The Last Refuge (11 page)

Now, four years into it and for the first time I didn’t like the mood I was working myself into. I was getting nervy. It was messing up my sleep, nagging at me in the middle of the night.

Dotty Hodges had the old place under control. She wore a tight T-shirt that rode up above her belly and matched her raven-black hair. Her jeans were cut like pedal pushers, and accentuated a clunky pair of yellow-stitched Doc Martens and blue and white horizontally striped socks.

I ordered the fish of the day without further inquiry and pulled out good old Tocqueville to give it another try. I had a rule not to quit a book after I started it, no matter how daunting it got.

The fish took a long time, but it was delivered by the chef.

“It’s the baked.”

“Great.”

“Bon appétit.”

He let me take a few bites of the fish before interrupting.

“That Miss Filmore’s a hard on, isn’t she?”

“I don’t think I made her happy.”

“It’s like her little empire. Likes to keep things under control.”

“Always been there?”

“Nah, I’ve been through a bunch of directors. Used to be all volunteer till the widow of a guy who’d cashed out his potato farm left money for a professional staff. It’s a good place, though, Sam. Don’t take a broad like Filmore too seriously.”

I got in a few more mouthfuls while he talked. Dotty brought him a beer and refilled my glass.

“Didn’t learn much,” I said.

“I called a few people I know from over there. They’ll ask around. Never know.”

“Thanks, Mr. Hodges,” I told him, pleased.

“Paul.”

“Paul.”

“You spooked her with that thing about recent deaths.”

“Didn’t mean to.”

“She thought you were Social Services heat.”

“Nope. Just nosy.”

He took some time out to drink his beer and let me finish my meal. Dotty swept up the plates the moment I put down my fork and recharged our drinks. It struck me she liked seeing her father talk to somebody. That it was me showed how out of touch with people Hodges probably was. Would’ve given my own daughter a good laugh.

“I did find out a few things, though” said Hodges. “I was hoping you’d come in so I could tell you.”

“Really.”

“Regina and Mrs. Anselma hated each other’s guts. It was like a blood feud, some thought, only way below the surface. You know, act all civil with each other, but the air’s filled with little invisible daggers.”

“That fits.”

“It fits with Broadhurst, but Mrs. Anselma wasn’t that way. A sweet lady, refined. You know, maybe a little higher class, but everybody liked her. Never had a bad word for nobody but Regina, who she’d stick it to whenever she got the chance.”

“Raised a daughter on her own.”

Hodges was warming to his subject.

“Yeah, well, that’s the other interesting thing. No dad in the picture. Ever. Back then this wasn’t something that went unnoticed. But Mrs. Anselma was such a class act nobody’d talk her down, though it sorta hung around her all the time.”

“Amanda. The daughter. Married Roy Battiston.”

“I knew most of the Battistons. Lowlifes.”

“You think?”

He raised his hand.

“Just an opinion. Shouldn’t say that kind of thing about people.” He glanced over at Dotty. “I just never liked them much. Used to be a passel of them livin’ year round in an old summer colony in Noyac. All the houses up on cinder blocks. Shacks is what they were.”

“Roy runs the local Harbor Trust.”

“No shit. Must’ve got the brains in the family.”

“Must’ve,” I agreed. “So you knew him.”

“Yeah, though mostly his family. I crewed with his uncle and grandfather out of Montauk. They were
serious hard cases. Only worked off and on. Construction labor. Pumping gas. Cheating County Welfare. Kind of like me, without the style.”

“Amanda said Roy worked his way out of it.”

“Roy didn’t talk much. Big fat serious kid. Looked like a bed-wetter to me. But yeah, hard worker. Stuck to himself. Stayed clear of his grandfather’s backhand. Grandmother was no better. Big-time drunk. Had a huge rosy face—nose full of busted capillaries. Beautiful people.”

“Including his mother?”

“Oh yeah, Judy Battiston. Worked at the Anchorage for years. Another drinker. Anybody that could stand her could take her home. Ended up at the 7-Eleven. Pretty sad.”

Hodges waited a moment before adding, “Now they’re all dead.”

“Who?”

“The Battistons. The whole clan. Including his mother. Everybody but Roy.”

He had to leave after that to look after the other customers. I was able to concentrate on forgetting about everything but my vodka and Alexis de Tocqueville, who was having a great time boppin’ around the old U.S. I guess I could see some relevance to the country that’s here now, but a lot of it seemed alien. I wondered if he ever made it to the Hamptons. Would have found a bunch of hard-nosed Yankee farmers and a few beat-up Indians. And the Bonnikers crabbing like they still do over in Springs. Oceanfront was where you grazed cattle.

Hodges came back at the end of the night and
settled in at my table like I’d invited him. The old bastard was growing on me a little, I had to admit.

Not that I was looking for a friend. I never had a lot of friends in the first place, and since moving to the cottage I’d kept to myself. Friends were another thing I wasn’t very good at. Probably why I got a dog.

