Beach Road

stranger?”

“The standard explanation includes long hours, parents in Sarasota, and brothers scattered with the wind. The pathetic truth, I’m afraid, is I didn’t want to run into Tom Dunleavy. Who, by the way, I just ran into.”

“The truth is always pathetic, isn’t it? That’s why I avoid it like the plague myself. In any case, now that you’ve gotten over the dreaded encounter with Dunleavy, why don’t you come out here and put the little shit out of business? Not that it would be much of an accomplishment. I hear he bills about a hundred hours a year.”

“Better yet, why don’t I just forgive him and move on? It’s been almost a decade.”

“Forgive? Move on? Kate Costello, have you forgotten that you’re Irish?”

“Macklin, you’ve made me laugh,” I say, and just then, none other than Mary Catherine wobbles across the room and flings herself at my legs.

“Drivel aside, Mack, this is the true problem for me and Montauk. Of my two favorite people, one is twenty months old, the other eighty-four.”

“But, Kate, we’re both just hitting our strides. This shillelagh nonsense is nothing but a corny piece of atmosphere.”

Chapter 19. Tom

THE NEXT DAY, to sweat out the funeral, I head to the beach, my four-legged personal trainer, Wingo, nipping at my heels. It’s the first Monday after Labor Day, the unofficial start of townie summer, and most of the insufferable New Yorkers are gone.

On a cool, brilliantly sunny day, the greatest stretch of beach in North America is empty.

Running on the damp, packed sand close to the water is no more difficult than running on the track behind the high school. To punish myself, though, I stay on the soft stuff that sucks at your feet with every step.

In five minutes, everything that’s attached to me hurts-legs, lungs, back, head-so I pick up the pace.

In another five minutes, I can smell the whiskey from last night as the sweat pours off my face. Five minutes after that, my hangover has nearly vanished.

Later that afternoon, Wingo and I are recovering from our midday workout, me on the couch and Wingo asleep at my feet, when a knock on the front door rouses us. It’s about four, still plenty of light outside, and a black sedan is parked on the gravel driveway.

At the door is young master Van Buren, the detective who ran the show on the beach the other night.

Barely thirty, he made detective early this summer. Considering his age, it was quite a coup. He leapfrogged half a dozen pretty decent cops with more seniority, including Belnap, and it didn’t win him any friends in the station house. So guess what Barney’s nickname is?

“Tom, I don’t need to tell you why I’m here,” he says.

“I’m surprised it took this long.”

Still dehydrated from my run, I grab a beer and offer him something, just to hear him say no.

“Why don’t we sit outside while we still can,” I say, and then because of the force with which he rejected my first offer, or because I’m acting like a prick for no good reason, I repeat it. “Sure I can’t get you that beer? It’s almost five.”

Van Buren ignores me and takes out a brand-new orange notebook he must have just bought for the occasion at the stationery store in Montauk.

“Tom, people say you did a good job getting that kid to put down his gun the other day. What confuses me is why you didn’t call the police.”

I can tell Van Buren doesn’t expect an answer. He’s simply letting me know that he can be a prick too.

“Obviously, I should have, but I could tell the kid had no intention of using it.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“I was closer. Believe me, he was more scared than Feif.”

“You know what kind of gun it was?”

“I don’t know guns, Barney.”

“Can you describe it?”

“I barely looked at it. In fact, I made it a point not to. I tried to pretend that me and Walker were just two people having a conversation. Ignoring the gun made that a lot easier.”

“You know any reason Michael Walker or Dante Halleyville might want to kill Feifer, Walco, or Roche?”

“No. There isn’t any.”

“Why’s that, Tom?”

“They barely knew each other.”

The young detective pursed his lips and shook his head. “No one’s seen them since the murder.”

“Really.”

“Plus, we got reason to think Dante and Walker were at the scene that night.”

I start shaking my head a little at the news. “That makes no sense. There’s no way they’d go back there after what happened that afternoon.”

“Not if they were smart,” says Van Buren. “But, Tom, these boys weren’t smart. They could be killers.”

Chapter 20. Tom

WOW! HALF AN hour after Barney Fife Van Buren leaves with his little orange notebook in hand, Wingo sounds the alarm again. More company.

When I look through the front-door window, all I see is torso, which means it’s Clarence, and that’s not good news either.

Clarence, who drives a cab in town and does some college scouting, has been a close friend since he steered me to St. John’s fifteen years ago. Because there’s as much downtime for a Hampton cabbie as for a Montauk lawyer, he comes by my office two or three times a week. The six-foot-six Clarence is also Dante’s cousin, and I know from his worried expression that’s why he’s here. This cannot be good.

“I just got a call from him,” says Clarence. “Boy is scared out of his mind. Thinks they’re going to kill him.”

“Who? Who’s going to kill him?”

“He’s not sure.”

I pull two beers out of the fridge and Clarence takes one.

“Where the hell is he? Van Buren just left here. He says Dante and Walker bolted. It looks bad.”

“I know it does, Tom.”

With the sun on the way down, we sit at the counter in the kitchen.

“Van Buren also implied that Dante and Walker were at the murder scene that night.”

“They got a witness?” asks Clarence.

“I can’t tell. He was being cute about it. Why the hell would Dante and Walker be going back there after what happened?”

“Dante says he can explain everything. But right now we got to get him to turn himself in. That’s why I’m here. He respects you, Tom. You talk to him, he’ll listen.”

Clarence stares at me. “Tom, please? I’ve never once asked you for a favor.”

“He tell you where they are?”

Clarence shook his head and looked hurt. “Wouldn’t even give me a number.”

I spread my hands wide. “What do you want to do, Clarence? Wait here and hope he calls again?”

“He says we should talk to his grandma. Dante says if Marie says it’s cool, he’ll give us a call.”