Cornwallis almost smiled. He said, “What you apparently are not aware of, Mr. Strachey, is that Bill Moore happened to like getting into the Sturdivant-Gaudios hot tub. He did not visit it just once. He liked it, and he went back again and again. In fact, he visited the tub twice a week right up until the night of Jim Sturdivant’s death, on nights when Fields was at work at the Triplex movie house. Steven Gaudios will testify to that fact also.”
Gaudios. He was very deliberately framing Barry Fields, as if he knew who Sturdivant’s killer was and was desperate to deflect attention. Why?
I said, “Gaudios is lying.”
“I have no reason to believe so.”
“He told you Bill Moore was in the hot tub on the night of the murder? Not so. Moore was working on a computer job in Springfield. I’m sure that can be checked out. Anyway, how would Gaudios know who was there that night? He was off playing bridge somewhere.”
“Well, Gaudios didn’t say Moore was there that night. But on recent nights he had been. That is nights plural.”
I said, “You’re being conned. You’re so ready to believe that no man would ever turn down a blowjob when offered one – a conviction more commonly held by straight men than gays, I do believe – that you have been suckered into this horseshit story of Gaudios’s. You apparently believe that all gay men ever think about is dick, when in point of hard fact many of us have a variety of other interests.”
He peered at me confusedly. “You’re gay too?” My impulse was to bat my eyelashes, but I just nodded. “I have no problem with gays,” Cornwallis said.
“Peachy.”
“I have a lesbian on my staff.”
“You’re so advanced.”
“I’m not asking to be congratulated.”
“I’m relieved.”
“I happen not to agree with the church on homosexuality. We’re all sinners, but this ’disordered’ stuff is crap. I also know, however, that men do terrible things because of their sexual impulses. It’s not a gay thing. It’s a man thing. Gay men just happen to have more opportunities to fuck around and get in trouble and lose control of their emotions. The Sturdivant case is plainly one of those situations. It has crazed sexual jealousy written all over it. You’re deluding yourself, Mr. Strachey, to believe otherwise.”
Cornwallis was in love with a stereotype, and there was nothing I could do about it. To him this case was a simple queen-out-turned-violent, and he was stuck on that and not about to get unstuck. And it wasn’t as though his version of events would have been unprecedented. The murderously jealous queen stereotype had some basis in fact. But it happened rarely – never in all my years of PI experience – and the theory was all wrong here.
I said, “I’m going to prove you’re mistaken, Mr. Cornwallis. I’m going to ask you for some information about organized crime in Berkshire County and some names of people I can talk to about what’s going on currently, mob-activity-wise. And you’re going to give me that information just to watch me make a fool of myself. But then I’m going to surprise you and use this information and these contacts to find out who really killed Jim Sturdivant. And then you’re going to thank me profusely and eat shit.”
Cornwallis did not laugh uproariously at me, as I would have. He smirked. “Now there’s an offer only a total dickhead could refuse. Sure, I’ll point you in the direction of knowledgeable people. But if you lose a mouthful of teeth or get into a situation that ends up with organ failure, don’t come whining to me.”
Now he was relaxed and enjoying me. Cornwallis had hated me only minutes earlier, but now I was giving him huge pleasure. I couldn’t wait to tell the guys back on Gordon
Street that I had won over the fearsome Berkshire County district attorney.
Cornwallis consulted his computer while I waited and looked out the window. I watched a couple of three-car rollovers down on hectic Park Square, and some antiwar activists waving signs that read Honk If You’re for Peace. The din was intermittent.
Soon Cornwallis wrote three names and phone numbers on a slip of paper and handed it across his desk to me.
He said, “You can say these referrals came from me, but I’m not sure how forthcoming any of these people will be.” Then Cornwallis grinned – I didn’t know he knew how – and said, “Don’t hurt yourself now.”
