Beach Wedding(60)

We made it to the sixth hole and were approaching a service road when out from the tall stately trees roared a gray SUV that stopped short in front of us. It was followed by another SUV and then a third. As a cop, I knew unmarked law enforcement cars when I saw them.

“I knew it,” I said to the security guy. “You’re a lying sack of shit.”

I watched as over half a dozen heavily armed SWAT officers in military-style uniforms stormed out of the vehicles along with a K9 officer with a barking black German shepherd.

“Yeah, and it looks like you’re under arrest, asshole,” the security creep said as two offensive lineman–sized policemen with shaved heads flung me down on the cart path and bit handcuffs into my wrists.



81

I guess my tangle with Tapley wasn’t as under the radar as I had initially hoped, I thought as I sat hemmed in tight in the first SUV by two burly SWAT cops.

The absurdity of how over-the-top the arrest had been had almost made me laugh, but now as we rolled along, I was beginning to have some misgivings.

Because I was seriously beginning to wonder where they were taking me. The closest Suffolk County PD headquarters was about an hour south. Would they take me there? Somewhere else?

Were they even Suffolk County cops? I couldn’t tell from their gray tactical uniforms. There were no patches or markings. They could have been from East Hampton or anywhere.

There were so many damn police departments in Long Island, it made your head spin.

After thirty minutes, we stopped along an ummarked road, and the driver got out to talk to the cops in the SUV parked in front of us.

“Where are we?” I said to the cop beside me.

But he wouldn’t say. He seemed about as talkative as the battering ram strapped to the door beside him. And about as smart. And charming.

We got rolling again, and a quarter of a mile ahead, we pulled into a tree-lined driveway. The place didn’t look like a police precinct. It looked like a cheesy office building.

What in the living hell? I thought as they parked and took me out of the truck and into the parking lot.

I looked at the small brown-brick-and-black-glass corporate building. There were no cars in the large lot. Beyond it was a two-lane road, and on the other side of it, a grass field, flat and featureless with some silver power-line transmission towers in it.

We could have been anywhere, I thought, starting to get even more worried.

Didn’t the SWAT guys in Chicago or somewhere get in trouble for having some off-site location where they would warehouse suspects? I thought.

They brought me inside the building and into an office suite off the empty lobby and put me in a small room with a table in it. It looked exactly like an interview room in a precinct, I noticed. I swallowed when I saw that there was a large ringbolt in the floor for handcuffing prisoners.

But if this was a precinct, where were the other cops? Where was the desk sergeant?

I thought about my options.

Before I fled Tapley’s house, I triple-checked to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind.

My alibi was being in the city with my wife and daughter while they were picking up their dresses with the rest of the bridal party, and I had the cell phone movement to prove it. They really had nothing. No witnesses. Nada.

This was speculation, I decided. A total bluff.

I guess Tapley didn’t care. Was he doubling down? Intimidating me?

I looked around the anonymous room in the anonymous building in the middle of Anonymousville.

It was starting to work.

I thought about my boss back in Philly. How baffled he would be when he heard about all of this.

But he didn’t matter.

I just didn’t want Viv and Angelina to worry.

One of the SWAT cops opened the door and poked his head in.

“Hey, your lawyer’s here.”

What lawyer? I thought as the guy left.

The door opened, and I looked up and saw what I could and couldn’t believe at the same time.

It wasn’t my lawyer.

It was Hailey Sutton’s.



82

I stared at Byron Seager as he came into the tiny room. The white-haired tan fiftysomething dream-team lawyer seemed like he hadn’t lost a step in two decades’ time. He got right down to business by firmly closing the door and putting a briefcase on the table.

He opened the briefcase, and as he sat, he removed a photograph from it and laid it flat on the table for me to see.

It was a photograph of me and Courtney at her restaurant. We were both laughing.

“This is an old girlfriend, right?” he said. “Cozy. You look smitten. Does your pregnant wife know about this?”

I looked at him, stifling the urge to laugh.

“Something like this could be damaging, no?” Seager said, shrugging the shoulders of his crisp bespoke suit. “Women, especially pregnant women, are sensitive, vulnerable. Pictures certainly are effective, aren’t they? There’s a mystery to them. You and Ms. Frazier look pretty enthralled with one another. Leaves a lot to the imagination.”

I kept looking at him.

“That photo might have me sleeping on the couch for a night,” I said. “But other people are going to be sleeping in a stone hotel for a lot longer when all this is said and done, Byron. And call me crazy, I’m thinking you might be one of them.”

He put the photo away and raised his palms in a submissive way. “I’d like to apologize for that approach, Mr. Rourke. You’re right. It was stupid. As well as rude. I’m an employee, as you know, so sometimes I’m called to perform tasks that I don’t recommend. But sometimes my clients insist. What I really want to show you is this.”