“He hitched a ride to Denver, the gay mecca of the mountains and plains. He knew about Denver because the Felsons had picketed AIDS-victim funerals there, and Barry had gone along a few times and seen all the counter-protesters. So he knew right where to go. He shacked up with a guy he met in a park for a while, and then he met Bud Radziwill at a gay community center. Bud’s family hadn’t thrown him out, but they were so homophobic that he ran away on his own.”
I said, “Bud Radziwill is really Bud Huffler, right?”
Moore looked startled. “How did you know?”
“He’s from Oklahoma, I’ve been informed by an expert amateur linguist. I knew his story was similar to Barry’s because Bud told me his family were homophobic horrors, too. The most infamous public homophobe in Oklahoma is Republican Senator Elwin Huffler. He’s the man who, during a debate on the anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment, stood on the Senate floor and bragged that no one in his family had ever been divorced or had ever been a homosexual.”
Moore said, “Yeah, that’s Bud’s granddad. A piece of work.”
“Isn’t Bud ever tempted to make a liar out of that awful clown?”
“I don’t think so,” Moore said. “Bud just wants a life. Like the rest of us.”
“So he and Barry met in Denver and became pals?”
“They were boyfriends for a week or so, but the chemistry just wasn’t there for that and they decided to be friends instead. They got restaurant jobs, and when they got worried about Bud being tracked down by his family, both of them decided to change their identities and make a complete break from their old lives. Some of the illegal Mexicans they met in the restaurant where they worked showed them how to get fake IDs.”
I said, “It’s ironic that Congress – including Senator Huffler – is beside itself over all the aliens with phony papers, when remaking oneself has always been the quintessentially American act. It almost ought to be a requirement of citizenship.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Oh, sorry, Bill. You must have to take the FBI’s line on illegal immigration, you being a former agent and all.”
Moore did not take this opportunity to enlighten me on his Washington career, and I let it go for the moment.
Moore smiled weakly and said, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to turn them in.”
“You’re a regular fellow.”
“Barry and Bud were very fortunate in Denver,” Moore went on. “Somebody in the gay movement there put them in touch with the Hemmings Foundation, which arranges for college scholarships for smart, gay kids who are alienated from their families. So they both went to the University of Colorado, where they really thrived. Bud calls Boulder the Emerald City.”
“It must have seemed magical after… where? Oklahoma City? Tulsa?”
“Enid. Not so cosmopolitan as Tulsa.”
“And after college they came to the Berkshires?”
“They met some people in Boulder who’d gone to Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington, and this area sounded to them like a place that was both civilized for gay people and a long way from their families. So they just drove their old truck here after graduation, and you know the rest.”
“That’s an amazing tale, Bill. I admire those two brave guys immensely, and I’m going to do everything I can, within my meager powers, to make sure their good life in the Berkshires can continue. But first I’d like to hear the story of how and why you moved up here.”
Moore scowled and shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I hired you, Strachey, so that I would not have to demonstrate skills and knowledge I gained at the bureau, and so local people would not start looking at me in a certain way. I want my privacy, and I want my identity as a computer technician, and that’s not asking a lot. And I’m not sorry I hired you to be me. You’re good at it. A hell of a lot better than I was.” He looked at me grimly.
I said, “You got drunk one night at Twenty Railroad and told a fellow drinker you had killed people during your career, and you were tortured by the memory of this.”
His mouth opened and he looked around the room, as if to check if anyone else might be overhearing our conversation. Then he stared at me hard. After a long, tense moment, Moore said, “My real name is Willis Garwinski.”
“That doesn’t ring a bell for me. Should it?”
“Two people in Great Barrington know the truth about me – Barry and Jean Watrous. Jean and I were colleagues at the bureau.”
“Oh, so you worked in counterterrorism. I know Jean did.”
