by Justin Scott
“Whom are they guarding? I’ve never considered Newtown that dangerous a place.”
“Our host made his fortune in hip hop music.”
“Clearly, Mr. Kimball is not one to overestimate the taste of the American public. But I don’t see the connection to bodyguards.”
“Most hip hop performers are African-American. Do you see any African-Americans at this party?”
“I see fat white businessmen and six-foot girls who weigh a hundred pounds.”
“For that matter, do you see any musicians or singers or performers and anyone of any color who could be called ‘the talent’?”
“I don’t know that I could discern a talent for hip hop.”
“Is it possible that the bodyguards are here to discourage disgruntled talent from gate crashing?”
“You have always been cursed with a villainous imagination, Ben. I think that it is far more likely that Mr. Kimball invited his New York City employees up for a day in the country.”
More to the point, why I was invited? “You guys need some help?”
A fellow who looked like he would really rather be administering chin checks to the unruly in a Chelsea dance club hefted a nearly full trug of greens and said, “Thanks, buddy, we’re almost done.”
“That is not watercress,” Connie called.
“Say what?”
“You’ve picked forget-me-nots. See the little blue flower?”
“Taste any different?”
“It tastes terrible. And I would imagine it’s poisonous.”
All four looked in their trugs. “Jesus H!—Sorry, lady.”
“Man, what are we going to do? Mr. Kimball said go down and pick it. Who’s going to tell him it’s poison?”
“He might have been referring to that,” said Connie, indicating a patch of darker green vegetation twenty yards down stream.
They started wading toward it. Connie cried, “Stop!”
“What?”
“Climb out of the water.”
They exchanged looks and shrugged and obeyed docilely.
Connie said, “Approach the watercress from downstream. That way you won’t muddy the water. Good, that’s it. Walk down there. Good. Now dump the forget-me-nots back in the water. Don’t worry, they’ll take root again.”
I didn’t think any of them looked worried. Though I did notice one or two eyeing Connie with an expression of almost aching loneliness, as if wanting to connect with a human, never knowing how and now suddenly sensing the opportunity.
“Take your scissors and shear the watercress just at the surface. You’ll be so glad you did. It will be much easier to clean.”
From the back of the four I heard a muttered, “We gotta clean this crap, too?”
If Connie heard she pretended not to.
***
“Took you long enough,” Kimball grumped to the bodyguards shuffling into the kitchen at Aunt Connie’s slow pace.
“Ralph, Edward, Charles, and Henry were kind enough to help me up the hill,” said Connie, relinquishing the anvil arm that had been gallantly offered by the biggest, Henry. “And they’ve picked you a fine crop—Amanda, dear, would you have another apron?”
Amanda helped her into one with strategically placed lemons. “Would you like a stool, Miss Abbott?”
Connie allowed that she would—she was pale from the climb—and settled gratefully at the zinc table, where she instructed the hulking four in the fine points of watercress grooming. Kimball motioned for me to join him outside. He paused at the bar beside the barbeque, which was inside the house, presumably for the pleasure of those who liked their cookouts indoors. “Champagne?”
“Perrier. I’m driving.”
“Sure?”
I would have liked a glass or four very much, but there was something going on here I didn’t want to miss.
“Your aunt is a character.”
“I’m glad I could bring her along. On a day like today when she’s feeling well, she really enjoys getting out.”
“How old is she?”
“She remembers when her mother first got the vote.”
“Wow. So how’s it going for the kid?”
It occurred to me that I had never heard him refer to Jeff as his son. It was always the kid. Not even my kid. “Well, he’s convinced one person he didn’t kill Billy Tiller.”
“Who?”
“Me. Trouble is, I don’t get to vote in the jury room.”
Kimball’s mouth tightened thin as piano wire. “Jury? I don’t want this going to trial.”
“Neither do I, but again, no one’s asking my permission.”
“What convinced you?”
“For one thing, his bulldozer teacher convinced me that Jeff couldn’t have done it the way it was done. For another, an amazing number of people who disliked the murder victim know how to drive bulldozers. Unfortunately they were all pretty up front about it. The only person who hid the fact that he knows how to drive a bulldozer was you.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You told me you were at the crime scene. You never mentioned you knew how to drive a machine.”
“You could find that on Google.”
“Actually, no. There’s no mention of you driving bulldozers.”
“So dump your Google stock. What do you want from me?”
“It seems a funny thing to leave out. You told me you were at the crime scene.”
“Afterward. Not when it happened. What is this?”
“You told me sow doubt.”
Kimball covered his face with his hands. He rubbed his eyes. He lowered his hands and turned and looked at me. “So you’re demonstrating how lame a strategy it is.”
“It’s a standard criminal defense strategy, but in this case…”
“You’re telling me to get used to the idea that the kid is going to prison.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“You have anything to go on?”
“Yes I do,” I said, watching for his reaction. “Somebody shot at Billy Tiller last year. Wounded him.”
Kimball made a face. “Everybody knows that. You know some connection?”
