Beach Road

Chapter 88. Kate

AT 8:15 A.M. the sprawling parking lot in front of the Arthur M. Cromarty Court Complex is overrun with media. TV news trucks occupy the half-dozen rows closest to the courthouse; thick black cable stretches over the cement in every possible direction.

Network and cable reporters, comfortably rumpled from the waist down and impeccably dressed and groomed above it, their faces caked with makeup, stand inside circles of white-hot light and file their first remotes.

Tom and I weave our way through the chaos and park. Then we walk briskly toward the entrance of the complex, hurrying to get safely inside before getting grabbed by the journalistic mob.

Our timing is good, because at that moment every TV camera in the lot is aimed at an elegant black man standing dramatically on the courthouse steps. As we hustle past, I see that it’s none other than T. Smitty Wilson. I guess he’s finally come to pay his respects.

Inside, three hundred or more spectators pack forty rows, and they are split straight down the middle of the courtroom. Dante’s supporters, who have arrived from as far away as California, fill the left half of the room. On the right are those who have traveled a much shorter distance to support the families of the victims. I’ve known most of them my entire life.

Surrounding the divided crowd are at least fifty cops, and in this instance, it doesn’t seem unwarranted. Officers from the Sheriff’s Department stand shoulder to shoulder along the front and back walls, behind the jury box, and on both sides of the judge’s podium.

Except for the journalists in the front two rows, there are few exceptions to the racial seating pattern. One is Macklin, the octogenarian exception to most rules. He sits defiantly between Marie and Clarence, and woe to the man who tries to move him. Hanging just as tough one row back are Jeff and Sean.

Tom, rifling through a stack of file cards, barely looks up when the twelve jurors and two alternates solemnly take their positions.

But neither of us can ignore the loud gasp when Dante, escorted by a pair of county sheriffs, enters the courtroom. He wears an inexpensive blue blazer and dress pants, both a size too small-he’s grown an inch in prison. He stares at the ground until he is seated between us.

“You guys good?” Dante asks in the quietest voice I can imagine coming out of his large body.

“Not just good,” I tell him. “We’re the best. And we’re ready.”

Dante’s slight smile, when it comes, is priceless.

Twenty minutes behind schedule, the sharp nasal voice of the bailiff finally rings through the courtroom. “Hear ye! Hear ye! All persons having business before the Suffolk County Supreme Court and Honorable Judge Richard Rothstein will now rise!”

Chapter 89. Tom

SUFFOLK COUNTY DA Dominic Ioli pushes his chair back from the prosecution table and then carefully folds his reading glasses into a leather case. Only after they’re safely tucked away in the jacket pocket of his new gray suit coat does he stand and face the two rows of jurors.

“Ladies and gentlemen, over the next several weeks you’re going to hear about the cold-blooded murder of four young men last summer. Before this trial is over, the state will have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the defendant seated on my left, Dante Halleyville, carefully and deliberately planned and carried out all four heinous crimes.

“We will prove that in the first three murders, Mr. Halleyville acted with Michael Walker, and that eleven days later, he turned that same weapon on his best friend and accomplice.”

Ioli has logged his share of court time, and you can hear it in his measured delivery. As Ioli refers to “a gun and a hat and a body of evidence that places the defendant at both crime scenes,” I glance back at the divided sea of faces staring from opposite sides of the courtroom. I scan the expressions of Jeff, Sean, Clarence, and Mack, and linger on Marie.

“Murder is too gentle a word,” bellows Ioli, bringing me back to his speech. “The more accurate word, the only word that captures the horror of these crimes, is execution.”

As Ioli winds down, I look around for one last piece of incentive, this time in the row of journalists and brand-name lawyers the networks have flown in as talking heads.

Sitting beside Alan Dershowitz, in a rumpled suit, and Gerry Spence, in a fringed suede jacket, is Ronnie Montgomery. For a second, we lock eyes.

The moment makes me think of Cecil Felderson, a fellow benchwarmer in my short time playing with the Timberwolves. According to Cecil, who hoarded his resentments like gold, “the worst thing of all, the thing that sticks in your craw more than anything, is having to listen to some guy say ‘I told you so.’”

With one haughty look at us and our tiny office, Montgomery wrote me off as an amateur and a loser, hopelessly out of my depth. Now I can either prove him right and hear about it, one way or another, for the rest of my life, or I can prove him wrong and shut him, and everybody else, the fuck up.

I rise from my seat.

Chapter 90. Kate

I DON’T KNOW who’s more nervous right now, Tom or me, but somehow I think it might be me. This is it, a bigger, more important trial than either of us has any right to be involved in probably ever in our careers, but certainly right now.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” says Tom, turning to face the jury, “I have only one request of each one of you this morning, and it’s harder than it sounds. I ask you to listen.

“For as long as it takes for justice to be delivered to the nineteen-year-old sitting behind me, I need you to listen with a sharp, open, and critical mind.”

Tom looked green on the drive over, and he hasn’t said a dozen words all morning, but suddenly his game face is screwed on tight. “Because if you do, if you just listen, the prosecution’s case will collapse like a house of cards.

“The district attorney of Suffolk County has just told you that this is an open-and-shut case and that he has a mountain of evidence against Dante Halleyville. Ladies and gentlemen, nothing could be further from the truth. Not only did Dante Halleyville have no motive to commit these murders, he had enormous incentive not to commit them.

“For the past half a dozen years Dante Halleyville has concentrated all his considerable energy, talent, and determination on becoming the top schoolboy basketball player in the country. Lofty as that goal was, he accomplished it. Dante Halleyville succeeded so well that pro scouts guaranteed him that whenever he chose to enter the NBA draft he would be among the very top selections, maybe even number one. Growing up under extremely difficult circumstances and surrounded by family members who made one disastrous choice after another, Dante never took his eye off his goal. Not once, until these false charges, has Dante been in any kind of trouble, either at Bridgehampton High School or in his neighborhood, with the law.

“So why now, when he is so close to achieving his dream, would he commit such self-destructive crimes? The answer-he wouldn’t. It’s as simple as that. He wouldn’t do it.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your selection as jurors was random, but the next few weeks could be the most important in your lives. The future of a fellow human being is in your hands. Not just the life of an innocent nineteen-year-old, but of a truly remarkable young man. And both Dante and you will have to live with your decision for the rest of your lives.

“Someone did kill those young men on Beach Road. And in that Brooklyn apartment. Murdered them in cold blood. Whoever committed these horrible crimes will eventually be apprehended and brought to justice, but that person was not and could not have been Dante Halleyville.

“So I ask you to listen carefully and dispassionately and critically to everything presented to you in this courtroom. Don’t let anyone but yourself decide how strong or weak the prosecution’s case is. I have faith that you can and will do that. Thanks.”

When Tom turns away from the jury, three hundred bodies readjust themselves in their seats. In addition to the rustling, you can almost feel the surprise, and it runs from Judge Rothstein in his pulpit to the last beer-bellied cop leaning against the far wall. This inexperienced lawyer, with mediocre credentials and crap grades, can handle himself in a courtroom.

Chapter 91. Kate

TOM SITS, AND Melvin Howard, Ioli’s assistant DA, stands. Howard is a tall, thin man in his early fifties with a trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and antique wire-rimmed spectacles. He’s also African American, and none of these things is coincidental.

For the same transparently cynical reasons that my old firm chose me to help Randall Kane fend off sexual harassment charges brought by his female employees, the prosecution has selected a black man, with the mild-mannered appearance of a college professor, to prosecute Dante Halleyville. The selection is an attempt to tell the jury that this case is not about race, but about crime, a vicious murder that should outrage blacks as much as whites.

And just because this strategy is obvious and self-serving doesn’t mean it won’t work.

“In addition to listening,” Melvin Howard begins as he tapes a twelve-by-fourteen-inch color photograph to a large easel set up directly in front of the jury, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to look too.”

He slowly attaches three more photographs to the easel-and when he steps out of the way, the jurors push back in their chairs, trying to get as far away from the lurid images as possible.

“These are crime scene photographs of each of the four victims, and it’s your sworn duty not to look away.”

Caught in the white light of the flash, the skin of the victims is a ghostly white; the lips blue-gray; the raw, burned edges where the bullets entered the foreheads orange; the ample blood that poured down into eyes and cheeks, over chins and down the necks of shirts a deep maroon, a red so deep it looks almost black.

“This man here, with the bullet hole between his eyes, is Eric Feifer. He was twenty-three years of age, and before the defendant executed him on August thirtieth, Mr. Feifer was a professional-level surfer.

“This young man is Robert Walco, also twenty-three. While other kids were going to college and business school, he put in ten-hour days with a shovel. The result of his sweat and labor was a successful landscaping business he owned with his dad, Richard Walco.

“And this is Patrick Roche, twenty-five, a painter who paid the bills by moonlighting as a bartender, and whose good nature earned him the affection of just about everyone who knew him.

“Finally, this is Michael Walker, and no matter what else you might say about him, he was seventeen years old, a high school senior.

“Don’t look away. The victims couldn’t. The killer and his accomplice wouldn’t let them. In fact, the killer took sadistic pleasure in making sure that each of these four victims saw exactly what was happening to them as they were shot at such close range that the barrel of the gun singed the skin of their foreheads.

“And the killer got exactly what he wanted because you can still read the shock and the fear and the pain in their eyes.

