Short Squeeze (33 page)

“All the guy wanted to do was brush his teeth in his own bathroom,” I said to her, but she was too far away to hear.

I’m not sure why I wanted to do this, but there I was, floating in the Little Peconic Bay with Harry and Sam. Perhaps because I was the only one in the group who could actually float on her own. They weren’t only lousy swimmers; life jackets were all that kept them from sinking like lead statues.

Thus I had a physical advantage for the first time, a certain leveling of the playing field, psychologically at least.

Sam’s girlfriend, Amanda, had opted to stay ashore with Eddie and take advantage of the last warm day of the year to preserve her tan, a glorious deep reddish bronze, offset perfectly by a scant white bikini, all of which Harry claimed not to have noticed.

Sam had let me unfold the story of Sergey Pontecello’s final hours in my own way, in fragments, slipped into the general conversation. But out there in the bay, bobbing on the little bay waves, he asked a direct question.

“How much did Sergey know about the blackmail?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Betty kept him encased in a bubble. You want to think she was protecting him, but it was probably just the way she was. By all accounts, they got along fine, but Betty ran everything and kept all her secrets to herself.”

“Like Edna Jackery’s occasional visits, one piece at a time.”

“Finding that nipple pushed Sergey over the edge,” I said. “So to speak.”

“Where did he find it?” Harry asked.

“When I saw him earlier that day, he told me he’d been going through Betty’s unopened mail. It must have been in there with the electric bill and come-ons from credit card companies. The conflict with Eunice was terrible, but the nipple in the envelope was enough to drive him crazy, literally,” I said. “He thought it was her doing. Like I said, crazy.”

“Though sane enough to operate Zander’s invention,” said Sam.

“Ray was wooing him as an investor and had shown him how to use it. Sergey was desperate to confront Eunice, so he rode it to the second floor. What he thought when Zander took off with the thing still hooked to the truck, I can’t imagine.”

“Finally took a little initiative and look where it got him,” said Harry.

I held my breath and sank all the way into the water, committing myself to an hour or two of wet hair. But it was worth it to feel the salubrious properties of the salty bay.

When I surfaced, I sought a cleansing of another kind.

“After Sergey found the nipple in the envelope, he called me,” I told them, “but he couldn’t get through because I turned off the cell phone. If I hadn’t done that, he’d probably still be alive. For some reason, I’ve known this from the beginning—that I was somehow culpable, an accessory to the crime. And it turns out I was right.”

Neither one of them was particularly happy with me for sharing this insight. Harry looked at a loss for words. Sam came to his rescue.

“Crap, Jackie,” he said. “Ray Zander killed Sergey when he decided to kill a bottle of booze. Fuzzy killed him by terrorizing Betty. Eunice helped torment him to death, in a way even colder and more calculating than Fuzzy. And Betty killed him when she killed Edna, kicking off
the whole thing. They all made decisions, and took actions, with malice aforethought or callous disregard—something you couldn’t have done because you didn’t know anything. If you’re that desperate to feel guilty, save it for when you actually do something you deserve to feel guilty about. You’ll get the full effect. Trust me on that one.”

With that he started to thrash his way back to shore. Harry cocked his head in that direction, and I nodded. He kissed me, a glancing peck made so by his encumbering life jacket, then followed Sam. I let them get a decent head start, then happily swam after them, not exactly absolved, but close enough.