Crime of Privilege: A Novel

by Walter Walker

  “He wanted to know if the Senator had come into the library when Kendrick was in there with us. He wanted to know if the Senator had participated in any way.”

  “Participated?” He was twisting again, making everything I said sound foolish.

  “I told him the Senator just stuck his head into the room and I didn’t think he really could see anything other than, you know, there was a girl in there with a couple of guys.”

  “A girl who was being raped.”

  “Well, see, it wasn’t all that clear. Even to me.”

  “What wasn’t … clear … Georgie?” He used the diminutive like I was a child. Like I was an idiot.

  “Like whether she was …” I didn’t want to use the word again.

  “Participating?”

  “The thing is, she wasn’t saying anything. She wasn’t doing anything to stop them.”

  “She was passed out, you perverted little creep.”

  “She wasn’t passed out,” I argued, my voice rising. And then I cut it off.

  “What was she doing, Georgie, while people were shoving things up her vagina?”

  It was a candle. I had stopped Peter from using the candlestick … Peter’s dick maybe, although I hadn’t seen that for sure. And his finger. And Jamie’s finger.

  “Look, I didn’t get Kendrick drunk. I didn’t invite her into the library, and I didn’t get her to lie down on the couch, take her shoes off, put her leg up.”

  He bent at the waist, moved his face close to mine. “And you didn’t do anything when those scumbags began shoving shit inside her, did you?”

  Don’t say a word. Don’t say anything, George. Let him hit you if he wants. Whatever it is he does, just take it. Take it and keep your mouth shut.

  Mr. Andrews, however, still did not hit. He straightened up instead, pivoted as though he could not stand breathing the same air I did, and walked to the dining room table, where he looked at my books and my notebook. “Quite an accomplishment, you getting into this school, Georgie. How do you suppose that came about?”

  “I had good boards.”

  The man kept his back to me. “That so?” He picked up my notebook and flipped through it. “I happen to know that before you went to see Ralph Mars, you and your good boards had been turned down by every law school you applied to. You had given up any thought of going anywhere and all of a sudden, after a half-hour talk with a state attorney, there they were, acceptances from Boston College and GW, one school where the Senator lives and one where the Senator works. Pretty remarkable coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “What I think is remarkable is that you seem to know so much about my life.”

  “Oh, you can bet on that, Georgie.” Mr. Andrews turned with deliberate slowness. He held my notebook as if he were calculating its weight, and then tossed it behind him, showing no sign of caring when it hit on the edge of the table and slid to the floor. “Mr. Powell has lost his only daughter. Mr. Powell is one pissed-off, vengeful, resourceful sonofabitch who can buy things that aren’t even for sale. And Mr. Powell is going to burn your life down around you, my fatuous little friend.”

  He put his hands behind his waist and rocked forward onto the balls of his feet as if he were very much going to enjoy the fire. “I can guarantee you that things are going to start happening now that never would have happened before. And they are going to keep happening in every aspect of your life until you get to the point that if you so much as buy a losing lottery ticket you’re going to think Mr. Powell rigged the game against you.”

  Mr. Andrews kept his eyes on me as he walked to the door. He stopped when he got there. “You’ve gotten yourself caught up in a very nasty war here, Georgie. And I daresay, I think you’ve chosen the wrong side.”

  2.

  “CHUCK, CHUCK LARSON,” AS HE ALWAYS INTRODUCED HIMSELF, was the Senator’s man. He would say his first name, then his whole name, then pause to see if you recognized him. It was not an unreasonable expectation. He was at least six-feet-five, at least two hundred and ninety pounds, and he had been a stalwart on the offensive line for the Washington Redskins for many years.

  Chuck had a broad red face and sandy hair that was getting thin but was still long enough to form curls. He had the kind of face that was built to smile, that made you think the only thing that made him sad was not smiling. When I told him about my visit from Mr. Andrews, the outer edges of his pale blue eyes became a mass of crinkles and the lines at the corners of his mouth turned into grooves.

