The Last Refuge (22 page)

“Doesn’t sound like the worst deal.”

“I guess.”

Sullivan wasn’t going to press it. He also wasn’t going to give up his local allegiance, his bigotry against all things Manhattan.

“So that’s where it’s at. Besides Burton, I’m gathering up what I can on Bay Side from real-estate records.
The Surrogate’s Court still has to have a hearing on making me administrator, but I can keep going. Should be a slam dunk unless Jimmy Maddox wants to make trouble, which I don’t think’ll happen.”

Sullivan drank some more of his beer and looked around the inside of the Pequot. The midday regulars were hunkered around the bar trying to hold coherent conversations with Dotty. Hodges was in the back rustling up Fish of the Day for the guys coming off boats that’d been out since four in the morning. Sullivan looked like he wanted to say something.

“What.”

“It bothers me,” he said.

“What bothers you.”

“I’m responsible for the safety and well-being of all the people and property inside about a five-square-mile chunk of Long Island. You’re put in charge of something like that, and everybody has to pretend that it’s actually possible to do the job. But it’s really not, at least not the way everybody wants you to. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just you gotta act out this fantasy that we’re all some kind of superman. But that’s okay. I do the job anyway, my way, as best I can. Only my way makes it hard to buy into the bullshit. I can’t help havin’ a mind of my own.”

“What’s your mind telling you?”

“Nobody gives a shit about dead old ladies. And I don’t even blame ’em. There’s so much shit going on all the time, there’s so little money to ever get it all done. Out here you got homegrown idiots stealing shit and selling drugs, and shootin’ each other, you got all kinds of crazy evil shit coming out of the City,
especially during the season. You got all these people along the water who act like they own the world, because, basically, some of ’em do. Then there’s the people in the court system you have to keep happy. You got County people, State people, fucking Feds if you think about it, all doing nothin’ but figurin’ out ways to make your job harder. The last thing any of ’em wants you to do for Christ’s sake is say, ‘I
know
this is what you
think
happened, but it ain’t that way, it happened like
this.’
That’d mean paperwork. Time away from other shit that’s already more than they can handle. That’d mean somebody’d have to say, oh, I guess I fucked up a little bit on that one.”

It was too bad, but Hodges picked that moment to come over and say hi. Sullivan stood up and shook his hand. They ran through a bunch of names looking for connections, which wasn’t hard. Sullivan dredged up some nice things to say about Hodges’s joint. Hodges pledged admiration and support for all boys and girls in law enforcement. All of which was fine, but I wanted to find out where Sullivan was heading. Which I couldn’t do until much later, back out in the parking lot.

As soon as we were outside I said, “So, Joe, what were you saying in there?”

He dug around inside his jeans pocket for the keys to his old Bronco.

“Broadhurst might’ve been a lousy old bitch, but she was my lousy old bitch. My beat, my neighborhood. I don’t care if you’re full of crap. Until I can prove to myself one hundred percent that you’re full of crap, I’m interested in this. Let me know what you’re doing.”

He walked over to his truck, carrying the extra weight around his middle with obstinate dignity. I went home to feed the dog and nurse my wounds.

There were little clouds of gray-blue mist rising up from the harvested potato fields when I drove out Scuttle Hole Road on the way to Jackie Swaitkowski’s place in Bridgehampton. It was mid-morning and you could see the clear sky above waiting for the sun to dry out the air. Despite the mist, everything looked sharp and scrubbed clean, even through the Grand Prix’s pitted windshield. Ribbons of fresh white fencing separated cropland from pasture, where dressage horses grazed and tried to look indifferent to their status. Huge piles of postmodern architecture and partially submerged potato barns broke up the slow curves of the landscape. To the north were short hills covered by forests of red oak and scruffy pine. Jackie was somewhere up in there, if I’d read my map right. Her answering service said she’d be there all morning. The woman I spoke to said not to bother with an appointment.

“Go ahead up there. I know her, she won’t mind.”

“Really.”

“She’s bored. She’s been stuck on this brief for a bunch of people trying to run this poor guy off his gas station. They say it’s a blight on the neighborhood.”

“Not if you need gas.”

“People are so touchy about property values.”

“Because they’re so valuable?”

“That’s the thing. Everything’s so expensive. Hey, got another call. Say hi to Jackie. Tell her not to work too hard.”

I called for an appointment anyway. The answering service was right. Jackie Swaitkowski longed for distractions.

“Sure, come on over. Ring the bell,” she said before I’d given much of an explanation.

Once in the woods, the atmosphere changed abruptly. Enclosed by tall oaks, the air was cool and the light was splattered patternless across the ground and up the sides of thick tree trunks. The iridescent red and orange fall foliage betrayed the deep green of scrub pines and hemlocks and wild mountain laurel. A few more weeks and all the leaves would be on the ground and the forest would give in to the gray gloom of winter.

Jackie’s house was the kind of flimsy, unadorned wooden box real-estate people called a Contemporary. It was built into the side of a hill at the end of a long dirt drive. Jackie, or whoever owned the place, wasn’t much of a landscaper. A rusty Toyota pickup with oversized tires and welded metal racks was in front of the garage.

Next to the front door were two buttons—one labeled “Jackie Swaitkowski, attorney-at-law.” The other said “Jackie Swaitkowski, Private Citizen.” I rang the lawyer.

She had a long, thick crop of strawberry-blond hair and a lot of freckles splashed across a reddish tan complexion. Her face was wide open and pretty, and could have been used to promote Irish tourism. She had a nice figure stuffed into a yellow cotton jersey dress and
flip-flops on her feet. Maybe thirty-two, maybe more. It was getting harder for me to tell.

“Hi.”

“Attorney Swaitkowski?”

“Jackie.”

“Sam Acquillo.”

