Beach Road (6 page)

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.”

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

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.

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.”

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, and 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.

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?”
“Acting tough,” says Dante, glancing at me again for help. “Trying to save face for letting Tom talk him
into putting the gun down.”

”
You two think we’re idiots.

Is that it?” says Knight, suddenly leaning across the table to stick his face in Dante’s. “Ten hours after
a fight that’s ‘no big deal’ and a threat that didn’t mean a thing, Feifer, Roche, and Walco are shot
through the head. A triple homicide-over
nothing.

”