Beach Road

Apparently some sharp-eyed civilian called in a tip to the cops this morning about a wanted fugitive looking a lot like Michael Walker. The suspect was leaving a Brooklyn gym last night, and the name of the establishment now fills the twenty-two letters set aside for nine across. And when I glance at the backseat, I see Hugo has also left me a little party favor-a brand-new, bright-red Miami Heat basketball cap.

I may have been underestimating Lindgren all these years. I know it’s only the Post and not the London Times, but who would have thought that a corrupt, degenerate excuse for a police officer had the balls or vocabulary to do the crossword in ink?

Chapter 23. Loco

ON ACCOUNT OF the fact that I’m a whole lot brighter and craftier than I look, locating the Bed-Stuy Community Center is a piece of cake. The tricky part is finding a place to park where the Big Black Beast doesn’t draw too much attention to itself and I still have a halfway decent view of both entrances. This, after all, is a stakeout. Just not by the cops.

After circling the block a couple times, I double-park half a dozen spaces past the community center. That’s right across the street from Carmine’s Pizzeria, so it looks as if I’m just sitting there enjoying my Pepsi and slice like any other self-respecting neighborhood goombah.

I thought these boxing clubs were extinct, something out of a black-and-white Cagney flick. These days, tough kids don’t scrap. They strap. So mastering the sweet science is only going to get you killed.

But maybe I’m wrong, because the place looks all renovated and spiffy, and folks are going in and out at a pretty good clip. Most of ’em have a strut too.

If nothing else, banging on a heavy bag has got to be good stress management. And right now our man Michael Walker has got to be seriously stressing, what with an APB out for him in fifteen states and an outstanding warrant for triple homicide.

While Walker works out, I blacken the end of the Graycliff Robusto I bought at the Tinder Box in East Hampton. And it looks like I picked it well. It’s nice and soft, and lights like a dream.

The bad news is that I’m exactly three puffs into my delightful cigar when Walker slides out the back door in a gray hooded sweatshirt, a big gym bag slung over his bony shoulder.

Now I’m fucked. If I put it out and relight it, the Graycliff will never taste the same. If I take it with me, it’s hardly going to be the relaxing experience I had in mind when I dropped fifteen dollars on it.

So making the kind of difficult executive decision that earns me the big bucks, I open the sunroof and place the cigar gently in the ashtray. Then I follow Walker north toward Fulton Street.

Staying half a block back, I see him take a quick left. Just as I round the corner, he looks both ways and ducks into a six-floor tenement about halfway down the block. Two minutes later, the lights go on and the shades come down on the corner apartment four flights up.

Gotcha!

I’ve caught the fugitive.

Chapter 24. Loco

AND GIVE THAT lucky man a cigar!

I get back to the Big Black Beast, and everything, including my slowly burning Graycliff, is just like I left it. Seeing as we’re in Crooklyn, I pop in an old-school Eric B and Rakim CD and head for the Williamsburg Bridge.

At 8:00 p.m. the Manhattan-bound lanes are flowing, and twenty minutes later, as my cigar burns down to the finish, I’m in Chinatown, Jake. Killing time.

It’s a way different world down here, lots of tiny people scurrying over the packed sidewalks with feverish energy, and it never fails to get me jazzed. Makes me think of Saigon , Apocalypse Now, and The Deer Hunter.

I luck into a parking spot big enough for the Beast, a miracle down here, and wander around for a while until I find a familiar place, where I wash down a couple plates of sweet, soggy dim sum with a couple of sweet, soggy beers.

After di

I park on Franklin, climb into the back, and stretch out on my foam mattresses.

With my blacked-out windows cracked for ventilation, sleeping conditions are pretty damn good, and the next time I open my eyes it’s 3:30 a.m. and I have that pounding in my chest you get when your alarm rips you out of sleep in the middle of the night. I rub the gunk out of my eyes, and when the street comes back into focus, I see that the shadows fluttering over the cobblestones are rats. Is that what Frank meant about waking up in a city that never sleeps?

Without stopping for coffee, I head back to Bed-Stuy, and half an hour after my alarm went off, I pick the lock in the vestibule of Michael Walker’s building. Then I climb the stairs two, three at a time to the fugitive’s roof.

It’s cool and quiet up here, and at this hour Bed-Stuy looks peaceful as Bethlehem on a starry night, even beautiful.

When a lone nocturnal civilian finally turns the corner, I climb down the fire escape to Walker ’s kitchen.

I need a break here and I get it. The window is half open, and I don’t have to break it to slip inside. There’s plenty of light to screw the silencer to the end of my Beretta Cougar, which is a beauty, by the way.

Like I been saying: killing time.

A sleeping person is so unbelievably vulnerable it almost feels wrong to stare at him. Michael Walker looks about twelve years old, and for a second I think back to what I was like when I was young and i

I cough gently.

Walker stirs, and then his dark eyes blink open. “What the -”

“Good morning, Michael,” I say.

But the bullet flying then bulldozing into the back of his brain is more like good night.

And I guarantee, Walker had no idea what just happened, or why.

I don’t need to tell you there’s nothing but crap on TV at this hour. I settle on a Saturday Night Live rerun with Rob Lowe as guest host, and he performs his monologue as I carefully wrap Walker ’s cool fingers around the handle of my gun. Then I slip it into a sealed plastic bag.

After I find Walker ’s piece in the corner of his closet, the only thing left to do here is drop off Officer Lindgren’s gift-the red Miami Heat cap-on the kitchen floor before I step back out onto the fire escape.

Sunrise is still an hour away when I lower my window on the Brooklyn Bridge and toss Walker ’s one-hundred-dollar pistola into the East River.

I sing that real nice Norah Jones song “ Sunrise ” most of the way home. Kind of sad what happened to Walker, but actually I don’t feel a thing. Nada.

Chapter 25. Tom

EVENTUALLY, I WILL think of this downtime with affection, call it the calm before the shitstorm.

At work the next day, in my office, I wad up a sheet of printing paper, lean back in my desk chair ($59), and let fly. The paper ball bounces off the slanting dormer ceiling of my second-floor attic office ($650 a month), glances off the side of a beige metal filing cabinet ($39), bounces on the end of my worktable ($109), and drops softly into the white plastic wastebasket ($6).

The tasteful furnishings are all from IKEA, and the successful shot-nothing but wastebasket-is my eleventh in a row.

To give you a sense of the breakneck pace of my legal career, that’s not even close to a personal best. I have reached the high fifties on multiple occasions, and one lively afternoon, when I was really feeling it, I ca

After two years as the sole owner and employee of Tom Dunleavy, Esquire, Inc., headquartered in a charming wooden house directly above Montauk Books, my paper-tossing skills are definitely world-class. But I know it’s a sorry state of affairs for an educated, able-bodied thirty-two-year-old, and after visiting Dante’s grandmother Marie, and realizing what she’s going through, it feels even lamer than it did twenty-four hours ago.