Short Squeeze Page 15

  “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.”

  “And what’ll looking at tell us?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I will when we’ve looked at everything.”

  By now we’d been able to isolate all the room categories, adding two more—a library and a sewing room. The sewing equipment was from the fifties, at least, and the fabrics and thread were not much newer. So whoever sewed hadn’t done it in a very long time. My guess was Mrs. Hamilton, Elizabeth and Eunice’s mother, but there was nothing there to prove that.

  The library was of the same vintage, and again I pegged it to the professor. Most of the books were scientific texts or books about science and medicine, and there was the occasional historical novel. Except for a stack of Pogo compilations and the complete works of James Thurber, it was a pretty starchy collection.

  Why Eunice had conveyed all these things to Elizabeth was unexplained, but I didn’t know if that mattered. Or if it should live under the category “weird family dynamics.”

  Braced and rested, we started emptying bedroom boxes.

  Elizabeth, it turned out, might have gambled like the Cincinnati Kid and drunk like a sailor, but she dressed like a librarian. Not only sensible shoes, but sensible dresses, skirts, blouses, and hose. When I opened a box full of her underwear, Harry averted his gaze.

  “This is where I go check my e-mail,” he said.

  When he left I started to lay the items one by one out on the table. It wasn’t a job I was particularly keen on doing, but I’d promised myself I would go through everything. I knew that nag in my head wouldn’t let me do otherwise, even if I hadn’t promised.

  Betty’s conservative ways didn’t falter at the intimate. She had all the things your grandmother wore. High waists, industrial-strength bras, slips, and even a couple of old-fashioned girdles. No secret red panties or cut-out bras, which I’d half expected to find.

  I went through the first box, but in the second, the clothing only filled the top third. Below was an old mahogany box. I took it out and tried to open it. Locked. I went and got Harry at his computer.

  “I have a moral and technical dilemma,” I said.

  “First the moral,” he said, spinning around in his seat.

  “A locked box.”

  He deliberated.

  “You’re the coadministrator of the estate,” he said. “You have a fiduciary responsibility to determine the disposition and value of the estate’s assets. That actually obligates you to open the box.”

  “Spoken like a lawyer.”

  “I’ve known a few.”

  “So bring some tools.”

  Harry set down a cloth tool bag on the table and picked up the box, examining the brass keyhole.

  “Hm,” he said after several minutes’ study. “Stay put.”

  He disappeared for another ten minutes, then came back with a small cardboard box. He opened it so I could see what it was–a box full of old keys.

  “Get out of here,” I said, impressed.

  “Do you know how many old desks, clocks, filing cabinets, hope chests, gun cases, and wooden boxes a professional mover would have to open over a twenty-year period?”

  “A lot?”

  “I buy these at flea markets. The box owners usually like it better than a hammer and crowbar.”

  I tried not to crowd him while he worked through a series of keys. I liked to watch him work, deliberate but respectful. I imagined all those anxious furniture owners, like me, hovering over his patient shoulders.

  Finally one took with a satisfying click. He turned around and smiled.

  “Love that sound,” he said.

  I moved in next to him when he raised the lid. The box was apparently full, since right on top was a recent copy of Us Weekly.

  “Now, there’s a treasure worth preserving,” I said.

  There were two more issues, then a yellow notepad with a grocery list on the first page. I leafed through the other pages, but that was it. Next was a thin stack of tissue paper, then another curious item—a layer of wrinkled tinfoil. Under that a folded newspaper.

  “If there’re fish and chips under there, I’m not gonna be happy,” said Harry.

  I thanked him for the thought and carefully lifted a corner of the newspaper.

  It took only a split second to absorb what I saw on the bottom of the box, but it took a much longer time to fully comprehend. Later on we did a thorough inventory, but in the time I had before making a run for the bathroom, I counted two fingers, a big toe, a nose, and best of all, an eyeball floating in a little Tupperware container.

  14

  Joe Sullivan showed up with two young women in tow, each wearing rubber gloves and carrying sleek aluminum cases. I led them to the bodily remains as I tried to answer questions about the sequence of events leading to the discovery, including what we touched and didn’t touch, and in what order.

  “Any prior knowledge before opening that box that you might be uncovering evidence?” Sullivan asked.

  “Oh, great,” I said. “Nice thought. Jesus.”

  “Don’t start,” he said.