“In ten years, I’ve prosecuted eleven murder cases, but I’ve never seen crime scene photographs like these. I’ve never seen head-on executions like these. And I’ve never seen eyes like these either. Ladies and gentlemen, don’t assume this is run-of-the-mill horror. This is very different. This is what evil looks like up close.”

Then Melvin Howard turns away from the jury and stares directly at Dante.

Chapter 92. Tom

ON THIS STIFLING early June morning, with the temperature on its way to the midnineties, the state initiates its pursuit of justice by calling drug-dealer Artis LaFontaine’s former girlfriend, Mammy Richardson, to the stand. Mammy was at the basketball court when Feif and Dante came to blows. She saw it all.

A large, pretty woman in her early thirties, Mammy cut a striking figure at Wilson ’s estate last summer, and as strong rays slant in through the courtroom’s only window, she steps into the booth in a cream-colored pantsuit that she fills to bursting.

“Directing your attention to last August thirtieth, Ms. Richardson, do you recall where you were that afternoon?”

“Watching a basketball game at Smitty Wilson’s estate,” says Richardson, clearly enjoying her cameo, a trill of excitement in her voice.

“Could you tell us who was playing in this game?”

“Young fellas from Bridgehampton taking on an older squad from Montauk.”

“Was it a friendly game?”

“I wouldn’t say that. Way both squads were going at it, you’d think it was game seven of the NBA finals.”

“Ms. Richardson, do you have any idea why a weekend pickup game would be so intense?”

“Objection!” snapped Kate. “The witness isn’t a mind reader.”

“Sustained.”

“Ms. Richardson, were the players on the Bridgehampton squad all African American?”

“Yeah,” says Richardson.

“And the Montauk team?”

“White.”

“Which team won the game, Ms. Richardson?”

“The white fellas.”

“And then what happened, Ms. Richardson?”

“That’s when the trouble happened. Some of the Montauk guys started showboating. One of the Bridgehampton fellas didn’t appreciate it. He shoved somebody. They shoved back. Before anyone could calm things down, one of the victims and the defendant were throwing down.”

“Throwing down?” asks Howard, feigning ignorance.

Richardson flashes him a look. “You know, scrapping.”

“How far away were you sitting from the court, Ms. Richardson?”

“Closer than I am to the jury right now.”

“About how big was Eric Feifer?”

“Six feet, and skinny. One hundred seventy pounds, tops.”

“You’ve got a pretty good eye, Ms. Richardson. According to the coroner’s report, Eric Feifer was five eleven and weighed one hundred sixty-three pounds. And the defendant?”

“Anyone can see, he’s got some size on him.”

“Six foot nine inches and two hundred fifty-five pounds to be exact. How did Eric Feifer do in the fight?”

“That skinny white boy could fight. He put a whupping on Dante.”

“What happened next?”

“Michael Walker, one of Dante’s teammates, ran to his car and came back with a gun. Which he put upside Eric Feifer’s head.”

“How far away did he hold the gun from Eric Feifer’s head?”

“He pressed it right up against it. Just like those pictures showed.”

“Objection,” shouts Kate like a fan screaming at the refs about a bad call. “Your Honor, the witness has clearly been coached and has no right or authority to equate what she saw to the pictures taken of the crime scene. This is grounds for a mistrial.”

“The jury will disregard Ms. Richardson’s last remark, and the stenographer will expunge it from the record.”

Howard moves on. “Then what happened, Ms. Richardson?”

“ Walker put the gun down.”

“Did Michael Walker say anything?”

“Objection, Your Honor,” says Kate, increasingly exasperated. “This is nothing but hearsay.”

“Overruled,” says Rothstein.

“What did Michael Walker say, Ms. Richardson?”

“‘This shit ain’t over, white boy. Not by a long shot.’”

“No further questions, Your Honor,” says Howard, and Kate is already up out of her chair.

Chapter 93. Tom

I LEAN IN close to Dante, figuring he needs some reassurance. “This isn’t going to be as much fun as Mammy thought,” I say.

“Ms. Richardson, what do you do for a living?” Kate begins.

“I’m unemployed at the moment.”

“How about last summer? What were you doing then?”

“I was unemployed then too.”

“So you’ve been unemployed for a bit more than a moment, Ms. Richardson. How long exactly?”

“Three and a half years.”

“You seem bright and personable, not handicapped in any way. Is there a reason you haven’t been able to find a job?”

“Objection, Your Honor.”

“Sustained.”

“Did you come to Mr. Wilson’s estate alone that afternoon?”

“I came with Artis LaFontaine.”

“What was your relationship with Mr. LaFontaine?”

“Girlfriend.”

“Were you aware at the time that Mr. LaFontaine had spent a dozen years in jail for two separate drug convictions?”

“I knew he’d been incarcerated, but I didn’t know for what.”

“Really? Did you know that according to police your former boyfriend was and remains a major drug dealer?”

“I never asked him what he did for a living.”

“You weren’t curious how a man with no apparent job could drive a four-hundred-thousand-dollar Ferrari?”

“Not really,” says Richardson, the trill in her voice long gone.

“Are you in a relationship right now, Ms. Richardson?”

“Not really.”

“You aren’t involved with Roscoe Hughes?”

“We date some.”

“Are you aware that he has also served time for a drug conviction?”

“I don’t ask about the specifics.”

“But I do, Ms. Richardson, so could you tell me, do you date drug dealers exclusively or just most of the time?”

“Objection,” shouts Howard.

“Sustained,” says Rothstein.

Mammy Richardson has been skillfully discredited as a witness, but she can defend herself a little too.

“Why?” she asks, squaring her shoulders at Kate and putting her hands on her ample hips. “You want me to fix you up?”

Chapter 94. Tom

NEXT UP, DETECTIVE Van Buren. He takes the stand and, among other things, says that a call had come to the station establishing that someone matching Dante’s description tossed a.45-caliber Beretta in a Dumpster behind the Princess Diner. After Barney’s testimony, Rothstein offers an hour recess for lunch, but the stone plaza outside is so hot and shadeless that despite the anemic air-conditioning in the courtroom, the crowd is relieved to get back to their seats.

Once they’re settled, Melvin Howard pops right up from his table and approaches the bench with a large plastic bag in each hand.

“The state,” says Howard, “submits to this court as evidence the forty-five-caliber Beretta recovered behind the Princess Diner in Southampton early on the morning of September twelfth. Henceforth referred to as Exhibit A. And a red Miami Heat basketball cap recovered at eight thirty-eight MacDonough Street in Brooklyn four days later, from here on referred to as Exhibit B.”

Howard then calls a second member of East Hampton ’s finest, Officer Hugo Lindgren.

“Officer Lindgren, were you on duty the morning the defendant turned himself in?”

“I wasn’t assigned to work that day, but I got a call to come in. I arrived at the police station just after Van Buren and Geddes.”

“Were you privy to anything that the defendant told the detectives that morning?”

“Yes, the discussion about the gun. I retrieved it from the Princess Diner.”

“Tell us about it, please.”

“At about five thirty in the morning, five thirty-three to be exact, an anonymous call came into the station and was routed to my desk. The caller reported that a few hours before, he’d seen a man discard a weapon in the Dumpster behind the Princess Diner.”

“Did the caller describe the man?”

“Yes. He said the man was extremely tall and African American.”

“What did you do then?”

“I drove to the diner with Officer Richard Hume. We found the weapon in the garbage.”

“Is this the weapon that you found that morning?”

“Yes, it is.”

When Howard informs Rothstein he has no further questions, Kate stands to face off with our old buddy Lindgren one more time.

“According to the defendant and receipts, what time was Dante Halleyville at the diner that morning?” she asks.

“Between two thirty and two thirty-seven a.m.”

“And what time did you get to the police station?”

“A little after five.”

“So the caller, whoever it was, sat on the information for three hours.”

Lindgren shrugs and frowns. “People are resistant to get involved.”

“Or maybe the caller just waited for you to get to the station, Officer Lindgren. Now why in the world would that be? Hmmmm?”

And Dante whispers to me, “She’s damn good.”

Yes, she is.

Chapter 95. Kate

THE NEXT MORNING, Melvin Howard, who is patiently and pretty skillfully building the state’s case block by block, puts Dr. Ewald Olson on the stand.

Olson, an itinerant forensic scientist, travels the land from courtroom to courtroom offering his expert testimony to whoever is willing to pick up the tab. He arrives with his own video setup and an assistant, who controls it from a laptop. Only after Olson has spent nearly an hour going through every last published article and citation does the assistant DA turn his attention to the images on the monitor.

“Dr. Olson, could you tell us about the photograph on the left?”

“It’s an enlargement of the recovered forty-five-caliber shell that entered and exited the skull of Patrick Roche,” says Olson, a tall, stooped man with a crawling monotone.

When he says all there is to say about the bullet, he talks about the Beretta and all the tests performed on the inside of its barrel.

“The photographs on the right,” says Olson, wielding a red laser light, “are impressions taken from the Beretta’s barrel. As you can see, the markings on the barrel conform exactly to the markings on the bullet.”

“And what does that indicate?”

“That the bullet that killed Patrick Roche was fired from the recovered weapon.”

“Based on twenty-eight years as a forensic scientist, Dr. Olson, how certain are you that this is the murder weapon?”

“Entirely certain,” says Olson. “Barrel and bullets are a perfect match.”

At noon, Rothstein mercifully recesses for lunch, but an hour later, Olson picks up where he left off, this time going through a similarly exhaustive drill with the fingerprints found on the handgun.

“As you can see,” says Olson, “the set of prints taken from the handle is an exact match to the prints later taken from Walker ’s right hand.”

