Death Vows

by Richard Stevenson

  I said, “How come you refer to Jim and Steven as the toads? And in a tone that is, if I’m not mistaken, pejorative?”

  Radziwill said, “It’s short for ’those poisonous toads.’ Not to put too fine a point on it.”

  “Poisonous in what way?” I asked.

  “Poisonous,” Fields said, “as in malicious, bitchy, meddling and treacherous. Jim and Steven see themselves as the reigning divas of gay southern Berkshire County. They’re both snobs and control freaks.”

  “And lousy tippers,” Josh the waiter/boyfriend added.

  “Jim became wealthy collecting stock options from the corporations he flacked for,” Fields said. “He’s given a lot away to the state Republican Party – he’s got a picture on his living-room wall of him standing with an ecstatic Mitt Romney – and locally he donates to respectable but homophobic organizations like the Boy Scouts. Jim also lends money at below-market interest rates to certain friends and acquaintances in need. Except, not everyone is eligible for this service. If you’re over forty, you can pretty much forget it – Bill was the only exception to this rule that we know of. And there are conditions attached that only become apparent just before Jim cuts the check for the recipient.”

  The three looked at me with a queasy expectancy, as if my acquaintanceship with Sturdivant and Gaudios – the precise nature of which they had guessed with no trouble at all – would have clued me in on their idea of any obligatory “condition.”

  I said, “Is the condition sexual?”

  I was making a stab, having eliminated political conditions, spiritual conditions, and astrological conditions. This was based on my investigator’s knowledge of how extortion often works once you eliminate cash as the desired currency of exchange.

  Radziwill said, “Jim and Steven have a hot tub. You have to get naked and get in it with them.”

  “Don’t forget the dog,” Josh put in.

  “They have a fluffy white terrier,” Radziwill said as the other two watched me react. “You get in the hot tub with Jim and Steven and What-Not. You all drink martinis – the dog has one, too. And then the fun begins. If you want to call it that. I have to say, they do let the dog out before things really get going.”

  “I’m sure you’d never convince Rick Santorum of that,” I said, trying unsuccessfully not to visualize any of this. “But can’t people just say no, thank you?”

  “You can say that, yes,” Fields said. “But if you do – and everybody knows this – then difficulties suddenly arise with the loan. Jim says, oh, by the way, the market has gone south, and my finances are looking dicier than they did last week, and the rate on the loan will have to be half a point above the market rate instead of half a point below. At that point, the loan recipient either shuts his eyes and slides into the tub, or he heads over to Great Barrington Savings Bank to get the best deal he can.”

  “And Bill Moore… slid in?”

  “It’s how he got the down payment on his house,” Fields said. “Bill has a federal pension, but he left the government with very little in savings. He said the hot-tub experience was icky and humiliating, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as some other things he did during his years in Washington that he had no way of avoiding without jeopardizing his career and livelihood.”

  “Bill’s dick was his collateral,” Radziwill said. “The loan department won’t accept that at Great Barrington Savings Bank, so far as I know.”

  “Unless you get Arthur Homler as your loan officer,” Josh put in, and they all chuckled.

  My mind began to force to the surface shameful memories of sex I had had in earlier years for reasons other than love or fun. But I shoved these thoughts back down into their seamy cerebral storage bins. At any rate, Bill Moore seemed to be beyond an age where he would be willing to make his body available in exchange for mere money, or would even be requested to do so, no matter how humpy a forty-eight-yearold he was. Fields seemed to suggest, and perhaps this was the answer, that Moore was a man who had known deep shame previously and was more prepared than some men would be to degrade himself. Of course, another plausible explanation was, a blowjob is only a blowjob – if in fact that’s what we were talking about here.

  I said, “How much does Bill owe the toads?”

  “It’s down to around thirty-four thousand three hundred,” Fields said. “It was forty, but the front end is mostly interest. Just like it is with the banks.”

  “And you think Sturdivant and Gaudios see you and your marriage to Bill as a threat to their recovering their loan?”

