Текст книги "Crime of Privilege"

Автор книги: Walter Walker

Соавторы: Walter Walker
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

I was pretty sure I was no longer in love. It wasn’t fair, I realized. She was answering my questions without guile or subterfuge, taking me at my word as to the reason for my interest. And yet something about the way her mind meandered, the way she bopped about in her seat when a thought occurred to her, the way bits of bran muffin stuck in her teeth—I wondered what it would be like waking up next to her in the morning. I wondered if she would be attractive at first light, if she would expect me to get up first, open the curtains, run the shower till it was hot, water the plants.

Cory drank more coffee and smiled at me. It was a genuine smile, a lovely smile. The bits of bran muffin had disappeared.

I said, “So Peter, I can understand. But I’m wondering if something could have happened that weekend that affected Paul.”

Was I being too direct, too obvious?

“Like what?” Cory said, still smiling.

“Look.” Emboldened by what I had gotten away with so far, I set off on a new lie. “That was the last time any of his old crowd heard from him, that weekend of the race. After that he seems to have taken off out west, almost as though he was trying to get away from everything in his old life. Sort of escape, maybe.”

She was still regarding me as if she and I were the only ones in the café, but the look of confusion had crept back into her eyes.

“So there was your cousin Ned, your cousin Peter, your cousin Jamie—”

“Jamie’s my brother.”

“Sorry.” Cory’s appeal took another slight tumble.

“Okay, the three of them, plus you, Paul, and a guy named Jason Stockover—”

“Who?” She blinked, thought about it, then sparked again. “Oh, Jason, I remember him. He was so cute. Okay, it was my graduation year, because that was the last time he ever came and I had such a crush on him and then I never saw him again. So, okay, 1999 it was.”

“You know what happened to him? Know where he is?”

“No. Like I said, we never saw him again. He went to Deerfield or Dartmouth. One of those green schools, because he had a dark green baseball hat with a white D on it.” She finished, and there was a new clouding on her brow.

I had to ask what was wrong.

“You know, it’s kind of funny because we had such a good time. But you think about it and there were, what, six of us, and three of them never sailed again. I mean, like I said, Peter has an excuse, but our two friends, to just never hear from them after that …”

“Which is why I’m asking if something happened.”

And suddenly Cory Gregory was not having such a good time anymore. “George,” she said, not Georgie but George, “what is it you do? For a living, I mean.”

“I work with Barbara Belbonnet. I thought she told you.”

“You’re a district attorney?” She seemed shocked. Her hand went to the center of her chest.

“Assistant. I’m an assistant D.A., like Barbara.”

Now her hand started grabbing around her hip, both hands did, she was getting her windbreaker. I started to speak again and she stopped. “No, George. You seem like a really nice guy and all, and I’m sure you only want to get hold of your friend, but we have to be really careful who we talk to and what we talk about. So I thank you for the coffee, but I’m afraid this conversation is over.”

I reached across the table and saw the same ice coldness come over her that I had seen when Buzzy grabbed her in the British Beer Company. “Don’t,” she commanded. “I’m going to leave now and, I swear, if you so much as get out of your seat I’m going to press a button and a guy is going to come flying through that front door and it is not going to be pretty. Understand?”

I told her I did.

She stood up, did not put on the windbreaker, just tucked it under her arm. She started forward, hesitated in mid-step, said, “Thank you,” again and walked out of the café.

My date with Cory Gregory was at an end.

8

.

CORY GREGORY WAS NOT THE FIRST WOMAN TO DITCH ME ON Cape Cod. Marion had left me with a three-bedroom house, a two-vehicle carport, and a third-of-an-acre yard.

