HardScape (2 page)

“You bill him cost-plus.”

“Exactly like you when you ran leveraged buyouts. There's so much money flying around who's going to question fees?”

“And I'm ‘first class' because I went to prison?”

“The word is you did time because you wouldn't rat on your friends. Loyalty's valuable. The fact you got out alive says you learned to handle yourself. That's an asset, too.”

“Tell your boss if he ever finds himself in a similar position, treat it like Outward Bound.”

“The jail thing is my opinion. What turns Mr. Long on is your ONI background. He ate that up.”

“It takes a civilian to really appreciate the military.”

“He fought in 'Nam.”

“Tell him I spent most of my time investigating sex-bias complaints.”

“Terrific training for P.I. work—you could probably get your license. Wha'd you investigate the rest of the time?”

I didn't answer.

“Thought so,” said Rose. Another eighteen-wheeler wink implied we both knew that real men do not betray secret submarine landings on the Baltic Coast. For all his heavy-handed flattery, I still wasn't a hundred percent sure why he wanted me. That might be part of the fun. And I had a feeling if I opened the door without speaking, he'd up his offer.

I opened the door.

“Five thousand.”

Chapter 2

The wildest thing my father ever did in his good and orderly life was marry my mother, Margot Chevalley—bastardized “Chevalier” in New England, where folks never needed black people to dump on because they already had the French.

Centuries before the railroad, Newbury had a wrong side of the tracks, named Frenchtown. Mother's people farmed outside of Frenchtown, on a hodgepodge of swamp and cold north slopes. After my father died she moved back to the farm, leaving me the big white Georgian house on Main Street, with the shingle out front, office in a glass porch, and a red barn in the back yard.

Alex Rose, P.I., wrote a down-payment check for five thousand dollars and extended it with a flourish. “Sorry I can't do this in cash.”

“Makes no difference to me,” I said. “It's going straight to the bank.”

“Mr. Long likes his paperwork.”

He opened a leather shoulder bag he had brought in from his Mercedes and took out the camcorder. “Maybe you want to practice a little in the back yard, but it's real simple. It's got a little computer that adjusts for your hand shaking.”

“Why would I be shaking?”

He answered me seriously, explaining that everyone's hands shake and that when the Japanese made the camera so small it could be held in one hand, they discovered that they had to compensate for that one hand shaking. He demonstrated.

“What's that red light?”

“Indicates you're taping.”

“I don't think that's a very good idea.”

“So you know it's working.”

“You've indicated that you want me to shoot through a window at night, while hiding in the woods. Let's assume that in the midst of entertaining her boyfriend, Mrs. Long glances at the window, perhaps to enjoy their reflection in the glass, and sees instead this little red light in the woods.”

“Okay, I see what you mean. Put some tape over it.”

“Terrific idea.” I was indeed loving this whole concept less and less. It seemed I'd gotten caught up in negotiating a price instead of questioning the deal—an old 'Eighties habit that apparently died hard.

“You know, I don't get the point of this. New York and Connecticut are both shared-property states. What does Mr. Long get out of a video of his wife cheating on him? She still has the protection of equal distribution. She won't lose it all for getting caught.”

Rose looked superior and said, “Divorce law is a little more complicated than that, Mr. Abbott.”

I was about to retort that realtors, who end up selling the debris of broken marriages, are intimately familiar with divorce law, but at that second a scrawny eleven-year-old with a shy, crooked-tooth grin darted into my office like a muskrat. “Mom wants to know if you'll have supper with us tonight.”

“Tell your mom thank you very much. I would be delighted. And what can I bring? You come back and tell me. This is Mr. Rose, up from New York looking at houses. This is my neighbor, Alison Mealy.”

Alison froze.

I said, “Say hello to Mr. Rose and shake his hand.”

Rose had the wit to extend his hand, and the child did her part. She saw his camera, and her eyes grew big. I handed it to her. “Go take some pictures of your mother cooking supper.”

Rose blanched as his camera went out the door at a high rate of speed. He watched Alison run down the driveway.

“She's taking it into the barn.”

“She lives there.”

“You rent it out?”

I said yes, because it was easier, though I was surprised that in his snooping around town about me he hadn't heard several versions of how Alison and her mother happened to live in my barn.

Rose said, “Do you own a gun?”

“Why?”

“Something small you could carry with you?”

“What for?”

“This guy Mrs. Long is seeing has been known to get a little violent.”

