Hard Stop (23 page)

“If you had Iku Kinjo’s computer, what would you normally look for?” I asked.

“I’d look for the report from forensics. They do all the looking.”

“Can I talk to them?” I asked.

“You can talk to me. I can talk to them.”

“I don’t know what questions to ask.”

“Yeah, you do. You just don’t want to share.”

He was right. It was a bad habit.

“I’d want to know everything she ever wrote relating to Bobby Dobson and Angel Valero. I’d want to see private logs, journals, love letters, confidential memos and photographs. Financial spreadsheets. To-do lists. Shopping lists.”

“That’s all? How come you don’t want to read all her email? Inbox, sent, deleted and saved. What about a full record of her Internet habits? Websites visited. Click-throughs. Searches. Social networking sites. Chat rooms. Blogs read and responded to. Rants. How about iTunes and YouTube downloads? How come you don’t want the whole fucking hard drive?”

“Because I don’t know what any of those things are.”

It got quiet on the other end of the line.

“You might think about catching up with the contemporary world there, MIT,” he said finally.

“You’re right. Though I did get a cell phone. Did you know you can call people from your car or when you’re sitting on the can?”

“People like the victim run their whole lives on the computer, and forensics can get it all. The public thinks they can delete what they want, hide what they write or do online, but they can’t. It’s all available. No secrets. No privacy, and nobody seems to care but the people who make a career whining about it.”

“So where is it?” I asked.

“What?”

“The computer.”

“Stupid,” he said.

“What’s stupid?”

“I am. For not realizing that was an Ethernet connection in the girl’s room. Or asking anybody about it. I oughta know better.”

Sullivan was one of those intelligent people who grew up in a world that assumed otherwise, based entirely on your relatives, your neighborhood, your choice of profession. It used to annoy me, but I’d since developed a tactful way of overcoming his inferiority complex.

“Pretty stupid. But I’ve seen stupider,” I told him.

“Thanks, Sam. That makes it better.”

“So where do you think it is?” I said.

“Vedders Pond. I’ve already called in the divers.”

“That’s where I’d start. But if you find it, there’s a bigger question.”

“What?” he asked.

“Who put it there?”

I
REMEMBER THOSE SCIENCE CLASS
analogies of the sun as a basketball and the earth as a pea. It’s the same for the Hamptons and New York City. We have more room out here, but the City is a whole lot bigger.

To say people in the Hamptons have mixed feelings about the colossus next door would be to understate the matter by an appropriately vast degree. Even for people who work in town and live here when they can. No matter what you want to believe, the Hamptons are an adjunct of the Big City—an appendage. We’re in her orbit, her gravitational pull, and utterly in her thrall.

Which is one of the reasons I like driving into town. To see the big girl in all her arrogant glory. The only question was how I drove—or more precisely, in what.

“You’re thinking of taking the Audi, aren’t you,” said Amanda.

“Why would I think that?” I lied.

“I’ll drive the pickup.”

“Nah. I’ll drive the pickup. If you need to haul a few tons of stuff, you can use the Grand Prix,” I said.

So I ended up in Amanda’s little red truck, with Eddie next to me in the passenger seat, heading into New York City. It was a compromise, admittedly. It wasn’t easy for me to accept help from anyone, least of all my rich girlfriend. But driving the Grand Prix over the lunar landscapes of Manhattan was getting to be a hit-or-miss proposition, and I could do without the added stress.

I’d booked a hotel in Tribeca that allowed dogs. “Pet friendly” is how they put it, which sounded more like a predilection than a policy. The ad in the
Times
noted that the hotel bar featured the widest selection of vodkas in New York City. Providence like this demanded a reservation.

I had the rough edges of a plan. I’d drive in before rush hour, settle Eddie into the room, take my daughter out to dinner, then figure out the rest of the plan while testing the legitimacy of the bar’s claim.

I executed everything but the figuring out part.

The best I could do was wake up early enough to walk Eddie, bring him back to the room and haul myself up to the West Side in time to catch Bobby Dobson getting ready for work.

As I pushed the button on the panel outside his building, I was still waiting for a bolt of inspiration.