The first time she came down the Cape I took her to the dunes at the National Seashore. I had gotten a fire permit, and we went to Marconi Beach and walked far away from the guarded area to a spot where we could lay out a blanket and have nobody within a hundred yards of us. As it grew dark, we dug a pit and filled it with driftwood. Then we spent hours huddled next to the flames while she told me all of her frustrations and I told her none of mine. Later, when ours was the only light on the beach and there was nothing else around us but millions of stars in the sky and the sound of waves crashing on the shore, we made love in the sand and she proclaimed it the most perfect moment of her life.

By the time she went back to Boston on the Sunday of that weekend she had determined to leave her big-city job with its preposterously large paychecks and seventy-hour workweeks and move in with me. She would apply to all the firms on the Cape; somebody would want her. Or she would get a job with a government office, like I did. Or she would just chuck the law altogether and open a tea shop. Wouldn’t that be great, never having to worry about billable hours again?

I did nothing to encourage or discourage her. I liked Marion. She was smart and funny and fun, and I had been lonely, especially during the winter months.

So I let her make her plans and tell all her friends, and I didn’t complain when she never gave her notice at work. I didn’t complain when we bought our house and she only came down on weekends. I didn’t even complain when she started skipping weekends.

9

.

MUGGSY’S WAS NOT NEAR THE WATER AND WAS NOT ON ANY of the main roads that visitors used. It was in Marstons Mills, and you had to know where it was to find it. Either that or you had to stop for gas at the two pumps outside and notice that the shingled structure behind the pumps had a neon sign that said Eats in tubular cursive. Then, if you were so inclined, you were in for the best five-dollar breakfast you could find on the Cape.

The owner was the cook, and he didn’t seem to care if people ate or not. He had tattoos on his forearms, perpetually smudged glasses, an unkempt mustache that no doubt discouraged fastidious diners, and he ran the place more like a social club than a restaurant. He would come out from behind the counter and sit with the guys who came in regularly to drink coffee, eat coffee cake, joke about people who were not like them, and mock those who were like them over their golf games, fishing mishaps, and spending habits.

That same Saturday morning that I met with Cory Gregory, the guys with whom Muggsy was sitting consisted of not two but three Macs, and one police chief wearing civilian clothes. There was no waiting list for tables, as there had been at Break A’Day. In fact, there was nobody in the place but the cook and the four men, all gathered around one table.

I could hear them talking when I was in the parking lot, which was hard dirt and still contained potholes from the recent spring thaw. I could hear them laughing. I could hear three or four guys trying to get their smack across by shouting over the others. When I walked in, they all shut up.

“Morning,” I said, and got a couple of silent nods, none of which was from the chief. I stopped just inside the door and smiled at them. It seemed the best thing to do. The Mac I did not expect to see was an old guy named McCoppin, very tall, with a full head of snowy white hair that stood out because of his bright red V-neck sweater. I knew who he was because he had once been on the Board of Assessors. He did not know me and looked away so he would not have to talk to me. The other two Macs probably said my name, or something close to it, in a manner that indicated they had no reason to talk to a guy like me and I had no reason to be there in their little clubhouse. The chief folded his arms.

“You want something?” Muggsy said. Because he was the owner, he could have been asking if I wanted coffee, orange juice, scrambled eggs with a side of ham. But it didn’t sound like that.

“I wanted to speak to the chief for a moment, if I could.” I pointed softly at Cello DiMasi, in case someone did not know who the chief was.

“It’s my day off, George. Can’t it wait till Monday?”

“Sure. But it’s only a quick question and I drove all the way over here to ask it.” I was still smiling.

McBeth pulled a rolled-up copy of The Herald out of his pocket and spread it out on the table. Everybody but the chief looked at it as if it was really important to see who won the lottery, which Boston city councilor was accused of which impropriety, and whether the Red Sox’s new shortstop was too sensitive to perform in Fenway Park.

“All right,” said the chief, “I’ll give you three minutes,” and then he led me outside, away from his friends, who had started debating whether the city councilor really had taken a bribe or was conducting his own investigation when he was videotaped stuffing cash into a computer bag.