“Dr. Olson, is there any doubt that the prints on the recovered weapon belong to Michael Walker?”

“Every print is unique, Mr. Howard. These could belong to no one other than Michael Walker.”

Then Howard holds up Exhibit B, the red Miami Heat cap found in the Brooklyn apartment where Walker was killed. He asks Olson to compare two more sets of fingerprints displayed on the monitor.

“The prints on the left, Dr. Olson,” asks Howard, “whom do they belong to?”

“They were taken from the defendant, Dante Halleyville.”

“And the prints on the right?”

“An identical set of prints lifted from the bill of the basketball cap found in the apartment where Michael Walker was murdered.”

“Again, Dr. Olson, could you give us the odds of these prints belonging to anyone but the defendant?”

“These prints could belong to no one other than Dante Halleyville.”

When the prosecution is through, Olson has been plodding along like the tortoise that always catches the hare-for six hours.

So long that there are groans of disappointment when Tom pushes out of his chair.

My own feelings are even stronger. We hadn’t planned on cross-examining Olson. Tom is recklessly winging it.

“Dr. Olson, no one questions that the handgun recovered behind the Princess Diner was the murder weapon. The question is, who fired it? Is there any physical evidence, anything at all, linking the defendant to that weapon?”

“No. The only fingerprints left on that gun belong to Michael Walker.”

“As for the prints found on the gun, the ones belonging to Michael Walker, what kind of quality are we talking about?”

“Very good. The highest quality.”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“Nine, maybe even a ten,” Olson says with pride in his voice. Maybe he’s been watching a little too much CSI.

“Doesn’t it strike you as suspicious, Dr. Olson, that on a gun that has been carefully cleaned there would be one complete set of prints and every fingertip would be perfect?”

Now, for the first time in hours, the crowd is actually awake and paying attention.

“Not in this case,” says Olson.

“But you have, in the past, on at least two occasions that I’m aware of, concluded that prints found on murder weapons were, in your words, ‘too good to be credible.’ That was your conclusion in the State of Rhode Island versus John Paul Newport. Is that not true?”

“Yes, but that’s not my conclusion about these prints.”

“Defense has no further questions.”

The crowd is still buzzing when Judge Rothstein calls an adjournment for the day, but whether or not Tom’s high-risk two-minute gambit succeeded in undermining six hours of testimony, we don’t have long to dwell on it.

After Dante gives us both hugs and the sheriffs escort him back to his holding cell, the paralegal for the prosecution delivers a note.

They’ve just added Dante’s eighteen-year-old cousin, Nikki Robinson, to their list of witnesses.

Nikki was among the group of spectators who saw Walker pull the gun on Feifer, but the prosecution has already established what happened after the game. So the decision to put Nikki on the stand now doesn’t make sense.

And when the prosecution makes a move I don’t understand, I get scared.

Chapter 96. Tom

WHEN NIKKI ROBINSON, eyes averted, walks past our table and takes the witness stand, the morning crowd ripples with anticipation. To be honest, Kate and I are a lot more on edge than the spectators. Nikki works as a maid for a local house-cleaning service. She hung around at Smitty Wilson’s-but what else? Why is she being called now?

“Ms. Robinson,” says Melvin Howard, “could you please tell us your relationship with the defendant?”

“Dante is my cousin,” says Robinson, her girlish voice faint.

“And were you at the game at Smitty Wilson’s that afternoon?”

“I got there just before the fight broke out, and Michael Walker got that gun.”

“Did you leave right after?”

“No, sir.”

“What were you doing?”

“Talking to Eric Feifer,” says Robinson, her voice getting even fainter.

“Was that the first time you met?”

“I had seen him around.”

“Did you talk long that afternoon?”

“No. I clean for Maidstone Interiors and had to go do a house. Eric asked if he could go with me. Swim in the pool while I worked. I said okay.”

“So the two of you left together?”

“He put his bicycle in my trunk.”

“What happened when you got to the house you had to clean?”

“Eric hung by the pool. I got to work. House wasn’t much of a mess. The owner’s gay, and gay people are usually neat.”

“Then what happened?”

“I was vacuuming the master bedroom,” says Nikki, her voice reduced to a whisper, “and something made me turn around. Eric was standing right behind me. Naked. At first, I was so shocked-I didn’t notice the knife in his hand.”

The entire courtroom stares at Robinson now, and Rothstein gently taps his gavel. I resist looking over at Kate, or especially Dante. What is this all about?

“What did you do then, Nikki?”

“I screamed,” she says, fighting through tears. “I ran and tried to lock myself in the bathroom. But Eric, he grabbed the handle. He was strong for his size.”

“I know this is painful,” says Howard, handing her a tissue. “What happened next?”

“He raped me,” says Nikki Robinson in a tiny, anguished squeak.

Then Robinson’s head falls onto her chest, and for the first time since the trial began, both sides of the courtroom are equally distressed. Within seconds of each other, one woman cries out, “Liar!” and another yells, “Lying bitch.” Each have different reasons for their anger.

“One more outburst,” shouts Judge Rothstein, trying to control his courtroom, “and I’ll clear the room.”

Still, it’s another minute or so before Howard asks, “What happened after you were raped?”

“I pulled myself off the floor. Finished my work. I don’t know why. Shock, I guess. Then I left the house.”

“Where’d you go, Ms. Robinson?”

“I was going to go home. But I got more and more upset. I went to the courts behind the high school. Dante and Michael were there. I told them what happened. That Feifer raped me.”

“How did Dante react?”

“He went crazy. He was screaming, stomping around. He and Michael.”

“Quiet!” shouts Rothstein again, calming the room some.

“What did you think when you heard about the killings, Ms. Robinson?”

“It was my fault,” says Robinson, staring at her lap. “I never should have let Feifer come to the house. Most of all, I never should have told Dante and Michael Walker.”

Dante leans in to me. “She’s lying, Tom. She made that whole thing up. Every word.”

Chapter 97. Kate

AS ROTHSTEIN BANGS his gavel like a jockey flogging a fading horse on the home stretch, Tom writes Lindgren on a piece of paper. He slides it to me before I get out of my chair. I’m already there.

“Ms. Robinson, we’re all hearing this for the first time. To say the least, we’re a bit overwhelmed. And confused. Could you tell us again why you decided to come forward now?”

“Jesus,” says Nikki, then pauses as if to let this sink in. “He came to me in a dream and told me it was my duty to tell what happened.”

“Does Jesus often come to you in dreams, Nikki?” I ask, provoking enough derisive laughter to have Rothstein pound his desk some more.

“That was the first time.”

“Ahh. But why wait this long to come forward? And why do it now?”

“I was afraid. I didn’t want to hurt my cousin. But Jesus said I should say what I knew.”

“After the rape, did you go to the hospital?”

“No.”

“Really? Did you see a doctor anywhere?”

“No.”

“You weren’t examined by anyone?”

Robinson shakes her head, and I say, “I didn’t hear your response, Ms. Robinson.”

“No, I was not examined by a doctor.”

“Weren’t you worried about contracting a sexually transmitted disease or getting pregnant?” I ask.

“I was on the Patch.”

“But you weren’t worried about an STD?”

“Not really.”

“So you didn’t tell anyone at all about the incident at the time. No one. There is no police record, no medical record, and you finished cleaning the house after the rape. So there’s not a single bit of evidence, even circumstantial evidence, to support or confirm your story.”

“Objection,” cries Howard.

“What’s your question, Counselor?” asks Judge Rothstein.

“When you decided to come forward two days ago-after your visit from Jesus-who’d you talk to first?”

“I called the East Hampton Police Department.”

“And who exactly did you talk to?”

“Officer Lindgren.”

I am thinking on my feet now, trying to, anyway. “Ms. Robinson, have you been arrested lately? Say, in the last few months?”

“Yes, ma’am. For possession.”

“Possession of drugs?”

“Yes.”

“And who arrested you?”

Nikki Robinson looks left and right, anywhere but at me, but there’s no getting around this. “Officer Lindgren,” she says.

Loud, angry voices erupt from all sides, and Judge Rothstein has no choice but to finally go through with his threat. He clears the courtroom.

Chapter 98. Loco

LITTLE NIKKI PUTS on quite a show up on the witness stand. Who would have thought the slut had it in her? But after clever-girl Costello gets her to drop Lindgren’s name and her arrest, all hell breaks loose, and Rothstein clears the courtroom and calls it a day.

Everyone spills out into the hot courtyard, and if not for two hundred cops, there would have been a riot then and there. The atmosphere is so messed up and ugly, Rothstein suspends proceedings for an additional twenty-four hours.

So it’s not until Thursday morning that we all file back into the courtroom. Rothstein must think we’re all basically children, because he gives us a stern lecture on the importance of orderly courts in a free society. What a crock, and most of us know it.

Then he turns to Ms. Costello, who calls Marie Scott to the stand. This should be good. Scott’s a big witness for Dante, his beloved grandma.

One look at Scott, I see she’s one of those God-fearing, righteous women you always watch on the TV news after some tragedy happens. You know the type I mean, who somehow keep their shit together no matter what unspeakable thing has just happened.

She’s no spring chicken but her back is straight as a plank. And the slow way she walks up to be sworn in, you’d think she’s here to receive a special award from George Bush.

“What’s your relationship to the defendant, Ms. Scott?” asks Costello.

“I’m proud to say the young man is my grandson,” says Scott, hurling her big voice into the room.

“How long has Dante lived with you?”

