Death Vows

by Richard Stevenson

  I said, “Are you from the Berkshires, Jerry?”

  He smiled. “Nope. I grew up in Batavia, New York. Would I have come out there? Noooo way. I was too much of a coward. People who come out in their hometowns are the bravest people in the world. But I’m not one of them. Were you, Donald?”

  “Nah.”

  “It’s never too late.”

  “Yeah, it is. Anyway, I’m from New Jersey, where the ex-governor recently did all the coming out the state will be needing for the next several decades.”

  “Yeah, I read about that.”

  “How could you not have?”

  Treece asked, “When did you come out, Donald?”

  “At Rutgers. It was more of a semi-coming-out. Then I found myself in an official capacity in Saigon – that’s a large city in Southeast Asia that’s since been re-named.”

  “Yeah, I’ve read about that, too,” Treece said.

  “And I went pretty far back into the closet again. Army Intelligence is not the best place to raise the rainbow banner. I sneaked around a little, formed no real attachments, survived the war, got out of the Army, soon fell in love with a fine woman in the antiwar movement, was married for a while, then figured out who I really was, and started getting it right fast.”

  “And became a grown-up.”

  “Often a bumbling one, but a grown-up.”

  “Have you got a honey?” Treece asked.

  “You bet. Timothy Callahan and I have been together for a thousand years, though it doesn’t feel like more than a hundred and fifty. We’re as comfy and nuts about each other as Al and Tipper Gore. Of course, we have had our Bill and Hillary moments. I will say, he never hit me over the head with a lamp, even when I had it coming. Those early conflicts were over differing sexual mores, as is often the case with both homosexuals and heterosexuals, pertaining mainly to monogamy versus a little variety. Over the years we’ve hit a happy medium in that department. Now we both go to Paris twice a year and join the over-forty grope at the Odessa Baths, and that pretty much takes care of that biological imperative. There are annoyances and roll-your-eyes or even clutch-your-head differences, of course, but all within the normal range. We’re a really interesting many-celled organism, the two of us. And terribly lucky to have found each other. We’ve got exactly the kind of marriage the anti-gay religious right says is needed for social stability, proving that they are full of slit. We’re both proud of that.”

  Treece said, “Jeez, it sounds just like Greg and me. Except we haven’t been together for a thousand years. Just five.”

  “Mazel tov. Together may you live to be a hundred.”

  “Are you Jewish?” Treece said.

  “No, I was raised Presbyterian. So maybe I should just say, ‘Oh, go ahead and have a second lump of sugar with your Earl Grey tea, boys.’”

  “Yeah, well, I was raised Baptist,” Treece said, “and what the Baptists have in mind for me is a big lump of hellfire. Greg and I attend the Church of Christ in Lenox, which is open and affirming. That’s where we had our union. You know, I saw in the Eagle that Jim’s funeral will be in a Catholic church in Pittsfield. But Steven wasn’t mentioned at all. It looks like Jim’s family snatched him back from his world of sin and corruption. That must be terrible for Steven. Do you think that’s why he’s calling in the loans? Maybe being around Berkshire County is now so painful for Steven that he’s cutting his ties and just running away.”

  I said, “Possibly. If so, I should ask him what his plans are.”

  “So, you don’t think Barry Fields shot Jim?”

  “No, I doubt it.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. He’s tense, but a good guy, I’ve always thought. So, who the hell would want to shoot Jim? He was obnoxious but basically harmless. Steven’s saying it was Barry. But if it wasn’t, I wonder if Steven knows a lot more than he’s letting on.”

  “Me too.”

  I drove down to Sheffield, and there it was: a Realtor’s For Sale sign on Gaudios’s lawn. It felt precipitous and strange. Sturdivant had been dead for less than forty-eight hours, and Gaudios was not just cutting his ties, but erasing his past, remaking his life.

