Free Hard Stop by Chris Knopf Page A

down.
    “Okay.”
    “Or she didn’t do it. He just says she did.”
    She raised her wine glass so I could clink it with my tumbler. She didn’t look nearly as self-satisfied as she deserved to look.
    “From now on you approve every assumption I make about precocious young women. You’re obviously knowledgeable on the subject.”
    “I was never precocious and I’m no longer young. But all women are capable of sexual conduct that can surprise them as much as anyone else. By the same token, all women are prey to false accusation prompted by male fantasy.”
    “You learn that in biology?”
    “At the disco. New York City. Circa 1987.”
    “Both possibilities provide a motive for her to go to ground,” I said. “Which gets me no closer to finding her.”
    “Don’t be so sure about that.”
    She studied the inside of her glass, swirling the wine around until it was perilously close to cresting over the lip.
    “The bad thing that caused her to run could have been something entirely different,” she said, finally.
    “You’re right. I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “Do you think Donovan was surprised by her disappearance?”
    “Definitely. He was completely caught off-guard. That partly explains the reckless way he’s been handling things. Taking big risks. Panic mode.”
    “Alerting Marve Judson,” she said.
    “Yeah. You can’t work around a reptile like that. He can sense perfidy through the soles of his feet.”
    “What do you think Judson will do?” she asked.
    “Get ready to meet him. He’ll be here within a week.”
    “You think so?”
    “I know him. It’s a sure thing.”
    “I’ll pick out an outfit.”
    “Think Kevlar.”
    She went back to examining her wine glass. I focused on the Little Peconic. There were two or three sails still visible in the fading light, stark white against the distant shore of the North Fork, heeled over against the westerly funneling through the channels above and below Robins Island. I’d been watching sailboats crisscross the little bay outside my front door my whole life, and only now was I beginning to think about being on one of them. I’d sailed since the birth of memory, on Sunfish and homemade dories and then bigger sloops belonging to friends around town, and ultimately crewed on stately racing yachts for the vapid sops Abby cultivated up in Marblehead. But it wasn’t competition I had in mind. Quite the contrary. I imagined ghosting into the outer waters on a lazy southwesterly and anchoring within the embrace of a sheltered harbor, to watch the show in the sky and listen to the splash and flutter of water birds and the ring of hasps against a metal mast.
    It wasn’t exactly the male fantasy Amanda referred to, but it served to transport my mind through the balance of the evening, allowing me to postpone another confrontation with uncontrollable forces set loose on the world by the usual concoction of ardor, cupidity, ego and fear.

SIX
    I WAS HOLDING A PIECE of crown molding over my head when my cell phone rang. I had three finish nails stuck in my mouth and one half-nailed through the molding, which I was about to pull out, unhappy with the coping job I’d done at the corner joint. I had to keep the twelve-foot-long piece of trim jammed in place with my left hand while I slipped the hammer in its holster and fished the cell phone out with my right. The phone’s persistent ring tone lent a lunatic accompaniment to the maneuver. I flipped it open and pushed the talk button.
    “Wha’,” I said into the phone, or something like it as I spat out the nails.
    “Drinking on the job?”
    “Hey, Jackie. Can I call you back in a minute?”
    “What’s the matter? You sound strained.”
    “That’s why I need to call you back,” I said through my teeth.
    As she started to ask another question I flipped the phone shut and stuffed it back in my pocket. My next trick was to dig a small block of soft pine out of my shirt pocket to stick between the hammer