Cop Job (7 page)

This was a big advantage for law enforcement, one Joey Wentworth recognized. And as a dedicated entrepreneur, figured out a work-around.

Speedboats.

“Joey had a twin engine picnic boat he could run to Bridgeport in just a few hours,” said Jackie. “Stock up on the bad stuff and be back at Hawk Pond before nightfall.”

“Nice gig.”

“Until someone emptied a twelve-gauge into the cab of his SUV. Needed DNA to confirm his identity.”

I knew Joey. Friendly, but twitchy guy. Docked his powerboat about five slips down from mine. Now I knew why I could hear the rumble of the big diesels five boats away and what was in the giant duffel bags tossed into his Range Rover, and why I hadn’t seen him around for a while.

Next snitch up was Lilly Fremouth. Black father, white mother. Waitressed at a diner up on Old County Road. Had an infant daughter and a pimp, who also happened to be the daughter’s father. Instrumental in busting a brothel and drug-retailing operation in Flanders, an impoverished backwater just south of Riverhead.

She was found strangled in her living room by her mother when she showed up to babysit for the grandkid.

“Ross has suspended all interaction with confidential informants while these killings are investigated,” said Jackie. “Trouble is, snitches grease the gears of investigations. So effectively, the detective squad is half shut down.”

“Might explain him letting us meddle in the Alfie thing,” I said.

“Might.”

“Is there a common thread?”

“Not that I can see. No evidence they knew each other. Joey was Veckstrom’s, Lilly and Alfie were run by Joe Sullivan. Any thoughts on how we deal with that?” she asked.

That was the Big Thing. What to do about Joe Sullivan. A good, true, and loyal friend, when we weren’t battling over alleged obstruction of justice or interference in police investigations. We’d all saved each other’s lives and been through a load of crap together over a lot of years, so it didn’t seem possible to hide this from him; the district attorney and her pretty pale assistant be damned.

“We tell him,” I said.

“Of course we do,” she said. “I just want to know how.”

“Tomorrow night at the Pequot.”

“Do I have to actually eat dinner, or just drink?”

We knew we’d find Joe Sullivan at the Pequot, Hodges’s ratty little bar and grill serving the remaining fishermen of Sag Harbor and other diehard locals. His daughter, Dorothy, a Goth depressive, mostly ran the joint at this point, though Hodges was usually there to eat and lend unwanted advice.

The food was actually more than edible, contrary to Jackie’s opinion, and the atmosphere truly distinctive, if your taste runs to red vinyl, weathered-grey wood, and the smell of fishermen fresh off the job.

“Drink all you want,” I told her. “I’ll drive you home.”

“Then pick me up at six. Don’t bother ringing the bell. I’ll know you’re there.”

Jackie lived above a Japanese restaurant in Water Mill, a hamlet just east of Southampton Village. It wasn’t a big place, just enough for an apartment and separate office. She’d know I’d arrived because the entire exterior of the building was under video surveillance, along with strategically placed alarms controlled by motion sensors.

I wasn’t the only one on the team with a history of mortal threat.

Despite all that, when I got there, Jackie was sitting on the stoop eating out of a take-out container. As she stood, she had to pull down the hem of her dress to get it within legal distance above her knees. She wore high-heeled sandals and her big ball of hair was pulled back from her face.

“Jesus, Jackie,” I said, “we’re going to the Pequot, not Studio 54.”

“I turn forty next year,” she said. “Got to use up the wardrobe while I still can. What’s Studio 54?”

“You’re gonna give Hodges a heart attack.”

“Then maybe he’ll stop staring at my boobs.”

Sag Harbor was an old whaling town bordering Southampton to the north. It had a lot of old houses densely packed together and a marina that accommodated giant yachts as well as the usual mix of merely unaffordable sailboats and cabin cruisers. Hidden away down a narrow channel on the other side of the harbor was the town’s fishing fleet, once focused on commercial catches like cod and flounder, now as likely chartered out by sport fishermen who liked catching their bluefish and bass in more rustic surroundings.

The Pequot was off the marina’s parking lot, so the fish was as fresh as the charter crews were ripe.

Sullivan was at his usual table for two, so we had to drag over another chair to all sit together.

