“Acting tough,” says Dante, glancing at me again for help. “Trying to save face for letting Tom talk him into putting the gun down.”
“You two think we’re idiots? Is that it?” says Knight, suddenly leaning across the table to stick his face in Dante’s. “Ten hours after a fight that’s ‘no big deal’ and a threat that didn’t mean a thing, Feifer, Roche, and Walco are shot through the head. A triple homicide—over nothing?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you about it being no big deal,” says Dante, his eyes begging the two detectives to please understand and see that what he’s saying makes perfect sense. “The only reason we’re there that night is because Feifer called Michael and asked us to meet him there so we could put this drama behind us. And look, here’s the truth—Michael was looking to maybe buy some weed on Beach Road. The only reason we ran is because we heard the whole terrible thing happen and thought the killer saw us. The fact that Feifer called and asked us to meet him shows what I say is true.”
“How’d he get Walker’s number?” asks Van Buren.
“I really don’t know. I saw Feifer talking to my cousin Nikki at Wilson’s; maybe he got it from her.”
“And how did you feel about that?” asks Detective Knight.
“About what?”
“About Eric Feifer putting the moves on your cousin.”
When Knight says that, he’s leaning halfway across the small table again, so when I bring my hand down hard in the middle of the table, he jumps back as if a gun went off.
“You’re the one with the problem,” I say, my face in Knight’s now, even more than his was in Dante’s. I’m bluffing, but Knight doesn’t know that. “Dante had nothing to do with these murders. He was there. That’s all. Now he’s here to share everything he saw and heard that night. But either the tone of this questioning changes, or this interview is over!”
Knight looks at me as though he’s going to throw a punch, and I kind of hope he will. But before he makes up his mind to do it, there’s a hard knock on the door.
Chapter 32
Tom
VAN BUREN STEPS outside, and J. T. Knight and I continue to glower at each other until his partner returns with a large brown paper bag. Van Buren places the bag behind his chair and whispers something to Knight.
I can’t make out Van Buren’s words, but I can’t miss his smirk. Or Knight’s, either. What the hell is this about?
“Let’s all calm down here for a second,” says Van Buren, a trill in his voice belying his words. “Dante, did you stop at the Princess Diner in Southampton on your way out here tonight?”
Dante looks over at me again, then answers. “Yeah, so Tom could use the bathroom.”
“Tom the only one who used the bathroom?”
“No, I think Clarence went too.”
“You think or you’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“So that left you alone in the car? Is that right?”
“I didn’t need to go.”
“Really?”
“What are you getting at?” I ask Van Buren, who maybe isn’t as dumb as he seems.
“An hour ago we got a call from someone who was at the diner at about two thirty this morning. The caller says they saw a very tall black man throw a gun into the Dumpster in the parking lot.”
“That’s a lie,” says Dante, shaking his head and looking at me desperately. “I never got out of the car. Didn’t happen.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes, why don’t you send a cop out there and look for yourself?”
“We did,” says Van Buren, a smug smile creasing his lips. Then he reaches behind his back and drops a sealed plastic bag on the table like a poker player triumphantly laying down a full house.
Staring up at us through the plastic and looking almost obscene is a handgun with a black plastic handle and a dull steel barrel.
“I’ve never seen that gun in my life!” cries Dante. “And it’s not Michael’s gun either.”
I cut him off. “Dante’s not saying another word.”
Chapter 33
Tom
I DON’T KNOW what feels worse—what just happened, or the thought of facing Marie. I stagger up the stairs into the small waiting area, where Marie and Clarence jump from their chairs and surround me.
Behind them, steep sunlight streams through the glass door to the parking lot. It’s 8 a.m. Dante and I were in that box for two hours.
“What’s happening to my grandson, Mr. Dunleavy?”
“I need some air, Marie,” I say, and walk through the door into the cool morning.
Marie follows and stops me in my tracks. “What’s happening to my grandson? Why won’t you look at me, Mr. Dunleavy? I’m standing right in front of you.”
