Death Vows

by Richard Stevenson

  “I hear where you’re coming from, Strachey.”

  “Yeah, and…?”

  “We’ll have to talk.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow – say, lunch? But meanwhile, Barry’s being arraigned at nine in the morning in Southern Berkshire District Court. Can you be there?”

  “I can. But let’s us get together sooner. I need clarity – clarity and honesty and the truth about all of you – if I am to be at all helpful to you and to Barry. Do you get what I’m saying? Can I make it any clearer?”

  “I have to work tonight. I’m behind on an installation job I should have finished today, and I’ll be at the Lenox High School until late tonight. But I’ll see you at the arraignment, and then we’ll have lunch, and I’ll fill you in on a few things. These are things that won’t be helpful in clearing Barry. But if telling you these things relieves your mind, then it’ll be worth it. Deal?”

  Now what game was he playing? “Sure.”

  Moore said, “I just talked to Ramona Furst, Barry’s lawyer on the assault charge, and she’s agreed to represent him on the murder charge too. She’s sure she can get Barry out, though the bail could be high. Ramona’s good. You’ll need to talk to her. She knows about you and is pleased that you’re on the team.”

  I said, “Oh, there’s a team? So far, everybody in this town I’ve met seems to be a rugged individualist. It’s hot-dogger heaven here. I’m awfully glad that’s about to change.”

  Moore said he had to get to the high school and would see me in the morning, and then he was gone.

  I thought about dropping in on Myra Greene again to see what more I could pry out of her, now that she had been revealed as a dissembler and possible felon. But I had appointments with Radziwill and, later, with two of the hot-tub borrowers, so I walked up the hill to Radziwill’s apartment and phoned Timmy as I went.

  I told him I would be home late and that I’d be heading back over to Great Barrington first thing in the morning. I gave him a quick rundown on the cunning liars on whose behalf I was working and on how confused and disgusted I was.

  Timmy said, “If they’re all so treacherous and underhanded, how come they hired you? They must know that you are reputed to be competent. On that score, word is out.”

  “Timothy, may I quote you to the Better Business Bureau the next time anybody complains that I’m a screw-up and a con artist?”

  “Yes, you can quote me to the Better Business Bureau, the Vatican, and Ellen DeGeneres, too. That’s how much I think of your abilities.”

  “The thing is, these people all seem to want to have it both ways – have somebody on the job who’s competent about clearing Fields but incompetent about knowing them and who they are and what they’re up to. I keep telling them it can’t work that way.”

  Timmy said, “Maybe they’re using you for reasons that will remain unclear until it’s too late and you’re up to your neck in something heinous and criminal.”

  “That has occurred to me.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I’m doing my best.”

  “Somebody’s already gotten killed in this.”

  “And hit with a wheel of cheese first.”

  “Try to avoid both, Donald. Though if you have to choose…”

  “Are you going to quote St. Augustine to me again, Timothy?”

  “No, I was going to quote my Aunt Moira. ‘Keep your priorities as straight as your lipstick.’ I heard her say that to my mother one time when I was a kid. It’s a bit of Callahan-family wisdom that has always stuck with me.”

  “But she never said it directly to you?”

  “No, but later on she must have been tempted. It’s what they were all thinking.”

  “Well, I’ll keep my priorities as straight as Aunt Moira’s lipstick, and I’ll come home to you un-dead but perhaps smelling vaguely of an overripe Camembert.”

  “I’ll keep my receptors cleansed.”

  “And you might want to open a window.”

  Radziwill had just gotten home from work at Barrington Video and was waiting for me. He opened the door as soon as I buzzed. Josh the waiter/boyfriend had left for work at Pearly Gates, so we were alone in the apartment. Lanky and barefooted in jeans and a T-shirt, Radziwill was confusing to look at with the long tattoo on his forearm with the image of a long arm with an open hand at the end of it. I wondered if he had a picture of an erection on his penis, but asking could have been misconstrued.

  Radziwill was tenser than he had been two days earlier and asked if I minded if he smoked a joint, and I said fine. He said he rarely smoked anymore, but he was upset that Barry was in custody. Radziwill had called the lockup, and the cops wouldn’t let anyone but his lawyer visit the suspected murderer.