When I was a kid my only friend enlisted in the Army to avoid going to jail for car theft. He and I used to borrow expensive convertibles from used-car lots and bomb around the South Fork like we were rich city kids. I did the hot wiring and he did the driving, so when the cops were chasing us he was the one who slowed down just enough to let me jump out of the car. I landed in a sandbank covered in wild roses and he sped away. They caught him trying to swim across Mecox Bay, the front end of the convertible nearly submerged in the stony bay beach.

The only hitch in the enlistment idea was he had a genuine phobia of guns. His father was a hunter and had decided the only way to cure his son’s fear was to take him deer hunting in Connecticut. The woods were full of deer, so there was ample opportunity to get the rifle stock up to his shoulder, but he couldn’t get his finger to pull the trigger. By the third try, the old man lost his temper. He started to yell. The kid yelled back. The old man yanked the rifle out of the kid’s hands and slammed the butt into his face. Inexplicably, the old man’s thumb had slipped into the trigger guard, so the cocked rifle went off right at the moment of impact. The recoil knocked the kid out, so he didn’t see the heavy deer shot blow his father’s face off. He only saw the results when he
woke up a few hours later, half dead himself from a huge gash in his forehead.

The recruitment officer, having literally heard it all, promised the kid he could enlist as a medic, stationed in Germany, and would never have to carry a gun. Half the promise was kept. He was trained as a medic, and up until an hour before he boarded the transport he assumed he was going to get a chance to learn German.

He drank all the way to Saigon and watched a fire-fight light up the skies as they landed that night. Two days later, he was in the front seat of a jeep in a small convoy winding along a jungle road on the way to an ARVN firebase somewhere near the western border. They were behind a canvas-covered deuce and a half. Another jeep leading the convoy was the only other vehicle, since the road was supposed to be secure. That was why the machine gunner sitting behind the kid had his M-60 stowed at his feet, with the bandoleers safely packed in boxes in the back of the deuce. Not that he could have done anything about the sniper who shot him through the throat.

That night the kid slept with the machine gunner’s blood in his hair and an M-16, his regular issue Colt .45 and a half-dozen ammo bags full of clips snuggled up next to his body like a child’s stuffed animals.

He got plenty of opportunity to use it all, right up to the moment the Vietcong ripped him to pieces while he was trying to stuff a Huey full of wounded grunts. That was near the beginning of his second re-up. He was pretty badly strung out on heroin by then and had forgotten that there was a place called Long Island he could come home to.

My mother got me one of the last deferments you could get for having a dead father. I almost enlisted anyway, thinking I could wrangle school money out of the deal. She fought me on it. Said if I went in I’d never get my degree. Her interference bothered me at the time, since she’d never interfered with anything I’d ever done before. I tried to thank her later on, but she’d forgotten about Vietnam by then, along with everything else.

When I got home Eddie was passed out on my bed on the screened-in porch, snoring. I had to wake him up. Fearless watchdog. But he was glad to see me and glad to get outside.

I had a nightcap and watched Eddie under the moonlight, running the yard, securing the perimeter. It was bright and clear enough to light up the bay so you could see all the way across to Southold. Some lights were still lit over on Nassau Point and Hog’s Neck, full of guys on porches, staring back into the mysteries of the Little Peconic Bay.

In the morning I called my personal banker.

“Amanda Battiston.”

“Hi. It’s Sam. On official business.”

“Ready to open that investment account?”

“And plunge Wall Street into chaos?”

“I’m ready when you are.”

“I need everything you got on Regina’s account.”

“We have her account?”

“I got the checks to prove it. I want to cash one to pay her bills. Keep the lights on. I need to know how much she’s got. If there’re any other accounts. Savings, or one of your aggressively promoted investment accounts. Any account history as detailed as you can give me. I have one box of canceled checks, which I’m guessing goes back a few years. I haven’t found her checkbook, so current stuff is important. I need to know what obligations she’s got, premiums, taxes, that kind of thing. Do you take pictures of checks from other banks that are deposited?”

“I don’t think so. Theymight record the bank code. I can ask. This could take a little time.” There was a pause. “I’m trying to write it all down.”

“I appreciate it.”

“I’ll need an original death certificate and a copy of whatever says you’re the administrator of the estate.”

“I got that.”

“If there’s a safety-deposit box the Town attorney might have to be there when we open it up.”

“Okay. Whatever you got.”

“I don’t think I ever saw her in here.”

“I think Regina ran everything out of her mailbox. The flag was up all the time. Didn’t drive. Cabbed or took the Senior Center shuttle to the IGA, unless she could nag me into getting her groceries.”

“You’d do that?”

“Occasionally.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Nothing relating to Regina was sweet. Least of all me.”

“No safety-deposit. No investments, no savings account. Just one checking. Originally opened in 1987, which was the year Harbor Trust bought out East End Savings and Loan, so it could be a much older account.”