“I don’t remember the invitation,” he said, as we plopped ourselves down. “What did you do with the rest of your dress?” he added, looking at Jackie over the top of his burger.

“She bought it off the midlife crisis rack,” I said.

“Be thankful you’re only at mid.”

“We need to talk to you about something,” said Jackie. “It’s important.”

Sullivan looked over at me.

“Do you like it when she says stuff like that?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Sam knows it’s important. He’d just wait till the end of the night to talk about it. I’m not that patient.”

Sullivan held up his burger.

“What if we just wait till I eat this?”

“How come we’re not drinking?” I yelled toward the bar, where Dorothy looked up from a conversation with another tattoo-festooned ghoul. She gazed through curved, three-inch-long black eyelashes, then walked slowly over to our table.

“Vodka, Pinot, and Bud,” she said. “What’s shakin’?”

“A vodka, a pinot, and a Bud,” I said, “if they can find their way to our table.”

“What’re the specials tonight?” Jackie asked.

“Everything’s special,” said Dorothy. “Especially the wait staff. Certifiably awesome.”

“You added something,” said Jackie, studying Dorothy’s face.

“Interesting,” said Dorothy, “though consistent with clinical studies of the weak interplay between memory and casual observation.”

“She took something away,” I said, interpreting.

“Nose stud,” said Dorothy. “Sick of it.”

“In other words, eyewitnesses aren’t worth shit,” said Sullivan.

“How’s the interplay between memory and drink orders?” I asked.

Dorothy patted me on the shoulder and sauntered back toward the bar.

“Seriously, Joe,” Jackie said to Sullivan. “We need to talk.”

He put his burger down with some regret, and stood up. We followed him out to the Pequot’s rickety deck.

“What,” he said, when we got there.

“We’re going to tell you something you can’t tell anyone we told you,” said Jackie.

“I can’t promise that.”

“I know,” said Jackie. “But when we tell you, you’ll know why you have to.”

Sullivan looked at me with more than a little exasperation.

“What the hell, Sam.”

“There’s something rotten inside Southampton Town Police,” I told him. “The whole force is under investigation.”

His frown was a complicated affair. Concern mixed with recognition.

“The snitches,” he said.

“I didn’t know Alfie was a CI,” said Jackie. “What court would accept evidence from a full-out paranoid schizophrenic?”

Sullivan got more irritated.

“Who told you about Alfie?”

“Edith Madison,” I said.

He pinched his lips together as if to throttle an ill-advised remark.

“How could anything he said be admissible?” Jackie asked, not ready to give up her point.

“They wouldn’t know it was Alfie. That’s why they’re called confidential informants. Anyway, Alfie was more directional with his information than specific. Sam knows what I mean.”

“He heard and saw a lot,” I said. “Wouldn’t necessarily know what it all meant.”

“Where’s Ross in all this?” Sullivan asked.

“Out of the loop,” I said. “There’s an official probe under way. No idea how they’re going about it. But Edith Madison asked us to go CI ourselves.”

“Get the fuck
out
of here,” said Sullivan.

“Meanwhile Ross invited us to go ahead and dig around Alfie’s murder despite the ongoing investigation,” I said.

“What the hell’s going on, Joe?” Jackie asked.

He didn’t want to answer, but knew he had to say something after we’d shown him such unconditional trust and regard.

“I don’t know. Don’t even know how to think about it. Ross runs such a tight ship, no way he doesn’t know. But if he knew, heads would already be rolling all over Southampton.”

“Why did you jump to the snitches?” I asked.

“Three in a matter of weeks? Basically the whole snitch staff. Either an incredible run of bad luck, or somebody inside is dropping dimes. That makes sense up to the point it doesn’t. Officially the only people who know who’s snitching are me, Veckstrom, and Ross.”

“Officially?” Jackie asked.

Sullivan let a little embarrassment intrude on his general air of defiance.

“First off you don’t know who says what on the outside. Inside, none of us tried too hard to keep it confidential. Talk can be loose around the squad room. Occasionally a snitch will come in for a longer session, and never get booked, which was supposed to be the cover. Sloppy, now that I think about it, though you never think you have to hide stuff from your own cops.”

“You know them all that well?” Jackie asked.

He thought about it.

