Hard Stop (7 page)

“Oh yeah. My favorite look,” said the second guy she approached. A bartender.

“But did you see her?”

“Oh, yeah. Love the multiracial thing. In a thousand years we’re all gonna look like Halle Berry and Tiger Woods. It’ll be Earth Beautiful. Until some recessive ugly gene takes over and we’ll have to mix it all up again.”

“So you know her.”

“Not really. Campari and soda is all I remember. Always came in with two other women and a guy. I see those three all the time. Live together at a share. All strictly Caucasoid.”

“When was the last time they were here?” I asked.

“Labor Day weekend, I think.”

Amanda stuck her thumb at me.

“Any chance they’ll be here tonight?” I asked.

“Anything can happen, chief,” said the bartender.

“I guess we’re forced to wait here at the bar,” I said to Amanda.

“No sacrifice too great.”

We ordered gin and tonics and took a position where we could watch people coming through the door. We filled the time talking about the houses Amanda was knocking down and rebuilding on Oak Point and around the corner on Jacob’s Neck. I worked for Frank Entwhistle, but occasionally consulted for Amanda. For no charge, unless you counted frequent use of her pickup truck and outdoor shower.

The Playhouse slowly filled to near capacity and the volume finally overwhelmed our ability to converse, neither of us inclined to shout over the noise about Sheetrock crews and building permits. So we settled on watching the pulsing throng on the dance floor and the people standing around and drinking, the couples entangled or ill at ease, the packs of men in baseball hats and baggy pants trying to look nonchalant as they surreptitiously scanned the crowd for targets of opportunity.

The bartender who’d seen Iku sidled up to me at the bar and put his hand on my forearm.

“There’s the dude,” he said. “Over there next to the pole. White shirt. Heineken.”

I watched him for a while. He was apparently there alone, leaning on the pole and looking out on the dance floor, but otherwise disengaged. He had short brown hair and a few days’ growth of beard. He was slight, just shy of delicate—Iku would have been close to his height in her bare feet. But he wasn’t a bad-looking archetype of the generic young professional class.

“What do we do now?” asked Amanda, shouting in my ear.

“I don’t know,” I yelled back.

The guy stayed put through a half dozen musical segments—I don’t know what else to call them—strung together with the non-stop thump of the underbeat. Then he put his empty bottle on a table and headed for the men’s room. I told Amanda to save my seat and followed him.

A short line formed at the door. I stood behind him until we were through and waiting for vacancies at the urinals along the wall. It was a good time to take out the picture of Iku and hold it in front of his face.

“Hey, Bobby.”

He whipped around.

“Get away from me,” he said in a strained whisper. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for your girlfriend. What are you doing?”

He pushed past me and plunged back into the crowd. I followed him across the club floor to the main entrance. He maneuvered his way through the oncoming flow and shot through the door. When I got outside he was already partway through the parking lot. I ran after him.

“Hey, just want to talk,” I called, which had the effect of shooting him into a full run. I saw him point something at a row of cars and the lights inside a Volvo sedan lit up. By the time I got there he was in the car with the engine running, his headlights blinding me as the car pulled out of the parking space and tore down the lane. I turned around and ran for the entrance to the lot, zigzagging through the rows of cars, hoping to cut him off at the pass.

Which I didn’t quite do, but as he squealed out onto the street the headlights from the other cars lit the rear of his car and I could make out the license plate. I pulled a pen out of my shirt pocket and wrote the number on the inside of a pack of matches.

A man and a woman I’d nearly plowed over on my way across the lot came up behind me.

“What was all that about?” the woman asked me.

“That guy hit my car when he was backing out. Didn’t even bother to look.”

“Fucking Volvos,” said the man, as if that explained everything.

When I got back to the bar Amanda asked me how it went.

“It went out the door and down the road. In a big hurry,” I shouted in her ear.

“Interesting.”

“You think?”

“Did he say anything?”

I told her what he’d said, as best I could above the noise.

“Odd,” she said.

“I got his plate number. I think.”

“So what do we do now? All this shouting is hurting my throat.”

I looked around the inside of the club, which was now filled with young bodies and energetic foolishness.

