Mark Mills - Amagansett

The accident had changed all that. It had empowered her, it had allowed her to hold sway over him, it had given her control—not theoretical and intellectual, but real and immediate. His choices were now her choices, and hers his. They were bound together in perpetuity, his fate now in her hands.

And when it came to it, she had opted to take from him everything she knew he held dear. On a point of principle she had chosen to destroy him. Now here she was again, still working from beyond the grave to bring him down, entrusting her wishes to a goddamn fisherman.

‘What does it mean, Richard?’

‘What does what mean?’

‘The document, for Christ’s sake.’

‘It means a lot of things, none of them good. Legally, we can maybe beat it, but the scandal…’

Manfred got to his feet and wandered on to the lawn. ‘There has to be another way,’ he said eventually.

‘You know there is.’

Manfred turned. ‘It has to end here. Can it be made to look convincing?’

‘With Labarde’s record?’ said Richard. ‘I can’t see that being a problem.’

Thirty-Three

Women swarmed like worker ants across the village green. Those who weren’t chivvying along the men erecting the stalls were chatting like magpies. Very few appeared to be actually achieving anything, just the small handful unpacking boxes of cotton drapes and colorful bunting near the pond.

‘Hello.’

She swept past Hollis like a galleon in full sail, snapped an order then came about, bearing off on another tack. Only then did Hollis recognize her, from Mary’s party.

He moved to intercept her.

‘Barbara.’

‘What now!? Oh, it’s you.’

‘How’s the apron booth coming along?’ he asked, and promptly wished he hadn’t.

‘Don’t talk to me about the apron booth,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Wednesday, he said. But was it ready? Is it here now? Do you see it?’

He glanced around. ‘I’m not sure I’d know it if I did.’

‘What’s that?’

‘See it…the apron booth.’

‘That’s because it’s not here.’

‘I’m sure it’ll show up before tomorrow.’

‘Lunch,’ she snapped. ‘Lunch today. At the latest. It takes time to dress a booth properly, you know.’

‘Is Mary around?’ he asked.

‘Never when you need her.’

Definitely a pretender to the throne, as Mary had told him.

‘She’s picking up Edward from the station,’ she continued.

‘Edward?’

‘Her son. He gets back at…well, any minute,’ she said, glancing at the watch strangling her fleshy wrist. ‘Is it anything I can help with?’

‘It’s about the parking. I’m on traffic duty.’

‘Well, that is Mary’s department,’ she conceded. ‘What did you do last year?’

‘I think we banned parking along the verge there, and on James Lane—’

‘Sounds good to me. I’d go for that if I were you. I’ll tell her you stopped by.’ She raised her hand abruptly. ‘Gordon!’ she bellowed, brushing past him and picking up headway. ‘Gordon, the latch on the door of the tombola’s broken. See what you can do, will you?’

There was no question of intruding on Mary’s reunion with her son, much as he needed to see her. He had hardly slept, the sense of loss deepening with each passing hour, until the cocktail of exhaustion and alcohol had finally prevailed. The dawn had brought a new clarity with it, but the hole was still there. He’d swung by the village green on his way to work in the hope of filling it a little.

It would just have to wait. He’d have another chance to drop by later.

He was wrong.

He arrived at police headquarters to find that Milligan had scheduled a string of fool’s errands for him. First up was a trip to Montauk. Two surfcasters had come to blows out at the Point that morning. A nose had been bloodied, a rod broken. Hollis was forced to sit with the wounded party in a room at Gurney’s Inn, suffering a lengthy discourse on surfcasting etiquette. There had been a flagrant breach of protocol, it seemed, with the result that a large striped bass had got away. It was bad enough—two grown men fighting over a fish—but when it emerged they were good friends, he lost all remaining interest.

His next assignment of the day was chauffeuring the Chief’s wife out to Southampton for some urgent shopping. Dawn Milligan was a short, shy woman, long since bullied into submission, if not servility, by her husband. Hollis liked her. There had always been an unspoken bond between them—the silent complicity of the abused—and he didn’t begrudge her his time, even as she strolled around the shops, chatting idly to friends.

Returning to East Hampton, Hollis slowed the patrol car almost to a crawl as they passed the village green. He failed to spot Mary in amongst the throng of women, and hopes of returning later that afternoon were shattered when the Chief demanded to see his report on the fishermen’s brawl.

By the time he was finished writing it up, Milligan had already left for the weekend, and the village green was deserted. Hollis strolled around it, reading off the names of the empty booths awaiting tomorrow’s cargoes of hot dogs and ice cream, flowers and cakes, candy, cigarettes and scarves.

He wasn’t altogether surprised to see that the apron booth held center stage.

He smoked a cigarette, judging his options. Then he returned to the patrol car and set off for Springs.

Joe was seated at a table in the creeping shade, fiddling with a bunch of engine parts laid out before him. He looked up briefly as the patrol car entered the boatyard, but there was no recognition in his eyes. Even when Hollis wandered over and removed his cap he wasn’t sure if Joe knew who in the hell he was.

‘A word of advice, bub—never get yourself a Marine Spark outboard.’

‘Having problems?’

‘Near on thirty years now. Shoulda named this thing The Bastard. ’

He grunted in defeat, his arthritic fingers discarding the two bits of metal refusing to mesh. ‘I’ll have you yet,’ he said.

He wiped his hands on a rag and looked up at Hollis. ‘You come by to thank me for last weekend?’

Hollis didn’t reply.

‘Didn’t think so.’ Joe levered himself to his feet. ‘You want a beer?’

‘I’m on duty.’

‘What do you know,’ said Joe. ‘Me too.’

Hollis stood on the veranda looking out over Accabonac Harbor while Joe busied himself inside. The wind came in light gusts, rippling the surface of the water, the reeds and rushes bending in obeisance.

‘Garden of Eden, bub,’ said Joe, joining him at the rail and handing him a beer. ‘Everything a man needs lies right out there. Ain’t nowhere like it. And that’s from folk what’s traveled some, men of good word.’

‘It’s very peaceful.’

‘It’s changing fast. There’s artists and all sorts moving in now.’ He pointed straight across the water. ‘City fellow bought just in back there, hard drinker, calls hisself a painter, but can’t hit the canvas for shit. I put a stove in for him. You should see the floor in that studio. And the walls. Just tosses that paint all over. What lands in the square, he sells. Now that’s a way to earn a life,’ he chortled, ‘not fiddlin’ with the guts of a bastard old outboard.’

He scanned the harbor, a rueful look in his eyes.

‘I guess it don’t matter who’s got it. The Montauketts took it off the Accabonacs with spears—butchered the whole lot of ‘em one evening—we took it off the Montauketts with a pen, the city folk takes it off us with their checkbooks. Men does as men is. It don’t matter, just so long as who’s got it looks after it. How’s Mary?’