Beach Road Read online

  When a lone nocturnal civilian finally turns the corner, I climb down the fire escape to Walker’s kitchen.

  I need a break here and I get it. The window is half open, and I don’t have to break it to slip inside. There’s plenty of light to screw the silencer to the end of my Beretta Cougar, which is a beauty, by the way.

  Like I been saying: killing time.

  A sleeping person is so unbelievably vulnerable it almost feels wrong to stare at him. Michael Walker looks about twelve years old, and for a second I think back to what I was like when I was young and innocent. Wasn’t that long ago, either.

  I cough gently.

  Walker stirs, and then his dark eyes blink open. “What the —”

  “Good morning, Michael,” I say.

  But the bullet flying then bulldozing into the back of his brain is more like good night.

  And I guarantee, Walker had no idea what just happened, or why.

  I don’t need to tell you there’s nothing but crap on TV at this hour. I settle on a Saturday Night Live rerun with Rob Lowe as guest host, and he performs his monologue as I carefully wrap Walker’s cool fingers around the handle of my gun. Then I slip it into a sealed plastic bag.

  After I find Walker’s piece in the corner of his closet, the only thing left to do here is drop off Officer Lindgren’s gift—the red Miami Heat cap—on the kitchen floor before I step back out onto the fire escape.

  Sunrise is still an hour away when I lower my window on the Brooklyn Bridge and toss Walker’s one-hundred-dollar pistola into the East River.

  I sing that real nice Norah Jones song “Sunrise” most of the way home. Kind of sad what happened to Walker, but actually I don’t feel a thing. Nada.

  Chapter 25

  Tom

  EVENTUALLY, I WILL think of this downtime with affection, call it the calm before the shitstorm.

  At work the next day, in my office, I wad up a sheet of printing paper, lean back in my desk chair ($59), and let fly. The paper ball bounces off the slanting dormer ceiling of my second-floor attic office ($650 a month), glances off the side of a beige metal filing cabinet ($39), bounces on the end of my worktable ($109), and drops softly into the white plastic wastebasket ($6).

  The tasteful furnishings are all from IKEA, and the successful shot—nothing but wastebasket—is my eleventh in a row.

  To give you a sense of the breakneck pace of my legal career, that’s not even close to a personal best. I have reached the high fifties on multiple occasions, and one lively afternoon, when I was really feeling it, I canned eighty-seven triple-bankers in a row, a record I suspect will last as long as man has paper and too much time on his hands.

  After two years as the sole owner and employee of Tom Dunleavy, Esquire, Inc., headquartered in a charming wooden house directly above Montauk Books, my paper-tossing skills are definitely world-class. But I know it’s a sorry state of affairs for an educated, able-bodied thirty-two-year-old, and after visiting Dante’s grandmother Marie, and realizing what she’s going through, it feels even lamer than it did twenty-four hours ago.

  It could be my imagination, but even Wingo stares at me with disappointment. “C’mon, Wingoman, cut me a little slack. Be a pal,” I tell him, but to no avail.

  Marie is still on my mind when the phone shatters the doldrums. To maintain a little dignity, I let it ring twice.

  It is not Dante.

  No, it’s Peter Lampke, an old friend. He’s just accepted an offer on his Cape in Hither Hills and wants to know if I can handle the closing.

  “I’m up to my eyeballs, Peter, but I’ll make time for a pal. I’ll call the broker right now and get her to send over the contracts. Congratulations.”

  It may not be challenging work, but it’s at least two or three hours of bona fide billable, legal employment. I immediately call the broker, Phyllis Schessel, another old friend, leave her a message, and, with the rent paid for another couple of months, call it a day.

  I don’t even attempt a twelfth shot, just leave the crumpled-up paper in the basket.

  I’m halfway out the door, key in hand, when the phone rings again. I step back inside and answer.

  “Tom,” says a deep voice at the other end of the line, “it’s Dante.”

  Chapter 26

  Tom

  THREE HOURS LATER I’m in New York City, and I must admit, the whole thing feels surreal.

