The Whaleboat House

Rollo paid out the rest of the net until the offshore wing narrowed to a manila line coiled at his feet. This was Conrad’s signal to turn again and begin their run to shore.

Speed and timing were everything when approaching the surf line. If Conrad lost momentum the dory would slip back into the trough, floundering at the mercy of the chasing waves. If he came in too fast the dory would hurtle down the face of a breaking sea, plant her bow in the sand and pitchpole forward, jackknifing over in one brief, heart-stopping moment, crushing her occupants.

Rollo was aft, his face a mask of concentration, applying just enough resistance to the net line whipping through his hands to keep the dory’s stern headed seaward. If Conrad misjudged, coming in too fast, Rollo could yank on the line, stalling the boat’s headway, buying them another shot at a clean approach. The line would skin his palms in an instant, but it was a small price to pay to avoid pitchpoling.

As it was, Conrad committed them to the surf on the back of a large, lazy sea that lowered them kindly into the maelstrom of white water. He boated the oars and seized the thwart to brace himself. As soon as he felt the jolt of the dory stranding he was over the port side, Rollo over the starboard. They seized the gunwales and hauled the boat up the beach, assisted by the next breaking wave.

Exhausted, clinging to the dory for support, they laughed. It always felt good when they judged the seas correctly, going off and coming back without mishap.

They left the net to fish for a while, buying themselves time to recover from their exertions and share a smoke. Conrad had relished the last couple of days, the timeless, almost biblical simplicity of the fishing – two friends, the beat of the sea, a net cast from a boat then hauled up on to the sand – no machinery, nothing to fall back on besides their experience and brute physicality.

After ten minutes or so they drew the offshore wing up on to the beach, closing the net. The semicircle of cork floats danced merrily on the building chop, the flag buoy at the apex not even a hundred feet beyond the breakers. They had yet to see any signs of fish. In all likelihood, the building heat combined with the shift in the longshore set had driven them into the deeper water beyond the bar.

‘You okay?’ asked Conrad.

Out of superstition, they never spoke when they sensed they were about to make a dry haul. But there was something else in Rollo’s silence, the manner in which he mistrustfully regarded the ocean. He made to speak. It wasn’t that he checked himself so much as gave up, unable to find the words.

‘Meet you halfway,’ said Conrad. He headed off down the beach to the Model A and unlashed the onshore line from the back of the truck. They started to haul on their respective ends of the net, hand over hand, in unison.

Conrad felt the weight almost immediately, a particular kind of weight – dead weight – not the twitching load of fish breaking for deep water and coming up against the twine. A dead porpoise, perhaps. Another thought flashed through his mind. He shut it out, cursing himself for even considering it, for lending it any kind of credence or life.

He glanced along the beach and knew immediately that Rollo had also sensed something amiss. His rhythm had slowed and he was staring intently at the shrinking half-circle of water, their small bite of ocean enclosed by the net. Still no visible signs of fish. Just the inert load being drawn towards the crashing surf. Short of abandoning the haul, there was nothing either of them could do to alter the outcome.

They had been drawing ever closer together, measured steps to keep the bag centered, coils of sodden net snaking behind them on the sand. Only ten or so yards of beach divided them when a big sea caught hold of the bag, raising it from the bed. They hauled speedily, taking up the slack.

Conrad glimpsed a streak of white – the belly of a large fish? – buried behind the glassy face of the capping wave. It was lost to view as the wave broke, collapsing in a thunderous tumble of water.

The wash receded to reveal a body snarled in the bag – a woman, long blonde hair braided with seaweed, sand crabs scurrying, sea robins flapping, drowning in air. Then she was engulfed by the next breaking wave. Instinctively, Conrad and Rollo used the momentum to drag the bag up the beach, beyond the wash.

Conrad stared, deaf to Rollo’s religious mutterings and the crash of the surf.

The woman was lithe and long-limbed, wearing a navy blue swimsuit. She was lying face down, her right foot cocked behind her left ankle, her right arm tight against her body, the left extended above her head, the fingers of her hand slightly splayed as if reaching for something.

She moved. Conrad hurried forward. She was definitely moving. Seizing her cold, pale shoulder, he turned her over. An enormous monkfish bucked and flailed beneath her. The bloated lips of its grotesquely broad mouth seemed to be reaching for the woman’s, lunging for an embrace. As for the woman, her lips were blue, starved of oxygen, of life.