  Radziwill said, “Barry is sooooo dangerous, doncha know? After all, he killed Tom Weed, didn’t he? And Jim and Steven know Barry can barely stand them. Not to put too fine a point on it.” More Texas inflections.

  “Bill must not be too crazy about Jim and Steven either,” I said.

  “He despises them.”

  This was Jim Sturdivant’s “dear friend” Fields was speaking of. So it was true. I had been had. But where to go from here? Rapid disengagement loomed.

  I said, “How many clients like Bill – if client is the right word for it – do the toads have?”

  “We know of four,” Fields said. “There may be others too embarrassed to admit they’ve been to the tub. We know of several who have respectfully declined. Or who have not so respectfully told Jim and Steven to go fuck themselves.”

  “This is highly unusual,” I said. “It’s really a weird way of getting recreational sex. If they have all this money and no one is eager to hop in the tub with the toads and their doggie, why don’t they hire call boys? Men of their background and means have been known to take this approach. Does one of the toads have a background in finance or banking or something that makes them want to get off by injecting interest rates into the sexual equation? I have to say, this is novel.”

  “Jim was a corporation mouthpiece, and Steven’s family had a couple of restaurants in Springfield, and apparently he did well on his own in banking,” Fields said. “What they do with their hot-tub operation is less about money than it is about control. It’s about making local gay men beholden to them, and about letting others know they can get away with it. It’s more a power trip than a money trip, I think.”

  If what Fields was telling me about Sturdivant and Gaudios was true – sex in a hot tub in return for discounted interest rates – there still seemed to be an important element missing, psychologically or practically. There were too many simpler, easier ways to attain both sex and social preeminence for those who sought them. There had to be more to this.

  I said, “Barry, I do understand why you’re upset about being investigated just before your wedding to Bill. It must be annoying – and embarrassing. Do you have family around here who might get wind of my nosing around about you? Family members who might be planning to attend the wedding?”

  Radziwill grew suddenly alert, but Fields just laughed. “Nice try, Don. What did the toads tell you about what I told them about my family?”

  “It has not been established,” I said, “that Sturdivant, Gaudios and I discussed you or anything about you. Perhaps I was dining with them this evening to analyze the musical pros and cons of the Tanglewood season. Levine is reported to be doing a bang-up job. I heard the Mahler was spectacular and the Mozart excellent, too. Or maybe our dinner at Pearly Gates wasn’t musical at all, and I was meeting with the toads to negotiate a loan for myself.”

  Hazel-eyed Josh, still in his waiter’s green and black getup, jumped right in. “Hey, I heard you with the toads talking about Barry and about Tom Weed’s death. And about asking around town about Barry. I wondered what it was you were talking about, but it was definitely about Barry, so don’t try to deny it.”

  They all looked at me balefully.

  “Josh,” I said, “isn’t there some high-end-restaurant protocol about customer confidentiality? You’re quite the little Aunt Blabby.”

  “And you’re quite the fucking ’stick your nose in other people’s business’
sleazy private eye asshole fucking jerk!” Fields spat out, suddenly flaring. His blue eyes blazed, and he seemed as if he might lunge at me but was working hard at controlling the impulse. Radziwill and Josh tensed and watched Fields and me somberly.

  I said, “Barry, a few hours ago I knew much less about you and your situation and relationships than I know now. Had I known earlier everything you have just told me – providing that all of your story is true and that you’re not withholding anything material – I might not have continued with my investigation. And what I’m thinking now is, I should just back off and get out of everybody’s hair here in this pleasant town. Are you reassured by that?”

  “No, I am not reassured. If you quit, those two will just hire some other cynical goon like yourself to start digging up my private life!” Fields’ face was flushed, and he leaned toward me shaking and waving a clenched fist. “My life is my life, and only I will be in control of it! Who I am and what I am is nobody’s damn business, and those two evil queens are not going to get away with this! It’s time somebody put a stop to those two, and I’m going to do it! Jim and Steven are done, they are finished, they are dead! And you, Mister Albany Private Snooper, had just better fucking get out of the way, if you know what’s good for you!”

