Further Lane (12 page)

Hideo's take was that of a monster.

“Stowe, a real ball-breaker she was. And I do not say this lightly.

“A true ball-breaker. With no appreciation of Samurai tradition and the legend of the Forty-seven Ronin who were prepared to disembowel themselves out of loyalty to their master. Or of Prussian probity. Or even the Old School Tie.”

He went on in graphic detail about Hannah's tantrums and wheedling. I cut him off. “You can't be serious.”

“Be a good fellow, Stowe, and hear me out. There's worse.” When I shrugged agreement to hear more he smiled thinly, a sort of smile halfway between the pleasure of trashing his late business colleague and disgust at what she'd done.

“Three years ago she visited Tokyo for the first time since we acquired her business. You've read the figures, the Samurai paid nearly a billion for her controlling stock, a lot less to her partner, Max Victor, and on top of that we named her chairman of the U.S. affiliate at five million a year. I was installed as president to watch over things. And then she was invited to visit the home office so to speak, get to meet the Samurai, see aspects of Japan the average tourist couldn't possibly get to. And to preside over the launch of the Japanese edition of
Hannah's Way
magazine and the opening of a chain of Hannah for the Home boutiques. For a week Hannah got the deluxe guided tour of Japan, everything but an audience with the Emperor (he inclined his head slightly in deference). We trotted her around to palaces and temples and tea pavilions and sumo matches, visited the company's manufacturing plants and our finest retail shops. At the end of which, at corporate headquarters in Tokyo, a reception was laid on, a sort of farewell tribute before she flew back to the States, the affair to be carried live on Japanese television. All terribly
comme il faut.
The Seven Samurai, I assure you, do these things well. No expense spared. Influential members of the press, prominent political figures both from the government and the loyal opposition, leaders of society, the top publishers and fashion designers, a cousin, on his mother's side, of our Emperor.” Hideous again made a little bow and I tried to look respectful. He resumed. “Let me set the stage. Late afternoon and even Tokyo's notoriously changeable weather cooperated. Through the windows of our office tower you could see clearly the snow-capped peak of sacred Mount Fuji off there fifty miles in the distance. Everything was perfect.”

“So?”

“Several brief welcoming speeches were made, people were presented, and then Hannah was handed an arrangement of the most lovely flowers by a troupe of young girls in traditional costume. Everyone stood back, waiting expectantly for what surely would be a gracious little thank you from our distinguished visitor and then, on with the festivities! But no, not Hannah Cutting. She remarked on the loveliness of our young girls and said how pleased she was that they, at least, seemed admirably chaste, pure, and virginal. And she hoped that despite sexually perverse and wicked forces all about, that they would remain that way. Innocent young women owed it themselves to resist commercial pressures seeking to cash in on their vulnerability. On and on …

“What was this all about? The Seven Samurai began to look at each other. Members of the government cleared their throats. The Royal cousin looked apprehensive. What was coming next?”

Hegel knew how to tell a story. I found myself waiting for the punch line.

“It was then Hannah said during her week in Japan she'd been reliably informed that on the Tokyo subway system the most popular vending machines were those frequented by perverts and dirty old men, which purveyed, for a hefty price, the soiled underwear of teenaged Japanese schoolgirls.…”

I looked at Hideo Hegel.

“You're shitting me.”

He shook his head.

“I swear to you, Stowe, those were virtually her exact words to a roomful of distinguished Japanese on the final day of her first visit to Tokyo.” He paused. “It was unknown for an honored guest to throw up such an insult into your face. My superiors, the Samurai, fell over themselves getting out of the room and that evening and the next day her remarks were all over television news and in the papers. Not since Commodore Perry had the Japanese people been so insensitively treated by a Western visitor.”

“What did she have to say for herself? Anything?”

“I got her aside and asked her later why she'd gone out of her way to insult her business partners, causing the Samurai to lose face before so many important people.

“She said, ‘They're a smug, self-important bunch and I just wanted to puncture their pomposity. I thought they'd get a laugh out of how ridiculous it all was. Until you people learn to laugh at yourselves, Japan will never be a great nation.'”