He walked all the way to his city-issued SUV and leaned his back against the engine compartment. He folded his arms.

He said, “Yeah?”

I said, “Tell me if this list of names means anything to you: Ned Gregory, Jamie Gregory, Cory Gregory, Peter Gregory Martin, Jason Stockover, Paul McFetridge.”

“Sounds like the list Old Man Telford was peddling.”

“What did you do with it?”

“Gave it to Detective Landry.”

“What did he do with it?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

I nodded. The list had not been in the files, at least not that I had seen. I said, “Is he working today, by any chance?”

“Not today. Not any day.”

“How come?”

“Took early retirement. Moved to Hawaii.”

“Where?”

The chief silently considered whether “Hawaii” was enough. It was very clear I annoyed him. Like Mitch White, however, he was unsure of my connections. He settled his internal debate with a shrug of his shoulders. “Not one of the famous islands. The other one.”

“Kauai?”

“That’s it.”

“When did that happen?”

“About six or seven years ago.”

“So the list wasn’t something Bill Telford just came up with recently.”

“Wasn’t recently, wasn’t right away, neither. It was just something Anything New came up with somewhere along the line. He was always trying to come up with something.”

“Did Detective Landry follow up on it?”

“I believe he did. Couple of people he couldn’t find. The ones he did talk to, they said there wasn’t any party at the Gregory house that night, and none of them had seen anyone matching Heidi Telford’s description.”

“And you believed them?”

“Me?” The chief laughed. “I didn’t have nothing to do with it. It was Detective Landry’s investigation, and if he didn’t feel there was anything to Bill’s latest theory, well, that was his call.” He pushed himself away from his vehicle. “Now, you done with me? Can I go back inside, talk to somebody I want to talk to?”

“One more thing. After Landry left, who took over the investigation?”

“Technically, that would be Detective Iacupucci. But, seriously, kid”—he paused in his departure long enough to poke me in the chest—“what’s to investigate?”

10

.

CHUCK, CHUCK LARSON, WAS ON THE PHONE. “YOU SHOULDNA scared Cory like that, Georgie.” He sounded sadder than I had ever heard him.

“I didn’t scare her, or at least I didn’t mean to. I was just asking questions.”

“Yeah, but about what?”

“I was trying to locate McFetridge. You remember him.”

“You wanted to know where someone was, you shoulda come to me, Georgie. I can pretty much always help you with that. What did you want to find Paulie for?”

“He was my roommate, for heaven’s sake. At one time he was my best friend. I just wanted to find him, talk to him, see what he’s up to.”

“Yeah, but you were asking Cory questions about stuff that happened a long time ago.”

“Because it turns out that was the last time she saw him.”

In court I have learned that it is best not to stick to a script. You ask a question, get an answer, pick that answer apart. It was different when you were the one being questioned. I didn’t want be picked apart, to say things that were going to spawn whole new areas of inquiry.

“She says she had the feeling you weren’t just asking about Paulie. See, what you gotta understand, Georgie—and I know you do, which is what kinda surprised me about what you were asking—is there’s a lot of people out there who want to cause harm to the Gregorys. Sometimes it’s for political reasons, sometimes it’s just nutcases. People who want to make themselves famous at the Gregorys’ expense. So, yeah, somebody all of a sudden starts asking about where family members were and what they were doing at certain times, the kids know that’s when they have to pull the curtains, lock the doors, call for help. She had help there, Georgie. Did you know that?”

“The black guy.”

“Yeah. Recognize him? Pierre Mumford. Used to be my teammate on the ’Skins.”

“He wasn’t exactly discreet in making his appearance.”

“Nope. Wasn’t supposed to be. Since the Gregorys have all kinds of issues, all kinds of things to be concerned about, if you will, they use different assistants for different reasons. Sometimes they want to make a show of being protected, they use someone like Pierre. Sometimes they’re more subtle and you don’t even know someone’s watching out for them. Could be a little old lady walking her dog or something. You understand what I’m saying, Georgie?”

