by Drew Franzen
The property had been purchased cheap, one of the few remaining on the river permitted to retain its residential dwelling designation. Owing to their presence on a flood plain, most others along this stretch of the Hudson above the dam had been expropriated or denied approval for residential tenancy. In order to build, and at considerable expense in both currency and time, Womack had erected the break-wall that appeared as a “crust” on the outside edge of his pie-shaped lot, and though the County reserved the right to rezone if necessary, it had been five years and they hadn’t done so yet.
Sidney surveyed the broad expanse of emerald turf, a stand of willow trees that in summer offered shade and in winter protection from the harsh wind across the river, the lilacs in varying stages of bloom, depending on which way they caught the afternoon sun, and the half hearted attempt at a vegetable garden undertaken by his wife. The Sheriff of Warren County decided the risk, and the price, to be worth it.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Ed Dojcsak casually, staring off into the distance as if hoping to see what Sidney saw. As if it was a touchstone, he fingered the St. Jude Medallion hanging from around his neck, hoping some day to prove it a contradiction.
Sidney considered carefully before answering. “Why are you coming to me now, Ed?”
“I don’t know.” Dojcsak averted his eyes. “It’s just that Lee is acting like a creep, you know. I never figured how much until I saw the picture. You know, what he did to that girl.”
“He fancies himself a ladies man does he?”
“She wasn’t a lady, Sidney,” Dojcsak said, his voice flat. “She was a girl. It’s why I’m here.”
“Would it make Seamus suspicious if you purchased the photo? It is for sale, isn’t it?” asked Sidney.
“I suppose,” Dojcsak said. “I mean, Seamus hasn’t charged me for looking. Yet.”
“Did you ever express an interest?” said Womack, sipping from a bottle of Budweiser that had become warm from exposure to the sun. He was careful to keep his voice low, so as not to be overheard.
Dojcsak blushed, his complexion scarlet over his white tee shirt. He reached for his Pepsi, draining the remaining quarter-bottle in one swallow. At eighteen and unlike his cousin, Ed Dojcsak did not drink beer, unable to acquire a taste.
“I suppose I did,” he replied tentatively. “I don’t know what it would cost.”
“Don’t worry about that, I’ll cover it. If Seamus has pictures of Leland with the girl, especially in the way you say,” Sidney said, recalling the boy, his father and Jimmy Cromwell together in Albany after Drew Bitson’s arraignment, “it proves he knew her. It proves he was doing something he shouldn’t have been. More than that, it shows he had a possible reason to want her dead.”
Dojcsak didn’t know about that, but didn’t say so to his cousin. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to return to the home of Seamus Mcteer, to review the grainy black and white photo of Leland McMaster Junior and Frances having sex, though Dojcsak was curiously confused upon seeing it as to why the picture made him angry and not aroused. Envy, he supposed, recalling the image of Leland’s tight, white buttocks captured in a scissor-lock between the thighs of Frances Stoops.
Womack pressed two twenty-dollar bills across the table into Dojcsak’s hand, careful not to be seen by his wife. “Here. That should be enough to purchase the photo. If it isn’t, let me know. Remember, Ed, I have to be able to recognize who it is, both the boy and the girl.”
The following day, late in the afternoon, Womack sat across from Jimmy Cromwell in his office at the Albany Municipal Court House, the photo acquired by Dojcsak of Leland McMaster copulating with Frances Stoops placed face-up on the desk between them. Cromwell studied the photograph with detachment. Though he wouldn’t say, to himself Womack admitted to never having seen anything like it.
“If nothing else,” he said to Cromwell, “it’s grounds to re-open the investigation. To prosecute McMaster for no less than stat rape, or contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
The County Prosecutor raised his hand, as if to silence him. He continued to study the picture. Just as Womack was about to speak again, he said, “She looks like no minor to me. Besides, Sidney, it isn’t as simple as that. Drew Bitson goes to trial in two weeks. The case is strong. I‘d rather not complicate the prosecution with unsubstantiated hearsay and speculation linking the McMaster boy to the girl, let alone the crime. I’ll see you driving a county snowplow before I let you.”