Conrad delved into the bag, seized the mollykite by the tail, and in one violent movement swung the creature high out over the breakers. He remained staring out to sea.

‘Conrad,’ said Rollo helplessly, looking for guidance.

Conrad finally turned. ‘Help me take her out.’

They peeled the net off the woman as best they could, swept the sand crabs from her face and body, and drew her out by the feet. She was completely rigid, unbending, as if frozen or hewn from a block of white marble.

Her hair snagged in the mesh. Rollo proffered his jackknife, but Conrad ignored him, finally freeing the woman from the clutches of the seine.

Rollo seemed reluctant to touch the woman again, so Conrad took her in his arms and carried her up the beach.

Two

Tom Hollis lit another cigarette and turned to the sports pages. The Amagansett Bonackers had defeated the Hampton Bays by a score of 9–7 in Sunday’s game. Some fellow called Lambert had gone four for five, knocking in two runs, and his batting was described as ‘spectacular’.

‘About what?’ asked a gruff voice.

Hollis looked up to see the considerable bulk of Chief Milligan filling the door of his office.

‘About what?’ said Milligan, repeating himself.

Hollis frowned, still unsure.

‘You said, “Who gives a damn?”’ explained Milligan.

‘I did?’

Christ, not only was he talking to himself now, he didn’t even know it.

‘Oh, you know, the baseball.’ He flapped the East Hampton Star vaguely in Milligan’s direction.

‘My boy scored the winning run in the twelfth.’

He should have remembered. He did remember. Young Tim played for the Bonackers. Southpaw. Swing like a caveman killing his lunch. It was coming back now. All too late.

‘Think you could give a damn about this?’ said Milligan, advancing. He slid a sheet of paper across the desk. Hollis scanned it.

His first thought was ‘There goes my lunch.’

* * *

Hollis turned left on to Newtown Lane from the East Hampton Town Police Department. From here it was pretty much a straight run east of two miles into Amagansett, but as he cleared the town limits he swung the patrol car south on to Skimhampton Road, opting for the back roads.

He reached for the bottle of Gordon’s in the glove compartment, steering with his knees while he unscrewed the cap. A bracing shot, he persuaded himself, because of what lay ahead. He didn’t allow himself to recall the numerous other corpses he had confronted in his career without the aid of liquor.

The beach landing at the end of Atlantic Avenue was deserted except for a black sedan with New York City plates. Hollis pulled on his cap, squinting against the sun and the dust whipped up by the dry, stiff breeze. Even the beach appeared empty. Strolling down on to the sand he saw a gathering of vehicles and men about half a mile to the east through the thin haze of mist thrown up by the breakers. Half a mile. He’d only walked thirty yards and already his shirt was clinging to his chest. He removed his jacket and set off along the shore.

The body lay beneath a faded green canvas tarpaulin in the shade of a large truck, some kind of military transport converted for beach use. A dozen or so fishermen stood about talking in huddles. A few curious vacationers hovered on the fringes, morbid onlookers.

‘Deputy Chief Hollis,’ he announced, approaching the group of fishermen nearest the body. Amagansett fell within the jurisdiction of East Hampton town, but he rarely ventured over here and didn’t recognize any of the characters gathered around regarding him coldly. He didn’t blame them. He couldn’t abide small-town cops himself.

He removed his cap and wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. ‘Who found her?’

One of the men nodded over his shoulder. Thirty yards down the beach, a fisherman, tall and big-boned, was loading a net into a surfboat hitched to the back of an old Model A flatbed. Another fellow – slighter, wirier, with lank, bleached hair – was helping him.

Hollis glanced back at the tarpaulin. ‘Don’t worry,’ said one of the younger men, thin lips buried in a scraggy beard worn to conceal a weak chin. ‘She’s fresh. A day, not even.’

His reluctance to take a look was that transparent? Crouching, Hollis folded back the tarp.

Death had not completely obscured her beauty. Blonde tresses matted with weed framed an oval face that descended to the delicate point of her chin. Her lips, though blue, were arched and full. Faint smile lines flanked her mouth. Her nose was sharp, her eyes wide-set and closed.

