James Patterson: The Beach House

This might have been a problem if my mother, Katherine, had still been around, but for a long time it had been a curfewless house of men.

My father and Mack staggered off to their beds as soon as we got in the door. Dana and I grabbed the Jameson and a couple of thick glasses. We climbed the steep, wooden stairs to Peter's old bedroom.

"I'm right behind you," Dana whispered. I reached back and took her hand, held it tight.

"I'm glad."

I was struck again by how spare Peter kept the room. A pale wooden desk and bureau against one wall faced two twin beds. Except for the tiny and oblique detail of a stamp-size black-and-white photograph of the great bebop alto saxophonist Charlie Parker that Peter had taped above his bed, we could have been in a Motel 6.

Maybe Peter kept it that way because he didn't want to think of himself as living there anymore. It made me feel even worse, as if he didn't think that he had a real home anywhere.

Dana put on one of Peter's old Sonny Rollins CDs. I pushed the twin beds together and we stretched out on them. We wrapped our arms around each other.

"I can't believe any of this," I said in a daze.

"I know," Dana whispered, and held me tighter.

The whiskey had unclenched my brain enough to know that nothing made sense. Zero. There was no way my brother chose to go swimming that night. For Peter, staying warm was about the closest thing he had to a religion. Even without the heavy waves, the fifty-degree water was enough to keep him out.

It was even less likely he'd killed himself. I didn't know how he could have afforded it, but he'd just bought a $19,000 motorcycle. He'd waited six months to get the exact shade of blue he wanted, and it had less than three thousand miles on it. You don't wash a motorcycle twice a day when you're contemplating suicide.

On top of that, he was scheduled to do a print shoot the next week for Helmut Lang jeans. He had called at work and told me that one of photographer Herb Ritts's assistants had spotted him at the Talkhouse and had sent him a contract. Peter was trying hard to downplay it, but he wasn't fooling anyone, especially not me.

Dana refilled my glass and kissed me on the forehead. I took a long gulp of whiskey. I thought about how as kids, Peter and I used to wrestle in this room, playing a game called king of the bed. I realized now that half the time brothers wrestle, it's just an excuse to hug each other.

Then I told Dana about a fall afternoon, maybe twelve years ago. I was probably babbling, but she let me go on.

"On Saturdays a group of us would play touch football in the field behind the middle school. That day I brought along Peter for the first time.

"Even though he was about five years younger than anyone else, I vouched for him. Bill Conway, one of the two teenagers who ran the game, grudgingly consented to let him play.

"Anyway, Peter was the last guy taken on our side, and our quarterback never threw the ball anywhere near him all afternoon. Peter was so grateful to be included in the big-kids game, he never complained.

"With the sun fading fast, the game was tied. We were down to our last possession. In the huddle I told Livolsi to throw the ball to Peter. The other team had stopped covering him an hour ago. For some reason, Livolsi actually listened to me. On the last play of the game, he sent all the other receivers one way and Peter the other. Then he dropped back and hurled the ball half the length of the field. Peter was this tiny figure standing all alone in the dusk on one side of the end zone.

"Unfortunately, Livolsi himself was not a future Hall of Famer. His pass was way off. Peter chased after it and, at the last instant, left his feet and stretched out parallel to the ground like some dude in one of those slow-motion NFL films. I swear to you, not one person who was there will ever forget it. Livolsi mentions it every time I see him. Dana, he was nine. He weighed fifty-eight pounds. The guy could do anything he ever tried. He could have been anything he wanted to be, Dana. He had it all."

"I know, Jack," she whispered.

"Dana, that wasn't the best part. The best part was the ride home. Peter was so happy, I could feel it. Neither of us said a word. We didn't have to. His big brother said he could do it, and Peter did it. I don't care what anyone says, it never gets any better than that. The whole way home we shared that peace and lightness you get only after doing something really hard. Our bikes floated. We hardly had to pedal."

I barely got out the last few words. I started to cry, and once I got started I couldn't stop for twenty minutes. Then I got so cold, my teeth chattered. I couldn't believe I was never going to see Peter again.

STANDING IN THE FRAGRANT SHADOW of a tall evergreen, a large man with a nasty scar, Rory Hoffman watched as the EMS van led the caravan of vehicles off the beach. As the red taillights snaked through the trees, he clucked his tongue and softly shook his head. What a fucking mess. A disaster of the first order.

His official title was head of security, but he had attended to these delicate matters for so long and with such efficiency that he was referred to as "the Fixer." Hoffman considered the moniker grandiose and misleading. He was more like the maid, or the cleaning service.

And now here I am to clean up this nasty-ass mess.

He knew this wouldn't be easy. It never was. Among the petty insights he'd culled in his tenure was that violence always leaves a stain. And while with skill and diligence you might be able to get the stain out, the effort will leave its own telltale residue. It meant your work was never quite done.

The Fixer left the cover of the trees for the gravel driveway, the white stones pushing through the thin soles of his driving shoes. He snuffed out a laugh at the marketing élan of that one. Need to hawk a pair of shoes so flimsy that you can barely walk in them? Call them driving shoes. Genius. And he was wearing them.

He reached the point where the cars had gotten on the driveway. Then he followed their tracks back onto the sand. Half the beach seemed to have spilled into his silk socks. Under the full moon, the ocean was putting on quite a show. Very Shakespearean, as if the whole planet were caught up in the momentum of the so-called tragedy on the beach.

Although the moon was bright, he flipped on a flashlight and searched among the dunes for footprints. The beaches themselves were public. There was no way you could keep people off them entirely. Although for the most part the no trespassing signs were observed, you never knew who might have intruded.

The north side looked good. Perhaps tonight would be the exception to the rule. The scene might actually be clean.

The first ten yards of dunes turned up empty. Then he saw a cigarette butt, and another. Not good. Very bad, actually.

He had the sense of being watched, and when he closed his eyes his prominent nose picked up the scent of sulfur still hanging in the air from a struck match. Oh, Jesus.

Boot-shaped footprints led him to a stand of bushes in the dunes. Behind them were more prints, and more cigarette butts. Whoever had been there had been camping out awhile.

He crouched and scooped three of the butts into a little plastic Baggie, the kind cops used – or were supposed to anyway.

That's when his flashlight picked out a crushed bright yellow box in the sand. Kodak.

Christ, someone had been shooting film!

THE NEXT MORNING my eyeballs hurt. So did everything else above and below. What didn't actually ache just felt lousy. And that was in the two-second reprieve before I remembered what had happened to my brother.