Crime of Privilege: A Novel

by Walter Walker

  I heard a voice in the neighborhood, a mother shouting at her son. I heard a car door slam shut. An engine gunned to life. The car took off. Barbara and I exchanged looks, but said nothing.

  “How did you find out about the affair?” she asked, after we had smoked in silence for a while.

  “Buzzy.”

  “He told you? Why would he do that?”

  “There are people who want him to run for D.A. against Mitch. He’s afraid the affair will be exposed.” I had not expected to come right out and tell her. I heard the words and wondered why I had. I wondered if it had anything to do with her being friends with the Gregorys. Run home and tell them, Barbara. Let them squish Buzzy like a bug.

  But “Huh” was all she said. She put the cigar in her mouth, did it expertly, and squinted her eyes against the smoke. And then she added, “Why would somebody pick him to run?”

  “From what I understand, it has to do with his family connections.”

  She took out the cigar, waved it around, and said, “Then why not come to me? My family is as established as his. My background is probably a lot cleaner.”

  Probably, I thought, because your family is established a little differently than Buzzy’s.

  “Maybe they’re sexists,” she said. The idea seemed to get her worked up, made her suck hard on the cigar. “Who are ‘they’?”

  “McBeth, McQuaid. Those guys.”

  “Get out!”

  “No. Why?”

  “McBeth and McQuaid want to take Mitch down? What on earth for? So they can build stuff without permits? Wait, wait, wait, wait.” She held up one hand, the non-smoking hand. Her eyes brightened. “This have anything to do with the Indians over in Mashpee? The ones who are trying to get a casino?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” Barbara turned in her seat. She had lost interest in her cigar.

  “There are people out there,” I said, not looking at her, “who are convinced the Gregorys were involved in the murder of Heidi Telford.” Take that back to the compound, Barbara.

  I tapped my cigar ash, watched it fall. “They think that Mitch is protecting the family rather than investigating them.”

  Barbara bounced. Her cigar apparently was in her way because she threw it onto the pavers. “You’re talking about old Bill Tel—”

  “No, I’m not, Barbara. If anything, Bill’s become a pawn for these people.”

  Her chin tucked into her neck. “Is this, like, a political thing?”

  I said no, it was more of a personal thing.

  “How do you know them? These people?”

  At almost any other time I probably would not have told her. But I had been lying in bed for about twenty hours, feeling miserable about myself and my life and the world and everything in it; and now this woman, this gorgeous woman, had come to see me and brought me a cigar and was sitting on my back patio acting as if what I had to say really mattered to her.

  “Barbara, did you ever wonder how I got my job?”

  “No. Yes. Well, I sort of figured it was like me. You had someone who pulled a few strings—”

  “Yeah. The Senator. Because I had once done him a favor. Well, not him so much, but one of his nephews. Him, too, I guess, if you really get right down to it.”

  “Which nephew?”

  “You already mentioned him. Or one of us did, anyhow.”

  “Ned? Peter?”

  I motioned with my head, probably tried to raise my eyebrows in affirmation. “Peter.”

  “Oh, my God … you’re talking about the thing down in Florida?”

  “I helped cover it up.”

  “He really did it? Peter the doctor? Peter, who works with AIDS patients out in San Francisco?”

  “He did some nasty stuff, Barbara, and I was there, and a few months later the girl was dead.”

  “Oh, God.”

  I wanted her to understand the depth of my depravity. Of the Gregorys’. Maybe even of her own for being friends with them.

  For a long time we just sat there, me smoking, Barbara staring off into the yard. Then, very softly, she said, “Why did you ask about the Figawi race?”

  “Heidi Telford was killed the night the race ended in 1999. Bill Telford thinks she was at the Gregorys’ that night. I think he’s right.”

  There, Barbara, what are you going to do with that information? Perhaps you could pass it along to Cory, or Jamie, or whoever else comes over to your father’s house for big hunks of meat grilled by hired help. Then they could send Chuck-Chuck by to have a talk with me. Better yet, Pierre Mumford. He could squeeze my head between his fingers. Make it pop like a blister.

  “You think it was Peter?” she said, jerking my thoughts back to the moment.

  “I think Peter is a sick, twisted misogynist. I’ve seen what he can do.”

  “So … like … are you helping these people? The ones who want to get the Gregorys?”

  Yes, you would like to know that, wouldn’t you, Barbara? Let your hair down, pull on a pair of tight jeans, give me a cigar, and I’ll tell you anything and everything. Because that’s the kind of guy I am, the kind who can be bought for a cigar and a glimpse of paradise.

  “I’m not sure what I’m doing,” I told her. “I’d like to help Mr. Telford, I know that. And these people, as you call them, they’re using me just like they’re using him and even poor dumbass Buzzy to get what they want.”

  “And is that so bad? If it’s going to lead to the truth, I mean.”

  Wait. That wasn’t what she was supposed to say.

  I had a sudden, terribly cold feeling. The idea came into my head that Barbara Belbonnet, my office-mate with a world of problems of her own, had shown up at my house without her kids and her cell phone not because the Gregorys had sent her, but because Roland Andrews had. My breath caught in my chest and I turned my head slowly to look at her.

  Barbara’s eyes were on me. Big yellowish-brown eyes. She didn’t look devious, nefarious, manipulative. She didn’t look anything other than beautiful. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?” she asked. “As prosecutors? Go after the truth?”

  “I’m not prosecuting this case,” I answered. “As Mitch has taken pains to remind me.”

  “Mitch, who has his own interests to guard.”

  “So what are you saying, Barbara?” I spoke carefully, deliberately. “You think I ought to do what these people want?”