  The crime-scene tape was gone now, as well as the cop cars and reporters, and in the soft late-summer sunlight the big house looked serene, even inviting. The Beemer convertible was parked in the driveway, and I pulled in behind it. A light breeze rattled a few leaves off the maples, which were already starting to turn. The lawn had been freshly mowed, probably at the suggestion of the real estate agent, who would surely want all the cosmetics to be just right to help compensate for any remaining bloodstains.

  Knocking on the front door, where Sturdivant had been gunned down, would have felt not just disrespectful but creepy, so I walked around back. The pool and hot tub were deserted. I walked noisily up the back porch wooden steps – I didn’t want to startle anybody – and rapped energetically on the screen door. I could see into the kitchen, with its gleaming appliances and a fruit basket with a ribbon around it resting on a granite counter.

  Gaudios soon appeared, in crisp slacks and a beige polo shirt bearing its manufacturer’s insignia, a small creature that might have been a toad but probably wasn’t. Gaudios did not look glad to see me.

  “Oh, Donald, why do you keep tormenting me? What do you want this time? Haven’t you caused me enough heartache already? Really!”

  “I’m here with condolences, Steven. I saw that you weren’t mentioned in Jim’s obituary. That stinks.”

  He made no move to open the screen door, and said glumly, “Oh, that’s no problem, no problem at all.” He seemed about to add something and then thought better of it.

  “So the funeral’s Monday?” I asked.

  Gaudios’s face tightened. “Yes. It is. Now, thank you for your condolences, Donald, but I have a lot on my mind and a ton of stuff to do, none of it the least bit pleasant.”

  “Will you be going to the funeral?”

  At that, Gaudios suddenly trembled, burst into tears, and turned quickly away.

  I opened the door, and when Gaudios did not object, I followed him to the kitchen table, where he slumped in a chair, still crying. I took a seat across from him and waited while he uncapped a prescription container, extracted a small white pill with a shaky hand, and popped it into his mouth.

  “Would you like some water?” I said.

  He shook his head no and gulped the pill down. He seemed well practiced at this.

  I said, “So it looks like you’ve been shut out. That’s really rotten.”

  He snuffled some more and said, “We buried What-Not today. Nell Craigy and two of the girls in the bridge club dug a hole ourselves and put him in it out behind the rhubarb.”

  “Ah.” I wondered about the next owner’s cobbler. “Is his grave marked?”

  “No.”

  “But you seem to be planning to move.”

  Gaudios nodded. “The house is on the market. I can’t live here without Jim. I just walk around the house all day looking for him. I can’t go near the front door, because I’m afraid I’ll find him there on the floor all over again, covered with blood. I can’t sleep because I keep waiting for him to come home, hoping he’s all right. I have to get out of here as soon as possible. I’ll go to our place in Palm Springs for now, for the time being…”

  “So, you have a house in Palm Springs. That’s nice. Any others?”

  “We have pieds-à-terre in New York and Paris. I’m selling them all, though. I may pick up something in Fort Lauderdale until I decide what to do.”

  I said, “You and Jim did well financially, it seems. Are you retired, too?”

  “Yes, for some years.”

  “What did you do, Steven?”

  Gaudios wiped his eyes with a cloth napkin. He said, “Consulting, for the most part.”

  “What did you consult about?”

  “Ha! You name it.”

  “Like what? Mineral extraction? Dandruff control? Past-life regressi
on therapy?”

  Now he was looking impatient. “Mostly financial services,” Gaudios said and looked at his watch. “Oh, God, where has the day gone?”

  “I know you’ve called in some personal loans,” I said. “Loans with acquaintances in this area.” He looked at me hard. “I’m trying to determine if any of the borrowers might have been involved in Jim’s murder.”

  “That is absurd!”

  “I have five names.” I rattled them off. “Were there others?”

  “You are barking up the wrong tree, Donald. Yes, Jim and I lent money to a number of friends over the years as personal favors. But that has nothing to do with anything, I can assure you. I know you’re determined to get Barry Fields exonerated. But you won’t because you can’t, and you can’t because he is an angry young man who lost control and let his hatred spew out, and he killed Jim over… over nothing!”

