Short Squeeze (18 page)

“Okay, maybe I know some things. I just don’t know what I know,” I said aloud, then silently pledged to never again assume anything, never conclude anything without a freight car full of corroboration, never believe in the obvious, never fall prey to supposition. To be only what Harry had said I was:

The girl who never gave up.

The next day Harry picked me up in a big truck. Big enough to have a clattery diesel engine and a cab you had to climb up into. He looked
way too happy behind the wheel. That gave me insight into his love of logistics. It wasn’t just about moving stuff; it was how you moved it.

I’d called Eunice immediately after leaving Sandy Kalandro, and she was more than eager to have me retrieve Sergey and Betty’s things, as if they were emitting radiation and she was in dire fear for her life. I knew the type. My opposite. People who get physically ill looking at stacks of boxes, who only see a burden where I see a playground.

Harry loved boxes but hated clutter, which I knew was one of those ugly, bubbling issues left unresolved from when I tossed him out. But now was not the time to muck around with resolutions.

Instead, I focused on one of my favorite distractions, admiring the distance between Harry’s hip and knee, and subsequently from knee to ankle. Especially noticeable when he was wearing blue jeans, which he must have bought at the Gangly, Lean, and Ridiculously Tall Shop.

My blue jeans were actually green, which in the sunlight looked more sickly than I’d thought they would against the reddish flannel shirt. At least we were both dressed to schlep, which is all Eunice would care about–to completely and permanently scour Sergey’s residue from her ancestral home.

In addition to the big truck, Harry brought oversize cups of coffee and gooey pastries. Harry often did things like this, pleasing me by being thoughtful and aggravating me by making me feel I wasn’t.

The day was shaping up to be another bright blue East End wonder. People say the air and the sky aren’t only different in this part of the world, they’re also better. I haven’t traveled much–almost nowhere, in fact–but I’m happy to believe them.

As we pulled into the driveway, we had to work around a pair of pickup trucks that were pulled partway onto the grass. The confident signs on the doors said it was Ray Zander and crew. Harry drove the truck up to the front door, but before we announced ourselves, I walked
across the lawn to where a third pickup, one I hadn’t seen before, was backed against the base of a huge old maple tree.

When I got there I didn’t see Ray, but there was a thick rope leading from a spool on the back of the pickup and into the dense foliage of the tree. I followed it with my eyes and called, “Yo, Ray. You up there?”

“Who’s askin’?” he yelled back

I told him.

“You keep callin’ on me my wife’s gonna get suspicious.”

“Not if you don’t tell her.”

“That’d be deceptive,” he called down. “The worser evil.”

I didn’t ask him worser than what.

“You mind just coming down here for a sec so we can talk?”

Almost instantaneously I heard a mechanical whir and the spool on the back of the truck started to spin. Ray Zander dropped like a stone, or more evocatively, like a swashbuckler with a long branch trimmer in lieu of a sword. He was sitting on some sort of webbed seat attached to the line, and as he fell toward me, he held his legs straight out, ankles locked, with one hand on the trimmer, the other resting in his lap. I jumped out of the way. When he abruptly stopped, I saw the other hand held a small black remote.

He was grinning.

“Nifty, huh?” he said.

“Yeah. Sure,” I said, noncommitally.

“Rigged it myself. Thinking of going for a patent. You’re a lawyer, what do you think?”

“Not my branch of the law,” I said.

“I’m lookin’ for investors. You could get in on the ground floor. Mr. Pontecello took quite an interest, but his wife put the kibosh on that one. Fella was on a tight leash.”

“No leash on me. I’ll spread the word.”

“Tell ’em it’s not only convenient, it’s fast,” he said, and then zipped
back up into the tree, disappearing into the leaves. A few seconds later, he fell back out of the sky.

“I can see that,” I said.

“That’s the real innovation. The power takeoff was way too slow, so I regeared the whole thing. Integrated a grappling hook, a classic boson’s chair, a remote-controlled, high-torque electric motor, and bingo. Costs a fraction of a cherry picker, and I get to keep the money.”