“Five years. Ever since Dante’s mother began serving her sentence upstate. Dante’s father had already passed by then.”

“So you’ve raised Dante since then?”

“That’s right, and until these false charges, he’s never gotten into a bit of trouble. Not once.”

The question that always comes into my head when I see a woman like Marie is why, if her shit’s so damn tight, did her kids all turn out so bad? Even if she did a great job with Dante, how come her daughter’s in jail? That holier-than-thou attitude must drive them the other way.

“Where did he live in your place?” asks Costello.

“It’s just the two of us. So he had his own bedroom.”

“Could you describe it for us, Marie?”

“Nothing fancy. He had a bed that was way too small for him, but a good-sized desk and bookshelves on the walls. We couldn’t afford a computer, but he used one at school.”

“What was on those bookshelves?” asks Costello.

“On one wall were the things any high-schooler would have-books, CDs. The other shelf held his basketball stuff. He called it his Dream Wall because that space was dedicated to his dream of playing in the NBA. Of course, he never calls it that, he calls it ‘the League.’”

This is all highly fascinating, but where we going, Grandma?

“What did that wall consist of, Marie?”

“There were five shelves. On the outside went his trophies from the all-star games and the summer camps and being named Suffolk County High School Player of the Year two years in a row.”

“And how about on the inside?”

“That was where he kept his basketball caps. He had all thirty, one for every team in the League. Because that’s the moment he’s living for, when they call out Dante Halleyville in that auditorium in New York City and he walks to the stage and puts one of those caps on.”

“Did he ever wear those hats outside of the house, Marie?” asks Costello.

“Never!” says Scott so loudly that the whole courtroom feels the fury in it, and I don’t need to look at Officer Lindgren to know he’s sweating bullets now.

“He never wore those hats, period! Those hats weren’t for wearing. They were for dreaming. He ordered them by mail, took them out of their box, and placed them on the shelf, but he never put them on. He was superstitious. He didn’t want to put one on until they called him up on that stage and he knew which team he was playing for.”

I hate to admit it, but Lindgren was right. That bitch Costello has gotten too close.

“How long after the murders did the Suffolk County Homicide unit come to your home?”

“The next afternoon.”

“What did they do?”

“Searched Dante’s room, photographed it, dusted for prints. Then they taped it off. I still can’t go into my grandson’s room. To this day.”

“Were they the first police to come to your house, Marie?”

“No. That morning an officer from the East Hampton Police Department came over by himself. He said he was looking for Dante and asked if he could take a look in his room.”

About now I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Did you let him in, Marie?”

“Yes, ma’am. I knew Dante wasn’t involved in these crimes, so I didn’t see the harm. In fact, I thought it would help the police see that he was innocent.”

“Did you go in Dante’s room with the officer?”

“No, I let him in there alone. That’s the way he wanted it.”

Now the crowd is rumbling so much that Rothstein holds up one black-robed arm. Not that it does much good.

“How long was the officer in there?”

“Not long,” says Marie. “Not more than a couple minutes.”

“But long enough to take Dante’s Miami Heat cap off the shelf?” says Costello.

Now three things happen at once-the crowd explodes; the DA shouts, “Objection!”; and Scott drills out, “Yes, ma’am!” with everything she’s got, which is plenty.

“Strike the last question and answer from the record,” Rothstein tells the stenographer, then turns to the smart-ass bitch. “Ms. Costello, consider yourself warned.”

“Marie, do you remember which police officer came to your house that morning?”

“Yes, I do. Of course I remember who it was.”

“What was his name?”

“Hugo Lindgren.”

“Hugo Lindgren,” says Costello as if she’s stunned herself. “The same officer who just happened to get the anonymous tip about the gun at the Princess Diner and the call from Nikki Robinson also spent several minutes unattended in Dante’s room? Is that your sworn testimony, Ms. Scott?”

“Yes,” says Scott. “It most certainly is. Hugo Lindgren.”

By now the crowd, at least on my side, is ready to burn the courtroom down, no matter what Rothstein says about civic responsibility.

But it’s Costello, not Rothstein, who gets them to shut up. Because this is where she blows everybody’s mind, including mine.

“Marie Scott will be our only witness, Your Honor,” says Costello, twisting her gaze between the judge and the jury. “Ms. Scott said it all. The defense rests its case.”

Costello’s announcement stuns both sides of the courtroom into silence, and as the lookyloos start to file out deflated and confused, it reminds me of a pay-per-view title fight that gets stopped way too early. But you know 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 credible evidence connecting Dante to these murders, you’re going to come to the only conclusion you can-which is that the prosecution has proved nothing beyond a reasonable doubt.

“And then, Madam Forewoman, you’re going to say the two words that Dante Halleyville has being waiting to hear for a year-not guilty.

“If you don’t do that, you will be helping the murderers get away with a fifth murder, the murder of a remarkable young man, a very good friend of mine named Dante Halleyville.”

Chapter 100. Kate

TOM COLLAPSES IN his chair, and the jurors stare at him stone-faced. Five of the jurors are African Americans and eight are women, but talking about race is a risk, particularly to a jury that’s mostly white.

Howard can’t wait to make us pay for it. “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Melvin Howard. I’m fifty-two years of age, and to the best of my knowledge, I’ve been black the whole time.

“In Alabama, where my people are from, my grandparents were the grandchildren of slaves, and when my parents were coming up, black people couldn’t use the same bathrooms as white folks or eat at the same restaurants. But none of that disgraceful history has one iota to do with Dante Halleyville or this trial, and Mr. Dunleavy knows it.”

Tom didn’t say it did. In fact, he was saying the opposite, but Howard is twisting it anyway, doing whatever he thinks will work. But all that matters is how it plays to the twelve folks in the good seats, and when I look in their eyes I can’t read a thing. I’m proud of what Tom has done, but I’m nervous too.

“Race and police corruption?” asks Howard sarcastically. “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Now where have I heard that before?” And then he looks at the end of the press row where Ronnie Montgomery is sitting and holds his mock stare.

“Oh, now I remember. It was from the tabloid trial of the century, the murder trial of Lorenzo Lewis. About the only thing missing is a snappy little slogan, like ‘if the hat’s too red, their case is dead.’

“But how many people still think Lorenzo’s innocent today? Not even his golfing buddies in Arizona. So don’t let yourself be conned like that jury, ladies and gentlemen, unless you want to be remembered the same way.

“Now is the time for you to see through the nonsense and the imaginative conspiracy theories and focus on the evidence. For starters, we got a murder weapon with Michael Walker’s prints all over it, recovered at a Southampton diner three hours after Dante Halleyville stops there. Although the defense tried very hard to put words in his mouth, Dr. Ewald Olson, one of the nation’s top forensic scientists, has testified those prints could only belong to Michael Walker, and that gun killed all four of those young men.

“Now let me say something about a highly decorated East Hampton police officer named Hugo Lindgren.” In Riverhead every other family has a relative who’s a cop or corrections officer, and Howard is about to appeal directly to their defensive loyalties.

“By irresponsibly dragging his reputation through the mud, they have impugned not only an officer who has earned seventeen commendations in his nine years on the force, but by extension all policemen and corrections officers who risk their lives every day so that we can go about our business in safety.

“According to the defense, it’s evidence of a conspiracy that one cop should be so involved in every aspect of the biggest murder case in East Hampton in a hundred years. Good cops like Lindgren spend their whole career waiting for cases like this. It’s only natural that he would become obsessed with it. And remember, the East Hampton PD is a small unit, so for one officer to be involved a couple of times over the course of an investigation is hardly suspicious. It’s surprising to me his name didn’t come up more often.

“The defense, in its desperation, has said a couple other things that are simply untrue and need to be corrected.

“One is that it’s suspicious that the call about the gun came from the pay phone at the Princess Diner. Maybe most of us have cell phones now, but what if the caller was a busboy working the overnight shift at the restaurant that night for minimum wage? Not everyone can afford a cell phone. The second is the implication that the gun was found after the defendant told police he had been to the diner that night and that the defendant volunteered that information. Neither is true. Lindgren was nowhere near the room where the defendant was interviewed, and the police found out Halleyville had been at the diner after the gun was found.

“Bear in mind, also, that the one person who places that officer in Dante’s room is Dante’s grandmother Marie Scott. Marie Scott may be a very good woman, and I’m sure she is, and she swore to tell this court the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help her, God. But she’s also a human being, and who of us can say with any certainty exactly what they would do or say to save the life of their flesh and blood?”

Howard is sweating at least as much as Tom, but when he stops it’s only for a drink of water.

“And there’s an important part of this case that the defense hasn’t even attempted to discredit or obscure, which is that on the morning before the murders, Michael Walker got a gun out of Dante’s car, brought it onto T. Smitty Wilson’s basketball court, and put it up against the head of one of the victims, Eric Feifer. As the witness told you, he didn’t just aim the weapon at Eric Feifer, he put the tip of the barrel right up against his head, and you’ve seen those grisly photographs so you know how close the killer held the gun to the victims’ heads when the shots were fired. And before Walker temporarily put that gun down, he announced, ‘This ain’t over, white boy, not by a long shot.’ Before the actual murder, there was a dress rehearsal to which fourteen men and women were invited.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a pretty simple case. You’ve got two defendants at the murder scene; you’ve got a murder weapon containing the fingerprints of one of them; you’ve got a hat with fingerprints that connects the defendant to the second murder scene. And now, thanks to the courage of Nikki Robinson, you have a powerful motive-revenge for a brutal rape.