“You just know fucking everything about everybody, don’t you, Strachey? Well, you’ll be the third person up here to know about me, and you have to keep your goddamn mouth shut. Do you understand me? Can I trust you?” His face was flushed, and now he looked not so much frightened and angry as imploring.
I said, “I won’t be aiding a felon, will I? I don’t want Thorny throwing me in the lockup like Myra Greene.”
Moore looked at me and said, “I am not a felon. I was never tried and convicted. Nobody was.”
“Tried and convicted for what? We’re you some kind of assassin?”
“Yeah,” Moore said and clasped his hands together tightly as he seemed to shrink into his chair. “I was an assassin, all right. I killed three thousand people.”
It was the number. My breath caught. I knew immediately what he meant. We sat looking at each other.
I said, “It was the system, the cultures, the bad leadership. You were not responsible.”
He shook his head.
I said, “The FBI was there to prosecute crimes, and the CIA was there to gather intelligence, and the dolts in charge never cracked heads and demanded that the cultures merge and transform themselves to accommodate the new reality of international terrorism. No single person let nine-eleven happen, except maybe Clinton or Bush.”
Moore said evenly, “No, mistakes were made by individual people, and I was one of them. It could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. There were people in the bureau screaming for clues to be taken seriously. There was the supervisor in Phoenix who asked headquarters to check out Arabs with suspicious backgrounds matriculating at US flight schools. There was the Minneapolis agent who reported Zacarias Moussaoui’s weird interest in flying but not landing airliners, and then Washington declining a request to go into Moussaoui’s laptop because there was no probable cause. Then there were the CIA dickheads who knew that al-Qaeda operatives involved in the bombing of the USS Cole were inside the US and refused to modify their procedures and hand over the names of these characters to some of our guys who were actually hot on the trail of something big – something big which they didn’t know what it was until the day it happened.”
I said, “I’ve read about some of this. Some FBI people were suspicious, and they were thwarted.”
Moore said, “Well, take a good look at the man you’re sitting in this room with. I was one of the thwarters.”
“Jesus, Bill.”
“Checking out every Arab in a US flight school would have tied up hundreds of agents for months, or years.”
“And you didn’t have the resources?”
“Counterterrorism was way understaffed and underfunded. And the way up in the bureau was always to put crooks in jail – crooks who had already committed crimes. That’s what the bureau had always been for. Though basically the problem for me was, I was one of the people who thought, it can’t happen here. God will protect the United States of America.”
“Bill,” I said, “or Willis. You’re being way too hard on yourself. I’ll bet other people have said, yeah, we were wrong, but now let’s move ahead and get it right. That’s the important thing, getting it right the next time.”
“The other thing is, Strachey, I actually thought about taking some of this shit that was coming in more seriously and pushing harder. But I didn’t do that, because in my career at the bureau I was never a boat rocker. I was always Mi
ster Go-along, Get-along. I didn’t dare be a troublemaker. I couldn’t afford to draw too much attention to myself. And I think you know why.”
“Oh. That again.”
“It’s ironic,” Moore said, “in an organization whose headquarters is named for that candy-ass closet case J. Edgar Hoover. But the FBI is not an institution where out gay people can expect to move up. Or expect to be taken seriously at all.”
I said, “But you must have been taken seriously enough – even though you’re out of the closet now – that you thought you could go down to DC on Friday and knowledgeable people there would be helpful with the Sturdivant murder investigation. Am I right?”
“Yeah, there are people who still talk to me, in the bureau and at Justice. And they did help me out. I can confirm to you that Michael Sturdivant is involved in sports betting and numbers in Providence. And while he’s never been convicted, Michael has probably badly injured a number of citizens in the course of his business activities. Michael is a baddie, for sure.”
“This is helpful. It confirms what I picked up in Pittsfield.”
“Our problem,” Moore said, “is that there’s nada on Jim Sturdivant and Steven Gaudios. I was pretty sure they were into something dirty, and that’s why Jim got whacked.”
