Short Squeeze Read online

  We wound our way through the mazelike housing development and out to the strip. Traffic was heavy, which made following Fuzzy even easier. He made two or three turns, then pulled into the parking lot of a shabby row of storefronts with a liquor store, a Laundromat, and a pizza parlor.

  When Fuzzy went inside, Harry asked me what the plan was.

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Okay. What if you did?” he asked.

  “Is that one of those Zen logic puzzles?”

  “Sometimes it’s good to know what you’re going to do a few seconds before you actually do it.”

  “Sure, if you want to spoil the spontaneity,” I said, jumping out of the car.

  We found Fuzzy in a remote corner of the restaurant with his face in a BlackBerry, punching at the tiny keys as if he were trying to stick a hole in the device.

  We waited for a break in the action, but when it didn’t come, Harry reached out a long arm and tapped Fuzzy on the shoulder, making him jump like somebody’d stuck a firecracker down his pants.

  “Holy crap, freak me out.”

  “Sorry,” said Harry.

  A crowd was forming around the counter where you ordered your pizza. Waitresses were milling around, dropping off people’s meals and filling trays with dirty dishes. Teenagers were playing video games and trying to attract one another’s attention in the bad-mannered way teenagers like to do. It wasn’t the environment I’d have chosen to discuss the sensitive things I was about to discuss. On the other hand, Fuzzy looked perfectly at home. In his natural habitat.

  “What was your name again?” he asked when we sat down.

  I reintroduced myself and Harry.

  “Oh, yeah. Uncle Sergey’s lawyer. I didn’t know you could work this hard for dead people.”

  “You can for their estate,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  Fuzzy smirked at the thought, something I’d gotten used to. “ ‘Estate’ is a big word for a lot of nothing,” he said.

  “You should know I’ve been appointed a coadministrator of that estate. Your mother and myself. How’re you getting along with her these days?” I asked straight-out, not knowing how else to ask.

  “I told you. I don’t talk to her. But before you start jumping all over me, she’s not my real mother. I’m adopted, something she never tires of reminding me.”

  Right at that moment, for no apparent reason, he sneezed, with a violent shake of his head. He wiped his nose with the sleeve of his shirt.

  “Fucking allergies,” he said.

  “I know these are personal questions,” I said, “but they’re germane to me being here.”

  “I thought germane was some feminazi chick.”

  “You’re thinking of Germaine Greer,” said Harry. “ ‘Feminazi’ would be an unfair characterization. Germane means pertinent. Relevant.”

  “Okay, so what?”

  “You’re the sole heir to your aunt and uncle’s estate,” I said. “After donations, taxes, and legal fees—meaning me—you get all the rest. House, investments, personal effects. And a 1967 Chrysler 300, if I can find out where it is.”

  For the first time Fuzzy looked less than completely dismissive. Not exactly impressed but curious.

  “No shit. How about that.”

  “Your mother was named as the original administrator, but now that we share that role things could get sticky. However, my legal duty is clear. I have a fiduciary responsibility both to Betty and Sergey and to you, as the estate’s beneficiary. In other words, Fuzzy, I’m technically working for you.”

  “No shit.”

  “And in that capacity, my first bit of advice is to use a handkerchief when you sneeze. Surrogate’s Court likes a certain decorum on the heir’s part. I also need to know why there’s a conflict between you and your mother. That could have an impact on probating this thing, even without the complication of Sergey’s murder.”

  I could see Fuzzy’s bitterness etched directly into the contours of his face. As he sat there at the sticky Formica table—insolent, disheveled, and poorly bathed—I saw in his intelligent blue eyes a fury so boundless and primal it made me sit back in my seat and send thanks to whatever impulse had caused me to invite Harry along, exploitation be damned.

  “I don’t have anything to say to Eunice,” Fuzzy said, his voice flat and hollow. “She should be happy that’s as far as it goes.”

