Beach Road (8 page)

Our banged-up Crown Vic barely gets a glance from the sleepy-eyed schoolkids hanging out in front of
PriceWise. In this neighborhood police sirens are part of the soundtrack, like the strings and horns in a
Nelson Riddle chart.

“Joe, take it easy. I got it on good authority our man will sit tight till we get there.”
Joe Yates has three of the more annoying qualities you’ll ever find in a colleague or friend-tireless good
humor, a full head of hair, and a beautiful girlfriend. Maybe the three are related, but that doesn’t make
them any less annoying.

Yates doesn’t reply to my request, but apparently he listens. The car slows to double the speed limit, and
there’s less screeching around the corners. When we finally pull up in front of a redbrick six-floor walk-up
and park behind the two double-parked squad cars, half my iced coffee is still in my cup.

“Smooth enough for you, gramps?”
When we reach the fourth floor, everyone is already here-Heekin from Forensics, Nicolo and Hart from
Homicide, and the street cop who broke down the door after a neighbor alerted the super to the funky
smell inside.

But except for the guys in white gloves dusting the doorknobs, faucets, light switches, and window,
everyone’s been waiting for me to get here and see the scene as it was found.

No one’s touched the teenage brother half lying, half sitting on the bed. Judging by the smell and the pallor
and the chunk a rat gnawed off his big toe, I’d say the kid’s been dead about a week.

“TV on when you got here?” I ask.

“Yup,” says Hart, the younger of the two homicide detectives and a bit of a kiss-ass. “Same volume. Same
channel. No one touched a thing, Connie.”
Blaring away on the tube is one of those stand-up comedian shows. Right now some skinny black female
comic is riffing about large black women, and Heekin seems to think it’s hysterical.

“We catch you at a bad time, Jimmyboy? Because if we did, we can reschedule.”
“That’s okay, Chief.”
“You sure? Girlfriend’s pretty damn funny. I mean, she’s killing our friend over here.”
I get one of the guys from Forensics to dust the TV remote for prints so we can turn the set off and I can
ask the question of the hour.

“So who is this poor, unfortunate deceased individual?”

Raiborne
THERE ARE THREE characteristics I find particularly endearing in a friend or coworker-a deep and
dependable level of misery, male-pattern baldness, and a sexually stingy wife. Again, maybe all these traits
work together, but that doesn’t make them any less likable, and my favorite medical examiner, Clifford
Krauss, bless his heart, has all three.

Because of all his winning qualities, it doesn’t bother me in the least that Krauss, who took over the morgue
nine years ago, one year after I made chief of Homicide, is two or three times better at his job than anyone
else in the Seventeenth. And he definitely knows it.

By now we all know that the kid stretched out on his back on the metal gurney in the morgue is Michael
Walker, seventeen, from Bridgehampton, Long Island, and one of the kids wanted in connection with three
East Hampton homicides. Till this morning I didn’t even know there were black people in the Hamptons,
let alone triple homicides. But hey, I’m just a street cop from Bed-Stuy.

When I walk in, Krauss is at his desk in front of his laptop. He cups one hand over the mouthpiece of the
phone and says, “Suffolk County coroner.”
“They just went through my report,” he says after hanging up, “and are pretty sure that the same gun that
killed Walker was also used in the three Hampton homicides on Labor Day weekend.”
Then Krauss grabs his long yellow pad, comes over to where I’m standing next to Walker, and, wielding a
stained Hunan Village chopstick for a pointer, takes me on a dead man’s tour.

The crispness and intensity of Krauss’s delivery hasn’t softened in nine years, and if anything, his
enthusiasm for gleaning secrets from a corpse has only increased. He starts with the exact size and location
of the entrance and exit wounds, and the angle at which the bullet traveled. Reading from his notes, he
describes the caliber, make, and casing of the bullet picked out of the plaster from behind the bed, and
says all three are consistent with the weapon and silencer recovered by police in Long Island.

“I put the time of death at early in the morning of September eleventh,” he says, “very early in the
morning, approximately four a.m.”
“Approximately?”
“Yeah,” says Krauss, with a twinkle in his eyes. “Could have been four thirty. All his blood work and the
amount of dilation of his pupils indicate someone who’d been in a deep sleep right up to the moment he
was shot.”
“Hell of a way to wake up,” I say.

