The Beach House Read online

  I climbed into the old black pickup with MULLEN CONSTRUCTION painted on the door and drove to the small brick building on 27 that houses the East Hampton Police Department. I parked next to Frank Volpi's black Jeep.

  Tommy Harrison was the sergeant at the desk. He shook my hand and told me how sorry he was about Peter. "I liked your brother a lot, Jack."

  "That's what I'm here to talk to Volpi about."

  Harrison went back to get Volpi, then returned a couple of minutes later with a sheepish expression.

  "The detective is a lot busier than I thought. He thinks he'll be tied up all afternoon."

  "If it's okay, Tommy, I'll wait. It's important."

  Forty minutes later the desk sergeant told me the same thing. I walked outside. Then I entered the headquarters of the East Hampton Police Department one more time. Through the back door.

  Volpi's office was halfway down the hall. I didn't bother to knock.

  The detective looked up from a Post spread out on his lap. The foam of his latte covered the tips of his mustache. In East Hampton even the cops sip cappuccinos.

  "No rest for the weary, huh, Frank?"

  "I take enough shit in this town without having to take more from you. Get the hell out of here! Get lost."

  "Give me one reason why Peter would go swimming in the middle of his shift, then I'll let you get back to 'Page Six' and your mocha blend."

  "I already told you. Because he was a stoned-out little punk."

  "And why would he kill himself? Peter had it all going for him."

  "Because his best girl was screwing his best friend; because he was having a bad hair day; because he was tired of hearing what a saint his older brother was. You wanted one reason. You got three. Now go away!"

  "That's it, Frank? Accident, suicide — who cares?

  Case closed."

  "Sounds pretty good to me."

  "When are you going to stop acting like a rent-a-cop for the rich, Frank?"

  He jumped out of his chair, stuck his face in mine, grabbed my shirt, and pushed me hard against the wall. "I should kick your ass right now, you piece of shit."

  I didn't delude myself about Volpi's ability to back up his words, but the way I felt, maybe then wasn't the best day to get in the ring with me. Even Volpi sensed it. He released his grip and sat down.

  "Go home, Jack. Your brother was a good guy. Everybody liked Rabbit, including me. But he drowned."

  "Bullshit! That's total crap, and you know it. Frank, if you're not interested in looking into this case, I'm sure the press will be. Considering all the boldface types at the party that night, Newsday will be interested. And the Daily News. Maybe the high and mighty New York Times."

  Volpi's face hardened. "You really don't want to do that."

  "Why not? What am I missing here?"

  "Trust me on this one. You just don't. Leave it alone, Jack."

  Chapter 12

  I WAS FEELING A LITTLE NUTS, so I drove back out to the scene of the crime. The surf was down considerably, and it was still too rough for my brother to have considered swimming in it. Then I checked in on my father and grandfather. They were doing so bad, they were both in bed by 9:30. Dana had left a couple of messages for me.

  I didn't get to the Memory Motel until after ten. By then almost every charter member of our highly exclusive club of born-and-bred townies was crowding a small round table at the rear of the bar.

  Let me introduce you.

  At the back of the table, under a chipped mirror, was Fenton Gidley. Fenton grew up four houses down from us, and we'd been best friends since before we learned how to walk. At six-three and 245 pounds, Fenton was a little bigger than he had been back then. He was offered a boxful of scholarships to play college football — Hofstra, Syracuse, even Ohio State. He took over his old man's fishing boat instead, heading out alone from Montauk Point for days at a time to hunt giant swordfish and tuna, which he sold to the Japanese.

  On his left sat Marci Burt, who has planted and shaped shrubs for Calvin, Martha, Donna, and a handful of other less-fashionable multimillionaires. She and I were an item once — when we were thirteen. On Marci's right sat Molly Ferrer, who taught fourth grade and moonlighted for East Hampton's Channel 70. Like Fenton, Marci and Molly were former classmates of mine at East Hampton High School.

