Crime Of Privilege: A Novel Part 16

"Jason Stockover. He was another guy who was there that night."

"What night?"

Oh, very good, Mitch. "The night somebody buried a golf club in Heidi Telford's head."

The district attorney sucked in his lower lip. "And where is he?"

"I was hoping somebody could tell me. Then I'd ask your permission to go talk to him."

"But right now you don't need my permission because n.o.body knows where this Jason Stockover is." Mitch was not stupid, just simple.

"Well, let's put it this way-I don't know where he is."

Mitch had the exit he needed. He repositioned himself so he was facing me directly. He squared his bony shoulders, set his eyes on mine, and said, "Therefore, you will have no problem getting back to what you are supposed to be doing, which is prosecuting OUIs, right?"

I knew the answer he wanted. It seemed best to give it.

BARBARA BELBONNET ALSO WANTED to know what was wrong. Her concern was different from Mitch's. Still, I told her nothing and set about arranging my files.

She came over and leaned her b.u.t.t against my desk. She was wearing a sand-colored top that at first I thought was a T-s.h.i.+rt, but it was tightly woven material made to look more casual than it actually was. Once again she was wearing form-fitting slacks, black this time. She must have gone on a shopping spree.

"Want to tell me about it?" she said.

I looked down at her feet. She had shoes that matched the color of her top. "Tell you about what?" I wondered if women bought shoes to match their tops. Twenty tops, twenty shoes.

"Whatever it is that has you so worked up," she said.

"I'm not worked up."

"Oh." She didn't leave my desk. She raised her hand and brushed her almost-blond hair back from her face. For an instant the top that was not a T-s.h.i.+rt opened wide under her arm and I could see an expanse of smooth, fair skin. The hand came down. The skin disappeared.

I looked at my files again. I had a trial in the morning. A doctor had blown a .14 and thought he could beat it. I was supposed to wipe the floor with him. The doctor apparently didn't have friends in the right places.

Barbara pushed off the desk. "I think I liked you better the way you used to be," she said.

Which was funny not only because I didn't think I had changed, but because I never knew she liked me before.

BOSTON, July 2008.

I KNOCKED ON MARION'S DOOR.

A male voice asked, "Who is it?"

There was something familiar about that voice, but I did not immediately place it. I was thinking about Buzzy, and I knew it wasn't him.

"My name is George Becket," I said, "and I'm looking for Marion."

There was a very long pause on the other side of the door. I was about to knock again, ready to explain my relations.h.i.+p with whomever was guarding her privacy when the door was pulled open and I looked into the taut face and cold eyes of Roland Andrews.

"Marion doesn't live here anymore," he said.

"But you do."

"You've been a busy boy." Roland Andrews came close to smiling. "Somebody has to look out for you."

I may have sworn at him then. I can't think of any other reason why Roland's eyes suddenly lit up, why he grabbed my wrist, jerked me into the apartment, flung me against the wall, and kicked the door shut in one continuous, fluid movement. I was bigger than Roland, taller, heavier, but there I was, my feet dangling above the parquet floor, his forearm across my neck. "What did you say?" he demanded.

I did not tell him. I didn't say anything else, either. At that moment I thought there might be a certain poetic justice in him hanging me on my ex-wife's wall. There was, from what I could see, nothing else on the walls-no pictures, no art. Just me.

Roland applied one last bit of pressure to my throat and then let me slide down the wall to my feet as he backed away. He had hurt me, but I was not going to let him see that. I did not touch my throat or my wrist. I stood still and waited for my functions to return.

"Figured you'd be here sooner or later," he said, as if now that he had a.s.serted physical mastery we could move on to convivialities. He was wearing a gray T-s.h.i.+rt with a faded insignia over his heart that said Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. The T-s.h.i.+rt fit tightly, particularly over his arms, and it was tucked into jeans that seemed equally tight. Tight, tight, tight-the man radiated tightness. I wondered what would happen if my fist shot out and hit him in the nose. Probably my hand would shatter.

"Why?" I said, when I had enough air in my lungs to get the word out cleanly.

"Well, after you learned about Marion and Buzzy, I a.s.sumed you'd want to talk to her."