He resisted the temptation to force open the lids. Green, he guessed. He’d find out soon enough. There was a small scar etched into her left eyebrow, and pierce-marks in her ears. A beautiful young woman, her life cut short after no more than, what, twentyfive years? Thirty, maximum.

He examined both sides of her neck, instinctively, a vestige of his time in homicide. There was no bruising, but he did find something else, in the sand beside her head.

‘Anyone recognize her?’

The fishermen shrugged, not bothering to reply. Hollis folded back the tarp and got to his feet. ‘Who took her earrings?’

They stared at him, their faces set in stone. He held up the gold back-stud he had found in the sand.

‘I said, who took her earrings?’

He intended his words to have an edge of easy menace, but he knew they sounded petulant.

‘What you take us for?’ From the one with the beard again.

Hollis let it go.

The two men who had netted the body exchanged a few words as he approached them. ‘Deputy Chief Hollis,’ he announced. The tall fisherman nodded an acknowledgment. His dark hair was cropped short, his mouth was wide, intelligent. Steel gray eyes looked down on Hollis from beneath a broad, heavy brow.

‘You were the ones found her?’

‘Uh-huh.’

There was something unnerving about the steady, unyielding gaze. The stillness of the fellow was in stark contrast to his companion, who shuffled his feet nervously as he glanced around him.

Hollis removed a small memo pad from the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘Your name?’ he asked the taller one.

‘Conrad Labarde.’

Hollis looked up. ‘What is that, French?’

‘Basque.’

Basque. It rang a bell, some distant memory of a geography lesson.

‘And you?’ asked Hollis. The nervous fellow froze, then looked to his tall friend as if for assistance.

‘Rollo Kemp,’ replied the Basque. Even Hollis had heard of the Kemps, an old dynasty of farmer-fishermen, one of those families that went back all the way.

‘Cat got his tongue?’

‘You make him a little jumpy is all.’

There was no hint of aggression in his tone, no allocation of blame despite the phrasing. Hollis looked the Kemp boy over – something not quite right about him, he could see it now. Not ‘overburdened’, as his mother would have said. The product of inbreeding, perhaps.

‘You want to tell me what happened?’

Hollis took notes while the Basque, in an even monotone, described the events leading up to the discovery of the body. When he was finished, Hollis closed the pad and placed it in his hip pocket.

‘Any idea who she is?’

‘No.’

‘And what did you do with her earrings?’ It was an old cop trick – a question charged with assumptions, asked ever so casually.

The Basque held Hollis’ gaze, no trace of a flicker. Hollis showed him the earring back-stud.

‘Wait here,’ said the Basque, making for the group of fishermen. Hollis followed, damned if he was going to be ordered around.

The Basque stopped and turned.

‘It’s best,’ he said.

Hollis was too far away to hear the specifics of the exchange. At a certain moment, the Basque must have mentioned Hollis, because everyone glanced over at him. Not long after, the young fisherman with the beard became agitated, raising his voice. With a dismissive sweep of his arm, he turned on his heel.

He had taken all of two steps when the Basque placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. The younger man spun back, swinging a roundhouse as he did so. More shocking, though, was the speed of the big man’s reaction. He stepped inside the arc of the punch so that it fell harmlessly against his shoulder and in the same movement he pushed his assailant in the face with the open palm of his hand, so that he fell back on to the sand.

The Basque clamped a foot on the other’s chest and held out a hand. The younger man rummaged in his pocket and handed something over. Only then did the Basque remove his foot and step away.

He wandered back over and placed a pair of pearl stud earrings in Hollis’ hand. ‘What happens now?’ he asked.

‘The Medical Examiner’s on his way from Hauppauge. They’ll take her away.’

‘They’ll bog down on the beach. We should move her to the landing.’

Hollis nodded.

An hour later the Suffolk County Chief Medical Examiner and his two assistants arrived at the beach landing in an unmarked van. Dr Cornelius Hobbs was a stout, brisk man with gold-rimmed spectacles and a hairpiece that made little attempt to disguise itself as such. Jet black, its curling fringes flapped wildly in the breeze like a young bird struggling to take wing.

‘Deputy Hollis?’ he asked, not waiting for a reply. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got, shall we?’