“I do, Chuck.”

“So you can also understand that somebody like Cory doesn’t necessarily know where everybody fits in. So when she finds she’s being questioned by an assistant district attorney, it kind of freaks her out. And when she goes home and learns that a few years ago some detective was asking her brother and cousins questions about this same weekend you were asking about, well, that’s when she calls me. You got something you wanna know about that weekend, Georgie, something that involves the family, you’re better off asking me.”

“I just want to know where Paul McFetridge is.”

“Yeah, but why now? Why after all these years, you suddenly want to find him?”

It crossed my mind to tell him that it had recently occurred to me that I had no friends, that McFetridge was the last close friend I had had, that I just wanted to reach out and talk to someone about the way things used to be. I got rid of those thoughts in a hurry.

“McFetridge,” I said, “came up in a discussion I had with a guy named Bill Telford, whose daughter was killed that weekend.”

“We know about Anything New, Georgie. His name speaks for itself.”

“Yeah, but he keeps contacting me.” And here I diverged from the straight and narrow. “I think he’s got somebody talking to him.”

“The girl in the store.”

“Somebody else.”

“So that makes you want to talk to Paulie?”

“Let me put it this way, Chuck. It reminded me that I knew him. Made me think that if I made enough calls to enough people, I’d find him.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“Because I want to talk to him.”

“About what?”

“About what he remembers happening that weekend.”

“And you think that’s important?”

“I think somebody does.”

Chuck heaved a sigh. A big sigh. A two-hundred-ninety-pound sigh. “Okay, Georgie, I’ll see if I can help you out there. Only thing is, you gotta stop bothering the family, all right? It’s best for everyone that way.”

11

.

“MY FATHER IS HAVING A COOKOUT THIS SUNDAY,” BARBARA Belbonnet said. “Want to come?” She had never invited me to anything before. I looked across the room and wondered why she was doing so now. Once again, I was struck by the fact that this woman could be quite good looking when she was not stressed.

It was just that most of the time we had shared an office her face was turned away, bent between her shoulders while she talked into her phone, or focused on her computer screen while she tried to do in four hours work that she was being paid to do in eight. If someone had asked what she looked like, I might have said tall and athletic, light brown hair worn bunched on her head. If pressed for details, I would have said brown eyes, oval face, high cheekbones. Good shape, I guess. Hard to tell by the clothes she wore.

But now, as I studied her, I realized her hair was more blond than brown, her eyes were actually hazel, and her skin was virtually flawless. How, I asked myself, had I missed all that? Two people sitting in a room for weeks, each immersed in his or her own problems, barely looking at each other. Except now we were.

“Where?” I asked. Was that a good response to a personal invitation? I was still wondering why she was asking me, her office-mate, with whom she never so much as went to lunch.

“Oyster Harbors.”

Yes. Of course. An island community, where you have to go over a drawbridge and be cleared for entry by a man in a booth. Eight years on the Cape and I’d never been there.

“It’s the family home,” she said, as though embarrassed.

“Sure,” I said.

I BROUGHT WINE. Nickel & Nickel cabernet. The guy in the wine store on Route 28 acted as though he was selling the Romanov jewels. I told him I wanted a good wine and he pulled it out from behind the counter, cradled it like a baby, looked both ways, and said it would cost me $80 but be well worth it. I figured Barbara’s parents were likely to know their wine and made the purchase. Who’s this young man, Barbs? Oh, and such exquisite taste. He must be one of us!

I made it across the drawbridge well enough, but then had to wait several minutes while the guard searched for my name on a list.

“Ah, here it is,” he said at last. “Straight ahead. Bear left, then second left on Indian Trail. Go to the end of the road. You’ll see the cars.”