“Who’s there?” said a male voice over the scratchy intercom.

“It’s Jerome,” I said, my inflection pitched to Westchester by way of Brighton Beach. “We need to talk. Let me in.”

Seconds trudged by. Then the door buzzed.

I took the elevator to his floor, still wondering how I was going to beat the inevitable peephole in the door. But my luck and Dobson’s stupidity caused him to open his door
when I was only a few paces away, allowing me to shoulder my way into the apartment before he knew what hit him.

What hit him actually was the door, hard enough to knock him off his feet, which I really didn’t mean to do. This left me standing over him as Elaine Brooks stepped into the hallway wearing only a terry cloth bathrobe, which in the excitement she’d neglected to tie closed.

I squatted next to Dobson.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said, “but I’m here to help you.”

“I’m calling the cops,” he said, leaning on his elbows.

“You can do that, but that’ll force me to tell them how you’ve been lying about Iku Kinjo.”

“Bobby?” said Elaine from down the hall, now more properly pulled together.

“It’s okay, baby,” he said, still looking up at me, “we’re just talking here.”

“It doesn’t look that way to me,” she said.

“All I want to do is talk,” I said to Bobby. “Honestly. We keep getting off on the wrong foot. My fault. I want to make it up to you. If you’d rather fight me, I’ll have to fight back. I’d hate that. And so would you.”

He slowly got to his feet, feeling around a red spot on his cheek. He waved me into an area that served as a combination living room and kitchenette, where he cracked ice cubes out of a tray to put on his face. All the while Elaine was whispering at him furiously, to which he responded with semi-articulate grunts.

Feeling stupid standing alone in the living room, I went over to the kitchen and introduced myself to Elaine. She was examining Bobby’s cheek, which had again caused her to lose control of her bathrobe. Her body was plenty nice to look at, but I was embarrassed for both of us. I looked away as I offered my hand.

“Sam Acquillo, miss,” I said. “I’m really sorry to bother you.”

She clutched her robe to her neck, which helped a little, and offered her free hand.

“You got a weird way of showing it.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s Iku’s murder,” I added. “Makes me a little crazy.”

Elaine took the bait.

“Oh my God, is that horrible or what?” she said.

I saw Bobby let out an inaudible sigh.

Looking over at the gigantic coffeemaker on the kitchen counter, I said, “Can we sit down? Have some coffee?”

Their sitting area was mostly office space, with a tiny loveseat and two swivel chairs, a desk with a PC and bookcases with swayback shelves crammed with stacks of paper and miscellaneous clutter.

They plopped down in the loveseat and I took one of the swivel chairs. Now that I was familiar with Elaine’s more essential qualities, I studied her face. It was broad, large featured and pretty in the way old-fashioned writers called handsome. Her hair was dark brown, her chin square and her eyes, also brown, wide-set. There were dimples in her cheeks deep enough to grow crops and her smile was an orthodontist’s billboard.

Bobby was still his nervous, pale little self.

“So, Elaine, you guys knew Iku at Princeton, right?” I asked.

Her expression, seasoned with vague alarm, stayed in place.

“She was a Fast Track,” she said.

“A what?”

“A Fast Track,” said Bobby. “YIT. Yuppie-in-training. Mover and shaker. If you can’t help my career, get the fuck out of my way. I was in Economics with her. Awesome focus.”

“But very cute,” said Elaine.

Bobby blanched. Not a big blanch. A very slight, barely
noticeable blanch. “She was a babe. With a mysterious kind of look. Different,” he said. “But she didn’t seem to care about herself. You never saw her outside class. I think she skipped the social part.”

“So how did she end up staying at your place?” I asked.

Elaine looked to Bobby to answer.

“I ran into her at the Playhouse,” he said. “I didn’t know her that well, like I said, but enough to chat it up. She was looking for a place to stay. We had an extra room. She paid the whole freight for the summer through to Christmas. So that was that.”

I swiveled back and forth in my chair, feeling the painful lack of a coffee cup in my hand. It made me a little irritable.

“When are you going to stop lying to me?” I asked.

Bobby stared, unsure.