“Sure, except for the new guys. One rookie from town and one transfer from Up Island. Both been there about a year. Normal replacements for two retirees. Just cops from what I can see.”

“So nothing else?” Jackie asked.

Sullivan’s face froze in place.

“Already said too much. If you don’t mind, I’ll be getting back to my burger before it turns into a block of ice.”

Then he walked back into the restaurant, and we followed.

We flopped back at the table and ordered some food for ourselves and a few rounds of drinks, but it was a pretty subdued affair, not being able to talk about the thing most on our minds and too distracted to talk about anything else.

E
DDIE WAS
waiting on the lawn with a rubber ball between his feet. He looked down at the ball, then up at me, his face saying, “You know what to do here.”

I’d never seen the ball, which looked fairly new. I hoped it was scavenged and not an outright theft from a small child on the beach, not unprecedented.

We went out to the Adirondack chairs where Eddie could perform his Rin Tin Tin leap off the breakwater. I was pleased to see Amanda sitting in one of the other chairs, slumped down with her head back, pitcher of cosmopolitans and a bowl of red grapes on the side table. I tossed the ball hard down the pebble beach and sat next to her.

“Don’t let him fool you,” she said, without opening her eyes. “I’ve been throwing that ball for hours.”

“You can just say no.”

“I did. That’s when he went to wait for you. Sucker.”

“Where’d he get it?”

“Don’t know, but I heard wailing and assumed the worst.”

“How was your day?” I asked.

She scrunched up her face and stuck out her tongue.

“I’d rather hear about yours.”

So I told her everything I could remember. It took awhile since I had to answer perfectly reasonable questions I hadn’t yet broached myself.

“Okay, so you had a worse day,” she said. “Now I feel like a fool.”

“It’s not a contest. We’re bad-day neutral here on Oak Point.”

I couldn’t see her very well in the pale moonlight, but I could sense her pulling back her thick hair to better see me.

“I find it hard to believe. It’s about the last thing I’d think our cops would do,” she said.

“You don’t know all our cops.”

“True.”

“And though it looks like Ross and Edith have handed us the keys to the realm, I don’t believe anything they say.”

“I recall you once saying, ‘Nothing is ever what it seems,’ ” she said.

“ ‘Nothing’ might be overstating the case.”

“You can’t possibly think Joe Sullivan is involved.”

“He better not be. We just spilled the whole pot of beans.”

“You told him?” she asked.

“We did. But if he’s dirty, we’ve been transported to an alternate universe, one not worth living in.”

“Speak for yourself. I might like it.”

“It seems like Edith and Ross want people on the outside, but we need people on the inside. Which has to be Joe Sullivan.”

“You like Danny Izard. Still a beat cop.”

“Exactly. Too far from the action. It has to be Sullivan. Anyway it’s too late to change course. The deed is done.”

Amanda put her head back against her Adirondack chair and closed her eyes. She stayed like that for so long, I thought she’d fallen asleep. I occupied myself drinking and watching for subtle changes in the Little Peconic’s ecosphere. So I was startled when Amanda, without moving, said quite clearly, “So what the hell is going on?”

I wanted to give her an entirely honest answer, so I thought a bit before answering the question.

“Unusual things are happening for sure, likely related, though maybe not. Everyone is suddenly behaving contrary to established norms. Unless I never really grasped those norms to begin with. There is almost no data, and no clear way to develop any, and the major players are either territorial, conspiratorial, manipulative, unreliable, or certifiably insane. Or all the above.”

“In other words, you haven’t a clue,” she said.

“I haven’t. All the more reason to refill the tumbler.”

“I’ll be here when you get back.”

C
HAPTER
S
IX

T
he next day I was deep into coping joints for the cherry molding I’d custom-shaped for the built-in china cabinet when Jackie trotted down into my shop through the basement hatch. She wore flip-flops and a yellow cotton dress over a wet two-piece bathing suit.

Her frizz-ball hair was partially air-dried and the bright summer sun seemed to have added a few hundred new freckles.

“Welcome, I think,” I said.

“You’re always glad to see me.”

She picked up a piece of the curved molding and examined the coped angle. “You know making this stuff doesn’t seem possible,” she said. “To the layperson.”