Beach Road (5 page)

Stay on it long enough, the road leads to Sag Harbor, but along the way is the one enduring pocket of
poverty left in the Hamptons. It’s called Kings Highway but is often referred to as Black Hampton. One
minute you’re passing multimillion-dollar estates, the next minute shotgun shacks and trailer homes, old
rotting cars on blocks like in the Ozarks or Appalachia.

Dante and his grandmother live off the dirt road leading to the town dump, and when we pull up to her
trailer, the woman who comes to the door has Dante’s cheekbones and lively brown eyes but none of his
height. In fact, she’s as compact and round as Dante is long and lean.

“Don’t stand out there in the cold,” says Marie.

The sitting room in the trailer is dark and a little grim. The only light comes from a single low-watt table
lamp, and the desperation in the close air is a palpable thing. It’s hard to imagine that both she and Dante
can live in here together.

“We’re here to help,” says Clarence, “and the first step is getting Dante to turn himself in.”
“You’re here to help? How is that? Dante and Michael had nothing to do with these crimes,” says Marie.
“NOTHING! Dante is very aware of the chance he has been given, and earned, and what that could
mean.”
“I know that,” says Clarence, heartbreak in his voice too. “But the police don’t. The longer he stays out,
the worse it looks for him.”
“My grandson could have entered the NBA draft,” says Marie as if she hasn’t heard a word Clarence said.
“This home was filled with vultures waving cars and money under his nose, and Dante turned them all
down. Dante told me that when he does go pro, he wants to buy me a new house and a new car. I asked
him, What’s wrong with this house? What’s wrong with my car? I don’t need those things.”
Marie fixes us with a hard stare. Her tiny place is immaculate, and you can see the defiant effort to create
a semblance of middle-class stability. Barely visible on the wall directly behind Marie is a formal
photograph of Dante, his older brother, and his parents all dressed up outside the Baptist Memorial Church
in Riverhead. In the picture, Dante looks about ten, and I know from Clarence that soon after that picture
was taken, Dante’s father was stabbed to death on the street and his mother went to jail for the first time. I
also know that his brother, who many thought was almost as good a pro prospect as Dante, is serving a
two-year sentence in a corrections center upstate.

“Marie,” says Clarence, “you got to get Dante to give Tom a call. Tom used to be a heck of a ballplayer.
Now he’s a heck of a lawyer. But he can’t help Dante if Dante won’t let him.”
Marie stares at me, her face not revealing a thing. “This neighborhood is full of folks who used to be great
ballplayers,” she says.

Loco
ON A SLEEPY midweek afternoon in the teeming metropolis that is downtown Montauk, Hugo Lindgren
sits at the counter of John’s Pancake House, killing time like only a cop can, turning a free cup of coffee
into a two-hour paid vacation.

Since Lindgren’s all alone at the counter-the only “customer” in the whole place, in fact-I do the
sociable thing and take the stool beside him. Now, how many other drug dealers would make a gesture like
that.

“Loco,” he mutters.

As I sit, luminously green-eyed Erin Case comes over bearing a nearly empty pot of coffee.

“Good afternoon, darlin’,” says Erin in her still-strong Ulster brogue. “What can I get you?”
“I’d love a double-vanilla latte decaf, if it’s not any trouble.”
“No trouble at all, darlin’. Got it right here,” says Erin, filling my mug with the dregs of the pot in her right
hand. “You said double-vanilla latte decaf, right?”
“Must be my lucky day.”
“Every day’s your lucky day, darlin’!”

Pancake John is getting ready to close up shop and flip the sign, so when Erin excuses herself to wipe
the maple syrup off the red Naugahyde booths, me and Lindgren shyly return to our so-called coffee.
And when Erin stoops under a table to pick up a fallen menu, I slide him my
Newsday.

“John Paul Newport’s column on Hillary,” I say. “It’s hilarious. Kind of thing your lieutenant might get a
hoot out of too.”
“Thanks, pal,” says Lindgren.

He cracks the editorial section just enough to see two fat envelopes, then slides over his
New York Post.

“Crossword’s a bear today,” he says, “but maybe you’ll have better luck with it than I did.”
“Coffee’s on me, Hugo,” I say, dropping five dollars on the counter as I head to the door.

I don’t open my
Post
until I’m safely back in the Big Black Beast stationed in the middle of the empty parking lot.

Then I read the note from Lindgren.

