The Genius by Jesse Kellerman

said McGrath. “I know who he is. I recognized him straightaway. His name was Eddie Cardinale. Forty years ago someone strangled him to death, but we never found out who.” He coughed. “Can I give you directions or do you know how to get to the Belt?”
     
     
     

• 6 •
     
     
    Although technically part of Queens, the long, flat Rockaway peninsula juts beneath Brooklyn’s potbelly, like the concealed feet of a perching waterfowl. To get there you drive through Jacob Riis Park, a marshy preserve more Chesapeake Bay than New York City. Turning northeast takes you to JFK and some of the most ghettoized areas in the Five Boroughs, neighborhoods you’d never think of as dangerous, simply because they abut the beach. How can the beach be dangerous? Go to the Rockaways and you’ll get your answer.
    Breezy Point Cooperative sits at the other end of the peninsula, in every sense of the phrase. Nonwhite faces become less common as you head southwest, as does traffic, which thins out as you approach the parking lot. I pulled up in a cab around three. Just outside the entrance to the community was a pub that had drawn a decent crowd. The driver bobbed his head noncommittally when I asked him to wait, or to come back in an hour. As soon as I paid him, he sped away.
    I entered a warren of low-slung bungalows and Cape Codders and right away felt the eponymous breeze: cool and briny, whipping up grit from the beach a hundred yards away. My loafers filled with sand as I walked the alleyways, past houses done up with nautical themes: lifesavers and signs carved from weather-beaten teak:
JIM’S CLIPPER
or
THE GOOD SHIP HAL-LORAN
. Irish tricolors abounded.
    Later I learned that most of the homeowners are summerfolk who flee after Labor Day. But in mid-August they were still out in droves: out on their cramped porches or down by the boardwalk, sweating and crushing cans of Budweiser and watching towheaded skateboarders dive-bomb the pavement. Charcoal smoke turned the air heavy. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and nobody knew me. Kids playing basketball on a low hoop with a water-filled base stopped their game and gathered to stare at me, like I had a big scarlet letter on my chest.
N
, perhaps, for
Not Local
.
    I got lost looking for McGrath’s house, ending up on the beach beside a memorial to local firefighters killed at the World Trade Center. I shook out my shoes.
    “Lost?”
    I turned and saw a girl of about nine in denim shorts over a bathing suit.
    “I’m looking for Lee McGrath.”
    “You mean the professor.”
    I said, “If you say so.”
    She hooked a finger and went back into the maze. I tried to keep track of her turns but gave up and let myself be led to a shack with a well-kept front yard, peonies and pansies and a lawn cut golf-course close, good enough to make the cover of
Martha Stewart Living
. A hammock with a lumpy pillow hung at the far end of the porch, and behind it an old Coca-Cola sign leaned against the wooden siding. The mailbox out front read MCGRATH; underneath, an NYPD decal. In the front window was a sun-bleached poster of the Twin Towers, an eagle, and an American flag.
     
NEVER FORGET
     
    I knocked, drawing slow footsteps.
    “Thanks for coming.” Though Lee McGrath was not as old as he sounded over the phone, time had not been kind to him. Hairless calves gave him a feminine quality, and slack skin hinted that he had once been a much larger man. He wore a blue terrycloth bathrobe and disintegrating slippers that made a ghostly sound as he turned and shuffled back inside. “Take a load off.”
    The interior of the house smelled of ointments, and its clutter didn’t square with the neatly kept yard. Before seating me at the dining-room table, McGrath spent a good five minutes clearing out a workspace, shuttling piles of unopened mail, half-empty paper cups, and pill bottles to the passthrough, one item at a time, a process maddening to watch. I tried to help him but he waved me