The Beach House

asked.

'Clerical error.'

'Well, it's been corrected. Mr. Montrose wants to talk to you.'

He got on the line. 'What happened to that ambitious eager beaver who practically begged for his job?' asked Montrose, warming quickly to the task. 'We hold open a door that almost never gets opened for someone like you, and you slam it in our face. The only decent time you put in here was on a worthless pro bono case.'

'You're not talking about the Innocence Quest?' I asked. 'Exley told me it was the heart and soul of Nelson, Goodwin and Mickel. That would make me the heart and soul of the firm.'

'You're history, Mullen,' said Montrose. Then he hung up.

About five minutes later a pair of burly security guards – one African American, the other Hispanic – stood outside my office. I knew them from the firm's softball team.

'Jack, we've been asked to escort you out of the building,' said the shorter, wider of the two. His name was Carlos Hernandez. I liked him.

'We were also told to give you this,' he said, and handed me a piece of paper called a Separation Document.

' 'Effective immediately, Jack Mullen has been terminated from Nelson, Goodwin and Mickel for improper use of company time and resources and behavior detrimental to the firm,' ' I read.

'Sorry,' said Carlos with a shrug.

I wish I could tell you that when I pushed my way through the shiny steel revolving door and stepped out to the street, I felt relieved. Truth is, I was as frightened as Montrose and Barry Neubauer wanted me to be. Suddenly my threats against Neubauer seemed ridiculous and hollow. I knew I'd done the right thing upstairs, so why did I feel like such a fool?

I walked in a daze over to the New York Public Library and the beautiful paneled reading room where I used to ponder my future when I took the train into the city while I was still in high school.

I wrote a letter to the Mudman. I passed along the news that his old prosecutor finally seemed willing to submit the nineteen-year-old evidence from his case for DNA testing. I wished him luck and told him to stay in touch if he could.

I called Pauline from a pay phone, but I got voice mail and couldn't bear to leave a message.

Then I walked across town to Penn Station and crawled home to Montauk one more time. The whole way home I kept trying to solve the same riddle. What can I do to make this right?

Chapter 43

FENTON HOISTED HIS GLASS and toasted my sudden exit from the fast lane. 'You did good, my son. You've come back down to our level, maybe a little lower.'

'We missed you,' said Hank. 'Welcome back to the real world.'

It was Friday night at the Memory Motel. The membership of the Townie Benevolent Association was present and accounted for, and with the date set for the inquiry, there was a certain defiant joie de vivre.

In this group, my unemployment was hardly cause for sympathy. Despite the biggest economic boom in history and the fact that an obscene amount of that money was being frittered away in our backyard, very little was trickling down to us.

As we compared notes, it became clear we were all on the same blacklist. We weren't paranoid, either: somebody was out to get us.

'I've been knocking on doors all over town and can't get a thing,' said Hank. 'Even places like Gilberto's, which I know is hiring, won't touch me.'

'Some bastard has been cutting my nets,' said Fenton. 'Do you know how hard it is to repair a net? Not to mention that I'm afraid to go out on the boat alone.'

'My story is even worse,' said Marci, 'because it involves me. Two weeks ago this parking-space monger on Georgica Pond commissions me to build the Hamptons ' first authentic maze. Last night he calls and tells me he's awarding the project to Libby Feldhoffer. He was told that if he stuck with me, the planning and zoning board would never approve it.'

'Libby Feldhoffer!' said an outraged Molly. 'Her work is so pedestrian.'

'I knew you'd be there for me, sweetheart.'

'I didn't want to tell you, but this morning someone canceled their eleven-thirty at the last minute,' said Sammy to a round of boos.

Under the circumstances, I was almost glad to have finally shed my golden-boy bloom. I drained the dregs of our pitcher and was on my way back with a refill when Logan, the Friday-night barkeep, handed me a large manila envelope.

'For me?' I asked. 'From who?'

'A guy dropped it off. Said it was for all of you.'

'You know him?'

'I've seen him around, Jack. He tried to order a martini once.'

I returned to our table. 'We've got mail.'

I gave the envelope to Molly, and was refilling mugs when she flung it across the table.

'I don't know if I'm up for this whole thing anymore, Jack. Actually, I'm not. This is creepy. It's way beyond creepy. Will you look at this!'

The envelope held six pictures, one of each of us. Fenton sitting on the deck of his trawler at dusk. Sammy drinking coffee in the Soul Kitchen. Me getting off the Beemer in my driveway. The shot of Hank showed him racing across our lawn with a defibrillator. One of Marci with her maze client, just before she got dumped.

In every photo we were shot alone, and from behind. Just to remind us how vulnerable we were. Molly's picture set the standard. It was an extreme close-up of her asleep in bed. The photographer couldn't have been more than a foot away.

Under each picture were numbers: 6-5, 4-3, 10-1, 3-1. There was no note.

Chapter 44

ABOUT MIDNIGHT a boisterous pack of outsiders spilled into the Memory. The front of the bar, 'our' bar, was suddenly awash with strained smiles, fake laughs, and shrill squawking into cell phones.

'What a dive – I love it!' shouted one particularly enthused newcomer. 'Fuck you, too,' retorted an in-house wit.

'Check this out,' said Marci, pointing to a tanned figure sipping a sea breeze at the center of the clamor. 'That's Horst Reindorf.'

Reindorf, a former professional bodybuilder, had starred in more than a dozen hit movies. His latest, and Neubauer's first foray into film production, Intergalactic Messenger Boy, was being released the next Friday in 25,000 theaters. 'And there's Dennis Soohoo, who plays his Tonto-like sidekick,' added Marci as the actors posed for a picture.

'I guess somebody around here watches the E! channel,' said Sammy.

'Like you don't?' Marci snapped back.

'I don't watch it. I live it.'

'Someone at the Beach House probably suggested a great little townie bar,' I said. 'Told them it would be good for a hoot.'

Horst Reindorf had taken his sleeveless T-shirt off and was twirling it over his head. Dennis Soohoo had grabbed a cute girl, who happened to be Gidley's young cousin. Thank God, she pushed him away. One of the entourage's female members climbed up on the bar and started to dance.