  Getting out of the way sounded like a good idea, though I guessed rightly that it wasn’t going to be as simple as that.

  Chapter Five

  Having moved on to some routine background-checking for an Albany lawyer friend, I phoned Preston Morley in Stockbridge on Thursday morning, two days after my Great Barrington visit. I told him, “Thanks for sending the toads my way. You’re a sweetheart, Preston. I plan on returning the favor some day, so I’d advise you to be on the lookout for skunks in your garbage can or the odd moose stepping on your car. When it happens, I want you to know I was the man behind it.”

  “Donald, my friend, what’s this you say about skunks and moose and amphibians? Are we doing Carnival of the Animals? Or is it The Wizard of Oz? And instead of ‘lions and tigers and bears!’ it’s ’skunks and moose and amphibians!’ Clue me in, Donald, on the significance of these obscure literary or natural references, and then let’s see where we might go from there.”

  Morley was the resident dramaturge and a frequent director of plays at the Stockbridge Theater Festival, and a Georgetown classmate of Timmy’s. Two summers before, we had attended Morley’s wedding to David Murano, a Pittsfield elementary school teacher, an event so thrillingly emancipating that Timmy and I had considered abandoning Albany and moving thirty miles eastward to the Gay Peoples Republic of Massachusetts. That way, we too could legitimize our foul-in-the-eyes-of-the-state union and flaunt our lifestyle in Antonin Scalia’s front parlor, in the unlikely event that we should find ourselves down at Nino’s house being served prune juice with rue. It was mainly Timmy’s longtime financially rewarding and otherwise satisfying job with Assemblyman Lipshutz and both of our morbid attachments to the mauve charms of socio-political Albany that kept us where we were.

  I said to Morley, “You don’t know who I mean by the toads?”

  “I do not. Is this an Old Testament reference, Donald? If so, I should be getting it, being a Georgetown alum. Although the New Testament did receive considerably more attention at that resplendently Jesuit institution, as I recall.”

  “Didn’t you refer Jim Sturdivant and Steven Gaudios to me? They said you did.”

  “Oh, those toads.”

  “They hired me at your suggestion, Preston. That’s what they said. Thanks ever so much.”

  “God, aren’t they awful? I did run into Jim recently, and he asked if I knew of any private investigators, and before I could catch myself your name just popped out. You’re not only the only private eye I know, you’re the only one I’ve ever even heard of in this area. So maybe I was just showing off saying I knew a real-life gumshoe. I take it that your experience with Jim and Steven has not been fulfilling. If so, I do beg your forgiveness for my even mentioning your name. Go ahead. Have a moose step on my car.”

  I said, “I should have called you before I got mixed up with them. So it was my mistake. Anyway, it didn’t work out. I did a little work for them, decided I did not wish to continue in their employ, and then phoned them yesterday morning and cut myself loose. So it’s yet another lesson for me in checking out clients, especially before I check out anybody else for them.”

  “Timmy says you’ve had some doozies over the years.”

  “Most of my clients have been decent, ordinary people who have felt victimized or potentially victimized in ways where legal action was inappropriate or would have been personally awkward for one reason or another. But sometimes clients want to use investigators for their own dubious or even illegal ends. It’s a hazard of the profession. When I get one of those – and when I manage to find out in time – I provide a refund and disengage. It’s part ethical, part a matter of hanging on to my license.”

  “And were Jim and Steven crooks or just dubious types?”

  “I can’t really go into the details of what they wanted,” I said. “Suffice is to say they misrepresented themselves and they misrepresented the facts, and yesterday I suggested they drop the matter they hired me to look into.”

  Morley said, “Could a Barry Fields have been involved? Something about protection from Barry Fields? I realize you may not be in a position to answer that question.”

  What was this? “Why do you ask?” I said.

