Beach Road

Chapter 47. Tom

COME WHAT MAY, I am definitely on the case now, and in the spotlight again.

Since Lucy and the Montauk Bakery don’t want my business anymore, me and Wingnut, who by the way was named after the great Knicks reserve player Harthorne Nathaniel Wingo but answers to anything with a wing in it, have been forced to refine our morning routine. Now we start our workday at that Honduran-owned grocery where no one knows our names. There I can sit alone at the outdoor table ten feet from Route 27 and try to figure out how to keep New York from executing an i

Since I’ve taken on Dante Halleyville’s case, my days pass in a blur and end wherever I fall asleep over my notebooks. I am nothing if not dedicated, and a little crazy.

As I sit in the steep October-morning light, pickups roll in and out and traffic streams west on 27, ten feet from my nose, but I’m too preoccupied to be distracted. When Dante dredged up that “witness” on the bench from his memory, he gave me a tantalizing lead. But I’m having a hard time following up on it.

If there’s a person out there who can corroborate Dante’s version of events or saw the real killers, the state has no case. But I barely have a description, let alone a name.

Maybe Artis LaFontaine, dealer, pimp, whatever he is, stayed at the basketball court long enough to see the guy arrive, but I have no idea how to get in touch with him. If I went to the police, they might have him on their radar, but I hate to do that unless I absolutely have to.

As I take a pull of coffee, a yellow VW Bug rolls by. Yellow is the color du jour, I guess, and that makes me think of Artis’s canary-yellow convertible.

There can’t be that many places where a person can buy a $400,000 Ferrari, right?

I flip open my cell and start using up my minutes. The dealership in Hempstead refers me to an exotic-car dealership on Eleventh Avenue in Manhattan. They refer me to a dealership in Greenwich, Co

Two hours later, still at my outdoor office on the side of the road, I’m talking to Bree Elizabeth Pedi. Bree Elizabeth is the top salesperson at the Miami Auto Emporium in South Beach. “Of course I know Artis. He’s putting my kids through college.”

I persuade Pedi to give Artis a call, and a couple minutes later, Artis is on the line, but he’s chillier than I expect. “If you’re calling about that night at the basketball court, I wasn’t there.”

“Artis, if I have to, I’ll subpoena you.”

“First you got to find me.”

“Dante’s facing the death penalty. You know something, and you’re going to keep it to yourself?”

“You don’t know Loco. I’ll do time rather than testify against him. But as long as you understand that I was NOT THERE, I might be able to help.”

I describe the man lying on the bench, and Artis knows who I’m talking about right away.

“You’re looking for Ma

Chapter 48. Tom

OKAY, SO NOW I’m an amateur detective. And I’m back in Manhattan because Cold Ground, Inc., turns out to be in a funky postwar building right below Union Square.

A mirrored elevator drops me on seven, where a thumping bass line pulls me down a maroon-and-yellow hallway and the scent of reefer takes me the rest of the way.

Inside the last door on the left, a little hip-hop factory is chugging industriously. What had been the living room of a one-bedroom apartment is now a recording studio.

Behind a glass wall a baby-faced rapper, his immaculate Yankee cap precisely askew, rhythmically spits rhymes into a brass microphone.

I ice him and vanish

No trace of what I done

Finding me is harder

Than finding a smoking gun

The artist looks no more than seventeen and neither does his girl, who sits on the leather couch on the other side of the glass with an infant on her lap dressed just like his dad, right down to the cockeyed cap and retro Nikes. A dozen others are scattered around, and whether dazzlingly elongated or powerfully compact, they all seem like the fullest expression of who they are.

Who is in charge? No one that I can tell, and there’s no desk or receptionist in front.

“Ma

In Ma

In a crosstown cab, Ma

Three years later, Ma

I suspect he’s confused about why I’m here, but I’ll set him straight in a minute. We get off on West Twenty-first Street in front of a Chelsea townhouse, and he drops his tapes at another apartment-turned-recording-studio.

“I’m not going to be doing this much longer,” he tells me.

I offer to buy him lunch around the corner at the Empire Diner, and we take a seat at a black-lacquered table overlooking Tenth Avenue.

“So what label you with?” Ma

“I’m not with a label, Ma

If Ma

“You’re the ballplayer,” he says. “I seen you there. You were a pro.”

“That’s right. For about ten minutes.”

“You got a tape recorder?” he asks.

“No, but I’ve got a pad. I’ll take careful notes for now.”

“Good. Let me hit the bathroom. Then maybe I got a story that could save that tall black boy.”

I wrestle my legal pad out of my case and hurriedly scribble a list of key questions in my barely legible shorthand. Stay calm, I tell myself, and listen.

I’ve been lost in my notes, and Ma

I jump out of my chair and run like a maniac to the street.

I’m just in time to see Ma