James Patterson - The Beach House

"Bullshit. Why don't you try reporting the truth for a change?"

When the two-bit editor hung up, I called again and asked to speak to Burt Kearns, the reporter who'd written the earlier stories.

"You can't talk to Burt Kearns. Kearns was fired three days ago."

Then the editor hung up on me again.

THINGS GOT EVEN WORSE later that morning. I was on a roll – backwards.

I took one look at Nadia Alper's littered desk and did my best to conceal my alarm. Alper was the assistant district attorney assigned to the inquiry. The condition of her office, tucked away in an upper floor of the former Seaford Town Hall, didn't communicate a high level of organization or readiness. Every inch of her desk was strewn with police and coroner reports, phone books, notepads, cassettes, and crinkled Subway fast-food wrappers.

As she rummaged through papers, tiny columns of dust sifted through the sunlight tilting through the windows.

"I know it's here," insisted Nadia. "I was looking at it a minute ago."

"Are you handling this completely on your own?" I asked as calmly as possible. Neubauer had a lockstepping army of five-hundred-dollar-an-hour Ivy League attorneys protecting him like a Kevlar vest. Peter, it appeared, had one very young, underpaid, overworked assistant district attorney seeking justice for him.

"I also have a detective who's out in Montauk interviewing people right now," she said. "And no, this isn't my first case."

"I didn't mean to suggest…"

"It's my third."

We both bemoaned the fact that so much of the evidence pointing to foul play in Peter's death was circumstantial. Our strongest cards, she believed, were Jane's medical report and the photographs of the battered body. She finally unearthed the missing folder, and we reviewed it together. Attached were copies of the X rays revealing the multiple broken bones and skull fractures and the severed vertebrae, and photographs of Peter's lung tissue.

Having just been worked over myself, I had an inkling of what my brother's last minutes must have been like. It made me feel sick all over again.

Buried somewhere inside the paper pile, a phone rang. As she burrowed for it, her elbow knocked over a coffee cup, and it sent a mocha sluice flowing toward the pictures. Before I could scoop them out of the way, several were stained. Careful dabbing with a paper towel undid the damage, but I felt like taking the pictures and going home.

"What can I do to help?" I finally asked.

"Nothing. You're in law school, Mr. Mullen. We're in good shape here. Trust me."

"All right," I said with a sigh. What else could I say? "I could help, though, Nadia. I'll even fetch coffee and sandwiches."

"What happened to your face?" she finally asked. I could tell that her decision was final and that she was trying to change the subject.

"I got beat up. Quite possibly by the same people who killed Peter. Neubauer did this to me."

"Why don't you press charges?" she asked.

I wrinkled my nose, shook my head.

"It looks like you have enough on your plate already."

SAMMY GIAMALVA was having the nightmare again, the one in which he is falling and falling, all the time bracing himself for an impact that never comes. It was the third time he'd had it in a week, so in some part of his brain, Sammy knew it was a dream.

He opened his eyes to a completely different nightmare. This one was real.

In the chair beside the bed sat a large man, with the small, mean eyes of a pig. He wore a well-cut black suit. His legs were casually crossed, as if he were a guest at a cocktail party. Instead of a drink, he held a gun, which, like his awful smile, he aimed at Sammy.

"Get up, Sammy," the Fixer said. "I need a haircut."

He jabbed the muzzle hard into Sammy's throat, and nudged him down the stairs to the kitchen. Still training the gun on Sammy, the Fixer settled into the large chair facing the long mirror.

With the fingers of his free hand, he poked around in his thinning, light brown hair. "What do you think is a good length for me, Sammy?" he asked. "If I go real short, I look like a Nazi. I grow it longer, I look like an asshole with a comb-over."

"Shorter is better," Sammy tried to say, but his mouth was so dry that it sounded more like a cough.

"You don't sound so sure, Sammy."

"I'm sure." This time Sammy managed to get the words out. He desperately tried to size up his situation. He was remembering what had happened to Peter. Not to mention Fenton Gidley. This guy matched Fenton's description right down to the scar on his cheek.

"I guess you've already figured out I didn't come all the way out to Fag Harbor just to get a haircut."

Sammy just nodded and began to spread out the white plastic poncho for the haircut. He was trying to come up with a plan. Anything that would keep him alive. The man with the nasty eyes was cocky. Maybe that was something to play with.

"Is it because of what happened at the Memory?" Sammy finally spoke again.

"I've already taken care of that. That was no big whup. I'm here about what happened at the beach."

When Sammy responded with a puzzled look, the man said, "Don't look so sad. All we want are the negatives. There's no point pretending anymore. The game's over. I win. You lose."

The guy in his barber chair delivered these last words with an awful finality. This was worse than Sammy had thought. It wasn't about scaring him. It wasn't about the inquiry at all.

"Go ahead," said the Fixer. "I still need a haircut. And I'll take your advice on the length."

Soon the man's hair was falling like a light snow on the plastic tarp spread out beneath the chair, and despite everything, Sammy fell into the calming, competent rhythm of his work. Snip and move and pull. Snip and move and pull. Forget that this guy had a gun in his hand.

A simple phrase pulsed in his head: Do something or die. Do something or die.

Sammy concentrated on his work as if his life depended on it, and when the Fixer leaned forward in his chair so Sammy could pull off his plastic poncho, he couldn't help but be impressed. "Now I know why those rich ladies drive all the way out here."

Do something or die.

"One last spot," said Sammy, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. The man chuckled, then he settled back in his chair. When he looked into the mirror, he saw Sammy's right hand blur across his chest.

Goddamnit, he couldn't believe it. Not this puny little fag. Not here – not like this. Oh, Jesus, no.

The slice of the razor was so fast and clean, the Fixer didn't know for sure if his throat had just been cut until he saw a second pink mouth flap open beneath his chin. Then, as the hairdresser reached from behind the chair and pinned his arms with a strength and fury that was the final surprise of his life, the Fixer watched the life gush out of him.

"Who's going to fix this?" were his last five words.

When Sammy released his hug, the large man slid out of the chair onto the plastic tarp on the floor. Sammy took a deep breath and tried to think this mess through. Fast. Jesus, he'd killed this guy. Nothing he could do about it now.

Once he made up his mind, he went upstairs and packed. Then he went to the garage and siphoned a couple of gallons of Exxon regular from his car. He wetted down the cottage, corner to corner. Then he tossed in a flaming Zippo.

By the time the first pumper truck arrived, that's exactly what was left of Sammy's Soul Kitchen. Zippo.

I WAS WORKING UP A FEW NOTES to give Nadia Alper when I heard Mack's bellowing voice downstairs. "Jack, come outside. Your girlfriend's here. Pretty as ever, too."

Pauline was barely out of her car when Mack insisted she stay for dinner. About ten minutes later he announced he was abandoning us "lovebirds" to investigate the various offerings of Montauk's more reputable vegetable stands and fishmongers. "You are staying for supper," he told Pauline, and she didn't bother to argue.