  Two bolts turn over, a chain scrapes in its track, and Dante Halleyville’s frame fills door 3A at 26 Clinton Street. Dante hasn’t stepped out of the apartment in more than a week or opened a shade or cracked a window, and what’s left of the air inside smells of sweat and fear and greasy Chinese food.

  “I’m starving” are the first words out of his mouth. “Three days ago a delivery guy looked at me funny, and I’ve been afraid to order anything since. Plus I’m down to twelve dollars.”

  “Good thing we stopped on the way,” I say, pulling the first of three large pizza boxes out of a bag and placing it in front of Dante.

  He sits down with Clarence on a low vintage couch, a forty-year-old picture of Mick Jagger looking back at me over their shoulders. I’m not saying I approve of Dante’s decision to bolt, but an old immigrant neighborhood filled with young white bohemians, half of whose rent is paid by their parents, is not the first place the police are going to look for a black teenager on the run. The apartment belongs to the older sister of a kid Dante met this summer at the Nike camp.

  Dante wolfs down a slice of pie, stopping only long enough to say, “Me and Michael were there that night. I mean, we were right there,” he says, taking another bite and a long drink from his Coke. “Ten yards away. Maybe less than that. Hard to talk about it.”

  “What are you saying, Dante? You saw Feifer, Walco, and Rochie get shot? Are you telling me you’re a witness?”

  Dante stops eating and stares into my eyes. I can’t tell whether he’s angry or hurt. “Didn’t see it, no. Me and Michael were hiding in the bushes, but I heard it clear as I hear you now. First a voice saying, ‘Get on your knees, bitches,’ then another, Feifer maybe, asking, ‘What’s going on?’ Sort of friendly, like maybe this is all a joke. Then, when they realize it’s serious, all of them bawling and begging right up to the last gunshot. I’ll never forget it. The sound of them begging for their lives.”

  “Dante, why’d you go back there that night?” I ask. “After what happened that afternoon? Makes no sense to me.” Or to the police, I don’t bother to add.

  “Feifer asked us to come. Said it was important.”

  This makes even less sense.

  “Feifer? Why?”

  “Feifer called us that afternoon. That’s why I recognized his voice over at the beach. Said he wants to put all this drama behind us, wants things to be cool. Michael didn’t want to go. I figured we should.”

  “Michael still have his gun?” asks Clarence, and if he hadn’t I would have.

  “Got rid of it. Said he sold it to his cousin in Brooklyn.”

  “We got to get the gun back,” says Clarence. “But first you got to turn yourself in to the police. The longer you stay out, the worse this looks. You have to do this, Dante.”

  “Clarence is right,” I say, and leave it at that. I know from Clarence that Dante has always looked up to me some. Dante doesn’t say anything for a couple of minutes, long minutes. I understand completely—he’s just been fed, and he’s free.

  “Let’s do it tonight then,” Dante finally says. “But Tom’s coming with us, okay? I don’t want nothing outlandish happening when I show up at that police station.”

  Chapter 27

  Tom

  ON THE RIDE back to Bridgehampton, I make one call, and it’s not to the cops to tell them we’re on our way. It’s to Len Levitt, an AP sports photographer I’ve known for years, and almost trust.

  “Yeah, I know what time it is, Len. Now you want to find out why I woke you up or not?” When he hears me out, Levitt is thanking instead of cursing me.


  As soon as we’re out of the city and through the Midtown Tunnel, Clarence shows us his big Buick can still move. We get to Marie’s place just before 3:00 a.m.

  When we pull up, Marie is outside waiting. Her back is as straight as a board, and her game face is on. If people thought she’d been shattered by the events of the past week, they’re wrong.

  She’s wearing her Sunday clothes and beside her is a big plastic bag filled with food she’s been cooking all night and stuffing into Tupperware containers just in case Dante has to spend the night in jail. Who knows how long she’s been standing there already, but it doesn’t matter because you know she’d stay there all night if she had to.

  Then again, one look at her face and you know she’d march into hell for her grandson. Grandmothers are something.

