Coon didn't recognize Volpi, but Marci did and realized the meeting might have something to do with Peter's death. "Bob," said Marci, "this is the most exciting assignment I've ever been considered for. But I need thirty seconds to make a phone call."
That's when she called me at the office and I called Kearns at the Star. Less than five minutes later there was a screech of rubber out front and Kearns stood, mike in hand, in front of Volpi's table.
"What brought you to town?" Kearns asked Irving Bushkin, and although there was no response, he continued, undeterred. "Who's your client? Does your visit have anything to do with the investigation into Peter Mullen's death?"
Small and round, with fat, freckled hands, Kearns doesn't look like much, but he has balls. According to Marci, he peppered them with questions until Volpi threatened to arrest him for harassment. Even then he pulled out a camera and snapped a quick picture of the famous visitor and his pals.
But that wasn't even the best part. After Kearns left, Megan, the waitress who'd taken their order, came out and informed them that there'd been a mix-up. "I'm afraid we're all out of the pasta special," she said.
"It's ten past noon," protested Volpi, but the waitress just shrugged.
There was considerably more grumbling before the three changed their order to cheeseburgers and a turkey club. The new orders were barely in when Megan returned with more bad news. "We're all out of that, too," she said. "As a matter of fact, we're plumb out of everything."
At that point, Volpi, Irving Bushkin, and District Attorney Tim Maguire stormed out of the restaurant. Half an hour later Marci got a handshake deal to build what promised to be the only bona-fide English garden maze in the Hamptons. At least for a week.
Chapter 32
FOR MUDMAN'S SAKE, and I suppose because I wasn't quite ready to ditch my whole legal career yet, I returned to Nelson, Goodwin and Mickel and spent all Friday working on the latest appeal. In the morning I re-reviewed his court records and was outraged by the minimal effort of his court-appointed attorney.
I had lunch with Pauline, who told me she was still thinking about my offer to work for the good guys. I don't know what else we talked about, but suddenly it was three o'clock and we hustled back to the office. Separately.
For the remainder of the afternoon, I drafted a response to the judge in Texas. If I may say so myself, it was persuasive. It was after eleven that night when I e-mailed a copy to Exley.
Even though I felt okay about my day, the moment I got back on Peter's bike and pulled down the visor of his blue Arai helmet, I began rewinding my life like a depressing old video. Soul-searching wasn't a real good idea right then. I couldn't come up with too many selfless or generous acts in my life.
Of course, I had no trouble coming up with bad stuff. The most damning incident that came to mind had occurred seven years before. It was at Middlebury, when I was a twenty-one-year-old senior. Peter was thirteen at the time. It was winter break and he had come up to spend a long weekend with his big brother. One night we borrowed my roommate's car to get some Chinese food. On the way back to the dorm, a local cop pulled us over for a broken taillight. He was being a bastard, and he decided to search the car.
It occurs to me now that on that particular night, the cop was playing the part of the townie and we were the little rich shits. That's why he didn't stop until he was holding up a skinny marijuana cigarette between his fingers. I explained that the car belonged to my roommate and that we had no idea there was pot in it. But he ignored me and drove Peter and me to the station to book us for possession.
When we got there Peter said that the joint belonged to him. I did nothing to refute it. Peter called it a no-brainer. I was planning to go to law school. He had no intention of even going to college. I was an adult. He was a minor, so they couldn't do anything to him.
But, of course, that's what made what I didn't do so much worse. What a goddamned role model I was for my kid brother.
I remembered the exact moment when the cop turned to me and asked if it was true that the pot belonged to Peter, and I just shrugged.
Remembering the incident again on Peter's bike was a bad idea. It felt as if a white-hot current were running through me. It was all I could do to stay on the Long Island Expressway. A week after the arrest in Vermont, the case got thrown out for an improper search. I never told him how wrong I'd been. Whatever Peter had done to get himself murdered, maybe I'd helped put my brother on the slippery slope.
Chapter 33
IT WASN'T QUITE TEN on Saturday morning when I awoke to the pleasant sound of a woman's laughter. Macklin was laying on the blarney charm with a trowel. Judging by the way the lovely laugh kept interrupting his tales, a trowel was barely big enough.
As I walked down the stairs, I wondered who young and pretty enough to inspire Macklin's A game might actually be visiting us on a Saturday morning.
When I eased myself into the kitchen, Pauline Grabowski smiled up at me from the table. She looked as comfortable as if she'd been coming over for chats with Macklin her whole life.
"We have a visitor," said Mack, "who admits to being a friend of yours. And she's so lovely, I'm not even holding that against her."
"I didn't think you went for women with tattoos."
"Me, either," said Mack, dumbfounded. "For eighty-six years I've been living a lie."
The way Pauline chuckled, I could tell she was already taken with Mack.
"Please don't encourage him," I said. "It's worse than feeding the animals at the zoo."
"Good morning, Jack," she said, interrupting our routine. "You don't look so great."
"Thanks. I had a rough night at the shop. But even if I don't look it, I'm at least as happy to see you as Mack is."
"Well, have some coffee. It's out of this world. We've got work to do."
I filled a huge mug and took it outside to the back porch, where Pauline sat beside me on the top wooden step. After my long night, her unexpected presence felt almost angelic, and she looked so starkly beautiful in her Crunch T-shirt, cutoffs, and red Converse sneakers, I had to remind myself not to gawk.
"Here's to working for the good guys. Hope it isn't a huge mistake on my part."
Pauline pulled out two pieces of paper with a long list on each. "This is everyone who attended the Memorial Day weekend Beach House party," she said about the slightly longer one. "And this is everyone who worked there.
A third of the way down the second list was "Peter Mullen – valet" and our phone number. "How'd you manage to get these?" I asked her. "I've been trying, and striking out. There's a lot of paranoia right now."
"I've got a friend who's a very talented and unscrupulous hacker. All he needed was the party planner's e-mail address and the name of her web site."
There was an awkward pause. Despite my best efforts not to, I was gawking at Pauline.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"I guess I'm a little surprised you decided to do this," I said.
"Me, too. So let's not look a gift investigator in the mouth."
Chapter 34
"LET'S START WITH THE HELP," Pauline suggested. "The ones you haven't already spoken to, anyway."
The first phone call to bear fruit was to one of Peter's fellow car parkers, Christian Sorenson, whose fed-up girlfriend picked up after a dozen rings. "According to Christian, he's at the Clam Bar washing dishes," she said, sulking over the phone. "That means he's probably somewhere else."
The Clam Bar is a pretentiously unpretentious little shack right on 27, halfway between Montauk and Amagansett. The service is minimal and the decor nonexistent, but something about the vibe and the old classic reggae tapes they play has turned it into an institution. In August you can wait an hour to spend forty dollars for lunch.