“I want to thank all of you for the focus and commitment you have shown already. And thanks in advance for the concentration you will bring to the work that is still left. You’re almost home, ladies and gentlemen. Please, don’t take your eye off the ball now. Dante Halleyville is guilty of murder. If you value your safety and the safety of your loved ones, do not set him free.”

Chapter 101. Kate

FOR A COUPLE of quiet minutes spectators linger in their seats like moviegoers reading the closing credits. “We love you, Dante,” shouts Marie as two sheriffs approach the defense table to take him away. “It’s almost over, baby.”

“Yeah,” a guy in paint-splattered overalls calls from the door, “and then you fry!”

Tom and I shake Dante’s hand, which is still quivering; then the sheriffs put him back in handcuffs and lead him to the steel-cage elevator that will take him to the holding cell in the basement. On the opposite side of the room, another pair of sheriffs escorts the jury out a second door and walks them to a waiting bus. The bus will take them a quarter of a mile down the road to a Ramada Inn, where they’ll spend the weekend on the eleventh floor, sequestered from one another and the rest of the world.

After the jury’s bus pulls out, Tom and I slip out the same back door and hustle across the parking lot to where Clarence has left us his cab.

As we roll out the back exit in the yellow station wagon, TV reporters and other press are still waiting for us in front. By the time they realize what’s happened, we’re halfway to Sunrise Highway.

Neither of us says a whole lot during the drive home. Exhaustion is part of the reason, but mostly it’s shyness, or something like that. Suddenly alone together again, we’re not sure how to act. Actually, I’m thinking about the old days, when we were younger. During our senior year in high school, Tom and I saw each other just about every day-beach bums forever. It was pretty much the same way through college, and I went to almost all of Tom’s home games when he was at St. John’s. That’s why the breakup was such a shocker for me. I still didn’t know if I was over the hurt.

Anyway, when Tom pulls into Macklin’s driveway and I quickly get out of the car, I can read the disappointment in his eyes.

I’m feeling it too, but I’m so bone tired I need to get to my room before I collapse. I unbutton my skirt before I reach the top of the steep stairs, pull the shades, and crawl into bed.

The relief at finding myself horizontal between clean white sheets lasts a minute. Then my mind hits Rewind and Play and the second-guessing starts. Did Tom have to mention race? Were we right not to put Dante on the stand? Why was I so easy on Nikki? I should have shredded her. How hard could we really have been trying if we didn’t track down Loco? Who are we kidding-thinking we could win this case?

Then sleep, the loveliest gift a person ever gave herself, pulls the black curtain down.

When I sit up in bed again, awakened by what sounds like a woodpecker tapping against a pane of glass, it’s three thirty in the morning. I’ve been asleep for more than nine hours.

There’s another click on the glass, and then another click, and I climb out of bed and step groggily to the window.

I fumble for the shade, give one little tug, and it flies past my face up toward the ceiling.

Standing in the backyard, a bicycle lying at his feet, and about to throw another pebble at the window, is the only boy who’s ever broken my heart.

When Tom’s face breaks into a grin, I realize I’m naked.

Chapter 102. Tom

HOW CAN AN ex-NBA player miss a target the size of a door less than fifteen feet away? The pebble bounces off the siding, hits the edge of the gutter, and lands in the grass near my feet.

I scoop another little piece of Mack’s driveway out of my pocket and try again. This time I actually hit the window, and then I hit it again.

I’m wondering how many direct hits it’s going to take when the shade flies up and Kate stands at the window, the moonlight shining on her freckled shoulders and full breasts. After a couple interminable seconds, Kate lifts a finger to her lips and smiles, and I can breathe again, at least until the back door swings open and she steps outside barefoot in cutoff shorts and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt.

We tiptoe past the National Enquirer photographer asleep in his rented Toyota and walk down the middle of a sleeping Montauk street toward the beach. We leave our shoes under the bench behind the East Deck and cut through the dunes.

The sand is damp and cool, and the moonlight looks like a white carpet rolling toward us on the light surf.

Before the beach narrows, I find a spot near the cliffs to lay out a blanket, and Kate pulls me to the center of it. She stares into my eyes. Her eyes, straight out of sleep, look so naked and beautiful, and the wind whips her red hair around her face.

“Who are you, Tom?”

“I thought court was adjourned.”

“Really, Tom,” says Kate, and she looks as if she’s about to cry.

“A person who’s changed. A person who’s made mistakes. They’re behind me now.”

“Why should I believe that?”

“Because this whole thing has been as much about you as Dante. Because I’ve been in love with you since I was fifteen, Kate.”

“Don’t say things you don’t mean, Tom. Please. I’m enough of a sucker to believe them. Twice. I still remember when you called me on the phone to tell me that you didn’t love me. You were so cold. Maybe you don’t remember.”

“Ahh, Kate, if there’s no way I can ever win your trust again,” I say, a sickening desperation climbing into my throat, “you got to tell me now because I don’t know what else I can do. Back then, you know what it really was? I didn’t feel worthy of you, Kate.”

Maybe it’s the desperation in my voice that convinces her. I don’t know, but she pulls down my neck and kisses me on the mouth.

“I’m warning you,” she whispers in my ear, “screw up again and you’ll answer to Macklin. You love me, Tom?”

“Kate, you know I do.”

She pulls her T-shirt over her head, and her shorts drop to her feet, and with her white freckled shoulders and red hair Kate looks more beautiful than the woman in that painting standing on the seashell. I reach out one hand, and when I touch the tiny silver ring cut through her left nipple, her mouth drops open and her head falls back with pleasure.

“When did you get the piercing?” I whisper, reaching for her again.

“Which one, Tom?”

Chapter 103. Kate

IT FEELS AWFUL to be this happy, even happy at all, while Dante sits in jail, his life in the hands of a fallible jury. But what can I do? I’m just a person, and people can’t control the way they feel, and I feel happy. But I feel horrible about it too.

It’s Sunday afternoon, and Tom and I are still on that beach blanket, but now it’s spread out on his living room floor, and I’m leaning back against the base of his couch with the New York Times on my lap, looking for articles I might have underestimated the first couple times.

Tom sits next to me doing the same thing, and Wingo lies between us, snoozing on his side. The three of us have been sitting like this for the last thirty-six hours, and even with the weight of the verdict hanging over us and the shades pulled tight against the photographers and camera crews camped out across the street, it feels as if we’ve been together for years, not just two days. But of course, in a way we have. I’m trying to keep the past out of this, but when it does bubble up, it’s mostly the good stuff, not the breakup. The past ten years have humbled him, at least a little, and I like him more for it.

I get up to replace Exile on Main Street with Let It Bleed while Tom puts the dishes in the sink and opens a tin for Wingo. While Wingo is engrossed, Tom sits back down and touches the bottom of my foot with the top of his. That’s all it takes to get us groping between each other’s legs and pulling off our clothes.

Like I said, we’re just people, but it still feels wrong-and I’m relieved when we lead the press caravan back to Riverhead early Monday morning.

Tom and I are assigned a small room down the corridor from Judge Rothstein’s chambers. We spend the day there, second-guessing, for the hundredth time, every strategic decision and line of questioning, each of us assuring the other without much effect that we did the right thing. We don’t hear a word from the jury all day, and at 5:30 p.m. they are bused back to the Ramada Inn and we head back to Tom’s living room floor.

Tuesday is just as slow.

Same thing Wednesday.

But to be honest, I’m enjoying being with Tom.

Thursday morning our hopes soar when the jury requests transcripts of Marie’s testimony, and then plummet in the afternoon when they ask for Nikki Robinson’s. I’m rereading her transcripts when Rothstein’s clerk sticks his bald head in the door.

“The jury has reached a verdict,” he says.

Chapter 104. Tom

THE FIRST TO arrive are Macklin and Marie, Marie so hollowed out by days of constant worry that she leans on poor Mack for support. Then come the parents of Feifer, Walco, and Roche, and their friends, who rush in like volunteer firefighters who have dropped whatever they were doing to answer the alarm.

For the trial itself, the courtroom was split down the middle, Dante’s supporters and Montauk sympathizers, but because so many of Dante’s people arrived from outside the area, today’s crowd is made up of mostly Montauk people. Dante is represented by only a small, tight band of stalwarts-Clarence and Jeff, Sean in a FREE DANTE shirt, and a dozen or so of Dante’s high school friends and teammates.

When the room is almost packed, the press pour in and fill their assigned rows up front.

The sketch artists have just set up their easels when Dante is led in one last time in handcuffs. Dante’s so nervous he can barely meet our eyes, and when he sits between us and clasps our hands beneath the table, his hands are trembling and wet. Mine too.

“Hang in there, buddy,” I whisper. “The truth is on our side.”

An hour ago, when they reached their verdict, the jurors asked to be taken back to their rooms to shower and change. Now they file into the courtroom in their Sunday best, the men in blazers and ties, the women in skirts and blouses. Soon after they take their seats, Steven Spielberg and George Clooney rush in fashionably late in their expensive yet casual clothes. Other than Shales, the screenwriter, A-list attendance had gotten spotty as the trial slogged on.

But no one wants to miss the last ten minutes.

Chapter 105. Tom

SUDDENLY IT’S ALL going down too fast. The bailiff cries, “All rise.” Rothstein sweeps in and mounts his pedestal, and the jury forewoman, a tiny lady in her sixties with big plastic lenses, stands to face him.

“Has the jury reached a decision on all four charges?” asks Rothstein.