  “No,” I said, “you stop. As coadministrator of the Pontecello estate, I have a legal right to examine those belongings. If that’s a problem for you, take it up with Judge Simpson at Surrogate’s Court. And good luck with that one.”

  He was distra
cted by sounds of subdued delight coming from the forensic women as they picked the body parts out of the wooden box with long stainless-steel tweezers. He looked back, slightly confused.

  “Coadministrator? When were you going to tell me that?”

  “As soon as I was done looking at this stuff,” I lied, knowing I should have told him right after getting the call from Eunice and hoping to paper over that indiscretion with sheer bluster.

  “Either way,” he said, “I’ve got to ask you questions like that.”

  “No you don’t. You have to assume I haven’t fucked anything up and act like you’ve known me for longer than five seconds.”

  Then I left him and his lady ghouls and went outside to gather a little oxygen and figure out what to do next.

  Forensic crime shows on TV have done a huge service to the image of medical examiners. They make the job look sexy and fun and adventurous, with cool lighting and great bone structure. The old stereotype of the weirdo M.E. who prefers the company of carved-up corpses and rarely sees the light of day has almost been forgotten.

  That’s why it was good to have Carlo Vendetti, the Suffolk County M.E., around to remind us of where those stereotypes came from in the first place.

  It really wasn’t fair to think about Carlo that way. You knew he took his responsibilities seriously and worked hard to be the very best medical examiner he could possibly be.

  But, man, skeevy or what?

  After Sullivan left, I called Sam, who’d had more than one encounter with Carlo–not all pleasant, but usually productive.

  Sam answered the cell phone I’d given him as a desperate attempt to stop him from borrowing mine. He was just washing up after a day making wall units and lawn furniture in his shop in the basement.

  “I need to go see Carlo,” I said when he answered the phone.

  “Vendetti?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and told him about our latest discovery.

  “You think it’s more of Edna,” he said.

  Something about hearing her name almost made me retch.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But there’s a precedent. And Markham told me she was all there when she left the hospital. I gotta talk to Vendetti.”

  He was quiet on the line for a moment, then said, “I know where to find him. Catch him off guard. If you think you can take the surroundings.”

  “Dead bodies?”

  “Poetry,” he said.

  “I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

  “Amanda thought for some reason we needed to expand our social horizons,” he said. “So she made up a list of cultural attractions. I was strongly opposed to this but had to go along, assuming if I didn’t, she’d stop having sex with me.”

  “Finally a man who understands the lay of the land,” I said.

  “I slept through the plays in Sag Harbor, the folk singers in Amagansett, and almost broke my neck in Montauk trying to learn ballroom dancing, but I perked up at a poetry slam in Riverhead that featured Carlo, the Doc O’Death, Believer in the Reaper, Grand Incisionator.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Some people play golf. He’s performing tonight.”

  “What’s the dress code?”

  “Beatific.”

  I didn’t know what that meant exactly, so I went to the default blue jeans, cowboy boots, chambray shirt, and leather jacket. I left the hair to work things out on its own, too tired and stressed by the day to do anything else.

  “Where’s Eddie?” I asked when I jumped into Sam’s car.

  “Back at the cottage, defending the shores against alien encroachment.”

  He’d brought a thermos of flavored coffee, two giant plastic travel mugs, and a pack of Camel filters. Sam never went anywhere unequipped.

  “Expecting a long night?” I asked.

  “Just enough to get us to Riverhead. After that we’ll have to live off the land.”

  Riverhead lies at the crotch of the East End’s Twin Forks. It used to be a drab little mill town; now it’s the easternmost expression of Long Island’s love of strip development and discount retail. But the old town itself was still there, a row of storefronts grungy enough to house Chez Slam, serving burgers, booze, espresso coffee, and lyrical improvisation.

  This was not my thing. I was an English major in college mostly through default and indecision. I liked the books, but the poetry almost killed me. Some of it sounded nice when you read it aloud, but I could never understand what the hell they were talking about. If it weren’t for the textbooks and lectures, where they clued you in on the secret messages, I’d have flunked out in the first semester.

  On the other hand, Sam the mechanical engineer not only knew the stuff backward and forwards, he could also recite, declaim, cross-reference, and allude like Ezra Pound on amphetamines.

  The woman collecting the cover charge at the door wore a pretty black pencil skirt, spiked heels, white silk blouse, and heavy black-rimmed glasses. Sam asked her if her leotards were at the cleaners, to which she simply stared, blankly bewildered. So we were off to a good start.

