Beach Road (4 page)

Once I start regretting how I screwed things up with Kate, it’s only a matter of a couple more sips
before I revisit
The Moment.

Boston Garden, February 11, 1995. Barely more than a minute to play and the T-wolves are down by
twenty-three. A part of the game so meaningless it’s called “garbage time.” I come down on a
teammate’s ankle, blow out my left knee, and my pro career is over before I hit the famed parquet
floor.

That’s how it works with me and Dr. Jameson. First I think about losing Kate Costello. Then I think about
losing basketball.

See, first I had nothing. That was okay because in the beginning everyone has nothing. Then I found
basketball, and through basketball I found Kate. Now, Kate would deny that. Women always do. But you
and I, Doc, we’re not children. We both know I never would have gotten within ten feet of Kate Costello
without basketball. I mean, look at her!
Then I lost Kate. And then I lost basketball. Bada-bing. Bada-boom.

So here’s the question I’ve been asking myself for ten years: how the hell am I going to get her back
without it?

Doc, you still there?

Kate
UNTIL THIS GOD-AWFUL, godforsaken morning in early September, the only funeral for a young person
I’d ever attended was, I think, Wendell Taylor’s. Wendell was a big, lovable bear who played bass for Save
the Whales, a local band that made it pretty good and had begun to tour around New England.

Two Thanksgivings ago, Wendell was driving back from a benefit show in Providence. When he fell asleep
at the wheel, he was six miles from his bed, and the telephone pole he hit was the only unmovable object
for two hundred yards in either direction. It took the EMS ninety minutes to cut him out of his van.

That Wendell was such a decent guy and was so thrilled to actually be making a living from his music
made the whole thing incredibly sad. Yet somehow his funeral, full of funny and teary testimonials from
friends from as far back as kindergarten, made people feel better.

The funeral for Rochie, Feifer, and Walco, which takes place in a squat stone church just east of town,
doesn’t do anyone a lick of good.

Instead of cathartic tears, there’s clenched rage, a lot of it directed at the conspicuously absent owner of
the house where the murders took place. To the thousand or so stuffed into that church Sunday morning,
Walco and Feif and Rochie died for some movie star’s vanity.

I know it’s not quite that simple. From what I hear, Feif, Walco, and Rochie hung out at the court all
summer and enjoyed the scene as much as anyone. Still, it would have been nice of Smitty Wilson to show
up and pay his respects, don’t ya think?

There is one cathartic moment this morning, but it’s an ugly one. Before the service begins, Walco’s
younger brother spots a photographer across the street. Turns out that the
Daily News
is less cynical about Mr. Wilson than we are. They think there’s enough of a chance of him showing up
to send a guy with a telephoto lens.

Walco’s brother and his pals trash his camera pretty bad, and it would have been a lot worse if the police
weren’t there.

That scene, I come to think later on, that violent altercation, was what some people might call an omen.

Kate
IT JUST KEPT getting worse and worse the day of the funerals.

I don’t belong here anymore,
I think to myself, and I want to run out of the Walcos’ house, but I’m not brave enough.

The line of neighbors waiting to offer their condolences to Mary and Richard Walco starts in the dining
room in front of the breakfront, snakes along three living room walls, then runs past the front door and
most of the way down the bedroom hallway. Clutching Mary Catherine’s tiny hand for dear life, I thread
my way through the heavy-hearted gathering as if the carpet were strewn with mines and make my way to
the end of the line.

All morning I’ve clung to my niece like a life preserver.

But MC, who thank goodness knows nothing of human misery, has no intention of staying put and breaks
out of my grip and zigzags blithely around the room. She finally gloms on to her mom.

When MC scampers off, all the gloom of this dreadful day floods into the space she’s left behind.

I steady myself against one yellow-wallpapered wall and wait my turn, trying to will myself into invisibility.
It’s not a skill I’ve mastered over the years. Then there’s an alarming tap on my shoulder.

I turn. It’s Tom.

And as soon as I see him, I realize he is the land mine I was hoping Mary Catherine would protect me
from.

Before I can say a word, he moves in for a tentative hug that I don’t reciprocate. “It’s awful, Kate,” he
mumbles. He looks awful too, as if he hasn’t slept in about ten days.

