The Last Refuge (16 page)

“Hm.”

“Maybe I’ve been alone in that cottage too long.”

“You weren’t alone. You had Regina.”

“And Eddie. I got a dog.”

“I’ll have an associate do a little research on Bay Side Holdings.”

“That’s not why I’m telling you this.”

“I know. It’s no trouble.”

Burton Lewis owned a forty-eight-story building in lower Manhattan and all two thousand of the lawyers who worked inside. I guess it wouldn’t be any trouble.

“All I wanted was to knock things around a little.”

“It would be good for your soul to allow me to help.”

That might be true, but it was going to wreak havoc with the rest of me. But that was my fault. I knew I needed the help. Every form of refuge has its price.

“I could use the help. I appreciate it.”

“I know you do. While you’re at it, give me Regina’s Social Security number and I’ll see if we can uncover other assets.”

After that we caught up on the state of professional basketball, discussed plans for adding a library as a separate building on the property, the mechanical status of my Grand Prix and his Country Squire, and a case he’d recently helped bring before the Supreme Court. He kept the conversation focused on himself, which I appreciated.

It was late when I got back to the cottage. There was a note from Amanda pinned to my door.

“I’m going on a girls’ night out tomorrow night. The Playhouse in Bridgehampton. From nine till whenever. If somebody I know just happens to be there too I can apologize again and this time he
has
to accept!” Signed “A.”

It was too late to untangle any more confused impulses or reaffirm secret pledges I’d made to myself. It was time to go to sleep so I could dream about bathtubs and flying fists, and being too late to pick up my daughter at school, or losing her in a crowded shopping mall, having been too distracted to realize I’d let go of her tiny hand.

The next morning I made a bucket of coffee and smoked my first cigarette before calling Sullivan. I was
sitting on the screened-in porch so I could watch Eddie run around in the yard. Somehow he knew how to stay within my property lines, out of the street and away from Regina’s. Even when he jumped off the breakwater down to the pebble beach he stayed within the boundaries. He didn’t like to swim, but he loved to run through the water at about belly height, looking for plastic bottles or dead fish, which he’d put in a pile on shore. It’s hard to say if he achieved anything of lasting value, his air of determined purpose notwithstanding.

I got Sullivan on his cell phone like he told me to.

“Yeah, well, it’s interesting,” said Sullivan, his voice rising just enough above the car noise.

“How so.”

“The cause of death was a traumatic blow to the posterior region of the head—don’t you love that, ‘traumatic’? I guess it was fucking traumatic if it killed her.”

“And?”

“And, it could have been caused by hitting the tub, or it could’ve been somethin’ else. ‘The actual size and concentration of the contusion is not inconsistent with the subject’s head impacting the porcelain surface of the bathtub as the result of a fall, though this does not rule out the possibility of the cause being the striking surface of a broad, blunt object.’ There was no water in her lungs, which isn’t unusual, either. Or other injuries. Nothing under her nails that didn’t belong there, no sign of struggle at all. So, basically, they think she just fell backwards and hit her head.”

“I found her face down. How did she get face down if she cracked the back of her head?”

“The report says you could still be conscious after a blow like this. You get disoriented, you might try to stand up, you pass out, you fall face down.”

“Why not just conclude that it wasn’t from falling in the tub.”

“They aren’t looking for anything else. They’re looking for an explanation for her being face down after falling in the tub and hitting the back of her head.”

“What do you think?”

“I think they’re full of crap.”

I never liked talking on the phone. You can’t see the other guy’s face, can’t judge what he’s really thinking. I took a gulp of the coffee that was cooling down in my mug.

“You think somebody hit her.”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just not happy about the disposition of the body. Just like I never bought that crap about Kennedy lurching forward after getting hit straight on with a bullet. I’m sorry, if I shoot you in the forehead, you’re going backwards. If you smack your head after falling over backwards in the bathtub, you float on your back, not on your stomach.”

“Was there anything else?”

“That’s all I know. That she could’ve been killed by some flat heavy object.”

“Like a two-by-four.”

“Nah, I asked that. Wood leaves a different kind of imprint. They’ve seen lots of those.”

“So you asked.”

“I did. I figured a cast iron fry pan.”

“You did? How come?”

“I’ve seen it before. Women like ’em. About the only thing heavy with a handle they’re used to picking up. Always within reach.”

“You asked them if she could’ve been hit with a frying pan?” I was impressed.

“Yeah, and they said yeah. That’d fit the bill perfect. Heavy, flat, except it wouldn’t leave nothing behind.”

“Too bad.”

“Except maybe a little carbon from her gas stove.”

“Really.”

“Which would wash off in the bathtub.”

“Right.”

“Except they found a tiny residue in her hair.”

“Really?” I said, even more impressed.

“The lab guys can do some amazing shit these days.”

“So what does it mean?”

“Nothing, just curious.”

“You can’t match it with one of her fry pans?”

“Nah. Carbon’s carbon. She could’ve washed a pan, then scratched her head and left a trace. It’s really tiny.”

“So you’re satisfied.”

“I didn’t say that either.”

“You’re suspicious.”

“I am a little, yeah. But that don’t mean shit around here. I start talking like you and Chief Semple would have my ass.”

