It’s not until twenty minutes after that, when they’re both lounging around on one of the stripped-down beds, that he tells her the smell in the room isn’t reefer, it’s crack.
And that’s how the story begins-with Feif and Nikki, and the crack they smoke that lazy afternoon at somebody else’s summerhouse in the Hamptons.
Part One. Murder on Beach Road
Chapter 3. Tom Dunleavy
IT’S SATURDAY MORNING on Labor Day weekend, and I’m rolling down what some might call the prettiest country lane in America – Beach Road, East Hampton.
I’m on my way to meet four of my oldest pals on the planet. The ’66 XKE I have been working on for a decade hasn’t backfired once, and everywhere I look there’s that dazzling Hampton light.
Not only that, I’ve got my loyal pooch, Wingo, right beside me on the passenger seat, and with the top down, he hardly stinks at all.
So why don’t I feel better about another day in paradise?
Maybe it’s just this neighborhood. Beach Road is wide and elegant, with one ten-million-dollar house after another, but in a way, it’s as ugly as it is beautiful. Every five minutes or so a private rent-a-cop cruises by in a white Jeep. And instead of bearing the names of the residents, the signs in front of the houses belong to the high-tech electronic security companies that have been hired to keep the riffraff out.
Well, here comes some prime riffraff, fellas, and guess what you can do if you don’t like it.
As I roll west, the houses get even bigger and the lawns deeper and, if possible, greener. Then they disappear completely behind tall, thick hedges.
When that happens, Wingo and I have put the sorry land of the multimillionaire behind us and have crossed, without invitation, into the even chillier kingdom of the billionaire.