Текст книги "Crime of Privilege"

Автор книги: Walter Walker

Соавторы: Walter Walker
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5

.

I WAS BEING PLAYED BY PEOPLE WITH A LOT MORE RESOURCES THAN I had. I asked myself if that was the message Barbara had come to deliver. Barbara Blueblood Belbonnet. The game was between the Gregorys and Josh David Powell, and you’re just getting batted back and forth across the net, George.

Except Barbara had cried, hadn’t she? And what was in it for her, protecting Peter, running around the country, two countries, like she was? If, of course, she actually had been doing that. I had no proof that she had. No proof that anything she said was true.

I called Buzzy. It had been a long time since we had spoken and he seemed to jump when he recognized my voice.

I told him I needed a favor.

“Anything for you, buddy.”

I had to choke back my first reaction.

“Georgie? You all right?”

“What can you tell me about Barbara Belbonnet?”

“Your dungeon-mate? Used to be Barbara Etheridge?”

“She told me she grew up with you.”

“Well, she did, sorta. I mean …” Buzzy wanted to be helpful; he was looking for ways to do that. “I mean, she was one of the rich kids. Into sailing and all that shit, and I wasn’t. She was like Hyannisport Yacht Club and I was, like, the public golf course. She was also, I’ll tell you, about the best-looking girl around, so I knew who she was and everything. But as far as us hanging out together, no.”

He stopped then, thinking he had answered my question.

“But you did go to school with her, right?”

“Up to about, I don’t know, age fourteen, maybe. Then she went away to boarding school and, like, next time I saw her, she was married to Tyler Belbonnet. Or at least living with him.”

“Did that surprise you? Her and Tyler?”

“Okay, I gotta back up. When we were little, Tyler was, like, legendary. Like I said, I wasn’t into sailing, but everyone knew who he was. His picture was always in the paper, winning this or that race, and he was most definitely not a yacht-club kid. His father was a sailor, and Ty had his own boat and he only competed in the open races, but you’d hear people asking each other all the time, ‘How did you do compared to Ty?’—that sort of thing. And then you’d see him at parties and it was always a big deal for him just to be there. Of course, all of us watching him, admiring him, wanting to be like him, weren’t thinking so much about the fact that he didn’t seem to have any plans beyond sailing and partying. What we were thinking, back then, was that he was the one who had all the girls.”

“Including Barbara?”

“Oh, yeah. Early, early on. In fact, I think that was why they sent her away. It was pretty much common knowledge she was banging him.”

“Sent her away to prep school, you mean?”

“Yeah, Tabor, I think. Then four years to Sarah Lawrence or someplace like that. I’d see her around in the summers and we’d say hi and stuff, but that was all. And then, what I heard was that she was going to law school at B.U. and she ran into Ty again. By this time he’d been all over the world, and once he starts telling her about Saint Bart’s and the Greek islands and Tahiti, and it was like—fuck law school. That’s, I guess, when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“She got knocked up. Preggers.”

“But Ty did marry her.” It was a question, really. I was trying to find out if anything she said was true.

“I don’t know if it was that time or the next. What I can tell you is he signed on to a crew that was competing for the America’s Cup and he was gone to Australia for a year while she was here by herself. Then he returns and everything starts up all over again. I think she and Ty were living in some dump down in Harwich while he was working in a marine supply store, and she was back trying to go to law school at night and you just knew that wasn’t going to last. She has the second kid and the kid turns out to have Down syndrome and Ty sails off to the Azores.”

“Before or after they had Malcolm?”

“I don’t know, George. From what I understand, the syndrome is something you can find out about during pregnancy, so they must have known. Or at least she must have.”

“You think it’s possible she didn’t tell him because she wanted to keep her hold on him?”

“Jeez, I don’t know, George. I’d like to think she’s not that stupid. I mean, I know she’s not stupid, but sometimes people do things … you know?”

“I know, Buz.”

“Look, I was shocked as hell when you told me she was working in your office. She was, like, one of the great tragedies of my lifetime. My lifetime—what am I talking about? Of the Cape … of … of … I don’t know, of all time. Here was this beautiful girl, rich family, has everything going for her, and she lets her life get all fucked up by the local cool guy who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything but himself.”

“I’ve heard about people like that.”

“I don’t know if I’ve talked to Tyler Belbonnet in twenty years, but I could sort of understand his appeal back then. He had this romantic pirate image, but, Jesus, you can’t let some guy like that ruin your life. Especially when he keeps going, doing whatever he wants, and you’re left behind to pay the consequences. You know what I’m saying?”

I told him I did.