“Terrible” is what I manage to say. No more than that. Tom doesn’t deserve more. Ten years ago he broke
my heart, blew it apart, and didn’t even seem to care that much. I’d heard the rumor that he was running
around on me and partying hard. I hadn’t believed the rumor. But in the end I sure did.

“It’s still good to see you, Kate.”
“Spare me, Tom.”
I see the hurt in his face and now I feel bad. Mary, mother of God! What is it with me? After five years
together, he breaks up with me ON THE PHONE, and now I feel bad.

The whole thing has me so contorted, I want to run out into the street and scream like a crazy person.

But of course I don’t. Not good girl Kate Costello. I stand there with a dim-witted little smile plastered on
my face, as if we have been enjoying innocuous pleasantries, and finally, he turns away.

Then I take a deep breath, give myself a stern talking-to about the need to get over myself, and wait my
turn to offer some consoling words to the thousand-times-more-wretched Mary Walco.

One strange and disturbing thing: I hear virtually the same line half a dozen times while I’m standing
there waiting to see Mary-
Somebody’s got to get those bastards for this.

Kate
I OFFER WALCO’S mom the little that I can, and then I cast about the room for a red-haired toddler in a
black velvet dress.

I see MC in the corner, still with her mom, and then spot my precious pal Macklin Mullen and his
handsome grandson Jack over by the makeshift bar. Jack, a lawyer like myself, wanders off as I
approach. Okay, fine. I was going to congratulate him on getting married, but whatever.

Mack is sipping a whiskey and leaning heavily on a gnarled black-thorn shillelagh, but when we throw
ourselves into each other’s arms, his embrace is as warm and vigorous as ever.

“I was fervently hoping that would never end, Katie,” he says when we finally release each other.

“For God’s sake, Macklin, cheer me up.”
“I was about to ask you to do the same thing, darling girl. Three boys dead-tragic, pointless, and
mystifying. Where you been keeping yourself all this time? I know about your many accomplishments, of
course, but I’ve been waiting to toast you in person. Actually, I’ve been waiting to get you drunk! Why in
Christ have you been such a stranger?”
“The standard explanation includes long hours, parents in Sarasota, and brothers scattered with the wind.
The pathetic truth, I’m afraid, is I didn’t want to run into Tom Dunleavy. Who, by the way, I just ran into.”
“The truth is always pathetic, isn’t it? That’s why I avoid it like the plague myself. In any case, now that
you’ve gotten over the dreaded encounter with Dunleavy, why don’t you come out here and put the little
shit out of business? Not that it would be much of an accomplishment. I hear he bills about a hundred
hours a year.”
“Better yet, why don’t I just forgive him and move on? It’s been almost a decade.”
“Forgive? Move on? Kate Costello, have you forgotten that you’re Irish?”
“Macklin, you’ve made me laugh,” I say, and just then, none other than Mary Catherine wobbles across
the room and flings herself at my legs.

“Drivel aside, Mack, this is the true problem for me and Montauk. Of my two favorite people, one is
twenty months old, the other eighty-four.”
“But, Kate, we’re both just hitting our strides. This shillelagh nonsense is nothing but a corny piece of
atmosphere.”

Tom
THE NEXT DAY, to sweat out the funeral, I head to the beach, my four-legged personal trainer, Wingo,
nipping at my heels. It’s the first Monday after Labor Day, the unofficial start of townie summer, and
most of the insufferable New Yorkers are gone.

On a cool, brilliantly sunny day, the greatest stretch of beach in North America is empty.

Running on the damp, packed sand close to the water is no more difficult than running on the track behind
the high school. To punish myself, though, I stay on the soft stuff that sucks at your feet with every step.

In five minutes, everything that’s attached to me hurts-legs, lungs, back, head-so I pick up the pace.

In another five minutes, I can smell the whiskey from last night as the sweat pours off my face. Five
minutes after that, my hangover has nearly vanished.

Later that afternoon, Wingo and I are recovering from our midday workout, me on the couch and Wingo
asleep at my feet, when a knock on the front door rouses us. It’s about four, still plenty of light outside,
and a black sedan is parked on the gravel driveway.

