The Beach House

Chapter 47

THINGS WERE GETTING TIGHT. The inquest concerning Peter Mullen's death was almost there.

On Monday night the Fixer parked about a block down the street from a modest-looking house in Riverhead, Long Island. There was a terra-cotta planter on the porch and an antique weather vane on the garage. Beside the retro-looking mailbox with J. davis painted across it in childlike yellow script, a stone rabbit was perched on its hind legs. Yikes.

For this little slice of heaven, the doc spent fourteen hours a day elbow-deep in stiffs, coming up with all sorts of creative theories about how they got that way. Davis 's civic-mindedness baffled the Fixer. She could be pulling down a million per in Manhattan. Instead, she was poking around in cadavers.

Why do people do this? Why do they care if someone drowned or got sunk? They probably watch too many movies. Everyone wants to be a hero. Well, guess what, Jane? You're no Julia Roberts. Trust me on this one.

He knew the doc's loyal pooch would be showing the effects of the yummy treat he'd slipped through the brass newspaper slot at the bottom of the door – another corny retro touch – a few hours earlier. She wasn't much of a watchdog now, lying on her side and snoring to beat the band.

The Fixer quietly let himself in, stepped over the dog, and walked up the stairs toward Jane Davis's bedroom.

This, he was thinking, this is why I get paid the big bucks.

Jane was sleeping, too. Yeah, Janie, you do snore. She lay on top of the sheets in her bra and panties. Not a lot up top, the Fixer noted, but decent legs for a doc.

He sat down next to her on the bed and watched her breathe. Christ, she sleeps like the dead.

He touched his hand down between her legs, and that got her up in a hurry. All full of piss and vinegar, too.

'Hey! What the hell? Who are you?' she screeched, and raised her fists as if she wanted to fight.

But then she saw the gun, and the silencer attached to the long barrel.

'You're a very smart woman, a doctor, so you know what this is about, don't you?'

She nodded, then whispered, 'Yes.'

'There's going to be an inquest soon, and you've already been overruled by one of your superiors. That should make it real easy for you.'

Then he did something naughty – the Fixer pressed the barrel of his gun between Jane Davis's legs. He rubbed it around. Well, it worked for him.

'You owe me, Jane,' he said, and rose from her bed. 'Don't make me come back here. Because I'd like to do you. And, Jane, I wouldn't call the police, either. They're in on this, too. Call the police, and I'll be back real soon.'

He left her bedroom, and she listened to him walk back downstairs. She finally took a breath. But then she heard the silenced pistol cough once.

She knew what the bastard had done, and Jane was crying as she hurried downstairs.

He was still there in her house, grinning, and he hadn't shot Iris after all.

'You owe me, Jane.'

Chapter 48

FIRST THEY MURDER YOU. Then they slander you. That was my 'breakfast revelation of the day' when I spread out the Star beside my omelette at Estia. I sighed, shook my head, and felt sad again. Sad and really shitty.

Peter was featured in another bold, fourteen-point headline, but the story had spun 360 degrees out of control. Now we had a second opinion about how Peter died: POLICE SUSPECT RIVAL DRUG DEALERS IN MULLEN'S DEATH.

The lead paragraph elaborated: 'A bitter battle over turf or a drug deal gone awry are two possibilities that police are pursuing in their ongoing investigation into the death of twenty-one-year-old Montauk native Peter Mullen, according to East Hampton Chief Detective Frank Volpi.'

Mack was right. Life is war.

Volpi also said that there was the possibility Peter Mullen was under the influence of drugs at the time of his death and that a request had been made for further tests to determine if that was the case. 'We have requested tests to detect the presence of cocaine, alcohol, or marijuana in the victim's blood,' said Volpi, 'and should have them completed in time for the inquiry.'

Neubauer's lawyers were employing the same strategy that had worked so well with O. J. Simpson and so many others. Put enough semiplausible scenarios out there and it becomes almost impossible to conclude that there isn't reasonable doubt.

I borrowed the phone and finally got the Star's editor on the line. 'Who is feeding you these stories?' I asked. 'It's Volpi, isn't it?'

'No one is feeding us anything. We're reporting everything relevant. That's what newspapers do, Mr. Mullen.'

'Bullshit. Why don't you try reporting the truth for a change?'

When the two-bit editor hung up, I called again and asked to speak to Burt Kearns, the reporter who'd written the earlier stories.

'You can't talk to Burt Kearns. Kearns was fired three days ago.'

Then the editor hung up on me again.

Chapter 49

THINGS GOT EVEN WORSE later that morning. I was on a roll – backwards.

I took one look at Nadia Alper's littered desk and did my best to conceal my alarm. Alper was the assistant district attorney assigned to the inquiry. The condition of her office, tucked away in an upper floor of the former Seaford Town Hall, didn't communicate a high level of organization or readiness. Every inch of her desk was strewn with police and coroner reports, phone books, notepads, cassettes, and crinkled Subway fast-food wrappers.

As she rummaged through papers, tiny columns of dust sifted through the sunlight tilting through the windows.

'I know it's here,' insisted Nadia. 'I was looking at it a minute ago.'

'Are you handling this completely on your own?' I asked as calmly as possible. Neubauer had a lockstepping army of five-hundred-dollar-an-hour Ivy League attorneys protecting him like a Kevlar vest. Peter, it appeared, had one very young, underpaid, overworked assistant district attorney seeking justice for him.

'I also have a detective who's out in Montauk interviewing people right now,' she said. 'And no, this isn't my first case.'

'I didn't mean to suggest…'

'It's my third.'

We both bemoaned the fact that so much of the evidence pointing to foul play in Peter's death was circumstantial. Our strongest cards, she believed, were Jane's medical report and the photographs of the battered body. She finally unearthed the missing folder, and we reviewed it together. Attached were copies of the X rays revealing the multiple broken bones and skull fractures and the severed vertebrae, and photographs of Peter's lung tissue.