Beach Road (7 page)

“That’s what I was trying to tell you about it being no big deal,” says Dante, his eyes begging the two
detectives to please understand and see that what he’s saying makes perfect sense. “The only reason
we’re there that night is because Feifer
called
Michael and asked us to meet him there so we could put this drama behind us. And look, here’s the
truth
-Michael was looking to maybe buy some weed on Beach Road. The only reason we ran is because
we heard the whole terrible thing happen and thought the killer saw us. The fact that Feifer called and
asked us to meet him shows what I say is true.”

“How’d he get Walker’s number?” asks Van Buren.

“I really don’t know. I saw Feifer talking to my cousin Nikki at Wilson’s; maybe he got it from her.”

“And how did you feel about
that.

” asks Detective Knight.

“About what?”
“About Eric Feifer putting the moves on your cousin.”
When Knight says that, he’s leaning halfway across the small table again, so when I bring my hand down
hard in the middle of the table, he jumps back as if a gun went off.

“You’re the one with the problem,” I say, my face in Knight’s now, even more than his was in Dante’s. I’m
bluffing, but Knight doesn’t know that. “Dante had nothing to do with these murders. He was there. That’s
all. Now he’s here to share everything he saw and heard that night. But either the tone of this questioning
changes, or this interview is over!”
Knight looks at me as though he’s going to throw a punch, and I kind of hope he will. But before he makes
up his mind to do it, there’s a hard knock on the door.

Tom
VAN BUREN STEPS outside, and J. T. Knight and I continue to glower at each other until his partner
returns with a large brown paper bag. Van Buren places the bag behind his chair and whispers something to
Knight.

I can’t make out Van Buren’s words, but I can’t miss his smirk. Or Knight’s, either.

What the hell is this about?

“Let’s all calm down here for a second,” says Van Buren, a trill in his voice belying his words. “Dante, did
you stop at the Princess Diner in Southampton on your way out here tonight?”
Dante looks over at me again, then answers. “Yeah, so Tom could use the bathroom.”
“Tom the only one who used the bathroom?”
“No, I think Clarence went too.”
“You think or you’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“So that left you alone in the car? Is that right?”
“I didn’t need to go.”
“Really?”
“What are you getting at?” I ask Van Buren, who maybe isn’t as dumb as he seems.

“An hour ago we got a call from someone who was at the diner at about two thirty this morning. The caller
says they saw a very tall black man throw a gun into the Dumpster in the parking lot.”
“That’s a lie,” says Dante, shaking his head and looking at me desperately. “I never got out of the car.
Didn’t happen.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes, why don’t you send a cop out there and look for yourself?”
“We did,” says Van Buren, a smug smile creasing his lips. Then he reaches behind his back and drops a
sealed plastic bag on the table like a poker player triumphantly laying down a full house.

Staring up at us through the plastic and looking almost obscene is a handgun with a black plastic handle
and a dull steel barrel.

“I’ve never seen that gun in my life!” cries Dante. “And it’s not Michael’s gun either.”
I cut him off. “Dante’s not saying another word.”

Tom
I DON’T KNOW what feels worse-what just happened, or the thought of facing Marie. I stagger up the
stairs into the small waiting area, where Marie and Clarence jump from their chairs and surround me.

Behind them, steep sunlight streams through the glass door to the parking lot. It’s 8 a.m. Dante and I were
in that box for two hours.

“What’s happening to my grandson, Mr. Dunleavy?”
“I need some air, Marie,” I say, and walk through the door into the cool morning.

Marie follows and stops me in my tracks. “What’s happening to my grandson? Why won’t you look at me,
Mr. Dunleavy? I’m standing right in front of you.”
“They don’t believe him,” I say, finally meeting her eye. “They don’t believe his story.”
“How can that be? The young man has never lied in his life. Did you tell them that?”
Clarence puts his arm around her and looks at me sympathetically. “Tom’s doing his best, Marie.”
“His best? What do you mean, his best? Did he tell them Dante had no reason on earth to commit these
crimes? And where’s the gun? There’s no weapon.”
I look at Clarence, then back at Marie. “Actually, they have the gun.”
I sit on a bench and look at the early morning traffic rolling by on Route 27. What a mess this is; what a
complete disaster. And it’s only just starting.