“Like the saint?”

“That’d be Aquinas.”

“Right. Missed that catechism.” She walked away from the door and invited me in with an exaggerated wave of her arm. I followed her into a sloppy, cheerful living room furnished with two dirty white couches and a coffee table made from a gigantic slab of cross-cut timber. It was buried under heaps of magazines and catalogs. She walked across the table and dropped down cross-legged into one of the couches. I took the other.

Hardly seated, she bounced up again and asked if I wanted anything, like coffee or tea. I said coffee and she disappeared for a few minutes to rustle some up.

While I waited, I looked around at the overflowing bookcases and poster art plastered on every scrap of wall space. There were probably thousands of books and CDs, but no TV. On a side table was a stack of used dinner plates and there was a roach in the ashtray.

“I’m actually kind of glad to be getting away from this god-awful case,” she said as she came back in with two mismatched mugs.

“So I hear.”

She huffed.

“That’s Judy, she’s such a pain. We talk all the time, of course. She should be paying me, I’m so entertaining.”

She climbed back into the couch, slumped down and put her feet up on the coffee table. Her legs were pinky brown and freckled like her face. They’d seen a lot of beach time. She held the mug with two hands and blew the steam off the top.

We talked about Southampton past and present and tried to find common ground. It was the kind of conversation you have on a barstool or at a checkout counter. With a little prompting, she talked enough to hold up both our ends.

“Always practiced out here?” I asked her.

“What, does it show? Yeah, of course. Born, raised and so on. Except for law school. Even married a Polish potato boy. He’s dead,” she said quickly, before I could comment. “Sold the farm, then bought the farm, so to speak. Stuck that cute little car about halfway up the side of a great big oak tree. Right out here on Brick Kiln Road. Perfect, huh?”

“Sorry.”

She set down the coffee and sat back, throwing her arms across the back of the couch. “Hey, what am I doing here telling you my life’s story.”

“I got you started.”

“That’s right, you did.”

She looked me over a little more carefully.

“You gonna tell me what happened?”

“To what?”

“Your head.”

“Oh.”

I reached up to feel the wound. I’d actually forgotten it was there. Maybe those cumulative effects had begun to accumulate.

“I didn’t know it still showed.”

“I’m observant. So what happened?”

“I ran into a wrecking ball.”

“Really?”

“Just felt like one.”

“Which means none of your business.”

“Means it’s a long story.”

“It sort of suits your face.”

“That’s what they said at the hospital.”

Her attention suddenly became unmoored and started to drift away. She looked out the window for a while, then around at the disarray in the living room as if unsure how it got that way.

“Okay,” she said, looking back at me, “what can I do you out of?”

“I was wondering if you could tell me anything about Bay Side Holdings. Milton Hornsby.”

The air inside the room dropped about ten degrees.

“Who did you say you were with?”

“I didn’t. I’m the administrator of an estate. Regina Broadhurst. According to the real-estate and tax records, she was living in a house owned by Bay Side Holdings. I went over to Sag Harbor to tell Milton Hornsby and he basically threw me off his property. Your name was on some documents submitted to the Town appeals board. So here I am.”

“Do you have any identification?”

I got out my wallet and tossed her my driver’s license. I also tossed her a death certificate and the Surrogate’s Court paper naming me administrator.

“Are you an attorney?” she asked, looking up from the court papers.

“Industrial designer. And the old lady’s next door neighbor.”

She got up from the couch to hand back my license and the Surrogate’s Court document. She left the death certificate on the table. She scooped up her coffee mug and took a sip, standing over me.

“You’re aware of attorney-client privilege,” she said.

“Yeah, of course. I’m only here because Hornsby won’t talk to me. All I want is to give him back his house. After I clear up whatever might be hanging, and get her stuff out of there. That’s all.”

“Industrial designer?”

“That’s what I did. I’m an engineer.”

“What you did?”

“Don’t do it anymore.”

Somebody threw another switch in her head and she tossed herself back into the couch, sprawling out across the entire length. She put her forearm up to her head.

“I was sane until those assholes drove me crazy. Honest, Doc.”

“Define crazy.”

She looked over at me from her swoon.

“You shrinks are all alike. All talk and no cure.”

I drank some of my coffee. It was just a little more viscous than the transmission fluid I used in the Grand Prix. I sat back, therapist style.

“Maybe if we started with your childhood.”

“Nah, too depressing. Anyway, I was fine until I got handed that dumb case.”

“I could use some help on this. If it doesn’t violate attorney-asshole privilege.”

Jackie hooted.

“Where’d you get the act?”

“MIT. Comedy’s part of the curriculum. Everyone knows that.”

“My dad was an engineer.”

“I knew you’d drag your childhood into this.”

She rolled over on her side and flipped off her flip-flops. She let her hand fall to the coffee table so she could fiddle with a bunch of rose-colored glass grapes.

“I guess I’m not much of a lawyer,” she said, much in the way people do when they want you to disagree with them.

“You’re probably great when you feel like it.”

That was the right tack.

“Hey, affirmation. I like that. Yeah, I’m actually pretty good at the job itself. I’m just really bad at being a person. Really fucks up the career.”

That sounded like me. Maybe Jackie and I should start a club.

“This is getting awfully heavy for people who just met each other,” she said, abruptly launching herself off the couch. “Let’s find another venue. All I gotta do is see a couch and I start baring my soul. You oughta see me in a furniture store. It’s like Pavlovian.”

I followed her out to a glassed-in porch that had been converted to office space. There was Masonite paneling below the windows and indoor-outdoor carpet on the floor. It smelled like a greenhouse. She dropped into an expensive-looking ergonomic desk chair, spun around once and put her bare feet up on the desk. I cleared a space for myself on a long wooden bench.