  “Oh,” he said, “I am so sorry, George.”

  “Like, I don’t know,” I said, because I really didn’t. “He was threatening me without actually threatening, if that makes any sense.”

  “Well, they’re feeling bad in that family, George, you can understand that. Girl they gave birth to, loved and raised, did everything they could for, something like this happens and they’ve got to make it somebody else’s fault.” He nodded his big round head at the tragedy of it all. He bathed me in sympathy as he explained, “Otherwise, the universe is in chaos. You have to find a reason something happened so you can restore order. Usual thing is finding it was somebody else’s fault.”

  He was sitting on my couch, the same place where I had sat when I received Mr. Andrews’s guarantee of how bleak my future was going to be. Chuck’s job was to tell me that wasn’t so. He was wearing a short-sleeved collared shirt that was white but had faint red stripes spaced several inches apart. He was wearing blue jeans that had to have been purchased in the Midwest for use as work clothes, and tan lace-up boots that you might see at a construction site. This was pretty much the way he had dressed when he had first come to see me in Philadelphia, back in the spring, shortly after the visit from Roland Andrews.

  Roland appeared. Chuck followed. Except this time I had called him.

  “It’s almost as if he was telling me he was putting a curse on me, you know?” I laughed lightly, because guys like Chuck and me knew there was no such thing as a curse.

  “You know,” he said back to me, “I once broke my helmet. It was just a snap for the chinstrap, but I borrowed someone else’s and ran onto the field. Didn’t fit quite the same, but it was still a helmet just like the one I always wore. First play, I’m supposed to trap the D-end. Dude blows right by me, flattens our quarterback, who lets the ball go fluttering away like a homesick brick. I sure looked bad on television, on the game film, in the coaches’ eyes, QB’s eyes. I blamed it on the helmet.”

  “What are you telling me, Chuck?”

  “That we get knocked out of our ordinaries and it can bother us in ways it never should. Ever see that movie Pumping Iron? Arnold Schwarzenegger, there, he’s in some Mr. Universe contest or something, and he wants to throw his opponent off his game so he hides the guy’s yellow shirt. It’s just a shirt the guy warms up in, but the guy freaks. You watch him come completely apart and, naturally, he loses the competition. Arnold had gotten in his head, see?”

  “And you’re saying this guy Andrews wants to get into my head by making me think Mr. Powell’s going to cause bad things to happen to me?”

  “Sure. And once he’s got you in that position he’ll come back to you, say, ‘Okay, now tell me something bad about the Gregorys and I’ll make everything all right for you again.’ ”

  “Lift the curse, huh?”

  Chuck’s broad shoulders rose an inch or two and crashed back down again.

  “But you’re saying his threats are all bullshit.”

  “That’s right,” Chuck said.

  And I believed him because under the circumstances he knew a whole lot more than I did.

  3.

  IT TOOK A WHILE FOR THE NEWSPAPERS TO CATCH ON. THE FIRST reports were matter-of-fact: Kendrick Powell, twenty-one, of Wilmington, Delaware, was found dead of an apparent overdose in a Midtown hotel in New York City. Then The Wilmington News Journal identified who she was and ran a respectful article on the unexpected passing of the daughter of one of the city’s more pro
minent citizens. A day later the Florida newspapers picked it up and expanded on the story: “Gregory Accuser Found Dead in Hotel Room.”

  The New York Post took it from there. The Washington Post and even The New York Times were obliged to follow. The New York Post’s article was lurid, carrying an old picture of Peter looking half crazed as he exited some unidentified drinking establishment and referring to a “wild party” at the Gregory mansion without providing any specifics. The others had short articles that appeared to have been written by someone who did not really want to touch a keyboard. Kendrick was identified, her father was identified, and in a last paragraph it was noted she had filed a criminal complaint against Peter Gregory Martin, nephew of the Senator, and that the Palm Beach state attorney had declined to press charges, citing a lack of corroborating evidence.

