thinned-out trail of cloud cover. I don’t think any of this was scientifically valid, but I knew he was right about the way the light looked because I saw how it composed shadows and drenched the leaves and potato fields with an oversaturated blue-green and cast dollops of chiaroscuro under the spreading boughs of red oak and silvery elm. As you moved from forest to fields, the landscape was recast and the light embraced the whole, claiming the separateness of this narrow, peninsular world.
I decided we’d go to Riverhead by way of Shelter Island, the chunk of wooded landmass caught between the jaws of the North and South Forks. It was less direct as the crow flies, but you got to catch little ferries on and off the island. There was usually a nice breeze and some sea spray over each of the narrow channels and I thought Jackie could use the extra oxygen.
“How’s work?” I asked her after we’d been underway a while.
“S’okay I handed off most of my cases. No client complaints.”
“Except for me.”
“No, you’re a keeper. Especially since you never ask me to do anything.”
The South Ferry was doing a brisk business. The guys directing the boarding cars sandwiched the Grand Prix between a Land Rover and a tradesman’s step van. Jackie and I squeezed out into the air so we could stand by the gunwale and watch the cormorants dive-bomb into the chop. Jackie’s hair unfurled against the wind. I held her around the waist so I could give her an occasional squeeze.
“You never ask me to do anything and you never tell me anything,” she said.
“It’s the law. Discovery is part of the process.”
She was quiet the rest of the way to Riverhead, so I just smoked and listened to afternoon jazz on WLIU and thought about how to gang cut the rest of the rafters for my addition. Jackie’s mood still threatened to breed gloom within the capacious cabin of the Grand Prix, but the light that continued to flow down through the abundant Shelter Island foliage was undaunted and unrestrained.
SIX
J ONATHAN E LDRIDGE’S OFFICE was on the second floor of a two-story building cobbed on to the end of a row of storefronts on Main Street in Riverhead. Downtown extended a few blocks in either direction, and was decorated by the retail iconography of mid-twentieth-century America. In other words, it was thoroughly beat up and godforsaken. We parked in the back and walked up a rear outdoor stairway to the separate entrance.
“It’s open,” a woman yelled from inside after we pushed the buzzer.
Eldridge hadn’t overextended himself on office appointments. It was basically a single room carved up by waist-high cubicle dividers into a loose arrangement of workstations, each with at least one computer terminal and keyboard. Sitting at a command post at the center of the room was a young woman identified by an enormous nameplate mounted to the front of her desk. It said she was AlenaZapata, Jonathan Eldridge’s assistant, though the visual evidence was less persuasive.
Her hair was a rooster shock of brilliant magenta, or maybe a light purple, depending on the way the light hit it. The color confusion was exacerbated by her brilliant red lipstick and the pale, bluefish tint of her complexion. She had a huge mole on her gaunt right cheek, what I thought was a Marilyn Monroe beauty mark, but discovered later was a tiny tattoo of Eve Ensler.
Jackie had already staggered back a few steps as the overall effect hit her, so when the purple-haired woman said, “Holy cow, what happened to you?” I couldn’t see her reaction.
“Are you Alena?” I asked.
“At’s what the sign says.”
She crammed a rounded O into the word “sign.”
“I’m Sam, this is Jackie. Did the Southampton police tell you we were coming?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. I got an open door policy. Sit down where you want.”
I dug a pair of chairs out of the other workstations and sat us in front of her desk.
“So, what can I do you for?
I decided we’d go to Riverhead by way of Shelter Island, the chunk of wooded landmass caught between the jaws of the North and South Forks. It was less direct as the crow flies, but you got to catch little ferries on and off the island. There was usually a nice breeze and some sea spray over each of the narrow channels and I thought Jackie could use the extra oxygen.
“How’s work?” I asked her after we’d been underway a while.
“S’okay I handed off most of my cases. No client complaints.”
“Except for me.”
“No, you’re a keeper. Especially since you never ask me to do anything.”
The South Ferry was doing a brisk business. The guys directing the boarding cars sandwiched the Grand Prix between a Land Rover and a tradesman’s step van. Jackie and I squeezed out into the air so we could stand by the gunwale and watch the cormorants dive-bomb into the chop. Jackie’s hair unfurled against the wind. I held her around the waist so I could give her an occasional squeeze.
“You never ask me to do anything and you never tell me anything,” she said.
“It’s the law. Discovery is part of the process.”
She was quiet the rest of the way to Riverhead, so I just smoked and listened to afternoon jazz on WLIU and thought about how to gang cut the rest of the rafters for my addition. Jackie’s mood still threatened to breed gloom within the capacious cabin of the Grand Prix, but the light that continued to flow down through the abundant Shelter Island foliage was undaunted and unrestrained.
SIX
J ONATHAN E LDRIDGE’S OFFICE was on the second floor of a two-story building cobbed on to the end of a row of storefronts on Main Street in Riverhead. Downtown extended a few blocks in either direction, and was decorated by the retail iconography of mid-twentieth-century America. In other words, it was thoroughly beat up and godforsaken. We parked in the back and walked up a rear outdoor stairway to the separate entrance.
“It’s open,” a woman yelled from inside after we pushed the buzzer.
Eldridge hadn’t overextended himself on office appointments. It was basically a single room carved up by waist-high cubicle dividers into a loose arrangement of workstations, each with at least one computer terminal and keyboard. Sitting at a command post at the center of the room was a young woman identified by an enormous nameplate mounted to the front of her desk. It said she was AlenaZapata, Jonathan Eldridge’s assistant, though the visual evidence was less persuasive.
Her hair was a rooster shock of brilliant magenta, or maybe a light purple, depending on the way the light hit it. The color confusion was exacerbated by her brilliant red lipstick and the pale, bluefish tint of her complexion. She had a huge mole on her gaunt right cheek, what I thought was a Marilyn Monroe beauty mark, but discovered later was a tiny tattoo of Eve Ensler.
Jackie had already staggered back a few steps as the overall effect hit her, so when the purple-haired woman said, “Holy cow, what happened to you?” I couldn’t see her reaction.
“Are you Alena?” I asked.
“At’s what the sign says.”
She crammed a rounded O into the word “sign.”
“I’m Sam, this is Jackie. Did the Southampton police tell you we were coming?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. I got an open door policy. Sit down where you want.”
I dug a pair of chairs out of the other workstations and sat us in front of her desk.
“So, what can I do you for?
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