Crime Of Privilege: A Novel Part 38

When he still did not respond, I got out my cell phone. "You get invited to the wedding?" I asked.

He snorted. "We weren't that kind of friends."

He could have been saying any number of things. I didn't bother to work them out. I hit a b.u.t.ton and put the phone to my ear.

"What are you doing?"

"Seeing if I need to stop that pickup truck, Chris."

"He's a good guy, just trying to support his family."

"Helpless guy, too, I imagine. Not like Lexi. She'll have all kinds of support. I talk with her, she'll probably have a lawyer sitting right there with her. Not that she did anything wrong or that she's going to be in trouble, but just to protect her against the things that all the rest of us have to deal with."

"Like you."

"Like me. That's right, Chris."

He shook his head. The drops I had seen at his hairline flew off. "I can't do anything to hurt the Gregorys."

"And I'm not asking you to do anything other than give me a name and address."

Chris Warburton cranked his neck back and looked up at the sky, which probably did not look as bright as it had when he came out of the kitchen.

"h.e.l.lo, Sergeant?" I said into the phone. "It's a.s.sistant D.A. Becket-"

"I might know where there's a Christmas card you could look at," the chef said, putting his hand out. And when I didn't lower the phone, he added, "Might still have the envelope."

"I'll get back to you," I said to the phone.

NEW YORK CITY, September 2008.

I CARRIED MY SUIT JACKET IN A GARMENT BAG. CARRIED IT ONTO the airplane. Carried it in the taxi on my way into Manhattan from LaGuardia. It was a light gray Zegna suit, purchased at a post-Christmas sale at Saks, tailored by a taciturn, chain-smoking Russian in the South End of Boston. My tie was a $150 red silk item from Louis Boston, a Christmas gift from Marion. At the time she bought it, I thought it was special because it was something I never would have bought for myself. This was the first I had worn it since she left.

I primped by marking my reflection in the pa.s.senger window of a Lincoln Town Car parked on the corner of 87th and Park Avenue. Then I walked a block north to an apartment building and presented myself to the doorman. Doormen. An army of them.

"I'm here to see Lexi Trotter," I announced.

"Yoor name, sir," said the doorman sitting at the desk in pretty much the middle of the lobby. Behind him stood two others, both in doorman's uniforms with hats and epaulets. The guy seated didn't have the bandleader jacket, just a white s.h.i.+rt and tie.

"George Becket." I handed him my business card.

The man looked at it, fingered its edges, turned it over, looked at the front again.

Beyond him, behind his two buddies, there was a large atrium with a garden on the ground floor. The apartments rose up in two high-rise buildings on either side of the atrium. I resisted the urge to show the doormen what a regular, friendly guy I was by commenting on the attractiveness of the plants and the water features among them.

"I don't got you in the computah," said the man at the desk. "Was she expecting you?"

"No. I was just hoping she'd see me."

He looked at the card again. "Is this a legal mattah?"

"Personal."

The uniformed boys s.h.i.+fted their feet. One of them looked at a fourth doorman, who was sitting in an anteroom off the lobby watching a bank of television screens, perhaps getting ready to rush out and spray me with Mace.

"Do you have Ms. Trotta's phone numbah, sir?"

"Don't you?"

The seated man stuck out his hand. In it was my card. "I'm sorry, sir," he said with just a trace of menace in his voice, "you don't got an appointment, you can't see none of the guests. You wanna see Ms. Trotta, you got to call her beforehand, get her to call down to us or leave your name wit us."

I wanted to point out the quality of my suit, my tie, even my Bally shoes, but it was not going to get me anywhere. I thanked the man at the desk and said I would be back.

He didn't seem to care. Neither did the guys in the bandleaders' garb.

I HAD A PHOTOGRAPH. It was on the Christmas card. It was the Christmas card. A family shot of a mom and dad and what appeared to be twin girls, all of them lying on their stomachs facing the camera, all of them laughing, all of them quite handsome. From what the black-and-white picture showed, Lexi had dark hair, a dark brow, and a slightly rounded face. Only her face, shoulders, and one arm were shown in the picture, and it was not possible to tell how tall she was, but she appeared to be well proportioned. It would, I realized, be best if she came out of the building lying down, the way she was in the picture. Barring that, I would have to watch for a dark-haired, dark-browed, well-built woman in her mid-twenties.

Fair enough, except I had no place to stand at 88th and Park with my Christmas card picture in my hand. The apartment building was on the southwest corner of the intersection, and I particularly did not want to loiter there because one of the doormen had come to the entrance to hold his hands in front of his crotch while he stared at me. I went through a quarter of an hour pretending to make cell phone calls while I waited for something to happen. Nothing did.