He pointed out a few more pertinent features and benefits of the system before letting me convince him to hold still for a few questions. He stayed in the boson’s chair, so I climbed into the bed of the pickup to get on his eye level.

I told him I’d been out to the casino, as he suggested I should. I saw a glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes. People love it when you do what they suggest.

“I’m not asking you to reveal any confidences or denigrate the memory of Mrs. Pontecello,” I said, “but did you ever notice her in a state of, ah, you know … inebriation?”

“Schnockered? Yeah, all the time. The more schnockered, the worse she got. Yappin’ at the crew, sayin’ all this nonsense with the cigarette bouncin’ up and down between her lips. Kinda thing you expect to see back in Brooklyn, where I grew up, not out here. I can sure see her pissin’ off the wrong people, gettin’ her husband into trouble.”

“Must’ve been tough on him,” I said.

He looked into the sky, checking the weather or formulating a response. Hard to tell.

He looked back at me.

“Mr. Pontecello lived in his own little world, which suited him fine. Suited me, too. We had an understanding. I keep all this landscaping in perfect condition and he pays me. He ignores, I ignore. Square deal for everybody.”

“There was that much to ignore?” I asked.

“You’re serious, right?” he asked, before zipping back up into the maple canopy.

“I am,” I yelled.

Getting no response, I walked back to the front door of the house, where Harry was waiting not so patiently but pretending he was. I knew the look. I became oblivious, and ignored it, à la Sergey Pontecello.

“Have you rung the doorbell?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

“What are you waiting for? Come on, let’s move it.”

He liked that.

Eunice answered the door in a gray three-piece suit, supported by stubby sensible heels and a narrow, disapproving face.

“I can’t stay to administer all this,” she said. “You’ll have to make do on your own.”

“One of my specialties, ma’am,” I said.

She looked up at Harry, vaguely disturbed by the sight of him, though not enough to keep us out of her house.

“I’ve separated our family things from my sister’s and her husband’s things. I had to make judgments as to which was which. It wasn’t pleasant,” she added, as if to ward off a possible challenge to her decisions. “The boxes and furniture are in the east sitting room. Do I need to sign anything?” she said. She stood several paces away with her hands clenched anxiously to her abdomen.

“You already did when you made me coadministor,” I said. “I assume we’ll know which things to take.”

“Take everything in that room,” she said, pointing down the hall. “That’s why I put it there,” she said testily.

I was going to ease gradually into the tough stuff, but I’d about had it with that woman. I moved in close, invading her personal space, which she seemed poised to defend.

“Mrs. Wolsonowicz, are you aware your son has been named sole heir of the Pontecello estate?”

Up close, I could see her face grappling with emotions that went far beyond impatience and irritation.

“Of course,” she said.

“Shouldn’t he be deciding what to do with these belongings?”

She shook her head aggressively enough to wrench her neck. “He doesn’t want anything. Of that I’m certain.”

I nodded and moved in a half step closer. She stepped back the same distance.

“And the financial piece, same feelings?”

She scoffed.

“The debt?” she asked. “The house settles that.”

“So you haven’t looked into the remaining assets.”

She shook her head again, less violently.

“The bank won’t release anything until authorized by the courts. Some bureaucratic nonsense.”

“The murder investigation,” I said flatly.

“As I said, nonsense.”

She looked down at her watch, then looked at me, then looked back at her watch.

“I have an appointment,” she said.

I had the bad news of the Pontecellos’ unfortunate lack of insolvency on the tip of my tongue. Something more than her clipped dismissal kept it there.

“Of course,” I said.

She guided us to the east sitting room, which had a wide pair of French doors that opened out on the front lawn. Harry asked if he could back up the truck to the doors, which for some reason seemed to aggravate her even more.

“I suppose,” she said, turning to leave. Then she stopped, turned again, and forced herself to stand still. “Thank you for taking care of
all this,” she said with all the sincerity of a sixth grader reciting lines in the Christmas pageant. “I appreciate it.”

Index cards with things I wanted to say started to flip in front of my mind’s eye, but before I could pick out something, Harry said, “It’s the least we could do. Losing a loved one is hard enough.”

