Beach Road

steps into the tiny attorney’s room where Tom and I are waiting. Now I’m thinking that it’s one thing for an eighteen-year-old to hold his own with men on a basketball court but another to do it at a fifteen-hundred-man maximum-security jail. And Dante’s eyes definitely reveal he’s as terrified as my kid, or your kid, or any kid would be who suddenly found himself locked up in this terrible place.

“I’ve got good news,” says Tom. “This is Kate Costello. Kate is a top New York lawyer. She’s just taken temporary leave from her job at a major firm to help with your case.”

Dante, who has already gotten way too much bad news, only grimaces. “You’re not backing out on me, are you, Tom?”

“No way,” says Tom, straining to make himself understood better. “Defending you is all I’m doing and all I will be doing until you’re out of here. But now you’ve got yourself a legal team-a shaky ex-jock and an A-list attorney. And Kate is from Montauk, so she’s local too,” he says, reaching out for Dante’s hand. “It’s all good, Dante.”

Dante grabs for Tom’s hand and they embrace, and then Dante very shyly makes eye contact with me for the first time.

“Thanks, Kate. I appreciate it.”

“It’s good to meet you, Dante,” I say, and already feel more invested in this case than any I’ve handled in the last few years. Very strange, but true.

The first thing Tom and I do is talk with Dante about the murder of Michael Walker. He’s close to tears when he tells us about his friend, and it’s difficult to believe he had anything to do with the killing. Still, I’ve met some very convincing liars and con artists in my day, and Dante Halleyville has everything to lose.

“I got another piece of good news,” says Tom. “I tracked down the guy who was at the basketball court that night-a Cuban named Manny Rodriguez. We couldn’t talk for long, but he told me he saw something that night, something heavy. And now that I know where he works, it won’t be hard to find him again.”

As Dante’s young face brightens slightly, I can see all the courage that’s been required to keep it together in this place, and my heart goes out to him. I think, I like this kid. So will the right jury.

“How are you holding up?” I ask.

“It’s kind of rough,” says Dante slowly, “and some people can’t take it. Last night, about three in the morning, these bells go off and a shout comes over the intercom: ‘Hang-up in cell eight!’ That’s what they say when an inmate tries to hang himself, and it happens so often the guards carry a special tool on their belts to cut them down.

“I’m in block nine, across the way, so I see the guard race into a cell and cut some guy down from where he’s hanging. I don’t know if they got him in time. I don’t think so.”

I haven’t read through the materials yet, but Tom and I stay with Dante all afternoon to keep him company and give him a chance to get to know me a little. I tell him about cases I’ve worked on and why I got sick of it, and Tom recounts some NBA lowlights-like the night Michael Jordan dunked the ball off his head. “I wanted to ask the ref to stop the game and give me the ball,” says Tom, “but I didn’t think it would go over too well with my coach.”

Dante cracks up, and for a second I catch a glimpse of his smile, which is so pure it’s heartbreaking. But at six, when our time is up, his face clouds over again. It feels awful to leave him here.

It’s after eight when we get back to Montauk, but Tom wants to show me the office. Our office. He grabs the newspapers lying on the first step and leads me up a steep, creaking staircase. His attic space-with dormer walls slanting down on both sides so he can only stand up straight in half of it-is a far cry from Walmark, Reid and Blundell, but I kind of like it. It feels like rooms I had in college. Hopeful and genuine, like starting over.

“As I’m sure you’ve noticed,” says Tom, “every piece in the room is original IKEA.”

Tom leafs through the Times while I look around. “Remember,” he says, “when I used to just read the Sports? Now all I read is the Metro section. It’s the only part that seems connected to anything I under-”

He stops midsentence-and looks as though he’s been kicked in the stomach.

“What? What’s the matter?” I say, and walk around to look for myself.

Near the top of the page is a picture of a sidewalk in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Candles have been set out and lit in front of a makeshift shrine, an attempt to mark and protest one more pointless street killing in the neighborhood.

Beneath the picture is a story with the headline HIP-HOP FEUD CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM.

The name of the vic is right there in the first paragraph, staring up at both of us-Manny Rodriguez.

Chapter 56. Tom

I AM QUICKLY learning that misery does love company. And let’s hope two lawyers without a chance in hell are better than one.

When Kate and I pull into the lot behind East Hampton High School, all that’s left of the sudden November dusk is a violet smudge in a desolate sky. We park behind the gym and wait, doing our best to ignore the awkward reunion feeling of sitting next to each other in pretty much the exact spot where we met almost twenty years before.

“It’s like deja vu all over again,” I finally say, and regret it immediately.

“Still quoting Yogi,” says Kate.

“Only when it’s absolutely appropriate.”

A parade of students, all looking ridiculously young, pushes through the rear doors of the gym, and each drives off in one of the cars or SUVs parked or idling in the lot.

“Where’s our girl?” Kate asks.

“Don’t know. Our luck, she has the flu.”

“Our luck, she was run over by a semi this morning.”

At six thirty, when only a couple of cars are left, Lisa Feifer-Eric’s kid sister-steps through the door into the chilly air. Like her brother, Lisa is thin and graceful, the star on the girls’ state-championship lacrosse team. She moves across the empty lot with the relaxed shuffle of a spent athlete.

As she drops her gym bag on the roof of her old Jeep and unlocks the door, Kate and I get out of our car.

“We can’t waste time feeling sorry for ourselves about Rodriguez.” Kate had told me that first thing in the morning when she walked into the office. By then she had already read through my interviews with Dante and thought there were several areas worth pursuing. “It’s not our job to find out who actually killed Feifer, Walco, Rochie, and Walker. But it would sure help if we could steer the jury somewhere else. We’ve definitely got to find out more about the deceased.”

“You mean, dig up dirt on the dead?”

“If that’s how you want to put it,” Kate said, “that’s fine with me. Feifer, Walco, and Rochie were my friends too. But now our only loyalty is to Dante. So we have to dig, unmercifully, and see where it leads. And if it pisses certain people off, so be it.”

“Certain people are already pissed off.”

“So be it.”

I know Kate’s right, and I like the concept of unmerciful action on our part, but when Lisa Feifer turns around and sees us coming toward her, she looks at us as if we’re muggers, or worse.

“Hi there, Lisa,” says Kate, in a voice that manages to sound natural. “Can we talk to you for a minute?”

“About what?”

“Eric,” says Kate. “You know that we’re representing Dante Halleyville.”

“How messed up is that? You were his babysitter. Now you’re defending the guy who put a bullet between his eyes.”

“If we thought there was any chance Dante killed your brother, or Rochie, or Walco, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

“Bullshit.”

“And if you know anything dangerous that Eric might have been involved in you’ve got to tell us. If you don’t,