Beach Road

Sean seems a little disappointed, but I’m not sure if it’s the subject matter or my attempt at humor.

“Is that really why you’re here?”

“It is, Sean.”

“You mean information about Feifer, Walco, and Rochie?” asks Sean.

“Or anything that might help explain why someone would want to kill them.”

“Even if I did-I’m not sure I’d tell you.”

“Because people told you not to.”

Sean looks at me as if I just insulted him in the worst possible way. “I could care less about that bullshit. But these dudes were my pals, and they’re not here to defend themselves.”

“We’re just trying to figure out who killed them, Sean. If you’re a friend, I’d think you want to know too.”

“Spare me the lecture, Kate,” says Sean. But then he flashes one of those gracious Dunleavy smiles. “So you going to buy this CD, or you loitering?”

“I’m buying.”

I take my CD out to a dark bench a couple doors down and claw at the cellophane as I take in the elegant street and cool, fragrant air. East Hampton is one of the prettiest towns you’ll ever see. It’s the people who can be ugly sometimes.

Beside the bench is a mailbox. Looking closely, I see I’m not the only Sounds customer to make this their first stop. The blue surface is covered with hundreds of tiny little peeled-off CD titles, and now Rumors is part of the graffiti montage.

Rumors is even better than I remembered, and when I get to Mack’s place, I sit in the car in the driveway until I’ve heard the whole thing.

When I finally go inside, Mack is snoring on the living room couch, and my beeping cell doesn’t faze him at all.

It’s Sean, and he’s whispering. “I have heard something, Kate, and from people I trust-which is that in the last few weeks, Feif, Walco, and Rochie were all hitting the pipe. This summer, crack was all the rage out here, particularly on Beach Road. Supposedly, all three of them got into it. Once you hit the pipe, you can go from zero to a hundred in a weekend. That’s what I know. So how’d you like the CD?”

“Great. Thanks. For everything, Sean.”

I hang up and look over at my sleeping host. Grateful that Mack still hasn’t stirred, I pull the blanket up to his chin and head upstairs.

So they say the dead boys were hitting the pipe. I wonder if it’s true.

Chapter 59. Tom

THE CALL FROM my nephew Sean seems to break the frustrating logjam on the case, because the very next afternoon, eighteen-year-old Jarvis Maloney climbs the creaking stairs to our office. He is the first visitor we’ve had in a week, and Wingo is beside himself, not to mention all over Jarvis.

“I’ve got something that might not mean anything,” he says. “But Coach told me I should tell you about it right away.”

Every summer, the village of East Hampton shows its appreciation for the influx of free-spending visitors by siccing a teenage army of meter maids on them. Dressed in brown pants and white shirts, they hump up and down Main Street chalking tires, reading dates on registration and inspection stickers, writing tickets, and basically printing money for the town. Jarvis, a jug-headed high school senior, who also happens to play noseguard for the East Hampton High School football team, was a member of last summer’s infantry, and once we get Wingo off him, he shares what’s on his mind.

“About nine o’clock on the Saturday night that Feifer, Walco, and Rochie were murdered, I ticketed a car at Georgica Beach. Actually, I wrote two tickets-one for not having a valid 2003 beach sticker and another for the missing emissions sticker. Only reason it stuck in my mind was the car-a maroon nine-eleven with seven hundred miles on the odometer.

“The next day, I’m shooting the breeze with my buddy who works the early shift. We had a little competition about who ticketed the sweetest car, and I throw out the Porsche. He says he ticketed it too, at the same spot, early the next morning. That means it was sitting there all night, right next to where the bodies were found. Like I said, it probably doesn’t mean a thing, but Coach says I should tell you.”

Soon as Jarvis leaves, I drive over to Village police headquarters. What little crime there is out here is divvied up two ways. The Hampton police patrol the roads from Southampton to Montauk, but the Village police are in charge of everything falling inside the village itself, and as you might expect, the two departments pretty much hate each other’s guts.

Mickey Porter, the chief of the Village police, is a friend. Unlike the Hampton police, who tend to take themselves very seriously, Porter, a tall guy with a big red mustache, doesn’t pretend he’s a character on some cop show. Plus, he’s got no issue with Kate and me representing Dante.

After 9/11, the Village Police Department, like others all over the country, received a powerful fifty-thousand-dollar computer from the Bureau of Homeland Security. In thirty seconds Mickey has the registration of the ticketed Porsche on his screen-a New York plate, IZD235, registered to my beach buddy Mort Semel at his Manhattan address, 850 Park Avenue.

Bingo.

Well, not quite.

“Even though it’s registered to Semel,” says Porter, “I’m pretty sure the only one who drove it was his daughter Teresa.” He scrolls down on the screen and says, “See, Teresa Semel, eighteen. One week in August she got three tickets, two of them for speeding.”

“What do you expect, you give a hundred-thousand-dollar car to an eighteen-year-old?”

“On Beach Road, a nine-eleven is a Honda Civic,” says Porter. “An act of parental restraint. Besides, Tess is no ordinary teenager.”

“She’s a fashion model, right? Dated some guy in Guns ’N Roses?”

“Stone Temple Pilots, but close enough. Beautiful girl. Was on the cover of Vogue at fourteen and played the hottie in a couple teen flicks. Since then, she’s been in and out of rehab.”

“It sucks being rich and beautiful.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m just beautiful.”

“Trust me then. So, Mickey, I gotta see this girl. For whatever reason, she was at the murder scene.”

Chapter 60. Tom

I REINFORCE WITH Mickey that I need to talk to Teresa soon. Before she does something bad to herself or someone decides to do something bad to her. Still, I don’t expect him to report in before I’m halfway back to Montauk.

“Tom, you’re in luck. Teresa Semel just got back in town after a stint at Betty Ford. Hurry, maybe you can catch her while she’s still clean. What I hear, she’s replaced her heroin addiction with exercise. Spends all day at the Wellness Center.”

“The proper word’s dependency.”

“I mean it, Tom. The girl’s got a thousand-dollar-a-day Pilates habit.”

Fifteen minutes later, I’m at the Wellness Center myself, watching Teresa’s class through a green-tinted oval window.

Spaced evenly on the floor are five female acolytes. All exhibit near-perfect form as far as I can tell-but no one can match Teresa Semel’s desperate concentration.

Seeing her effort, I regret mocking her. Instead of sitting at home and feeling sorry for herself, she’s literally taking her demons to the mat and fighting them off one after another.

Informing the client that time is up is always a delicate moment in the service industry, and the instructor shuts down her hundred-dollar session with a cleansing breath and a round of congratulations.

The women collect themselves and their belongings and serenely slide out of the room.

Everyone except Teresa, who lingers on her mat as if terrified at the prospect of being left on her own with time on her hands. She actually seems relieved when I introduce myself.

“I’m sure you’ve heard about the murders on the beach last summer,” I say. “I represent the young man charged with the killings.”