  “Because Barry Fields attacked Jim Sturdivant in a grocery store yesterday afternoon. It’s in today’s Berkshire Eagle. You don’t know about this?”

  “No. Unless it’d been a homicide or it involved a New York State elected official or his mistress or his underage boyfriend, it wouldn’t make the Albany paper. What’s the story?”

  “It happened in Guido’s, a fancy market in Great Barrington. Do you know it?”

  “Of course. People from Albany drive over to Great Barrington just to shop there.”

  “So apparently Jim and Steven were in there yesterday around two doing their shopping when they ran into Barry Fields, a local gay guy who is about as fond of them as most people are, and they got into an argument about something. Anyway, Fields ended up screaming at the toads, and he hit Jim with a wheel of cheese.”

  “Was Sturdivant hurt?”

  “Not badly, according to the paper. Not hospitalized, at any rate.”

  “Perhaps it was a fine, aromatic, soft cheese.”

  “The report didn’t say. The Eagle is not what it once was, Donald. It’s owned by a cheap chain now, and you’re lucky if they don’t spell cheese with a z. The old Eagle would have described the area in western France where the cheese originated and included a sidebar about the editor’s mother’s visit there in 1958.”

  “So was Barry Fields arrested?”

  “The altercation was broken up by store employees and bystanders, but the police were called and Fields was hauled off. There was a hearing in Southern Berkshire District Court, and Fields was released on bond and ordered to stay away from the toads. The judge probably didn’t state it exactly that way. Presumably he used their actual names.”

  “He must not have been acquainted with them.”

  “The other thing was – and this seems to me rather serious – Fields threatened to kill Sturdivant, according to some of the witnesses. Or at least to get rid of him. That’s what the witnesses said Fields said. They said he said he was going to get rid of Jim once and for all, and that people would thank him for it. Now there’s a remark that’s not going to help him if he goes on trial for assault.

  “So, Don,” Morley asked, “what can you tell me? Do you know about what’s going on here?”

  “I think I do know, but I can’t tell you, Preston. At least not until we see what’s about to leak or spew out. Do you know Fields yourself?”

  “Slightly. He lives with Bill Moore, a computer guy we once had in here to solve a box office crisis. Our computer was p
rinting tickets with the number seven in front of every word on the ticket. Bill got rid of the sevens. We never knew what he did with them. I’ve heard Moore and Fields are getting married later this month. David and I know some people who are going to the wedding.”

  “Do you know either Fields’ or Moore’s families?”

  “No. I don’t think either of them is local.”

  “How about Bud Radziwill? He’s a pal of Fields’.”

  “Oh, sure. The Kennedy cousin, so-called. So-called by Radziwill, but not by anybody else.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “The thing is, there are some actual Kennedy cousins around here, and they laugh when anybody asks them about Radziwill. He claims to be related to Lee Radziwill, the Bouvier with the Polish aristocrat ex-husband. I know somebody who dated Bud for a while several years ago, and this guy said Radziwill did seem to speak with a slight Polish accent.”

  I said, “What have you heard about the toads’ financial affairs? Anything about money-lending?”

  “Do you mean like banking?”

  “Like banking, but more informal.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. But the two do seem to be well off. Jim cleaned up, I’m sure, doing PR for defense and utilities companies, and Steven made money in investment banking, I believe. They always donate to the theater. That’s basically how I know them.”

  “Have you ever been to their house?”

  “Once, yes. They did a cocktail-party fundraiser before our annual gala. Nice place. Gorgeous big Victorian manse. Gardens, pool, hot tub. No tennis court, as I recall.”

  “Did you slide in, Preston?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you get in the hot tub with Jim and Steven?”

  A pause. “You know, Donald, I’d forgotten those stories. If you’re referring to what you seem to be referring to.”

  “I am.”

  “Well, most of the STF board was there when I was there, and twenty or thirty other theater donors. The hot tub was not being operated on that occasion. There were lovely hors d’oeuvres, I’m sure, but I expect that the snacking was limited to mushrooms with goat cheese in a light phyllo.”