Womack thought of Becky, his children, his father-in-law and the personal mortgage guarantee, his pension and his home and said, “How would you like me to handle it, Jimmy?”
Cromwell thought, and said, “You say the negative is in the possession of Seamus Mcteer, a high school student and resident of Church Falls?”
As Cromwell took notes, Womack nodded his ascent.
“First thing is to collect that. Can’t have it floating around.” Cromwell paused to write. “And the boy who purchased the photo? Edward Dojcsak, you say?”
“Correct,” said Womack.
“Related to you somehow isn’t he, Sid?” Cromwell observed Womack over the rim of his dark glasses. His head remained low as he scratched a yellow paper pad without looking at it. The tips of his moustache were trimmed off his lip, as if he were wary at the prospect of having them become soiled with food while eating. A fringe of black hair circled his prematurely balding head, and, though at only five-foot-four he was a shorter than average man, Jimmy Cromwell would never be purposely mistaken by those who knew him as being a little one.
Womack agreed, adding, “He’s close to the boy, Jimmy. He’s been a big help. For a while, it was impossible for me to get straight answers.”
“Impossible, eh? You say he’s close to the boys?” Cromwell asked.
“That’s right.”
“To Leland McMaster?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“For how long?”
Womack wasn’t certain, but said anyway, “Years.”
Cromwell turned his leather desk chair on its swivel so that he faced outside. The office overlooked a small parkette. With the window open, the sound of midday traffic drifted in from the street. Despite the warm temperature, Cromwell hadn’t removed his dark suit jacket or loosened his necktie; he did not seem to perspire.
“Let me understand, Sidney. In your estimation, the Dojcsak boy and Leland McMaster are close, have been for years, and from this relationship the boy gathered evidence you believe implicates McMaster in the killing of Frances Stoops.”
Womack hesitated only a moment before answering, “Yes, sir, I believe so, yes.”
“When had he first become aware of the photo?” Crowell wanted to know.
“I can’t say for certain,” said Womack. “I didn’t ask.”
“Presumably, before he mentioned it to you?”
“I suppose,” agreed Sidney. “It’s why he came to me.”
Cromwell kicked with his feet off the windowsill, spinning freely to face Womack. He spoke while writing, not raising his head, or looking over his glasses at the Sheriff.
“So, your informant is close and has been for years to the potential suspect. Also, for an undetermined period he’s been admittedly jerking off with the evidence you consider material in an investigation into the killing of a young girl. Perhaps your cousin is envious, Sidney. Vindictive because he wasn’t screwing her himself.”
Womack bristled. The veins in his forehead throbbed as the blood flow in his neck struggled to squeeze through his constricted arteries and to reach his brain. He swallowed his reply, appreciating how this must appear to a man whose past record of success attested to a considerable grasp of the law, the courts, and generally and most significantly, to a jury of one’s own peers.
Minutes later, Womack left the prosecutor’s office with an assurance from Cromwell that he would initiate inquiries. Sidney reciprocated with his own promise that at the risk of
precipitating a possible mistrial and at the very least the spread of unsubstantiated and damaging allegations, he would say nothing to anyone regarding the photos or his own suspicions.
…
Jimmy Cromwell commandeered his sixty-eight Cadillac (purchased on account in nineteen sixty-nine from McMaster Cadillac Chev-Olds) along the crushed gravel drive of the McMaster property, up from the State road along which in nineteen fifty-six Leland had the foresight to purchase over five hundred acres of farmland, forest and rolling hills. If residential development ever breached the beachhead of the river and moved north, as Cromwell knew one day it must, Jimmy would relocate here, though given the nature of his relationship to the man who even now had become inarguably the wealthiest in Warren County and benefactor to Cromwell’s considerable ambition to one day run for county DA, it might appear too close for comfort.