  But right now, more than anything else in this world, Marie is relieved to finally be able to lay her eyes and hands on Dante, and when she wraps her arms around his waist, the love in her eyes is as naked as it is ferocious. And then another surprise—Dante starts to cry in her arms.

  “Don’t worry, Grandma, I’m going to be okay,” he says through his tears.

  “You most certainly will be, Dante. You’re innocent.”

  Part Two

  Kate Costello

  Chapter 28

  Tom

  IT’S 4:15 A.M. In the moonlight, East Hampton’s deserted Main Street looks almost wholesome. The only car in sight is a banged-up white Subaru parked in front of the quaint fifties-era movie theater marquee.

  As Clarence plows slowly through town, the Subaru’s lights go on and it tears off down the road. We follow it to the tiny police station, and when we arrive, the Subaru is already parked out front.

  Short, solid, and determined, Lenny Levitt stands beside it, one Nikon hanging around his neck, another being screwed into a tripod.

  I hop out of Clarence’s car and read Levitt the brief statement I composed during the drive from New York City. “Dante Halleyville and Michael Walker,” I say slowly enough for him to take it down in his notebook, “had absolutely nothing to do with the murders of Eric Feifer, Patrick Roche, and Robert Walco. Dante Halleyville is an exceptional young man with no criminal record or reason to commit these crimes.”

  “So where’s Walker?” asks Levitt.

  “Walker will turn himself in tomorrow. There will be no further comment at this point.”

  “Why did they run?”

  “What did I just say, Len? Now start taking pictures. This is your chance to get out of the Sports section.”

  I called Lenny for PR reasons. The tabloids and cops love that shot of the black suspect in shackles paraded through a gauntlet of blue and shoved into a squad car. But that’s not what they’re getting this morning.

  The image Lenny captures is much more peaceful, almost poetic: a frightened teenager and his diminutive grandmother walking arm in arm toward the door of a small-town police station. The American flag flutters in the moonlight. Not a cop is in sight.

  As soon as he has the shots, Levitt races off with his film as agreed, and Clarence and I catch up to Dante and Marie as they hesitantly enter the East Hampton station. Marty Diallo is the sergeant behind the desk. His eyes are shut and his mouth wide open, and when the door closes behind us, he almost falls out of his chair.

  “Marty,” I say, and I’ve been rehearsing this, “Dante Halleyville is here to turn himself in.”

  “There’s no one here,” says Diallo, rubbing the cobwebs out of his eyes, and also taking out his gun. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

  “This is a good thing, Marty. We’re going to sit down here while you make some calls. Dante just turned himself in. Put down the gun.”

  “It’s four thirty in the morning, Dunleavy. You couldn’t have waited a couple hours?”

  “Of course we couldn’t. Just pick up the phone.”

  Marty looks at me with some strange mixture of confusion and contempt, and gives us our first inkling of why Dante was so insistent that I accompany him.

  “I don’t even know why you’re here with this piece of shit,” Diallo finally says.

  Then he cuffs Dante.

  Chapter 29

  Dante

  SOON AS THE desk sergeant wakes all the way up, something pretty scared and angry clicks in his doughy face, and he pulls his gun and jumps out of his chair like he thinks the four of us are going to rough him up or maybe steal his wallet. The gun points straight at me, but everyone puts their hands up in the air, even my grandmoms.

  Just like on the court at Smitty Wilson’s, Tom’s the only one steady enough to say anything.

  “This is bullshit, Marty,” he says. “Dante just turned himself in. Put down the gun.”

  But the cop doesn’t say a word or take his eyes off me. Folks being scared of me is something I’m used to. With white strangers, it’s so common, I’ve almost stopped taking it personally. But with Diallo—I can read his name tag—I can almost smell the fear, and the hand with the gun, with the finger on the trigger, is dancing in the air, and the other one, fumbling for the handcuffs on his belt, doesn’t work too well either. For everyone’s sake, I put out my hands to be cuffed, and even though the cuffs are way too small and hurt, I don’t say a word.

