Beach Road Read online

  “Make yourself at home,” says Detective Van Buren. He dumps the contents of one chair onto the floor. “We’ve been about to move to new headquarters for two years now.”

  I wasn’t expecting much civility, and I don’t get any. Just typical cop shit. Who wants a visit from a big-city cop who’s going to look at him like he’s some kind of pretend cop? But Van Buren seems like any other young, ambitious detective, and there’s nothing pretend about the bodies piled up in his backyard.

  “I’m here,” I say, “because about a month after Michael Walker got shot I investigated the murder of Manny Rodriguez, a rapper who was also shot. Yesterday I found out he also had been hanging out at Wilson’s place. That makes five dead bodies connected to Wilson’s court.”

  “A starting squad,” cracks Van Buren, and I have to smile because I think it might help me get somewhere with him.

  “An all-dead team,” I say.

  “You probably should be talking to Suffolk County Homicide. After the first couple weeks, they’ve been running the show out of Southold. But since you came all the way out, I’ll be glad to drive you over to Wilson’s place.”

  I leave my black banged-up Taurus in the lot and get into Van Buren’s black banged-up Crown Vic, and we drive to the good part of town. Soon we’re in a neighborhood that makes Main Street look like the projects.

  “Through those hedges,” says Van Buren, “is Seinfeld’s place. Stole it from Billy Joel for fifty-six mil. Just up that road to the left is where Martha Stewart used to live.”

  “This is all very interesting, but where the black folks live at?”

  “We’re almost at Wilson’s place right now,” says Van Buren, turning onto a particularly wide country lane called Beach Road.

  Van Buren unlocks the police chain on the rustic wooden gate, and we take the long driveway toward the ocean. The basketball court is also locked, but Van Buren has the key for that too.

  “Were you the one who talked to Wilson originally?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “One of the other detectives?”

  “No one talked to Wilson.”

  “Three local kids are piled up on his lawn. Another deceased individual shows up afterward, and no one feels it’s necessary to talk to Wilson?”

  “Ahh, no. That’s not the way we do things out here.”

  I look around the estate, but other than the spectacular ocean views, there’s not much to see, or make notes on.

  Eventually, Van Buren and I are standing on the veranda of the massive house, which, he says, is for sale.

  “I’m a little pressed for cash right now,” I tell him.

  Van Buren laughs, and actually, we’re getting along fairly well under the circumstances.

  “There’s one name that’s come up,” he finally says. “Local dealer who calls himself Loco.”

  I nod, scratch my head some. “You talk to this Loco?”

  “Nobody’s been able to find him.”

  “Mind if I try?”

  Chapter 79

  Raiborne

  WHAT’S WRONG WITH this messed-up picture? Three days ago I was kicking back in the Hamptons. Now I’m in NYC, on my hands and knees on the floor of a beat-up surveillance van eyeing the entrance of a take-out joint in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

  Soon as I got back to the city, we leaned on a network of junkie snitches to see what could be learned about a drug dealer named Loco.

  The name didn’t mean a thing to several lowlife informants, but we found out that on the last Monday of the month, a major dealer drives in from the Hamptons and replenishes his supply from the Colombians operating out of a take-out place in South Williamsburg.

  It’s called Susie’s Wok, and for the last two hours, I’ve had a pretty good view of its side door as a parade of tattooed hipsters in skinny black pants and old-school sneakers comes and goes. Remember when arty white kids like Hemingway went to Paris to write a novel? Well, now junkies from Paris come to Williamsburg to start a rock band.

  The DA’s office has been doing surveillance on the Colombians for months, running wiretaps, working up to a major sting. So we can’t touch Susie’s. All they’ve cleared us to do is watch out for Loco. If there is a Loco.

  If we spot him, we can follow him back to the LIE and pull him over for a traffic violation or something.

  That’s if Loco shows at all.

  I haven’t seen a single nonjunkie come up to Susie’s door in hours, and my knees are killing me. When I see a lumbering Hasidic Jew sneak in for an illicit fix of outlawed swine—I guess we all got something we’re afraid of getting busted for—I call it a wasted day and follow him in.

