Mark Mills - Amagansett

‘Who do you think you are, barging in here?’ said Walter, reaching for the phone on the sideboard.

The man dropped to one knee at the baseboard, pulled a knife from somewhere around his ankle and cut the telephone cable. Rising to his feet, he said, ‘I’m the man who’s going to mess you and your family up unless you put your ass in that chair this second.’

He pointed with the knife, its slender blade flashing in the sunlight slanting through the window.

Walter’s daughter began to sob. He glanced at his wife, her eyes wide with fear, and they both sat down.

‘That’s better.’

The man circled the table, examining the food.

‘Looks good.’ He leaned over and speared a shard of ham just sliced from the bone. ‘You want some, son?’

The ham hovered in front of Walter Jr’s face, the tip of the blade inches from his eyes.

‘Go on, I insist.’

Walter Jr’s bottom lip began to tremble. The man shrugged, then ate the ham off the tip of the knife.

‘What do you want?’ asked Walter, wishing there was more authority in his voice.

‘Conrad Labarde.’

Labarde—his four o’clock appointment—the tall man who’d come to see him with the interesting legal conundrum.

‘What about him?’

‘He came to see you. I want to know why.’

Walter was about to plead the sanctity of an individual’s relationship with his lawyer, when the man said, ‘And don’t give me any crap about client-attorney confidentiality.’

It was a principle Walter prided himself on upholding. And he abandoned it without hesitation. The man listened closely to his account of the discussion with Labarde, interrupting every so often to ask a question. Finally, he seemed satisfied.

‘Enjoy your meal,’ he said, making for the entrance hall. ‘Oh.’ He stopped and turned. ‘If you tell anyone about this conversation I’ll cut out your daughter’s lips and feed them to your wife.’

Later that evening, while discussing with his wife which real estate agent should handle the sale of their house, it occurred to Walter J. Scarlett that even if he had ignored the threat and gone straight to the police, he would have struggled to give them an accurate physical description of the man.

Thirty-Two

Manfred lay on his back in the darkness, torn between leaving and sliding into alcoholic slumber. He glanced to his right and the matter settled itself.

It was as though the moonlight washing through the window had melted her face. Her mouth sagged open, the flesh was slack and loose around her jaw, gathered in folds. She had lied about her age, he’d guessed that at the time, mentally topping up the tally by four or five years. Looking at her lying there, laid bare by sleep, he revised that estimate by another five years.

Where was she from? Savannah? Charleston? Somewhere down South. They had hardly spoken over dinner at the Maidstone Club, just enough to establish that she was staying with the Van Allens; not in their ghastly new house—the one that looked like the bridge of an ocean liner—but in the old guest cottage at the end of the garden. Manfred had taken the information as an invitation, and he’d been right to do so. But now it was time to leave.

He eased himself out of the bed, his head throbbing as he stooped to recover his clothes. He carried them into the living room, dressing there so as not to wake her, already working through the consequences of his actions.

He could rely on his friends’ discretion, he knew that. Not that it really mattered. It wasn’t as if his relationship with Helen was set in stone. Not yet, anyway. What would Senator Dale really do if he got wind of a one-night tryst?

Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. That was the truth.

Beneath the puff and the posturing, the Senator was a pragmatist. He knew better than anyone that his daughter’s union with Manfred was little short of a business deal: the Senator’s considerable political muscle in exchange for his daughter’s elevated status, one which would see the Dale name etched into the history books.

It was almost two in the morning when he returned to the house on Further Lane, and he was surprised to see the ground-floor lights burning bright through the trees as he wended his way down the drive. His father and Gayle weren’t due out till the following evening, and Richard was inclined to turn in well before midnight.

He parked near the front door and entered.

‘Hello.’

Silence. No. The dim sound of music—Beethoven—coming from the drawing room.

The room was empty, but the doors to the terrace were open.

‘Richard?’

‘Out here.’

He was seated in a rattan chair, staring out across the lawn. Manfred could tell immediately that something was wrong. The ashtray on the low table beside him was almost full, the wine bottle near empty.

‘Who was she?’ asked Wakeley without turning.

‘No one. You don’t need to worry.’

‘Oh, but I do. And so do you.’

There was a manic edge to his voice, uncharacteristic and worrying.

‘Richard…?’

Richard pointed to a chair. Only when Manfred had pulled it up and sat down did Richard turn and look at him.

‘It’s Labarde. He went to see a lawyer.’