“So I’m just sorry about the number he did on Barbara because she really could have been somebody.” Buzzy caught himself. “Not that being in the D.A.’s office isn’t being somebody. I mean, I’m obviously trying to do it myself … so to speak.”

“Yeah.”

“You still with me on that, Georgie?”

“Yeah, Buz, just as much as I ever was.”

6

.

A MESSED-UP LIFE. A LIFE AS MESSED UP AS MINE. MORE SO, because she had responsibilities beyond herself. Were those responsibilities enough for her to sacrifice me? Why not? If they led to a better job, better security, better daycare.

Still, it made no sense. Fly to California, fly to Costa Rica. What for? I had already been to those places. Why would she retrace my steps? Why would she go before I had a chance to go back?

I decided I would call her. Ask her to come in again. Meet me someplace else if she wanted.

SHE WAS WEARING A DARK blue belted sheath top that dipped very slightly at the neck and slacks that were more or less the color of oatmeal. Her purse, which was big enough to carry a notebook, a change of clothes, and a frying pan, was in her lap. She had been glad to come in. She had something to tell me and wanted to get through the preliminaries as quickly as possible.

From my seat of power on the other side of the desk I waved her into whatever she wanted to say.

“Tell me, George, of the people who were at the Gregorys’ that night, how many have you actually interviewed?”

I held up two fingers. “Not counting the woman who may or may not have been Leanne, only McFetridge and Cory.” Then I remembered and held up a third. “Patty the pickup.”

“You’ve tried to find Jason, Peter, Leanne, I understand that. But why haven’t you tried to find the rest?”

“Who’s left?” I said. “Jamie, who’s never done anything but follow Peter around, and Ned, who had his own thing going on. Think either one of them is going to tell me anything about cousin Peter’s adventures with his date that night?”

“First of all,” she said, her hands on her purse, her back straight, her words quick, “what you’re describing is not the Jamie I know. The Jamie I grew up with was the most conniving of the bunch. Maybe it was because of his size, I don’t know, but the way he competed was to try to outsmart everyone else. And it’s certainly not the Jamie I see these days, who’s probably the most popular of all the Gregorys of his generation because he’s making everybody a fortune.” She paused. “You know about these mortgages they’re giving away?”

“The Gregorys?”

She made a face. It wasn’t a bad face. It probably wouldn’t have been possible for Barbara to make a bad face. “Not the Gregorys. The banks. Something about they figure housing prices are going up so fast that as soon as people move in they’ve already acquired some equity. And then apparently the banks sell off the mortgages to somebody who bundles them all up, the good and the bad, and then offers them as a commodity that other investors bid on. Which I guess is where Jamie comes in. I don’t understand how it works, but that’s why Jamie was at my parents’ party that turned out to be such a disaster for you.”

“I thought he was there to raise money for a film for that girlfriend of his.”

“Well, that was what was going on, yes. But Dad didn’t know that ahead of time. See, that crowd, they’ve all been making money hand over fist through Jamie. So he shows up at the party, everybody wants to talk to him anyhow because he’s been doing so well for them, and he’s got this glamourous actress with him so he can let it drop how he’s raising money for her next picture. He doesn’t have to ask, which you don’t do at a gathering like that. But as soon as the party was over you can bet they were all calling him, see if they could get in on it.”

“Including Pop-pop?”

“That’s what I call my father.”

“I know.”

Barbara’s shoulders lifted and fell as if she did not quite understand me. It was a quick and graceful movement, and when it was over she was done with Jamie. She turned to Ned, and asked why I hadn’t talked with him.

I explained about the eighteen-year-old au pair.

“Well, there was someone else who was there that night, too, George.”

“Ned’s children?”

“I’m talking about the gatekeeper. The guard.”

“The black kid.”

“Chris Warburton, that’s his name,” she said, chiding me. “Sound familiar?”

I shook my head, feeling more wary than excited that I was about to learn something I had not figured out already.

“He’s the chef at The Captain Yarnell House in Brewster. You know it?”

Of course I knew it, a restaurant fashioned out of an old sea captain’s home off Route 6A. I just had never been to it because it cost about a hundred bucks a person to eat there and because I had not had a dinner date since Marion left me.

“I’ve known Chris since he was about six years old. His father used to do my parents’ yardwork, and he’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. All his life he wanted to cook, and the Gregorys gave him the chance. They sent him to culinary school. Then they made sure he got jobs until he proved to be so talented he didn’t need them anymore. I went to Chris, George.”