  After staring at Susie’s Wok all day, I’m starving for some fried pork myself.

  Chapter 80

  Loco

  ON MONDAYS, WHEN I make my pickup in Brooklyn, I leave the Tahoe at home and get a loaner.

  “Weekenders” not due back till Friday are generous enough to leave a fleet of cars for me to choose from at the railroad station. Today, I select a ten-year-old off-white Accord so generic it’s practically invisible. After thirty seconds to pick the lock and hot-wire the ignition, I’m off to Crooklyn.

  The cops have their network of snitches, and I got my network too. Actually, it’s the same network. I just pay a little better and play a lot rougher.

  They tell me Susie’s Wok has been getting a lot of attention lately. Something about too many cops spoiling the Wok, so when I get there, I circle the block a couple times to scope things out.

  The first time I drive around, everything looks copacetic to me.

  The second time, I notice this white van parked a little too conveniently across the street. The third time by, I can see that the van’s blacked-out windows are a lot newer than the banged-up body.

  If I had the IQ of a piss clam, or an iota of criminal discipline, I’d turn around and keep going, but I spent three hours getting into makeup and wardrobe, and in my gray-flecked beard and side locks, I barely recognize myself. So I park a quarter of a mile away, put on my wide-brimmed black hat and baggy black jacket, and head back to Susie’s Wok on foot.

  I know my disguise is kosher because on the four blocks back to Susie’s two guys dressed just like me wish me “Good Yontif,” and a cute little Hasidic mommy gives me the eye.

  Inside Susie’s, my man Diego is pacing impatiently outside his little back office.

  “Shalom,” I say.

  “Shalom to you too, my friend,” says Diego, nervously looking at his watch.

  “When I say shalom, I truly mean shalom. It’s not something I’m just saying.”

  That gets Diego’s attention, and he stares at me warily before a faint smile sneaks across his lips.

  “Loco?” he whispers.

  “This would be true, my friend.”

  Behind closed doors, our transaction is handled with brisk efficiency. Twenty grand for Diego and his people, a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of goodies for me. The drugs are packed up in little cardboard boxes and metal take-out tins, with a handful of menus scattered on top.

  It’s a good thing too, because as I step out the door I almost bump into a large black guy whose carriage and black leather jacket shout NYPD.

  “Good chow?” he asks.

  “The best,” I say, and keep on stepping. I don’t even let myself look in the rearview mirror until my take-out and I are out of Williamsburg and back on the LIE.

  “Lo-co!” I shout at the windshield of the stolen Accord. “You da man!”

  Chapter 81

  Tom

  IT’S FRIDAY, JUST days before the start of Dante Halleyville’s trial, and the first buses filled with protesters arrive in East Hampton just after dawn. The people out here are about to understand the scale of this case, its national implications.

  The buses aren’t Jitneys, the tall, sleek air-conditioned models that drop queerly dressed Manhattanites at quaint bus stops up and down 27. They’re a rolling armada of ruste
d-out school buses, long-retired Greyhounds, and dented-up vans. There are hundreds of them, and they come from as far north as New Hampshire, as far south as the Florida Panhandle.

  Like a medieval army laying siege, they stop just outside of East Hampton. Early arrivals fill the field across from the Getty station, and when it can’t hold any more, the protesters fan out onto the tony south-of-the-highway streets that lead to the water.

  At noon, a mile-long column, twelve people across, marches into town, and East Hampton’s two perpendicular blocks, where you could go a week without seeing an African American, are overwhelmed with thirty thousand mostly black protesters—men, women, and children.

  They are waving homemade signs that read FREE DANTE HALLEYVILLE! and STOP LYNCHING OUR TEENAGERS! They’re everything East Hamptonites are not—loud, unself-conscious, and angry.

  The crowd marches past the hastily boarded-up windows of Cashmere Hampton, Coach, and Ralph Lauren. They turn left on Newtown Lane and file past Calypso and Scoop and Om Yoga until they reach the middle school.

