Colin Harrison - The Havana Room

The single-lane road winding east toward the Atlantic revealed a charming and classically American dreamscape almost too good to be true- three-hundred-year-old saltwater cottages, steepled churches and clapboard farmhouses, silver barns next to ancient, heavy-limbed maples. My glimpse of Jay's dark frozen fields two nights earlier, I realized now, had been insufficient to understand the forces at work on the value of his property. The rolling land was a heart-yanking time warp to a simpler age. People find such authenticity frighteningly attractive, for it lets them forget terrorism and global warming and genetic counseling, lets them forget that time runs in only one direction, at least for those of us still roped to the mast of Western rationalism. Such places conjure a lost psychic era, pre-Nixonian, when Cadillacs looked like rockets and silicone was used only to caulk windows. Back then, when America was the great good place. And people will happily pay for that, they will pay twenty-first century prices. I passed a tractor pulling a wagonload of hay; in the other direction flew three white limousines in sequence, carrying who knows who- corporate executives, pro athletes, movie stars? A few miles farther I swept past two golf courses going in, then half a dozen wineries, each expensively grand structures of shingle and glass centered among precise four-foot-high rows of trellised grapevines that swept backward toward the horizon. In the instances where obsolete farm buildings or modest homes fronted the main road, these were being purchased and demolished. Indeed, the large projects I saw had probably been the result of the consolidation of multiple lots, an expensive and time-consuming way to assemble a land parcel, and typically only done when prices are rising dramatically. But as Jay had said, the prospect of world-class vineyards and wineries within what amounted to a stone's throw of New York City- which, let it be remembered, still holds more wealth than any other city on the globe, even London, even Hong Kong, even Kuwait City- was a surefire bet. Overlay on that proximity various other factors- the cheek-by-jowl development of the Hamptons, the recent local land-use restrictions enacted in an effort to block that very same kind of development, and America's ever-burgeoning retirement-age population- and the surefire bet became a kind of slo-mo bank robbery.

Yet even more proof awaited me when I parked in the quaint town of Southold and found Hallock Properties, one of whose signs, I'd remembered, lay flat in the weeds on Jay's old property. The office's windows were adorned with listings for large pieces of land, complete with aerial photos of woods and field and gorgeous shoreline headlined THE LAST UNCUT JEWEL! and HISTORY DOESN'T REPEAT ITSELF!

I stepped through the agency's door; it was as one might expect, a bustling hive of office cubicles, the walls plastered with house listings. For a moment I mused over the prices. A trailer home on a tenth of an acre? Try $195,000. A clapped-out one-bedroom shack on half an acre? $320,000. Undeveloped mere half-acre oceanfront lots ran $475,000. Two acres of swampy overgrown brush on a brackish inlet? $950,000. A terrific five-bedroom job on the water with gourmet kitchen, "rocking chair porch," tennis court, and "forever views"? At least a million five. Vineyard acreage? Prices started at three million and went to the moon. What had happened to the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket and Malibu and Pebble Beach and Coral Gables was happening here. It was America, after all; somebody had to be getting rich.

The brokers stood or sat talking into their headsets, consulting files or computer screens, the women attractive and tough, in their thirties and forties, and the few men older and ruined-lookingclutching the floating logs of their careers.

"Help you?" asked a woman who introduced herself as Pamela. Her hair reminded me of a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

I told her I wanted to talk with someone about the large property in Jamesport they'd recently handled. "Acreage up on the Sound," I added.

"I'm not sure which-?" she said, politely inspecting my shoes.

"It was just bought by some Chilean wine people."

Pamela frowned politely. "We didn't handle that."

"I thought you did. I saw your sign out there."

"No."

I stared at her Frosted Flakes hair, which made her nervous. "Who did then?"

"I don't know."

"Was it listed with multiple brokers?"

She was dodgy, even for a real estate agent. "I couldn't say."

Already I knew enough about the region to see that large properties with ocean frontage didn't come along too often. "I was told, by the buyer of the property, that one of your agents specifically told him"- and here I glanced at some scribbled notes in my hand-"that another bidder was in the picture and that the second party was prepared to bid again if the buyer didn't close."

She was still looking at my shoes, blinking rapidly.

"I should also probably mention, Pamela, that I am a New York City attorney specializing in real estate matters."

Now she looked up at me, a tight smile pinned on her face. "You need to talk with Martha. But first, understand this. That property, the old Rainey farm, was never handled by us. It was never officially listed by us." She lowered her voice. "I don't know what Martha may have said, or done. Maybe she stuck one of the agency's signs next to the road- whatever. She's- she could have said- well, I'm sure I don't want to know."

I made a show of writing all this down.

"May I have your name again, Mr.-?"

"Bill Wyeth."

I followed Pamela through the partitioned offices, down a wainscoted hallway.

"Martha?" she called when we reached a closed door.

No answer. Pamela pushed the door open and the room we entered could not have been more different- a vintage realtor's office at least fifty years old, stuffed with files, yellow topographical maps, and curled tax survey volumes. An old, rather heavyset woman sat sleeping in an armchair, despite the early hour. Her housedress had fallen open a little too far and she was holding a spoon. On the table next to her lay a glass of tea and a thick biography of the Duke of Windsor. Propped next to the seat was a cane.

"Martha!" cried Pamela. "Hello-o?"

"Yes?" The elderly woman blinked awake.

"This is Mr. Wyeth," announced Pamela hatefully.

"How do you do?"

"He's come to discuss the old Rainey farm?"

"Has he?"

The women stared at each other. "I'm going to leave you two alone," Pamela said, "so I can have a quick look for my sanity."

She departed, her heels clicking smartly down the hall.

"Get that, would you?" Martha pointed to the door. When I closed it she waved at the chair opposite her for me to sit. "Pammy's a dreadful woman. A shocking hussy. A tart, they used to say."

"Oh?"

"Yes, we're lashed together, and neither of us likes it much! I taught her everything she knows but there's no respect, no loyalty anymore."

"This was your agency?" I guessed.

"Still is." She nodded defiantly. "Which my father started in 1906." She noticed her housedress and pulled it closed. "I was the baby of the family. I'm eighty-three, Mr. Wyeth, so you can see how long I've been around."

"Seen a lot of things."

"Oh my," she agreed. "I remember when the potato trucks used to go down the main road by the dozens. We had one doctor, paid him with firewood in the winter and produce in the summer. Nobody knew about this place. Most beautiful spot in the world. Everything's different now. I can't begin to tell you. Everybody was on well water. You could eat oysters at every meal when they were in season. And lobster, too. We had a lovely church community."

Humor her, I thought. "What did farmland go for, Martha, when you were a girl?"