“They don’t believe him,” I say, finally meeting her eye. “They don’t believe his story.”
“How can that be? The young man has never lied in his life. Did you tell them that?”
Clarence puts his arm around her and looks at me sympathetically. “Tom’s doing his best, Marie.”
“His best? What do you mean, his best? Did he tell them Dante had no reason on earth to commit these crimes? And where’s the gun? There’s no weapon.”
I look at Clarence, then back at Marie. “Actually, they have the gun.”
I sit on a bench and look at the early morning traffic rolling by on Route 27. What a mess this is; what a complete disaster. And it’s only just starting.
“So, what are you going to do now, Mr. Dunleavy?” asks Marie. “You’re his lawyer, aren’t you?”
Before I can come up with any kind of response, the door swings open behind us. Dante, in handcuffs again, is being led out by two more cops, this time from the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department.
The cops try to fend off Marie, but they’re no match for her, and she runs between them and throws her arms around her grandson’s chest. Dante looks ready to cry, and Marie’s face looks even more heartbroken. The cops don’t want to grab her, so they turn to me.
“Where are you taking him?” I ask.
“Suffolk County Courthouse.”
“We’ll follow them in Clarence’s cab,” I tell Marie. She whispers something to Dante as Clarence gently pries away her arms. Both of them are crying, and I’m pretty close myself.
“Are you in over your head?” Marie suddenly asks me.
I look at her, and I don’t say absolutely, but I’m pretty sure she can read my mind.
Chapter 34
Tom
THIRTY YEARS AGO, when the county slapped it together at the outskirts of Riverhead, the Arthur M. Cromarty Complex, a sprawling campus of county courtrooms, might have looked almost impressive and modern with its big white walls and tall glass doors.
Now it looks as plain and shoddy as any out-of-date corporate park. We pull into the complex just as Dante is being led into the main building. Hustling past a flock of off-course seagulls, we follow him in through the glass doors.
The guard behind the metal detector tells us that arraignments are handled by Judge Barreiro on the third floor, and with a beefy, heavily tattooed arm, he points us to the elevator.
Courtroom 301 has the same stench of catastrophe as an inner-city emergency room, which in a way it is. The distraught members of two dozen families have rushed here on short notice, and they’re scattered in clusters throughout the forty rows of seats.
Clarence, Marie, and I find an empty section and sit and wait as a parade of men, mostly young and dark-skinned, are processed.
One after another, they’re ushered through a side door with a sheriff on each arm and, as devastated moms and girlfriends and court-appointed attorneys look on, are formally charged with burglary, drug sale, domestic battery, and assault. For three years I was one of those public defenders, so I know the drill.
“Such a shame,” Marie whispers, talking to herself. “This is so wrong.”
The system proceeds with brutal efficiency, each arraig
nment taking less than ten minutes, but it’s still more than two hours before a disembodied voice announces, “The people in the county of Suffolk in the state of New York versus Dante Halleyville.” And now it’s Marie and Clarence’s turn to gasp.
Like the others before him, Dante wears handcuffs and a bright-orange county-issued jumpsuit, in his case several inches too short in the legs and arms.
Dante is marched to a rectangular table in front of the judge. Already sitting there is his court-appointed attorney, a tall, stooped man close to sixty with overly large horn-rimmed glasses. This is mostly Marie’s doing. She knows Dante is innocent, so she’s advised him to use what the court gives him. I don’t necessarily agree, but I’m just here to give free advice when I’m asked, if I’m asked.
Judge Joseph Barreiro leans into the microphone mounted on his podium and says, “Dante Halleyville is charged with three counts of first-degree murder.” Murmurs of disbelief instantly sweep through all the rows of the courtroom.