“I thought so, too.”
“It turns out, however, that they are model citizens. They got rich the way most people get rich in the US of A – legally investing in the honest labor of others.”
“Which leaves us,” I said, “with no plausible motive for Jim being killed by the mob. Except, the evidence is piling up that that is exactly what happened.” I described to Moore my meeting with Thorne Cornwallis, my conversations with two Pittsfield hometown thugs, the apparent involvement with Michael Sturdivant of a Schenectady hit man, and the firebombing of my office and the attack on my car to warn me off the Sturdivant murder case.
Moore said, “Then they sure as hell did it. Those fuckers killed Jim. Christ, but why?”
“Maybe it was personal? Except, why would either of them have anything to do with these mob guys? Michael and Jim were brothers, and both of them seemed devoted to their mother, the sainted Anne Marie. But that seems to be their only current point of connection.”
“Maybe,” Moore said, “Jim did something to hurt Anne Marie and it set Michael off.”
“Like what? Jim basically indulged her every wish and need, I’ve been told by Pittsfield people, including staying basically closeted north of Stockbridge so she would not have to face the ignominy of having begotten a fag son. And he left her a million-five. How could he possibly have offended her at this late date?”
Moore said, “What’s a woman in her mid-eighties or older going to do with a million and a half dollars? That’s a lot of bingo cards.”
I pondered this. “So who is in her will? Is that what you’re saying? Like maybe Michael is her heir, and she’s in ill health, and if she died before Jim, the one-point-five would go to someone else, like Gaudios or the opera? But the way it works now, the money goes to Anne Marie and then, when she croaks, to Michael?”
“Maybe. Mob guys think that way. Even when family members are involved. Maybe especially when family members are involved.”
“So,” I said, “what we have to find out is, how healthy is Anne Marie, and who is in her will?”
Moore thought about this and said, “What else have we got?”
I thought about it too, and it just didn’t feel like the answer. It was too tidy, too small, too shabby. Not that people’s lives weren’t sometimes snuffed out by smallness and shabbiness. The horror of that ugly truth – that the Clutter family could be massacred by a couple of dim punks, that JFK could be deleted from the American landscape by a bitter and confused creep who got off a series of lucky shots – was why so many people chose instead to believe in fate, or divine retribution, or vast conspiracies that don’t exist. That people’s lives could be ended for dumb, trivial reasons was just too awful for some people to contemplate, even though it was all too grotesquely true.
And yet, I still felt this wasn’t about money. Jim Sturdivant’s life had been too complex, too fraught, and his killing too seemingly out of the blue.
I said, “Bill, I’m sorry I called you an assassin. I wish you had told me the truth. I’d have been understanding, as most people would be.”
He shrugged weakly. “I just don’t want to be the man that people look at and say ’that’s the man who… you-knowwhat.’ I don’t want to be that guy to anybody except myself. Which is hard enough, believe me.”
“I understand now why both you and Barry first bonded over your carrying secrets that haunted both of you. But Barry’s secret might soon be revealed, and I can’t help suspecting that he’ll be stronger and healthier for it. He won’t be carrying the load nearly all alone. And maybe that could also be the case for you.”
“Barry has been my savior, that’s for sure,” Moore said, his voice unsteady now. “He’s been the one person who’s been able to drag me kicking and screaming out of myself. And I didn’t move to Massachusetts for its gay politics. I came here because Jean has been a real pal to me. But now that I am free and out of the closet, I just feel so goddamned lucky I live in a state where two men who love each other and are devoted to each other can stand up in front of their families and friends and the whole fucking town and proclaim their love and commitment, and then get recognition from the state for doing it.”
“It’s a truly wonderful thing,” I said.
“I feel bad for people in other states who can’t do it,” Moore went on, “and also for people right here in Massachusetts who for religious or family reasons can’t just go down to town hall and get hitched, even though they know in their hearts that their relationships are as deep and good and true as anybody else’s.”