She softened a little at that, though not enough to improve my opinion of her. Then she spun back around and left us to administer things on our own.

The east sitting room was about twenty feet square. It was heaped almost floor to ceiling with boxes, lamps, tables and chairs, temporary clothing racks, rolled-up rugs, framed pictures, a pair of bicycles, and a lot of indescribables, such as palm fronds stuck in a gigantic blue vase and a wicker umbrella holder in the shape of an old-fashioned woman’s boot.

“Stuff,” he said.

“The staff of life. How do you want to tackle it?” I asked.

“We’ll work that out with the crew.”

“The crew?”

“You don’t think
we’re
moving all this crap, do you?”

About ten minutes later the crew showed up. Alejandro and Ismael. They high-fived Harry and instantly dug into the gigantic pile of personal belongings. By then Harry had backed up the truck and pulled a ramp directly into the east sitting room. Alejandro was apparently the lead guy, even though Ismael was almost twice his size.

I wasn’t just going to stand there while other human beings worked, so I joined the hauling frenzy. This naturally forced Harry into the fray, so in a startlingly short period of time we emptied the place of the Pontecellos’ belongings. I expressed my amazement to the crew.

“Ismael and myself are magicians,” said Alejandro. “Make objects disappear.”

“Abracadabra,” said Ismael, as if they’d rehearsed the act.

With that satisfying, sweaty feeling of accomplishment, I jumped
into the truck and slammed the heavy passenger door. Harry started the engine, which almost drowned out the sound of my cell phone ringing on my hip. I answered.

“I did tell you about the car,” said Eunice.

“Not that I remember.”

“Well, the ridiculous thing is in one of the garages. It needs to be moved.”

“Ridiculous?”

“American.”

Latent love of country stirred in my breast.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll take care of it.”

“It’s a forty-year-old Chrysler, if you can imagine. Who would drive such a thing?”

“No one I know,” I lied.

Harry told me he’d decided to bring everything to his rental over in Southampton, citing all the extra space, including room to set up tables and shelves to help go through the boxes. When we got there the tables and shelves–and Alejandro and Ismael–were waiting. In another wink of an eye the stuff was out of the truck and neatly arrayed in the garage bay next to where Harry had set up housekeeping. Harry paid the guys while exchanging palm slaps and mock insults in the way men seem to delight in. Then we watched them leave, Ismael taking the truck.

I washed the sweat off my face while Harry made a pot of coffee and put the Magnetic Fields on the stereo. Then we stood together at the edge of the room and took it all in.

“Let’s go look at some dead people’s things,” I said, diving in.

The boxes weren’t labeled, so Harry armed us both with Sharpies and Post-its and we set to work. He designated receiving tables and shelves by room–living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, bath–so as we unpacked, identified contents, and repacked, we had another layer of organization.

The living room section filled up fast. Lots of vases, ashtrays, table lamps, framed photographs, coasters, cigarette boxes, and the usual assemblage of indefinable porcelain and cast-metal tchotchkes.

The dining room saw a definite uptick in quality. The china and crystal were beautiful, ancient, and rare. And very valuable, according to what I could glean from a quick Web search. The bowls, candlestick holders, and flatware were all silver, as proven by their blackened neglect. I guessed it all came down from Professor Hamilton, which made me wonder why Eunice had let it go. Had it become contaminated by the Pontecellos’ possession?

“Weird family dynamics. No explaining it,” said Harry, satisfied with that.

The bathroom stuff, besides being incredibly depressing, was more notable for what was missing than what was there.

“No toothbrush,” I said.

“He didn’t brush his teeth?”

“No. He was holding it when he called me that night. Eunice had thrown him out of the master bathroom. He thought he was still the master and wouldn’t brush his teeth anywhere else.”

“So what does that mean?” Harry asked.

“I don’t know. Probably still in one of the other bathrooms.”

After laying grim witness to things like denture cleaners and nail files, I needed a break before cataloging the stuff from their bedroom. We went outside and drank some more coffee. Actually, I drank coffee. Harry stood over me and massaged my shoulders.

“So what’re we looking for?” he asked.

“We’re not exactly looking for. We’re looking at.”