The door to the McMaster home was answered promptly on the first ring, before Cromwell could pull his finger from the bell and return it to his side. Helen McMaster stood before him, taller than he and resplendent in royal blue dressing gown and slacks: an embroidered Chinese smock with short, cuffed pants cut from a silky material Cromwell could not identify, but which he knew would feel smooth to the touch. Her bottle blonde hair was piled high on her head, falling in ringlets over her ears. In her fist, Helen had a tumbler with a slice of lemon and clear liquid over ice. She grasped it tightly, as if it were the leash on a dog straining to break her grip. As she passed close by him to shut the door, he detected the faint scent of alcohol on her breath. A spider web of broken capillaries pocked what had once been a complexion the envy of dairy farmers across the northeast, though with her heavy makeup they were not noticeable, unless you were standing close.
Leland McMaster entered the hallway from stage left, parting the heavy oak doors to his study with a flourish, allowing the sunlight to spill from one room to the next.
“Look, doll,” he said in a half shout, “it’s Jimmy, it’s Jimmy come to visit,” he repeated, as if without prompting, Helen might not recognize Cromwell for herself. “Pour us a drink, doll,” he commanded in a hackneyed tone reminiscent of some forties film noir. To Cromwell he said, “You’ll join me, won’t you? Just arrived home myself: bloody busy day at the dealership. Sometimes,” he said, guiding Cromwell firmly by the elbow into the study, directing him to a chair, “I wonder to myself: how much money does one man need?”
Cromwell waited, knowing the question was rhetorical, requiring no answer from him. McMaster moved to a leather sofa opposite, careful to maintain the crease in his slacks as he settled into the chair.
“The answer is simple really,” he said solemnly, “as much as he has the capacity to earn. There are two things that defy the traditional definition of greed, Jimmy,” he continued, as if waiting for his wife to return, which eventually she did, carrying two single malt whiskey over ice. “A man’s need for women, and his quest for wealth. You can never have too much of either. Cheers!” He raised his glass as Helen prepared to settle by her husband.
“Be a doll,” McMaster said before she could. “Close the door behind you on the way out.” Helen paused in a half-squat and as if by remote control, straightened. With a benign smile, she walked silently from the room. As instructed, Helen closed the door behind her on the way out.
Leland was a big man, possibly in his late thirties, perhaps five years either side of forty. Tall, physically fit with a self-confidence vested in good looks, McMaster possessed an easy appeal. To Cromwell, he was, and, despite his affluence, would always be a peddler of used automobiles. Jimmy wouldn’t allow himself to critically underestimate the man, aware that his own prejudice derived more from a sense of intellectual pride than from experience. McMaster influenced with money and intimidation. (Emotional rather than physical, though privately, Jimmy suspected the potential was there.) By contrast, Cromwell used the prospect of favors granted or withheld, secrets revealed or concealed. Until the moment Sid Womack walked into McMaster’s office with the photos of Leland’s rutting son, Cromwell was uncertain which held more leverage.
After five minutes of innocuous chit-chat, during which the two men discussed the Dodgers, the Yankees and the prospects for the upcoming pennant race; a pending application by Leland’s real estate trust, Cloverdale Properties, to rezone a one hundred acre parcel of property belonging to McMaster from farm land to commercial, for the purpose of constructing what the owner described as the county’s first “enclosed shopping mall”; and, the prospect of Cromwell’s re-election, about which the county prosecutor was feeling confident, Jimmy removed an envelope from his breast suit pocket, passing it across the table to McMaster. Leland opened the package, taking time to review the photo critically, as if assessing the performance of his son.
“There were copies,” Cromwell told McMaster. “And negatives. I’ve retrieved them from Womack, who retrieved them from the boy. I have them at the office, under lock and key.”
“Good work,” replied McMaster, his jaw working overtime to grind his molars into dust, his eyes fixed on the image before him.
“I can virtually guarantee there are no others, Leland.”
“You did well to get your hands on this,” McMaster said, taking his eyes from the photo, slapping it with a snap against his thigh. “You’ll be wanting to retain possession, I imagine?”
