Crime of Privilege: A Novel

by Walter Walker

  It was necessary to drive three blocks west to Washington Street, turn right, and then just keep going straight until the road became the George Washington Memorial Parkway. From there we had only to go past National—or Ronald Reagan Airport, as they were now calling it—and continue on into the District. Even a drunk guy could do that. We made it a block and a half.

  The red light came on behind us, accompanied by some otherworldly blipping sound. I immediately pulled over. “Oh, Christ,” gurgled Marion, and she struggled to sit all the way up in her seat. She wasn’t going to fool anyone. I still had aspirations for myself.

  “Yes, officer?” I said, powering down the window.

  The cop was middle-aged and portly, with bad skin. While I was looking at him his partner somehow managed to creep up on Marion’s side of the car. The partner was a sinewy fellow, also middle-aged, and he was bent at the waist, his hand on the butt of his gun, looking through the window from Marion to me and back again. Two middle-aged cops riding in a patrol car and performing traffic stops in a neighborhood like this did not bode well.

  I asked Marion for the registration and she was unresponsive. I reached in front of her, intending to go into the glove box, but the cop next to me screamed in my ear, “Freeze!”

  I froze.

  “Keep both hands where I can see them,” he said, his voice still louder than it needed to be, and somehow I knew that he, too, had his hand on his gun. “I’m gonna open this door, and I want you to sidestep out with your hands away from your body.”

  I was only part of the way out of the car when I heard the other officer opening Marion’s door. I was not completely out when the cop on my side grabbed me by the back of the shirt and slammed me up against the side of the Audi.

  “Put your hands behind your head, asshole,” he said.

  Asshole?

  He was breathing hard as he put his foot between mine and kicked me on each instep. I gathered he wanted me to get my feet apart, and I tried to comply. He smacked me in the back of the head and told me not to fucking move.

  On the other side of the car, the sinewy cop had Marion out of her seat but was unable to get her to stand up straight. Her hair, her one great vanity, was tumbling all over the place, covering her face like a veil. He tried to push her against the car the way my cop was doing to me, but she slithered down and he had to plaster her against the side with both hands. “Roy, we got a problem over here,” he called out.

  “Put her on the ground,” my guy told him.

  With some effort, the sinewy cop got Marion lying facedown on a strip of grass between the road and the sidewalk. She lay there and didn’t move. He then looked to see what he should do next, and the cop behind me told him to leave her alone, check the glove compartment, see if the registration was there. It took the sinewy guy about a minute, but he came up with a card in his hand. “Lars Bjorklund,” he read. “Darien, Connecticut.”

  “That you?” my cop said. “You don’t look like a Lars. Guys named Lars are big guys with big heads and stupid looks on their faces.”

  I had not seen enough of my captor to ascertain what would constitute a stupid look to someone like him, but the whole event was taking on a surreal aspect. Why hadn’t he asked me if I had been drinking? Made me walk a straight line, touch my nose, say the alphabet backward?

  “Yeah,” the cop said, seeming pleased with his knowledge of Scandinavian physiognomy, “you don’t look like a Lars. You look like Prince Charles. Is that who you are? You some kind of prince or something?”

  Why would he think that? What had I done besides drive someone else’s car for a block and a half? I tried to tell him the car belonged to Marion, that I believed Lars Bjorklund was her ex-husband.

  “So we find her license, it’s gonna say her name is Bjorklund, is that it?”

  I knew it wasn’t. I couldn’t remember what it was. Something Italian.

  “And if we call up there to Dairy-Anne, Connecticut, they not gonna tell us this car’s been stolen, are they?”

  Before I could answer he grabbed me by the collar and the belt and manhandled me over to the strip of grass where Marion was lying, her eyes blank and unblinking so that I couldn’t tell if she was seeing anything or not. “Get down,” he said, and roughly pushed me first to my knees and then to my stomach. I was now staring at Marion from about two feet away and she still had not blinked.

