“I want to see Mr. Fleming.”
“And I want to see Heather Locklear in a bikini. Not happening anytime soon.”
“You can be overprotective, you know, Ike. I think that’s what you’ve been doing here.”
“That’s the job, asshole. Protection.”
The two guards overheard the asshole part and walked over with their hands resting on their holsters. Ike smiled at me.
“You could probably use a little yourself right now,” he added.
“Call up Ivor and tell him I’m out here. I’ve just got one thing to ask him. If he tells me to beat it, I’ll beat it. And you’ll never see me again.”
“Not breathing,” said Connie.
I pointed at him, but kept my eyes on Ike. “What’d I say about that stuff?”
Ike jerked his head at Connie and told him to back off, which he did. I walked over to the guard desk and sat down in one of their chairs.
“Go ahead, give him a call. I’ll be right here.”
Ike nodded at the guards, one of whom came over and made the call.
“Lois, this is Max at the front desk. I’m with Ike and Connie and we got a guy named Acquillo who’s here to see Mr. Fleming. Doesn’t have an appointment, but Ike thinks Mr. Fleming might want to see him anyway. Don’t bother him if he’s really busy with something.” He paused, listening. “Okay then I guess why not ask him. You can call me back.”
From where I sat I had a good view of the mural on the right-hand wall. I determined it was painted on a very smooth surface, but not directly on the wall, though that was the impression encouraged by the way it was hung. Clever. Well thought out, like everything Butch Ellington did.
The phone rang. Ike picked it up.
“He said to come on back. Let’s go, hero,” he said to me, ushering me into the lead, with him and Connie a close step behind. We went through the double doors and into a wide room filled with cubicles that looked a lot more like Ross’s squad room than Brad Maplewhite’s brokerage house. A few people looked up at us as we walked down the passageways, though not overtly. I suspected in Ivor’s shop the concept of keeping your head down had some tangibility.
Ivor’s office was in the corner of the open office area distinguished by walls paneled in the kind of luan ply that was popular in the fifties and sixties. Back then you could have bought dimensional mahogany for about two cents a board foot, but why do that when luan looks just as good?
A frump of a middle-aged woman, who had to be Lois, got up from her desk and planted herself just outside the office door.
“You’re Mr. Acquillo,” she said to me.
“I am.”
“Just wait here a moment. He wants to see you alone,” she said, with a firm look at Ike and Connie. It didn’t seem to bother them. When she came back out to show me in, I could see why. At the far side of the room was a long leather couch, covered partway with a well-worn sheepskin mat that Cleo had deftly shaped into a comfortable bed. Ivor was at the other end behind a big wooden desk of the same vintage and aesthetic as the paneling. The walls, shelves and side tables were filled with golf memorabilia, some clearly going back decades, like a black-and-white photo of young Jack Nicklaus posing with skinny young Ivor Fleming. The present Ivor slumped down in a heavily padded green leather chair, swiveling slowly back and forth like a kid checking out his dad’s office furniture.
I ignored Cleo, but sat down as swiftly as I could in one of the hot seats directly in front of the desk. Lois silently shut the door.
“You got balls, I’ll give you that,” said Ivor, by way of a greeting.
“More curiosity than courage, if you want to know the truth.”
“I’m curious about something myself,” he said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here.”
“Okay.”
“My boys said they were jumped by a bunch of guys they never seen before. Pulled some kind of kung fu on em. What do you think?”
“Must’ve been something like that. Nobody else would take on a pair of hard cases like Ike and Connie.”
“Yeah. Sure. Nothing to do with you, then. I told them to keep an eye on you. They’re not exactly Serpico when it comes to undercover work. You coulda seen em and called in somebody.”
“Nope. Wouldn’t know how, even if I was stupid enough to show that kind of disrespect to you.”
He liked that. It didn’t show, but I’d known a lot of Ivors over the years. They always liked that kind of thing. He slid up a little taller in his chair and pulled himself over to the desk.
“So what’s with the investment deal,” he asked me. “You still trying to peddle that shit?”
I glanced over at Cleo. She looked like she was asleep on the couch. A good sign.
“Doesn’t look good,” I told him. “Your original assessment was basically accurate. Nothing much to sell, even though most of his clients got a pretty decent return on their investment. More than decent.”