“We dance,” I told her, pulling her out on the floor and holding her in a traditional slow dance embrace, contrary to the pace of the music. It was the only kind of dancing I knew how to do, though empirically speaking, it was also the best.

We left after that, which I was happy to do. I was never much for nightclubs, and they made even less sense at this stage of the game. Amanda always looked great to me, but looked best when I could hear her speak, when she was animated by the conversation, whatever the content.

I cashed in my rain check for the outdoor shower before we went to bed. Cleansed by the steaming water, the pinprick stars overhead and the proximity of the sacred Little Peconic Bay, I slept hard. For once the swarm of bitter wives, alienated daughters, conniving plutocrats and light heavyweight contenders stayed out of my normally snarled dreams. Held at bay by the surge of gratitude that com mingled with the scent of Amanda’s thick brown hair and filled my mind as I let go and yielded to the night.

I
CAUGHT UP TO
S
ULLIVAN
the next day at the boxing gym in Westhampton, as I often did in the late afternoon, both of us preferring to go there after work. He was riding the stationary bike, a towel around his neck and a scowl on his face.

“I’m still unhappy about cutting that stupe loose,” he said as I approached.

“I know. I appreciate it.”

“Ross never heard anything. I hope he never does.”

Ross Semple was the Chief of Southampton Town Police. Sullivan’s boss.

“He won’t from me,” I said.

“You’ll be thanking me the rest of your life for that one.”

“So then you won’t mind doing me another favor.”

His expression stayed the same, but he sped up his pace on the bike. “Funny.”

“I need to match a license plate with a name and address.”

He smiled.

“Sure. Do you want a surveillance crew to go with that?”

“That’s okay. I’ll handle that part.”

He took his feet off the pedals and the bike slowly spun to a stop.

“Explain.”

“I found Iku’s boyfriend hanging at a club last night. When I tried to talk to him he took off. But I got his plate number.”

I stopped him before he could say no.

“There’s no official police interest in this, I know,” I said. “But so far at least two people consider this woman missing. Her boss and her big-shot lover. These are not minor connections. What if the boyfriend’s in the same boat? She was last known to be in Southampton. That’s your interest, right?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“If I can’t do this through you I’ll have to go underground. Consort with dangerous scoundrels selling license plate identities out of storefronts in the Bronx.”

“I thought you were born in the Bronx.”

“Right. The attraction will be irresistible.”

He stuck out his hand.

“Gimme the number.”

I took it out of the waistband of my workout shorts.

“It was a Volvo. Four-door, black, fairly new. The guy’s name is Robert Dobson. Mid-thirties, maybe a little more. Five foot nine, maybe less. Light brown hair, might have a short beard. I’m pretty certain he’s out of the City, but might have an address here as well.”

He looked at the slip of paper as if he could pull the address out of his memory.

“Why’s that?”

“He’s here all the time. Even in the off-season. Iku was last known to be here. One and one is two.”

“Could still be a renter. Part of a group. Used to be a summer thing, now you see it year-round.”

“Good thought,” I said.

“You’ll have to talk to the realtors. But if it’s a private deal, there’s no records anywhere. You’d have to go door-to-door.”

“Let’s try the easy way first.”

“What ‘let’s’? This ain’t an ‘us’ thing. It’s a ‘you’ thing.”

“I know. Whatever you can get me on the plate is all I need. Then I’ll leave you alone.”

“Right.”

I spent the next hour doing all the clichéd things you do in a boxing gym—working the bags, jumping rope, lifting weights. I’d never seen the inside of a regular gym where regular people worked out, so I didn’t know what that was all about. Having been a fighter as a kid, I’d gotten used to a boxing gym’s sweet stink and blunt-force simplicity, its sense of purpose and undercurrent of latent threat. More motivational.

I had to stop sparring on doctor’s orders. That was fine with me. I never liked the actual fighting part of the sport. Way too easy to get hurt.

In further acknowledgement of time and the looming menace of infirmity, I’d almost quit smoking, and for the first time put a weekly budget on vodka consumption. I wasn’t entirely committed to the idea and the program was still in the experimental phase. But at least it kept at bay my daughter’s carping on the subject.