  There was a tremendous crushing sensation in the middle of my back and I knew that Roy the cop was kneeling on me. I made some kind of noise from deep in my chest as air rushed out of my lungs, and then suddenly the whole area in which we were lying was lit up with headlights.

  A car stopped, then another, then another after that. The cop bellowed at the cars to move on, but they didn’t. Doors began opening, footsteps began sounding on the asphalt.

  Roy was stuck then. He was surrounded by law students—six, eight, ten of them.

  “Good evening, Officer,” said a calm, cheerful male voice. “May we be of some assistance here?”

  “You’ll be in the back of a patrol car in two minutes, you don’t get the hell out of here.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m counsel to these people.” The speaker did not say he was our lawyer.

  The cop lightened the load he had put on me, giving me the chance to turn my head. The speaker was, of course, one of the partygoers, a third-year student, a guy people had been talking about as having already secured one of those coveted associates’ positions with one of the premier D.C. firms. Behind him, one of the other students was taking pictures with a flash camera. She took a picture of me, then took several shots of Marion lying on the ground, glassy-eyed, with the sinewy cop standing over her.

  “Hey,” my cop shouted, “you can’t do that. Cyrus, get that camera away from her. And you, all of you, get outta here before I call for backup and have you all arrested.”

  The third-year student held up his hand with such authority that Cyrus stopped moving. When he was sure he had Cyrus’s compliance, he said to my cop, “On the contrary, Officer, as long as we are standing back a significant distance and not interfering with the conduct of your official duties, we have a right peacefully to gather and observe the proceedings. People v. Baldwin. Supreme Court, 1984.”

  Both cops were silent.

  “My father argued it,” the third-year said. “He is now United States deputy attorney general.”

  “I don’t give a damn what your daddy does,” said the cop. But it was clear that he did.

  “Oh, I concur with that sentiment exactly, Officer. I only mention it because he lives right here in Old Town, and if you will allow me to, I can call him and have him here within just a few minutes so he can give you not only the cite to People v. Baldwin, but he can bring the published opinion, show you where—”

  “You’re already interfering with our official duties,” the cop said. But lights were going on in the homes lining both sides of the street, and out of the corner of my eye I could see the cop swinging his head from one lighted house to another. This was not what he had anticipated. He knew even better than we did that anyone could be living in Old Town: Supreme Court justices, cabinet officers, elected officials. It was that kind of place.

  The cop got off me altogether, pushing down with his hand on my shoulder harder than was necessary as he stood up. I stayed where I was and waited to see what would happen next.

  “With your permission, Officer,” the third-year student said, “I would like to have one of my colleagues attend to Ms. Bettinelli, who appears to be in some danger. My colleague is an Army medic who served in Bosnia.” He pointed to a rather dazed-looking fellow with short hair. “And if you would prefer not to have him approach her, then we really should call the EMTs. In fact”—he pulled out a cell phone—“I can do that right now, if you wish.”

  Roy hesitated. From my position on the ground, the left side of my face in the dirt, what I saw was a pack of drunken law students. Roy must have seen it diffe
rently. He said, “You got a medic, send him over.”

  The dazed guy lurched forward in a relatively straight line, dropped down onto one knee, gently turned Marion’s head, and then used his thumb and forefinger to apply pressure to the sides of her mouth to force it open. I was lying right next to him. I didn’t see anything but teeth. “There’s signs of vomitus,” he announced gravely. “She’s got to get to a hospital.”

  “That’s where I was taking her,” I called out in a sudden wash of inspiration.

  “Oh, gosh,” said the third-year, and everyone was quiet for a moment as if contemplating the dangerous possibilities of this traffic stop.

  “She still has a pulse,” shouted the erstwhile medic as if he had done something miraculous to discover it.

  “Cyrus,” ordered the cop in charge, “see if there’s vomit.”

