James Patterson - The Beach House

Montrose bellowed, "Objection! Objection! Objection!" as if his client's cry had tripped a mechanical alarm in his throat.

Their ruckus set off Macklin. He was mad, and it showed. "I'll gag the whole room if you don't pipe down. This is evidence, and it's certainly relevant. I'll allow it."

Only when quiet had been restored did I return to the painstaking task of hanging more photos. Reminding myself to take my time to "build the boat," I spent the next five minutes taping up pictures of Peter and various partners. All together I put up thirteen, a pornographer's dirty dozen and just about the saddest family album I've ever seen.

Although there were occasional cameos by unidentified guests, the core troupe remained constant: Barry and Peter, Stella and Tom – the Neubauers' best friends. We definitely had the right people in the room. They had been doing my brother since he was a kid.

There's no denying the disconcerting power of hard-core pornography. After each photograph was secured to the wall, Molly zoomed in for a close-up. She held it for a full ten seconds.

"Turn off the camera!" screamed Neubauer. "Stop it now!"

"Could the prosecutor and I approach the bench?" asked Bill Montrose after speaking to Neubauer. When Mack waved us forward, Montrose said, "Mr. Neubauer has a proposal he believes could end these proceedings. He's asked me to pass it on."

"The People aren't interested," I said flatly.

"What is it?" asked Macklin.

"My client insists on presenting it himself. In private."

"There is nothing of value he can offer this court," I told Macklin. "Let's move on."

Montrose repeated his request to Macklin. "All he wants is ninety seconds, Your Honor. Surely you can spare us that – in the interest of fairness, or whatever the hell this is supposed to represent."

"This court is recessed for two minutes," announced Macklin. "Give the networks a chance to sell some beer."

He motioned for Gidley, then led all four of us into a library equipped with a running track and a ladder to get to the high shelves. Of course, there were no books.

Being in the same room with Neubauer, even with his hands cuffed, was unsettling. He was close to a rage state. He wasn't used to not getting his way. His eyes were dilated, and his nostrils flared. He gave off a feral, vinegary odor that was hard to take.

"Ten million dollars!" said Neubauer as soon as the door shut behind him. "And none of us will cooperate in any criminal proceedings against you, your grandfather, or your friends."

"That's your proposal, Mr. Neubauer?" asked Macklin.

"Ten million dollars," he repeated, "in cash deposited into an account in your name in Grand Cayman in the Bahamas. Plus, no one in your group spends any time in jail. You have my word on it. Now would somebody take off these cuffs? I want to get out of here. You got what you wanted. You won!"

"We aren't interested in your money," I said flatly.

Neubauer flicked his head at me dismissively. "A couple of years ago," he said, "some of my guests got a little carried away. A hooker fell off my yacht. It cost me five hundred thousand dollars. Now another whore has died, and I want to settle my account again. I am a man who pays his debts."

"No, Barry. You're a murdering scumbag. Frank Volpi was good enough to confirm that last night. You can't buy your way out of this, asshole!"

I realized I had gone over the edge. Neubauer's face twisted into the same pre-ejaculatory grimace recorded in some of the pictures. Then he spoke in a freaky whisper. "I liked fucking your brother, Jack. Peter was one of my all-time favorite pieces of ass! Particularly when he was thirteen, okay, Mullen?"

I was leaning on the ladder and Neubauer was straddling the metal track in the floor less than two feet away. The track led straight to his groin. All I had to do was grab the ladder and push hard, but I grabbed control of myself. I wasn't going to let him return to the courtroom looking beaten-up or abused.

"I already know what you did to my brother," I finally said. "That's why we're here. And it's going to cost you a lot more than money, Barry."

"Let's get back to work," said Mack. "It's not polite to keep a hundred million people waiting, and if nothing else, we Mullens have our manners."

STELLA FITZHARDING didn't fit the profile of a third wife of a New York-Palm Beach billionaire. She was not young or blond or augmented. She was a former professor of Romance languages at the small midwestern college to which her husband had given millions to get his name on the library. If she was embarrassed by her appearance in the graphic display on the wall, she didn't show it. The first time she had screwed my brother, he was fourteen years old.

"Mrs. Fitzharding," I said once she'd been sworn in, "I have the feeling you've seen these photographs before. Is that true?"

Stella Fitzharding frowned but nodded.

"Peter had been using them to blackmail us for two years," she said.

"How much did you pay him?" I asked.

"Five thousand dollars a month? Seventy-five hundred? I forget exactly, but I remember it was the same amount we pay our gardener." She seemed bored by my questions. Bear with me, Stella. It will pick up soon.

"Didn't you complain to Barry Neubauer?"

"We might have, except that we found the whole experience of getting blackmailed so deliriously theatrical and, I don't know… noir. As soon as the pictures got dropped at our back door, we'd grab them and rush into the den, where we'd pore over them the way other folk look at themselves smiling in front of Old Faithful. It was a game we played. Your brother knew that, Jack. It was a game for him, too."

I wanted to go after her, but I held everything inside.

"Who did you make the payments to?" I asked.

She pointed to the witness table. "Detective Frank Volpi was the messenger boy."

Volpi sat there very calmly. Then he gave Stella the finger.

"So you paid the monthly fee to Detective Volpi?"

"Yes. But when the merger of Mayflower Enterprises and Bjorn Boontaag was announced, Peter suddenly realized how damaging the pictures could be. Instead of a few thousand, he wanted millions."

"So what did you think when my brother's body washed up on the beach?"

"That he had played a dangerous game – and lost," said Stella Fitzharding. "Just like you are, and just like you will."

"I CALL DETECTIVE FRANK VOLPI."

Volpi didn't move. I wasn't surprised. In fact, I had expected it to happen with more of the witnesses.

"I can question you from here, Detective, if you would prefer?"

"I'm still not going to answer your questions, Jack."

"Well, let me try just one."

"Suit yourself."

"Do you remember the talk we had last night, Detective?" I asked.

Volpi sat there impassively.

"Let me refresh your memory, Detective. I'm referring to the conversation in which you said that Barry Neubauer had two of his goons murder my brother on the beach a year ago."

"Objection!" yelled Montrose.

"Sustained!" yelled Mack. "Mrs. Stevenson, please delete these last two questions from the record."

"I apologize, Your Honor," I said. "The People have no further questions."

"Nice work, Jack," said Volpi from his seat.

WE BROKE FOR LUNCH and returned promptly after forty-five minutes. I couldn't eat, mostly because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to keep anything down.

The witness I was about to call represented the kind of risk any really good trial lawyer is cautioned not to take. I felt I had no choice. It was time to find out if I was a good judge of human nature, and also if I was any kind of lawyer.