Beach Road by Peter de Jonge; James Patterson

Author:Peter de Jonge; James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery, Fiction, Fiction.Legal, Adventure, Suspense & Thriller
ISBN: 9780446619141
Publisher: Vision
Published: 2006-01-01T10:00:00+00:00

Chapter 61

Kate

FIVE MINUTES AFTER we lift off from the East Hampton heliport, the guy seated next to me glances down at the traffic crawling west on 27 and flashes a high-watt smile. “I love catching the heli back to town,” he says. “An hour after going for a run on the beach I’m back in my apartment on Fifth Avenue sipping a martini. It makes the whole weekend.”

“And it’s even lovelier when it’s bumper to bumper for the poor slobs down below, right?”

“Caught me peeking,” he says with a chuckle. He’s in his late forties, tan and trim and dressed in the traveling uniform of the überclass—overly creased jeans, dress shirt, a cashmere blazer. On his wrist is a platinum Patek Philippe; on his sockless feet, Italian loafers.

“Fifteen seconds and you’ve seen right through me. It takes most people at least an hour.” He extends a hand and says, “Roberto Nuñez, a pleasure.”

“Katie. Lovely to meet you too, Roberto.”

In fact, I already knew his name and that he owns a South American investment boutique and is Mort Semel’s neighbor in the Hamptons. After Tom’s run-in with Semel’s bodyguards taught us how hard it would be to talk to Beach Road types, I called Ed Yourkewicz, the brother of a law school roommate. A helicopter pilot, Ed has recently gone from transporting emergency supplies between Baghdad and Fallujah to shuttling billionaires between Manhattan and the Hamptons.

Last week I e-mailed him a list of Beach Road residents and asked if on a less-than-full flight he could put me beside one of them for the forty-minute, thirty-five-hundred-dollar trip. He called this afternoon and told me to be at the southern tip of the airport at 6:55 p.m. “And don’t come a minute earlier unless you want to blow your cover.”

For the next ten minutes Roberto struggles in vain to capture and convey the miracle that is Roberto. There are the half-dozen homes, the Lamborghini and Maybach, the ceaseless stress of presiding over a “modest little empire,” and the desire, growing stronger by the day, to chuck it all for a “simpler, more real” life.

It’s a well-oiled monologue, and when he’s done he smiles shyly as if relieved it’s finally over and says, “Your turn, Katie. What do you do?”

“God, I dread that question. It’s so embarrassing. Try to enjoy my life, I guess. Try to help others enjoy it a little more too. I run a couple foundations—one helps inner-city kids land prep-school scholarships. The other involves a summer camp for the same kind of at-risk kids.”

“A do-gooder. How impressive.”

“At least by day.”

“And when the sun goes down? By the way, I love what you’re wearing.”

After getting Ed’s call, I had just enough time to race to the Bridgehampton mall and buy a black Lacoste shirt dress three sizes too small.

“The usual vices, I’m afraid. Can’t they invent some new ones?”

“Altruistic and naughty. You sound perfect.”

“Speaking of perfection, you know where an overbred philanthropist can score some ecstasy?”

Roberto purses his lips a second, and I think I’ve lost him.

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