  Harry had been holding back from the conversation until then, but he started catching the vibe and pulled his chair closer to Fuzzy and me. I put my elbows on the table and leaned forward.

  “Fuzzy, do you know why Betty and Sergey made you their sole heir?”

  Fuzzy’s eyes narrowed.

  “Do you cross-examine witnesses in court, you know, like they do on Law and Order? Jack McCoy circling like a shark, setting up the poor schmuck, then pouncing on him, making him confess everything, like a complete fucking idiot, when all he had to do was sit there and take the Fifth or lie like a bastard and nothing would’ve happened? That’s why I hate those shows.”

  “That’s why I love those shows,” I said. “But I’m not trying to trap you in anything. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Then quit asking questions you already know the answers to. I don’t think you’re stupid; don’t treat me like I am.”

  I sat back again.

  “Okay. But it would be better if you just said it, because I can’t,” I said, thinking of how I’d explain accessing confidential hospital records. “Just remember, I’ve got your financial future in my hands. If you’re going to get into a fight with Eunice Wolsonowicz, you might weigh the value of having her coadministrator, a lawyer by the way, on your side.”

  I gave him a look that said, “Your move, buster.”

  He looked over at Harry.

  “You know, she doesn’t need to always bring you along,” he said. “Just because I disgust women doesn’t mean I’m dangerous.”

  I didn’t dignify his comment with a response. I let the silence—what there was of it in the din of the restaurant—build between us.

  “Since you obviously already know,” Fuzzy said, in a singsong voice more defensive than defiant, “my father fucked his wife’s sister. I’m the result. Whoopsy doodles. Trouble is, no way is Betty going to raise a kid. She’s a single girl running around Europe, fucking barons and dipshits like Sergey. So she says to Eunice, Here’s the deal. I tell the world Tony is the cock-swinging son of a bitch you know he is, or you can take this kid and raise him. Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall during that conversation? Anyway, everybody bought into the deal. Only problem is, nobody bothered to tell me.”

  He shouted the last sentence, half raised out of his seat.

  “But they did eventually,” I said as quietly as I could.

  He sat back in his chair and into his slouching, disdainful indifference. He shook his head.

  “Betty told me. But only when she was forced into it,” he said. “So what’s this got to do with the estate shit? What’s the germane part?”

  “Eunice was pretty upset when she found out what her sister’s estate is actually worth,” I said. “She might decide to contest the will. I have to decide what my part in this is going to be, and that depends on knowing the facts. Right now, I can tell you honestly, I don’t want much to do with any of you people. All I want to know is who killed Sergey Pontecello, who might have been a dipshit, but who wanted to be my client and I let him down.”

  Obviously, Fuzzy heard only the first part of that speech.

  “What do you mean, what the estate was really worth?”

  “You’re rich, pal,” said Harry. “Get used to it. Your mother might’ve ditched you, but give her credit for trying to make good on it in the only way she could.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Fuzzy. “How rich?”

  So I told him. After all, he was my client, sort of.

  “Millions. More than one, less than ten. Somewhere in the middle.”

  Fuz
zy burst out laughing, on cue, like a stand-up comic or a trained actor.

  “Ah, that’s so great,” he said. “That fucking brilliant, conniving, selfish bitch, it’s no wonder she was my mother.”

  And then he kept laughing until it was clear he really meant it, as if the act of laughter was so alien to him he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

  And, God preserve me, it became so infectious Harry started to smile, and before I knew it, both of us were laughing, too. Right there amidst the lunatic clamor and chaos of the pizza parlor, only one of us knowing what was so funny, but all of us enjoying the moment on its own terms, just for the hell of it.

  When sobriety returned, I told Fuzzy what he needed to do in the lead up to entering Surrogate’s Court, including getting a copy of his birth certificate. I also told him that if Eunice got aggressive he’d have to find his own lawyer. A good laugh aside, I wasn’t about to spend the next few years with Fuzzy litigating a complex legal issue I had next to no experience litigating.