I thought of Preston and David and how fortunate they were – maybe Timmy and I would have the chance to do this one day also – and I remembered at lunch on Saturday noticing Preston and David’s twin silver wedding bands. Then I remembered someone else I had just been with who was wearing a silver band on his ring finger, and that’s when it all came together.
Chapter Twenty-six
On the way back down to Sheffield, I phoned Ramona Furst. She said Massachusetts state offices wouldn’t be open until Monday morning, but it would be no trouble retrieving the information I was looking for. Meanwhile, she said, she was joining Bill Moore on his visit with Barry Fields, aka Benjamin Krider, at Berkshire Medical Center. I asked her to set up a meeting later that afternoon with Joe Toomey, and she said she would try. I told her it was crucial that we coordinate our plans for solving the Sturdivant murder case, for Toomey had the wherewithal and I had the facts.
Steven Gaudios was in the driver’s seat of his convertible, his back-up lights on, about to head off somewhere. I pulled in behind him, the rental car’s front bumper touching the BMW’s rear. I got out, and he said, “Please move. I am expected for lunch, and I am already quite late.”
“I haven’t had lunch myself, Steven, but that’ll have to wait.”
“No, in my case lunch will not have to wait. Now please move your car! We have had our discussion, Donald, and there is nothing more for you and I to say to one another.”
I said, “His family killed Jim because he got married to a man. That man would be you.”
Gaudios gagged, and I was afraid he would retch on his car’s leather upholstery or on his beautiful white shirt.
“Somebody in or close to Jim’s family,” I said, “discovered that you two were married and told Michael. He was afraid
Jim’s mother would find out, and the news would break her heart and embarrass her with the ladies at bingo and with the priests at Mount Carmel and with other family and friends around Pittsfield. So Michael hired a Schenectady enforcer named Cheap Maloney to kill Jim, ending the ungodly and embarrassing same-sex marriage and punishing both of you for your gross insult to diocese and mob ethics.�
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Gaudios was staring up at me wild-eyed and still coughing up a storm.
I said, “Then they told you to get the hell out of Berkshire County before they did to you what they did to Jim. And they no doubt told you that if word of the marriage ever came to light, you were finished.”
Gaudios suddenly opened his car door and bolted toward the back of the house, still sputtering. I followed him as he zigzagged past the back porch, around the pool, and over to the hot tub, where he vomited into the still waters.
I stood aside as Gaudios retched copiously, gagged dryly a few times, and then fell back gasping against a chaise lounge. He noticed that his pretty shirt was spattered, and he pulled out a handkerchief to wipe away some of the mess.
I said, “I would be far more sympathetic, Steven, if you hadn’t been so eager to let Barry Fields take the rap. What a despicable thing to do to a person.”
Now he began to snuffle piteously. I didn’t know whether to take him into my arms and comfort him or kick him in the teeth. I did neither.
Finally, through his tears, he said, “I thought Barry would get off. I never thought he would be convicted. Really, Donald, I didn’t!”
“How can you say that? You knew Thorne Cornwallis lacked both the guts and the fluency of mind to hold out for the truth. You were going to let him lock Barry away for life in some savage behavioral sink while you went off to a tropical isle and set up another jolly blowjobs-and-martinis hot-tub operation. Steven, I feel like puking myself.”
“Oh, you’re so sanctimonious, Donald! But you don’t know. You just don’t know.”
“I don’t know what?”
“What they said they would do to me!”
“What who said?”
Terror filled his eyes. “Michael. He told me if any of this ever got out, it would kill Anne Marie, and he would come after me wherever I was, and he would torture me like in Iraq with an electric drill. And I believe him. Jim always said Michael was a sadist with no class.”
I seated myself on the edge of another chaise and looked down at Gaudios as he sat slumped and slobbering. I saw the silver band on his finger and asked, “When did you and Jim marry?”
Death Vows Page 18