She went to Chris, who had spoken to Landry, and whom I had never even considered interviewing. I looked over the head of Barbara Belbonnet at the walls I had yet to decorate and wondered how long I would be here. In this room. In this office. On this job. Probably 2.5 months. Till the election. George Becket, my letter of recommendation would read, wonderful boy. Forgets to locate an occasional witness from time to time, but that’s all right. He fit in just fine with Detective Iacupucci.

I looked across my desk at my former dungeon-mate and wondered not for the first time how I had managed to share a room with her for so long without really knowing her. Barbara Blueblood, with the pirate husband and the Down syndrome child and the daughter who was already fourteen years old. Friend of the Gregorys, second circle, taking a leave of absence from work so she could prove something to me. Was that possible? Didn’t she need the job, the security, the life the Gregorys had provided for her when she had screwed up everything else?

“Chris confirm that Heidi was there?” I asked, half hoping that was all she was going to say.

“He remembered something about Jason Stockover, George. He remembered he wore a green hat with a white D on it.”

Cory Gregory had remembered that, too. Dartmouth or Deerfield, she had said.

Now Barbara Belbonnet said the same thing. Such are the ways of people in a certain class in a certain place. She didn’t think Drew, Drake, Drexel, Duquesne, DePaul, Davidson, Dickinson, Denison.

“Chris said he thought Jason and Ned had been friends in college.”

She wasn’t thinking Duke, whose color was blue, or Delaware, whose team nickname was the Blue Hens.

“Thing is,” she said, “I know Ned went to college at Trinity and not Dartmouth, so I figured the D must be for Jason’s prep school, and I took a chance and drove out there.” She pointed. Nice, smooth underarms. “To Deerfield. In the western part of the state.”

I nodded. I knew where it was.

“I went to the school library, examined yearbooks from twenty years ago, around the time a college classmate of Ned’s would have been there, and was rewarded with a picture of Jason Stockover, a list of his school activities, and his home address in Cos Cob, Connecticut.”

“And let me guess, that’s where you went next.”

“Yep.”

Sure, of course. Barbara Belbonnet doing my job better than me. Or maybe for me. I still wasn’t sure.

“I got there,” she said, “only to find the Stockovers no longer live at that address. The family had some sort of falling out, the current owners said, and there was a divorce. They couldn’t tell me where any of them went.”

“Do you think the school would have a—”

She was way ahead of me. “So I drove back to Deerfield and visited the alumni office. They were so sorry, but they were not at liberty to give out addresses.” She lilted the words “at liberty” as if she were imitating the Queen.

“But that didn’t stop you, I assume.”

“No,” she agreed, “it didn’t. I went back to the library, back to Jason’s yearbook. I had the idea that maybe he was on the sailing team and I could find a picture of the team, see if I recognized any of his teammates, people I could contact about him. It was a long shot, I know, but there are only so many races in the northeast, and, hey, I was at plenty of them.”

“Except you’re older.”

Barbara’s recitation came to a standstill. “I’m thirty-seven, George.”

“Oh.”

“You’re what, thirty-four? You think that’s such a big difference?”

“No.”

“You do, don’t you?” Her chin moved, her hand moved, her leg moved, the corner of her mouth squeezed shut, and I realized that I had actually hurt her. It seemed like such a small thing. I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to tell her that I hadn’t really noticed a difference, that it was one of a thousand things I hadn’t noticed, that I hadn’t noticed because my own life was so screwed up, such a mess, such a total disappointment, that I wasn’t even aware of things that were right in front of me.

But Barbara was not waiting for my explanations. “Ned’s at least two years older than I am,” she said. “Which means, since Jason was in his class, he’s about two years older as well.”

“Thirty-nine,” I said unnecessarily.

Was there a wince? It was hard to tell in the midst of my own embarrassment.

“The only problem with my idea was that the school didn’t have a sailing team.”

I told myself there could have been a lot of reasons for her new tone of voice. She could have been commenting on the incomprehensibility of a landlocked school not having a sailing team.

“What I found instead,” she continued, “in the listing of activities beneath his yearbook picture, was that Jason had been a member of the cross-country team, the Outdoor Club, and the French Club. I asked the librarian about those things, not expecting they were going to get me anywhere, except, it turns out, Monsieur Weber, the faculty member responsible for the French Club, is still at the school.”

“Great. That’s great, Barbara.” I may have gone overboard in my enthusiasm.

“That wasn’t the end of my good luck, George. Monsieur Weber is still in touch with Jason because, it turns out, Jason is actually living in France. In a bastide.” She got a shot in on me. “Do you know what a bastide is?”

I knew, but I didn’t tell her.

