Plum Island (2 page)

I looked to my right where the porch turned around the west side of the house. A man appeared around the corner, then stopped
about fifteen feet from me, searching the long shadows cast by the setting sun. In fact, the man cast a long shadow himself
which passed over me, so he didn’t seem to see me. But with the sun at his back, it was also difficult for me to see his face
or to guess his intentions. I said, “Help you?”

He turned his head toward me. “Oh … hey, John. Didn’t see you there.”

“Have a seat, Chief.” I slipped my revolver into my waistband under my T-shirt, then lowered the volume on “Dancing in the
Street.”

Sylvester Maxwell, aka Max, who is the law in these here parts, sauntered toward me and plopped his butt on the rail, facing
me. He was wearing a blue blazer, white button-down shirt, tan cotton slacks, boating shoes, and no socks. I couldn’t tell
if he was on or off duty. I said, “There’re some soft drinks in that cooler.”

“Thanks.” He reached down and rescued a Budweiser from the ice. Max likes to call beer a soft drink.

He sipped awhile, contemplating a point in space about two feet from his nose. I directed my attention back toward the bay
and listened to “Too Many Fish in the Sea”—The Marvelettes. It was Monday, so the weekenders were gone, thank God, and it
was as I said after Labor Day when most of the summer rentals terminate, and you could feel the solitude returning again.
Max is a local boy and he doesn’t get right down to business, so you just wait it out. He finally asked me, “You own this
place?”

“My uncle does. He wants me to buy it.”

“Don’t buy anything. My philosophy is, if it flies, floats, or fucks, rent it.”

“Thank you.”

“You going to be staying here awhile?”

“Until the wind stops whistling through my chest.” He smiled, but then got contemplative again. Max is a big man, about my
age, which is to say mid-forties, wavy blond hair, ruddy skin, and blue eyes. Women seem to find him good-looking, which works
for Chief Maxwell, who is single and hetero.

He said, “So, how’re you feeling?”

“Not bad.”

“Do you feel like some mental exercise?” I didn’t reply. I’ve known Max about ten years, but since I don’t live around here,
I only see him now and then. I should say at this point that I’m a New York City homicide detective, formerly working out
of Manhattan North until I went down. That was on April twelfth. A homicide detective hadn’t gone down in New York in about
two decades so it made big news. The NYPD Public Information Office kept it going because it’s contract time again, and with
me being so personable, good-looking, and so forth, they milked it a little and the media cooperated, and round and round
we go. Meanwhile, the two perps who plugged me are still out there. So, I spent a month in Columbia Presbyterian, then a few
weeks in my Manhattan condo, then Uncle Harry suggested that his summer house was a fitting place for a hero. Why not? I arrived
here in late May, right after Memorial Day.

Max said, “I think you knew Tom and Judy Gordon.”

I looked at him. Our eyes met. I understood. I asked, “Both of them?”

He nodded. “Both.” After a moment of respectful silence, he said, “I’d like you to take a look at the scene.”

“Why?”

“Why not? As a favor to me. Before everyone else gets a piece of it. I’m short on homicide detectives.”

In fact, the Southold Town Police Department has no homicide detectives, which usually works out okay because very few people
get iced out here. When someone does, the Suffolk County police respond with a homicide detail to take over, and Max steps
aside. Max does not like this.

A bit of locale here—this is the North Fork of Long Island, State of New York, the Township of Southold, founded, according
to a plaque out on the highway, in sixteen-forty-something by some people from New Haven, Connecticut, who, for all anybody
knows, were on the lam from the king. The South Fork of Long Island, which is on the other side of Peconic Bay, is the trendy
Hamptons: writers, artists, actors, publishing types, and other assorted anals. Here, on the North Fork, the folks are farmers,
fishermen, and such. And perhaps one murderer.

Anyway, Uncle Harry’s house is specifically located in the hamlet of Mattituck, which is about a hundred road miles from West
102nd Street where two Hispanic-looking gentlemen had pumped fourteen or fifteen shots at yours truly, accomplishing three
hits on a moving target at twenty to thirty feet. Not an impressive showing, but I’m not criticizing or complaining.

Anyway, the Township of Southold comprises most of the North Fork, and contains eight hamlets and one village, named Greenport,
and one police force of maybe forty sworn officers, and Sylvester Maxwell is the chief, so there it is.

Max said, “It doesn’t hurt to look.”

“Sure it does. What if I get subpoenaed to testify out here at some inconvenient time? I’m not getting paid for this.”

“Actually, I called the town supervisor and got an okay to hire you, officially, as a consultant. A hundred bucks a day.”

“Wow. Sounds like the kind of job I have to save up for.”

Max allowed himself a smile. “Hey, it covers your gas and phone. You’re not doing anything anyway.”

“I’m trying to get the hole in my right lung to close.”

“This won’t be strenuous.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s your chance to be a good Southold citizen.”

“I’m a New Yorker. I’m not supposed to be a good citizen.”

“Hey, did you know the Gordons well? Were they friends?”

“Sort of.”

“So? There’s your motivation. Come on, John. Get up. Let’s go. I’ll owe you a favor. Fix a ticket.”

In truth, I was bored, and the Gordons were good people…. I stood and put down my beer. “I’ll take the job at a buck a week
to make me official.”

“Good. You won’t regret it.”

“Of course I will.” I turned off “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog” and asked Max, “Is there a lot of blood?”

“A little. Head wounds.”

“You think I need my flip-flops?”

“Well … some brains and skull blew out the back….”

“Okay.” I slipped into my flip-flops, and Max and I walked around the porch to the circular driveway in the front of the house.
I got into his unmarked PD, a white Jeep Cherokee with a squawky police radio.