Manfred felt breathless all of a sudden. ‘A lawyer?’

‘It looks like he might have some kind of document.’

‘What document? What are you talking about?’

‘Calm down.’

‘I am calm. What document, damn it!?’

‘I don’t know exactly. Our man…he managed to speak to the lawyer. It seems Labarde wanted to know what weight a document written by a dead person would carry in a court of law.’ He paused. ‘A document which had come to light since that person’s death, implicating the author and others in a crime.’

‘A diary? A letter? What?’

‘Labarde said it came to him via a lawyer. He didn’t have it with him, he didn’t say what exactly.’

‘A confession…’

‘That’s what it sounds like. Written to Labarde and to be delivered to him in the event of her death.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ He reached for one of Richard’s cigarettes and lit it. ‘He’s bluffing.’

‘Except he didn’t come to us, Manfred, he sought legal advice, not knowing he was being followed.’

He was right. It didn’t hang together.

‘No,’ continued Richard, ‘she saw what was coming.’

How? He had been so persuasive with Lillian, so masterful in his manipulation. When Justin first came to him with the news that she was wavering badly, he hadn’t gone in hard—going in hard with Lilly had always been counter-productive, ever since she’d been old enough to defend herself with fist or tongue.

No, he had approached her in a spirit of sympathy, laying his own torment on thick, even managing to squeeze out some tears. He had said he needed time to think about it, to figure how best to approach the issue of coming clean about the accident.

Christ, he had almost persuaded himself of his own sincerity. And she had seen right through it. Through him. As she always had done. She was the only person in the world who could make him feel naked, stripped bare. When she was present in the room he would find himself questioning and doubting every word he uttered, every opinion he held. She was like a mirror always lurking at the periphery of his vision. Every now and then he’d glance over and catch sight of his own reflection, and he’d falter and stumble.

She had always praised his talents, more than any other member of the family. What she disliked, as she’d told him many times, was his application of those gifts to the wrong ends. He sometimes wondered if she hadn’t struck up a relationship with Justin purely in order to stay close to him, to monitor him, setting herself up as his moral compass. He hadn’t resented this; he’d embraced the challenge, the debate, their continual sparring. He was happy to have her play at being his conscience, if only because it helped him believe he might actually have one. Besides, in the end her words were just that—words—they counted for nothing.

The accident had changed all that. It had empowered her, it had allowed her to hold sway over him, it had given her control—not theoretical and intellectual, but real and immediate. His choices were now her choices, and hers his. They were bound together in perpetuity, his fate now in her hands.

And when it came to it, she had opted to take from him everything she knew he held dear. On a point of principle she had chosen to destroy him. Now here she was again, still working from beyond the grave to bring him down, entrusting her wishes to a goddamn fisherman.

‘What does it mean, Richard?’

‘What does what mean?’

‘The document, for Christ’s sake.’

‘It means a lot of things, none of them good. Legally, we can maybe beat it, but the scandal…’

Manfred got to his feet and wandered on to the lawn. ‘There has to be another way,’ he said eventually.

‘You know there is.’

Manfred turned. ‘It has to end here. Can it be made to look convincing?’

‘With Labarde’s record?’ said Richard. ‘I can’t see that being a problem.’

Thirty-Three

Women swarmed like worker ants across the village green. Those who weren’t chivvying along the men erecting the stalls were chatting like magpies. Very few appeared to be actually achieving anything, just the small handful unpacking boxes of cotton drapes and colorful bunting near the pond.

‘Hello.’

She swept past Hollis like a galleon in full sail, snapped an order then came about, bearing off on another tack. Only then did Hollis recognize her, from Mary’s party.

He moved to intercept her.

‘Barbara.’

‘What now!? Oh, it’s you.’

‘How’s the apron booth coming along?’ he asked, and promptly wished he hadn’t.

‘Don’t talk to me about the apron booth,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Wednesday, he said. But was it ready? Is it here now? Do you see it?’

He glanced around. ‘I’m not sure I’d know it if I did.’

‘What’s that?’

‘See it…the apron booth.’

‘That’s because it’s not here.’

‘I’m sure it’ll show up before tomorrow.’

‘Lunch,’ she snapped. ‘Lunch today. At the latest. It takes time to dress a booth properly, you know.’

‘Is Mary around?’ he asked.

‘Never when you need her.’

Definitely a pretender to the throne, as Mary had told him.