“It would be best. There’s no telling where this all may lead. If worse comes to worse, it wouldn’t do for either you or I to be accused of suppressing, or destroying evidence in the prosecution of a capital crime. If your son is involved, Leland, it would be tragic: for you or I to sacrifice ourselves as a consequence of a cover-up, would be wasteful.”
“You’re right, of course,” agreed McMaster sincerely, after only a moment’s hesitation. He replaced the photograph in the envelope, returning it to Cromwell. “What do you suggest we do?”
Cromwell resented the notion “we” had anything to do at all, that the problem conceivably could belong to anyone but Leland McMaster and his son, let alone the county prosecutor. He didn’t say this. Rather he suggested, “Leland might go away.”
McMaster turned his eyes to a set of French doors opening on to a flagstone patio. Beyond a formal garden planted with roses, the property stretched to the horizon. At dusk, the tree line turned from green to gold against the backdrop of an amber-colored sky. Leland seemed not to notice, preoccupied instead with calculating his acreage and the number of building lots each might realistically yield.
He said, “I could send him to college; out of state.”
“We spoke about this, Leland, at the arraignment of the colored boy. Your son’s testimony over Bitson’s behavior at the diner was critical in convincing the judge to indict. It will be critical in convincing a jury to convict. This,” he said, referring to the photo, “complicates things. It makes it impossible for me to risk calling him to the stand. If the defense gets hold of these, Leland’s credibility is shot.” Cromwell snapped his fingers.
“If he were away, would he be required to testify?”
“It’s a capital crime; he would, which is why I’m thinking farther away, Leland,” said Cromwell. “Overseas.”
“Like the Sorbonne?”
If Leland Junior was subpoenaed while attending college abroad, Jimmy Cromwell couldn’t prevent an appearance; he hadn’t yet been elected District Attorney and lacked the clout. Leland’s refusal to return could jeopardize the outcome of the trial, not to mention Cromwell’s reputation.
Even so, the decision was more problematic than Jimmy was prepared to admit to McMaster. If brought to light, the photo, together with his refusal to return home to testify, would make Leland Junior immediately suspect. The notion of a privileged child killer shipped abroad to attend college by his influential father to evade a murder rap—and, should it become known, aided and abetted in the exercise by the county prosecutor—would play poorly in the opinion of a conservative public and local
press. On the other hand, if young Leland were to fight the good fight, perhaps willingly enlist and disappear for a time into the festering jungles of Vietnam, kill a few gooks and return home a decorated war hero with a Purple Cross, it might be considered punishment enough by the constituency Cromwell sought to appease. He suggested as much to Leland Senior.
“He could also return home in a pine box,” McMaster said to Cromwell, echoing a sentiment he had more than once issued to his son. “As a solution, Jimmy, I think it’s no solution at all.” McMaster drained his tumbler, moving to a sideboard to refill his glass. He did not offer another to his guest.
“Not having a child of my own, I won’t pretend to appreciate your dilemma,” said Cromwell, unsure himself as to the decision he hoped for Leland to make. “If nothing else, a tour of duty overseas spares your family its reputation. I can’t say the same if he stays, whether or not he actually faces an indictment. And there is one more thing you should consider.”
McMaster remained silent, as if waiting for a second shoe to drop.
“Semen, Leland. Extracted from the body during the post mortem. We’ve proven conclusively that it does not belong to the black boy. If your son is serving overseas, we can’t test his blood. There’s no way we can prove the ejaculate belongs to him.”
“I’ll think on it,” McMaster said, his back turned, indicating to Cromwell the discussion was over.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
ON THE FIRST Saturday morning following the murder, Dojcsak woke early to the sound of mourning doves outside his open bedroom window. It was a fine spring day, a day to banish any thought of relocating south to Florida. The sky was high and pale, a pre-summer blue stretching like a vast carpet into space; the Face of God, Dojcsak imagined, final sight for the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia crew as in that final, painless and mindless instant they became one again with the elements. Dojcsak took comfort in this, as he supposed, too, must have the families of the fallen astronauts.