  There, frantic police and just-arrived National Guardsmen steer them across the street into the park.

  A low stage has been set up in the infield of the softball diamond in the far corner of the twenty-acre field, and Reverend Marvin Shields, in a dazzling white three-piece suit, grabs the mike.

  “No justice!” bellows Shields.

  “No peace!” reply thousands of voices in unison.

  “I can’t hear you,” shouts the reverend, one cupped hand to his ear.

  “No peace!”

  “What was that?”

  “No peace!”

  “We’ve got a very special guest here this morning,” Shields says. “A man who has proved himself to be a friend time and again, a man who now works out of an office in my neighborhood in Harlem, the former president of the United States, Mr. Bill Clinton!”

  President Clinton saunters onto the stage to a deafening roar, and for a full minute, he waves and smiles, as comfortable in front of this enormous, mostly black crowd as if he was in his backyard. Then he puts one arm around Reverend Shields and grabs the microphone with the other.

  “Welcome to the Hamptons, y’all,” he says. “Nice out here, ain’t it?”

  Chapter 82

  Tom

  BILL CLINTON IS still talking when Kate takes my hand and pulls me away. East Hampton can burn for all she cares right now. We have a capital murder defense to prepare, and we’re still way behind.

  The road back to Montauk is so empty it’s as if the eastern tip of Long Island has been evacuated. The ride with Kate brings back memories of our days together when we were younger. We used to hold hands all the time, and I want to reach out for Kate’s hand now. But of course, I don’t, which makes it even worse. When we get to Montauk, there’s not a single car in the parking lot outside our office.

  Aided by the unlikely quiet, Kate prepares a folder on every witness we might call to the stand, and I attempt a first draft of our opening statement. At one point, she gives me a little hug. I don’t make a big deal out of it, even though I don’t want it to end.

  The historic sense of the day is inspiring, and the sentences and paragraphs begin to flow for me. But Kate is underwhelmed. When she slides back the draft, half of it is crossed out, the rest festooned with notes. “It’s going to be great, Tom,” she offers as encouragement.

  Grateful for standards higher than my own, I churn out draft after draft, and until a car pulls into the empty lot outside, I have no sense of the time. I suddenly notice that the afternoon is long gone, and our one window has turned black. In fact, it’s close to 10:00 p.m.

  Car doors open and slam shut, and then heavy footsteps clomp up the steep stairs. It sounds as if there are three or four people coming, and based on the creaking, they’re all large and probably males.

  I reach for the baseball bat I’ve been keeping beside the desk and look over at Kate. She returns my nervous smile and shrugs, but the glint in her eye says, “Bring it on.”

  Chapter 83

  Tom

  THE HEAD THAT pokes through the door doesn’t belong to a drunken local lout. It’s Calvin Coles, the minister at Riverhead Baptist. Calvin has been over a couple times in the last few months and apologizes for the lateness of the visit as two other formidable black men, both wearing dark suits, follow him into the room. The heads of all three nearly scrape the low ceiling.

  Coles smiles awkwardly and introduces his companions, as if it’s necessary. One is Reverend Marvin Shields, the other Ronnie Montgomery, the dapper black attorney who became a celeb after winning the acquittal of former Major League Baseball star Lorenzo Lewis for the murder of his wife.

  “I’ve got some very exciting news,” says Reverend Shields, stepping forward and clasping my hands in both of his. “After some serious cajoling and arm twisting, Mr. Montgomery has generously volunteered to take over Dante Halleyville’s defense.”

  “The trial starts in a few days,” says Kate, her voice calm, her eyes red hot.

  Ronnie Montgomery responds with a condescending smile. “Obviously, I’m going to ask for an extension,” he says. “And I have no reason to believe I won’t get it.”

  “Have you spoken to Dante?” I finally say.

  “I wanted to come here first,” says Montgomery, “as a professional courtesy.”

  Montgomery takes in our modest office, conveying with a shrug what it suggests about our inappropriateness for this huge case and about our chances in the upcoming trial.