“I’d prefer a kiss from J-Lo,” says Krauss.

“So Walker wasn’t the one watching the tube?”
“Not unless he left it on.”
“Also, we found a basketball cap on the floor of the closet, where it looked like someone was searching for
something. The hat’s barely been worn and is about three sizes too big for this guy here.”
“Isn’t that how they wear everything now?”
“Jeans, coats, sweatshirts, but not hats. And none of Mr. Walker’s prints are on it. Maybe if we’re really
lucky, it was left by the shooter.

“That’s all you got for me, Cliffy?”
“One last thing. The rat who snacked on Walker’s big toe-a black Norwegian, four to six pounds, female,
pregnant.”
“Why’s it always got to be a black rat, Krauss? Why never a white one?”
One thing, just for the record. That description of Cliffy’s wife-pure bullshit. Her name is Emily, and she’s
a sweetheart.

Marie Scott
LAST WEEK THIS very same Riverhead courtroom was filled with a sickening indifference. It is even
worse now. It turns my stomach inside out.

Today the room’s
bursting
with reporters, family and friends of the victims, and, more than anything else, a lust for blood. The
parents of the three dead boys stare at me with powerful hatred, and Lucinda Walker, Michael’s
mom, who I’ve known since she was a grade-school student at Saint Vincent’s, looks at me as if she
doesn’t know what to think. I feel so bad for Lucinda. I cried for her last night. Deep down she must
realize Dante would no more kill Michael than Michael would kill Dante, but there’s so much hurt in
her eyes that I look away and squeeze Clarence’s arm and rub the embossed leather cover of my
Bible.

The spectators crane their necks and gawk as my grandson Dante, in handcuffs and an orange
jumpsuit, is led to that bare table with nothing but a water pitcher in the middle of it. They stir with
anticipation or whatever as a booming voice intones, ”
The State of New York versus Dante Halleyville
” as if it were the ring announcement before a disgusting boxing match. Dante looks so scared and sad
up there it breaks my heart. I need to go and hug him but I can’t, and that makes me feel almost as
bad.

The electricity builds as the judge leans into his microphone and says, “The state of New York charges Mr.
Halleyville with a fourth count of first-degree murder.” Then the judge asks, “How does the defendant
plead?”
Dante’s court lawyer says, “Not guilty.” But it’s as if he has said nothing at all. No one seems to believe
him, or even listen to the man. Until this very moment, I don’t think I believed that a trial could ever really
happen, but now I know it can.

The crowd’s only interest is the district attorney, and now that white man, so young he can’t possibly
understand what he’s saying, so forgive him, Lord, addresses the judge.

“Your Honor,” he says, “in light of the heinous nature of the original crimes and the wanton disregard the
defendant displayed in executing his accomplice, just as he did in the first three execution-style murders,
the state of New York has no choice but to seek the ultimate penalty available to defend its citizens. In this
case, the prosecution takes the extraordinary step of seeking the death penalty.”

I nearly collapse, but I won’t let myself fall in front of all these people. The state of New York wants
to murder my grandson!
Lord,
it’s as simple as that. The state wants to murder my miraculous grandson who is as innocent as your
own son, Jesus Christ, and the crowd thrills, THRILLS, to these terrible words. If they could, or if it
were fifty years ago, they’d surely drag Dante from his chair and pull him out of this so-called
courtroom and hang him from the nearest tree.

Lord, help me, and please help Dante in his terrible time of need.

I look at Clarence, and then I look at Mr. Dunleavy. “Please help us,” I say to him. “Please help Dante. He
didn’t kill those boys.”

Tom
IF YOU’VE NEVER seen a live media courtroom circus, consider yourself lucky.

Vans from all the TV networks and the big cable shows have been double-lined outside the courtroom
building all day, and everywhere I look a correspondent is summoning the required fake gravitas to
describe the ins and outs of such a high-profile death-penalty case.

I can’t get away from the courthouse fast enough. Eyes cast downward, I thread my way through the
crowded parking lot, trying to avoid an encounter with people I’ve known my whole life.

I’m so eager to get into my car, I don’t notice Clarence in the front seat until my key is almost in the
ignition. He’s shattered, sobbing into the back of his hand.

