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Barney.”
    “Can you describe it?”
    “I barely looked at it. In fact, I made it a point not to. I tried to pretend that me and Walker were just two people having a conversation. Ignoring the gun made that a lot easier.”
    “You know any reason Michael Walker or Dante Halleyville might want to kill Feifer, Walco, or Roche?”
    “No. There isn’t any.”
    “Why’s that, Tom?”
    “They barely knew each other.”
    The young detective pursed his lips and shook his head. “No one’s seen them since the murder.”
    “Really.”
    “Plus, we got reason to think Dante and Walker were at the scene that night.”
    I start shaking my head a little at the news. “That makes no sense. There’s no way they’d go back there after what happened that afternoon.”
    “Not if they were smart,” says Van Buren. “But, Tom, these boys weren’t smart. They could be killers.”

Chapter 20
    Tom
    WOW! HALF AN hour after Barney Fife Van Buren leaves with his little orange notebook in hand, Wingo sounds the alarm again.
More company.
    When I look through the front-door window, all I see is torso, which means it’s Clarence, and that’s not good news either.
    Clarence, who drives a cab in town and does some college scouting, has been a close friend since he steered me to St. John’s fifteen years ago. Because there’s as much downtime for a Hampton cabbie as for a Montauk lawyer, he comes by my office two or three times a week. The six-foot-six Clarence is also Dante’s cousin, and I know from his worried expression that’s why he’s here.
This cannot be good.
    “I just got a call from him,” says Clarence. “Boy is scared out of his mind. Thinks they’re going to kill him.”
    “Who? Who’s going to kill him?”
    “He’s not sure.”
    I pull two beers out of the fridge and Clarence takes one.
    “Where the hell is he? Van Buren just left here. He says Dante and Walker bolted. It
looks
bad.”
    “I know it does, Tom.”
    With the sun on the way down, we sit at the counter in the kitchen.
    “Van Buren also implied that Dante and Walker were at the murder scene that night.”
    “They got a witness?” asks Clarence.
    “I can’t tell. He was being cute about it. Why the hell would Dante and Walker be going back there after what happened?”
    “Dante says he can explain everything. But right now we got to get him to turn himself in. That’s why I’m here. He respects you, Tom. You talk to him, he’ll listen.”
    Clarence stares at me. “Tom, please? I’ve never once asked you for a favor.”
    “He tell you where they are?”
    Clarence shook his head and looked hurt. “Wouldn’t even give me a number.”
    I spread my hands wide. “What do you want to do, Clarence? Wait here and hope he calls again?”
    “He says we should talk to his grandma. Dante says if Marie says it’s cool, he’ll give us a call.”

Chapter 21
    Tom
    I CAN FEEL right then and there that this is going real bad in a big hurry, and I should not be involved. But I go with Clarence anyway.
    We climb into his big yellow Buick station wagon and head west through Amagansett and East Hampton, and just before the start of Bridgehampton’s two-block downtown, we turn right at the monument and go north on 114.
    Stay on it long enough, the road leads to Sag Harbor, but along the way is the one enduring pocket of poverty left in the Hamptons. It’s called Kings Highway but is often referred to as Black Hampton. One minute you’re passing multimillion-dollar estates, the next minute shotgun shacks and trailer homes, old rotting cars on blocks like in the Ozarks or Appalachia.
    Dante and his grandmother live off the dirt road leading to the town dump, and when we pull up to her trailer, the woman who comes to the door has Dante’s cheekbones and lively brown eyes but none of his height. In fact, she’s as compact and round as Dante is long and lean.
    “Don’t stand out there in the cold,” says Marie.
    The sitting room in the trailer is