“A little violent. You mean like if he gets pissed off because he sees a man in the woods taking his picture through the window?”

“Obviously, the best thing is don't get caught. But just in case, you might be well advised to be prepared.”

I slid his money across the desk, toward him. “I feel well advised to turn down the job. Thank you very much. If you're ever in the market for a home in Newbury, please call for an appointment. As you know, Abbott Realty has a lock on the older, finer, bigger places.” I stood up and extended my hand.

Rose looked appalled. “Wait a minute. We have a deal.”

“We have not shaken on it. You put money on my desk and then tell me I need a gun. There was no gun in the original deal. So we don't have a deal.”

“The gun was just an idea. Some people like guns. Obviously, you don't.”

“I love guns. I admire good machinery. If I wanted to shoot people I would be a policeman. Goodbye, Rose. You got the wrong guy.”

I felt relieved. The more I thought about taking pictures of some poor couple making love, the more it sounded like a lousy way to earn a buck. Even five thousand bucks.

Rose looked sick, like a guy who had blown a really big deal. That was puzzling because what the hell were we talking about, but a silly little job anybody who wanted to could do? In fact, he seemed so worried and upset that I got curious. “Are you Long's investigator for everything, or just the divorce?”

“Anything he needs.”

What I was beginning to understand was that Rose was a high-priced gofer, the sort that guys who can afford to keep around for convenience. In this case, he'd get the video and dig up other stuff in New York and
then
carry their evidence to a shark divorce attorney, who'd hint that maybe Mrs. Long would forgo her half of the stock option. At least that was how men got out of marriage when I worked on the Street.

Rose proved to be a shrewd, high-priced gofer worth his fee. He grinned. “Your little neighbor needs braces.”

“What?” I can usually count on my face not to advertise what I'm thinking, but when the detective came that far from left field, I must have looked as dumbfounded as the hero of a Ross Perot infomercial. I didn't know what the hell Alison's teeth had to do with a sexy home video.

Rose, however, saw a connection he could run with. “The little girl who lives in your barn needs her teeth fixed before she grows up ugly.”

I regained control of my face, but not the situation. He was right. Alison made a cute tomboy, but she would end up hiding her smile as she got older. “So?”

“I got a client who's the absolutely number-one orthodontist in New York City. East Side parents register their kids at conception to get an appointment. You do the job, I'll take care of the girl's teeth, transportation down to New York, visits on the weekends at his country house in New Milford. Whatever works. We're talking thousands here, fella, if you had to pay for it.”

Many thousands.

“Who is this guy?”

“What guy?”

“That Mrs. Long is sleeping with.”

“Just a guy. Somebody she and her husband have known a long time.”

“What's his name?”

“You don't need to know, fella. None of your damned business.”

I made a point of looking very dubious.

Rose laughed. “What, you think maybe I'm setting you up to video somebody famous?”

“That would be one reason to offer so much money.”

Rose sighed elaborately, like a bored fight manager reminding a semiconscious client that his right was never his best lead. “I thought I already explained that Mr. Long pays for first-class service—Look, Abbott, I'll tell you what. Make you a deal.”

I waited.

Rose winked. “If it turns out she's screwing President Clinton or Robert Redford, don't film 'em. If not, do the job, take the money, and give little Alison a break. She'll thank you for the rest of her life.”

I knew when I was beaten. So did Rose. He said, “They'll be at the house, tonight.”

“Then I'll do it tonight.”

“That's the spirit.”

“Spirit's got nothing to do with it. The moon's getting full. Any brighter and they'll spot me.”

***

I walked Rose to his car and ran his money over to the bank. Then I called up John Butler and told him I was ready to insulate the barn.

I had accepted the supper invitation from Alison's mother with no illusions. Janet Mealy was a thin pale weary country girl of twenty-six, old beyond her years. She had borne Alison at fifteen, trading a drunken father for a drunken husband. She had worked waiting tables in a diner up on Route 4 and had had a few factory jobs in Torrington, a wolf-at-the-door existence where all could be lost with a single missed paycheck.

For a brief interlude of hope and tranquility, her husband had landed a job driving a Newbury snowplow, only to get jailed soon after for stealing parts from the township garage. From there it was a quick tumble to welfare and sudden homelessness.