“We have, Your Honor.”

Dante looks straight ahead, his eyes focused on a secret spot inside himself, and his wet grip tightens. So does Kate’s.

“And how do you find?” asks Rothstein.

I steal a glance at Marie’s tortured face, and then, turning away from it, see the more composed features of Brooklyn detective Connie Raiborne, who is sitting right behind her. I guess he didn’t want to miss the verdict either.

“In the charge of first-degree murder in the death of Eric Feifer,” says the elderly forewoman, her voice strong and clear, “the jury finds the defendant, Dante Halleyville, not guilty.”

My hand inside Dante’s feels like it’s been caught in a machine, and behind us, anguished cries compete with hallelujahs and amens. Rothstein does his best to silence both with his gavel.

“And in the charge of first-degree murder in the death of Patrick Roche and Robert Walco,” says the forewoman, “we find the defendant, Dante Halleyville, not guilty.”

The courtroom convulses, and the cops straighten their backs against the walls. Ten seconds stand between Dante and the rest of his life.

“And what is the jury’s decision in the charge of first-degree murder in the death of Michael Walker?” asks Rothstein.

“The jury finds the defendant, Dante Halleyville, not guilty.”

The gray-haired woman says those final two resounding words with extra emphasis, but before the last syllable is all the way out, the room splits open. Marie and Clarence must feel as though they’re watching Dante rise from the dead, and Feifer’s mom, who lets out an awful wail, must feel as if she’s seeing Eric get murdered again right in front of her eyes. The cheering and cursing, screaming and jubilation are way too close to each other, and the room teeters on the verge of violence.

But none of that means a thing to Dante. He springs out of the chair and pulls us up with him as he throws his huge fists into the air, tilts his head back, and roars. Kate gets the first hug. I get the second, and then we’re at the center of a wet, hot mosh pit of pressed bodies; then the whole hot circle hops up and down and emits a chant.

“Halleyville! Halleyville! Halleyville!”

When Kate and I extricate ourselves enough to take in the rest of the room, it looks as spent as Times Square three hours after the ball drops on the new year. Kate and I jump inside the phalanx of sheriffs who circle Dante, and as they usher us out a side door, my eyes lock with Spielberg’s screenwriter, Alan Shales.

In this wild moment, Dante, Shales, and I are all linked. Dante is free to play ball again; after my squandered decade, I have a career; and Shales’s script is going to get made. If Dante had been convicted, there would have been no movie. But now, suddenly, all three of us have a future.

Chapter 106. Kate

JOYOUS NEIGHBORS AND friends carrying food and drink show up at Marie’s an hour after the verdict, but the celebration doesn’t officially begin until Dante, a foaming bottle of champagne in one hand, scissors in the other, snips through the tangle of yellow police tape that sealed his bedroom for nearly a year. When the last sticky piece has been ripped away, he and his pals rush into the room like a liberating army.

“This is for my homeboy Dunleavy,” says Dante, donning the black-and-blue cap of Tom’s old team, the Minnesota T-wolves.

Then he tosses the other twenty-eight-the Miami Heat cap is still in a plastic bag in Riverhead somewhere-to his crew, and for the rest of the party, wherever I turn, brand-new gleaming caps bob jauntily above the fray.

As for me, I haven’t been dry-eyed ten minutes since the verdict came down. All I have to do is see Marie gaze up at her grandson, or Tom and Jeff with their arms around each other, or the relief on Clarence’s exhausted face for the tears to flow again. After a while, I don’t even bother wiping them away.

Now Macklin bangs on the kitchen table and shouts, “Order in the court! I said, order in the court!” And the room erupts in a riot of whistles, catcalls, and stomping feet.

“Anyone recognize this?” he says, waving a familiar wooden stick and sounding at least a couple drinks to the good. “Let’s just say that tight-ass Rothstein will have to find something else to beat on his poor pew. Because I wasn’t leaving that courtroom without a souvenir.

“Goddamn it, Dante. I’m proud of you,” says Macklin. “I don’t know how you hung so tough, but based on what I see in your grandmother, I’m not surprised. I hope someday you can look back on this bullshit and feel you got something out of it. Anything. And now I want to hear from the brilliant and gorgeous Kate Costello.”

When the room twists toward me and cheers, I open my mouth to see what will fall out.

“To Dante!” I say, raising my champagne. “And your long-overdue freedom! And to Marie! And your long-overdue freedom! I’m so relieved Tom and I didn’t let you down. I love you both.” Then I lose it again as Dante and Marie rescue me in their arms.

“What my partner was trying to say, Dante,” says Tom, picking up my toast like a dropped baton, “is you’ll be getting our bill in the morning.”

The highly emotional toasts and festivities roll on without letting up. I go over and stand by Macklin and Marie while Tom steps outside to join the revelers dancing in the yard to Outkast, Nelly, James Brown, and Marvin Gaye. Half an hour later, a peal of thunder rips through the joyous din, and the clouds that have been swelling all afternoon spill open.

The downpour sends half the neighborhood running for cover back into Marie’s six-hundred-square-foot trailer. Soon after that, Tom, his brow creased with worry, taps me on the shoulder.

“It’s Sean. Seems my nephew just got dumped by his girl. I didn’t even know he had one, but I guess he did, because he’s saying all kinds of crazy stuff.”

“You need to go talk to him?”

“I think so.”

“Well, give him a hug for me.”

“I will. And when I get back, I have a surprise.”

“I don’t know if I can take any more surprises right now.”

“It’s a good one. I promise,” says Tom, then gestures toward Mack and Marie. “Am I hallucinating, or are those two holding hands?”

Chapter 107. Loco

WHEN BOY WONDER comes around the back of that shitty little trailer and walks across the muddy yard, he looks so different it sends a quicksilver shiver up my spine.

It’s like I can barely recognize him, and I have this awful feeling that when he gets to Costello’s car, where I have been waiting for forty-five minutes like he asked, he’s not going to recognize me either. Or if he does, it’s going to be like we’re nothing but acquaintances and the last eight years never happened.

Boy Wonder is such a cunning bastard, that was probably his plan from the beginning. I don’t mean since this afternoon or last summer, I mean from the very beginning, eight years ago, when he came to the Village Police Station at three in the morning and bailed me out after the cops busted me for selling weed on the beach. I don’t know what he did or how he did it, but somehow he got the chief of police to drop the whole thing and fixed it so completely even my folks never found out. But now that I think about it, I bet he set me up with the cops in the first place so he could come in and bail my ass out and I’d owe him from the start.

A week later, he took me to Nick and Tony’s and picked out a three-hundred-dollar bottle of wine that he barely touched. He kept filling mine though, and on the ride home, when I could barely sit up, he made what he called “a modest little proposal.” I should leave the high school kids to the amateurs and instead help him take over the whole Hampton drug trade. “It’s nothing but funny money to these assholes,” he said. “Besides, we’ve been staring at rich people our whole lives. It’s time to join the country club.”

I was all of seventeen at the time, a high school junior. What did I know? But the Boy Wonder knew exactly what he was about, and with him doing the thinking and me the heavy lifting, it wasn’t long before the money arrived in sacks.

Boy Wonder was smart about that too. Said that if we started living like pimps, the cops would be sniffing around us in months. So for eight years we lived like monks, nothing changing in our lives except the number in the bank accounts he’d opened in Antigua and Barbados.

Since then, it’s just been a matter of hanging on to what we took, or what Boy Wonder calls “our franchise.”

That’s been no problem either. Ruthlessness is one of Boy Wonder’s strong suits, right up there with cagey thinking, and I guess I’m no slouch in that department either. But I’ll tell you, it’s impossible to figure out what BW is thinking-always has been.

It’s coming down in buckets now, but BW ambles through the rain like it’s exactly what he needs to wash him clean. Maybe it is. I know better than anyone what he is capable of doing and living with. I stood next to him as he put a bullet in Feifer, Walco, and Rochie, them bawling for their moms until the last second.

And for what? Stealing a thousand dollars’ worth of crack. Doing some small-time dealing. That’s all it was. More of a prank than stealing, since the next day Feif and Rochie came around with the cash, plus interest.

But BW wouldn’t let me take the money. He said we had to send a message. A strong message. It was psycho but cunning too, because he waits until after that fight at Smitty’s court where Walker pulls his piece on Feifer. That way we can pin the whole thing on the brothers, and I think, okay, maybe we can get away with this just like everything else.

But as Boy Wonder opens the door of the car, he seems so transformed and remote, his old name doesn’t seem to fit anymore. And when he slides behind the wheel and gives me his chilly “What’s up?” I fall back on what I called him for fifteen years before he showed up that night at the police station.

“Hell if I know,” I say. “What’s up with you, Tom?”

That gets his attention. Never using real names is even stricter with us than not spending money, and before he can catch it, he flashes the same hard look he gave Feifer, Walco, and Rochie right before he shot them through the eyes. Then he covers it with a smile and asks, “Why you calling me Tom, Sean?”

“Because the party’s over, Uncle. We’re done.”

Chapter 108. Tom

“MAYBE WE CAN still figure a way out,” I say, starting up Kate’s Jetta and carefully backing out of the muddy driveway. With every neighbor within miles celebrating at Marie’s, the street is deserted, and in the heavy rain, it looks more desolate than usual. “What makes you so sure it’s over, Nephew? What happened?”

