Beach Road (25 page)

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.

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.

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.”

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.

Epilogue
After the Fall

Tom
THE HEAVY BOOTS of the day guard echo off the oppressive cinder-block walls that are all around me.
A minute later there’s a rattle of keys and a clanging of bolts, and when the footsteps resume I hop off the
twenty-four-inch-wide metal cot. When the guard turns the last corner to my cell, I’m already standing by
the door.

In the seven months I’ve been locked up in Riverhead-I’m on the same floor where Dante did his time-
I haven’t had a visitor, and the only letters I’ve received are from Detective Connie P. Raiborne, Brooklyn
Homicide. If Connie wants to pick my criminal brain, I say, pick away.

Since his letters are all I get in the way of human interaction, I do my best to keep him interested, even if I
have to make shit up, which, if you haven’t noticed, I’m very good at.

The guard leads me to a fenced-in courtyard for my federally mandated twenty minutes of outdoor
exercise a week, unlocking my wrists through a slit in the barbed wire once I’m safely inside.

Across the way, the brothers run up and down the one court they got here, their black skin glistening with
sweat even in the anemic December sun.

I still have more than enough game to school those fellas, but no one’s going to let me play hoops in
this joint. All I’ve got of freedom is the
pock
of the bouncing ball and the sun on the back of my neck. As I do my best to enjoy those, there’s a
commotion at the far end of the cage, and some inmates are shoved inside.

I’m in solitary, isolated from all the other inmates, since I fucked up that guy in the shower, messed him up
so bad they’re still feeding him through a tube. So right away I know what’s happening and so does the
whole courtyard, because the basketball stops bouncing and the place goes stone silent. For these sick
bastards, this is better than HBO.

I almost feel the same way. I’m scared as hell, but excited-scared. No one ever learns the whole truth
about himself, but in a place like this, you find out what you miss, and more than Kate’s skin or smile
or the daydream she kept alive, I miss
the action,
the rush of shaking the dice and letting them roll, and right now they’re bouncing across the caged
cement of this prison courtyard.

I stand up and, making a point of taking my time about it, move to the corner near the fence. That way no
one can get behind me, and only one of them can get at me at a time.

They sent three people to do the job. There’s a pasty-looking white guy with a full sleeve of green tats on
both arms, plus two thickly built black guys.

But I never take my eyes off the white guy, because I know the one in the middle is holding the blade.

They’re halfway across the lot now and closing fast, but I don’t move a muscle, not even in my face. I let
them get close, and then everything changes in an instant. I bring my right foot up hard into the kneecap of
the brother on the right. There’s a crunch and a scream of pain, and now, despite the four-leaf clover
carved on his biceps, Irish boy is not feeling nearly as lucky, is he.