The Beach House Page 8

  "Nobody has any idea how over the top and ridiculous it gets out here. These people buy ten-million-dollar houses and then tear them down."

  One mansion blended into the next, and as tasteful as the homes were, there was something odd about the neighborhood. It looked colorized, a very upscale suburbia, with Ferraris instead of station wagons, and every messy trace of children airbrushed out.

  "Strange times we live in," I said. "Everyone believes they're just a couple of breaks from being rich. I think it's something they put in the water."

  "I buy Lotto tickets every week," said Pauline. "And I drink bottled water."

  The conversation drifted back to Peter's murder and the investigation.

  "Actually, I called all of my friends off the case," I told her.

  "Why did you do that, Jack?"

  I told Pauline what had happened to Fenton on his boat, how Hank had gotten fired, and that Marci and Molly had been followed.

  Pauline merely nodded. "Remember what I told you about the big leagues, young Jack."

  "I'm twenty-eight, Pauline."

  "Uh-huh," she said, nodding. Then she reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a small revolver. "Ever shoot anybody? Ever get shot at?"

  "Did you?" I asked her.

  "I already told you. I'm from Detroit."

  I watched Pauline's merry eyes concentrating on the road and her hair whipping around in the breeze, and I realized the only honest thing for me to do was to shut up and smile. Because sitting next to Pauline was making me happy. Simple as that.

  "Stay for dinner," I said, "and I'll introduce you to Sam's Pizza. On a good day, it's right up there with John's and Lombardi's."

  "High praise, but I have to get back. Maybe another time."

  "Artichokes and bacon, the yin and yang of pizza toppings?"

  "You're persistent."

  "Actually, when it comes to women, I tend to discourage pretty easily."

  "Maybe it's time you get over that."

  Chapter 37

  MY BIKE — I guess it's mine now — was still parked in front of the house. After Pauline dropped me off, I stood beside it and watched the orange taillights of her car recede toward Manhattan.

  It felt too early to hunker down for the night. And I was a little hurt that Pauline had turned down my invitation for dinner. I liked her, and I thought she liked me. Of course, I'd thought that Dana was rather fond of me, too. So with no particular place to go, and no one to go there with, I threw a leg over the Beemer and pointed it west.

  Just beyond town, I turned onto Old Montauk Highway, a well-traveled road full of roller-coaster humps and dips, which had offered Peter and me our first taste of genital titillation. We'd dubbed it "the Weenie Road" because if you're going fast enough as you crest the hills, that's where you feel it.

  That night I thought of both Peter and Pauline when I twisted back the throttle and caught some air. Long live the Weenie Road, I thought.

  Too soon, I was back on 27, ripping past condo time-shares and trendy restaurants. Every time I got on the bike I was getting a little better at it, learning how to lean into turns, mastering the rhythm of clutch lever and throttle. Maybe a little of Peter was rubbing off.

  When I swerved off 27 onto Bluff Road, it occurred to me that I was probably following the same route that Peter had on his last night. It didn't feel like a coincidence.

  The Neubauer estate was less than a quarter mile up the road. When I saw the open gates, I braked unconsciously and swerved between them. A hundred yards later I cut the engine and the lights. Then I coasted down the gentle grade toward the beach.

  I stashed the bike in the thick brush of the last dune, took off my sneakers, and sat on the cool sand just out of reach of the tide.

  Everything about the scene echoed the night they brought me to look at Peter's body. The moonlight had the same powerful wattage. The surf was about as high and as loud.

  As I pondered the scene, the tide slithered up the beach and grabbed my heel. I recoiled in shock. No one who wasn't covered in white fur would go swimming in the middle of the night in that.

  Next thing I knew, I was stripping off my clothes, bellowing like a madman, and running headlong toward the surf.

  No one would go in the water without a really good reason — would they?

  Could Peter have done it? Then seemed like as good a time as any to find out.

  The water was frightening, bone-aching cold, and it was a full month warmer than when Peter had supposedly drowned. In three steps, my feet and lower legs hurt. But I kept running through the slop of the first wave. I dove under the collapsing crest of the next.