Hideo looked at me. I was beyond comment and waited for him to go on.

“Of course I submitted a resignation of honor for having visited such troubles upon my company and my country. The Samurai, generously, declined to accept it. Needless to say, while she continued to work for us, Hannah was never invited back.”

“What she said about vending machines selling girls' panties, did she just make that up out of sheer mischief?”

“Oh, no. The underwear machines are very popular. Everyone knows that.”

Now I was silent, shaking my head in disbelief.

“Well, then, why get so upset…?”

Hegel looked at me sternly. “My dear Stowe, it's extremely rude to tell people unpleasant things they already know.”

I gathered myself.

“But who killed her?”

“Don't ask me,” Hegel said, “I got there too late.”

*   *   *

I'd not taken Alix along. She didn't seem put out. Had her own fish to fry, she said, a list of people to see starting with Hannah's servants. Fine. I was determined to play the cards close myself and did nothing beyond showing her places on the map. That afternoon at The Blue Parrot I had a couple of Pacificos. Michael the barman was shaking his head, mourning lost innocence. What? “Damned woman's dead less than a week and someone broke into her place. Next thing we'll have graffiti on the Presbyterian church…”

According to Michael a sneak thief or someone had gotten into Hannah's pool house by breaking a window pane in a back door. No one could say when it might have happened and very little if anything was missing. The Kroepkes gave the cops a brief inventory of stuff they couldn't find, cautioning that Ms. Cutting often discarded things carelessly, and items thought stolen might simply have been thrown out. Apparently not among the missing was that nifty new laptop computer, on which Hannah was supposed to have been writing her book. The burglar must not have been a computer nerd, overlooking an easy-to-lug and very pricey laptop and not taking much else of value. Good news for me, the PC still being there. Now how did I get my hands on it?

What was still unclear, had the small window just been broken or had the window been broken earlier and simply not noticed? Maybe the break-in happened earlier. Maybe even the night Hannah died. An estate that size with a number of outbuildings, one small broken window could go unnoticed for weeks.…

I called Tom Knowles and we met for coffee at John Papas's café. Tom had no theories but he was looking into it. “See if you can get me a look at that laptop, plus the floppy disks, if any.…”

“We've already looked,” Tom said. “Thought there might be a clue on her computer as to who might be menacing her, if anyone. She was supposed to be writing a book or something.”

“Yeah, that's why I want to see that laptop.”

“Waste of time,” Tom said. Very definite about it, as well, but not very forthcoming, not the way he usually enjoyed humoring me. Instead, he dropped the subject of the computer and focused instead on the broken window. What puzzled him was why anyone had to break a window to get into Hannah's house. Almost everyone in East Hampton had a key. The plumber, the cleaning woman, a pool boy, the electrician, the snowplow guy, the carpenter, the winter housewatcher, the … Well, you get the idea. That's how it was out here. Rich people installed expensive burglar alarm systems or retained security patrol companies and then handed out keys to the front door to people they ran into at the hardware store.

Tom wouldn't be surprised if Jesse Maine had a key. How else would he have gotten in to use Hannah's personal toilet?

I didn't really care about where Jesse took a leak or if he left the toilet seat up.

“The PC, Tom. Can I very quietly and confidentially sort of scroll through the directory? Check out a few disks?”

“No.”

This wasn't the Tom Knowles I knew. He might not go along with my idiocies. But he didn't usually just cut me dead like this.

“What?”

“There are no disks. She didn't know how to do them.”

“Well, the PC itself. She was writing a book on it. Worked on it every day. Had been doing for months. Random House bought the book already, paid a lot of money. That hard drive could have some interesting stuff on it for this piece I'm writing, plus other stuff that maybe, just maybe, could tell you and me both, something about who might…”

“Beech, you Harvard guys make great reporters. But lousy cops.”

“Oh?” I was kind of miffed by that. I never wanted to be a cop but suspected I might be reasonably good at it.