When I was back in my car I made a call on my cell phone, another concession to the inevitable. This was all Jackie’s fault. She’d lent me her phone once, and I liked it so much I didn’t want to give it back. I blamed her for the new addiction even as I delighted in calling people from the front seat of a ’67 Pontiac Grand Prix.

“House Hunters of the Hamptons,” said the sing-song female voice on the other end of the line. “You tag ’em, we bag ’em. This is Robin speaking, how can I help you?”

“I think the selling metaphor needs a little work.”

“Not if you ask my accountant.”

“This is Sam Acquillo.”

“Who else. Ready to cash in and move up?”

Robin and her partner Laura were old friends of Amanda’s from when she worked at the bank. They’d started their real estate business at the bottom of the market in the early nineties, starved for several years, and now lived in the kind of houses they once dreamed of listing with their agency. Yet success had done nothing to add polish to their operation.

“I’m looking for a guy.”

“Can’t help you there, Ace. Sales and rentals only. Does Amanda know this?”

“The guy’s a renter. Maybe. Though I guess he could be a buyer or an owner,” I said, realizing I’d assumed from his age that he couldn’t afford to buy in the Hamptons, which was ridiculous given the money often made by the callow youth of Wall Street.

“Why are you looking for him?”

“I’m actually looking for his girlfriend. It’s a long story.”

“Sounds it. What’s his name?”

“Robert Dobson.”

“I can check the computer.”

“While you’re at it, check for Iku Kinjo,” I said, spelling out the name.

“That I’d remember, but I’ll check.”

She put me on hold. I spent the time trying to stay on the road while catching occasional glances of the tiny screen on the phone, checking the connection. I was still getting used
to the mystical vagaries of modern telecommunications.

“Nobody here by that name,” said Robin when she came back on the phone. “But I can ask around the other agencies.”

“You can? That’s great.”

“Sure. We talk all the time. It’s like one big happy back-scratching family. When we aren’t back-stabbing. Don’t tell the FTC I said that.”

When I hit the end button on the cell phone I noticed the message icon on the tiny screen. This was a regrettable consequence of owning the phone. I’d been able to resist an answering machine my whole life, now it just tagged along for the ride whether I liked it or not.

I struggled unhappily through the retrieval process. It was George Donovan.

“Hello, Sam. It’s George Donovan here. Just calling to confirm that I’ve spoken with counsel regarding the intellectual property settlement. I have full discretionary powers to negotiate a resolution of potential claims based on certain provisos being met. It’ll need both our signatures. I’ll await an update on your progress toward completion of the items we’ve discussed. Just a heads-up.”

I knew circumlocution was the language of commerce, but I never liked listening to it. At least this time there was a good reason for the gibberish. I saved the number he’d called from and tossed the phone on the front passenger seat, letting it cool down before the next irritating interruption.

When I got home I showered off the day of work at Frank’s giant rehab over on Halsey Neck and my subsequent workout at the gym. I was so eager to get under the hot water I forgot Eddie’s dinner. When I came out of the outdoor shower he bounced around my feet and ran toward the door to show me where it was, then ran back to make sure I understood simple instructions.

“So, I shouldn’t take a few hours to get back into the house like I usually do,” I said to him.

He ignored me and continued herding, tongue out and lavishly long tail aloft, waving in the air.

Still in my towel, I dumped food in his bowl and a pint of Absolut in my aluminum tumbler. Our rations for the night. Or at least that part of the night. I put on a clean T-shirt and jeans as I always did after a day of dusty carpentry. It meant an almost daily laundry run to the basement, but it was a habit I’d formed early on. A reaction, I think, to my old man’s disregard for the effect his greasy clothes had on the already agitated atmosphere of our household. He was a mechanic, and the caustic smell of refined petroleum still reminded me of emptiness and cruelty.

I was about to stroll over to Amanda’s when Honest Boy Ackerman’s SUV rumbled into my driveway. Eddie bounded up to greet him with his usual “Oh, boy, company!” élan. I bounded up, too. Less convivially.