  In a kind of shock I swam furiously from the shore, counting out thirty strokes. When I stopped, I was well past the breakers. The safety of the beach looked a mile away.

  For what felt like minutes but was probably less than thirty seconds, I bobbed in the moonlit swells. I took deep, slow breaths, and my body adjusted somewhat to the cold.

  Peter wouldn't have done this. Hell, no. Peter hated to be cold . . . besides, Peter loved Peter.

  I could control my breathing, but I couldn't control my brain. I was up to my neck in the big black ocean, getting scared.

  I began to swim back toward the beach as desperately as I'd left it. Halfway there, numbed by the merciless cold, I let myself slip too far forward on a curling breaker.

  Suddenly the ocean fell away and I was tumbling in black space. I felt a beat of terror-filled nothingness. I kept reaching out. Then the waves swept me back again. I was lost in a black swirl. I felt as if I were being buried alive. I couldn't breathe. Over and over again the waves pounded me like falling concrete from a collapsing building. They beat me against the shell-covered floor.

  Somehow I remembered that you have to stop fighting back. I grabbed my nose and concentrated on holding my breath. Seconds later, I resurfaced, wildly gulping air.

  I wasn't prepared for the second wave. It was smaller, but it was the one that really nailed me. I took a lungful of water down with me. If I hadn't thought about all the shit Mack would have had to listen to about my killing myself, too, I might have given up. The waves seemed to have taken on a life of their own. They felt like half a dozen battering rams. I hung on, one second at a time, until the ocean finally spat me out and I crawled onto the beach.

  Even though Jane Davis had told me my brother didn't drown, I had to prove it to myself.

  I guess I had. Peter hadn't gone swimming that night. My brother had been murdered.

  Part Three

  THE INQUEST

  Chapter 38

  VERY EARLY on a Monday morning in August, I rolled over in my Montauk bed and sighed contentedly. Once in a blue moon, Mack gets it into his head to make a "proper breakfast," and all it took was one semiconscious breath to know that downstairs Mack was knee deep in it.

  I scrambled down the stairs and found him hunched over the stove. His attention was focused on the four gas-burning rings. His arms were moving as furiously as Toscanini's when conducting on the stage of Carnegie Hall.

  I inhaled the greasy bouquet and watched the master at work. Mack had much too much frying to oversee for me to risk saying a word at this delicate moment. In a motley armada of pots and pans, bacon, sausages, blood sausages, potatoes, mushrooms, tomatoes, and red beans were noisily building toward a simultaneous finale of pleasure. I brought out the jams, started squeezing the oranges, and, when he gave me the signal, pushed down the toast.

  Five minutes later the stovetop symphony was done. In an excited rush of plucks, scoops, and tilts, a generous allotment from each pan was transferred to two dinner-size plates. The two of us sat down and began silently mixing the reds, yellows, blacks, and browns to our genetically determined liking. It felt as if mere seconds had passed before the last slices of toast were going into the toaster for the final cleanup operation and we were reflectively sipping our Irish breakfast tea.

  "God bless you, Mack, this was better
than sex."

  "Then you're doing it wrong," he said, washing down a marmaladed crust with a big sip of tea.

  "I'll have to keep practicing," I promised as I poured him another cuppa, then headed to the front porch for the paper. I read it before coming in and dropping it down beside his well-smeared plate. I'd known this was coming — but now it was official.

  "Feast your eyes on this."

  I looked over Mack's old bony shoulders and read the big, beautiful headline one more time: MURDER INQUIRY SET INTO SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF MONTAUK MAN. Then we wolfed down the story with the same rapt attention that we'd given our breakfast.

  For the first time in two months, I felt celebratory. I pumped the air with a fist. We were too full to jump, so I scampered to the liquor cabinet, and at seven in the morning, with the feast still settling in our bellies and minds, we did a shot of the good stuff.

  "Here's mud in your eye, Jackson," Mack said.