  He managed a better rapport with the waitress. She was about his age, with disheveled gray hair, wearing a dress and apron set handed down from Betty Crocker.

  “What do you have that’s clear?” he asked.

  “My conscience and the mortgage on this place.”

  “Can you put that on the rocks? No fruit?”

  “What do you have against fruit?” she asked.

  “All that vitamin C wrecks the mood.”

  “What about your girlfriend?”

  “Not his girlfriend, but I’ll have the same thing. Just double up on the lime,” I said. “You can use his.”

  It was early, but the place was filling up fast. Most were young black people and young white people emulating the speech and gestures of young black people. Dotted about were older people, white, the men usually bearded and frumpy, wearing polyester shirts and sandals over socks. It was hard to tell the original purpose of the joint in the dim light, but the water rings and cigarette burns on the table testified to its longevity. So did the walls, covered in posters—some printed, others handmade—promoting singers, poets, and stand-up comedians. The faded artwork and antiquated fonts went back to a few decades before the girl in the pencil skirt had learned to use crayons.

  We ordered burgers to chase down the vodka, which we finished just in time to focus on the first act, a twitchy African-American guy in a Bobby Kennedy suit and wraparound sunglasses. Every line of his bit ended in ate, as in stipulate, perambulate, pontificate. It was an impressive cataloging of legitimate and artificial applications of that particular suffix, but as usual, the underlying meaning was lost to me. I whispered as much to Sam.

  “You gotta concentrate,” he said, “and let it percolate.”

  The next poet, also African-American, but young, too young to be in a place serving liquor, began by sitting silently for about five minutes on a stool next to a boom box playing a rhythm track. Then he started nodding his head to the downbeat and occasionally hitting the off beat with a loud grunt. The grunts slowly picked up in frequency, to which he gradually added other mouth sounds—clicks and pops—and then strategic slaps to the knees and chest.

  After about fifteen minutes of this it sounded as if there were dozens of kids up there playing as many percussion instruments. It was just great. I loved it, not just because I didn’t have to speculate or evaluate.

  After reaching an impossible crescendo, followed by thunderous applause, he did an encore, this time playing the William Tell overture on his cheeks. The whole thing, with perfect pacing and intonation.

  During all this I’d completely forgotten why I was there, which made the shock of seeing Carlo Vendetti lope onto the small stage that much greater.

  You could almost call him chinless, though not in the way some people’s chins are lost somewhere between lower lip and throat. His was more of a sharp, horizontal line, like Dick Tracy’s, as if
he’d had part of him neatly sliced off. His eyes were covered in huge, square-framed sunglasses. His head was bald on top, but he did the tragic thing some guys do with the remains, growing it long and pasting it over his skull with what looked like Vaseline. I never realized, seeing him once or twice in baggy lab coats, how thin he was–maybe a hundred and fifty pounds. That night, wearing a black bodysuit that started below his missing chin and ran all the way to his feet, it was easier to tell. And since that was all he was wearing, you could also clearly make out his masculine equipment, which was both appalling and impressive.

  “Now I know the problem,” I whispered to Sam. “Testosterone poisoning.”

  Like the kid before him, Carlo opened in complete silence. The audience followed his apparent wishes by settling down. When all you could hear was your own breath, he started to speak.

  It’s a good thing Sam has such a good memory, because I don’t. So whenever I want to recall parts of Carlo’s poem, I call him up. I want to remember it, because it was so beautiful and moving. He began with a low, slow cadence, but the pace of the words slowly increased, as did the pitch of his voice. It was really more of a narrative, more free verse, than regular poetry. And the storyline was clear. It was about a strange childhood–I presumed Carlo’s–spent on a farm on the prairie wastes of western Canada, where the only escape from the trackless monotony of wheat fields and oppressively stolid parents was a soaring imagination. An imagination rich enough in describing his world to make me want to get in the Volvo and head for Saskatchewan. And as with the kid playing his own body, I quickly forgot I was on Long Island listening to the Suffolk County medical examiner.

  When his story ended, the audience was either too stunned by his performance or mindful of his opening bit to clap until he’d already left the stage.

  “Now that’s a medical examiner worth writing home about,” said Sam.

  I didn’t answer him for fear he’d notice I’d almost started to choke up. Instead, I took off for the ladies’ room to clean up. I was a little concerned that Carlo would sneak out before we had a chance to talk to him, but when I got back to the table he was sitting there with Sam. The sunglasses were off and his tall beer was already half consumed.