  Everyone at the table was sporting a surprisingly trendy coif, thanks to the man with almost no hair sitting opposite them — Sammy Giamalva, aka Sammy the Hairdresser. Sammy, who was five years younger than the rest of us, was Peter's best friend. Growing up, Sammy spent so much time at our house that he was like a member of the family. He still was.

  When I arrived at the Memory, they each got up to lay a hug on me, and before I emerged from their warm, sad embraces, the final member of our crew and the most sincere person I know, Hank Lauricella, walked in.

  Lauricella, a full-time chef and part-time EMS volunteer, was the one who got the call about Peter's body on the beach. The small, scarred table now held my five most dependable friends on the planet. They were as angry and as confused about Peter's death as I was.

  "Accident, my cute behind," said Molly. "As if Peter, or anyone else, would go swimming in the middle of the night in that surf."

  "What Volpi's really saying is, Peter did himself," said Sammy, the first openly gay person any of us ever knew. "We all know that didn't happen."

  "Right. All this time we thought he was having more fun than the rest of us combined," Fenton said. "He was actually crying himself to sleep."

  "Then what did happen?" asked Marci. "Nobody would want to hurt Peter. Maybe slap him upside the head a couple of times."

  "Well, something sure happened. Except for Jack, none of you saw Peter's body," said Hank. "I sat next to Peter in a space smaller than this table for four hours that night. He looked like he was stomped to death. And Frank Volpi never even looked at him. Never stepped inside the ambulance."

  "Volpi doesn't want to go near it," said Fenton. "He's scared shitless it goes right back to the folks who own him and the rest of this little village of ours."

  "So maybe we all have to start asking around. Talk to anyone who might know something," I said. "Because obviously no one else cares."

  "I'm for that," said Molly.

  "I know just about everybody who worked at the party that night," said Fenton. "One of them must have seen something."

  "And moi," said Sammy. "I'm really good at poking around for dirt."

  We held up our beers. "To Peter."

  Chapter 13

  THE TABLE SUDDENLY FELL SILENT. The change couldn't have been more pronounced if we had been union workers plotting a strike and someone from management had just stuck his head in the door. I turned and saw Dana at the bar.

  Actually, the Memory isn't much of a bar. It's not much of a motel, either. Eighteen rooms with unobstructed views of John's Drive-Inn and the Getty station. Its one claim to notoriety is that back in the days when there were these big round black things known as records, a rock 'n' roll band by the name of the Rolling Stones stayed there once and wrote a song about it. The record it's on, Black and Blue, came out in 1976, and the cover is tacked on the wall along with the copy of the notes from the recording session.

  We spent a lonely night at the Memory Motel, It's by the ocean (sort of),

  I guess you knew it well.

  To be fair, the Memory also has a pretty great sign — the name spelled out over the entrance in jet black Gothic type. In any event, Dana, even dressed as she was that night in old blue jeans and a T-shirt, stood out as much as if Mick Jagger himself had shimmied in. I got up and went to the bar.

  "I thought you might be here," she said. "I called your house a bunch of times. I had to go into New York this morning."

  We found two seats at the end of the bar next to a middle-aged man doing a beer and a shot. He had an old St. Louis Cardinals hat pulled down low over his face.

  "They really like me, don't they, Jack?" Dana s
aid, and snuck a look at my friends.

  "In their own quiet way."

  "I'll go if you want me to. Really, Jack. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Are you?"

  "Nope. That's why I'm glad you're here." I leaned in and kissed her. Who wouldn't? Her lips were so soft. Her eyes weren't just beautiful, they showed off how whip smart she was. I think I'd had a crush on Dana since she was about fourteen. I still couldn't believe that the two of us were together. My friends hadn't given her a chance yet, but they'd come around once they got to know her.

  I emptied my wallet on the bar, waved good-bye to the crew, and escorted Dana out of the Memory. Instead of walking toward the street and her gleaming SUV, she led me away from the curb under an overhang to the end of the stone walkway.

  Then Dana fumbled with a key until room eighteen lay open before us in all its splendor and possibility. "I hope you don't mind," she whispered, "but I took the liberty of reserving the honeymoon suite."