“The defendant pleads not guilty to all three counts, Your Honor,” says Dante’s lawyer. “And in the setting of bail, we ask that the court bear in mind that this is a young man who turned himself in of his own volition, has never previously been charged with a single significant offense, and has strong ties to the community. For these reasons, Dante Halleyville represents a negligible risk of flight, and we strongly urge that any bail that is set be within the reach of his family’s modest income.”
Dante’s lawyer sits down, and his more-energized adversary jumps up. He is around my age, and with his short haircut and inexpensive suit, he reminds me of half the kids I went to law school with.
“The state’s position is the opposite, Your Honor. Three young men were bound and executed in cold blood. Because of the nature of the crimes and the severe penalties facing the defendant, as well as the fact that before turning himself in he remained at large for several days, we believe he represents a substantial flight risk.”
The black-robed judge weighs the relative merits of both arguments for a full thirty seconds. “This court sets bail for the defendant at six million dollars. Two million dollars for each victim.”
Plea to bail, the whole process takes about as long as it does to place and pick up your order at the drive-through window of a McDonald’s. The echo of Judge Barreiro’s gavel has barely receded when the two sheriffs reappear and lead Dante out the side door.
“He’s innocent,” Marie whispers at my side. “Dante never hurt anyone in his entire life.”
Chapter 35
Tom
IT’S MONDAY MORNING, and the only person feeling semi-okay with the world is AP photographer and friend Lenny Levitt. Since the weekend, Len’s moonlight shot of Dante and his grandmother has appeared on the covers of the Post, the Daily News, and Newsday. My minor role in his affair barely rates a mention—in Newsday—and I think I have a pretty good chance of crawling back into my old and comfortable, if uninspiring, life.
Even though the only thing I’ve got to do is that real estate closing for my buddy Pete Lampke, I’m parked outside my office at 8:15 a.m. Like every weekday morning for three years, I leave Wingo on the front seat and step into the Montauk Bakery for my Danish and coffee.
Why I’ve been so loyal to the bakery is a mystery. It’s certainly not the flakiness of the pastry or the richness of the coffee. Must be the comforts of consistency and the dependable early morning cheer of owner Lucy Kalin.
Today, the only thing Lucy’s got to say is “two twenty-five.” I guess she had a bad night too.
“I think I know the price by now, Lucy girl. And top of the morning to you too.”
Breakfast in hand, I grab my pooch and head for the office.
Grossman Realty has the ground floor of the building next to mine, and the eponymous owner is also arriving bright and early. Normally Jake Grossman is a sinkhole of bonhomie, upbeat, full of chatter even by the outsized standards of his profession.
This morning, though, the way he reacts to my greeting, you’d swear he’s deaf and blind.
Whatever. I’m still relieved to be back in my office where I can quietly read the papers again before checking in with Clarence.
When I call him, the poor guy’s so twisted up about what’s happening to Dante he can barely talk and admits he had to go to the emergency room in Southampton for sedatives to get through the night. I hope I’m imagining it, but he sounds a little chilly too. What’s up with everybody this morning?
I know Marie has to be feeling even worse because she doesn’t even pick up her phone.
When Lampke’s contracts haven’t arrived by noon, I get Phyllis at the broker’s on the line.
“I owe you a call,” she says. “Peter decided to go with a lawyer with a little more real estate experience.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
The bad news makes me hungry, but rather than getting shunned across the street at John’s, Wingo and I drive to a little grocery run by a Honduran man and his three daughters at the edge of Amagansett.
As always, the place is packed with the Hispanic carpenters, gardeners, and day workers who keep the Hamptons buff. Despite the stack of newspapers with Dante’s picture plastered all over them, no one here could care less about the latest Hampton drama. In this disconnected Spanish-speaking pocket of town, I’m invisible, and it feels pretty good.
I eat the pork-and-assorted-veggies sandwich at my desk, where despite my best efforts, I think about Dante scared in his cell and about his tired old public-defender lawyer. The only good thing I come up with is that big as Dante is, no one will mess with him.
