Mark Mills - Amagansett

Hollis, Abel and Hartwell screwed their faces into the dirt, the light raking their hiding place, pinning them down. And that’s how they remained, anticipating their discovery at any moment, until Labarde arrived.

Only one of the headlights on his truck was working, but it was enough to illuminate the two men waiting for him, to get them squinting.

Hollis crawled to his left, edging closer. He needed to hear what was said.

Labarde took a few steps into the no-man’s land between the vehicles. He had a large buff envelope in his hand.

‘How do we know you’re alone?’ demanded Wakeley.

‘I could ask you the same thing.’

‘Are you armed?’

‘Are you?’

‘No.’

‘And him?’

‘No,’ said Manfred Wallace.

‘Me neither,’ said Labarde as if that settled it. ‘Where’s the money?’

It was some kind of exchange, but what exactly? What was in the envelope?

‘We need to know you’re not armed,’ said Wakeley.

‘The man you sent to kill me made me strip, just to be sure. It didn’t help him, so why don’t we just drop it?’

‘What man?’ asked Wakeley.

Hollis asked himself the same question, his head reeling. Was he really so far behind the field?

‘Think straight,’ said Labarde. ‘If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now. I just want my money. Where is it?’

Wakeley removed an attaché case from the rear seat of the car. He handed it to Manfred, who didn’t look too pleased at the prospect of having to draw any closer to Labarde.

‘Open it first.’

Manfred opened the case. From where he was lying on his belly, Hollis couldn’t make out the contents, but Labarde seemed satisfied.

The two men met each other halfway, eyes almost at a level, one dressed in torn twill pants and a cotton shirt, the other in a tuxedo.

‘Don’t be bitter,’ said Labarde. ‘I earned it.’

‘Oh really? How do you figure that?’

‘Manfred…’ It was Wakeley again, a note of caution in his voice.

‘You don’t want to be here,’ said Labarde, ‘but you are. You don’t want me to have it, but I’m going to walk away a rich man.’ He paused. ‘I must have done something right.’

Manfred Wallace’s face twisted into a rictus of pure hatred. ‘Here.’ He thrust the case at Labarde.

‘You mind if I count it?’

‘It’s all there.’

‘You’ll understand if I don’t trust the word of a murderer.’

He placed the case on the ground and began to count the bundles of bills.

Hollis turned to look at Hartwell beside him and only saw then that Abel was gone. He gesticulated. Hartwell shrugged. Shit, thought Hollis. Shit.

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Manfred. ‘Give me the envelope.’

‘Just wait, Manfred.’

‘Tell me something,’ said Labarde. ‘What’s it like to kill your own sister?’

‘Don’t answer that,’ said Wakeley.

‘She loved you, you know that, don’t you?’

‘Just do what you have to do, and we can all go,’ said Wakeley.

‘What the hell.’ Labarde snapped the case shut and got to his feet. ‘If it’s short, I’ll drop by some time for the rest.’

He handed over the envelope. Manfred ripped it open, feeling inside, then peering inside.

‘There’s nothing in here.’ He turned to Wakeley. ‘It’s empty.’

Wakeley stepped forward and examined the envelope. ‘Where’s the document?’

‘What document?’ said Labarde.

‘The one you went to the lawyer about.’

‘The one we talked about on the phone,’ said Wakeley.

Labarde tossed the attaché case to Manfred. ‘There never was one,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that—it never existed.’

‘I don’t—’ sputtered Manfred.

‘It’s simple. I just thought we should meet. Face to face. That way there’ll be no misunderstanding.’

He took a couple of steps towards Manfred.

‘I want you to know that I’m not going away, not ever, that I’ll dog you for the rest of your life. You better keep one eye over your shoulder, ‘cos that’s where I’ll be. What I do and when I do it, who knows? But I’ll tell you this—it won’t be quick and it won’t be painless.’

‘Come away,’ said Wakeley, taking Manfred by the arm.

Manfred pulled free.

‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ he spat.

‘Get one thing straight, I don’t care what you think of me. You’re not in charge here.’

That’s when Manfred pulled out the handgun. And that’s when Hollis began to understand.

‘Manfred, put that away.’

‘You heard him, put it away.’

Labarde was clearly provoking him; taunting a man just wasn’t his style. Hollis was aware of Hartwell unholstering his gun, about to break cover, and he held him back.

‘No,’ he whispered, his mind racing, the pieces falling into place.

Manfred Wallace had to pull the trigger. That was the point. If he didn’t, nothing had been gained. They hadn’t heard anything that a good defense attorney—and the Wallaces would hire the very best—couldn’t tear apart in a court of law, twisting their testimony into any number of shapes.

Manfred Wallace had to pull the trigger and Labarde had understood it from the very beginning. He had figured that no amount of circumstantial evidence would lead to the downfall of Manfred Wallace, but if he could only get him to commit another crime, another murder…

‘Manfred—’ Wakeley took a step towards Manfred and found himself staring into the barrel of the gun.

‘I can end this now. It’s over. Gone.’

‘You don’t have it in you,’ grinned Labarde.

Manfred spun back, on the point of firing.

‘Tom,’ hissed Hartwell.

