Eddie looked at it like, man, you gotta be kidding me. He gave the bird a second to settle in before
launching an attack across the lawn. The tern took flight with as much dignity as haste would allow.

I watched Eddie cut across the bay frontage, then make an unexpected right turn to leap over the rosebush and picket-fence border between my property and the house next door. It was a gray and white bungalow that shared the tip of Oak Point with me. An old lady named Regina Broadhurst used to live there. It had been empty since she died the year before, so it gave me a jolt to see a gray Audi A4 parked in the driveway. Or maybe the jolt was because I knew who owned the Audi.

So did Eddie, which is why he was there barking at the side door. It was opened by a woman in a white silk dressing gown and bare feet. She had long, thick auburn hair that matched the dark reddish brown of her complexion. When she bent down to pet Eddie’s head her gown opened up, revealing enough breast to identify a tan line, even from a few hundred feet. She scratched his ears, then tossed him a treat of some kind. He caught it, did a quick spin, then ran back over to me. The woman followed him with her eyes until she saw me sitting in the Adirondack. Then she backed slowly into the house and shut the door.

Eddie ran up to me with a Big Dog biscuit in his mouth, his favorite. He dropped down in front of me to eat, showing off the prize. As he crunched away I had a chance to get in touch with feelings of another sort.