“So, what are you going to do now, Mr. Dunleavy?” asks Marie. “You’re his lawyer, aren’t you?”
Before I can come up with any kind of response, the door swings open behind us. Dante, in handcuffs
again, is being led out by two more cops, this time from the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department.

The cops try to fend off Marie, but they’re no match for her, and she runs between them and throws her
arms around her grandson’s chest. Dante looks ready to cry, and Marie’s face looks even more
heartbroken. The cops don’t want to grab her, so they turn to me.

“Where are you taking him?” I ask.

“Suffolk County Courthouse.”
“We’ll follow them in Clarence’s cab,” I tell Marie. She whispers something to Dante as Clarence gently
pries away her arms. Both of them are crying, and I’m pretty close myself.

“Are you in over your head?” Marie suddenly asks me.

I look at her, and I don’t say
absolutely,
but I’m pretty sure she can read my mind.

Tom
THIRTY YEARS AGO, when the county slapped it together at the outskirts of Riverhead, the Arthur M.
Cromarty Complex, a sprawling campus of county courtrooms, might have looked almost impressive and
modern with its big white walls and tall glass doors.

Now it looks as plain and shoddy as any out-of-date corporate park. We pull into the complex just as
Dante is being led into the main building. Hustling past a flock of off-course seagulls, we follow him in
through the glass doors.

The guard behind the metal detector tells us that arraignments are handled by Judge Barreiro on the third
floor, and with a beefy, heavily tattooed arm, he points us to the elevator.

Courtroom 301 has the same stench of catastrophe as an inner-city emergency room, which in a way it is.
The distraught members of two dozen families have rushed here on short notice, and they’re scattered in
clusters throughout the forty rows of seats.

Clarence, Marie, and I find an empty section and sit and wait as a parade of men, mostly young and dark-
skinned, are processed.

One after another, they’re ushered through a side door with a sheriff on each arm and, as devastated
moms and girlfriends and court-appointed attorneys look on, are formally charged with burglary, drug sale,
domestic battery, and assault. For three years I was one of those public defenders, so I know the drill.

“Such a shame,” Marie whispers, talking to herself. “This is so wrong.”

The system proceeds with brutal efficiency, each arraignment taking less than ten minutes, but it’s still
more than two hours before a disembodied voice announces, ”
The people in the county of Suffolk in the state of New York versus Dante Halleyville.

” And now it’s Marie and Clarence’s turn to gasp.

Like the others before him, Dante wears handcuffs and a bright-orange county-issued jumpsuit, in his case
several inches too short in the legs and arms.

Dante is marched to a rectangular table in front of the judge. Already sitting there is his court-
appointed attorney, a tall, stooped man close to sixty with overly large horn-rimmed glasses. This is
mostly Marie’s doing. She
knows
Dante is innocent, so she’s advised him to use what the court gives him. I don’t necessarily agree, but
I’m just here to give free advice when I’m asked,
if
I’m asked.

Judge Joseph Barreiro leans into the microphone mounted on his podium and says, “Dante Halleyville is
charged with three counts of first-degree murder.” Murmurs of disbelief instantly sweep through all the
rows of the courtroom.

“The defendant pleads not guilty to all three counts, Your Honor,” says Dante’s lawyer. “And in the setting
of bail, we ask that the court bear in mind that this is a young man who turned himself in of his own
volition, has never previously been charged with a single significant offense, and has strong ties to the
community. For these reasons, Dante Halleyville represents a negligible risk of flight, and we strongly urge
that any bail that is set be within the reach of his family’s modest income.”
Dante’s lawyer sits down, and his more-energized adversary jumps up. He is around my age, and with his
short haircut and inexpensive suit, he reminds me of half the kids I went to law school with.

“The state’s position is the opposite, Your Honor. Three young men were bound and executed in cold
blood. Because of the nature of the crimes and the severe penalties facing the defendant, as well as
the fact that before turning himself in he remained at large for several days, we believe he represents a
substantial
flight risk.”