‘No.’

They had all been summoned here for a reason, steered and cajoled towards this stage, this amphitheater in the woods, each with his role to play: Labarde to lay down a life he no longer valued; Manfred Wallace to bring about his own ruin; Hollis to bear witness to the killing, no more.

‘Manfred—’ said Wakeley again. And that’s when Manfred fired.

Labarde was jerked to the right by the impact of the bullet. Manfred fired a second time, and the moment he did so, the scene was lit by a blinding white light, the tableau frozen for a split second: Wakeley recoiling, the muzzle flash from the handgun, Labarde seemingly suspended in time and space, but in reality buckling towards the ground.

Manfred Wallace was turning to the source of the flash of light when Hollis and Hartwell burst from the bushes.

‘Police,’ yelled Hollis. ‘Drop the gun. I said, drop the gun!’

It was the shock more than anything that forced the gun from Manfred Wallace’s fingers.

‘On the ground. Now. Both of you!’

As he recovered the weapon, Hollis glanced over at Labarde. He lay face down in the dirt, inert, an arm twisted behind his back.

In a fit of fury, Hollis found himself kicking Manfred Wallace in the side of the chest.

‘Spread your arms and legs.’

‘I—’

‘Shut up!’ snapped Hollis, kicking him again.

The moment was trapped for posterity by Abel as he emerged from his hiding place.

Forty-One

The following days passed in a blur of lawyers and seemingly endless debriefings by men from the DA’s office as everyone shouldered in looking for a slice of the cake. A pack of newshounds descended on East Hampton. Most were obliged to sleep in their cars, the inns and boarding houses already at capacity, what with it being the height of the season.

Justin Penrose was the first to crack. Those with the least to lose always were. He cut himself a deal—accessory after the fact of manslaughter—for his role in covering up the hit-and-run. It was the turning point. Once Lizzie Jencks had entered the frame, there was a motive for the murder of Lillian Wallace. The floodgates opened. Now it was just a question of who would drown and who would be saved. Wakeley and Manfred Wallace fought each other for the lone life preserver.

Wakeley had done a good job of protecting his charge from any association with the murder—too good a job as it turned out; there was almost nothing linking him to the crime. Manfred’s lawyer drew a parallel with Henry II and Thomas à Becket, claiming that Wakeley had taken it upon himself to rid Manfred of his meddlesome sister. This argument largely fell on deaf ears.

Hollis didn’t witness it at first hand, the unsightly spectacle of the two former friends turning on each other. He had already removed himself from the scrum by then. So had George Wallace. The newspapers presented him as a broken man, destroyed by the revelation about the true circumstances of his daughter’s death. The Press was no better equipped than anyone to speculate in this way. Following his brief interrogation by the DA, George Wallace had simply disappeared.

Chief Milligan, on the other hand, had taken center stage, the winds of national interest fanning the flames of his ego into a firestorm. Strangely, Hollis found himself amused rather than angered by the sight of Milligan claiming credit for the arrests, the successful conclusion of his own month-long investigation.

When it came to it, Hollis really didn’t care, and that realization surprised him. Besides, his thoughts were elsewhere—with the man hanging between life and death in Southampton Hospital. The man who had been manipulating events from the moment he first dragged his lover’s body from the ocean in a net.

Labarde had survived the initial surgery, only to be hit by a raging infection. He had not regained consciousness.

The fourth time Hollis visited him, there was a leather-cheeked old Indian seated at his bedside, clasping his hand. Hollis waited patiently in a chair for twenty minutes, unable to make out what the Indian was muttering in his soft voice.

When the old man finally left, he said, ‘Ain’t nothin’ to do if he don’t want it. And he don’t.’

Who could blame him? There was a bunch of people poised to pounce all over him, eager for his version of events, should he survive. Hollis had made a point of charming the head nurse, a woman who concealed a good heart behind a lofty demeanor. She had finally relented, promising that he would be the first to know if there was any news.

The call came four days later, early in the morning, at Mary’s place, to which Hollis had decamped to avoid the overeager newspapermen staking out his house. When the phone rang, his head was thick with exhaustion, having hit the pillow only an hour or so before.

Abel and Lucy had come to dinner, and somehow they’d all found themselves seeing in the dawn. There was a lot to catch up on. Abel had been out of circulation all week, dealing with the commotion over ‘the photo’, as it was now referred to.

It had been bought many times over, syndicated around the world, and he was still reeling from the shock of what he’d achieved: the big picture, the photographer’s dream. True to form, Abel dismissed the image as a work of mediocrity, an instant of violence trapped on film, with little else to recommend it apart from a certain ghoulish appeal.

He was wrong. It somehow captured more than the moment, pointing to a deeper, more universal injustice: two well-dressed types gathered at the execution of a working man. Wakeley was frozen in the act of turning his head away and raising his arms protectively, an instinctive gesture, but one which seemed to imply he was washing his hands of the deed. Because of the angle, the gun wasn’t visible, but the muzzle flash was, shards of lightning exploding from Manfred Wallace’s fingers, a faceless figure clad all in black, unleashing a thunderbolt. There was something almost beatific about Labarde’s expression as he crumpled forward and to the right.