“It’s one of those fortified towns built during the Hundred Years’ War, when France and England only fought when the soldiers weren’t needed in the fields.”

“Ah.”

“They’re all over the Bordeaux region, and what Monsieur Weber said was, the one where Jason lives is the most beautiful bastide of all.”

A slow smile crept over her lips, enough to make me question whether my punishment was over. It was a smile of promise, one that invited me to smile along with her. “So,” she said, as I watched her lips part, her teeth sparkle, her tongue flash, “I guess it’s no wonder that a guy like Jason Stockover would own a bed-and-breakfast there. Don’t you think?”

1

.

MONFLANQUIN, FRANCE,

September 2008

CARTE BLANCHE TO MONFLANQUIN.

I still did not know about Barbara. My heart told me to believe everything she said. My head told me I had to watch out, because she didn’t need me; if Josh David Powell could employ a woman to stay married to me, the Gregorys could certainly insert a woman into my office. I was clearly susceptible. The cost of doing something like that meant nothing to these people. Years meant nothing. I certainly meant nothing, except as a tool. A pawn.

A denizen of the fourth circle.

Get out of town, George. Go to France.

I didn’t go for any of the reasons she gave me. I went because I had Mitch’s $100,000 to spend. And because I had the time to do it. That is what I told myself.

2

.

I FLEW INTO CHARLES DE GAULLE, TOOK A LONG AND EXPENSIVE taxi ride into Paris, and boarded a train south to the city of Bour-deaux, where I rented a Renault with a stick shift and drove east. It was a sunny day, the air was warm enough to go without a jacket, and I was almost enjoying myself. I stopped in Saint-Émilion for lunch and drank wine because I was in the heart of one of the great grape-growing regions of the world and felt I should. The bottle I had was a merlot from the Médoc region, and I was disappointed. Perhaps I ordered from the wrong château, or the wrong vintage, or didn’t let it breathe sufficiently. Or maybe I just was not sophisticated enough to appreciate what I was having, but I did not finish the bottle.

From there on, however, the drive seemed even prettier and more interesting than it had before.

I arrived at Monflanquin late in the day. “At” because one gets to the town well before one gets into the town. It is a walled city built on top of a hill overlooking a broad valley. I had to find the motor vehicle entrance and then wend my way around and around until I got to the top, where there was a large open square flanked by homes and shops and restaurants. For all that, it was surprisingly easy to find my destination on a side street leading off the square, and, miracle of miracles, a place to park directly in front of it.

My surprises only grew from there. The address Barbara had given me was a gray stone building sharing common walls with the buildings on either side of it and housing not just a bed-and-breakfast but a gift shop on the ground floor. Inside the gift shop was a large man wearing an apron and shorts. The apron I could accept. The exposed knees, shins, calves, and ankles were a shock. Then the man greeted me and I realized he was not French but English, which made the sight a little less shocking because it is a well-known fact that the English tend to do strange things when they see the sun.

I must have been dressed peculiarly for the region as well, because the first thing the bare-legged man did was greet me in my own language. He wanted to know how I was doing.

I told him I was fine and that I was interested in renting a room for the evening. He said that I appeared to be an acceptable lodger and it took me a moment to realize he had made a joke. It took another moment after that to laugh.

Barbara Belbonnet had used her cell phone to take a picture of Jason Stockover’s photograph in his yearbook. While more than twenty years had passed and the camera image of a boy in sport coat and tie had not been ideal, this large man making jokes to me was most definitely not the same person. The boy in the photo had dark wavy hair and rather delicate features masked by an expression of smugness that promised cheer to those he liked and misery to those he didn’t. This fellow in front of me not only had a British accent but a bald head and a wide-open face. The accent could have been affected, the hair lost, the smugness decimated by the realities of life beyond prep school, but this man, clearly, had never had delicate features.

“All alone, are you?” He posed the question as if being alone was an exciting thing to be.

I told him I was.

“Would you happen to have a passport?” he asked, getting out a hardcover register book and opening it to a page that contained the day’s date and handwritten column markers that read nom, adresse, and nombre de passeport. The way he asked, I had the impression that not everybody who stayed there did have one. Or perhaps he was just being friendly. In any event, I handed mine over. He noted where it had been issued. “San Francisco!” he said with genuine enthusiasm. “I have had some adventures there, mon ami, I can tell you that.”

“Yes,” I said, not wanting to know. “Actually, I’m from Boston.”

“Boston.” He was busy writing things down.

“Cape Cod, really.”

“You don’t say. Could I have the address, please?”