His voice was pinched, nasal. Sinuses, thought Hollis, a welcome affliction for someone in his line of work.

The woman’s body had been placed on the bed of the Basque’s Model A. Without any consideration for the handful of onlookers, Hobbs seized the end of the tarpaulin and yanked it off.

‘Mmmmmmm,’ he mused, lowering his voice as he turned to Hollis. ‘A fine figure of a woman. I believe a little mouth-to-mouth is called for. You never know, Hollis, you just never know.’ Like many of the medical examiners Hollis had known in the past, Dr Cornelius Hobbs clearly enjoyed proclaiming his own ease when confronted with a corpse. He was still chuckling to himself as he used the trailer hitch to clamber up on to the back of the truck.

The Basque appeared at the side of the vehicle. ‘A little more respect, I think.’

There was nothing censorious in his tone. Had there been, maybe Hobbs would have reacted differently; as it was, he simply frowned. ‘Don’t I know you?’

‘Not sure I’ve ever had the pleasure.’

The reply brought a thin smile to Hollis’ lips.

The woman’s body was loaded into the van on a gurney by the two assistants. Hobbs closed the doors and turned to Hollis.

‘They never learn.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Hollis.

‘The sea’s no friend of ours. Third drowning this week.’

Here we go, thought Hollis.

‘Had a lad down Mecox way, city people, father a banker. The boy gets accepted by West Point, has his friends up for the weekend to celebrate, big party on the beach. Swam for his college. Wasn’t drunk, his blood tested clean. Sharks had themselves a nibble before he washed up.’ He nodded towards the van. ‘No, don’t get much cleaner than that.’

‘How long do you reckon?’

‘From the rigor … less than twenty-four hours. You’ll have the autopsy report tomorrow, afternoon at the latest.’

‘I need a photo. For identification.’

‘Of course you do.’

‘Today would be good.’

‘Today, today, all I ever hear.’ Nevertheless, he clicked his fingers at one of his assistants. ‘Snap her.’

Clutching two four-by-five film holders, Hollis watched as the van pulled away. Almost immediately the spectators started to dissipate. The Basque was rolling a cigarette by the Model A; the Kemp boy appeared to have left already. Hollis strolled over.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘For the earrings.’

‘I figured it was important.’

‘Yeah?’

‘How many women you know go swimming in their jewelry?’

Damn right, thought Hollis.

‘What do you mean?’ he said.

The Basque eyed him flatly, then slipped the rolled cigarette between his lips and lit it with a steel Zippo.

‘Army issue?’ asked Hollis, nodding at the lighter.

‘See you around, Deputy.’

The Basque climbed behind the wheel of the Model A, fired the engine and pulled away. Hollis stood watching the vehicle, the trailer dancing over the ruts, until it turned east on to Bluff Road and was lost to view.

Three

Unable to justify a full-time photographer, the East Hampton Town Police Department subcontracted the work to a local man, Abel Cole. The sign in the window of his narrow shop next to Edwards Theater on Main Street read: Portraits, Christenings, Weddings. ‘And Bar Mitzvahs’ had been added beneath in a different shade of ink.

Many wealthy Jews from New York had built houses in the more exclusive beachside areas of town in the years preceding the war. They experienced little or no prejudice from the locals, who looked on all ‘people from away’ as aliens, but if they expected their peers to leave their bigotry behind them in the city they were sorely mistaken.

The Maidstone Club, the sine qua non of social acceptability for the wealthy summer colonists, showed no signs of removing its ban on Jewish members. As a Jew, you could own a lavish mansion overlooking the manicured fairways of the Maidstone’s links course, but if you wished to actually play golf you had to travel west to Wainscott.

Hollis had witnessed at first hand anti-Jewish sentiments, or at any rate their aftermath – a Star of David daubed in white paint on the front door of a Colonial-style residence belonging to a family called the Rosens.

It had been a sorry introduction to East Hampton for Hollis, occurring just two weeks after he’d taken up his position as Deputy Chief. A stark and malicious act, it was also quite unnecessary, since a large brass Star of David was already attached to the lintel above the door, nailed there by the Rosens when they had moved into their new home.

A search of the front garden had uncovered a size-10 patent leather dress-shoe speckled with white paint in a clump of hydrangeas – a discovery that Hollis had kept to himself, along with the name of the shoe’s owner, clearly embossed on the inside.