  After that, one of the national television networks hurriedly put together a half-hour show of investigative journalism that was long on titillation and short on facts. The network had come up with a few photos of its own, including one of Kendrick as a preteen equestrian in full riding garb, another of her father standing next to the mast of some gargantuan sailboat, and yet another of her mother dressed in a formal gown and accompanying her latest husband to a New York City gala, so they were able to refer to Kendrick as a beautiful young socialite victimized by the depredation of the Gregorys.

  Josh David Powell, a beefy man with an unruly head of graying hair, was featured prominently in the show, saying there was no doubt in his mind that his daughter had been raped by Peter Gregory Martin and that the authorities’ failure to act on it had sent her into a state of depression that led to drug use, drug dependency, and now this, the fatal overdose. The show cut first to a still photo of a bunch of pills spilling from a jar and then to a video of a body on a gurney covered by a white sheet being wheeled from a building to an ambulance.

  The show then caught Mr. Powell in a close-up, looking particularly wild-eyed as he declared that he had reason to believe that it was not a self-inflicted overdose. Even now, he announced, he had investigators working to prove that.

  There was a snippet of an interview with Ralph Mars, state attorney for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, in and for the County of Palm Beach. Mr. Mars, looking Hollywood handsome and, unlike Mr. Powell, with every hair on his head combed neatly into place, gazed with complete sincerity at his interviewer and explained that he could fully understand Mr. Powell’s emotions, but his office had looked into the matter and there just wasn’t any evidence to support the accusation.

  The television reporter, a perky brunette whom I would wager was not hired because of her investigative acumen, was then shown standing on the street in front of the Gregory home on Ocean Boulevard wearing a low-cut blouse and tight slacks as she explained to the viewers: “In fact, on the evening in question there was a full-blown party going on here at the Gregorys’ storied waterside estate, attended by some sixty or so members of Palm Beach society, and not a single person has come forward with the evidence Ralph Mars says he needs.”

  Cut back to Mr. Mars: “We’d prosecute a Gregory just as fast as we would prosecute anyone else. But there simply was no evidence.”

  Cut to Mr. Powell, his shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest, his eyes puffy, his hair matted as if he had just swum up from the bottom of the ocean: “That’s a load of crap and he knows it. My daughter went to Humana Hospital and they confirmed that she had been raped.”

  Cut to perky brunette, still on Ocean Boulevard, this time with documents in her hand: “In fact, Kendrick Powell did not go to the hospital until the day after the party, when she was taken by a female friend who was staying at the Powell home about a mile and a half from the Gregorys’ here in Palm Beach. A spokesperson for the hospital has informed us that it is against hospital policy to release patient records or even to confirm whether someone was a patient. Josh David Powell, however, readily provided records (pause, wave sheets of paper at the camera) that show that both the doctor who examined her and a rape counselor believed her story.” (Cut to the pages, lying in V-formation; close in on top page, scan down, then highlight and magnify the words “vaginal bruising.”)

  Cut to Mr. Mars, now in shirtsleeves and tie, leaning forcefully across his desk: “Look, there was evidence that Ms. Powell had been involved in some sexual activity. But there was no proof as to who it was with or whether it was consensual. And let’s be honest here, the type of accusation that is at issue is one that our police department deals with every day. If it were not for the family of the person being accused, I have no doubt we would not be having this conversation.”

  Cut to perky brunette, sitting at a studio desk that looks very much like a real anchorman’s desk: “Kendrick Powell did not return to her studies at Bryn Mawr, not even to complete the second semester of her junior year. She appears to have kept a low profile until she checked into this hotel (cut to gray-walled high-rise with modest awning and glass door just off busy Lexington Avenue in New York City) three days before her death. Back to brunette: As for Peter Gregory Martin, he remains a second-year medical student at Northwestern University in Chicago. Both he and members of his family declined to be interviewed for this segment.”

  4.

  CHUCK, CHUCK LARSON, HAD ASSURED ME I DID NOT NEED TO worry. I worried anyway.

