Beach Road (17 page)

Raiborne
NOW I FEEL as if maybe I’m pushing the envelope too far, even for me.

The next morning, instead of driving to the precinct house in Brooklyn, I take the Grand Central Parkway
to the Northern State and follow the signs for Eastern Long Island. Two hours later, I’m rolling through the
shade of the biggest, oldest elms I’ve ever seen into downtown East Hampton.

Since it’s my first time out here, I squeeze my Taurus between a starter Porsche and a bright-red Ferrari
and have a look around.

It’s Main Street USA. I’m two hours from Bed-Stuy, but I feel as though I’m on some kind of National
Geographic expedition, like Darwin in the Galápagos. I’d buy a notebook and jot down my impressions,
except there’s no place to buy one.

The only things for sale seem to be cashmere, coffee, and real estate. Shit, there are more real estate
agencies here than bodegas in Brooklyn. In two blocks I count seven, all in white clapboard houses with
cute, preppy names: Devlin McNiff and Brown Harris Stevens.

But there’s nothing cute about the prices under the black-and-white photographs, eight-by-tens, like the
ones Krauss takes in the morgue. Twenty million for something grand, four million for something nice, and
$950,000 for a shack on an eighth of an acre. Is that possible?

When I tire of walking, I check out a “bodega” called the Golden Pear Café, where oddly enough
everyone behind the counter
is
Hispanic, like in a real bodega. I pick one of the six kinds of coffee and a four-dollar slice of angel
cake, and take them to a bench out front.

The coffee’s way better than I’m used to, the pastry beats the hell out of a Hostess Twinkie, and there’s
something about the light out here. But there’s so much money dripping off of everything I can’t tell where
the town ends and the money begins. Instead of wasting any more time figuring it out, I cut myself a break
and spend the next ten minutes warming up in the sun and smiling at the girls walking by, suddenly
remembering life’s too short to do much else.

Raiborne
THE EAST HAMPTON Police Station isn’t quite as idyllic as the sidewalk outside the Golden Pear. To my
disappointment, it looks like a police station-squat and grim and overcrowded and sweaty. Three beefy,
Irish-looking detectives are stuffed into one room. The chief detective, the youngest of the four, has got his
own little office, the size of a small closet.

“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?”

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.

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!
”

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 rusted-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?”

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.