I crossed 88th and looked back. I crossed Park and looked back. I had no place to sit on that side of the street, either. There was not even a shop I could go in. I went south across 88th and west across Park, and this time I had a little bit of luck because the doorman was no longer at the entrance. I did the circuit again. My feet were beginning to hurt. There are many things about detective work that should not be taken for granted.

AT 3:00 in the afternoon she emerged from the building. At least I had reason to believe it was her. A dark-haired woman wearing a dark blue sweat suit, white trainers, and a Yankees hat, pus.h.i.+ng a double baby stroller. She came out the door, turned left, went to the corner of 88th and turned left again in the direction of Central Park. I caught up with her when she stopped at the traffic light at Madison.

"h.e.l.lo, Lexi."

I got no h.e.l.lo in return. She stared at me, tightened her grip on the handle of her carriage, and looked impatiently at the light.

"My name's George Becket. I'm from the Cape and Islands district attorney's office in Ma.s.sachusetts. Can I talk to you for a minute?"

The light turned and she flat-out ran across the intersection. On the other side of Madison she pushed the stroller up onto the sidewalk, looked over her shoulder at me walking after her, and kept on running.

I stayed back a block and watched her run all the way to the sidewalk on the far side of Fifth Avenue, turn north, and keep going. I crossed 88th, mingled with the crowd in front of the Guggenheim Museum and kept my eye on her as she ran to 90th, turned left, and entered Central Park. Then I ran, too: a guy in a suit sprinting along Fifth Avenue.

Enter Central Park at 90th and you come to a road, and on the other side of the road is the reservoir surrounded by a fence and a running path. I wondered if she could have gone there, thought it unlikely with her baby carriage, and looked to my right and left. There was another path, this one paved and just inside the park wall. Heading south, still running behind the carriage, was Lexi. Between us were at least a dozen people walking dogs. Purebreds, mostly. Airedales seemed to be extremely popular. I used the dog walkers as a cover, stayed back, wished I wasn't the only guy in the park in a suit and tie. People I pa.s.sed shot me quick looks as if I must be a strange fellow indeed. I took off my coat and carried it over my arm. She went around a corner and I lost sight of her.

THERE WAS A CHILDREN'S playground just south of the Metropolitan Museum. She wasn't there. No one was. I kept following the path until I got to a second playground below 75th Street. That was where I found her, sitting on a park bench in an area where young mothers and older nannies ruled. There were sandboxes and slides and fortresslike mazes with no sharp edges. Her kids, who looked to me to be about two years old, were still in their stroller, craning their necks to see what the older kids were doing while their mother pushed the stroller out and pulled it back, never letting it go more than a couple of feet. Mom was doing this while she talked to a woman dressed much like she and doing the exact same thing with her stroller from the other end of the bench.

I walked up and stood in front of them, halfway between them.

"Lexi," I said, "can I just show you my identification?"

She was already getting to her feet.

"Here," I said quickly, "I'll hand it to your friend here."

Lexi hesitated just enough for me to get my D.A.'s card and my driver's license into the other woman's hands. The woman looked startled, as though I had just handed her a melting ice-cream cone.

"Read them out loud," I urged.

The woman held up the license, stared at the photo, and said, "All right. It says you're George Becket. And this other one says you're an a.s.sistant district attorney." She glanced at Lexi, as though she might not be the person she had a.s.sumed her to be, sitting on a park bench with adorable little twins. Not if an a.s.sistant D.A. was trying to talk to her. "You want to see?"

"I don't care about his ID," Lexi said. But she didn't flee.

"Look," I told her. "I'm going to stay back here, behind this crack in the pavement. What is that, about seven or eight feet away? I won't move in front of it unless you give me permission, okay?"

The other woman did not want my cards in her hand. She was waving them at me. I saw that with my peripheral vision, saw her put them down on the bench next to her, saw her start to stand.

"Please," I said, holding out my hand toward her, "just for a second."

Lexi was looking back toward Fifth Avenue, no doubt making escape calculations.

"I just need to ask you a few questions."

"About what?" she said, her head still turned.

"The night of May twenty-fifth, 1999."

"Nineteen ninety-nine? I was only eight- Oh, G.o.d." Her eyes sought out mine. "I've got nothing to say."

With that, the woman next to her was gone, racing away with her stroller at arms' length in front of her.

"Lexi," I said gently, "I can subpoena you."