The black-robed judge weighs the relative merits of both arguments for a full thirty seconds. “This court
sets bail for the defendant at six million dollars. Two million dollars for each victim.”
Plea to bail, the whole process takes about as long as it does to place and pick up your order at the drive-
through window of a McDonald’s. The echo of Judge Barreiro’s gavel has barely receded when the two
sheriffs reappear and lead Dante out the side door.

“He’s innocent,” Marie whispers at my side. “Dante never hurt anyone in his entire life.”

Tom

IT’S MONDAY MORNING, and the only person feeling semi-okay with the world is AP photographer
and friend Lenny Levitt. Since the weekend, Len’s moonlight shot of Dante and his grandmother has
appeared on the covers of the
Post,
the
Daily News,
and
Newsday.

My minor role in his affair barely rates a mention-in
Newsday
-and I think I have a pretty good chance of crawling back into my old and comfortable, if
uninspiring, life.

Even though the only thing I’ve got to do is that real estate closing for my buddy Pete Lampke, I’m parked
outside my office at 8:15 a.m. Like every weekday morning for three years, I leave Wingo on the front
seat and step into the Montauk Bakery for my Danish and coffee.

Why I’ve been so loyal to the bakery is a mystery. It’s certainly not the flakiness of the pastry or the
richness of the coffee. Must be the comforts of consistency and the dependable early morning cheer of
owner Lucy Kalin.

Today, the only thing Lucy’s got to say is “two twenty-five.” I guess she had a bad night too.

“I think I know the price by now, Lucy girl. And top of the morning to you too.”
Breakfast in hand, I grab my pooch and head for the office.

Grossman Realty has the ground floor of the building next to mine, and the eponymous owner is also
arriving bright and early. Normally Jake Grossman is a sinkhole of bonhomie, upbeat, full of chatter even
by the outsized standards of his profession.

This morning, though, the way he reacts to my greeting, you’d swear he’s deaf and blind.

Whatever. I’m still relieved to be back in my office where I can quietly read the papers again before
checking in with Clarence.

When I call him, the poor guy’s so twisted up about what’s happening to Dante he can barely talk and
admits he had to go to the emergency room in Southampton for sedatives to get through the night. I
hope I’m imagining it, but he sounds a little
chilly
too. What’s up with everybody this morning?

I know Marie has to be feeling even worse because she doesn’t even pick up her phone.

When Lampke’s contracts haven’t arrived by noon, I get Phyllis at the broker’s on the line.

“I owe you a call,” she says. “Peter decided to go with a lawyer with a little more real estate experience.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
The bad news makes me hungry, but rather than getting shunned across the street at John’s, Wingo and I
drive to a little grocery run by a Honduran man and his three daughters at the edge of Amagansett.

As always, the place is packed with the Hispanic carpenters, gardeners, and day workers who keep the
Hamptons buff. Despite the stack of newspapers with Dante’s picture plastered all over them, no one here
could care less about the latest Hampton drama. In this disconnected Spanish-speaking pocket of town,
I’m invisible, and it feels pretty good.

I eat the pork-and-assorted-veggies sandwich at my desk, where despite my best efforts, I think about
Dante scared in his cell and about his tired old public-defender lawyer. The only good thing I come up with
is that big as Dante is, no one will mess with him.

As of yesterday, Michael Walker still hadn’t turned himself in, and I call Lenny at the AP offices to find
out what, if anything, he’s heard. We’re talking the talk when something is thrown through the window in
the office. What the hell? Shattered glass covers my desk. Then I see a burning bag on the floor.

“Call you back, Lenny! Somebody just broke my damn window.”
I douse the flames with the extinguisher hanging in the hall, but the room is already full of acrid yellow
smoke and a horrendous stench, which Wingo and I soon discover is the smell of a plastic bag of burning
shit.

I think I get the point-somebody is mad at me. And guess what? I’m a wee bit angry at them too.

Detective Connie P. Raiborne
I GIVE DETECTIVE Yates the address for today’s first reported homicide-838 MacDonough-and he
swerves out of the traffic and barrels down the middle of Fulton, his screaming siren and flashing lights
barely denting the usual cacophony of a lovely Bed-Stuy afternoon.