  “Why,” I asked, “did you and Jim hire me to investigate Fields? You both told me it was to keep your dear friend Bill Moore from making a terrible mistake by marrying Fields. But Moore doesn’t consider either of you dear friends. He thinks of your actions as outrageous butting in where you don’t belong.”

  Gaudios considered this and reddened. I thought, Good grief, he may be about to say something truthful.

  He said, “The thing was, Jim didn’t like Barry.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “He offended his mother.”

  “His mother?”

  “Jim’s mother and brother were at the Triplex one time seeing Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith. Anne Marie is hard of hearing, and Michael was telling her what the movie was about. Somebody complained about them talking, and Barry came in and told them to keep it down. He was extremely rude in the way he went about it, apparently. Anne Marie told him she couldn’t understand the movie without Michael explaining everything, and how was she supposed to enjoy the movie? Barry told them they were disturbing the other patrons, and he’d give them their money back and they’d have to leave. They thought that was unreasonable – they wanted to see how the story turned out – and they refused to go. Barry lost his famous temper, and he grabbed Michael by the arm, and Anne Marie swung her handbag at him. Somebody called nine-one-one on a cell phone and yelled that the police were on their way. Anne Marie and Michael were humiliated and furious, but not wanting to be in the middle of something that would end up in the Eagle, they left. Without even getting the refund they had coming, Anne Marie said.”

  They disturbed people while watching Star Wars? So it wasn’t even The Seventh Seal.

  I said, “Did Barry know the yackers were Jim’s mother and brother?”

  “No, there’s was no point in telling him. Michael and Anne Marie wanted to let it go. They don’t like to make a fuss.”

  “And that was the beginning of some grudge by Jim against Fields?”

  “Well,” Gaudios said, “Barry was known to be some kind of weird character. He made up stories about his past – all that BS about Colorado – and he hung around with that annoying Bud Radziwill. Kennedy cousin, my ass! If Jackie O ever met Bud Radziwill, she’d have him arrested for impersonating a Radziwill.”

  “Is that a crime in Massachusetts?”

  “Now you look here,” Gaudios snapped. “I’ve had just about enough of your smart-ass meddling and insinuations and following me around! I’ve lived a life of law-abiding taste and elegance, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll go back to seedy old Albany and leave us alone to worry about our own problems. Thorne Cornwallis is a man not to be trifled with, and if you get in his way in this, he’ll take you apart. Thorne is going to put Barry Fields in Walpole, where he belongs, and if you don’t watch your step, you’re liable to end up there, also. Now, I’ve got stuff to do, so please, Donald, take your ugly accusations and just get the frig out of here.”

  I said, “I didn’t accuse you of anything, Steven. Should I have?”

  He stood up, stalked to the door, and held it open for me. “Just please go!”

  I went.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I checked my cell phone to see if Bill Moore had called, but he had not. I was meeting George Santiago, one of the other borrowers, at five, so I headed back toward downtown Great Barrington. I reached Ramona Furst on her cell and asked her if I could visit Fields in jail over the weekend, and she said she would set it up. We made a plan for dinner at eight at an Indian place she said was good.

  As I drove up Route 7, I tried calling Lewis Bushmeyer again. The hot-tub borrower who had hung up on me the first time I called was now willing to talk, and he was still angry and upset, but this time not at me.

  “Did you say you’re working for Barry Fields?” he said.

  “I am.”

  “And not for Steven Gaudios?”

  “No. Gaudios thinks Barry shot Jim Sturdivant. Or says that’s what he thinks, anyway.”

  “Are you aware that Steven called in my loan? And probably other people’s, too?”

  “I heard that, yes.”

  Bushmeyer said in a shaky voice, “I don’t happen to have access to four thousand dollars. And my credit is all shot to hell. I can’t go to any commercial lender.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “I told Steven this, and do you know what he said?”