“No,” I lied, really uncomfortable with him not telling me about driving bulldozers. “But as big a chiseling unprincipled jerk as Billy Tiller was, I’m having a hard time believing that two different people actually would try to murder him.”
“So find the shooter.” Did he look relieved, that I was looking elsewhere?
“Terrific idea. Unfortunately the combined efforts of the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad and our resident trooper did not turn up the shooter.”
“Don’t you have your own sources?”
“They don’t know who did it, either.”
“Weren’t there any suspects?”
“Half a dozen. Including your son,” I added, to get him off the shooter topic.
“What?”
“Stemming back to the ruckus he had with Tiller.”
“That was years ago.”
“Don’t worry. He had an iron-clad alibi.”
“How iron clad?”
“The day of the shooting, Jeff was in Oregon. In custody.”
“For what?”
“Chaining himself to the top of a redwood he was trying to protect.”
“Jesus H, the kid is a nut.”
“You could say that. Or you could say he’s passionate in his beliefs.”
Kimball practically shouted, “Don’t say that. You’ll make him a prosecutor’s wet dream.”
Several tall, thin women were watching curiously.
Kimball lowered his voice and looked me in the eye. We stared at each other in silence. He was probably hoping I wouldn’t say aloud that Jeff was already the prosecutor’s wet dream. I was hoping that he wasn’t letting his son stand trial for a crime he himself had committed for some reason I knew nothing about
. I knew it sounded crazy. But he had not admitted to me that he knew how to drive a bulldozer. Maybe it was nothing, but it seemed to me that it should have come up. Maybe I would never had considered it if he just once referred to his son by name. Maybe I was clutching at straws thinner than he was.
“Can you tell me where you were last Sunday afternoon?”
“What?”
“I think you heard me, Mr. Kimball.”
He barked a bitter laugh. “You are a piece of work. You want an alibi from me?”
“Can you give me one?”
“I was here.”
“Was Amanda with you?”
“Amanda was in St. Louis.”
“Servants?”
“No.”
“Friends?”
“No one.”
“All alone in this big house?”
Kimball glanced back at the kitchen door. “Not quite.”
I looked at him, and barked my own laugh. It was either a brilliant lie or he was having more fun than anyone who looked like him deserved to.
“You get it? Capish?”
“Sure. But if I felt I really had to speak to the, uhm, young person? Would that be possible?”
“If absolutely necessary, that could be arranged.”
“All right.”
“Jesus, were you off base.”
“Don’t expect an apology.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because, essentially, I am working for the kid who’s in jail.”
“Is there any hope?” he said, finally. “Have you learned anything that can help?”
“Not in the doubt department.”
“Anything else?”
I considered laying out my theory that Billy’s killer rode to the murder scene with Billy in Billy’s truck and left on foot. I considered explaining exactly why Sherman Chevalley was so positive that Jeff couldn’t have killed Billy. I even toyed with telling Kimball that I had found the grieving wife who wasn’t widowed. And had a sauna with her husband.
“Nothing worth saying out loud, yet.”
Suddenly, Kimball waved across the lawn. “Hey, Judge,” he called, “you made it.”
To me he said, “There’s somebody here I want you to meet. Don’t say you’re working for me.”
“I’m not. I’m working for Ira Roth.”
“Whatever you do, don’t say you’re working for my lawyer.”
“It’s a party. It won’t come up in social conversation.”
“That’s right. It’s a party. So just say hello.”
“Why?”
“I want your take on him.”
I looked at Kimball. This was plain weird. A hotshot rich businessman connected politically in New York did not need my take on anybody. “What is this?”
“Maybe another way to skin a cat.”
He gripped my arm, and I let him walk me in the direction of a man who looked like most of the males at the party—overweight, underdressed, and in possession of a young woman probably not his daughter. This one had a Chihuahua under her arm and, for reasons that escaped me, considering the lug-nut diamond on her finger, a pout on her very pretty face.
Kimball shook hands with the guy, leaned over the dog to kiss the daughter, wife, or girlfriend on the cheek, asked how was the drive up and had they found anything to eat yet. Then he introduced me as Ben Abbott from Newbury. I was already reaching for the man’s hand when Kimball said, “Ben, meet Judge Clarke from Stamford.”
I performed a lightning fast face lock, an instant before my expression betrayed my desire to punch His Honor in the face.
This was Judge Clarke from Stamford—Judge Gary Clarke—whose edicts from his far-off Stamford bench had bulldozed the Town of Newbury’s P&Z Board’s attempts to rein in Billy Tiller’s worse developments, including the flood-spawning Tiller Heights. Why, in my opinion, was no mystery. While Connecticut’s judiciary maintained a high standard of honesty—pure as the driven snow compared to numerous corrupt mayors, Hartford lobbyists, and an infamous governor—Judge Clarke was, in my humble opinion, an exception who hadn’t been caught, yet.