  Chapter 14

  WHAT THE FIXER REALLY WANTED was a Tanqueray No. Ten martini with a twist. By the time the bartender at the Memory stopped ignoring him, he had lowered his sights to a Budweiser and a shot of tequila.

  By then he had found an empty, torn red-leather stool at the center of the bar, and with his vintage St. Louis Cardinals cap pulled down, he sipped his Bud and watched.

  An occasional twist of his head gave him a view of the plotting mourners at the back table. Their faces were so sincere and open that he wondered how he and they could be members of the same species.

  After a while he started working his gaze around the table, gauging who would give him the hardest time. The unshaved guy in the old jean jacket had the most size, about six-three and 250 pounds, he estimated. And he carried himself like an old ballplayer. The bitch who had arrived in the maroon Porsche looked tough. And, of course, Mullen could be dangerous, particularly in his current state. He was undoubtedly the smartest in the group, and the boy was hurting.

  By the time the Mouseketeers were done drinking, laughing, and crying, he'd been sitting on the stool for almost three hours and his butt was numb. He watched Lauricella and Fenton leave in Lauricella's van, and Burt tear off in her Porsche. He was about to follow Molly Ferrer home for a little reconnaissance when he saw Dana and Jack slink out of the bar and into the darkness. "A hundred-million-dollar girl in a sixty-dollar-a-night motel," he muttered.

  Dana Neubauer and Jack Mullen. Sooner or later, he was going to have to fix that, too, no doubt.

  Chapter 15

  PETER'S FUNERAL was the worst day of my life. For a week I wandered around in a daze — hollowed out, unreal, a ghost. When I went back to work, Pauline Grabowski came by to say how sorry she was about Peter's death, and I got a sweet condolence call from Mudman on death row. As for everybody else at Nelson, Goodwin and Mickel, it was strictly business as usual.

  Every night after work, I went back to my apartment on 114th Street, two blocks south of Columbia. My roommates had left for the summer, and I lay on my mattress, the only piece of furniture left, and listened to the Yanks lose three in a row on a tiny transistor radio I had had since I was twelve.

  Friday night I hustled down to Penn Station and caught the last train out. Dana wasn't waiting in Montauk as I had hoped for the entire three-hour trip out there. Since the track stopped barely two miles from my house, I decided to hump it instead of calling home for a ride. I figured the walk would do me good.

  In fifteen minutes I put the darkened windows of Montauk's three-block downtown behind me and climbed the long, steep hill out of town. The night was full of stars, and the crickets were noisier than the traffic. I wondered what had happened to Dana.

  I walked by the stone ruin of the historical society and the stark-white sixties architecture of the town library, where I'd often stopped on my way home from school.

  Peter and I had covered this stretch at least a thousand times, and every single crack in the pavement looked familiar. We'd walked it, run it, skateboarded it, and biked it in every extreme of Long Island weather, sometimes with Peter propped precariously on my handlebars. And although we weren't allowed to, we'd often hitchhiked. On account of all the carless Irish kids who come over every summer to pump gas, change sheets, and bus tables, Montauk is one of the last places left in the country where drivers still routinely pull over for strangers.

  I walked off 27 onto Ditch Plains Road and made the sweeping turn by the beach parking lot. My father's pickup was in the driveway. I guess Mack wasn't done fleecing the pigeons in his weekly poker game.

  If I was up when he got back, he'd dump his winnings on the kitchen table and I'd join him in a Rice Krispies nightcap.

  All the lights were out, so I lifted the sticky garage door as quietly as possible and entered through the kitchen. I grabbed a beer and sat in the cool, pleasant dark. I called Dana, but all I got was the answering machine. What was that all about?

  I sat in the darkened kitchen and thought of the last time Peter and I were together. Two weeks before he died, we had dinner at a trendy restaurant on East Second Street. We polished off two bottles of red wine and had ourselves a gas. Christ, he was such a happy kid. A little crazy, but good-natured. It didn't even bother me when the waitress wrote her phone number on the back of Peter's neck.