  Every day that I walked to or from the classroom building at George Washington I would look down alleys, between parked cars, over my shoulder, for any sign of Roland Andrews. When I ate in restaurants I always faced the door. I stopped going to the gym and quit the flag football team. I stopped having conversations with strangers after I met a woman on the Metro whom I thought was asking too many questions. I stopped socializing with my classmates, and gradually developed the reputation that I was a rather peculiar fellow. I couldn’t find fault with their thinking. Especially when I lay in bed unable to sleep at night.

  After a month of this self-imposed exile, I allowed myself to be talked into returning to the 21st Amendment for Friday-afternoon beers. I was the subject of a lot of questions, to which I did not give answers. This apparently made me mysteriously attractive to a woman from my section named Marion, and that night I ended up back at her apartment.

  She was several years older than I was, divorced, and obviously pleased that I found her attractive. Which I did. She had long, flowing dark hair, spirited eyes, and a figure that some of my male classmates had commented on at least once a week since school began and that I got to discover all on my own. I am sure we had a good time, but I had drunk so much beer that most of what happened was but a blur. I woke up at some point with her sleeping soundly beside me. Rather than stick around till morning, I dressed in the dark and snuck out. Afterward, we only said “Hi” in the hallways.

  In December I took my first semester exams. I thought I did well. Why not? With the exception of my one experience with Marion, I had, since Roland Andrews’s visit, done almost nothing but study. In the week between Christmas and New Year’s I got my grades: an A in criminal law, an A in torts, a B in real property, a B in contracts, a D in civil procedure.

  As soon as I returned to school for the new semester I went to see my civ pro professor, a septuagenarian who always wore suspenders and a bow tie, a man whom I had no reason to believe knew me as anything other than a name on one of his class rosters. We were in his office, just him and me, and I explained as deferentially as I could how well I had done in my other classes, how equally well I thought I had done in his. He got out my blue exam book and spent no more than a minute glancing through it.

  “Civil procedure is not an easy subject,” he informed me. I agreed. I told him that I enjoyed it.

  He flipped the notebook onto his desk. “The grade looks appropriate to me.”

  I probably sputtered.

  “Mr. Becket, I do not expect this D will ruin either your life or your legal career.” And then he looked at me knowingly beneath great white clouds of eyebrows.

  If he had p
ointed out flaws in my reasoning, my citations, my writing style—one flaw, any flaw—I might have understood. If he had urged me to use this barely passing grade as a springboard, a motivational moment, a learning experience, I might have accepted it. But instead I immediately began thinking of Roland Andrews and Josh David Powell.

  I do not remember arguing with the professor; I do not remember thanking him for his time or his comments. I remember only staring at him with a feeling of utter betrayal, and him staring back at me with what I was sure was utter disgust.

  MARION INVITED ME TO A PARTY. I was surprised. We had barely spoken since I had snuck away from her apartment. She had gone out with other guys, I knew. I had heard them talking. One had even bragged about what a fantastic time they had in bed. But she wanted to go out with me. I agreed because I had not had a date, a planned-ahead date, in about a year, not since I had gone to Palm Beach, and because I had some vague idea that I might be able to make up for sneaking out on her the last time we were together.

  One problem was that I didn’t have a car and the party was outside the district, in Old Town Alexandria, down the Potomac River and into Virginia a few miles. Not a problem, said Marion. She would pick me up in her car, which turned out to be an Audi coupe, a going-away present from her former husband.

  We went and we had fun, partying in a townhouse that had been built before the Revolution and now belonged to a third-year student who had made a fortune at a private equity firm before he attended law school. We danced and drank. Marion knew everyone, and I knew almost no one, except by sight. I overheard one of the other women ask how she had managed to “snag” me. I heard another tell her I was so “mysterious,” and ask what I was really like. One woman actually said she and her friends thought I didn’t like girls, but she was clearly drunk. I laughed and joked and danced with everyone who asked me.

  When it was time to leave, I was the one who ended up with the keys to Marion’s car. Her driving was not an option. She could barely walk. I helped her into the passenger seat, got her buckled up, and took my position behind the steering wheel.