  Cyrus, who had made it back to the patrol car, returned to Marion, reconnoitered a position where he could get down on his hands and knees and move his head between hers and mine, got down so low his head was on the grass and his hat fell off, and tried to peer into her mouth. His picture got taken in that posture, too.

  “Oh, God, Cyrus,” said the other cop, “sit her up, would you?”

  Cyrus and the student each took Marion under the shoulder and twisted her and rolled her until they could hold her torso in some semblance of a right angle to her legs. There was no sign of vomit on her lips, her chin, her sweater, at least none that I could detect. There was, nevertheless, a round of murmurs from the gathering of students. It grew stronger until the cop, perhaps thinking that none of this was going to be worth the effort of filling out forms and making court appearances, not to mention responding to media and department inquiries, gave up. “All right,” he said without bothering to look himself, “I’ll accept what you’re saying. Go. Take her to the hospital. But,” he added, straightening up and kicking me with the side of his foot, “this one’s not driving.”

  “No problem,” said the intrepid third-year, and within seconds I was bundled, pushed, and folded into the backseat of the Audi, my legs behind the driver’s seat, my hips behind the passenger’s seat. The cop leaned in the car then and looked directly into my face as if intent on remembering it. “I understand you got some powerful friends, boy.” He waited a beat. “I just want you to know you got some powell-ful enemies, too.”

  Did he say “Powell-ful”? Did I really hear him say that? I could not be sure, but before I could formulate the question he was gone and the other students were loading Marion into the front seat like a large sack of cement, and then the third-year himself got behind the wheel, strapped himself in, made sure Marion was strapped in, called “Thank you” to the cops and “Bye” to his friends, and wheeled onto the street.

  We went a block and a half to Washington and turned right, heading for the Parkway. I was too stunned to say anything, and then I noticed our driver trying to catch my eye in the rearview mirror. “How did I do?” he asked.

  “Fantastic,” I said. I was about to express admiration, gratitude, wonder at what had just taken place, when he derailed me with a laugh and a quick glance into the seat next to him.

  I knew it was coming the instant before it happened. There was a movement, then a tumble of dark hair, then one dancing eye peering around the curve of the seat back. “And how did I do?” said Marion.

  5.

  I LEFT GEORGE WASHINGTON IN MAY AND NEVER RETURNED. I TRANSFERRED to a school in Boston. I had hoped to get into Boston College, but even with a strong letter of recommendation from the Senator, I wasn’t able to overcome the D I had gotten in civil procedure.

  The school to which I went was fine, and while it may not have had the same prestige as GW, it allowed me the freedom not to fret quite so much about who was watching me, grading me, pulling me over in the middle of the night. Two years later, I graduated, sat for the bar, hung around my mother’s house in New Jersey awaiting the results, and when I was sworn in as an attorney I got a call from Chuck, Chuck Larson, telling me to apply to the Cape & Islands district attorney for a job.

  1.

  CAPE COD, April 2008

  “ANYTHING NEW?”

  “You know, Mr. Telford,” I said as I watched him climb onto the long-legged chair next to mine, “if you don’t stop coming here, I’m going to have to.”

  I wanted him to know I was not joking. “I like this restaurant, I like sitting at the bar, I like having John mix me a Manhattan. I like, most of all, that I’m not working when I’m here.”

  Bill Telford kept his eyes on the television as he completed his personal seating arrangement. The Bruins were on, game seven of the first round of the playoffs, and while Mr. Telford dutifully watched, he didn’t say anything pithy or knowledgeable, the way a real hockey fan might.

  John asked him what he wanted, and he said he would like a nice cup of coffee. This got barely a grunt out of John.

  I turned back to my meal, steak tips over rice.

  “I didn’t hear anything from you,” he said.

  “I didn’t have anything to report.”

  “I heard you went to see the chief.”

  I dropped my fork, let it clang against the crockery. The two of us sat there staring at ten men slapping a disk up and down the ice, pausing in their pursuit only long enough to slam one another into the boards and occasionally grab one another by the sweater.