  "Do you realize what we've done," I said excitedly. "We've shocked the goddamned system."

  "The goddamned system is a clever old whore, Jack. I'm afraid all we did was piss it off."

  Chapter 39

  AT WORK THAT WEEK, I kept my head down. Literally. I figured if no one saw it popping out of my office, no one would think to lop it off. I don't recommend it as a long-term career strategy, but at that point I wasn't thinking long-term about Nelson, Goodwin and Mickel, or anything else.

  Since we still hadn't gotten a response regarding the Mudman, it left me plenty of time to contemplate the upcoming inquiry.

  Early on Thursday morning Pauline called and asked me to meet her for lunch. She said it was "important," and Pauline tends not to exaggerate. She suggested an out-of-the-way place on First Avenue, in the Fifties, Rosa Mexicana.

  When I arrived, I saw her at a table in a back corner. As usual, she wore a dark suit and had her hair in a ponytail. And as usual, she looked great. But she also looked anxious, or maybe in a hurry.

  "You okay?" I hadn't seen her in almost a week, and I'd missed her. Streetwise Pauline seemed rattled. I had an awful feeling she was about to tell me that working on Peter's case had been a big mistake and she'd finally come to her senses. Maybe she had been threatened.

  "The more I look into Neubauer's file," said Pauline in a whisper, "the nastier it gets."

  "Nastier than throwing young women off yachts?"

  "I've spent more time than I can spare doing a background check on him. I went all the way back to when he was still in Bridgeport. Bridgeport is not exactly Greenwich and four-acre lots. It's gangs and housing projects.

  "In 1962 and again in 1965," Pauline continued, "when Neubauer was in his early twenties, he and a guy named Bunny Levin were arrested for extortion."

  "He has a criminal record? That's great."

  "It isn't great. In both cases all charges were dropped when the key prosecution witnesses suddenly changed their testimony. One witness disappeared completely."

  "So we can't use any of this in the inquiry?"

  "That's not my point, Jack."

  "If you want to quit, Pauline, please just tell me. You've already helped me enormously. I understand what you're saying to me about Neubauer."

  Her face twisted and I thought she was almost going to cry. But she just shook her head. "I'm talking about you, Jack. Listen to me. These people make problems disappear."

  I wanted to lean over and kiss her, but she looked spooked enough already. It didn't seem like a good idea. I finally reached under the table and touched her hand.

  "What was that for?" Pauline asked.

  "For giving a shit."

  "You mean for caring, Jack?"

  "Yes, for caring."

  Chapter 40

  PAULINE HAD NEVER ACTED LIKE THIS in her life. Not even close. As she and Jack stepped out of Rosa Mexicana, she felt flustered and exposed. "I really don't think we should be seen going back to work together," she announced.

  Jack held out a faint smile, but Pauline left him standing slightly befuddled as she vanished up the street. Without looking back, she walked west to Third, headed downtown ten blocks, then turned west again, all the way into Grand Central, where a number six train was waiting with open doors.

  As soon as the doors closed, her equilibrium returned. Heading downtown always felt good. Making the trip in the middle of the day added a lovely hooky-playing frisson.

  She got off the train at Canal and continued downtown on foot until she pushed through the heavy doors of a former girdle factory on Franklin Street.

  An exchange of buzzes got her into an untagged service elevator that opened directly onto a raw loft strewn with a motley collection of artifacts from its owner's eccentric résumé. Pauline walked past a dusty massage table, a cello, and circus stilts, toward the square of light at the far wall.

  It wasn't until she got to the very back of the space that she spotted the wavy-haired head of her sister, Mona, bent under the light of her worktable. She was soldering a pin onto a gold circular earring embossed with what looked like hieroglyphics.

  Two years earlier Mona had hung up her cha-cha shoes for the security of a career as an avant-garde jewelry designer. In the past few months her earrings, necklaces, and rings, all based on castings of actual Con Edison manhole covers, were flying out of pricey boutiques all over Manhattan and L.A.

