Beach Road

“Dante Halleyville,” Teresa says. “He didn’t do it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Just do,” she says as if the answer floated into her beautiful head like the message in a plastic eight ball.

“I’m here because your car was parked at the beach nearby that night.”

“I almost died that night too,” says Teresa. “Or maybe that was the night I got saved. I’d been so good, but that night I went out and copped. I met my co

“See anything? Hear anything?”

“No. That’s the point, isn’t it? The next morning I told Daddy, and twelve hours later, I was back in rehab.”

“Who’d you buy from?”

“As if there’s a choice,” says Teresa.

I don’t want to seem too eager, even though I am. “What do you mean?”

“There’s only one person you can cop from on Beach Road. It’s been that way as long as I can remember.”

“Does he have a name?”

“A nickname, anyway. Loco. As in crazy.”

Chapter 61. Kate

FIVE MINUTES AFTER we lift off from the East Hampton heliport, the guy seated next to me glances down at the traffic crawling west on 27 and flashes a high-watt smile. “I love catching the heli back to town,” he says. “An hour after going for a run on the beach I’m back in my apartment on Fifth Avenue sipping a martini. It makes the whole weekend.”

“And it’s even lovelier when it’s bumper to bumper for the poor slobs down below, right?”

“Caught me peeking,” he says with a chuckle. He’s in his late forties, tan and trim and dressed in the traveling uniform of the überclass-overly creased jeans, dress shirt, a cashmere blazer. On his wrist is a platinum Patek Philippe; on his sockless feet, Italian loafers.

“Fifteen seconds and you’ve seen right through me. It takes most people at least an hour.” He extends a hand and says, “Roberto Nuñez, a pleasure.”

“Katie. Lovely to meet you too, Roberto.”

In fact, I already knew his name and that he owns a South American investment boutique and is Mort Semel’s neighbor in the Hamptons. After Tom’s run-in with Semel’s bodyguards taught us how hard it would be to talk to Beach Road types, I called Ed Yourkewicz, the brother of a law school roommate. A helicopter pilot, Ed has recently gone from transporting emergency supplies between Baghdad and Fallujah to shuttling billionaires between Manhattan and the Hamptons.

Last week I e-mailed him a list of Beach Road residents and asked if on a less-than-full flight he could put me beside one of them for the forty-minute, thirty-five-hundred-dollar trip. He called this afternoon and told me to be at the southern tip of the airport at 6:55 p.m. “And don’t come a minute earlier unless you want to blow your cover.”

For the next ten minutes Roberto struggles in vain to capture and convey the miracle that is Roberto. There are the half-dozen homes, the Lamborghini and Maybach, the ceaseless stress of presiding over a “modest little empire,” and the desire, growing stronger by the day, to chuck it all for a “simpler, more real” life.

It’s a well-oiled monologue, and when he’s done he smiles shyly as if relieved it’s finally over and says, “Your turn, Katie. What do you do?”

“God, I dread that question. It’s so embarrassing. Try to enjoy my life, I guess. Try to help others enjoy it a little more too. I run a couple foundations-one helps i

“A do-gooder. How impressive.”

“At least by day.”

“And when the sun goes down? By the way, I love what you’re wearing.”

After getting Ed’s call, I had just enough time to race to the Bridgehampton mall and buy a black Lacoste shirt dress three sizes too small.

“The usual vices, I’m afraid. Can’t they invent some new ones?”

“Altruistic and naughty. You sound perfect.”

“Speaking of perfection, you know where an overbred philanthropist can score some ecstasy?”

Roberto purses his lips a second, and I think I’ve lost him. But, hey, he wants to be my friend, right?

“I imagine from the same person who supplies anything you might need along those lines, the outlandishly expensive Loco. I’m surprised you aren’t a client already. From what I hear he has a tidy monopoly on the high-end drug trade and is quite committed to maintaining it. Thus the nickname. On the plus side, he is utterly discreet and reliable and has paid off the local constabulary so there’s no need to fret about it.”

“Sounds like quite the impressive dude. You ever meet him?”

“No, and I intend to keep it that way. But give me your number and I’ll have something for you next weekend.”

Below us, the Long Island Expressway disappears into the Midtown Tu

“Why don’t you give me yours?” I say. “I’ll call Saturday afternoon.”

The width of Manhattan is traversed in a New York minute, and the helicopter drops onto a tiny strip of cement between the West Side Highway and the Hudson.

“I look forward to it,” says Roberto, handing me his card. It says Roberto Nuñez-human being. Good God almighty.

“In the meantime, is there any chance I can persuade you to join me for a martini? My butler makes a very good one,” he continues.

“Not tonight.”

“Don’t like martinis?”

“I adore them.”

“Then what?”

“I’m a decadent do-gooder, Roberto, but I’m not easy.”

He laughs. I’m such a fu

Chapter 62. Tom

ABOUT THE SAME time that Kate catches her whirlybird to Manhattan, I squeeze into a tiny seat in a fourth-grade Amagansett homeroom smelling of chalk and sour milk.

Like her, I have a role to play, and to be honest, I’m not sure it’s much of a stretch.

As I take in the scene, more adults enter the classroom and wedge themselves into small chairs, and despite how rich most of them are, there’s none of the usual posturing. The leader closes the door and signals me, and I walk to the front of the room and clear my throat.

“My name is John,” I say, “and I’m an alcoholic.”

The crowd murmurs with self-recognition and support as I lay out a familiar story.

“My father gave me my first glass of beer when I was eleven,” I say, which happens to be true. “The next night, I went out with my pals and got gloriously drunk.” Also true, but from here on, I’m winging it.

“It felt so perfect I spent the next twenty years trying to re-create that feeling. Never happened, but as you know, it didn’t keep me from trying.”

There are more murmurs and empathetic nods and maybe I actually belong here-I’m hardly a model of sobriety. But I try not to think about that and keep my performance marching along.

“Six years ago, my wife walked out and I ended up in the hospital. That’s when I went to my first meeting, and thank God, I’ve been sober since. But lately my life and work have gotten much more stressful.” I assume some of the people in the room know me or the work I’m referring to, but Amagansett is a different world from Montauk, and I don’t recognize anyone personally.

“In the last couple of weeks, I’ve felt myself inching closer to the precipice, so I came here tonight,” I say, which is also true in a way. “It’s hard for me to admit-but I need a little help.”

When the meeting comes to a close, I have a set of new friends, and a handful of them linger in the parking lot. They don’t want to leave here and be alone just yet. So they lean on their Beamers and Benzes and trade war stories. And guys being guys, it gets competitive.

When one describes being escorted by two cops from the delivery room the morning his son was born, another tops him-or bottoms him-by passing out at his old man’s funeral. I’m starting to feel kind of sane, actually.