“Hello, Izzy, it’s Lee. I just had a meeting with Gerry about the will, and he told me something that surprised and confused me.”
After Weinstock left, she had gone straight to the phone. Fortunately her brother was at home, so she didn’t have to spend hours wondering why he had told her that he couldn’t get to East Hampton until Sunday and that there was no longer any point in going after he heard about the car crash from Alfonso.
“I thought the terms of Jackson’s will were clear,” Irving replied. “Was there some problem with the wording? It’s not like Gerry to leave anything ambiguous or open to interpretation.”
“No, no, nothing like that.” She was hesitant, trying to figure out how to phrase the question.
“Was he unfavorable to the idea of my taking over the Pollock estate in case of your death or disability? You told him I had agreed, didn’t you? Surely he wouldn’t object to that.”
“No, of course not. It’s not about Jackson’s will, or mine.” Better just put it out there and see what he says.
“Izzy, were you in East Hampton last Saturday?”
The question was met with a momentary silence. He certainly was not prepared for it. How could she possibly know? He decided to obfuscate.
“What makes you think I was?”
“Gerry says he saw you.”
Impossible. Only two people had seen him face-to-face, and Weinstock wasn’t one of them. And the two who did see him didn’t know him from Adam.
“He must have seen someone who looks like me.” Evasive, but not a bald-faced lie. He was playing for time.
“That’s what I told him,” said Lee, “but he insisted it was you. He said you were at the filling station when he pulled in to get gas. You were in the car ahead of him.”
Irving’s mind was in turmoil. Jesus fucking Christ, of all the rotten coincidences, how improbable is that one? Yes, there was a car behind me, but what were the chances that the guy in it was someone who knew me? Late at night on the highway, in a town I hardly ever visit, that was the last thing I would have expected.
“I’m sorry to contradict Gerry, but he’s wrong. I told you I couldn’t get a rental car on Saturday, so how could I have been buying gas in East Hampton that night?”
Now it was Lee’s turn to go silent. She hadn’t mentioned the time of day Gerry said he saw her brother. She felt a little stab of pain in her chest as the implication registered. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to confront it directly.
“You couldn’t, could you? Not without a car, obviously. I guess Gerry was imagining things. He did say it was quite late, and he’d driven all the way out from the city and was probably tired. I guess that explains it.”
Irving sounded relieved. “That’s right. Just a case of mistaken identity. Happens all the time. You’d be surprised how often.”
After she hung up, Lee retreated to the kitchen for more coffee, cigarettes, and mental turbulence. As if she didn’t have enough to deal with, she now had to confront the likelihood that her brother, her most trusted ally and emotional lifeline, had lied to her. That he had come out on Saturday after all. That he needed to deny it, but why? He had been so insistent that she still held out hope he was telling the truth and it was all a mistake. As of now she only had Gerry’s word for it. If she could confirm his story, if anyone else had seen Izzy, then at least she would know for sure. She decided to call around.
It was a fruitless exercise. None of her friends had seen him since earlier in the summer, before she left for Europe. He didn’t come out often, since he and Jackson didn’t get along, and when he did show up it was usually because Lee was at her wit’s end and needed someone to run interference for her.
His presence had a salutary effect on Jackson, who was a bit afraid of him. Even though Irving was sixteen years older and going to pot around the middle, he was taller by a couple of inches and built like a wrestler. In his condition Jackson was no match for him and he knew it.
He could brawl with his artist friends, since they pulled their punches and it was all in good fun, but with Irving it would be serious, so when he was around, Jackson steered clear of any confrontation, spending most of the time in his studio, out with the dogs, or over at the General Store shooting the breeze with Dan Miller and drinking beer with his Bonacker buddies. But he’d been avoiding them lately, not wanting them to see how frail he was, physically and emotionally.
And besides, once Lee was out of the picture he had Ruth to keep him occupied.