The gentleman was a member of the Maidstone Club, the son of the club Treasurer no less. Hollis didn’t need to summon the full force of his detective’s training to piece together the events of the evening in question: a drunken dinner following the Maidstone’s annual tennis tournament; the member’s dress-shoe; further sets of footprints in the flowerbeds; a property defaced with white paint that washed off easily – as easily, in fact, as the thin whitewash used to mark the lines on a lawn tennis court. Hardly the stuff of departmental legend.

Hollis had stalked the shoe’s owner for a few days until the opportunity presented itself for a word in private. When confronted with the evidence, the culprit pleaded high jinks. When Hollis informed him that a court of law would only accept a plea of ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’, he broke down in tears, right there in the changing rooms of a gentlemen’s outfitters on Newtown Lane.

Two hours later, Jacob Rosen answered his door to a blond, redeyed young man in a brand-new blazer who handed him an envelope. Inside was a banker’s draft to the order of five hundred dollars made payable to the Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor. The young man then asked for, and received, Jacob Rosen’s forgiveness. He politely declined the invitation to take tea and cake with the family.

To Hollis’ mind the debt was only part-paid. Almost a year on, he still kept the shoe in a box beneath his bed along with a photo of the incriminating article, taken in situ by Abel Cole in his official capacity as the Police Department’s photographer.

It was the first time the two men had met, but the signs of a fast friendship were there from the start. Hollis’ plan for an unofficial settlement of the matter had required Abel’s discretion and collusion. Indeed, it was Abel who suggested the outrageous sum of five hundred dollars by way of a penalty. He knew the family by reputation, knew the boy was good for the money but that it would pinch him hard enough to hurt. That very same week Abel Cole had added ‘And Bar Mitzvahs’ to the sign in his window.

Hollis entered the shop to find Abel photographing a sternfaced, middle-aged woman seated in a chair set against a mottled backdrop. A Persian cat lay curled on her lap, looking quite as unhappy and mistrustful as its owner. As ever, the sickly smell of darkroom chemicals hung heavy in the air.

Abel was stooped behind a tripod, peering through the viewfinder of his camera – a Graflex Speed Graphic. Hollis had seen hundreds, if not thousands, of the machines over the years – in front of precincts and courthouses, at crime scenes, bulbs popping on their side-mounted flashing units – but Abel’s was different, trimmed in olive drab, witness to his time as a wartime photographer in Europe.

‘She’s got beautiful eyes,’ said Abel.

There was no reaction from the woman.

‘And a fine, pert little nose.’

‘Yes, she has, hasn’t she?’ conceded the woman matter-of-factly.

Abel looked up. ‘I was talking to the cat.’

Despite herself, the woman broke into a smile. Abel tripped the front shutter.

‘Gotcha,’ he said.

‘Edith Harper,’ explained Abel as soon as the door had swung shut behind the woman. ‘Lost her only boy in the Pacific, but she was a sour-faced old trout long before.’

He took a pack of cigarettes from beneath the counter and offered one to Hollis. Six months back, Hollis would have glanced outside through the window to check no one was watching before accepting. He was way beyond that now.

Abel lit the cigarettes and pushed his long fringe out of his eyes. ‘Any luck?’ he asked.

‘No.’ After dropping off the film holders with Abel for developing, Hollis had returned to police headquarters to run a missing persons check through the neighboring force at Southampton, but had turned up nothing. ‘I was hoping you might know her.’

‘Seen her around,’ said Abel, reaching for a buff envelope on the counter. ‘Who could forget, face like that? But I don’t know her name. City girl. Drives a swanky roadster. Ten bucks says someone’ll know over at the coven.’

‘The coven?’

‘You know … the Ladies’ Vaginal Insertion Society.’

The Ladies’ Village Improvement Society was an organization of local women devoted to preserving and beautifying ‘the village’, as they insisted on calling it. They had first come together to campaign and raise funds for the regular watering down of Main Street when it was little more than a dusty track at the mercy of the brisk summer winds. But they soon expanded their activities to include a program for the sweeping of the sidewalks and crosswalks, the installation of oil lamps, and the pruning of the huge elms that flanked the thoroughfare.