“Milhouser.”
“Caught me at a weak moment in the cafeteria. Started grilling me about a lecture on the environment we’d heard during assembly. Got me going on sensitive interrelationships within complex systems, hidden causalities and the law of unforeseen consequences. All the stuff that had my eighteen-year-old brain on fire. I was halfway through an immature dissertation on the paradigm shift of emerging chaos theory before I remembered I was talking to the biggest bully in school. I thought, holy shit, I must be out of my goddamned mind.”
“Fred Astaire meets Robert Oppenheimer,” I said.
“Not exactly. I think he was just sort of inspired by that lecture. The point is, he knew to talk to me. He sought me out. He had my number, but never did anything about it but have a little chat and scare the crap out of me.”
“So you didn’t hang with him.”
That amused Joey.
“I said I kept my head down, I didn’t say I was cool. You could only be cool by wearing a letter sweater, consuming intoxicants or victimizing weaker kids. None of these were appealing to me.”
“I think Robbie managed two out of three,” I said.
“You mean sports? It was generally assumed he could kick the ass of any starting lineman on the football team, so he didn’t have to play ball. Plus, he had the one thing that virtually guaranteed absolute, irrevocable coolness.”
“His girlfriend was the hottest babe in school.”
“Precisely.” He put his hand over his heart. “The only other thing that set my eighteen-year-old brain on fire. Amanda Anselma.”
I
DON’T REMEMBER
what murky and misguided impulse got me into boxing in the first place, but I stuck with it for the gyms. My favorite was the one in New Rochelle where I met Antoine and Walter Bick and where I could always find the comfort of anonymity and the solace of organized brutality. It had been in operation since well before the war and was appropriately dank and claustrophobic and shopworn, the walls thick with overpainting and the ceilings a tangle of exposed metal rafters. But you went there for the rummy old trainers, ambitious contenders and haunted ghetto kids. And the equipment was as good as anywhere, what there was of it. A row of speed bags, a half dozen heavy bags, jump ropes, medicine balls and a ring. Showers and a ready supply of rigid white towels you could use to either dry yourself or sand down a picnic table.
For almost twenty years it was about all I did other than work. No one at the company ever knew, except Jason Fligh,
the only member of my company’s board I could say was a friend. The reason was simple enough. Back when we were both trying to raise money for tuition he saw one of my few professional fights. The first up on a triple bill in Chicago. I won, thank God. Which was how Jason remembered it the day I met him, minutes before I had to pitch the board on my division’s annual budget. We were pouring coffee at an eighteenth-century serving table they’d rolled into the boardroom. Jason described the whole night in rich detail, something people with photographic memories like his are able to do.
I was glad I hadn’t asked him to keep it to himself. He just did, knowing I’d rather not have to explain such an alien thing to the lordly, white-haired board members whose notice of boxing barely extended beyond annoyance at Muhammad Ali for changing his name from Cassius Clay.
Jason was an outside director, his regular job being president of the University of Chicago. He was the only outside director who seemed to take the job seriously, and I was the only division head who didn’t treat him like an afterthought when I had to speak before the board.
Since moving out to Southampton I’d found a shabbier version of my gym in New Rochelle, if such a thing was possible, up in the scraggly pine barren north of Westhampton. It was called Sonny’s, though the name wasn’t displayed anywhere. You knew because Ronny, the guy who ran the place, told you that was the name.
When I wasn’t killing myself in the construction trades I’d go there on a regular basis to work the bags, mess around with the free weights, sit in a tiny steam room and go comatose in one of two Jacuzzis, the pride of the establishment.
After my lunch with Joey Entwhistle this seemed like the only logical thing to do.
I was a half hour into the speed bag, which was about my limit, when Sullivan appeared a step or two outside my swing. He waited while I finished the pattern. I like the speed bag. It’s strenuous work to keep your arms up and moving like that. Unlike the heavy bag, you can hit the thing as hard as you want without hurting your wrists, and it makes a great sound. And I was good at it. Keeping up a steady rhythm on a speed bag is a lot harder than it looks. It impressed the kids who were always crowding into the place, which I hoped dampened any urge to mess with the crazy old white guy.