I'd come across them last spring out on Route 7, hitchhiking, hoping to find work in a New Milford motel that I had already heard was going out of business. I was definitely not in the market for roommates. But the sight of Janet Mealy's stringy hair turning dark in the rain, the bundle of plastic shopping bags at their feet, and her bone-white arm wrapped fearfully around Alison's shoulder, pretty much eliminated any options in the matter. I took them home and put them in the barn, which had a crude whitewashed apartment last lived in by my great-grandfather's stable hand, Haughton Moody.

Janet was old New England, daughter of ten generations of hardscrabble farmers, and always addressed me as “Mr. Abbott” in deference to my family, my house on Main Street, and the social gulf that stretched between us. She expected me to call her “Mrs. Mealy” to honor her marriage and her hope that Alison's father might one day come home sober. Alison, of course, called me “Ben” as soon as we became friends, but the quaint titles of courtesy her mother and I shared allowed “Mrs. Mealy” and “Mr. Abbott” their privacy and dignity.

Talk around town ran the gamut nonetheless.

Horny gossips said the barn was a front and Mrs. Mealy actually slept in my own fourposter, while busybodies with a Marxist bent claimed that she worked as a slave, cleaning the houses I tried to sell. The truth was it had been her idea to clean the empty houses I had on the market, which amounted to some light dusting. We would drive out in excruciating silence. She'd demolish spider webs while I mowed the lawns with the vague hope that some buyer would appear by magic, exclaiming, “What perfect grass! How well-dusted! We'll buy it!”

So I had no illusions about supper. Mrs. Mealy inclined toward prepared foods, like frozen baked potatoes. Gently as I could, I would try to demonstrate how two of them cost more than a five-pound sack of the real thing. But she was proud, or maybe the fancy packaging made her feel good. We ate frozen baked potatoes, fried pre-formed hamburger patties, and fresh spinach, which I had taught Alison to pick from my garden and rinse of sand. Dessert was the specialty of the house, Cool Whip on Jell-O.

We trooped after supper to my house and popped into the VCR the footage Alison had shot of her mother cooking. Janet Mealy hid her face in her hands, then peeped between her fingers when Alison said, “Mom, you look great.” And she did. After a painful moment of ducking the camera, she turned into a star, tearing open the potato package, frying the burgers, with sidelong glances at the camera. Her big, sad eyes were her prettiest feature and they shone on the screen. Alison, who had been plowing through my paperbacks all summer, searched for the right word. “You're
exotic
, Mom.”

“Hush.”

Suddenly Alison herself jumped into the picture, making faces as the lens zoomed in and out.

“How'd you do that?” I asked.

“The remote, silly. See the thing I'm pointing at the camera?”

I saw she was waving a remote-control device, demonstrating her natural aptitude for electronic gear—and reminding me that somehow I had to get hold of a secondhand computer for the kid, and some tools so she could take it apart. She had already fixed my VCR with a screwdriver and a hammer, so I felt she had some future in the field.

Alison wanted to watch the tape again. I left them to it, anxious to get over to Morrisville while there was still daylight enough to get the lay of the land. I loaded a fresh tape into the camcorder and changed into jeans, a dark sweater, and my Raichle Swiss climbing boots, which I had purchased way back when for a junk-bond seminar in Aspen and wore these days to split firewood.

I stepped outside to spray my hair and hands with Deep Woods OFF! and spread some on my face. Then I went upstairs and took a couple of pocket flashlights from my night table. There was a gun in the drawer. My father, who had collected guns, slept with a .38 beside the bed as he got older. It was a fine old piece, ideal weight to pack while filming lovers from the woods, but I left it.

I am next to helpless with a handgun. My father kept promising to teach me to shoot, but he didn't, and it fell to my uncles, who favored hunting weapons. Besides, I seriously doubted that Mrs. Long's fella would come gunning for me, and if he did the best defense would be to bolt into the dark or politely raise my hands. If he came out throwing indignant punches, I wouldn't need a gun.

Route 349 runs east from the flagpole over the hill to Morrisville. North of the road lies Frenchtown, south is a long, rolling slope, home to the bigger estates and horse farms, a section divided by an invisible and totally meaningless Newbury-Morrisville line. Many places straddle the line. The Castle was just east of it, down a dirt road with woods on one side and pasture on the other, neatly defined with white board fences.

It was immediately apparent that the Longs were not suffering from recession. Money had been spent, and was still being spent on upkeep and expansion. Before I reached the house I passed restored barns and silos that made a postcard picture, catching the golden light of a soon-to-set sun. Then the woods on the left began to sheer up the slope opening to broad meadow that blended into a wide lawn that rose to a stone fantasy straight out of
Ivanhoe
.