As of yesterday, Michael Walker still hadn’t turned himself in, and I call Lenny at the AP offices to find out what, if anything, he’s heard. We’re talking the talk when something is thrown through the window in the office. What the hell? Shattered glass covers my desk. Then I see a burning bag on the floor.
“Call you back, Lenny! Somebody just broke my damn window.”
I douse the flames with the extinguisher hanging in the hall, but the room is already full of acrid yellow smoke and a horrendous stench, which Wingo and I soon discover is the smell of a plastic bag of burning shit.
I think I get the point—somebody is mad at me. And guess what? I’m a wee bit angry at them too.
Chapter 36
Detective Connie P. Raiborne
I GIVE DETECTIVE Yates the address for today’s first reported homicide—838 MacDonough—and he swerves out of the traffic and barrels down the middle of Fulton, his screaming siren and flashing lights barely denting the usual cacophony of a lovely Bed-Stuy afternoon.
Our banged-up Crown Vic barely gets a glance from the sleepy-eyed schoolkids hanging out in front of PriceWise. In this neighborhood police sirens are part of the soundtrack, like the strings and horns in a Nelson Riddle chart.
“Joe, take it easy. I got it on good authority our man will sit tight till we get there.”
Joe Yates has three of the more annoying qualities you’ll ever find in a colleague or friend—tireless good humor, a full head of hair, and a beautiful girlfriend. Maybe the three are related, but that doesn’t make them any less annoying.
Yates doesn’t reply to my request, but apparently he listens. The car slows to double the speed limit, and there’s less screeching around the corners. When we finally pull up in front of a redbrick six-floor walk-up and park behind the two double-parked squad cars, half my iced coffee is still in my cup.
“Smooth enough for you, gramps?”
When we reach the fourth floor, everyone is already here—Heekin from Forensics, Nicolo and Hart from Homicide, and the street cop who broke down the door after a neighbor alerted the super to the funky smell inside.
But except for the guys in white gloves dusting the doorknobs, faucets, light switches, and window, everyone’s been waiting for me to get here and see the scene as it was found.
No one’s touched the teenage brother half l
ying, half sitting on the bed. Judging by the smell and the pallor and the chunk a rat gnawed off his big toe, I’d say the kid’s been dead about a week.
“TV on when you got here?” I ask.
“Yup,” says Hart, the younger of the two homicide detectives and a bit of a kiss-ass. “Same volume. Same channel. No one touched a thing, Connie.”
Blaring away on the tube is one of those stand-up comedian shows. Right now some skinny black female comic is riffing about large black women, and Heekin seems to think it’s hysterical.
“We catch you at a bad time, Jimmyboy? Because if we did, we can reschedule.”
“That’s okay, Chief.”
“You sure? Girlfriend’s pretty damn funny. I mean, she’s killing our friend over here.”
I get one of the guys from Forensics to dust the TV remote for prints so we can turn the set off and I can ask the question of the hour.
“So who is this poor, unfortunate deceased individual?”
Chapter 37
Raiborne
THERE ARE THREE characteristics I find particularly endearing in a friend or coworker—a deep and dependable level of misery, male-pattern baldness, and a sexually stingy wife. Again, maybe all these traits work together, but that doesn’t make them any less likable, and my favorite medical examiner, Clifford Krauss, bless his heart, has all three.
Because of all his winning qualities, it doesn’t bother me in the least that Krauss, who took over the morgue nine years ago, one year after I made chief of Homicide, is two or three times better at his job than anyone else in the Seventeenth. And he definitely knows it.
By now we all know that the kid stretched out on his back on the metal gurney in the morgue is Michael Walker, seventeen, from Bridgehampton, Long Island, and one of the kids wanted in connection with three East Hampton homicides. Till this morning I didn’t even know there were black people in the Hamptons, let alone triple homicides. But hey, I’m just a street cop from Bed-Stuy.
When I walk in, Krauss is at his desk in front of his laptop. He cups one hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and says, “Suffolk County coroner.”