That made him unhappy again. Only this time not at me.
“What a putz. I don’t know why I listen to these guys.”
“So he made all the calls. I mean, you followed his advice.”
“What the fuck else you pay him for?”
“Some people like to lead the charge with their brokers. Like to get in the game. Like you said, a trip to the casino without the chips and slots.”
“You want to know about steel? You come to me. There’s nothin’ I don’t know about how to make it, salvage it, extract
it and sell it. Then get it back, chew it up and sell it all over again. This is what I know about. Investments? I don’t know shit about that stuff.”
I couldn’t admit it right then, but I sympathized with him. I didn’t know shit about that stuff either.
“So Jonathan told you to get into art.”
Ivor grinned a little at that.
“That was the only call that worked out. Those things over there on the wall? Worth five times what I paid for them.”
They might have been Chagalls, or painted by somebody trying to look like Chagall. No factories or heroic workers. Rather some spindly impressionistic flowers, butterflies and starscapes. Fit right into the scrap-metal ambience of General Resource Recovery.
“Same deal?” I asked Ivor. “Jonathan told you which artists to buy?”
“Yeah. Got a bunch of stuff. All’ve gone up, last I looked.”
“Including the big Ellingtons.”
“Shit, yeah. Maybe ten times. Got em on the cheap. His own fault, douche bag.”
“Jonathan?”
“Nah, the artist. Ellington. Professional wingnut. I’d only paid him about two-thirds of what he asked for before he got em hung in the reception area. I just asked him to paint some more clothes on the girls. Too much tit. Can embarrass people. He wouldn’t do it, so I didn’t pay him the balance. Said he’d sue me. Showed up here with this little bottle-eyed shit of a lawyer. Wouldn’t let em in the building. Told him if he wanted the pictures back, I’d take em down myself. Got a factory over there full of guys who know how to use a crowbar.”
That really made him happy. The happiest I’d ever seen him.
“You sure got him where you wanted him,” I said.
“Yeah. I sure did. Douche bag.”
I looked over at Cleo again, hoping Dobermans couldn’t read minds. She looked back at me, now awake, with a blank, noncommittal stare.
“Okay,” I said to Ivor. “I’m sorry again for bothering you. I really mean it this time.”
I jerked my head over at Cleo.
“Can I stand up?”
“Sure. Just keep your hands out where she can see them.”
I stood up and offered to shake, carefully. He took my hand.
“So that’s it?” he asked. “I thought you had a question for me.”
He was right. I’d lost my train of thought. Often happens when the talk turns to modern art.
“I do. I just wanted to know how you discovered Jonathan Eldridge. Who introduced you in the first place?”
“She didn’t tell you? Joyce Whithers. Sold Eldridge pretty hard. I figured that’s how you got on to me. Used to play cards with her. Still do, couple times a year.”
“I thought her husband was the card player.”
“Nah, the old lady had the brains and balls in that family. It was her game. She just brought him in so there’d be somebody around to get her a Scotch on the rocks and light her cigarettes. Smart broad. Getting me mixed up with that putz was the only thing she ever screwed me up on.”
“Thanks. That’s really all I wanted to know.”
“Next time you got a question like that, you can try picking up the telephone. Number’s in the book.”
“Sorry You’re right. I will. I appreciate it,” I said, making motions to leave. Then I thought of something.
“I’d really appreciate it if you cleared me with Ike and Connie. I don’t want any trouble.”
He waved that off.
“Nobody’s lookin’ for trouble,” he said, although with less sincerity than I’d hoped for.
Cleo stayed put on the couch, but as I passed by she pulled back her ears and wagged her tail. When Ivor opened the door Ike and Connie could see me scratching the top of her head and cooing softly in her ear.
“Tu eres una niña hermosa. Estoy pensando que tu debes morder a esos hombres allí en el vestíbulo.”
“Cute pup,” I said to them as I fell into the parade back to the reception area.