  For some reason, I found myself thinking about my pro bono case at the office, the Mudman — his life on death row in Texas. What Peter and Mudman had in common was the minuscule regard that the powers that be had for their lives. The government valued Mudman's so lightly, they wouldn't bother to make sure they were executing the right man. And Peter's murder was so trifling, it didn't require solving.

  My thoughts were suddenly shattered by a loud crash directly overhead. What the hell? Someone must have broken in through Peter's window and toppled over his dresser.

  I grabbed the skillet off the top of the stove and sprinted up the stairs.

  Chapter 16

  THE DOOR TO PETER'S ROOM was shut, but the sound of moaning came from inside. I pushed against the door, met some resistance, then crashed through, stumbling over the outstretched legs of the body on the floor.

  Even in the dark, I could see that it was my father.

  I switched on the lights. He was in trouble. He was sick. Obviously, he'd collapsed and fallen, which had made the loud racket. He twisted violently on his back as if he were fighting someone only he could see. I hooked one arm under his neck and lifted his head off the floor, but like a child having a night terror, he couldn't see me. His eyes were aimed inward at the explosion in his chest.

  "Dad, you're having a heart attack. I'm calling an ambulance." I ran for the phone. By the time I got back to him, his eyes were even more dilated and the pressure on his chest seemed worse. He couldn't take a breath.

  "Hang on," I whispered. "The ambulance is on the way."

  The color drained from his face, and he turned a sick, ghostly gray. Then he stopped breathing, and my father's eyes rolled up into his head. I held open his mouth and breathed into it.

  Nothing.

  One, two, three.

  Nothing.

  One, two, three.

  Nothing.

  Tires screeched in the driveway and there were loud footsteps on the stairs, then Hank was kneeling beside me.

  "How long has he been like this?"

  "Three, four minutes."

  "Okay. There's a chance."

  Hank had the portable defibrillator lifepack with him. It was in a white plastic box about the size of a car battery. He hooked up my father, then threw the toggle that sent electrical current into his chest.

  Now I was the one who couldn't breathe. I stood over my father, numb and disbelieving. This couldn't be happening. He must have come up to Peter's room to reminisce.

  Each time Hank threw the switch, my father went into spasm.

  But the line on the electrocardiogram showed no response.

  After the third jolt of electricity, Hank looked
at me in shock.

  "Jack — he's gone."

  Part Two

  THE MURDER

  INVESTIGATION

  Chapter 17

  MY FATHER'S FUNERAL was held forty-eight hours later at St. Cecilia's. Close to a thousand year-rounders squeezed into the squat stone chapel or stood just outside it for the Monday service. No one was more surprised by the size and intensity of the outpouring than I. My father was reserved and modest, the opposite of a hail-fellow-well-met. Because of that, I always assumed he'd been unappreciated. That wasn't the case.

  Monsignor Scanlon recounted how, at sixteen years of age, John Samuel Sanders Mullen left Ireland and traveled alone to New York City, where he found a spot with relatives in an already crowded Hell's Kitchen tenement. Macklin and my grandmother couldn't make it across for another three years, and by then my father had dropped out of school and apprenticed himself to a carpenter. Even after his parents arrived, he was the family's only means of support for several years — "a sixteen-year-old boy working eighty-hour weeks. Can you imagine?" asked the monsignor.

  Five summers later Sam and his new wife, Katherine Patricia Dempsey, were looking for a Sunday's respite from the asphalt furnace. So they rode the Long Island Rail Road as far as it would take them. Stepping off, they found a little fishing village that reminded my father of the one he'd left behind in County Claire. "Two weeks later," said the monsignor, "Sam, full of a young man's love and ambition, pulled up roots for the second time in eight years and moved out to Montauk for good."

  I often wondered why my father showed so little zeal for the Hamptons gold rush. Now I saw that by the time he arrived at the end of Long Island, he was far more concerned with appreciating what he had than lusting for more.