We drove down the long driveway, which was covered with about a hundred years’ worth of raw oyster and clam shells because
Uncle Harry and everyone before him threw shells on the driveway along with the ash and cinders from the coal furnace to keep
the mud and dust down. Anyway, this used to be what’s called a bay farm estate, and it’s still bayfront, but most of the farm
acreage has been sold. The landscape is a little overgrown, and the flora is mostly the kind of stuff they don’t use much
anymore, such as forsythia, pussy willow, and privet hedges. The house itself is painted cream with green trim and a green
roof. It’s all pretty charming, really, and maybe I will buy it if the cop docs say I’m through. I should practice coughing
up blood.

On the subject of my disability, I have a good shot at a three-quarter, tax-free pension for life. This is the NYPD equivalent
of going to Atlantic City, tripping over a tear in the rug at Trump’s Castle, and hitting your head on a slot machine in full
view of a liability lawyer. Jackpot!

“Did you hear me?”

“What?”

“I said, they were found at 5:45
P.M.
by a neighbor—”

“Am I on retainer now?”

“Sure. They were both shot once in the head, and the neighbor found them lying on their patio deck—”

“Max, I’m going to see all this. Tell me about the neighbor.”

“Right. His name is Edgar Murphy, an old gent. He heard the Gordons’ boat come in about 5:30, and about fifteen minutes later
he walks over and finds them murdered. Never heard a shot.”

“Hearing aid?”

“No. I asked him. His wife’s got okay hearing, too, according to Edgar. So maybe it was a silencer. Maybe they’re deafer than
they think.”

“But they heard the boat. Edgar is sure about the time?”

“Pretty sure. He called us at 5:51
P.M.
, so that’s close.”

“Right.” I looked at my watch. It was now 7:10
P.M.
Max must have had the bright idea to come collect me very soon after he got on the scene. I assumed the Suffolk County homicide
guys were there by now. They would have come in from a little town called Yaphank where the county police are headquartered
and which is about an hour drive to where the Gordons lived.

Max was going on about this and that, and I tried to get my mind into gear, but it had been about five months since I had
to think about things like this. I was tempted to snap, “Just the facts, Max!” but I let him drone on. Also, “Jeremiah Was
a Bullfrog” kept playing in my head, and it’s really annoying, as you know, when you can’t get a tune out of your head. Especially
that one.

I looked out the open side window. We were driving along the main east-west road, which is conveniently called Main Road,
toward a place called Nassau Point where the Gordons live—or lived. The North Fork is sort of like Cape Cod, a windswept jut
of land surrounded on three sides by water and covered with history.

The full-time population is a little thin, about twenty thousand folks, but there are a lot of summer and weekend types, and
the new wineries have attracted day-trippers. Put up a winery and you get ten thousand wine-sipping yuppie slime from the
nearest urban center. Never fails.

Anyway, we turned south onto Nassau Point, which is a two-mile-long, cleaver-shaped point of land that cuts into the Great
Peconic Bay. From my dock to the Gordons’ dock is about four miles.

Nassau Point has been a summer place since about the 1920s, and the homes range from simple bungalows to substantial establishments.
Albert Einstein summered here, and it was from here in nineteen-thirty-whatever that he wrote his famous “Nassau Point Letter”
to Roosevelt urging the president to get moving on the atomic bomb. The rest, as they say, is history.

Interestingly, Nassau Point is still home to a number of scientists; some work at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a secret
nuclear something or other about thirty-five miles west of here, and some scientists work on Plum Island, a very top secret
biological research site which is so scary it has to be housed on an island. Plum Island is about two miles off the tip of
Orient Point, which is the last piece of land on the North Fork—next stop Europe.

Not incidental to all this, Tom and Judy Gordon were biologists who worked on Plum Island, and you can bet that both Sylvester
Maxwell and John Corey were thinking about that. I asked Max, “Did you call the Feds?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Murder is not a federal offense.”

“You know what I’m talking about, Max.”

Chief Maxwell didn’t respond.

W
e approached the Gordon house nestled on a small lane on the west shore of the point. The house was a 1960s ranch type that
had been made over into a 1990s contemporary. The Gordons, from somewhere out in the Midwest, and uncertain about their career
paths, were leasing the house with an option to buy, as they once mentioned to me. I think if I worked with the stuff they
worked with, I, too, wouldn’t make any long-range plans. Hell, I wouldn’t even buy green bananas.

I turned my attention to the scene outside the windows of the Jeep. On this pleasant, shady lane, little knots of neighbors
and kids on bicycles stood around in the long purple shadows, talking, and looking at the Gordon house. Three Southold police
cars were parked in front of the house, as were two unmarked cars. A county forensic van blocked the driveway. It’s a good
policy not to drive onto or park at a crime scene so as not to destroy evidence, and I was encouraged to see that Max’s little
rural police force was up to snuff so far.

Also on the street were two TV vans, one from a local Long Island news station, the other an NBC News van.

I noticed, too, a bunch of reporter types chatting up the neighbors, whipping microphones in front of anyone who opened his
mouth. It wasn’t quite a media circus yet, but it would be when the rest of the news sharks got on to the Plum Island connection.

Yellow crime scene tape was wrapped from tree to tree, cordoning off the house and grounds. Max pulled up behind the forensic
van and we got out. A few cameras flashed, then a bunch of big video lights went on, and we were being taped for the eleven
o’clock news. I hoped the disability board wasn’t watching, not to mention the perps who’d tried to ice
moi
, and who would now know where I was.

Standing in the driveway was a uniformed officer with a pad—the crime scene recorder—and Max gave him my name, title, and
so forth, so I was officially logged in, now subject to subpoenas from the DA and potential defense attorneys. This was exactly
what I didn’t want, but I had been home when fate called.