“The thing is, man,” I said, “you’re not that good at it. All this does is aggravate the person you’re lying to. With me, it doesn’t mean much, even though I hit you with the door—not intentionally. But it means a lot to the cops, who are not as loving as I am. Worse for you, the cops are friends of mine. If I say you’re dirty, you’re dirty. They’ll escort you to a session at the cleaners—a good washing and drying. Do you hear what I’m saying to you? Do you understand?”

“That’s very threatening language,” said Elaine.

“No, it’s not. It’s informative. Iku didn’t just want a place to party for the summer, she wanted a hideout. You made it appear, to some people at least, that you were romantically involved with her, which clearly you weren’t. How come? Unless you wanted to give her some cover.”

Elaine was studying my face while I talked, intent on grasping what I was saying. When I stopped, she turned her attention to Bobby, with the same concentration. Assessing point and counterpoint.

“You ever been to a place where people are hooking up?” Bobby asked. “Probably not. It’s a fluid dynamic. If Iku wanted to hide out, that was her business. And as far as me being her boyfriend, I can’t help what people think. I’m Elaine’s boyfriend. I think,” he added, looking at her. She nodded her head at me, with a look I can only describe as chipper.

“He better be,” she said. “Or I’ll kill him.”

I looked at Elaine.

“You knew Iku was Eisler, Johnson’s golden girl,” I said. “Must have been a teeny bit weird for Bobby to have somebody with a pass card to the top floor sleeping in the basement.”

I let the awkward silence fill the room.

“You said she was a worker bee,” Elaine said to Bobby.

“She did a little consulting for Angel Valero,” he said, answering her, but still looking at me. “This guy thinks that matters.”

Realizing she might have breached their unified front, Elaine snapped back into character. “I don’t know anything about business stuff,” she said. “I just sell art.”

“That’s right,” I said. “You’re only in it for the culture.”

She smiled, still holding her ground.

“What difference does it make who introduced who to who?” asked Bobby. “We ran into Iku, had a few drinks, invited her to rent one of the empty bedrooms. So what? What’s your point?”

“Who else beside Iku was on the Internet?” I asked.

“Who wasn’t,” said Elaine.

Bobby liked her answer.

“We also talked on telephones. Again, what’s your point?”

I didn’t exactly know what Sullivan wanted to keep confidential, but I was backed into a corner. So I said it.

“Iku’s computer wasn’t recovered. It’s missing.”

Scorn flashed across Bobby’s face.

“Those cops could fuck up a wet dream.”

I tried to imagine how Joe Sullivan would have answered that.

“So, you think they lost it? Dropped it down a hole on the way to the car?”

He shrugged. “Who knows. Their problem.”

Bobby looked like he was teetering between outrage and terror. I gave him a shove.

“No,” I said, “yours. As soon as I throw you to those cops you hold in such contempt.”

He stared at me, scraping together his meager shreds of courage.

“This’s got nothing to do with me,” he said.

“Give me the computer and I won’t tell Joe Sullivan you were withholding evidence. I’ll say I found it in the woods.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only computer I have is over there.” He nodded toward an overflowing desk. “And you won’t find it very interesting, unless you love financial analyses. I should let you take it home with you as punishment.”

The computer was the only thing in the apartment that looked new, which was made more apparent by its disheveled surroundings.

“So, no theories,” I said.

“About what?” said Bobby.

“The computer. Where it went.”

“The killer took it. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.”

“Really? So the killer cared about what was on it. Is that what you think?”

Bobby didn’t like that.

“That’s not what I’m saying. Maybe he just wanted it.”

“Pretty selective thief. Did you report anything else stolen?”

“We didn’t report anything,” said Elaine. “They won’t let us back in the house.”

Bobby liked that more. He looked proud of his girlfriend. He jumped to his feet. “Listen, we gotta get ready for work,” he said, and walked out of the room.

Elaine stood up and said, “Well?”

I shrugged and got up to follow her, but on the way to the door she turned and used her shoulder to wedge me against the wall. The maneuver caused more revealing disruption to her bathrobe, which by now was getting to be old hat.

“What makes you think we won’t have you arrested? Or worse?” she asked in a low voice.

“You would have done it by now if you thought you could,” I said.