I looked around the living room. It was clear Marion was not living here anymore. There were no books in the bookshelves. Wherever Marion went, there were books. "You tell him to tell me?"

"No, sir. Never met the gentleman."

"But you have met the Macs, I'm guessing."

"And who might the Macs be?"

"Mike McBeth, Jerry McQuaid, Declan McCoppin, maybe."

"Ah, those Macs." He grinned in what was meant to pa.s.s for irony. Grinning did not become Roland Andrews. It made you want to cover his mouth with your hand. "Fine fellows, one and all. Would like to change the legal establishment down in your neck of the woods, from what I understand."

"And why are you involved? What's in it for you?"

"Why, I've got a job to do, Georgie. I told you that back in Philly when we first met. And here I am, lo these many years later. Still doing it."

"s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up my life, you mean."

"Hey, you screwed up your own life, son. Threw in your lot with the Gregorys." His eyes, small to begin with, narrowed into mere slits.

I had not moved from my position in front of the wall. I would have moved, but I wasn't sure where to go. The living room was not that big. It had black-leather-and-chrome furniture and all of it matched. Quite different from what she had bought for our house.

"What's your relations.h.i.+p with her?"

I didn't have to use her name. He knew whom I meant. That was why he smirked. Given how thin his lips were, it came more naturally to him than a grin. "You might say employer to employee."

My knees wobbled. I wanted very much to sit down. No, I wanted to run. Run right at Roland Andrews. Run through him and then through that window that ran the length and breadth of the wall behind him, get myself up in the air six floors above Storrow Drive, pumping my legs and swirling my arms just as I had when I'd leaped off the cliff in Idaho. Run, leap, fall.

"You shouldn't be surprised," he said. "I told you that things were going to happen that never would have if you hadn't done what you did." Somehow Roland had gotten his hand on my arm. He was not gripping it like he was going to break it this time. He was guiding me into a seat, into one of the black-leather-and-chrome chairs.

"You want some water, Georgie?"

I didn't answer and he didn't get it. I think he was afraid of what might occur if he left the room.

When Marion lived here she had African masks, Tibetan prayer rugs, a photograph of a hillside village in Italy that she said was her ancestral home. She had ... stuff. Now there was nothing personal at all. It could have been a hotel room.

"Where is she?"

"Gone back to Was.h.i.+ngton. She wanted to do it long before she did. We convinced her to stay on for a while, that was all."

Looking out the window I could see the Charles River and Cambridge on the other side. I could see sailboats on the water and cars on Memorial Drive. People enjoying themselves, driving home, going on errands, living normal lives. Not me. I couldn't even marry normally. "So this whole thing was just work to her?"

"I didn't say that, Georgie. I think there was a time she really liked you."

Until when? The Berks.h.i.+res? Until she didn't move down the Cape? Until she met Buzzy? Out loud, I said, "Until she met you?"

"Well, you gotta figure, Georgie, here you were, right in the Gregorys' home base, right in their nest, so to speak. But you don't join any clubs, don't go out partying; you don't even date. The only thing you ever did was ride your d.a.m.n bike. Hard to make contact with someone on the road cruising by himself. So we made contact with her, instead."

I was fumbling with the math. Twelve years since I had witnessed Kendrick Powell being violated. Eleven and a half since I had last seen this evil little creature in front of me. Eight since I had joined the D.A.'s office.

Andrews read my mind. "Mr. Powell is a patient man, Georgie. He's had to be. He tried to act quickly once, and that's when you let him down."

Five years since she reappeared in my life.

"So you sent her down the Cape to hook up with me, huh?"

"No. We just saw her with you, recognized her from that little stunt she pulled with the police in Old Town, Alexandria, and thought, well, she might be game."

Spring of my first year of law school. Nineteen ninety-seven. Eleven years ago. They recognized Marion from then. My breath was coming in short spurts. I looked at Andrews. I looked past him to the window. I wanted to run again.

Roland had been standing the entire time. Now he took a seat on the black-leather-and-chrome couch at right angles to my black-leather-and-chrome chair. It was a good place for him to sit. He could block me if I moved. Tackle me if I bolted.

"She did have a job up here," I asked, my voice tight. "Didn't she? With a law firm?" I didn't want to sound as though I was pleading, but I knew I was.