  Mona didn't notice her visitor until Pauline sat beside her on the bench and rubbed up against her like a friendly Siamese cat.

  "So, what's his name?" asked Mona without taking her eyes off the back of a twenty-four-karat gold earring.

  "Jack," said Pauline. "His name is Jack. He's great."

  "It could be worse," said Mona. "It could be John or Chuck."

  "I suppose. He's this guy at work who lives with his grandfather and whose brother was probably murdered. I've known him three months and already he's got me doing things that could cost me everything I have. What's really screwed me up is, I'm more worried about him than me. Mona, I think he actually has a conscience."

  "Sounds like you're penis-whipped. Are you?"

  "Totally. Except that I haven't even seen it yet. He is a cutie, though. Best of all, he doesn't seem to know it."

  "Sounds like you," said Mona. "So, what do you want me to tell you?"

  "No point telling me anything. I just need a hug."

  Mona turned off her soldering iron, flipped off her gloves, and wrapped her arms around her savvy, streetwise, utterly romantic sister.

  "Be careful," she said. "He sounds too good to be true, this Chuck of yours."

  Chapter 41

  I WAS DOING SOME DECENT LAWYERING on behalf of the Mudman. Actually, the work was a lot like a legal aid defender clinic I had participated in that spring at Columbia. I had a couple of publications from the National Institute of Trial Advocacy spread out on my desk. Also Fundamentals of Trial Techniques, by Thomas Mauet, referred to by us law students as "Mauet."

  The phone rang and I snatched it up. It was Montrose's executive assistant, Laura Richardson. Damn.

  "Bill asked me to see if you could come up," she said.

  "It's not really a good time for me," I said. "I'm up to my eyeballs down here."

  "I'll meet you at the elevator."

  Her call set off the same adrenaline rush as the earlier one. This time I was less afraid of what Montrose had in mind than of how I might react. To get my heart rate down a notch, I slowly walked the full circumference of the floor before getting on the elevator.

  "What kept you?" asked Laura as I arrived on forty-three.

  Instead of her walking me down the plank to Monty's office, she led me to an elegant little conference room and parked me at a jet black table illuminated by four recessed spotlights. Now, what is this?

  "It shouldn't be more than a couple of minutes," she said before closing the door. "Wait here." If you've worked in a big corporation, you may have been the victim of this kind of bloodless violence. First you're summoned to an urgent meeti
ng, then met by an assistant who politely asks you to sit and wait.

  I did as instructed, but my mind was rioting. Why am I sitting here with my hands on my lap? Why am I cooperating? After maybe ten minutes, I couldn't stay in the hot seat any longer. I wandered outside.

  When Richardson saw me walking free, I thought she was going to yank an alarm.

  "Going to the bathroom," I explained.

  A relieved Richardson rearranged her face.

  When I returned to the conference room, I saw Barry Neubauer waiting there. Instead of the surprise or shock I probably should have felt, I was kind of teed off. This was actually his first response to Peter's death. "Hello, Jack," he said. "I don't know if anyone mentioned it, but I'm a client here."

  Neubauer pulled his custom-made Italian black suit jacket snug across his square shoulders and sat down. I tried to maintain some perspective. He was just another medium-size, middle-aged man, after all, but he was buffed and art-directed. Every touch, from his perfect tan to his perfect haircut to his thousand-dollar silver eyeglass frames, argued for his special status in the world.

  "Do you know why I'm here, Jack?"

  "You're finally getting around to paying your condolences? That's touching."

  He slammed his fist on the table. "Listen, you insolent punk bastard. Obviously, you've got it into your thick skull that I had something to do with the unfortunate death of your brother. So instead of conducting your little amateur-hour investigation, I thought maybe you'd like to talk to me directly."

  He hadn't asked, but I decided to sit down, too. "All right. So where do we start?"

  "I didn't murder Peter. I liked your brother. He was a good kid, with a nice sense of humor. And unlike Dana's other boyfriends, I actually liked you."

  I couldn't keep back a half smile. "That's nice to know. How is Dana?"