  “None of my stuff was there, was it?”

  “Mr. Telford, you obviously don’t need me. You know everything already.”

  He got his coffee, turned the mug so that the handle was to the right, and poured in a fair amount of sugar. “Just wanted to confirm it.”

  “So I was, what, an experiment? A mine canary? If you’ve got friends in the police department, why don’t you just ask one of them if anything’s going into the files?”

  Mr. Telford stirred his sugar into his coffee, being careful not to let his spoon crack against the sides of his mug. “I wanted you to see for yourself.”

  “Why?” But I knew I was asking a question to which I probably did not want the answer.

  “Because, Mr. Becket, you’re a decent guy and my last hope.”

  He fixed me with his blue-gray eyes and let them linger, even when I looked away. Perhaps he realized a commercial was on the television screen and there was nothing else to capture my attention. I tried focusing on my food, which did not seem as appetizing as it had a few minutes earlier. I decided I was, indeed, going to find a new place for dinner. Maybe I would even start cooking at home. Get microwave meals, sit by myself in front of the television, eat off a tray table.

  “Mr. Telford, I’m just someone doing a job, that’s all. I’ve got no pull in the office, no say. I sit in a little dungeon in the basement and I do what I’m told, okay? So if you think I’m your best hope, you might as well forget it.”

  “You talked Mitch White into letting you look at the file.”

  “Honest to God, Mr. Telford, you’re so much more on top of things than I am, why don’t you just use all these other resources you have, go about your business, and leave me alone?”

  Did I say that too loud? Is that why John looked up at me from down the bar?

  But Mr. Telford was unperturbed. “My resources,” he said, “as you call ’em, are mostly people like me, support people who lived here all their lives doing the jobs that allow other folks to come down and have a good time for a few weeks every year. I want to get a plumber to my place seven o’clock in the morning, I can do that. I want to plant a cactus in my yard, I got no doubt I can get somebody to look the other way. But that only gets me so far. It doesn’t get me into the files.”

  “Both the district attorney and the chief of police know who you are. They know the case isn’t solved and the file is still open.”

  “Sure. They see me coming, they smile and say, ‘Hi, Bill,’ ‘Sure thing, Bill,’ ‘Get right on it, Bill.’ Then they never do anything.” He sipped from his mug, put it back on t
he bar. “Which you just proved.”

  I tried to go back to watching the game, but he stayed where he was, his head hanging slightly, holding on to the mug handle like a tired swimmer. I finished my drink, pushed my plate forward, signaled to John that I was ready to go.

  “I don’t know what’s been Goin’ on in your life, Mr. Becket,” he said suddenly. “But I’m willing to bet something has.”

  “Yeah, the Bruins are getting the crap kicked out of them, the Celtics lost last night, and I’m glad baseball is under way so the Red Sox can prove that winning last year’s championship was a total fluke.”

  “Guy like you,” he said, “young, good-looking, talented, you clearly could be doing something more than sitting in the basement of some backwater prosecutor’s office.”

  I thanked him for his observation and he nodded as though my thanks were genuine.

  John sidled over. “You done with that meal, Counselor? You want a doggy bag or anything?” I shook my head and made a little check mark in the air. He cut his eyes to Mr. Telford, indicating he knew exactly why I wasn’t eating, why I couldn’t enjoy my drink and the game in solitude. Guy comes in, orders a coffee, ruins everything for everyone. All that was expressed in one side glance.

  Mr. Telford waited until John went back to the kitchen with my plate before he spoke again. “You know, it’s funny. My Heidi wanted to do so much with her life and didn’t get the chance, and here you are, you got the opportunity to do wonderful things, and what do you do instead? Sit around watching other guys play games on television.”

  I grimaced. Kept my mouth shut. The guy had lost his daughter.

  “Do that much longer,” he said, “you won’t have any other options. Maybe you could take up fishing. Stand out on the jetty every night with all those guys, got nothing else to do.”