  I said, “Were you surprised that Barry was hiding here in Great Barrington?”

  He gave me an ironic oh, honey! look and said, “Suhpraaahzed?”

  “Yeah, I figured he was here, and you and probably dozens of others knew it – hundreds, maybe – and I was being kept in the dark for no apparent reason. What was that about?”

  Radziwill sucked on his weed. “Barry said don’t tell you till you showed you were really on his side. He’s still not entirely convinced you aren’t reporting to his family. It was my idea to hire you, ‘cause you seem okay to me. I’m a more trusting person than Barry is. And Bill checked you out, and you have creds.”

  “And who is this family of Barry’s he thinks I might be in cahoots with?”

  “They are baaaad.”

  “And who and where are these bad people?”

  “I’m sorry, Donald, but Barry would have to tell you that. And I don’t think he will. It’s the one thing he is really pathological about. But you don’t need to know; I can promise you that. You can take my word for it, though, that Barry’s family is moooocho trouble.”

  I looked at him hard and said, “You know, Bud, you don’t talk like the other Kennedys. Is that because you’re from the Polish branch?”

  Now he laughed. “That’s all bullshit.”

  “Do tell.”

  He was shaking with mirth. “I made up the name and all that Kennedy hooey.”

  “It’s my impression hardly anybody believed it.”

  “I know that. I’m not stupid. But I come from a family of conservative wing-nuts who all hate the Kennedys. So when I left that life behind, it seemed like it would be fun to stick it to them – especially my grandfather – by seeming to become everything they despised. Of course, they don’t know about it.”

  “Why haven’t you told them?”

  “Because,” Radziwill said grimly, “I don’t want to have anything to do with any of them ever again. To say they hate gay people is putting it maaaahldly. I have a new, good life now, and the hell with all of those sad, wretched people.”

  “Who’s your grandfather, Bud? Anybody I’d know?”

  He just laughed and took another toke.

  I said, “And is Barry’s story similar?”

  Radziwill nodded. “Similar but not the same. His story is a whole lot more complicated. Maybe he’ll tell you about it when this is all over. Or maybe he won’t. It’s a real horror, and Barry just wants to forget it if he can. Ya know, you and Ramona Furst really have to get Barry out of this totally dumb murder charge thing. It’s just so… so stupid.”

  “I’m trying,” I said. “I’d work faster and better if everybody was honest with me, the way you’ve started to be. What about Bill Moore? Is his story like yours and Barry’s – fleeing an impossible family situation?”

  Radziwill looked puzzled. “No, why? I mean, I don’t think so.”

  “I’m told that Bill is a depressive man with a problematical past.”

  “Yeah, Bill gets depressed,” Radziwill said. “But I’m not sure why. It might be something to do with when he worked for the government. I think maybe he was doing some kind of secret government work, and maybe he had to do some stuff he’s ashamed of. Barry never told
me about it. He just said don’t ask. But I don’t think it was family stuff like me and Barry. Bill’s a good guy, though, and he and Barry are a good pair. It’s great that they’re getting married. Where I come from, I never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Where did you come from, Bud?”

  “Out west. I guess you can tell.”

  “ Texas?”

  He laughed and shrugged off the question.

  “And where did you get the fake IDs? You and Barry?”

  He chortled again. “Ain’t sayin’.”

  “Okay then, Bud. Or whatever your name is.”

  “It actually is Bud. Anyways, that’s what I’ve always been called. I have a real first name, too.”

  “And is Barry’s name really Barry?”

  “Noop.”

  “What is it?”

  “Ask him. But don’t hold your breath waiting for a straight answer.”

  “Okay, Bud’s-your-real-name. How about this? If Barry didn’t kill Jim Sturdivant, who might have? Any ideas?”

  Another toke. Radziwill was relaxing now, and I was afraid he would unhelpfully drift away. He said, “Tons of people couldn’t stand Jim. But actually kill the guy? Jeezum!”

  “Sturdivant traded favorable loan terms for sex. Did he work any other scams you’re aware of?”