  That done, I was ready to get out of that irritating place and head back to Harry’s converted gas station in Southampton. As we got up to go, Fuzzy had a request of his own.

  “Hey, uh, you could do me a favor on the whole mother thing,” he said. “Eunice doesn’t like to talk about it. Neither does Wendy. I don’t care that much about Eunice, but with Wendy, it’s like, you know, really bad.”

  I reassured him.

  “I’m a lawyer, Fuzzy. I don’t share a client’s information with myself without prior authorization,” I said, and even though that really wasn’t true, I liked the way it came out.

  20

  I slept in my own bed that night. For some of the night. Then I pretended to sleep for the rest, until the first pale signs of daylight woke up the birds, which made lying there seem that much more futile.

  After showering and getting dressed, I killed time until seven-thirty, then drove over to the estate section in Southampton where I thought Sam might be working. I’d noticed trucks belonging to Frank Enwhistle, one of Sam’s favorite contractors, lining the street. I called it right. Parked with the trucks was a late 1960s Grand Prix, another popular construction vehicle.

  It was a cool, hazy morning, but Sam wore only a white T-shirt, warmed as he was from wrestling with a big triangular hunk of fancy molding above the front door.

  “It’s a pediment. We have the ancient Greeks to blame,” he said through gritted teeth as he tried to keep a level steady with one hand and tap a slender finish nail with the other.

  “I thought it was postmodern architects.”

  “For them we’ve reserved a new circle of hell.”

  He twisted around on the stepladder and pointed to the ground.

  “Could you hand me that hydraulic nailer?” he asked.

  “What’s a hydraulic nailer?”

  “The thing with the hose attached. Look lively, Swaitkowski. Can’t hold this position forever.”

  “Good thing I came along.”

  “You’re decent help,” he said when I handed him the nailer. “I can get you steady work.” He popped a dozen nails into the inside curve of the molding. “You could specialize in setting pediments.”

  “Easier than setting precedents.”

  “That’s right, I forgot. You’re a lawyer.”

  He climbed down the ladder.

  “How’s the case?” he asked.

  “That’s why I’m here. I know more and understand less. I’m in need of clarity.”

  “I’m in need of caffeine. Let’s combine the two.”

  I drove him to a coffee place nearby. We took coffee and croissants out to a park bench in front of the shop. I briefed him on my time at the library with Ruth Hinsdale, the friendly chat with Eunice, and what I’d learned about Fuzzy, including the conversation at the pizza parlor.

  I told him what I thought was clear. That Elizabeth Pontecello was a very intelligent woman living in the company of an army of demons, though she definitely manned the helm at the Pontecellos’. That her personal banker at Harbor Trust had never dealt with Sergey. That all the bank records and legal documents, the will, the tax returns, every scrap of paper we’d come across, was in Betty’s name and handwriting. “And how do you jibe chain-smoking ace poker player with little old lady librarian?” I concluded.

  “Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, eidetics gotta memorize,” he said.

  “Okay. That clears up everything.”

  “That’s the technical description of people with photographic memories. Eidetic,” said Sam. “It means just what you’d think it means. Their brains store and process information as images. A lot of people can do this, but with some, like Betty, they remember damn near everything, in perfect detail. It might sound like an affliction, but for people like Betty, it’s a compulsion. The more stuff to memorize, the better. I had one of these guys working for me as a chemical engineer, a Pakistani trained in Edinburgh. He didn’t have a lot of imagination, but he could build a polymer plant out of his head. I never saw him without a bag full of technical papers.”

  “So what better place to spend your days than a reference library.”

  “And your nights at the blackjack table,” he said.

  “Counting cards. But they mostly played poker. Texas Hold ’Em. Card counting doesn’t work.”

  “It works with blackjack until you’re caught. Which will happen eventually. Then you’re out of the casino forever. Every casino. Her memory still gave her some advantage over the other poker players, but she had another dodge going on there, the oldest one in the book.”