“Raiborne happened,” says Sean. “Soon as the verdict came down, I bolted out of there, but when I get to my car, Raiborne is standing right next to it. The son of a bitch is waiting for me. He must have sprinted to get there first, but if he was breathing hard, he didn’t let me see it. He introduced himself. Said that as of three minutes ago the murder cases of Eric Feifer, Patrick Roche, Robert Walco, and Michael Walker were wide open again, along with the never-solved murder of Señor Manny Rodriguez. Then he smiles and says the only suspect he’s got for all five is a psychopathic drug dealer named Loco.

“When I ask him why he’s telling me, Raiborne looks at me cute and says, ‘Because I’m pretty sure you’re him, Sean. You’re Loco!’”

I’m on Route 41 now, but it’s raining so hard, I’m doing less than thirty. I slow down even more when I see the boarded-up Citgo, and just past it, I turn off onto another depressed little street.

I look over at Sean-and I smile. “Well, you don’t have to worry about Detective Raiborne anymore.”

“Really?”

“Really. He came to see me too. This afternoon at my place, just after Clarence picked up Kate and took her to Marie’s. He said he couldn’t figure out how I knew so much about the murders-that the gun was a plant, the prints and the call from Feifer staged, that Lindgren was dirty. Then he realized I must have been involved too.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I was going to ask if he’d ever been to Antigua, any of the islands. Had he ever thought of taking early retirement? But I knew it would be a waste of my time.”

“So what’d you do?” asks Sean, looking away because he already knows the answer.

“What I had to. And I’ll tell you, the guy’s an easy two hundred thirty pounds. I barely got him in the trunk.”

“Now you’re killing cops, Tom?”

“Didn’t have much choice,” I say as we hear the siren of an East Hampton cruiser racing north on Route 41 toward Marie’s place.

“How about letting Dante find his own lawyer? Or if you had to be the big star again, be in the spotlight with your girlfriend, how about letting him lose?”

The road, barely visible through the pounding rain, climbs past an abandoned trailer home.

“I guess you never heard of something called redemption, Nephew.”

“Guess not.”

“A chance to undo mistakes like mine comes once in a lifetime, Sean.”

“Isn’t it a little late for that, Uncle?”

“What do you mean?”

“To undo the past? Start over?”

“Oh, it’s never too late for redemption, Sean.”

Chapter 109. Tom

NOW IT’S RAINING so hard that even with the wipers flapping on the highest setting, I can hardly see the road. If I thought I could risk it, I’d pull over and wait for the rain to let up.

“So what are we doing with Raiborne?” asks Sean, trying not to look at me, the way I’ve seen people look away from born-agains.

“Bury him,” I say. “At that old nigger cemetery up on the hill. Only seems right.”

The paved road becomes a dirt one. I know it well. Somehow I make out the half-grown-over opening in the bushes and beside it what’s left of a sign for the Heavenly Baptist Burial Grounds.

I push through the opening, the bushes flailing against the car windows, and up a dirt driveway. It’s rutted and soft, but going real slow and avoiding the worst parts, I get the car to the top of the rise, where it opens on a clearing lined with dozens of modest limestone headstones and markers.

I park beside a rotting bench, nod to Sean, and we step reluctantly into the downpour. With the soggy mud sucking at our shoes, we walk to the rear of the car. Heavy drops ping off the roof and trunk as Sean pushes the chrome lock and then steps out of the way as the chipped blue lid slowly lifts open, but of course, the only thing inside is Kate’s bald old spare and some gardening tools she uses around Macklin’s place.

“What the fuck?” says Sean, turning toward me and quickly pinning my arms.

But by then my gun is tight against his side, and as he stares at me with the same shocked expression the mortician had to wipe off Feif, Walco, and Rochie, I shoot him.

I’ll say one thing. Sean doesn’t cry for his mother like those other boys did. He must think I’m his mom the way he reaches for me and says, “Tom? What are you doing, Tom?”

I fire three more times, the barrel of the gun so tight against Sean’s big chest it works like a flesh-and-blood silencer, and the sound of the muffled shots barely reaches the soggy woods. That shuts him up, but his eyes are still wide open and it feels as if they’re staring at me. I feel Sean’s eyes on me until I get a small shovel from the trunk and dig a shallow grave. Then I start throwing dirt over his face. I find another spot to bury the gun; then I get back into the car.

I love being in a parked car when the rain is tap-dancing on the roof, and for a while I just sit there and watch it wash the grime off the windshield, just like I washed Sean off of me. And you know what? I still feel redeemed.

Chapter 110. Kate

MARIE’S TINY LIVING room is so crowded it’s kind of like swimming in the ocean. You go where the waves take you. One minute I’m listening to the very good-looking George Clooney rant about the American criminal justice system, the next I’m having an emotional heart-to-heart with Tom’s brother, Jeff, who tells me he’s been worried about Sean.

“He’s not been himself since the trial started,” says Jeff. “Anxious, depressed or something. And he never said a thing to me about a girl.”

“It’s a tough age,” I say, and try to reassure him, but before I have much of a chance, I’m pulled away as if by an undertow to a spot in a corner beside Lucinda Walker, Michael Walker’s mom. It’s awful standing in such a jubilant crowd with the mother of a murdered child, but Lucinda takes my hand.

“God bless you, Miss Costello,” she says. “You kept another innocent life from being destroyed. I never believed Dante killed my son or those others. Maybe now the police will concentrate on finding the real killers.”

As Lucinda talks about Dante and Marie, the front door opens and Tom wedges himself back into the packed party, and when he smiles at me across the room, my heart flies out to him. It scares me to think how close I came to not giving him a second chance. If not for this case, I might have never talked to him again.

“I feel like a salmon fighting his way upriver to spawn,” says Tom, sweat dripping off his nose.

“Hold that thought. How’s Sean?”

“More down than I’ve ever seen him. It’s sad, but I gave him my spiel and your hug. How about you, Kate? How’s my girl?”

“I had no idea being happy could be this exhausting.”

“What do you say the two of us get lost for a little while?”

“You got a place in mind?”

“Actually, I do. But that’s the surprise I told you about before.”

He leads me across the room toward Mack and Marie, and Marie hugs me so tight I laugh.

“Look at you two,” she says, her eyes dancing with joy. “You showed everyone. E-ver-y-one! The whole world!”

“Us? How about you two?” says Tom, and clinks his beer bottle against Mack’s glass.

“To twos,” says Macklin, putting his arm around Marie.

“Well, this couple’s heading home,” says Tom. “It’s been a great day but a really long one. We can barely stand up.”

The guest of honor is in the kitchen surrounded by high school buddies who beam at him in awe. Although around the same age as Dante, they seem five years younger. Dante won’t let us leave the house until he’s introduced them all.

“This big fella,” says Dante, pointing to a heavyset kid on his left, “is Charles Hall, C-H. These are the Cutty brothers, and this is Buford, but we call him Boo. They’re my boys.”

Tom and I give Dante one more hug, and then we’re out of there. Actually, the more I think about it, I am in the mood for a surprise.

Chapter 111. Kate

OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, where it’s twenty degrees cooler, the rain feels like a warm, sweet shower. Tom puts an arm around me and leads me across the yard to my car. As I look down at the muddy tires, Tom pulls me to him hard and says, “I just have to kiss you, Kate.”

“Works for me.”

We kiss in the rain, then climb soaked into the car. Tom buckles me in and heads for home, but at Route 27, he turns west instead of east, and if you grew up out here like us, that’s not something you can do by accident no matter how hard it’s raining or how tired you are. When I look over for an explanation, Tom responds with a shit-eating grin.

“I told you I had a surprise.”

“Let me guess,” I say, almost too exhausted to care. “A weekend at the Peninsula?”

“Way better.”

“Really. You sure you can’t tell me? That way I’ll just be surprised now.”

“Kate, have we been working our butts off for like decades?” asks Tom, still smiling as he peers through the driving rain.

“Approximately.”

“Have we done well by our client?”

“You could say that.”

“And do you trust me?”

“You know I do,” I say, touching Tom’s shoulder and suddenly overcome by such warm feelings, I’m choking up for the umpteenth time today.

“Then sit back and relax. You’ve earned it, Counselor.”

Like a good girl, I do as I’m told, and after a while I even manage to doze off. When I open my eyes, Tom’s turned off 495 and is driving down a dark side road past overgrown lots and boarded-up houses. Where are we now? I’m disoriented and lost.

Then I see the sign for Kennedy Airport.

“Tom?”

Tom offers nothing but that same silly smile as he swerves into the lane for international departures and pulls up in front of the Air France terminal.

“Ever been to Paris, Kate?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

I’m feeling so many different things, but all I can say is “Who’s taking care of Wingo?”

“Macklin,” he says. “How do you think I got this?” And he hands me my passport with an e-ticket inside.

“I’m going to drop off the car,” says Tom as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. “I’ll meet you at the gate.” But I can’t move or stop looking at him because it’s as though I’m seeing him for the first time.

Chapter 112. Tom

THE OVERNIGHT AIR France flight touches down at 1:00 p.m. local time, and we hustle through the chaos of Charles de Gaulle Airport. With no luggage to wait for, we’re first in line at immigration and pass effortlessly through customs. I’ve never felt so free and easy in my life.

Eleven hours ago, I was driving through Queens. Now we’re in the back of a black Fiat speeding past French road signs. We leave the drab motorway for the tree-lined postcard streets of Paris proper. The cab pulls off a grand boulevard, chatters briefly over cobblestones, and stops in front of the small hotel on the Left Bank I booked online this afternoon.