  “Not that I know of. I wouldn’t know. I never liked the toads, and they never liked me. They’re both a couple of phonies. Were, in Jim’s case.”

  “What was phony about them that put you off?”

  I though Radziwill would talk about the way the toads put on airs and patronized people, but that wasn’t it. “Being an imposter myself, I know one when I see one. Those two are fakes from the word go. Especially Jim. He wasn’t who he started out to be, I don’t think.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “They tried too hard. They were both always playing a part. And I heard once that Sturdivant isn’t Jim’s real name. Or he had it legally changed.”

  “From what?”

  “Dunno. Older people from Pittsfield might know. That’s where Jim was from.”

  I said, “His obituary will be in tomorrow’s paper. That’ll have the accurate basic details of his life, we can safely assume.”

  Radziwill said, “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I met two of the hot-tub borrowers separately after a burger at the Union Bar and Grill on Main Street, and neither was helpful. Mark Berkowicz said the conditions of his car loan from Sturdivant were somewhat embarrassing, but that was all. He was not angry and said he didn’t know of anyone else among the borrowers – he supplied an additional name – who might be upset enough with Sturdivant to become violent. Ernest Graves, a comely, sloe-eyed man in his thirties, wasn’t even embarrassed by the loan conditions. He likened his multiple hot tub visits to getting a free set of champagne glasses from a bank.

  I reached the three other borrowers by phone, and two – Jerry Treece and George Santiago – agreed to meet me the next day. The other, Lewis Bushmeyer, refused to see me and demanded to know who had given me his name. I said Bill Moore, and Bushmeyer hung up on me. He seemed not to want to be associated with the fiancé of a murder suspect, and in similar circumstances neither would I.

  I was home in Albany by eleven, fell into bed with Timmy, laughed at Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, slept uneasily, and dreamed of Batman.

  Friday morning, I deposited Bill Moore’s check first thing at my bank’s neighborhood ATM. I was back in Great Barrington at 7:30 and scanned the Berkshire Eagle at a Main Street coffee shop. The Sturdivant murder took up much of the front page, and accompanying the story was a photo of Sturdivant in the company of musicians and officials at Berkshire Opera, one of several arts organizations Sturdivant donated money to. The article told me no more about the crime itself than what I had learned from Trooper Toomey. It said Barry Fields, assistant manager of the Triplex Cinema, had assaulted Sturdivant in Guido’s on Wednesday, was now in custody, and was expected to be charged with the fatal shooting that came several hours after the attack in the market. Police said they were uncertain of motive. There was no photo of Fields.

  The Eagle’s other front-page story – no Darfur, no Iraq – was WILD RIDE FOR MISSY, about a hamster that had survived a journey down the Taliaferro family’s malfunctioning garbage disposal. There was an immense photo of the grinning Taliaferros patting a mangled Missy, plus a sidebar story called LUCKY BREAK OR DIVINE INTERVENTION? DO HAMSTERS HAVE SOULS? WHAT DO YOU THINK? I recalled Preston Morley’s comment that the now-chain-owned Eagle had seen better days.

  The homicide story provided little personal information about Sturdivant – Steven Gaudios was referred to as Sturdivant’s “roommate” – so I located the obituary page in the B section, where Sturdivant got plenty of ink. His corporate career was outlined at length, as was his history as a supporter of conventional good causes. Personal information was sparser. Born in 1939 in Pittsfield, Sturdivant was the son of Anne Marie and the late Melvin Sturdivant. The only survivors listed besides his mother were a sister, Rose Dailey, of Worcestor, and a brother, Michael Sturdivant, of

  Providence, Rhode Island. Steven Gaudios did not make the cut as a survivor.

  There would be no funeral-home calling hours, the paper said, and a private Liturgy of Christian Burial would take place at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Pittsfield on Monday at ten, followed by burial in St. Joseph ’s Cemetery. Whoever had supplied the obit data to the Eagle – probably a family member via the funeral home – had been careful to offer up only the public persona Jim Sturdivant had cultivated and approved of for himself. His public image in death was largely one-dimensional, as it had been in life.