I had no proof that the judge was a crook. But why else would he intervene in zoning battles half a state away? Certainly, he hadn’t bought the girl’s diamond on a judge’s salary. I once asked a federal prosecutor why public servants risked their careers and incarceration by spending bribe money like drunken sailors. Because they think they deserve to, was the answer. And why risk everything for what were so often relatively small bribes? Cash. So their wives wouldn’t find evidence of girlfriends on their credit card receipts.
Perhaps Judge Clarke had inherited money. Perhaps he had invested wisely. Or perhaps Billy Tiller cut him in on a land deal. Or simply bribed him with a FedEx envelope full of twenties and fifties. At two or three hundred thousand dollars extra profit on every additional house Billy could squeeze into a subdivision, he could easily afford a judge.
I managed to say hello without shaking his hand, and sent a polite smile in the direction of the lady and dog in case they were innocents. Judge Clarke asked, “Newbury? That’s to hell and gone. What do you do up there, Ben?”
“He’s a real estate broker,” Kimball answered for me.
“Who are you with?”
“I’m independent.”
“Must be the last one in the state.”
“There are a few of us still standing.”
“How do you compete with the big boys?”
“We have different standards,” I said, and I swear the Chihuahua winked at me. “You’re a long way from home, too, judge. How’d you come up?”
“Back way. 106, 107.”
We discussed roads for a moment or two, as newly met folk will at a country party, and the lovely weather. His consort finally spoke. “We saw a fox,” she said. “Rachel chased it.”
Rachel was the dog. The judge explained they had stopped the car so the dog could relieve itself and it ran after the fox. I said that the fox must have been in a particularly benign mood considering the Chihuahua had returned intact.
“I was afraid she’d catch Lyme disease,” said the girl.
“Rabies,” said the judge. “Rabies is from foxes. Lyme disease from deer.”
“Whatever.”
“Rachel is safe here,” said Kimball. “They spray the place every Friday, right before I get here.”
Imagining the weekly pesticide dose draining into his stream, I resolved not to give Kimball my take on Judge Clarke until he told me why he wanted to know. I would not be surprised to learn that Kimball was working a scam to get Jeff’s trial moved from Plainview to Stamford. He must have known the judge very well to think they could pull that off.
“I gotta get back to the kitchen,” said Kimball. “Ben, see if you can find the judge a drink.”
With waiters flitting everywhere that was not hard. Clarke ordered cosmopolitans for himself and his lady, who suddenly shrieked recognition and ran to a woman who looked much like her, minus the dog. Judge Clarke and I watched them kiss the air around each other’s faces. “The ladies,” said Clarke. “Where would we be without them?”
I said, “I recall you sat on a case involving one of our zoning applications.”
“I sit on a lot of cases.”
“I remember wondering how you got involved up in Newbury.”
“I hear cases from all over the state. We’re rotated regularly.”
“I remember wondering how difficult it must have been to rule on a case that involved land you were not familiar with.”
Clarke turned hard-eyed attention to me and I was kind of glad I was bugging him at a party and not in his courtroom. “I rule on law, not land.”
“I remember wondering—”
I expected him to turn on his heel and walk away. Instead, he seemed to decide that I was not a threat. He smiled and said, “I am sure that you understand that I don’t discuss case
s—Oh, there are our cosmos. Over here, fellow,” he beckoned the waiter. “Cheers, Ben, nice talking to you.” With that he led the waiter to the girl and her dog.
I wandered back to the kitchen, thinking that it was not surprising that the judge was so affable despite my provoking him. Whatever evil he and Billy Tiller had floated over the Newbury dam in the past, was in the past forever.
Connie was still perched on a stool, holding court for the bodyguards, who were grouped around her like adoring bears. Amanda kept pressing small bits of food on her and I was delighted to see her eat more than she would ordinarily in a week. Somebody gave me a fresh Pellegrino and Kimball steered me toward a plate of beautifully grilled scallops.
“So what do you think?” he asked quietly.
“Why do you want to know?”
“I think you can guess that.”
“I’m impressed.”
Kimball looked astonished. “By Judge Clarke?”
“By the fact that you are so determined to save your son that you would risk getting in bed with the kind of sleaze-bag public servant who will sooner or later end up betraying his friends to plea bargain his way out of a prison sentence.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m impressed. I didn’t realize how much you cared about Jeff.”
“Abbott, how the fuck would you feel if you had a kid going to prison?”
“Desperate.”
“So?” He spoke so intensely that Amanda looked over anxiously.
“Bribing a judge won’t help. It will only make it worse.”
“The trick is not to get caught. I would never put myself in a place where the judge can set me up for a fall.”
“Wrong,” I said.
“It’s just a matter of getting the details right.”
“It is wrong to subvert the legal system.”
“What? What? Don’t get holier than thou with me.” Amanda looked over again and started our way. Kimball waved her off.
“It is wrong to subvert the legal system.”
“The legal system is grinding up my kid.”
“Beat the system. Don’t beat it down. You’ve got the best lawyer in the state and you’ve got my word I will do my best to help get him off.”