Indeed, I did. Mercedes Benzes, BMWs, Jaguars, Cadillacs, convertibles of all makes, including a Bentley. Luxury vehicles filled the crushed-shell driveway and lined the road in front of a twenty-first-century version of a sea captain’s home. The real thing, only better. With a widow’s walk on the roof.

I heard the sound of a steel band and multiple voices from the backyard as I walked onto the property, and so I steered directly there without going through the house. Men and women were clustered in little groups, maybe clustered closer than usual because it was not that warm, even though the sun was shining. Men wore polo shirts under sport coats or golf sweaters; women wore slacks and light jackets. All looked as though they were gritting their way through the brisk weather because it was worth it to have drinks and be in such august company.

A few people looked up as I entered the backyard, but no one acknowledged me. No one even stopped talking. I glanced around, thinking there had to be someone I knew, someplace where I could at least point myself to deliver my wine. An outdoor bar was located at the far end of the patio, manned by a bartender in a waistcoat and bow tie. I did not think he would fully appreciate my gift, so I stood there holding it by the neck, figuring sooner or later at least Barbara was bound to see me.

A tall man with a full head of perfectly brushed gray hair was leading the discussion in one of the groups. He watched me as he spoke, kept his eyes on me to the point I had to nod at him. Nod and smile and raise my shoulders in admission that I did not know what to do, where to go. I saw him say, “Excuse me,” to those he was with and make his way over to rescue me. Or confront me.

It could have been either.

His manner was a little brusque.

“Hello,” he said in a way that was impossible to interpret as welcoming, “I’m Hugh Etheridge.”

“George Becket,” I told him. “I work with Barbara.”

Only then did he extend his hand. I think he was glad to see that I was bringing wine and not pilfering it. I offered the bottle and he held it out from his chest and read the label closely. “California, is it? Oh, yes, Napa. Fine, fine. I’ll have it opened.” His admiration was at an end and he lowered the bottle and scanned the crowd, looking for someone to carry out the assignment or, perhaps, for someone to whom I could talk.

“Are you alone?” he asked, and I told him I was.

I could see a slight change as it occurred to him that his married daughter had invited a man of about her age to a party where he knew no one else.

I quickly explained that Barbara and I shared an office. “We kid that we’re cellmates. Down in the dungeon.”

Mr. Etheridge stopped scanning and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “The what?”

“That’s what we call it.” I was beginning to sweat. Sixty-five degrees and I was overheated. “Because we’re on the bottom floor.”

I wished what I had said had been funnier. My host did not smile. He just went back to scanning. I had an impulse to tell him that I had been married. That I was a lawyer. That I had gone to prep school. That I knew the difference between that and which.

“Ah, there she is, playing croquet. Come.”

He strode off in the direction of the water, which I could see in the distance. There was a patio, where we were standing; then a border of outdoor grills, where men in aprons were busy flipping sizzling hunks of meat; and then a broad green lawn rimmed by great bushes of light blue hydrangeas. On the lawn holding mallets were several people of various sizes, but my attention was distracted.

As we walked across the patio I could see that the largest cluster of people was around a tall, thin woman with white-blond hair and a fixed smile painted in red lipstick on her face. I knew that woman. I had seen her face before. I slowed my step, not enough to let Mr. Etheridge get away from me but so I could get a closer look and see that she was hanging on to the arm of a shorter man with a distinctively floppy hairstyle, a white shirt, a blue blazer, a pair of khaki pants. The woman, I realized, was an actress. The kind of actress whom everyone knew but whose movies were not likely to come readily to anyone’s mind. And the man she was with was none other than Jamie Gregory.

He looked up, looked through the crowd of admirers right at me. Or right through me.

Didn’t he?

Wasn’t he grinning at me? Not the same God-awful grin I had seen in Palm Beach, but it was a grin just the same, and it chilled me.

“George.”

Somebody was annoyed. Mr. Etheridge, still with my bottle of wine, his hands inverted on his hips. I apparently had stopped, since I was not moving. And I most definitely was staring.

