Beach Road

Chapter 80. Loco

ON MONDAYS, WHEN I make my pickup in Brooklyn, I leave the Tahoe at home and get a loaner.

“Weekenders” not due back till Friday are generous enough to leave a fleet of cars for me to choose from at the railroad station. Today, I select a ten-year-old off-white Accord so generic it’s practically invisible. After thirty seconds to pick the lock and hot-wire the ignition, I’m off to Crooklyn.

The cops have their network of snitches, and I got my network too. Actually, it’s the same network. I just pay a little better and play a lot rougher.

They tell me Susie’s Wok has been getting a lot of attention lately. Something about too many cops spoiling the Wok, so when I get there, I circle the block a couple times to scope things out.

The first time I drive around, everything looks copacetic to me.

The second time, I notice this white van parked a little too conveniently across the street. The third time by, I can see that the van’s blacked-out windows are a lot newer than the banged-up body.

If I had the IQ of a piss clam, or an iota of criminal discipline, I’d turn around and keep going, but I spent three hours getting into makeup and wardrobe, and in my gray-flecked beard and side locks, I barely recognize myself. So I park a quarter of a mile away, put on my wide-brimmed black hat and baggy black jacket, and head back to Susie’s Wok on foot.

I know my disguise is kosher because on the four blocks back to Susie’s two guys dressed just like me wish me “Good Yontif,” and a cute little Hasidic mommy gives me the eye.

Inside Susie’s, my man Diego is pacing impatiently outside his little back office.

“Shalom,” I say.

“Shalom to you too, my friend,” says Diego, nervously looking at his watch.

“When I say shalom, I truly mean shalom. It’s not something I’m just saying.”

That gets Diego’s attention, and he stares at me warily before a faint smile sneaks across his lips.

“Loco?” he whispers.

“This would be true, my friend.”

Behind closed doors, our transaction is handled with brisk efficiency. Twenty grand for Diego and his people, a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of goodies for me. The drugs are packed up in little cardboard boxes and metal take-out tins, with a handful of menus scattered on top.

It’s a good thing too, because as I step out the door I almost bump into a large black guy whose carriage and black leather jacket shout NYPD.

“Good chow?” he asks.

“The best,” I say, and keep on stepping. I don’t even let myself look in the rearview mirror until my take-out and I are out of Williamsburg and back on the LIE.

“Lo-co!” I shout at the windshield of the stolen Accord. “You da man!”

Chapter 81. Tom

IT’S FRIDAY, JUST days before the start of Dante Halleyville’s trial, and the first buses filled with protesters arrive in East Hampton just after dawn. The people out here are about to understand the scale of this case, its national implications.

The buses aren’t Jitneys, the tall, sleek air-conditioned models that drop queerly dressed Manhattanites at quaint bus stops up and down 27. They’re a rolling armada of rusted-out school buses, long-retired Greyhounds, and dented-up vans. There are hundreds of them, and they come from as far north as New Hampshire, as far south as the Florida Panhandle.

Like a medieval army laying siege, they stop just outside of East Hampton. Early arrivals fill the field across from the Getty station, and when it can’t hold any more, the protesters fan out onto the tony south-of-the-highway streets that lead to the water.

At noon, a mile-long column, twelve people across, marches into town, and East Hampton’s two perpendicular blocks, where you could go a week without seeing an African American, are overwhelmed with thirty thousand mostly black protesters-men, women, and children.

They are waving homemade signs that read FREE DANTE HALLEYVILLE! and STOP LYNCHING OUR TEENAGERS! They’re everything East Hamptonites are not-loud, unself-conscious, and angry.

The crowd marches past the hastily boarded-up windows of Cashmere Hampton, Coach, and Ralph Lauren. They turn left on Newtown Lane and file past Calypso and Scoop and Om Yoga until they reach the middle school.

There, frantic police and just-arrived National Guardsmen steer them across the street into the park.

A low stage has been set up in the infield of the softball diamond in the far corner of the twenty-acre field, and Reverend Marvin Shields, in a dazzling white three-piece suit, grabs the mike.

“No justice!” bellows Shields.

“No peace!” reply thousands of voices in unison.

“I can’t hear you,” shouts the reverend, one cupped hand to his ear.

“No peace!”

“What was that?”

“No peace!”

“We’ve got a very special guest here this morning,” Shields says. “A man who has proved himself to be a friend time and again, a man who now works out of an office in my neighborhood in Harlem, the former president of the United States, Mr. Bill Clinton!”

President Clinton saunters onto the stage to a deafening roar, and for a full minute, he waves and smiles, as comfortable in front of this enormous, mostly black crowd as if he was in his backyard. Then he puts one arm around Reverend Shields and grabs the microphone with the other.

“Welcome to the Hamptons, y’all,” he says. “Nice out here, ain’t it?”

Chapter 82. Tom

BILL CLINTON IS still talking when Kate takes my hand and pulls me away. East Hampton can burn for all she cares right now. We have a capital murder defense to prepare, and we’re still way behind.

The road back to Montauk is so empty it’s as if the eastern tip of Long Island has been evacuated. The ride with Kate brings back memories of our days together when we were younger. We used to hold hands all the time, and I want to reach out for Kate’s hand now. But of course, I don’t, which makes it even worse. When we get to Montauk, there’s not a single car in the parking lot outside our office.

Aided by the unlikely quiet, Kate prepares a folder on every witness we might call to the stand, and I attempt a first draft of our opening statement. At one point, she gives me a little hug. I don’t make a big deal out of it, even though I don’t want it to end.

The historic sense of the day is inspiring, and the sentences and paragraphs begin to flow for me. But Kate is underwhelmed. When she slides back the draft, half of it is crossed out, the rest festooned with notes. “It’s going to be great, Tom,” she offers as encouragement.

Grateful for standards higher than my own, I churn out draft after draft, and until a car pulls into the empty lot outside, I have no sense of the time. I suddenly notice that the afternoon is long gone, and our one window has turned black. In fact, it’s close to 10:00 p.m.

Car doors open and slam shut, and then heavy footsteps clomp up the steep stairs. It sounds as if there are three or four people coming, and based on the creaking, they’re all large and probably males.

I reach for the baseball bat I’ve been keeping beside the desk and look over at Kate. She returns my nervous smile and shrugs, but the glint in her eye says, “Bring it on.”

Chapter 83

Tom

THE HEAD THAT pokes through the door doesn’t belong to a drunken local lout. It’s Calvin Coles, the minister at Riverhead Baptist. Calvin has been over a couple times in the last few months and apologizes for the lateness of the visit as two other formidable black men, both wearing dark suits, follow him into the room. The heads of all three nearly scrape the low ceiling.

Coles smiles awkwardly and introduces his companions, as if it’s necessary. One is Reverend Marvin Shields, the other Ro