Chapter Nineteen
Back in my car, parked on a side street near the Crowne Plaza Hotel, I phoned the numbers Cornwallis had given me. At one number, I got the voicemail of Johnny Montarsi and chose not to leave a message but to try him later. The second number was answered by the name Cornwallis had written down, Daniel Travio, but when I explained who I was and why I was calling, Travio told me to fuck off and hung up. Thorne Cornwallis’s name was not yet working its magic.
Then I reached Tom O’Toole on his cell. Here was a last name with the vowel on the wrong end – had he changed it from Alioto? – which just went to show how thoroughly the forces of ethnic dilution and integration in America had done their job in recent decades. O’Toole said he was at that moment watching the Red Sox-Yankees game at an East Pittsfield bar, but the game was going badly and why didn’t I drive over and distract him from the disaster?
G’s Place was on Newell Street, near the now all-butabandoned General Electric plant. The sports field across from the bar appeared shiny and new and looked like one of those let’s-make-the-best-of-it civic projects where kids cavort above residues of toxic waste. The bar had the worn but durable feeling that’s so appreciated in working-class neighborhoods where there isn’t much work anymore. The place was nearly empty on this late summer Saturday afternoon, and I had no trouble locating O’Toole where he said he would be, on a barstool under the flat-screen TV, which as I came in showed a Sox batter chopping air.
“I’m Don Strachey.”
“Tom O’Toole. Brew?”
“Sam Adams.”
O’Toole sent an invisible message to the bartender, who produced a bottle and moved back down the bar.
“Thorne Cornwallis sent you over here? I haven’t laid eyes on Thorny since he sent my brother-in-law Vincent to Cedar Junction four years ago.”
“What’s that, a camp for the performing arts?”
“Nuh uh. A penitentiary. Used to be called Walpole.”
“Ah.”
He must have weighed 300 pounds. He was in brown work pants whose contents spilled over the barstool like the great Boston molasses flood. His dark green T-shirt was fresh and clean and had the number 74 stenciled on the front. O’Toole was fiftyish, with soft, gray eyes and a flat nose. He smelled of cigarettes, aftershave and the Budweiser he was drinking. He had arms like stone Buddhas, and they made me contemplative, as they no doubt did others.
“Thorny could’ve put Vincent away for ten to fifteen, but he only asked for five,” O’Toole said. “Mitzi appreciated that, and so did I. The gambling stuff, there was no getting around that. The assault with intent was not so clear-cut, though – everybody knew that flaming asshole had it coming – so Thorny let it go. I’m beholden to him because of it. And that, my friend, is why you are here.” He looked at me with no particular expression.
I sipped my beer and then O’Toole sipped his. I said, “Jim Sturdivant. What do you know?”
“What do I know about what, Jim Sturdivant?”
“He was killed on Wednesday.”
“Yeah. The guy was a pansy.”
“You think that’s why he was killed?”
“It’s a good enough reason.”
Could I just adroitly back out of this place? Yes, but then what? I said, “No, that’s a poor reason. I disagree with you, Tom.”
He shrugged, and something in the game caught his attention. He said, “Fuck.”
I said, “It doesn’t look so good for the Sox this year.”
O’Toole looked back at me and said, “Jim Sturdivant was a pussy, that’s what that fucker was.”
“A pansy and a pussy. He was all over the place.”
> “The guy was older than me and I didn’t know him, but I didn’t like him,” O’Toole said.
“How come?”
“How come what? What’s to like?”
I said, “Cornwallis thinks a guy from Great Barrington shot Sturdivant, but I think he’s wrong.”
O’Toole eyed the Yanks’ pitcher with disdain. He said, “Barry Fields. I don’t know him. Works at the movie down there. He’s a gay.”
I said, “Cornwallis says the murder was about sexual jealousy. But Fields wasn’t sexually jealous. Have you picked up anything about why Sturdivant might have been shot? If it wasn’t sex-related, what else could it have been? Was Jim ever involved, for instance, in the kinds of activities his biological father was once involved in?”
O’Toole smirked. “You mean like sticking his dick in the hole nature intended? Nah, I never heard that about Jim.”