“Yes, yes, that’s Darra Lane. She’s with Jamie Gregory and I’m sure you’ll get to meet them later. Come along now because I want to get you to Barbara.”

Five minutes into the party and I had already incurred the ire of the host. Perhaps he was not going to like it so much when I confronted Jamie, when I knocked him down, tore off his runt punk bastard lips and fed them to the seagulls while I danced around his prostrate body, delivering kicks to his ribs and an occasional stomp to his head. Yeah, I would do that. But in the meantime I had to hurry after Mr. Etheridge.

BARBARA WAS WEARING a white jacket over a black-and-white striped jersey top that appeared to cover only one shoulder. Her slacks, too, were white, and they hugged her long legs, something I had never seen any of her other clothes do. I had thought that white was not supposed to be worn until after Memorial Day, but this was her house, her family’s party, and she could clearly wear whatever she wanted.

With her mallet gripped mid-shaft, she held out her arms to greet me, calling my name.

In all likelihood, I had never done more than shake her hand, and now here I was, hugging her in front of her father. Hugging Barbara Belbonnet, who had let her hair down and whose skin was as smooth and cool as silk. I did my best to hug deferentially, positioning myself slightly to one side so as not to make too much contact. She kissed me loudly, exuberantly, on the cheek. When, I wondered, had she become so radiant?

“Pop-pop, this is my very best friend in the office, George Becket!”

Pop-pop? Intimidating old, steel-haired Hugh Etheridge?

“Yes, we’ve met,” he told her, with just the slightest flutter of irritation. “You might have noticed I brought him over. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to return to the other guests.” And with that, he turned his back on us.

“Oh, don’t mind him,” Barbara said as we watched him walk away. “Do you play croquet? You can take my place. Here.”

She thrust the mallet into my hand. Three other people stared at us. A Gatsbyish man and woman, obviously a couple, were introduced as Grace and Parker. Maybe they weren’t Gatsbyish. Maybe I was just thinking that way. Except the man was wearing a white hat with a brim and a thick black band around it and the woman was wearing a sailor-type dress that went to her ankles. The third person was a boy of about eleven, introduced as Malcolm. Grace and Parker said hello. Malcolm did not. He squealed something about “Gwa!” and ran awkwardly to swipe at a ball.

“Malcolm’s different,” Barbara whispered unnecessarily.

FIVE MINUTES INTO THE PARTY, I had annoyed the host. Ten minutes after that, I had ruined the croquet game. Without Barbara, Grace’s play became desultory. Parker made a cutting comment and then suddenly announced he was going to get a drink. That made Grace stop playing altogether and start whispering to Barbara. Only Malcolm wanted to keep going and it fell to me to keep going with him. Then the patrician tones of Hugh Etheridge wafted over the lawn, calling to Barbara, telling her one of the guests was leaving and she had to say goodbye and all of a sudden both she and Grace were gone and I was left alone on the back forty to play croquet with a boy with Down syndrome.

Over the next twenty minutes I made several efforts to extricate myself, but Malcolm would have none of it. I had no idea to whom he belonged, but he wanted to play and nobody, not Barbara or anyone else, came to rescue me. It was only by convincing Malcolm that he won and enticing him into the ritual of exchanging high fives that I was able to lay down my mallet and scurry away.

I arrived back at the patio looking more or less like an escaped prisoner with the sheriff after me. I tried to blend in, but I knew no one. I could not see Barbara, Hugh turned his back on me, and as best I could tell the guest who had departed was Jamie, taking with him, of course, the movie star. People were forming a buffet line to pick up their meats and salads and spring vegetables and hot rolls. I contemplated getting in line with them, but then I would be a sitting duck for Malcolm, who was pushing his way through the crowd, mallet still in hand.

I would get my food and then what? Sit with Malcolm? Sit by myself?

Georgie Becket, all alone. Georgie Becket hit the road.