Crime of Privilege: A Novel

by Walter Walker

  Chuck Larson, for all his ability to get along with people, proved surprisingly easy to manipulate.

  I wondered if that made me a worse person than I thought.

  4.

  PATTY, NOT CANDY. AS IN PEPPERMINT PATTY.

  Patty Margolis of Margolis & Associates, CPAs, Center Street, West Roxbury, Massachusetts. She was not a CPA herself. That was her husband, Nick. She was the office manager, and a notary public.

  I was there without a file, without a briefcase, without a familiar face. She thought I had come to get something notarized and gave me the welcoming smile that harried people bestow on customers whose business they really don’t care about having.

  She was in her early thirties, with a significant amount of black hair that was brushed in such a way as to add a few inches to her height. She was vaguely pretty, generously endowed on top, even more so on the bottom. I did not see her as McFetridge’s kind of pickup, but her body fit the description he had given me.

  I told her who I was and her eyes dimmed, even as she looked at my card. She asked what she could do for me, and I gave her the story about our ongoing investigation and her name just coming to our attention.

  “That wasn’t my name back then.”

  I had been expecting her to act perplexed, befuddled, confused. Why should she remember one particular night out of thirty-plus Memorial Days?

  I said I realized she had gotten married, but that’s why it had taken so long for us to locate her.

  She looked behind her. There were two inner chambers with doors, a half-dozen open cubicles, a large photocopy machine. I saw no other people, but I had the sense they were there, behind the doors, inside the cubicles. She tapped my card on the reception desk. “Let’s go outside,” she said.

  She walked around the reception desk, showing me a pair of not bad legs between wedge heels that were too high for the office and a skirt that was too short for someone with her figure. I followed her out the door to the sidewalk, where she squinted in the sunlight, studying the neighboring stores and businesses, before deciding that where she stood was as good a place as any. “All right,” she said, turning on me, poking my card into my chest, “what’s this all about? Why are you showing up at my office where my husband is?”

  “Why?” I said. “Is there something you don’t want him to know?”

  She was more than up to dealing with a little cruelty. “You know damn well what me and Leanne were doing there or you wouldn’t be asking me questions. Now, if you don’t tell me who it was who told you, you can haul my ass into court and I still won’t tell you a fucking thing. Get it?” And with that she squished the card into my chest and let it fall to the ground.

  Ms. Margolis did not look even vaguely pretty now.

  “A man named Paul McFetridge told me he met you that night.”

  “Fucked me on the beach and pushed me out the fucking door is what he did.” This was a very angry woman. “And he didn’t tell you because I never gave him anything but my first name.”

  “Ms. Margolis, who else has talked to you since then? About that night, I mean.”

  “I know goddamn well what you mean. And let me tell you, Mr. Junior District Attorney, I’ve got a deal, okay? So leave me the fuck alone or I’ll call your boss and your next job will be selling newspapers at the T-station.”

  And with that, Patty Margolis left me on the sidewalk in front of Margolis & Associates, CPAs, Center Street, West Roxbury, Massachusetts.

  5.

  “IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU?” MITCHELL WHITE WANTED to know.

  I said there wasn’t, although in truth I could have spent the better part of an hour telling him the opposite.

  “Who told you to go see that woman?”

  “Chuck, Chuck Larson.”

  “Chuck, huh? Well, I can only imagine that he sent you there so you could learn for yourself there’s no evidence to support the latest crap that Bill Telford’s throwing around.”

  “So she went ahead and called you, huh?”

  “Why would she call me?” Mitch demanded, his voice rising, his mustache flaring.

  “Because you know I talked to her and I haven’t told anyone.”

  This threw the district attorney into total discombobulation. He twisted sideways in his big rolling chair so he could put his left forearm on his ink blotter and look at me over his shoulder. “You know, this isn’t your case, my friend. Your cases are operating under the influence and petty burglaries, and until you hear different that’s all I want you working on.”

  “She told me she cut a deal.”

  “With whom?” Mitch White’s little eyes popped behind his oversized glasses. “Not with me.”

  “Oh, jeez, I knew that.”

  That seemed to temper him a bit.

  “But that leaves open the question of whom she did cut a deal with and what kind of deal she cut.” I felt a little bit like I had when I told Bonnie to throw the rope to the swimmers.

  Mitch’s eyeballs receded, but he kept me in his sight, not sure what I was going to spring on him next. I let him swirl in uncertainty for a moment, then said, “I’m thinking whoever it was had a reason for cutting that deal. I’m thinking the deal could have had something to do with seeing Heidi Telford that night.”

  “She say she saw her?”

  “Nope.” It was hard to tell if he believed me.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Nothing. But she was angry I found her.”

  “She’s not talking; there’s nothing more we can do.”

  Strange thinking, I thought, from the man with the power of a subpoena. “There’s one more person we can try,” I told him.

  Mitch’s fingers were conducting a drumbeat on the pad. He was still sitting sideways. He hadn’t blinked in an extraordinarily long time. Now he looked as though he wasn’t planning on speaking again, ever. I helped him out.

  “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 nobody 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 butt against my desk. She was wearing a sand-colored top that at first I thought was a T-shirt, 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-shirt 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.

  1.

  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 relationship 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 asserted physical mastery we could move on to convivialities. He was wearing a gray T-shirt with a faded insignia over his heart that said Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. The T-shirt 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 assumed 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 pass 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.”

  “Screwing 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 relationship 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 Washington. 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 Berkshires? 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 damn 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 soirées.”

  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?”