‘She’s picking up Edward from the station,’ she continued.

‘Edward?’

‘Her son. He gets back at…well, any minute,’ she said, glancing at the watch strangling her fleshy wrist. ‘Is it anything I can help with?’

‘It’s about the parking. I’m on traffic duty.’

‘Well, that is Mary’s department,’ she conceded. ‘What did you do last year?’

‘I think we banned parking along the verge there, and on James Lane—’

‘Sounds good to me. I’d go for that if I were you. I’ll tell her you stopped by.’ She raised her hand abruptly. ‘Gordon!’ she bellowed, brushing past him and picking up headway. ‘Gordon, the latch on the door of the tombola’s broken. See what you can do, will you?’

There was no question of intruding on Mary’s reunion with her son, much as he needed to see her. He had hardly slept, the sense of loss deepening with each passing hour, until the cocktail of exhaustion and alcohol had finally prevailed. The dawn had brought a new clarity with it, but the hole was still there. He’d swung by the village green on his way to work in the hope of filling it a little.

It would just have to wait. He’d have another chance to drop by later.

He was wrong.

He arrived at police headquarters to find that Milligan had scheduled a string of fool’s errands for him. First up was a trip to Montauk. Two surfcasters had come to blows out at the Point that morning. A nose had been bloodied, a rod broken. Hollis was forced to sit with the wounded party in a room at Gurney’s Inn, suffering a lengthy discourse on surfcasting etiquette. There had been a flagrant breach of protocol, it seemed, with the result that a large striped bass had got away. It was bad enough—two grown men fighting over a fish—but when it emerged they were good friends, he lost all remaining interest.

His next assignment of the day was chauffeuring the Chief’s wife out to Southampton for some urgent shopping. Dawn Milligan was a short, shy woman, long since bullied into submission, if not servility, by her husband. Hollis liked her. There had always been an unspoken bond between them—the silent complicity of the abused—and he didn’t begrudge her his time, even as she strolled around the shops, chatting idly to friends.

Returning to East Hampton, Hollis slowed the patrol car almost to a crawl as they passed the village green. He failed to spot Mary in amongst the throng of women, and hopes of returning later that afternoon were shattered when the Chief demanded to see his report on the fishermen’s brawl.

By the time he was finished writing it up, Milligan had already left for the weekend, and the village green was deserted. Hollis strolled around it, reading off the names of the empty booths awaiting tomorrow’s cargoes of hot dogs and ice cream, flowers and cakes, candy, cigarettes and scarves.

He wasn’t altogether surprised to see that the apron booth held center stage.

He smoked a cigarette, judging his options. Then he returned to the patrol car and set off for Springs.

Joe was seated at a table in the creeping shade, fiddling with a bunch of engine parts laid out before him. He looked up briefly as the patrol car entered the boatyard, but there was no recognition in his eyes. Even when Hollis wandered over and removed his cap he wasn’t sure if Joe knew who in the hell he was.

‘A word of advice, bub—never get yourself a Marine Spark outboard.’

‘Having problems?’

‘Near on thirty years now. Shoulda named this thing The Bastard.’

He grunted in defeat, his arthritic fingers discarding the two bits of metal refusing to mesh. ‘I’ll have you yet,’ he said.

He wiped his hands on a rag and looked up at Hollis. ‘You come by to thank me for last weekend?’

Hollis didn’t reply.

‘Didn’t think so.’ Joe levered himself to his feet. ‘You want a beer?’

‘I’m on duty.’

‘What do you know,’ said Joe. ‘Me too.’

Hollis stood on the veranda looking out over Accabonac Harbor while Joe busied himself inside. The wind came in light gusts, rippling the surface of the water, the reeds and rushes bending in obeisance.

‘Garden of Eden, bub,’ said Joe, joining him at the rail and handing him a beer. ‘Everything a man needs lies right out there. Ain’t nowhere like it. And that’s from folk what’s traveled some, men of good word.’

‘It’s very peaceful.’

‘It’s changing fast. There’s artists and all sorts moving in now.’ He pointed straight across the water. ‘City fellow bought just in back there, hard drinker, calls hisself a painter, but can’t hit the canvas for shit. I put a stove in for him. You should see the floor in that studio. And the walls. Just tosses that paint all over. What lands in the square, he sells. Now that’s a way to earn a life,’ he chortled, ‘not fiddlin’ with the guts of a bastard old outboard.’