“They want to kill him, Tom. He’ll never get a fair trial. You see what it’s like in there.”
“Clarence, come back to my place tonight. I could use the company,” I tell him.

“I’m not after your sympathy, Tom. I’m here to ask you to be Dante’s lawyer.”
“Clarence, I haven’t been in a courtroom in over a year. Even then I was nothing special.”

“That’s because you never tried, Tom. Not like you did playing ball. Put your mind to it, I believe you
can do anything well. Folks
like
you. They
listen
to you.”

“Just because Dante’s lawyer is older doesn’t mean he’s not doing a good job,” I say. “Besides, he’s
Marie’s choice.”

Clarence shakes his head. “Marie wants
you,
Tom. She told me to ask. If you were on trial for murder, would you want that guy representing you?
Or if your son was on trial? Be real with me.”

“I’m being real, Clarence. I can’t be Dante’s lawyer. The answer is no. I’m sorry.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, Clarence opens the door and pulls himself out of the seat.
“You’re a big disappointment, Tom. Not that I should be surprised. It’s been that way for years.”

Tom
HIGHLY AGITATED NOW, I drive to Jeff’s house. I need to talk to somebody I trust-because I am
thinking about being Dante’s lawyer. I need somebody to talk me out of my craziness.

Ten years ago my brother bought just about the last affordable house in Montauk. I loaned him the down
payment from my signing bonus, and now the house is worth five times what he paid. That doesn’t make
us geniuses. Anything you bought then has gone through the roof. It’s sweet in this case, however, because
Jeff’s wife had just left him for, as she put it, “not being sufficiently ambitious.” Now Jeff and his three
kids are living in a house worth more than a million dollars.

When she ran out on my brother, Lizbeth assumed she’d be getting Sean, Leslie, and Mickey. But Jeff dug
in and hired one of the best lawyers out here. The lawyer, a friend of mine named Mary Warner, pointed
out, among other things, that except in football season, Jeff was home by three thirty every day and had
summers off, and to everyone’s amazement, the judge awarded Jeff full custody of the three kids.

Sean, the oldest, just turned twenty-five, and when I pull into the driveway, he’s in the garage lifting
weights. The two of us talk for a couple of minutes; then he starts breaking my chops.

“So, Uncle,” he asks between reps, “how’s it make you feel to be the least popular person in Montauk?”
“The old man around?” I ask.

“He’s not back yet. The first game of the year against Patchogue is two weeks away.”
“I guess I’ll head over to the high school then. I need to talk to him.”
“You spot me on my bench before you go?”
I’ve got a soft spot for Sean, maybe because he reminds me a little of myself. Because he’s the oldest, the
divorce fell hardest on him. And he had that “son of the coach” crap in school, which is why despite being
a natural athlete, he never went out for a high school team.

The last couple years Sean’s been lifting weights. Maybe he wants to look good in his lifeguard chair, or
make a point to his old man. Well, now he’s making a point with me because he doesn’t stop adding black
rings until he’s got 160 pounds on each end. Add the weight of the bar, that’s over 350, and Sean can’t
weigh more than 170.

“You sure you’re ready for this?” I ask, looking down at his fiercely determined face.

“One way to find out.”
The son of a gun lifts it twelve times, and a huge grin rushes across his beet-red face.

“Thanks for nothing, Uncle Tommy.”
“My pleasure. Okay if I tell the old man how impressive you are?”
“Nah. It’ll only get him talking about all my wasted potential.”
“Don’t feel bad, Sean. For us Dunleavys, squandered talent is a family tradition.”

Tom
I’VE BEEN BACK in town three years, and this is my first visit to the old high school. Truth is, I’d rather
have a root canal than go to a reunion, but as I step onto the freshly waxed gym floor, the memories rush
back all the same. Nothing’s changed too much. Same fiberglass backboards. Same wooden-plank
bleachers. Same smell of Lysol. I kind of love it, actually.

Jeff’s office is just above the locker room, and a very small step up in terms of accommodations and
aroma. He sits in the corner, Celtic-green sneakers up on his metal desk, staring at a game film projected
on the white cinder-block wall. The black-and-white images and the purr of the projector and the dust
motes caught in the air make me feel as if I’ve fallen into a time warp.