  I hated it when Sam made me guess the thing he’d already figured out.

  “Goddamn it. Do we have to do this now?”

  “Come on, Jackie. Tonic and lime. Looks like a gin and tonic. Establish yourself as a drunk, then stop drinking. The other players don’t take you seriously, don’t hide the tells, the facial expressions and body language that a good player can read like the Sunday paper.”

  Betty didn’t just run with the demons, I thought, she was one of them. I remembered the look on Fuzzy’s face when I broke the news of his inheritance. Clearly enough to make me start laughing all over again. I finally got the joke.

  I smacked Sam on the arm.

  “Betty was a con,” I said.

  That’s what she really liked to do, play tricks on the world and everybody in it. I can see her as a little girl, realizing she could do things the other little girls couldn’t imagine doing. But she kept it to herself. It was her secret weapon. She had a lifetime of deception. She could be all these different things because none of them was really Betty. It must have been particularly satisfying to play one last trick on her overbearing, self-righteous older sister, taking her money when she didn’t even need it.

  I dropped Sam off at his job and drove a block to the corner of South Main Street and Gin Lane. If you’re going to find yourself at a crossroads, you might as well do it in style. I pulled the car under the shade of a huge birch tree and started chanting, “Eeny, meeny, miney, mo,” under my breath. When I landed on a choice I didn’t like, I took the other one, and turned up Main Street and headed toward Riverhead and the regional crematorium at Great Lawns Cemetery.

  Since I was already in such a great mood, why not spend the rest of the day with the dead?

  Though Riverhead isn’t the most beautiful place on the East End, it is the source of fond childhood memories. Back then, you could save a fortune on groceries and regular household products at the Riverhead shopping centers at the edges of town. It was as if they’d created a little outpost of American suburbia within easy driving distance of the Hamptons, just to give us an idea of what the rest of the country had turned into. My mother liked having company, so she always made routine shopping expeditions to Riverhead feel like a special treat.

  With that memory along for the ride, I half enjoyed the drive to Great Lawn Cemetery, which was just that: a great big lawn with big old trees and paved walkwa
ys and curving roadways and plaques on the ground instead of headstones. I liked the concept, which is why both my parents were there. I hadn’t been back to visit since I’d buried my mother. They were on eternal time, so I thought I could wait a few more years to muster the courage.

  The building with the crematorium was at the other end of the grounds. It was another stately colonial building, the architectural standard of the mortuary industry. The front door was unlocked, which I took as an invitation. Inside was a foyer lined with closed doors and filled with colonial furniture, mostly uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs, and a small pine desk. I buzzed the buzzer on the desk.

  Minutes later a young woman emerged from one of the doors. She was slight and pretty, even with a pair of thick glasses and short brown hair cut to accentuate the conservative. She wore a light blue shirt and khaki slacks, not unlike what I was wearing, which we both noticed immediately.

  “Well, at least I got the dress code right,” I said, sticking out my hand. “I’m Jackie Swaitkowski, an attorney from Southampton.”

  For better or worse, it was always helpful to get the lawyer part out early. Most people find it hard to blow you off without at least finding out what sort of trouble they might be in.

  “I’m Sarah Simms, cemetery director. What can I do for you?”

  I told her as much of the Edna Jackery story as I could without implicating anyone or implying that I was about to implicate her. This wasn’t easy, but I’d told the story so many different ways by then, it was getting easier.

  “So, if I understand,” she said, “pieces of Mrs. Jackery were removed from the body prior to cremation?”

  “That’s the long and short of it. I know it was a while ago, but I was wondering if you remember anything about her.”

  She was too polite to say something like “Surely you jest,” but the result was the same.

  “You must keep records,” I said. “Do you examine the body before it’s cremated?”

  “We require it. We run the person through a metal detector and do a hands-on examination. There’s often jewelry that’s been overlooked at the funeral home, and we can’t allow things like pacemakers into the retort. They can actually explode.”