Our room isn’t ready yet, so we walk two doors down to a coffeeshop. We order lattes and watch the bustling streets.

“Where are we, Tom?” asks Kate, licking the foam off her lips.

“ Paris.”

“Just checking.”

Five minutes after we pay for our coffees, we’re leaning against a stone balustrade and looking out over the muddy Seine. Elegant limestone buildings, none of which is much more than five stories tall or less than five hundred years old, line the far side of the river. The best part, though, is the light in Kate’s eyes.

We cross le Pont-Neuf and follow the concierge’s directions to the nearest department store. “I could get used to this,” says Kate.

Inside the Galeries Lafayette, we allot ourselves a thousand euros each and split up to buy stuff. I get two pairs of pants, three shirts, a cashmere sweater, and loafers, all more adult than anything I’ve ever worn. Then again, I’m not the same person I was a year ago or even twenty-four hours ago, so why should I dress the same?

“No suitcases?” asks the well-dressed woman in a gray pantsuit behind the desk at our hotel.

“Traveling light,” says Kate, holding her own purchases in one shopping bag.

An elevator the size of a phone booth takes us to the third floor, where our antiques-filled room overlooks a tiny triangular square called La place de Léon.

I tip the porter way too much, lock the door, and turn around in time to catch Kate skipping naked into my arms.

Chapter 113. Kate

TRY NOT TO hate us, but here’s our Parisian routine. Tom gets up at eight, buys the International Herald Tribune, and heads to the café. I come down an hour later and help him finish off what’s left of the croissants and Jumble. Then Tom closes his eyes, cracks open our guide, and lets fate pick the day’s destination.

Monday it was the Musée national Picasso in a neighborhood of cozy winding streets called the Marais. Tuesday we climbed the steep streets to the top of Montmartre. This morning we’re walking to an eighteenth-century hotel converted into a museum for the French sculptor Rodin.

We see the powerful black-granite figure of the writer Balzac and, mounted on a podium, the famous, hulking The Thinker, who looks awfully buff for an intellectual.

And behind them both, in a corner, is the epic The Gates of Hell, on which Rodin spent the last thirty-seven years of his life. It consists of two massive black doors crawling with more than two hundred writhing figures, each living out his excruciating eternal punishment, and for some reason, Tom can’t take his eyes off it.

He’s so transfixed, I leave him to stroll the garden’s stone pathways, which are lined with as many varieties of rosebushes as, I suppose, hell has sinners. There’s an empty bench in the sun, and I’m watching a young mother breastfeed her infant when Tom finds me.

“So how many of the deadly ones have you committed, Tom?”

“All of them.”

“Busy boy.”

We have a sandwich and a glass of wine in the garden café, then wander into the surrounding neighborhoods, many of whose stately homes have been converted to foreign embassies, with armed sentries posted out front. As beautiful and new as everything is, the wine and ripped, writhing sinners at the Gates have gone to my head, and I drag Tom back to our little room.

Actually, I can barely wait that long. As Tom fumbles with the key, I stick my tongue in his ear and tell him how hot I am, and as soon as we’re inside the door, I pull him into the bathroom and undress him in front of the long mirror. I get on my knees between his legs and begin to suck his perfect cock.

“Is this a sin, Tom?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Really? Am I doing it wrong then?”

“No, you’re not doing anything wrong. You’re doing everything just right.”

“Don’t look at me, Tom. Look at us in the mirror.”

A couple hours later in our bed, Tom moans in a different way, then mumbles, “No blood, no blood.”

I shake him, gently at first, then harder, and his terrified eyes blink open.

“You’re having a nightmare, Tom.”

“What did I say?”

“You were talking about blood, Tom.”

“Whose blood? What blood?”

“You didn’t say.”

“Did I say anything else?” asks Tom, his eyes still full of panic.

“No,” I tell him, and he smiles so sweetly that I need him inside me again.

Chapter 114. Tom

I DON’T DARE fall asleep again, but Kate does.

By the time she wakes, we’ve missed our reservation for dinner, so we head out into the night to see what we can find. As we pass various brightly lit windows, Kate seems unusually quiet, and I can’t stop thinking about my nightmare and what I might have said in my sleep.

We leave crowded St. Germaine for the quieter, darker streets along the Seine. The whole time Kate is clinging to my arm and not saying a word.

If something truly incriminating-about Sean or the others-had slipped out of my big mouth, she wouldn’t have fucked me again like that, would she? But if I didn’t say anything, why is she acting so squirrelly and tense?

We’re both starving, but Kate rejects one promising-looking restaurant after another.

“Too touristy.”

“Too trendy.”

“Too empty.”

She’s not herself. Whether I want to or not, I can’t ignore the mind-numbing possibility that I’ve given myself away.

And if I have, how can I clean up my mess in a city I barely know?

We finally stop at a simple bistro packed with natives. The swarthy maître d’ leads us to a red banquette in back, but even here Kate won’t look me in the eye. Then, staring at her hands on her lap, and in a cracking voice, she says, “Tom, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

Not here. Not in front of everyone-where there’s nothing I can do.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to say too,” I say. “But my head feels like it’s going to explode in here. Too noisy. Can we go someplace quieter, where it will be easier to talk?”

Apologizing to the maître d’, we step back onto the curb and walk toward the Jardin de Luxembourg.

But even at 11:00 p.m., it’s jammed with tourists. Every twenty yards or so there’s another street musician strumming a Beatles song, or a juggler tossing burning sticks, and the benches that are empty are too visible from the pathways.

Finally, I spot an empty bench in the shadow of some tall trees. After a quick check to make sure we can’t be seen, I pull her onto my lap. Still not quite believing that it’s come to this, I look into Kate’s eyes and put one hand at the bottom of her thin neck.

“Tom?”

“What is it, Kate?”

My heart is pounding so loud I can barely hear my words, and I look quickly over her shoulder to make sure no one is coming from the main path.

All night Kate could barely look at me. Now her eyes are like lasers, and she won’t take them off me, as if she’s studying my eyes to read my reaction to what she’s about to say.

“What, Kate? What’s the matter?” I ask, and bring my other hand to her throat.

“I want to have a baby, Tom,” she says. “I want to have your baby.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but Kate, desperate for an answer, stares at me like a deer caught in headlights.

“Only one?” I whisper, kissing the tears on her cheek and lowering my trembling hands to her waist. “I was hoping for three or four.”

Chapter 115. Tom

HOURS AFTER OUR first baby-making session, I lie calmly on my side and watch Kate sleep, the desperation of a few hours ago just about swept away by euphoria. I used to hate to think about the future. I’d boxed myself into such a tight corner I didn’t have much of one. Now I’m sitting prettier than the asshole who graduates first in his class at Harvard Law School.

Kate and I just won the biggest murder trial in the last ten years. We could live or work anywhere in the world, be partners at any law firm in the country, make a couple million a year between us without breaking a sweat. Or maybe, if we’re not quite ready to jump back into the harness, we just hang in Paris for a while. Stretch our trip from a week to a couple of months. Rent an apartment in the Marais. Soak up the culture. Learn about wine.

A happy woman is such a lovely sight, and Kate looks so content, even in her sleep. If she’s determined to start a family, why not do it? I’m not getting any younger. Maybe she can go to work, and I’ll be the stay-at-home dad, teach the little ginks the fundamentals before it’s too late, have them dribbling with both hands by the time they’re in preschool.

The alarm clock on the nightstand clicks, and the digital readout flips over to 6:03. I carefully slide out of bed, and with that old Joni Mitchell tune-“I was a free man in Paris ”-lodged in my head, and willing the ancient floorboards not to creak, I tiptoe to the bathroom.

I take a long, hot shower and shave. Slip on my new slacks and unwrap a shirt just back from the hotel laundry. Free and easy.

Of all the things I love about Paris, I love the mornings the most. I can’t wait to step onto the wet streets and buy my Tribune. I can already taste the flaky croissants and rich, muddy coffee.

At the door, I take one last look at Kate, lost in her unfathomable maternal dreams, and as I very gently close the door behind me, the cold steel barrel of a revolver presses into the back of my neck and the hammer is cocked back and catches in my ear.

Before I hear Raiborne’s voice say “Thanks for bringing me to Paris, Dunleavy,” I smell his cheap aftershave. Then he kicks my loafers out from under me and throws me facedown onto the floor, pulls my wrists behind my back, and cuffs me. You could be a tough guy too if you had six gendarmes with guns drawn behind you.

I still haven’t said a word because I don’t want to wake up Kate. I want her sweet dream to live a little longer. Fucked up as it may sound, I was starting to believe in it too, and if Raiborne or someone else hadn’t caught up with me, I might have gone through with it. It’s all just acting, right? If I could act like a good enough lawyer to save Dante’s ass, acting like a father and husband would have been a piece of cake.

But Raiborne doesn’t care about that.

“Your nephew knows you better than you think, tough guy.”

“He was wearing a vest, wasn’t he?” I whisper, still trying not to make any noise.

“How’d you know?”

“Because he’s a little bitch,” I say, but really I know the reason-because there was no blood. No blood!

“Three days after he crawls out of his grave, he turns himself in. Doesn’t even try to cop a plea. Just wants to share everything he knows about his uncle Tommy-which happens to be a whole lot.”

Why won’t he shut up? Doesn’t he know Kate’s sleeping? For all we know, she’s already sleeping for two. But it’s too late.

The door opens and Kate steps into the hallway in a T-shirt. Her bare feet are six inches from my face, but it might as well be six miles-because I know I’ll never touch her again.