“I guess I don’t understand cops.”

“Don’t start bustin’ on cops. Nobody likes to go back over something they figured was a done deal.”

“I didn’t mean that. I just don’t get the process.”

“For now, the process is you get the old lady planted. I’ll get you a copy of the autopsy report.”

“Okay. I appreciate it.”

“I’ll get her shipped over to Pappanasta’s, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure. Good as any.”

“We can keep talking. Like I said, talking’s okay.”

After I got off the phone with Sullivan I went running to work out the accretion of vodka, good and bad, from the day before. I needed to clear my head. I took Eddie with me, even though he hadn’t touched a drop. When I got back I felt better, even if my head wasn’t any clearer.

I had a manila folder with all the papers I’d been collecting on Regina. I spent the rest of the day sitting on the porch with the file on the table where I could take a look at it from time to time. I wrote a few thoughts and “things to do” on the legal pad. As it started to get dark, I thought about Amanda Battiston and her note. I still hadn’t figured out what to do. So I wrote “fry pan” on the outside of the manila folder and went to take a shower.

The Playhouse was on the main route between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor. It stood in the center of a huge swarm of parked cars that caught and threw back light from big security spots mounted in the trees. It was a nice house at one time, though decades of hard use had rounded off the edges. During the season you waited in line with the Summer People, but this time of year you could get right in after paying the huge bearded guy at the door.
A vintage oak bar anchored the back of an open area where you could dance or sit and listen to the band. The cocktail waitresses navigated the crowd with trays held overhead and faces set in neutral. Smoke formed cirrus clouds around the house lamps, from which warm yellow light painted the plain beautiful and the beautiful divine. The music was loud enough to vibrate your internal organs, but I liked it well enough. A joint wasn’t a joint without distorted electric guitars. God made rock and roll so people would have something to dance to and guys could pick up girls without having to say anything, a huge advantage for most of them.

I shoved my way through a pack of meatballs in baggy jeans, flannel shirts and baseball caps and caught one of the waitresses by the elbow. She cocked her head at me so I could yell vodka on the rocks in her ear. She nodded and moved off again. A dark-haired woman in a scoop-neck leotard top and scarf was looking at me, making flagrant eye contact. She was sitting on a man’s lap, sipping from a shot glass. I broke her heart by looking away and lighting a cigarette. A chubby, wiry-haired guy about my age was twirling a young woman around the dance floor. They moved with the perfect synchronicity you see in dance contests. They looked happy doing what they were doing.

The waitress gave me the vodka. I took my cigarette and drink over to a slippery wet table in a dark corner. People instinctively moved away from me. Couldn’t stand to be near all that charm. Music crashed through the crowd and rolled like foamy surf over the tables
and bar stools. All the women on the dance floor seemed lighter than air, moving instinctively, languidly to the crunching rhythms. The men lumbered, or mimicked their partners’ movements with little or no awareness of their own.

A woman with short blond hair the color of freshly polished brass sat down in the chair next to me. She was thick around the waist, and looked stuffed into her jeans and flannel shirt. Her lipstick and nail polish were too red, even in the low light. Each hand was laden with heavy molded rings and hoop-like bracelets. I guessed her to be on the top side of her thirties.

“Hey,” she yelled to me over the din.

I nodded noncommittally.

“Wanna dance?”

I tried to give her a friendly smile.

“No thanks. Just watching.”

She smiled back.

“Oh, I think you do.”

“Sorry, really don’t. Really can’t, actually, but I appreciate the offer.”

“I think you do,” she said, nodding at me and winking her left eye. “If you thought about it, you would really like to dance. This dance.”

She made a play for my hand. I drew deeper into the corner.

“Sorry, just isn’t my thing.”

“Ha,” she said, strangely undeterred, jerking her head toward the dance floor.

I looked past her shoulder and caught a flash of thick auburn hair as it passed through a smoky column of light from one of the ceiling spots.

“So,” I said to the big blond, who was watching me watch Amanda shoulder her way though the crowd. “You really think I’d like to do this.”

“Just a feeling,” she yelled back.

I downed the drink, crushed the butt and stepped out on the dance floor. It was important not to think about it much more, since I had no idea what I was going to do when I got there. I’d dedicated a sizable percentage of my life to sitting in all kinds of bars, lounges and nightclubs, but thus far had escaped all attempts to get me to dance, if that’s what those people out there were actually doing. This was something I knew nothing about.

I did, however, know how to box. And all boxers since Muhammad Ali knew you had to float like a butterfly. So this is what I sort of did, in approximate time with the music. My partner was unimpressed.

“What are you doing?”

“The butterfly.”

She thought about it. I concentrated on my moves, trying to blend into the general mayhem. I was momentarily sorry I’d never tried to do this before, but the thought passed when Amanda slid into view and took both my hands, pulling me as she danced deeper into the writhing tangle of humanity. My blond partner smiled at Amanda, waved at me and made a graceful withdrawl from the dance floor. Mission complete.

“What the heck are you doing here, Mr. Acquillo?” she said in mock surprise.

“Don’t rightly know—driven by little voices in my head.”

“What are they saying?”

“That I look like an asshole.”

She laughed.

“Not entirely. You’re getting it.”