Apparently some sharp-eyed civilian called in a tip to the cops this morning about a wanted fugitive
looking a lot like Michael Walker. The suspect was leaving a Brooklyn gym last night, and the name of the
establishment now fills the twenty-two letters set aside for nine across. And when I glance at the backseat,
I see Hugo has also left me a little party favor-a brand-new, bright-red Miami Heat basketball cap.

I may have been underestimating Lindgren all these years. I know it’s only the
Post
and not the
London Times,
but who would have thought that a corrupt, degenerate excuse for a police officer had the balls or
vocabulary to do the crossword in ink?

Loco
ON ACCOUNT OF the fact that I’m a whole lot brighter and craftier than I look, locating the Bed-Stuy
Community Center is a piece of cake. The tricky part is finding a place to park where the Big Black Beast
doesn’t draw too much attention to itself and I still have a halfway decent view of both entrances. This,
after all, is a stakeout. Just not by the cops.

After circling the block a couple times, I double-park half a dozen spaces past the community center.
That’s right across the street from Carmine’s Pizzeria, so it looks as if I’m just sitting there enjoying my
Pepsi and slice like any other self-respecting neighborhood goombah.

I thought these boxing clubs were extinct, something out of a black-and-white Cagney flick. These days,
tough kids don’t scrap. They strap. So mastering the sweet science is only going to get you killed.

But maybe I’m wrong, because the place looks all renovated and spiffy, and folks are going in and out at
a pretty good clip. Most of ‘em have a strut too.

If nothing else, banging on a heavy bag has got to be good stress management. And right now our man
Michael Walker has got to be seriously stressing, what with an APB out for him in fifteen states and an
outstanding warrant for triple homicide.

While Walker works out, I blacken the end of the Graycliff Robusto I bought at the Tinder Box in East
Hampton. And it looks like I picked it well. It’s nice and soft, and lights like a dream.

The bad news is that I’m exactly three puffs into my delightful cigar when Walker slides out the back door
in a gray hooded sweatshirt, a big gym bag slung over his bony shoulder.

Now I’m fucked. If I put it out and relight it, the Graycliff will never taste the same. If I take it with me, it’s
hardly going to be the relaxing experience I had in mind when I dropped fifteen dollars on it.

So making the kind of difficult executive decision that earns me the big bucks, I open the sunroof and
place the cigar gently in the ashtray. Then I follow Walker north toward Fulton Street.

Staying half a block back, I see him take a quick left. Just as I round the corner, he looks both ways and
ducks into a six-floor tenement about halfway down the block. Two minutes later, the lights go on and the
shades come down on the corner apartment four flights up.

Gotcha!

I’ve caught the fugitive.

Loco
AND GIVE THAT lucky man a cigar!
I get back to the Big Black Beast, and everything, including my slowly burning Graycliff, is just like I left it.
Seeing as we’re in Crooklyn, I pop in an old-school Eric B and Rakim CD and head for the Williamsburg
Bridge.

At 8:00 p.m. the Manhattan-bound lanes are flowing, and twenty minutes later, as my cigar burns
down to the finish, I’m in Chinatown, Jake.

Killing time.

It’s a way different world down here, lots of tiny people scurrying over the packed sidewalks with
feverish energy, and it never fails to get me jazzed. Makes me think of
Saigon, Apocalypse Now,
and
The Deer Hunter.

I luck into a parking spot big enough for the Beast, a miracle down here, and wander around for a while
until I find a familiar place, where I wash down a couple plates of sweet, soggy dim sum with a couple of
sweet, soggy beers.

After dinner for one, I walk around some more,
killing time,
then drive to even darker, quieter Tribeca.

I park on Franklin, climb into the back, and stretch out on my foam mattresses.

With my blacked-out windows cracked for ventilation, sleeping conditions are pretty damn good, and the
next time I open my eyes it’s 3:30 a.m. and I have that pounding in my chest you get when your alarm
rips you out of sleep in the middle of the night. I rub the gunk out of my eyes, and when the street comes
back into focus, I see that the shadows fluttering over the cobblestones are rats. Is that what Frank meant
about waking up in a city that never sleeps.

Without stopping for coffee, I head back to Bed-Stuy, and half an hour after my alarm went off, I pick
the lock in the vestibule of Michael Walker’s building. Then I climb the stairs two, three at a time to the
fugitive’s roof.

It’s cool and quiet up here, and at this hour Bed-Stuy looks peaceful as Bethlehem on a starry night, even
beautiful.

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.

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.”