"And I," she snapped, "can make your life miserable. My father happens to be a very rich man, Mr. Becket. You have no idea what he can do to you."

"Oh, I think I have an excellent idea what a very rich man can do, Lexi. Especially when his children are involved. I hope this won't come to that."

"You should be afraid, you junior shoes.h.i.+ner."

It was not an insult I had heard before, but I got its meaning. I also understood she could say it because her anger was as great as her fear.

"I should be afraid. Ned Gregory should be afraid. But most of all, Peter Gregory Martin should be afraid. Don't you think?"

At the mention of the Gregory names, Lexi's chin shot up, as though questioning who I was even to mention them. The stroller began moving in and out twice as rapidly as before. "Seriously, do you have any idea who you're talking about?"

"I'm talking about what happened to Heidi Telford, and I'm almost there, Lexi. I am this close." I held my thumb and forefinger an inch apart. "I have been practically all over the world, and I know who was at the party that night. I know where Ned was and where his wife wasn't. I know about the fight between Peter and his cousin Jamie. I know what Peter did to her."

"Did to who?" she said, her voice dripping with scorn.

"To Heidi." I was bending forward at the waist, trying to keep my promise to stay behind the crack in the pavement, trying to speak so just she could hear. "Heidi Telford."

"You think Peter did something to her?"

"I know he did."

"Peter, the AIDS doctor? That's what you're saying?"

"It is, Lexi."

"Hah." She laughed a single sharp note, its meaning clear: You, George Becket, are an idiot.

"I know he saw her at the Bon Faire Market. I know they met up at the post-race party in Hyannis. I know he brought her back to the Gregory compound and things didn't work out the way he wanted, and I know he hit her over the head with a golf club."

"I am so out of here," she said, and this time she did get to her feet. She was already moving when I said, "She was just a young girl, not much older than you were that night. She was young and pretty, like you, and filled with promise, like you, and she was somebody's daughter, Lexi."

But not Lexi's daughter. She was getting into full stride and I had no choice but to follow. "Her parents were waiting for her, Lexi. Doesn't that mean anything to you? They were just a couple of miles away and she never made it back to them. They could have been there in ten minutes to pick her up if she needed a ride, and instead the next thing they heard was that their child had been tossed onto a golf course like a bag of trash."

She kept going, her hands white on the handlebar, her feet a blur.

I was moving as fast as she, trying to keep my feet close to the pavement so I did not appear to be running. "It's all coming out, Lexi. It's been buried for a very long time, but I have tracked down everyone who was there and I know what happened."

"You obviously don't." She spoke as we were going up an incline. She was in better condition than I was. She was not breathing half as hard.

"I do, Lexi. I've found Paul McFetridge, Jason Stockover, the two girls they brought to the compound that night-"

Lexi braked. She did it so suddenly her kids began to cry and I nearly banged into her from behind. "If you knew so G.o.dd.a.m.ned much, you wouldn't need me, would you?" she said.

"Look," I told her, holding my hands wide to show that the near contact had been a mistake, "I know what you're concerned about. The thing is, if you don't talk to me, it's all going to come out. If your husband and his family don't know already, they will. If your own family doesn't know, it will. And since it's the Gregorys, you can be sure they will not let Ned take the blame for having an affair with his babysitter. They will fight back, somehow, some way. And it will be in Star magazine, and Us and People, and it will be on the celebrity television shows, and men and women you never have seen before will be all over you wherever you go. Microphones in your face, taking pictures of your babies, disturbing your neighbors to the point where you might not even be able to stay in your building."

"Screw you," Lexi said. Her face was twisted. But she wasn't moving.

"The only way you can keep that from happening is to help me present a case behind the scenes that is so strong they won't fight us. We'll be able to arrange a plea bargain for Peter Martin. He no doubt deserves first-degree murder, but he'll probably get a deal for second- or even manslaughter. And the most important thing will be that there will be some justice for Heidi Telford and some closure for her family."

I tried to speak with concern, care, reasonableness, even anguish. But I needn't have wasted my energy.

"You obviously don't know s.h.i.+t, Mr. Becket, and I, for one, am not going to help you. Okay? Now leave me alone before I start to scream."

"Lexi," I pleaded, "Lexi, I do-"

She was about fifteen yards up the path when she turned her head and shouted, "If you think it was Peter, then you clearly don't. You schmuck."

I watched until she disappeared and then I went back to the playground. My driver's license and district attorney ID had disappeared as well.

I CALLED BARBARA'S CELL PHONE.