Justin smiled at the memory of what had transpired maybe twenty minutes ago, realized she thought he was smiling at her, and then he was smiling at her. She was something to smile at.
He'd met Abby Harmon four months ago. In Duffy's, not a bar where you'd expect to meet someone like Abby. She confessed later that she'd come in looking for him. She knew it was where he went to drink, and she'd heard so much about him she decided she had to see the real deal for herself. For a stretch of quite a few months, she couldn't go to a party where people weren't talking about Justin Westwood. His background. His aloofness. His lack of interest in just about everything that everybody at those parties was interested in. She wanted to see him for herself, see what made him tick. So she pulled her Mercedes CLK550 convertible up to the old-fashioned blue-collar hangout at ten-thirty at night, walked in, and ordered a glass of their best red Bordeaux. Their best red Bordeaux was six months old, from the North Fork of Long Island, and cost three-fifty a glass, so she went instead for a Sam Adams on draft. Donnie, the bartender, nodded in silent approval when she'd switched her order. A much better choice.
Justin had recognized her as soon as she'd walked in, of course. It was not hard to recognize Abigail Harmon. There were plenty of rich women coming in and out of East End Harbor. And there were plenty of sexy women. But there wasn't anyone who was quite as rich and sexy as Abigail. Certainly no one who also had her kind of reputation.
Justin knew a horse trainer, a fairly placid guy, who'd done work at the stable where Abigail kept her two horses. "The meanest bitch I've ever met," is the way he had described her. Justin had seen her once, striding out of the mayor of East End Harbor's office. When Justin walked in, the mayor, Leona Krill, looked as if she'd gone ten rounds with the young Mike Tyson; when he'd asked her if she was okay, Leona had said, "Jay, I feel like I've just been bitten by a rattlesnake."
But he also knew that Deena, his ex-girlfriend, gave Abigail Harmon private yoga lessons. Deena went up to the Harmon mansion-the only way to describe it-three times a week. She was very well paid, but she wouldn't go there just for the money. Deena would never do anything just for the money. She liked Abigail Harmon. She told Jay, during their once-every-three-or-four-months lunch date, that Abby-it was the first time Justin had heard anyone refer to her as "Abby"-was "incredibly smart and really comfortable in her own skin and about the only person I teach around here who doesn't treat me either as the help or as if I'm some kind of kook. And she's incredibly nice to Kenny." Kenny was really Kendall, who was Deena's now twelve-year-old daughter. Justin was once the love of Kendall's life. Of course, she'd been nine years old then. Now he was almost but not quite yet just a grown-up to be tolerated. He took Kendall out to lunch every three months or so, too. And every so often out to dinner. He figured he had until she was fourteen for the dinners. Then she'd dump him for some pimply-faced teenager who, sooner or later, Justin would have to talk to about getting drunk in public and knocking over garbage cans.
That night at Duffy's, Justin had been drinking with Gary Jenkins and Mike Haversham, two of the young cops who worked for him. When Abby walked in, Gary and Mike stared in awe and disbelief. When she sauntered over to their table and asked if she could join them, they looked as if they might faint. After a few sips of her beer, she leaned over in the direction of both young men and said softly, in that voice of hers that somehow managed to be both fire and ice, "Could I ask you guys a real favor?" When they nodded, she said, "What I really want to do is have a drink with your boss. Would you mind giving us some privacy?"
The two cops practically fell over themselves to comply with her wishes, and suddenly Justin felt as if he and she were the only two people in Duffy's wood-paneled room.
She didn't say anything for a fairly long while and neither did he. Not speaking was one of Justin's better things. He was comfortable with silence. More comfortable than he usually was with conversation. He'd seen something once, when he was a kid, still in college and traveling for the summer in Europe. It was some ancient aphorism-his memory told him it was Turkish-and it said, "With language began all lies." He had liked the thought then, and now that he was grown-up and a cop, he liked it even more. So he was in no rush to interfere with the quiet that settled in over the table at Duffy's. Finally, Abby just introduced herself. And smiled. He thought he'd never seen anything quite as perfect as her white, sparkling teeth. Unless it was her shoulders, which he could see because she was wearing a sleeveless shirt; and they were tan and perfectly round and so smooth he thought someone must have oiled and polished them before she stepped out. Her eyes weren't too shabby either, he had to admit. They were big and almond shaped, brown with tiny specks of yellow. It was the floating specks that were so hypnotic, and they made him think of a song lyric he'd heard long ago, when he was a teenager and his parents had taken him to Manhattan to see Bobby Short sing at the Carlyle. He didn't remember all the songs he'd heard that night, but he did remember Short crooning about a woman whose eyes were open windows and when you looked in, there was a party going on inside.
Sitting at the table with her, he decided he wouldn't mind an invitation to the party that was going on inside Abigail Harmon.
"Is there something in particular you wanted to talk to me about?" he asked.
She shook her head. Her straight brown hair moved in sync with the motion, rolled left and right, then settled back easily, still and soft and glistening. Her hair was pretty damn perfect, too.
So they started talking about the town. She told him about her dealings with some of the younger cops, one of whom-she thought maybe it was Mike-had once tried to give her a speeding ticket.
"What do you mean 'tried'?" he asked.
She waved her hand, as if brushing aside a gnat. "Oh, I talked him out of it."
"How fast were you going?"
"Eighty-five."
"And what was the speed limit?"
"Twenty-five."
"Jesus Christ." He rolled his eyes. "What the hell did you say to him?"
But she just smiled and shook her head. "Sorry," she told him. "I might have to try it on you if you ever give me a ticket."
Then they spoke about the Hamptons and a little bit about Rhode Island, which is where Justin was from. Abby had spent time there. In college she'd dated someone who went to the Rhode Island School of Design. The fact is, he didn't really remember much of what they'd talked about. It wasn't her words that were so beguiling. It was her voice and her manner and her legs, which kept crossing and uncrossing, and looked so muscular and firm and inviting. And it was definitely her eyes, which hinted at all sorts of pleasures and an equal number of dangerous things. And which were vulnerable. And even a little bit sad.