I gave it to him. He transcribed and then handed back the passport along with a key attached to a heavy brass fob that would no doubt rip a hole in my pants pocket if I tried walking the streets of Monflanquin with it. “Number four, just at the top of the stairs behind you, two flights up. Need help with your luggage?”

“No, no. I’ve just one bag, and I can handle it.”

“D’accord, as the locals say.” He smiled.

I glanced around the shop. Knickknacks, mostly. Some framed vintage photographs and some paintings that had probably hung on walls for years without being noticed until their owners died and the estates were liquidated. But there was some fun stuff, too. Carafes and wineglasses and boards with comical renderings of various aspects of life in wine country. Posters and coasters and little figures made from pewter or blown glass. Chess sets with medieval warriors carrying French and English flags. Postcards, games, scarves, a display of tour books, and a rack of flamboyant sunglasses.

He saw me looking at the sunglasses. “Very Posh Spice, don’t you think?” And I had to go through various mental synapses to realize he was referring to Victoria Beckham, formerly of the Spice Girls. “Oh, yes, very much so,” I said, as if I knew what I was talking about.

I turned to go to the door, to go out to the car for my bag.

“You know,” he said as my hand went to the handle, “my partner spent some time in the Boston area. Back in the halcyon days of his youth. You’ll have to talk.”

“Oh, good,” I said. “I would like that very much.”

THE PARTNERS LIVED TOGETHER on the second floor. The door to their apartment was open when I walked past with my suitcase. A short hallway led from that open door to a darkened sitting room, where a soccer game was on television. I could not see who was watching it, but I assumed someone was. I put down the suitcase and knocked.

“Hello,” I called.

There was movement. A figure appeared at the end of the hallway. A lean man, a little less than six feet tall in bare feet, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. A man whose hair, if not wavy, was at least still on his head.

“Yes?” he said. Like the man on the first floor, he did not bother with French.

“Are you the fellow from New England?” I asked.

He came forward, out of the darkness. It was the boy in the prep school yearbook, two decades along. I felt a surge of elation and held out my hand even before he finished telling me he was from Connecticut.

“Massachusetts,” I said.

He took my hand. I remember thinking it was not the shake of a sailor. “I went to school in Massachusetts,” he said.

“Yes, I know.” I did not release my grip.

“Oh, did Toby tell you?” The inquiry was friendly enough. There was no subterfuge to it. He did not even try to pull his hand away.

I said, “No. I know because I’ve come all the way here looking for you.”

“Me?” He smiled, as though I might be a talent scout.

“I’m George Becket, from the Cape and Islands district attorney’s office.”

The handshake, minimal before, now went as soft as pudding.

“Oh, shit,” he said, and the words came out partly in dejection, partly in alarm. He tried to step back, but I would not let go of his hand. I wondered if he would call for Toby. If the big man would come charging up the stairs. If I would end up grappling with both of them, tumbling around the second floor. Georgie Becket, punching his way across the Western Hemisphere. You see this scar? Tamarindo, Costa Rica. This one? Monflanquin, France.

But Jason did not call for Toby and he did not keep up the struggle. He left his hand, his arm, hanging in my grip as if I were a doctor taking his pulse. “What did I do?” he said.

“If you want me to guess,” I told him, “I’d say you really didn’t do anything. But there are those who would like me to think you did.”

He did not respond. He just looked at me with eyes that contained none of the confidence of the youth in the yearbook photo.

“You are Jason Stockover, aren’t you?”

There was an instant when I did not know what he was going to say or what I was going to do if he denied it, but then he nodded and I was so relieved I almost hugged him. I opted for dropping his hand, which immediately went into his front pocket. Both his hands went into both his front pockets. Because he was wearing jeans, and because they were fairly tight, he got only his fingers in.

“What do you want?”

“To talk. To ask you some questions. To get some answers.”

He looked wistfully back into his apartment, no doubt wishing he had never come out. “About?”

“You know what it’s about, Jason. It’s about the night a young girl named Heidi Telford went to the Gregorys’ compound on Cape Cod to visit Peter Martin and ended up dead.”

I spoke brutally on purpose, letting Jason know there was no escape.

He made an attempt anyway. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“Let me help you, then. You sailed the Figawi race. You partied in Hyannis. You and Paul McFetridge picked up two girls and brought them back to the Gregorys. Once you got there you took them out to the beach—”

He glanced quickly down the stairs. From below came a deep voice. “I know all about your sordid past, Jason. Don’t hold anything back on my account.”

Jason looked at me as if it was really my opinion that concerned him. I tried to make sure my expression did not change one iota.

“You want to come in and have a glass of wine?” he asked.