Beach Road

what else? That bitch is smart.

Maybe she just stole the fight.

Chapter 99. Tom

THE NEXT MORNING, when the crowd trudges back into the courtroom, you can read the tension on every face. It fills the room. After a very hot week and air-conditioning that’s little more than a sound effect, this unventilated box reeks of dried sweat and body odor. As I walk to my seat alongside Kate, perspiration trickles down my back.

Deciding not to put Dante on the stand is a calculated risk, but putting a terrified teenager at the mercy of the prosecution seemed even riskier. Nevertheless, it places that much more pressure on my summation. I’m scribbling last-second notes when the bailiff crows, “All rise!”

Much too quickly, Judge Rothstein strides into the room, climbs onto his bench, and turns to me.

“Mr. Dunleavy,” he says, and I face the jury one last time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, when I stood before you at the start of this trial, my one request was that you accept nothing you hear until you’ve filtered it through your own judgment. I know you’ve done that because I sat and watched you do it, and because I can see the effect of that effort in your eyes. So, thank you.

“This morning we’re going to examine the prosecution’s case one final time and consider their so-called evidence piece by piece.”

Already, my face is dripping with sweat, and when I mop my brow and take a gulp of water, the only sound in the room is the drone of that useless AC.

“When I went to work for Dante, I thought this was a tragic case of an innocent teenager finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now I realize bad luck had nothing to do with Dante Halleyville and Michael Walker being at Smitty Wilson’s estate the night Eric Feifer, Robert Walco, and Patrick Roche were murdered.

“Dante and Michael were deliberately lured to the scene so they could be framed for the murders. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.

“How exactly did Dante and his best friend end up at Wilson ’s fifty-million-dollar estate that night? When Dante turned himself in, he told the police he got a call at about five p.m., and we know he’s telling the truth because the records show he got a call eighty-three seconds long, exactly at five oh one. It came from a pay phone outside a seafood shack called the Clam Bar in Napeague.

“The caller identified himself as Eric Feifer. He invited Dante to come to the Wilson estate so they could clear the air and put this overblown incident behind them. Dante, being a good person who felt exactly the same way about that stupid fight-which the prosecution has shamelessly blown up into a mini race riot-immediately agreed to meet Feifer later that night. Also, apparently Michael Walker was looking to buy marijuana that night. Dante admitted as much.

“But the person who made that call, ladies and gentlemen, wasn’t Eric Feifer. It was someone impersonating Eric Feifer.

“If Eric Feifer was the caller, he would have used his cell phone. He didn’t need to go out of his way to make a call that couldn’t be traced back to him, because he had nothing to hide. But the caller, who was setting up Dante and Michael for these murders, did have something to hide. So he used a pay phone.

“That call,” I say, pausing only long enough to swipe at my dripping face again, “was only the first of several steps the actual murderers took to frame Dante, but it was the most important. It got Dante and Michael to the scene, and as soon as the murderers heard them arrive, they killed those three young men.

“Now the murderers had Dante and Walker at the scene, but that wasn’t enough for them. They find out- possibly from a connection in the police department-where Michael Walker is hiding. They murder him with the same weapon used to kill Feifer, Walco, and Roche. After getting Walker ’s perfect prints on the weapon, they hang on to the gun until Dante turns himself in.

“As soon as they hear Dante stopped at the Princess Diner on his way back from the city that night, they drop the gun there. With another phony call, or so-called anonymous tip to Officer Hugo Lindgren, they reveal that the gun is in the Dumpster. How convenient.

“Ladies and gentlemen, do any of you use pay phones anymore? Do any of you not have cell phones? But in this case two crucial calls are made by pay phone. And both are made for the same reason-so the caller can’t be traced.

“Think hard about what the prosecution has been telling you. It doesn’t make sense. If Dante had killed those three young men, then used the same gun to kill his best friend, he had plenty of time to get rid of the murder weapon. If, as the prosecution maintains, he traveled alone from the Lower East Side to Brooklyn, killed Walker, and then returned to Lower Manhattan, he could have tossed the gun anywhere along the way. Instead, according to the prosecution anyway, he hangs on to it until the last minute. Then he recklessly discards it in a public place.

“And Michael Walker’s prints on the gun. That fails the smell test too. If Dante killed Walker he would have wiped all the prints off before discarding the weapon. He wouldn’t have carefully removed his prints and left Walker ’s.

“Now let’s talk about the Miami Heat cap-because this is where the actual murderers slipped up in a couple of important ways. Since the killers couldn’t get Dante’s print on the gun, they decided to leave one of his caps at the scene. But how could the killers know that the hats on Dante’s shelves were purely symbolic, that they were never worn, that Dante thought it was bad luck to put any of those hats on before the NBA draft? They couldn’t.

“That’s why they left a cap that had no trace of Dante’s sweat or hair oil on the band. They left a hat at the crime scene that had never been worn. If Dante had gone off that night to kill his best friend, would he pick the brightest, reddest cap in his collection? And in a year, the prosecution hasn’t been able to find one person, not one, who saw a nearly seven-foot man in a bright-red cap on the streets of New York City that night. Of course they didn’t. He wasn’t on the street that night.

“So what really happened? Who are the killers?

“Someone or some group of people connected to the drug trade that was conducted so brazenly at Mr. Wilson’s estate last summer killed those three young men. They opportunistically framed Dante Halleyville. They killed Michael Walker too, but in the process they made serious mistakes. Killers almost always do.

“A hat that Dante had never worn at a crime scene. A gun planted in a Dumpster in a way that makes no sense. And then, the biggest blunder-leaning way too heavily on one crooked cop.”

At that, the whole room squirms, particularly the men in blue standing shoulder to shoulder along all four walls.

“Are we really expected to believe it’s a coincidence that the same cop who received the so-called anonymous tip about the gun in the Dumpster also got the call from Nikki Robinson when she came up with her ridiculous fabrication of rape? And this is the same cop who arrested her for possession? And the same cop who was left alone in Dante’s bedroom with those hats? Please.

“But for all the mistakes the killers made, one calculation proved to be spot on-which is that the police would be quick to believe that a black teenager, even one with no history of violence and the prospect of being a top selection in the NBA draft, would throw it all away because he lost a meaningless pickup basketball game and got hit by a harmless punch. Why? Because that’s what black teenagers do, right? They go off for no reason.

“From the beginning of this trial, the prosecution has gone out of its way to talk about race. They told you about a basketball game in which, God forbid, one team was made up of black players and the other white players. They made sure you heard about a scared teenage kid who said, ‘This ain’t over, white boy.’ That’s because at the core of the prosecution’s case is the assumption that black teenagers are so fragile and insecure that anything can set them off on a murderous rampage.

“I know Dante Halleyville, and there’s nothing fragile about his personality or character. When his older brother veered into crime, he stayed in school and worked on his game. When his mother lost her battle with drug addiction, he stayed in school and worked on his game, and now he’s stood up to almost a year in a maximum- security jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

“In this case, as in so many others, race is nothing but a smoke screen. I know you’re not going to be distracted or misled. You’re going to see the prosecution’s case for what it is. Because there is not one piece of