The Beach House

Forty minutes later the desk sergeant told me the same thing. I walked outside. Then I entered the headquarters of the East Hampton Police Department one more time. Through the back door.

Volpi's office was halfway down the hall. I didn't bother to knock.

The detective looked up from a Post spread out on his lap. The foam of his latte covered the tips of his mustache. In East Hampton even the cops sip cappuccinos.

'No rest for the weary, huh, Frank?'

'I take enough shit in this town without having to take more from you. Get the hell out of here! Get lost.'

'Give me one reason why Peter would go swimming in the middle of his shift, then I'll let you get back to 'Page Six' and your mocha blend.'

'I already told you. Because he was a stoned-out little punk.'

'And why would he kill himself? Peter had it all going for him.'

'Because his best girl was screwing his best friend; because he was having a bad hair day; because he was tired of hearing what a saint his older brother was. You wanted one reason. You got three. Now go away!'

'That's it, Frank? Accident, suicide – who cares? Case closed.'

'Sounds pretty good to me.'

'When are you going to stop acting like a rent-a-cop for the rich, Frank?'

He jumped out of his chair, stuck his face in mine, grabbed my shirt, and pushed me hard against the wall. 'I should kick your ass right now, you piece of shit.'

I didn't delude myself about Volpi's ability to back up his words, but the way I felt, maybe then wasn't the best day to get in the ring with me. Even Volpi sensed it. He released his grip and sat down.

'Go home, Jack. Your brother was a good guy. Everybody liked Rabbit, including me. But he drowned.'

'Bullshit! That's total crap, and you know it. Frank, if you're not interested in looking into this case, I'm sure the press will be. Considering all the boldface types at the party that night, Newsday will be interested. And the Daily News. Maybe the high and mighty New York Times.''

Volpi's face hardened. 'You really don't want to do that.'

'Why not? What am I missing here?'

'Trust me on this one. You just don't. Leave it alone, Jack.'

Chapter 12

I WAS FEELING A LITTLE NUTS, so I drove back out to the scene of the crime. The surf was down considerably, and it was still too rough for my brother to have considered swimming in it. Then I checked in on my father and grandfather. They were doing so bad, they were both in bed by 9:30. Dana had left a couple of messages for me.

I didn't get to the Memory Motel until after ten. By then almost every charter member of our highly exclusive club of born-and-bred townies was crowding a small round table at the rear of the bar.

Let me introduce you.

At the back of the table, under a chipped mirror, was Fenton Gidley. Fenton grew up four houses down from us, and we'd been best friends since before we learned how to walk. At six-three and 245 pounds, Fenton was a little bigger than he had been back then. He was offered a boxful of scholarships to play college football – Hofstra, Syracuse, even Ohio State. He took over his old man's fishing boat instead, heading out alone from Montauk Point for days at a time to hunt giant swordfish and tuna, which he sold to the Japanese.

On his left sat Marci Burt, who has planted and shaped shrubs for Calvin, Martha, Donna, and a handful of other less-fashionable multimillionaires. She and I were an item once – when we were thirteen. On Marci's right sat Molly Ferrer, who taught fourth grade and moonlighted for East Hampton 's Channel 70. Like Fenton, Marci and Molly were former classmates of mine at East Hampton High School.

Everyone at the table was sporting a surprisingly trendy coif, thanks to the man with almost no hair sitting opposite them-Sammy Giamalva, aka Sammy the Hairdresser. Sammy, who was five years younger than the rest of us, was Peter's best friend. Growing up, Sammy spent so much time at our house that he was like a member of the family. He still was.

When I arrived at the Memory, they each got up to lay a hug on me, and before I emerged from their warm, sad embraces, the final member of our crew and the most sincere person I know, Hank Lauricella, walked in.

Lauricella, a full-time chef and part-time EMS volunteer, was the one who got the call about Peter's body on the beach. The small, scarred table now held my five most dependable friends on the planet. They were as angry and as confused about Peter's death as I was.

'Accident, my cute behind,' said Molly. 'As if Peter, or anyone else, would go swimming in the middle of the night in that surf.'

'What Volpi's really saying is, Peter did himself,' said Sammy, the first openly gay person any of us ever knew. 'We all know that didn't happen.'

'Right. All this time we thought he was having more fun than the rest of us combined,' Fenton said. 'He was actually crying himself to sleep.'

'Then what did happen?' asked Marci. 'Nobody would want to hurt Peter. Maybe slap him upside the head a couple of times.'

'Well, something sure happened. Except for Jack, none of you saw Peter's body,' said Hank. 'I sat next to Peter in a space smaller than this table for four hours that night. He looked like he was stomped to death. And Frank Volpi never even looked at him. Never stepped inside the ambulance.'

'Volpi doesn't want to go near it,' said Fenton. 'He's scared shitless it goes right back to the folks who own him and the rest of this little village of ours.'

'So maybe we all have to start asking around. Talk to anyone who might know something,' I said. ' Because obviously no one else cares.'

'I'm for that,' said Molly.

'I know just about everybody who worked at the party that night,' said Fenton. 'One of them must have seen something.'

'And moi,' said Sammy. 'I'm really good at poking around for dirt.'

We held up our beers. 'To Peter.'

Chapter 13

THE TABLE SUDDENLY FELL SILENT. The change couldn't have been more pronounced if we had been union workers plotting a strike and someone from management had just stuck his head in the door. I turned and saw Dana at the bar.

Actually, the Memory isn't much of a bar. It's not much of a motel, either. Eighteen rooms with unobstructed views of John's Drive-Inn and the Getty station. Its one claim to notoriety is that back in the days when there were these big round black things known as records, a rock 'n' roll band by the name of the Rolling Stones stayed there once and wrote a song about it. The record it's on, Black and Blue, came out in 1976, and the cover is tacked on the wall along with the copy of the notes from the recording session.

We spent a lonely night at the Memory Motel,

It's by the ocean (sort of),

I guess you knew it well.

To be fair, the Memory also has a pretty great sign – the name spelled out over the entrance in jet black Gothic type. In any event, Dana, even dressed as she was that night in old blue jeans and a T-shirt, stood out as much as if Mick Jagger himself had shimmied in. I got up and went to the bar.

'I thought you might be here,' she said. 'I called your house a bunch of times. I had to go into New York this morning.'