  I got directions at the coffee shop – MapQuest would have routed me through New Hampshire – and drove over to Southern Berkshire District Court. The building was an old schoolhouse behind a cemetery. The courtroom was what once had been an elementary school classroom, making it feel like a place for dealing not so much with the felonious as the naughty.

  The room’s more serious purpose was evident, though, in the manner of the clerks, guards and other attendants, who comported themselves with the gravity appropriate to a murder case. Even the gang at the press table looked less nonchalant than usual. The small courtroom quickly filled up, and I was lucky to find a seat next to Bud Radziwill and his boyfriend, Josh.

  “Where’s Bill?” Radziwill said.

  “Bill Moore?”

  “He’s not here, and I thought he might be with you.”

  “He’s not.”

  At ten to nine, a comely, auburn-haired woman in a dark suit and a briefcase that made her list to the right strode in accompanied by a younger woman with her own leather satchel, and they headed for the defense table.

  “That’s Ramona,” Radziwill said. “She’ll give Thorny a run for his money. What a jerk he is. This is the DA who once indicted an old lady in Stockbridge for breaking wind in church.”

  I said, “Was she convicted?”

  But Radziwill’s attention was now focused on the arrival of the man himself. Thorne Cornwallis and his entourage entered the back of the room with the thuggish invincibility of a presidential convoy of black SUVs, though in fact it was just four guys in dark suits. Cornwallis was a squat man with cold gray eyes and a bad hairpiece, who looked as if he might be happiest standing on a concrete balcony watching his ICBMs roll by. His claque stood while he seated himself at the prosecutor’s table. One of them opened the DA’s water bottle, then screwed the cap back on lightly.

  Barry Fields was led in by two bailiffs. He was wearing his own clothes, but he was shackled and seemed dazed. He did not look at us or anyone else in the room, but as Fields eased into a seat beside Ramona Furst, he suddenly came to life and began to talk animatedly to his lawyer. Furst listened and then wrote rapidly on a pad.

  Trooper Toomey ambled in and joined the prosecutors. I asked Radziwill who the other suits were
beside and behind Cornwallis, but he didn’t know. One, he thought, must be an assistant DA, and the others were “CPCU guys.” Radziwill said the CPCU was the DA’s investigative arm, the Crime Prevention and Control Unit. He said, “It sounds East German, but they’re local.”

  Just after nine, Judge John B. Groesbeck made the Mamelike entrance that protocol required, casually instructed everyone to have a seat, and got down to business. Cornwallis was the first to speak, and said the commonwealth was charging Barry Fields with first-degree murder. Cornwallis larded his gaudy presentation with inflammatory adjectives – he called the crime heinous but pronounced it heen-ee-us – and reeled off the awful events we had all heard about. He offered no additional evidence, however, that Fields was the shooter. It was all circumstantial and centered on the assault in Guido’s, Fields’ lack of an alibi that night, and then his running away and hiding.

  Fields sat stiffly through the accusations and didn’t visibly react until Cornwallis said, “Your honor, given the brutal nature of the crime, the commonwealth is asking for a dangerousness hearing in order to show that Mr. Fields should remain in custody until trial.”

  At this, Fields leaped to his feet and shouted, “Judge, there’s a harmless old lady back there in shackles!”

  Furst tugged at Fields’ arm to get him to sit down and shut up, but by then the bailiffs were moving toward him fast.

  Fields ignored them and continued to shout. “Myra Greene is eighty-nine years old! They’ve got her back there in chains! I don’t care what you do with me, but…”

  Judge Groesbeck was instructing Fields to sit down, his lawyer was standing now and pleading with him to cooperate, and the bailiffs had Fields by the arms and were struggling with him and glancing at the judge for guidance.

  Cornwallis threw up his hands and said, “Need I say more? This unstable man must not be released on bond.”

  “He’s going to indict Myra!” Fields yelled. “Judge, you know Myra! This is insane!”

  A grim-faced middle-aged man in horn-rimmed glasses, Judge Groesbeck banged his gavel repeatedly, and when Fields refused again to be seated, the judge ordered the bailiffs to take him back to the lockup. Fields was led away, not resisting, but still shouting about Myra Greene’s incarceration.