STANDING IN THE FRAGRANT SHADOW of a tall evergreen, a large man with a nasty scar, Rory Hoffman watched as the EMS van led the caravan of vehicles off the beach. As the red taillights snaked through the trees, he clucked his tongue and softly shook his head. What a fucking mess. A disaster of the first order.
His official title was head of security, but he had attended to these delicate matters for so long and with such efficiency that he was referred to as 'the Fixer.' Hoffman considered the moniker grandiose and misleading. He was more like the maid, or the cleaning service.
He knew this wouldn't be easy. It never was. Among the petty insights he'd culled in his tenure was that violence always leaves a stain. And while with skill and diligence you might be able to get the stain out, the effort will leave its own telltale residue. It meant your work was never quite done.
The Fixer left the cover of the trees for the gravel driveway, the white stones pushing through the thin soles of his driving shoes. He snuffed out a laugh at the marketing elan of that one. Need to hawk a pair of shoes so flimsy that you can barely walk in them? Call them driving shoes. Genius. And he was wearing them.
He reached the point where the cars had gotten on the driveway. Then he followed their tracks back onto the sand. Half the beach seemed to have spilled into his silk socks. Under the full moon, the ocean was putting on quite a show. Very Shakespearean, as if the whole planet were caught up in the momentum of the so-called tragedy on the beach.
Although the moon was bright, he flipped on a flashlight and searched among the dunes for footprints. The beaches themselves were public. There was no way you could keep people off them entirely. Although for the most part the no trespassing signs were observed, you never knew who might have intruded.
The north side looked good. Perhaps tonight would be the exception to the rule.
The first ten yards of dunes turned up empty. Then he saw a cigarette butt, and another. Not good. Very bad, actually.
He had the sense of being watched, and when he closed his eyes his prominent nose picked up the scent of sulfur still hanging in the air from a struck match.
Boot-shaped footprints led him to a stand of bushes in the dunes. Behind them were more prints, and more cigarette butts. Whoever had been there had been camping out awhile.
He crouched and scooped three of the butts into a little plastic Baggie, the kind cops used – or were supposed to anyway.
That's when his flashlight picked out a crushed bright yellow box in the sand. Kodak.
Chapter 10
THE NEXT MORNING my eyeballs hurt. So did everything else above and below. What didn't actually ache just felt lousy. And that was in the two-second reprieve before I remembered what had happened to my brother.
I rubbed my eyes. That's when I saw that Dana was gone. There was a note taped to the lamp: 'Jack, I didn't want to wake you. Thanks for letting me stay. It meant a lot to me. I miss you already. Love, Dana.' She was smart and beautiful, and I was lucky to have her. It's just that I was having a little trouble feeling lucky that morning.
I walked gingerly downstairs and took my place at the kitchen table with two grieving old men in bathrobes. We weren't a pretty sight.
'Dana's gone.'
'I had coffee with her,' said Mack. 'She was crying a lot.'
I looked at my father, and there was almost no reaction. One look at him in the morning light and it was clear to me he'd never be the same. It was as if he had aged twenty years overnight.
Mack seemed as steady as ever, almost stronger, as if fortified by the tragic turn of events. 'I'll make you some eggs,' he said, springing from his chair.
It's not that my grandfather wasn't devastated by Peter's death. If anything, Peter had been his favorite. But to my grandfather, life, for better or worse, is a holy war, and he was girding himself for another battle.
He peeled off five pieces of bacon and dropped them in a cast-iron skillet as old and gnarly as he was. Soon the room was filled with greasy music.
That morning I realized that my father had never really gotten over the death of my mother. His heart wasn't in his construction company, and he had no desire to chase the biggest building boom in Hamptons history. He watched his fellow tradesmen move from pickups to Tahoes and leave him in the dust. Not that he cared.
My grandfather, on the other hand, had actually gained momentum as he got older. After retiring as an ironworker in his early sixties, he spent a summer reading and farting around. Then he went back to school and became a paralegal. In the past twenty years he had become something of a legend in courtrooms and firms all over the eastern half of Long Island. A lot of people believed he knew the law better than most circuit judges. He insisted that this wasn't nearly as impressive as it sounded.
His love of the law was half the reason I was at Columbia, and he was immensely proud I'd come that far. Sharing a couple of pints with him at the Shagwong included the repeated embarrassment of his introducing me as 'the most overeducated Mullen in the history of Ireland and America.' I could see by the way he looked at me that morning, however, that he considered all that hypothetical schoolboy stuff compared to this.
'There is no way Peter killed himself,' I said. 'Volpi is a moron.'
'Or doesn't give a shit,' said Mack.
To my father, the issue of how Peter died was almost moot. His last moments would have been less terrifying if it was suicide. To Macklin, it was everything.
'The kid got laid more than God. Why would he kill himself?'
Mack broke three eggs on top of the bacon and let them sizzle sunny-side up. When they started to blacken around the edges, he skillfully worked a spatula under it all and flipped the whole thing without spilling a yellow drop. He let it fry for another thirty seconds before sliding the whole greasy construct onto my plate.
It was approaching summer, but this was cold, blustery, off-season food. It was exactly what I needed. After three cups of black coffee, I pushed my chair from the table and announced that I was going to talk to Volpi.
'You want me to come with you?'
'No, thanks, Mack.'
'Well, don't do anything stupid. Keep your head. You hear me, Jack?'
'Listen to him,' said my father, 'the bleeding voice of reason.'
For a second, I almost thought he was going to smile.
Chapter 11
SOMEONE MUST HAVE DRIVEN Peter's motorcycle to the house during the night. It sat in the driveway like a giant lizard warming itself in the sun. It was typical of Peter to go into hock for a rolling sculpture. Even if we got a fair price for it, we'd owe the bank a couple of thousand. But I had to admit, it was a thing of beauty, and the license plate got a smile out of me: 4NIC8. Yep, that was Peter.
I climbed into the old black pickup with mullen construction painted on the door and drove to the small brick building on 27 that houses the East Hampton Police Department. I parked next to Frank Volpi's black Jeep.
Tommy Harrison was the sergeant at the desk. He shook my hand and told me how sorry he was about Peter. 'I liked your brother a lot, Jack.'
'That's what I'm here to talk to Volpi about.'
Harrison went back to get Volpi, then returned a couple of minutes later with a sheepish expression.
'The detective is a lot busier than I thought. He thinks he'll be tied up all afternoon.'
'If it's okay, Tommy, I'll wait. It's important.'
