Beach Road

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.

Chapter 29. 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.”

Chapter 30. 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.

Chapter 31. 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?”

“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.”