—
I had an escort all the way from Ivor’s scrap-metal plant to the reaches of Suffolk County. A full-sized black pickup with a clattery diesel engine. They managed to keep several car lengths between us regardless of traffic or speed limits, so every time I thought they’d abandoned the tail they showed up again. I didn’t know if this was meant to convey a message, or just a signal, or even who was doing the signaling. Ivor seemed willing to let it go, but he might have been playing me the whole time. Or, Ike and Connie might have been taking a little independent initiative. Hard to tell. But it did interfere with my concentration, which was annoying, since right then I needed every bit of concentration I could muster.
I’d bypassed the traffic lights along the first leg of Sunrise Highway by going north and picking up the Southern State. From there I dropped down to Route 27 where they’d made it into a four-lane road. It was filled with cars and trucks, and local people trying to get back home to catch a little daylight savings relaxation in the outdoor furniture out on
the pressure-treated deck. With a different car I might have been able to get some distance on the pickup by weaving my way through the heavy traffic, but the Grand Prix wasn’t exactly engineered for nimble lane changes.
It was, however, born, raised and modified to accelerate very quickly in a straight line, hurtling its impossible mass up to a cruising speed you wouldn’t want to experience in any kind of pickup truck.
I’d just passed the exit for Shirley, Butch’s beloved hometown, when I noticed Ike and Connie were boxed in behind a brace of compact Japanese sedans driving side by side in tight formation. In front of me Route 27 was clear of significant traffic, a set of parallel concrete ribbons dissecting the pine barrens and disappearing into the ocean haze hanging above the South Fork.
I rolled up the windows and pushed in the clutch. I slid the Hurst shifter into third gear, brought up the RPMs, then popped out the clutch while simultaneously sticking the accelerator to the floor mat. With all four barrels opened wide, the 428-cubic-inch V8 bellowed under the hood. Just shy of the red line, I put it back into fourth, but kept the throttle open and gripped the steering wheel with both hands as the speed climbed up over a hundred miles an hour.
I started to run through a mental checklist of all the equipment failures likely triggered by the sudden torque loads and excess velocity, but quickly gave it up. Too many to count, and it wasn’t going to stop me anyway.
I looked in the rearview as the speedometer pegged at 120 and the tack was flirting again with the red line. No sign of black pickups or law enforcement. I’d felt some vibrations in the suspension system as the big car accelerated up to its top end, but now everything was settled down, a tribute to Butch’s skill with the wheel balancer.
I could sense the scream of the big block engine, but I couldn’t hear it above the wind noise. Reality distorts a lot when you move past a hundred miles an hour. It goes by so quickly it loses definition, and takes on a jittery, smeared quality. I could feel alarm rising up in my rational brain, which was involuntarily processing the possible consequences of losing control, which at this speed could happen from nicking even the tiniest road hazard. My solution was to ignore my rational brain and keep the accelerator on the floor.
A green exit sign for Center Moriches flashed by. I eased back on the throttle until the speedometer needle came off the peg and started to move counterclockwise. A white step van appeared in the right lane. I gave him as wide a berth as I could in case he hadn’t seen me and accidentally drifted into my lane. It must have been frightening to have a gray-brown
’67
Grand Prix roar by your door at 120 miles an hour. It was frightening for me to see how quickly he dropped back in my rearview. I eased up more on the accelerator, watching the speedometer mark the drop in tens—100, to 90, to 80. The Center Moriches exit ramp was suddenly there, so I had to downshift while applying steady pressure to the brakes, the most easily taxed system onboard the Grand Prix, given its extravagance of heavy-gauge sheet metal, the kind Ivor could sell to Honda to remake into a fleet of Civics.
I was almost within legal limits when I took the bend of the exit ramp. The smell of partially oxidized fuel wafted up behind me as I slowed to a halt, but I expected that from the inefficiency of rapid deceleration. At the stop sign I checked all the gauges, including oil and water temp, which looked normal. I shifted into first, pushed the buttons to lower the windows and lit a cigarette.
“Beverly Hillbillies indeed,” I said aloud, feeling warmly about my preposterous car, the most puzzling legacy from
my father, and the only one not encumbered by complex and hopelessly entangled associations.
—
I reached the tip of Oak Point as the last of the sunset had collapsed into a thin pink strip along the horizon. When I stopped at the mailbox Eddie came zinging over from Amanda’s house, barking and spinning around in circles. He seemed honestly glad to see me, or maybe was just hedging his bets.