“Yes. We had the same idea you had. A few days earlier. And we pulled the PC in for a day, had our house nerds check it out.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Not a frigging word. A clean hard drive. No disks, no A copy. No C copy. Nothing. That's what the nerds say.”

“But…”

“You're right, Beech. She'd been working on a book. The Kroepkes said so. Claire said so. Mr. Evans at Random House had been told by Hannah that she was writing a book and had negotiated a contract and paid her an advance. Hannah herself confirmed to people she was working on it and she had no overwhelming reason to lie unless she was up against … what is it when you can't get the next sentence out…?”

“… writer's block.”

“Yeah. Only there was nothing on the computer. Not a goddamned word. Everything had been downloaded, all deleted. Every trace gone, wiped out.”

I just looked at him.

“Doesn't make sense.”

“It does if you shut up and listen,” Tom said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, the department's own local Bill Gates tells us there were maybe one hundred eighty thousand characters on the hard drive. Say, thirty to thirty-five thousand words. A good chunk of a book, especially one an amateur was writing.”

“But…”

“They'd been erased. Every damn one of those characters, every one of those thirty thousand words. We don't know what they were. Can't retrieve them. We only know that many characters, that many words, were typed into the laptop by the late Hannah Cutting.”

I didn't say anything. Tom finished the thought.

“Someone erased what Hannah wrote. Maybe Hannah herself for reasons unknown. Maybe whoever killed her. Maybe third parties unknown. Maybe Martha Stewart, for God's sake, envious that anyone else out here might write a book. Or her daughter or the Kroepkes or Peggy Siegal or someone else.”

“Any ideas?” I said.

“Yeah, someone who knows how computers work. A newspaper reporter like you, even…”

FOURTEEN

Young Hannah once worked in the Further Lane house she now owned.

My father's place was situated on a narrow plot between Further Lane and the ocean, hemmed in on two sides by the houses of the rich. To the east, Toby Montana, the singer and bride of the music mogul who was CEO of her record company. He was fortyish and thrice-married; she was half his age and frighteningly talented. They'd had their house for two summers now and no complaints. Except that choppers delivered them and took them off again, with attendant noise. Beyond that there was nothing exotic except Toby herself. She was fond of sunbathing nude. My father, who spent a career gathering and analyzing information, complained about the choppers but forgave Toby, saying he'd seen her himself sunbathing several times, through his 7 × 50 field glasses. “Splendid young animal,” was his judgment. That was his intelligence training manifesting itself even in retirement; he got to the heart of the matter and drew conclusions.

Had Toby and her husband understood the privacy quotient, the value of a good privet hedge, her nude swims would have gone unnoticed by the whole damned CIA.

On the other, western flank, we had Miz Phoebe. Miz Phoebe was a wealthy man's widow, feisty, bigoted, ancient, dotty. My father and I both enjoyed the old girl and joined her for the occasional cocktail. Miz Phoebe would go on and on about the Decline of the West, blaming crime and disaster and most everything else on “gangsta rap,” “Gay marriage,” and “the Geraldo Rivera show.” At her age, she lived mainly in a nostalgic past, recalling Lee and Jackie Bouvier growing up just across Further Lane in that great gray and white stucco mansion which once belonged to the Bouviers and was now the Meehan House. “Such nice girls. Such good posture…” Miz Phoebe recalled the Bouvier sisters, reminding lesser people that “posture always tells.”

Then Miz Phoebe dropped her little bombshell over a Manhattan she'd invited me to have with her in my father's absence.

“That girl who died on the beach down by the Maidstone, Hannah Cutting? You know she lived on Further Lane years ago.”

I protested that she hadn't. “No, Miz Phoebe, she grew up poor, an immigrant Czech family scratching out a hardscrabble livelihood in Polish Town in Riverhead. I've gone up there to look into it and it's true.” Quite so, said Miz Phoebe; little Hannah wasn't actually
living
on Further Lane but working here as a teenaged au pair girl, what they called back then “a mother's helper,” to one of the great families, the Warrenders. Working the summer in one of the several great Warrender “cottages,” for one branch or another of the wealthy Warrender Clan.