At the door is young master Van Buren, the detective who ran the show on the beach the other night.

Barely thirty, he made detective early this summer. Considering his age, it was quite a coup. He
leapfrogged half a dozen pretty decent cops with more seniority, including Belnap, and it didn’t win him
any friends in the station house. So guess what Barney’s nickname is.

“Tom, I don’t need to tell you why I’m here,” he says.

“I’m surprised it took this long.”
Still dehydrated from my run, I grab a beer and offer him something, just to hear him say no.

“Why don’t we sit outside while we still can,” I say, and then because of the force with which he rejected
my first offer, or because I’m acting like a prick for no good reason, I repeat it. “Sure I can’t get you that
beer? It’s almost five.”
Van Buren ignores me and takes out a brand-new orange notebook he must have just bought for the
occasion at the stationery store in Montauk.

“Tom, people say you did a good job getting that kid to put down his gun the other day. What confuses me
is why you didn’t call the police.”
I can tell Van Buren doesn’t expect an answer. He’s simply letting me know that he can be a prick too.

“Obviously, I should have, but I could tell the kid had no intention of using it.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“I was closer. Believe me, he was more scared than Feif.”
“You know what kind of gun it was?”
“I don’t know guns, Barney.”
“Can you describe it?”
“I barely looked at it. In fact, I made it a point not to. I tried to pretend that me and Walker were just two
people having a conversation. Ignoring the gun made that a lot easier.”
“You know any reason Michael Walker or Dante Halleyville might want to kill Feifer, Walco, or Roche?”
“No. There isn’t any.”
“Why’s that, Tom?”
“They barely knew each other.”
The young detective pursed his lips and shook his head. “No one’s seen them since the murder.”
“Really.”
“Plus, we got reason to think Dante and Walker were at the scene that night.”
I start shaking my head a little at the news. “That makes no sense. There’s no way they’d go back there
after what happened that afternoon.”
“Not if they were smart,” says Van Buren. “But, Tom, these boys weren’t smart. They could be killers.”

Tom

WOW! HALF AN hour after Barney Fife Van Buren leaves with his little orange notebook in hand,
Wingo sounds the alarm again.

More company.

When I look through the front-door window, all I see is torso, which means it’s Clarence, and that’s not
good news either.

Clarence, who drives a cab in town and does some college scouting, has been a close friend since he
steered me to St. John’s fifteen years ago. Because there’s as much downtime for a Hampton cabbie
as for a Montauk lawyer, he comes by my office two or three times a week. The six-foot-six Clarence
is also Dante’s cousin, and I know from his worried expression that’s why he’s here.

This cannot be good.

“I just got a call from him,” says Clarence. “Boy is scared out of his mind. Thinks they’re going to kill
him.”
“Who? Who’s going to kill him?”
“He’s not sure.”
I pull two beers out of the fridge and Clarence takes one.

“Where the hell is he? Van Buren just left here. He says Dante and Walker bolted. It
looks
bad.”

“I know it does, Tom.”
With the sun on the way down, we sit at the counter in the kitchen.

“Van Buren also implied that Dante and Walker were at the murder scene that night.”
“They got a witness?” asks Clarence.

“I can’t tell. He was being cute about it. Why the hell would Dante and Walker be going back there after
what happened?”
“Dante says he can explain everything. But right now we got to get him to turn himself in. That’s why I’m
here. He respects you, Tom. You talk to him, he’ll listen.”
Clarence stares at me. “Tom, please? I’ve never once asked you for a favor.”
“He tell you where they are?”
Clarence shook his head and looked hurt. “Wouldn’t even give me a number.”
I spread my hands wide. “What do you want to do, Clarence? Wait here and hope he calls again?”
“He says we should talk to his grandma. Dante says if Marie says it’s cool, he’ll give us a call.”

Tom
I CAN FEEL right then and there that this is going real bad in a big hurry, and I should not be involved. But
I go with Clarence anyway.

We climb into his big yellow Buick station wagon and head west through Amagansett and East Hampton,
and just before the start of Bridgehampton’s two-block downtown, we turn right at the monument and go
north on 114.