been one of East Hampton ’s finest.
Belnap, in uniform and on duty, sits on the stool next to me smoking a cigarette, sipping a Coke. That could mean he is drinking a rum and Coke, or a Jack and Coke, or, unlikely as it may sound, a plain old Coke.
Either way, that’s between him and Marjorie, who is now concentrating on my cocktail. And when she places the chilled glass in front of me and pours out the translucent elixir, I stop talking to Billy and give her the respectful silence she deserves till the last drop brings the liquid to the very rim, like the water in one of those $200,000 infinity swimming pools.
“I hope you know I adore you,” I say, lowering my head for my first careful sip.
“Keep your affection, Dunleavy,” says Marjorie. “A couple more of these, you’ll be pawing my ass.”
As the Grey Goose does its work, I’m thinking about whether or not I should tell Billy, off the record of course, about the events of the afternoon. For the most part, so little happens to us townies, it seems ungenerous not to share a good tale.
So trying to strike the right balance of modesty and humor, I give it a shot. When I get to the part when Michael Walker puts the gun to Feifer’s head, I say, “I thought for sure I was going to be scrubbing blood off Wilson ’s million-dollar court.”
Belnap doesn’t smile. “Was Wilson there?” he asks.
“No. I hear he’s afraid to set foot down there.”
“I believe that.”
I’m wrapping it up, describing Walker ’s last face-saving threat, when a scratchy voice barks out of the two-way radio lying next to Belnap’s half-full glass. He picks up the radio and listens.
“Three bodies in East Hampton,” says Belnap, draining the rest of his drink in one gulp. “You coming?”
Chapter 11. Tom
“THREE MALES, EARLY twenties,” says Belnap as he drives. “A jogger just called it in.”
I want to ask from where, but the hard way Belnap stares through the windshield and the way the car squeals around corners discourage me from any questions.
I must have lived a sheltered life, because this is my first ride in a squad car. Despite the frantic flashing and wailing, it seems eerily calm inside. Not that I feel calm. Anything but.
The roads out here are wooded and windy, and the powerful beams of Belnap’s cruiser barely dent the dark. When we finally reach the end of Quonset and burst into the glaring light of Route 27, it feels like coming up from the bottom of a deep, cold lake and breaking through the surface.
A quarter of a mile later, just before the beach, we are braking hard again and turning back into the darkness. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust enough to see we’re on Beach Road.
In the dark the hulking houses seem threatening. We’re really flying now, hitting eighty-five as we pass the golf course.
A quarter of a mile later, Belnap brakes so hard I come up into my harness, and he swerves between a pair of tall white gates-T. Smitty Wilson’s white gates.
“That’s right,” says Billy, staring straight ahead. “Back at the scene of your latest heroics.”
The driveway is empty, and not a single car is parked beside the court, something I haven’t seen in months. Even when it’s pouring rain, there’d be a crowd partying in their cars. But on Saturday night, Labor Day weekend, the place is as deserted as if it were Christmas Eve.
“This is bad, Tom,” says Belnap, the master of understatement. “Nobody gets murdered out here. Just doesn’t happen.”
Chapter 12. Tom
IT’S EERIE AND creepy too.
Exaggerating the emptiness around the court is all the light that is being pumped in. For night games, eight high-watt halogens have been set on tall, elegant silver poles. They’re the same lights used on movie sets, and they’re blazing tonight.
A police cruiser and ambulance have beaten us out here.
Belnap makes me stay by the car as he hustles down to where two ambulances are backed into the dunes.
From the hood of his cruiser, I hear an uninterrupted wail of sirens, and then I see a posse of cop cars race up Beach Road from both sides.
Pairs of headlamps converge at the tall gate at the bottom of the hill and snake their way toward me up the driveway.
The next five minutes bring at least a dozen more cruisers and three more ambulances. In that same ominous rush come the department’s two detectives in their black Crown Vics. Plus the K-9 and Forensics units in separate vans.
Then the cop cars stop arriving and the sirens stop wailing, and I can hear the ocean waves again. The whole vibe is as strange and unnatural as a small child’s wake.
For the next few minutes, I stay by the car, the one person there not in the crowd ringing the crime scene, and just by looking at the backs, the postures, I can tell that this is far heavier than what the cops are used to, and I can feel the anger. A few years ago a millionaire was murdered in his bed within a mile of here, but that was different. These bodies aren’t summer people.
The way the cops are acting, these are three of their own-maybe even cops.
When the volunteer firemen show up, I figure I’ve stayed put long enough. After all, I’m not exactly a stranger here. For good or bad, everybody knows Tom Dunleavy.
But halfway to the ambulance, Mickey Harrison, a sergeant who played hoops with me in high school, steps up and puts both hands firmly on my chest.
“Tommy, you don’t want to go any closer right now. Trust me.”
It’s too late. As he restrains me, the circle breaks, and I glimpse the shapes the cops are scurrying around.
It’s dark down here, and at first the shapes make no sense. They’re too high, or too short, with no connection to familiar human outlines.
I squint into the shadows, my mind still unable to process the images. Then a cop from Forensics drops into a crouch, and there’s a powerful flash from his camera.
It sets off a second flash at the very middle of the scene, and before it fades to black again, I see the white circle of Feifer’s bleached hair.
“Oh, Jesus God,” I say, and Mickey Harrison takes my arm at the elbow.
Then, almost immediately, another shock. The bodies aren’t lying side by side. They’re stacked, one on top of the other,
Now there’s a voice cutting through the others, maybe Billy Belnap’s, but the way I’m suddenly feeling I can’t tell for sure. “You think Dante and his nigger friends could have done this?”
I don’t actually hear the response because I’m down on my knees puking into the damp sand.
Chapter 13. Kate
“HEY, MARY C, how you doing?” I hear as I arrive at the nightmare scene, the murder scene on a beach I think