Sullivan was less impressed, but kept a safe distance until I stopped the bag with my gloves.
“I think it’s ready to throw in the towel,” he said.
“Not this bag. Always bounces back.”
“Haven’t seen you here for a while.”
“Been pounding on crown molding.”
“I hoped you’d be working out this Milhouser thing.”
Wearing a simple gray sweatsuit without sunglasses or a sidearm, Sullivan almost looked like a standard-issue, moderately overweight gym rat. Except for the worried look on his face.
“What,” I said to him.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you about the case.”
“Okay. I know that.”
“Did you know there’s a special immunity clause that covers steam room discussions? I think I’m gonna go sit in there for a while.”
Steam closet might have been a more fitting description. I think Ronny built it that way to conserve on the cost of making steam. The bench slats, however, were real redwood and the walls an unfinished clear cedar, which reinforced the closet sensation. We almost had to share it with a young Shinnecock
middleweight, but the thought of being crammed in a hot little room with two sweaty old guys wearing nothing but scratchy towels got him out of there pretty quickly.
“Are you talking to Burton Lewis?” Sullivan asked as soon as the door shut.
“Last night.”
“He was at the station after your booking. Spent a couple hours in Ross’s office. He didn’t look too happy when he left.”
“I didn’t know about that,” I told him. “I knew he wasn’t happy.”
“I’m not either.”
“There’s strong evidence of an inverse correlation between happiness and a clear perception of reality.”
“That’s what I’m unhappy about,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
“Christ, not you, too.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you? There’s nothing that says you aren’t going down for this thing. Nothing. Not a single goddamned thing.”
“Except I didn’t do it.”
He looked straight at me, frowning.
“I’m the one who found the stapler,” he said. “I isolated the footprints and directed forensics. I’m the one who put the foundation down on this case. How do you think I felt when the County people told me who owned that damned tool? Whose shoes were all over that site?”
“You got a brain. How can I get you to use it?”
“Careful,” he said, sitting back and folding his arms.
“Joe, I can’t do this by myself. I can’t be the only one in possession of the only two irreducible facts in this whole sorry mess. Somebody killed Robbie Milhouser and that somebody wasn’t me.”
“I’d be just as happy if you killed the stupid bastard,” he said to me, half in jest. I appealed to the better half.
“Tell Ross you want back on the case. Tell him you don’t give a crap who killed whom, that you’re a cop and this is what you do and if he thinks you won’t approach the investigation with perfect objectivity and respect for the rule of law, he doesn’t know who you are.”
It’s very hard to hide what you’re thinking when you’re only a few feet away in a tiny windowless room, even allowing for the artificial fog. From what I could see, Sullivan was thinking happier thoughts.
“Hard to argue with that,” he said.
“Tell Ross that Veckstrom will approach this with an assumption of my guilt. He won’t see anything or think anything that would interfere with that mind-set. Somebody besides me has to be open to alternative possibilities. Ross is a good man. He’s fair. Even if he wants to fry my ass, he won’t fight it.”
“He’s not big on backing down.”
“Neither are you.”
He wanted to say I was blowing smoke up his ass, but the sensation was too pleasant to mount an objection.
“Veckstrom’s not gonna like having the company,” said Sullivan. “He’s been in plainclothes for over ten years. Doesn’t like to share the big cases.”
“You call his clothes plain? Just tell Ross you want the freedom to poke around a little on your own. You won’t get in Veckstrom’s way.”
“Okay, let’s just say, theoretically, I’d be able to poke around, what exactly would I be poking into?” he asked.
“I want to know who Patrick is. Him and that crew of Robbie’s from Up Island. What’s their deal? They seem way too self-possessed.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Cocky. In command of things. I wonder about his relationship with old Robbie.”
“Okay,” said Sullivan. “I can tag him.”
“And Amanda’s house. I’d surely love to know what the County investigators think happened there.”