“No, I mean loansharking or other organized crime activities.”
He looked at me carefully now. “That was a long time ago. A lot of old people in Pittsfield remember Phil Murano.”
“What I’m wondering, Tom, is if we have a case here of like father, like son. I know that Jim made a lot of money as a corporate flack. But maybe he had some other financial practices that weren’t so well known. Not because he needed the money, but for sentimental reasons. Is that possible?”
Now O’Toole gave me the look he had just given the Yankee pitcher. “You mean like he was a chip off the ol’ block? No. Jim Sturdivant was no Phil Murano in any way, shape or form. You got your head up your ass on that one.”
“So you’ve never heard of Jim involved in any kind of what Thorne Cornwallis would consider illegal?”
He almost smiled. “Only butt-fucking.”
“But, Tom,” I said, “butt-fucking is legal now, too. There was a US Supreme Court decision several years ago. It helped pave the way, in fact, for the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts. Sturdivant and his boyfriend, Steven Gaudios, never married, however. Before he died, Jim told me family considerations prevented them from getting married. I guess the family would have objected.”
“Objected!” O’Toole said, and grunted. “Jesus, Anne Marie would’ve fucking dropped dead! She’s a frail old lady, and her son marrying a fag would’ve killed her on the spot.”
All right, that was enough. “Tom,” I said, “before we go any farther, I think I should tell you something about myself.”
“Yeah, okay, just don’t say you’re queer too. If you did, this conversation would end right then and there.”
So that’s how it was going to be? Apparently. I said, “No, it’s that I’ve been trying to place you since I walked in here. I think I remember you from college. Did you go to Rutgers, by chance?”
“Nah, Pittsfield High.”
“It wasn’t you then. There was a linebacker named O’Toole. I was an English major, but I always noticed the football players.”
“Yeah.”
What a dork. I said, “What about other members of Jim Sturdivant’s family? Have any of them followed in Jim’s father’s footsteps?”
O’Toole puzzled over this. “Depends on what you mean by footsteps.”
“Gambling, loansharking, assault, whatever.”
After a moment, O’Toole said, “Well, there was Butch Murano.”
“Who is he?”
“Jim’s second or third cousin, he’d have to be. Butch ran a game for years in the back room at the Lakewood Grill.”
“But not anymore?”
“That’d be hard. Butch passed on five or six years ago. Cancer of the tongue. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Any others? More recently?”
“Not any Muranos or Sturdivants that I can think of. Most of the stuff people used to deal in – your card games, your numbers, your horse betting, your whores – a lot of that’s gone now. The Indians in Connecticut have ahold of the casinos. Hey, who says the white people won the war? The fucking Indians, they don’t go to jail, plus they make out like bandits. You got your drugs, of course, but the blacks and the Mexicans control it all, basically. No Irish need apply. There’s still lots of sports betting here in town, and it’s still a nice, clean white people’s way of doing business. It’s seldom anybody gets hurt – not your blacks with their Uzis and their pit bulls chewing people’s throats off. It’s just roughing somebody up once in a while who bets and loses and neglects to meet their obligations. I’ve seen that happen.”
I didn’t ask O’Toole if he had seen that happen firsthand. I said, “What about Sturdivant’s brother, Michael? He told a man who had him removed from a movie theater one time that the guy had better back off or he might get his leg broken.”
O’Toole thought about this. “I’ve wondered about Michael.”
“Wondered what?”
“People know him in Providence.”
“Which means what?”
“Hey, you know Rhode Island.”
“I guess you don’t mean that in colonial times Rhode Island was a haven of religious tolerance.”
“Nah, the mayor’s in a federal prison. You don’t get that in most places.”
“Buddy Cianci. What was it? Rigged contracts? Kickbacks?”
“Yeah, nickel and dime stuff for a fucking mayor. What a putz.”
“And Michael Sturdivant has friends of a certain kind in Providence?”
“I heard that. But what do I know?”
“Does Michael come to Pittsfield often?”
