Nothing.
Nothing.
Tires screeched in the driveway and there were loud footsteps on the stairs, then Hank was kneeling beside me.
'How long has he been like this?'
'Three, four minutes.'
'Okay. There's a chance.'
Hank had the portable deflbrillator lifepack with him. It was in a white plastic box about the size of a car battery. He hooked up my father, then threw the toggle that sent electrical current into his chest.
Now I was the one who couldn't breathe. I stood over my father, numb and disbelieving. This couldn't be happening. He must have come up to Peter's room to reminisce.
Each time Hank threw the switch, my father went into spasm.
But the line on the electrocardiogram showed no response.
After the third jolt of electricity, Hank looked at me in shock.
'Jack – he's gone.'
Part Two. THE MURDER INVESTIGATION
Chapter 17
MY FATHER'S FUNERAL was held forty-eight hours later at St. Cecilia's. Close to a thousand year-rounders squeezed into the squat stone chapel or stood just outside it for the Monday service. No one was more surprised by the size and intensity of the outpouring than I. My father was reserved and modest, the opposite of a hail-fellow- well-met. Because of that, I always assumed he'd been unappreciated. That wasn't the case.
Monsignor Scanlon recounted how, at sixteen years of age, John Samuel Sanders Mullen left Ireland and traveled alone to New York City, where he found a spot with relatives in an already crowded Hell's Kitchen tenement. Macklin and my grandmother couldn't make it across for another three years, and by then my father had dropped out of school and apprenticed himself to a carpenter. Even after his parents arrived, he was the family's only means of support for several years – 'a sixteen-year-old boy working eighty-hour weeks. Can you imagine?' asked the monsignor.
Five summers later Sam and his new wife, Katherine Patricia Dempsey, were looking for a Sunday's respite from the asphalt furnace. So they rode the Long Island Rail Road as far as it would take them. Stepping off, they found a little fishing village that reminded my father of the one he'd left behind in County Claire. 'Two weeks later,' said the monsignor, 'Sam, full of a young man's love and ambition, pulled up roots for the second time in eight years and moved out to Montauk for good.'
I often wondered why my father showed so little zeal for the Hamptons gold rush. Now I saw that by the time he arrived at the end of Long Island, he was far more concerned with appreciating what he had than lusting for more.
'Since the Mullens arrived in this town,' continued Thomas Scanlon, 'I've had many happy occasions to visit them in the house on Ditch Plains Road that Sam built. Sam Mullen had all a man could ask for – a lovely home, an even lovelier wife, an honest business, and in young Jack and Peter a pair of handsome sons who were already two of the brightest lights in our village. Peter was the town's most gifted athlete, and Jack was showing the academic promise that would eventually take him to Columbia Law.
'But then,' the monsignor said, 'catastrophe blindsided the Mullens. First came the much too early death of Katherine Patricia from cancer. Last week the still unsatisfactorily explained death of Peter Mullen, a blow that unquestionably contributed to Sam's death Friday night.
'To see the hand of God in any of this is obviously beyond our limited knowledge. I only offer what I know to be true. That this life, however short, and it's almost always too short, is precious beyond measure.'
Mack, Dana, and I sat in the front row. Behind the three of us, the room shared a cathartic sob – but Mack and I were dry-eyed that morning at least. To us, this wasn't divine mystery, it was murder. Whoever had killed Peter was also partly responsible for my father's heart attack, or at least his broken heart.
As the monsignor continued over his parishioners' tears, I felt the grip of my grandfather's hand on my knee. I looked into his ravaged face and bottomless Irish eyes.
'There's a couple of mysteries of this precious life,' he whispered, 'that you and I are going to get to the bottom of, whether God in heaven chooses to throw in with us or not.'
I put my own bony Mullen hand on his and squeezed back hard enough for both of us to know that a pact had been made.
Somehow, someway, we were going to avenge Peter and my father.
Chapter 18
IF YOU THOUGHT IT WAS A NEAT TRICK squeezing a thousand full-bodied mourners into a church built for two hundred, imagine the human gridlock when the same crowd arrived on our doorstep at 18 Ditch Plains Road.
Shagwong ran the bar and Seaside Market did the food, and for six hours the entire population of Montauk wended its way through our half a dozen small rooms. I believe that every single person who ever had any contact with my father or brother in the past twenty years walked into our living room, took my hand, and looked into my eyes.
Teachers and coaches going back to kindergarten showed up and described Peter's unlimited potential at this sport or that subject. As did the merchants who had kept my father in hardware and bacon sandwiches. The politicians, of course, were out in full force. So were the firemen and cops; even Volpi and Belnap showed their faces.
Despite how badly things had panned out for the Mullens in Montauk, it was impossible not to feel enormous affection for its unpretentious residents. People give a shit about their neighbors out here.
Nevertheless, after a couple of hours, all the faces ran together. I guess that's what funerals are for – turning grief into a blur. In that way, they're diverting.
Dana finally left about seven. She's not much of a drinker, so I understood. And I appreciated that she knew I had to be there and drink with my old friends and relatives.
All my friends were there. After the bulk of the guests left, we gathered in the kitchen. Fenton, Marci, Molly, Hank, and Sammy – the same crowd that had been there for me that night at the Memory.
We had all been working on Peter's case, the situation, or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. Fenton had been lobbying hard with the Suffolk County medical examiner, an old girlfriend of his, that Peter's death not be treated like a routine drowning. I had talked to contacts at the Daily News and
'People are talking,' Sammy reported about his A-list clientele. 'They're starting to feel some heat at the Beach House, too. The Neubauers already canceled a party for the weekend of the fourth. Out of respect, no doubt.'
We all applauded ourselves. Big deal, right, we'd gotten them to cancel a goddamned party.
Not all the news was good. Three nights before, Hank had walked into Nichols Cafe, where he'd been head chef since it reopened, and was fired on the spot.
'No reason or explanation,' said Hank. 'The manager handed me my last check and said good luck. For two
