The Beach House

Chapter 20

I DROVE AROUND FOR A WHILE – fast, too fast for the winding, crowded side roads of eastern Long Island. I was feeling really bad now, not for myself – well, hell, yeah, for myself.

By the time I got home, it was past four. The house was still a disaster from the day before. I figured I'd better clean up before Mack had to do it.

A note was stuck in the screen door. My heart sank. I grabbed the envelope and opened it.

The stationery was rose-colored and I could smell perfume all over it.

The note said – IL8400. The Memory.

That was enough. I'd gotten messages like it before. Dana wanted me to meet her at the Memory Motel. She was waiting there now. The letters and numbers were the license plate of her Mercedes SUV The note, the perfume – it was pure Dana.

I shouldn't have gone over to the Memory but – what can I say? – I went. Maybe deep down, I'm a hopeless sap. Or maybe I'm too romantic for my own good.

Dana was there. What was worse, she knew that I would go. She was so sure of herself. Well, maybe I could change that.

I pulled open the passenger-side door and leaned inside. The Mercedes still smelled new. It also smelled of her perfume.

"Sit down, Jack. We need to talk," she said in the softest voice. A slender, manicured hand patted the seat.

"I'm fine where I am," I said. "I'm good."

"It's not what it looked like, Jack."

I shook my head. "Sure it is, Dana. While I was riding around the past couple of hours, it all came together. I saw you and Volpi talking at my house yesterday. Then you left around seven or so. Amazingly, so did Volpi. You'll have to fill me in on the rest."

Dana somehow managed to look angry at me. "He came to our house this morning, Jack. Not last night. Said it was about the investigation, but he brought his bathing suit. That's Frank."

"So you invited him to have a swim? One thing led to another?"

Dana shook her head. "Jack, you can't believe that I'm interested in Frank Volpi."

"Dana," I said, "why were you making out with him? It's a fair question."

"Hey, Jack, let me tell you something that I learned from my father – life isn't fair. That's why he always wins. It's how the game is played. And Jack, it is a game."

"Dana -"

She waved me off, and it struck me that I had never really seen that side of her. "Let me finish. I know my timing is dreadful, but I've been thinking about this for weeks. I guess it's why I didn't come and pick you up on Friday night. Jack, I need space. I really need time to be by myself… I'm going to Europe for a couple of months. I've never done that before. The European thing."

"Oh, yeah, me neither," I said. "Run away from my problems."

"Jack, don't make this any harder than it already is. It is hard for me." Then tears started to run down her cheeks. I couldn't believe that all this was happening. It almost seemed too bad to be true.

"So, Dana," I finally said, "is Volpi going to Europe with you?"

I didn't wait for an answer. I slammed her car door and walked away. I guess we had just broken up.

Chapter 21

I COULDN'T SLEEP THAT NIGHT because I couldn't stop the bad thoughts and images crashing through my head. I finally got up and cleaned the mess from my father's funeral. About five in the morning I went back to bed.

On Sunday I made the hour-and-a-half trip to the BMW dealership in Huntington. I figured Peter got financing directly from the dealer, and I hoped that if I showed up with the bike and told them what had happened, they might offer fair market value.

The only salesman in the place was a burly, ponytailed guy in his mid-thirties, and I watched him expertly direct a retired couple to a full-dress silver Tourer.

"Bags!" said the salesman, introducing himself once he'd loaded up his prospects with brochures. "Although I don't know what I can possibly do for you since you already got the prettiest, baddest, and best engineered form of automotive transportation in the world parked right out front. Believe it or not, I delivered the same sucker to a handsome kid from Montauk not six weeks ago – same midnight blue paint, same custom black Corbin seat."

I explained that it wasn't a coincidence, and Bags extended an arm and squeezed my shoulder. "That's awful. Listen, man, you'll get a lot more for it by putting an ad in the New York Times and selling it yourself."

"All I'm looking to do is pay off the loan," I told him.

Bags's eyes grew wide, and they were large to begin with.

"What loan? You don't owe a dime on that sweetheart."

At his cluttered desk, he pulled out the paperwork from the sale. "Here we go. Peter wrote me a check for nineteen hundred dollars for the ten percent deposit," he said, showing me a copy. "He paid the rest in cash."

Although Bags may have felt that he was delivering good news, he could tell that I didn't see it that way. "Listen, if a dude walks in with the money, I'll sell him a motorcycle. I'd even sell one to a Republican if I was having a bad month," he guffawed.

The check was written on a bank six exits up the Long Island Expressway in Ronkonkoma. I knew where it was. When we were kids my father's truck broke down just outside it, and we spent half the night in a service station there. We loved the name so much, it became family lore.

Ten minutes later I was back in Ronkonkoma for the second time in my life, sitting at the desk of the Bank of New York branch manager, Darcy Hammerman. She'd been expecting to hear from me.

"Peter named you as the sole beneficiary, so the balance is yours. I might as well cut you a check now, unless you want to open an account here in Ronkonkoma. I didn't think so."

She opened a photo-album-sized checkbook and, in her careful banker's hand, filled one out. She stamped for deposit only on the back.

Then she carefully ripped the check out of her book and slid it over to me. It was for $187,646.

I read the six numbers in disbelief. My eyes started to blink. I hadn't felt that bad since, well… the day before. What in hell had Peter done?

Chapter 22

I NEEDED A FRIEND TO TALK TO, and I knew where to find one. I even had an appointment.

Sammy Giamalva was nine when he matter-of-factly told my brother that he was gay. By the time he was eleven, he knew he wanted to cut hair. Probably because of that precocious self-knowledge, Sammy, despite being one of the smartest kids at East Hampton High, was never much of a student.

At fifteen, he dropped out altogether and started working at Kevin Maple's. He spent his first six months sweeping up hair. Then he got promoted to shampooing. Six months later Xavier quit in the middle of an appointment, and Kevin gave Sammy a shot at his own chair. The rest, as they say, is Hamptons hairdressing history.

But Kevin milked him dry, booking him for ten or eleven heads a day, and after a while Sammy's gratitude was replaced by resentment. Three months ago he quit and opened Sammy's Soul Kitchen in his house in Sag Harbor.

Sammy had been cutting Peter's hair for free on Sundays and, in a weak moment at the funeral, offered to grandfather me on the same sweet deal. I made an appointment on the spot, and after driving back from Ronkonkoma, I pulled into his driveway.

Sammy greeted me with a big hug, then led me to an Aeron chair facing a huge gilt mirror.

"So what did you have in mind?" Sammy asked after my rinse.

"At these rates, I'll leave it up to you. Express yourself."

Sammy set to work, falling into an easy four-beat rhythm of snip and move, pause and touch. My hair fell in clumps on the black and white tiles. I let him work in silence for several minutes before I dropped the question whose answer I'd been dreading the whole ride back.