  Even when the cuffs are on me, Diallo still seems nervous and unsure of himself. He tells me I’m under arrest for suspicion of murder and reads me my rights. It’s like he’s cursing me out, only with different words, and every time he pauses, I hear nigger.

  “You have the right to remain silent (pause). And everything you say (pause) can and will be used against you. Got that (pause)?” Then he pulls me toward the door to inside, and he’s rough about it.

  “Where you taking my grandson?” asks Marie, and I know she’s mad, and so does Diallo.

  “Marty, let me wait with Dante until the detectives arrive,” says Tom Dunleavy. “He’s just a kid.”

  Without another word, Diallo shoves me through a small back office crammed with desks and then down a short, tight hallway, until we’re standing in front of three empty jail cells, which are painted blue.

  He pushes me into the middle one and slams the door shut, and the noise of that door shutting is about the worst sound I ever heard.

  “What about these?” I ask, holding up my cuffed wrists. “They hurt pretty bad.”

  “Get used to it.”

  Chapter 30

  Dante

  I SIT ON the cold wooden bench and try to hold my head together. I tell myself that with Grandmoms, Clarence, and most of all Tom Dunleavy outside, nothing bad is going to happen to me. I hope to God that’s the truth. But I’m wondering, How long am I going to have to be here?

  After twenty minutes, a new cop takes me out to be fingerprinted, which is some bad shit. Half an hour later, two detectives arrive in plainclothes. One is young and short and about as excited as the sergeant was scared. The older guy looks more like a real cop, heavyset, with a big square face and thick gray hair. His name is J. T. Knight.

  “Dante,” says the younger one. “All right if we talk to you for a while?”

  “The sergeant says I have the right to an attorney,” I say, trying not to sound too much like a wiseguy.

  “Yeah, if you’re a candy ass with something to hide,” says the older one. “Of course, the only ones who ask for lawyers are guilty as sin. You guilty, Dante?”

  My heart is banging, because once I tell them what happened, I know they’ll understand, but I calm down enough to say, “I want Tom Dunleavy in the room.”

  “Is he your lawyer?” asks the younger detective.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “If you’re not even sure he’s your lawyer, why do you want him in the room?”

  “I just do.”

  The younger one leads me down some steps, then another tight hallway, to a room the size of a big closet with a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. There’s nothing in it but a steel desk and four chairs, an
d we sit there until the older, bigger one returns with Tom.

  From the apologetic way Tom looks at me, I can tell that none of this is happening like he imagined it would. Him and me both.

  Chapter 31

  Tom

  “WHY DON’T YOU start by telling us about the fight,” says Barney Van Buren. He is so amped to have a suspect in the box in his first big case that he’s practically shaking. “The fight that afternoon between you and Eric Feifer.”

  Dante waits for my nod, then begins the story he’s waited almost two weeks to tell.

  “I barely know why we squared off. I don’t think he did either. People just started shoving, and a couple punches were thrown. But no one got hurt. It was over in maybe thirty seconds.”

  “I hear he tagged you pretty good,” says Detective J. T. Knight, his right knee bouncing under the metal table.

  “He might have got a couple shots in,” says Dante. “But like I said, it was no big deal.”

  “I’m curious,” says Knight. “How does it feel to get your ass kicked by somebody a foot and fifty pounds smaller than you, what with all your buddies standing on the sidelines watching it happen?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” says Dante, looking at me as much as Knight.

  “If it was such a minor deal,” asks Van Buren, “why’d your friend run to the car and get his gun? Why did he put the gun to Feifer’s head?”

  “That was messed up,” says Dante, his forehead already beaded with sweat. “It wasn’t my idea he did that. I didn’t even know he had a gun. I had never seen it before.”

  I wonder if Dante is telling the truth about that. And if he can tell small lies, then what?

  “And how about when Walker threatens Feifer again, says this still isn’t over?” says Van Buren. “It sounds like a big deal to me.”

  “He was fronting.”

  “Fronting?” says Knight, snorting. “What’s that?”