“I see him once in a while,” O’Toole said and signalled the bartender for another Bud and another Sam Adams. “At mass at Mount Carmel with Anne Marie. He’s a good son; you gotta give the guy credit. Unlike Jim. That fucker gave all his dough to the ballet and shit like that, and you seldom saw him in church. And he just lived down in Sheffield, unlike Providence two or three hours away.”
“Michael must be in Pittsfield for the funeral. It’s on Monday.”
“Yeah, I saw him at mass yesterday. He was here earlier in the week too. I saw him over at Ern’s Lounge on Fenn Street.”
“Earlier in the week? Before Wednesday?”
“Monday, Tuesday. Dunno.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“I said hi. What was I gonna say?”
“Who was Michael with when you saw him?”
“Anne Marie in church, and Rose, his sister. And in Ern’s some guy, Cheap, from Schenectady.”
“A man named Cheap?”
“They call him Cheap.”
“What do you know about Cheap?”
“Nothin’. He’s cheap, I guess.”
“Maybe it’s that he does bird imitations.”
“Nah. He’s too heavyset.”
“What’s Cheap’s last name?”
“I think it’s Maloney. Like baloney, but not.”
“What does Cheap do?”
“Dipped if I know. He’s just this guy you see once in a while.”
“Who is Rose married to? Jim’s sister.”
“Some guy in Worcester, but they’re divorced. She’s a bitch, Mitzi says.”
“Mitzi’s your wife?”
“And the mother of my children.”
“How many have you got, Tom?”
“Heather and Shaun. Shaun was a son of a bitch coming out, so Mitzi got her tubes tied. Father Ryan gave her some shit, and I had to talk to him, priest or no priest.”
“Do Michael and Rose have children?”
“Maybe, but not around Pittsfield. They’d be in Providence and Worcester.”
I said, “Except for Anne Marie, none of the Sturdivants stayed in Pittsfield. Why do you think that is?”
O’Toole shifted on his barstool, which creaked. “Lack of job opportunity. When power transformer went, Pittsfield went with it. We gotta get the GE back, is what this town’s gotta do. But the mayor, those pricks. They don’t do diddley. They’re all in it for themselves.”
“What do you do for a living, Tom?”
Now he chuckled. “I’m retired. What do you do, Don?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“Oh yeah. You said. Like Kojak.”
“I think Kojak was a police detective, wasn’t he? I’ve never been a cop.”
“Keep it up,” O’Toole said and raised his glass. “I have a niece who’s on the police. She’s a disgrace to the family. She’s a dyke too. I don’t know which is worse.”
“Pittsfield sounds like a rough town to grow up gay in,” I said.
“Gotta take pride in somethin’, my friend.”
From the car, I phoned a cop friend in Albany who had family and other connections in Schenectady. I asked him for information about a man known as Cheap Maloney, like baloney but not. He said he’d check. Then I tried Johnny Montarsi again, and this time he answered.
“I’m Don Strachey, a private investigator working on the Jim Sturdivant murder. Thorne Cornwallis said you might be willing to talk to me and give me some background information.”
“What kind of information? I’m busy.”
“Was Sturdivant involved in any kind of loansharking or other possibly illegal activities?”
“I wouldn’t know. Thorny thinks I’d know about that, he’s full of it.”
“He didn’t say that. He just thought you might have picked something up.”
“Nah. I can’t help. Anything else? I’m on my way somewhere.” I said, “Do you know Michael Sturdivant, Jim’s brother?”
“Why? No.”
“What about a guy named Cheap Maloney from
Schenectady who comes to Pittsfield?” Now I could hear Montarsi’s breathing, even over our cell phones. He said, “Tell me your name again?”
“Don Strachey.”
“Where do you work out of, Don? Springfield?”
“Albany.”
“Uh huh. Hey, I wish I could help you out. Tell Thorny I wracked my brain. But this one I know nothing about. Honestly. Are you here in Pittsfield, Don?”
Death Vows Page 14