"Oh, yes. Got the job, contacted you, came down to see you all on her own. At first, we were just watching, hoping she'd loosen you up a bit. Talk you into going to some of those Gregory soirees."

Of course. The ones to which I had never been invited.

"But you proved to be a tough nut to crack, Georgie. As far as I can tell, you've never even been in the Gregory compound. With or without Marion."

"What good would it have done you if I had?"

"Who knows? But there would be something. With the Gregorys, there always is."

"So it all proved to be a big waste of time, didn't it?" I was trying to be smug. "All that watching, all that scheming."

"Not really. We're here now, aren't we?" Andrews smiled. It was an ugly thing. A fissure in a glacier.

"We're here because you paid my wife to spy on me."

"No, George. We're here because the Gregorys murdered Heidi Telford."

My head was suddenly too light to stay upright. It wanted to fall forward onto my chest. It wanted to drift away. It wanted to spin in different directions. Somehow I kept my eyes on Roland Andrews. I wanted to search his face, look for clues as to how one thing had led to another, but for several moments I could not quite get it in focus.

"I'm not going to help you," I said at last. It was a statement of desperation, a claim more of spite than of purpose.

"Oh, but you already are. I mean, you just led us to Patty Margolis, didn't you?"

Sometimes you get hit with so many things you become inured. You start looking for them, expecting them, almost not caring when they rip into you. "You followed me?"

"I'd say it's a safe bet someone's always following you, Georgie. Pull up at a red light, look at the guy in the car next to you. Think, Does he know Roland? Is he one of Roland's guys?"

Was it possible? Twelve years of watching me go to school, go to work, go home at night and watch television?

"How about the people on that airplane that flew you into Indian Creek? They legit rafters or they working for Mr. Powell? Tell me, Georgie, you see anybody on that raft trip that maybe shouldn't have been there? Any couple that struck you as maybe not being a couple or who didn't do the things everybody else did?"

"You had me followed to Idaho?"

Roland Andrews laughed. At least that is what I think he was doing. It came out in a gruff barking sound, like he was spitting up a hairball. "Maybe I was there myself. You check out that little landing strip at Loon Creek?"

"You shoot at me, Roland?" It was the first time I had ever used his Christian name. It was meant to reduce him to my level. To show that he was every bit as venal as I was.

"Do you really think I'd miss if I shot at you?"

No, I didn't think that. But maybe his henchmen would. The couple that had been blown off the raft, the ones who had declined to go to the hot springs.

Except why would they want to shoot me? Josh David Powell wanted me to do something for him, and that wasn't going to be accomplished if I lay dead on a trail in the Idaho wilderness. "You would," I said, "if you wanted me to think it was McFetridge."

"Yeah? And why would I want you to think that?"

Why, indeed. It was something more complicated. More complicated and yet more obvious. The Powell faction was watching me; they knew where I was going, what I was doing. Perhaps they knew it was Chuck Larson who had sent me to Idaho, directed me at least.

I threw it out there. "The Gregorys send me into the wilderness, you make it look like they're trying to kill me because I'm getting too close to the truth about Heidi Telford. Is that it? Do I have it right, Roland?"

He said nothing. He didn't move.

"Then what? Then I'm supposed to hate them, give you whatever you want?"

Roland Andrews appeared more than willing to let me work this out.

"I mean, that's what it's all about, isn't it? Everything you're doing? Using me to get to the Gregorys? You pay Marion, that doesn't get you anywhere, so you start digging around, discover old Mr. Telford and his idea about the Gregorys killing his daughter. You put him onto me, then you follow me around, see what I come up with, hope it's enough for you to give to some muttonhead like Buzzy to use in a campaign against Mitch White. 'Senator's Protegee Covers Up Murder Investigation,' is that it? And of course you don't care about Mr. Telford or even about defeating Mitch, no matter what you may have said to the Macs. All you care about is hurting the Gregorys."

I was getting somewhere. That much was clear from Andrews's continued silence, from his failure to scoff at me-to put out his hand and make me stop.

"Couldn't you just get somebody to write a book? Murder on Old Cape Cod, how about that? Get some police detective or one of those guys who likes to do exposes on the rich and famous. Let him write up Telford's theory, speculate on who did what and why."