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘Just. Get. The. Money.’”

  “So, he was not sympathetic.”

  “He said – it’s hard to believe this – but Steven said, ‘How would you like to have both your legs broken?’ Can you believe it?”

  I said, “That’s not very tasteful and elegant.”

  “Tasteful and elegant? He talked to me like he was some fucking gangster.”

  I assured Bushmeyer that I was not a party to any of this and said, “I know of five borrowers.” I named them. “Do you know of any others?”

  “No, I don’t. And I didn’t know Bill Moore borrowed money from Jim and Steven,” Bushmeyer said. “I thought Bill didn’t much like Jim and Steven. And I know Barry couldn’t stand them. He always referred to them as the toads. In fact, that name kind of caught on.”

  “It’s my impression that nobody was crazy about Jim and Steven, but their charitable largesse and their generous loan terms won them a certain amount of deference and even social standing.”

  “People put up with them,” Bushmeyer said. “They were part of the scenery in gay Berkshire County. But really an embarrassment to everybody.”

  I said, “So, speaking of embarrassments – did you visit the hot tub in order to procure your loan, Lewis? I am not one to judge. I’m just fact-gathering.”

  There was a long pause. “It was humiliating.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I am twenty-five years old and extremely handsome, and I am very particular about who I have sex with.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I have very beautiful genitals, men say.”

  “That, too. Or, those.”

  “And I gave myself over to those two – for money. If my credit had been better, none of this would ever have happened. I am so ashamed. And now I’m paying for my misdeed.”

  “Good luck getting the money together. But four thousand is not as bad as it could have been.”

  Bushmeyer said, “You don’t have any extra, do you? You sound like somebody I wouldn’t be so embarrassed to get into a hot tub with.”

  “I’m not easily embarrassed, either. But I’m afraid I’m not in a position to be helpful, Lewis.”

  “Then just – just fuck you!” he yelled at me and rang off.

  Financial pressures can lead to both recklessness and rudeness, and my heart went out.

  I phoned Timmy at his office and described my varied day: Barry Fields’ arraignment and his outburst over Myra Greene’s needless incarceration by the hard-ass DA; Joe Toomey’s warning not to mess with Thorne Cornwallis; Jean Watrous’s indignation over my description of Bill Moore as an assassin, after he had run o
ff to Washington or elsewhere for unknown reasons; Jerry Treece’s revelation that all the loans were being called in, as well as his description of Pittsfield, the city where Sturdivant grew up and in which he was still closeted, as a “gay pit of shame”; Steven Gaudios’s distress over being shut out of the funeral and other final rites for the man to whom he had been effectively wed for forty-six years, as well as Gaudios’s goofy story about bad blood over Fields offending Jim’s mother by asking her to pipe down during Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith; and Lewis Bushmeyer’s report on (a) the beauty of his own genitalia and, arguably more importantly, (b) Gaudios’s threat to have Bushmeyer’s legs broken if he didn’t pay up.

  Timmy said, “Were there just the five borrowers?”

  “I still don’t know.”

  “Maybe there were others, and their loans were called in earlier in the week. And one of them who couldn’t pay freaked out and decided to get rid of Sturdivant.”

  “But,” I said, “the loans I know about weren’t called in until after Sturdivant was killed, and apparently as a result of his death.”

  Timmy said, “Well, Donald, I’d say ‘apparently’ is the operative word there.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “you should come over here and tell me what to think and what to do. And then I can wrap this up in no more than ten minutes.”

  No reply. I could hear his breathing and smell his Colgate breath.

  I said, “Oh, yes. Yes, I am frustrated, and yes, I am pissed off.”

  “But you’re not frustrated with me, are you? Or pissed off?”

  “Nuh uh.”

  “Should I come over after work?”

  “Yes. Come for the weekend. Bring me some clothes and my toothbrush and things, will you?”

  “Okay. I’ll help if I can. But don’t snap at me if things don’t go your way. I’m not the problem here.”