  “I know you mean well, and I’m sure you’ve worked terribly hard. And both of you are welcome to stay on to help with the transition. But you’re way out of your depth here, and Dante Halleyville deserves more.”

  When Montgomery serves up another condescending smile, I’m kind of sorry I put down that baseball bat.

  Chapter 84

  Tom

  THE NEXT MORNING as Kate’s Jetta pulls into the lot behind the Riverhead Correctional Facility, Ronnie Montgomery’s black Mercedes limo pulls out. This is the end of the line for us. It’s like arriving for your last day of work to find your replacement already sitting in your chair, cleaning out your desk.

  But Kate and I adhere to our routine. We park in our spot, exchange pleasant greetings with Mike and Billy at the front desk, and stash our watches and keys in locker number 1924.

  For presumably the last time, Sheila, the only female guard at the maximum-security jail, who has somehow worked here twenty-three years, escorts us through the sliding steel gates into the purgatory of the attorney rooms. Dante, having just met with Montgomery, is already there.

  He looks at his feet and says, “We’ve got to talk.”

  Kate and I sink into our seats at the small metal table. I bite my tongue and wait for the ax. I haven’t felt this awful in a long time.

  “I just had a visit from Ronnie Montgomery,” says Dante. “The brother that got off the baseball player Lorenzo Lewis.”

  “He stopped by our office last night,” says Kate.

  “Then I guess you already know he’s offered to take the case. He said he hasn’t lost a trial in fifteen years.”

  “Might be true,” says Kate.

  “He said that this is the most important decision I’ll ever make. That I need to take some time with it.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Time’s up, Mr. Montgomery. I already lost ten months in here. I know what I got to do.”

  “Which is what?” I ask.

  “You got to understand this ain’t personal. Lorenzo Lewis’s clothes were smeared with his wife’s blood. When the cops arrived he locked himself in his bathroom, took thirty sleeping pills, and called his mama. Montgomery still got him off.”

  “That was a unique case,” says Kate, “but we won’t take it personally.”

  “You sure?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Dante, what did you tell him?”

  “I told him, no thanks, bro’. I like th
e lawyers I got.

  “You think I’m crazy?” says Dante, pointing a long finger at Kate and smiling as though she’s just been Punk’d. “I hire Montgomery, and everyone, including the jury, is going to assume I’m as guilty as Lorenzo Lewis. Plus, I figure Montgomery used up his luck for three lifetimes on that other case. Kate, you crying on me, girl?”

  Chapter 85

  Kate

  DANTE’S GRANDMOM MARIE bows her head and reaches for my hand, which I gratefully give her.

  “Thank you, Lord, for the abundance we are about to receive,” she says. “Thank you for the strength to endure this terrible, terrible ordeal and most of all for delivering such dedicated attorneys as Tom and Kate. Bless this meal, oh Lord, and please find it in your heart to keep an eye out for my grandson Dante. My innocent grandson. Amen.”

  Saturday evening, two days before the trial, and every friend Tom and I have left sits around Macklin’s dining room table. With only Mack and Marie; Tom’s brother, Jeff, and nephew Sean; Clarence and his wife, Vernell, there’s plenty of leg and elbow room.

  “To this time next year,” says Mack, raising a glass and trying as always to lighten the mood. “When Dante sits next to us, stuffs his face, and tells barely believable tales of Shaq and Kobe, Amare and LeBron.”

  The guest list for the meal is short, but the table groans under a rarely seen combination of Caribbean and Irish standards. After almost a year in near isolation, the company means more than the food to me. But the food is wonderful too. We’re in the process of eating way too much of it when the ringing of Tom’s cell pierces the room. “I better answer it,” he says.

  He pulls it from his pocket and raises one hand in apology as the blood drains from his face.

  “We’ve got to turn on Fox News,” he tells everybody.

  Half of us are already in the living room with our desserts, and the rest shuffle over and twist a chair to face Mack’s antique Zenith. Sean finds channel 16 just as the anchor turns it over to a field reporter.