The Beach House

The city is full of women who with imagination and style can make a little beauty go a long way. Pauline did her best to downplay hers. But with the light on her face, there was no concealing it, and it took me by surprise.

She already knew about Neubauer's relationship to the firm and had done a little inquiring of her own. "Personally, I don't like Barry Neubauer. He can charm birds out of trees, but he gives me the creeps. Mayflower has an account with the most expensive escort service in the city," said Pauline. "It's not all that unusual for certain corporations. The service is like a co-op, Jack. You need letters of recommendation, there are interviews, and you have to maintain a balance of fifty thousand. That's all common knowledge.

"The next part isn't," she said. "Two years ago one of their A-list escorts drowned when she supposedly fell off a yacht during a moonlight sail with Neubauer and his friends. The body was never found, and Nelson, Goodwin and Mickel handled the matter with such panache, it never made the papers."

I stared at the cement and winced. "What's the going rate for a dead escort these days?" I asked.

"Five hundred thousand dollars. About the same as a one-bedroom. The girl was nineteen." I looked into her eyes as she finished off her sandwich and wiped away the crumbs.

"Pauline, why are you telling me this?"

"I want you to know what you're getting into, Jack. Do you understand?"

That's when it hit me, and I couldn't help what I did. "Pauline, help me on Peter's case," I blurted out. "Work on the good side for a change."

"It doesn't sound like a good career move," said Pauline. "I'll think it over." Then she got up and left. I watched her walk all the way to Third, and then she disappeared into the thick midtown stream of pedestrians.

Chapter 31

"WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR," insisted Rob Coon with contagious excitement, "is not another lovely, formal English garden but a full-on maze where you go in one end and get lost for a few days before finding your way out."

Marci Burt and her potential gold mine of a landscaping client, sitting in one of the su

Coon, the thirty-year-old scion of the country's first family in parking garages, explained the source of his inspiration. "I rented The Avengers the other night. Except for Uma, it blew. But the maze rocked."

"It would be a fabulous project," said Marci, and flashing dollar signs notwithstanding, she meant it. "Ideally, you would design it in such a way that you could keep changing the course so no one would get bored."

Coon beamed. "Very cool," he said.

The two fell into an enthusiastic discussion about the hardiest strains of evergreen, landscape libraries, possible models. They were talking about the need for a research junket to Scotland when Coon stopped mid-sentence.

Detective Frank Volpi and two other men in dark suits had entered the popular Amagansett restaurant. Coon's eyes followed them to their back booth.

"You know them?" asked Marci.

"The tall guy with a beard is Irving Bushkin. A lot of people consider him the best criminal attorney in America. If I ever kill my wife, he's the first person I'll call. I believe the guy to his left is the Suffolk County district attorney, Tim Maguire."

Coon didn't recognize Volpi, but Marci did and realized the meeting might have something to do with Peter's death. "Bob," said Marci, "this is the most exciting assignment I've ever been considered for. But I need thirty seconds to make a phone call."

That's when she called me at the office and I called Kearns at the Star. Less than five minutes later there was a screech of rubber out front and Kearns stood, mike in hand, in front of Volpi's table.

"What brought you to town?" Kearns asked Irving Bushkin, and although there was no response, he continued, undeterred. "Who's your client? Does your visit have anything to do with the investigation into Peter Mullen's death?"

Small and round, with fat, freckled hands, Kearns doesn't look like much, but he has balls. According to Marci, he peppered them with questions until Volpi threatened to arrest him for harassment. Even then he pulled out a camera and snapped a quick picture of the famous visitor and his pals.

But that wasn't even the best part. After Kearns left, Megan, the waitress who'd taken their order, came out and informed them that there'd been a mix-up. "I'm afraid we're all out of the pasta special," she said.

"It's ten past noon," protested Volpi, but the waitress just shrugged.

There was considerably more grumbling before the three changed their order to cheeseburgers and a turkey club. The new orders were barely in when Megan returned with more bad news. "We're all out of that, too," she said. "As a matter of fact, we're plumb out of everything."

At that point, Volpi, Irving Bushkin, and District Attorney Tim Maguire stormed out of the restaurant. Half an hour later Marci got a handshake deal to build what promised to be the only bona-fide English garden maze in the Hamptons. At least for a week.

Chapter 32

FOR MUDMAN'S SAKE, and I suppose because I wasn't quite ready to ditch my whole legal career yet, I returned to Nelson, Goodwin and Mickel and spent all Friday working on the latest appeal. In the morning I re-reviewed his court records and was outraged by the minimal effort of his court-appointed attorney.

I had lunch with Pauline, who told me she was still thinking about my offer to work for the good guys. I don't know what else we talked about, but suddenly it was three o'clock and we hustled back to the office. Separately.

For the remainder of the afternoon, I drafted a response to the judge in Texas. If I may say so myself, it was persuasive. It was after eleven that night when I e-mailed a copy to Exley.

Even though I felt okay about my day, the moment I got back on Peter's bike and pulled down the visor of his blue Arai helmet, I began rewinding my life like a depressing old video. Soul-searching wasn't a real good idea right then. I couldn't come up with too many selfless or generous acts in my life.

Of course, I had no trouble coming up with bad stuff. The most damning incident that came to mind had occurred seven years before. It was at Middlebury, when I was a twenty-one-year-old senior. Peter was thirteen at the time. It was winter break and he had come up to spend a long weekend with his big brother. One night we borrowed my roommate's car to get some Chinese food. On the way back to the dorm, a local cop pulled us over for a broken taillight. He was being a bastard, and he decided to search the car.

It occurs to me now that on that particular night, the cop was playing the part of the townie and we were the little rich shits. That's why he didn't stop until he was holding up a ski

When we got there Peter said that the joint belonged to him. I did nothing to refute it. Peter called it a no-brainer. I was pla

But, of course, that's what made what I didn't do so much worse. What a goddamned role model I was for my kid brother.

I remembered the exact moment when the cop turned to me and asked if it was true that the pot belonged to Peter, and I just shrugged.

Remembering the incident again on Peter's bike was a bad idea. It felt as if a white-hot current were ru