“They think it was arson,” said Sullivan.
“Yeah, but who, why and how? What do you think? Any reason it wasn’t Robbie and his boys? It makes the most sense.”
Sullivan started looking uncomfortable again.
“Proving that will give the ADA another motive,” he said. “She already thinks Milhouser humiliated you in front of your girlfriend.”
“That’s not how it was.”
“That’s how it’ll be when she brings it up in court.”
“I still want to know.”
“Only if Ross gives me the okay.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he said, and got up to leave. And then paused.
“You’re right. I liked you for this from the moment I got the call. I never said anything, but it probably showed. Couldn’t have helped you with Ross.”
“He got there fine on his own.”
“I like thinking now that you didn’t do it. Cops aren’t allowed to fraternize with murderers.”
“Could slow career advancement.”
“This is a better perspective. Makes me feel more confident. More self-possessed,” said Sullivan.
And then he left.
The steam room felt a lot roomier without his pinkish corpulence taking up valuable airspace. Though it wasn’t long before I regretted being left alone with my thoughts.
Or more accurately, my fears. Or was it anger?
I remembered reading once that the physiological effects of fear and anger were nearly identical. Evolution had it rigged so while the brain decided between fight or flight, the body was charged up and ready for action either way. All the blood ran into the arms and legs, and engorged the heart and lungs, while draining out of the brain, leaving just enough to fire the reflexes, but little for deliberative, analytical thought. Which is why mortal threats make you stupid. Stupid and dangerous, as the adrenal glands pump your bloodstream full of epinephrine, flushing your cheeks and drying out your mouth.
I don’t know if Nature also stirred in a dose of shame to go along with the fear and anger, or if that was an entirely human creation. Though I wasn’t ashamed to admit, at least to myself, that Milhouser and his boys, especially Patrick, had frightened me. I knew the type. Once challenged, or worse, embarrassed, they’d never stop. They’d never let it go. I got the drop on Patrick that night, but that wouldn’t happen again. Next time he’d own the surprise. Then it’s not a matter of who knows how to box, but who’s younger, stronger, meaner and as yet, un-brain damaged.
A reminder that we’re really only animals after all. Inflicted with the curse of cognition. Capable of moral reasoning, but prone to mindless violence. Mindless in its heedless ferocity, but also in its lunacy. Often begging the question, how could you do such a thing?
What were you thinking?
——
The only sure way to counter the wholesome, cleansing effects of an afternoon at the gym was an evening at the
Pequot. I went home first to check on Eddie, fill his bowls with food and water and make sure he had the cottage under control. I don’t know how old he was when I sprang him from the pound, but probably no more than two or three. In those formative years he’d learned to be basically self-sufficient. He was always glad to see me when I showed up, but not so much that you’d think he couldn’t live without me. He’d often run up from the beach or bolt out of the wetlands to the west of the property when I drove in the driveway. I never asked what he was doing in there, and he never told.
For some reason, though, he was unusually attentive that night, wagging his broad sweep of a tail and making low, friendly noises. He normally ran around the yard after eating dinner, but this time he trotted over to the Grand Prix and waited by the door.
“In the mood for a little seafood?” I asked him.
He spun around once and looked expectantly at the back door. I let him in and he jumped over the console into the front, where he whined at the closed window. I opened it for him after I started the car.
“Anything else I can do for you?”
There’s no more hysterical prohibition than dogs in public eating areas, except in places like the Pequot, where Hodges’s Shih Tzus were skilled in squirting out from under the feet of exhausted deep-sea fishermen, and Eddie would routinely curl up under my stool at the bar or one of the little round tables where I read Beckett and Camus under the existential glow of the red-shaded lamps mounted along the wall.
Hodges had already gone home to his boat, part of a plan to keep his work time to something under ten hours a day. This left Dorothy in command of the joint. A tall Croatian with thick jet-black hair named Vinko was cooking in the
back and helping serve tables while she held sway at the tattered pine bar. She’d dressed for the occasion, wearing her best black leather corset and matching accessories.