  “I think”—and then she took her time telling me what she thought. She did it by watching me intently, making sure I really was listening. “I think you ought to decide what’s right and then go ahead and do it. No matter what.”

  No matter if I lost my job and never worked again. No matter if I was vilified throughout the country, the world, for betraying the Gregorys. “Yeah?” I said harshly. “Well, these people we’re talking about want me to track down everyone who could have been at the Gregorys’ that night.”

  “Hasn’t anyone done that yet?”

  If she was with Andrews, she would know they hadn’t. If she was with the Gregorys, she would know they had … sort of. Chuck Larson had said a detective had talked to Cory Gregory’s brother and cousins. A detective who had put nothing about the Gregorys in his file.

  I lofted a cloud of cigar smoke straight above my head. “That’s one of the great unresolved questions,” I said.

  “Nobody’s investigated Peter?”

  “It doesn’t appear they have.”

  She thought about it. “Tyler still sees him, you know.”

  Tyler, the ex. The almost ex.

  “He’s living in Sausalito. Tyler, I mean. Peter still sails out there on San Francisco Bay. He gets Ty to crew for him sometimes. If you want, I could get Tyler to put you in touch. He’s more than happy to do little things like that for me. As long as I don’t try to get him to come home, help me take care of the kids.”

  It was time to stop this dance. I tossed my cigar next to hers on the pavers and sat up straight. “
You realize you’re telling me I should be going after your old friends.”

  “What I’m telling you is what I said before. Decide what’s right and then do it. And as for going after old friends, well, they’re friends because I know them. Because I grew up with them. Not because they’ve ever done anything for me.”

  “And if they had? If they had done something great and wonderful for you?”

  Barbara threw up her hand. “Look, George, I don’t know what more to tell you, but you’re obviously torn up by this. So what I’m suggesting is maybe you ought to stop worrying so much about other people and what their motivations are and just do something because it’s the right thing to do. That’s all.”

  I did not agree or disagree. It was easier just to stare at the tree where I had seen the squirrel go. Try to figure out where he was hiding, when he would come out next.

  4.

  MITCH WAS NOT EXACTLY SANGUINE ABOUT MY DAY OFF.

  “You think I can’t fire you?” he screamed at me.

  “I think it would be awfully awkward if you did.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you would have some explaining to do.” I was not being forceful or even cocky. Half of me did not care if I was fired; the other half just wanted to inflict a little damage on Mr. White. “It means it just may be that the card I’m holding is worth more than the one you have.”

  Mitch was unnerved. His eyes did the bulging thing behind his glasses. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Because I’m still the boss here.”

  The boss whose butt had come out of his chair, who was now leaning across his desk, his weight on his bare forearms. Once again, he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that severely impaired the authority he was trying to exert.

  “You think you’re already at the bottom doing OUIs, Becket?” he bellowed in his little man’s voice. “Well, I can make it even worse for you. I can put you in juvie. I can have you going after deadbeat dads. I can give you nothing whatsoever to do if I feel like it.”

  “Or the two of us can work together in what you might call our common interest.”

  Mitch’s face had gone blotchy. Like his pipe-cleaner arms, it was not a pleasant sight.

  “This Telford thing isn’t going away,” I told him. “In case you don’t know it, there’s a movement afoot to get someone to run against you. And the main platform of your opponent is going to be that you’ve been covering up for the Gregorys.”

  Mitch came even farther across the desk. His next move would have to involve putting his knees on it. Then he would crouch like a porcelain cat. “Who?” he demanded. “Who is it?”

  I did not give him an answer. I had something I wanted from him and that was my only bargaining chip.

  “You?” His voice soared to the point of cracking.

  “Not me, Mitch. I’m the Gregorys’ friend, remember?”

  Mitch did not know what to say to that. Little gurgling noises came out of his mouth and spit rolled down his chin. After a while, he sat back. I have never felt so hated in my life. Not when Roland Andrews confronted me in my apartment in D.C. Not even when I was being shot at. I gestured to my own chin, pointing with my index finger. That made him even angrier, but at least he wiped the spit away. He did it with his bare forearm.

  I told him that Bill Telford had raised enough questions about whether his daughter was at Senator Gregory’s house that night that people were out there now, combing the country for information.

  He gurgled again, but held his saliva.

  “One of the questions being asked is why you and Cello DiMasi didn’t follow up on the leads you had. I talked with Cello and he told me the police investigation was conducted by a certain Detective Landry, a guy who took early retirement and moved to Hawaii shortly after he didn’t find any connection to the Gregorys. You see where this is leading, Mitch?”

  He didn’t tell me. He was too busy trying to reduce me to cinders with his eyes.

  “We have no reason to want the Senator besmirched, do we, Mitch? He’s had enough problems over the course of his life. And he’s been good to us, to the people of this state, good to the entire nation. But you know as well as I do that there are folks out there who will seize any opportunity to tear him down. So I see us, you and me, as being in a position where we can do something about this whole mess. A unique position. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Mitch was not agreeing to anything. It is possible that the movements I saw his head make were simply the result of his body shaking.

  “So what I propose is that you send me to visit former Detective Landry and see if we can’t come up with an explanation as to why certain things were or were not done. Why there are things that don’t seem to be in the police investigation file. That way, if he’s questioned by reporters or one of those pseudo-journalists on TV, or even, God forbid, the U.S. Justice Department, we can have a little more control over the situation.”

  “You want me to send you to Hawaii.”

  “I do.”

  “So you can talk to Landry about the Heidi Telford investigation.”

  “So I can straighten out the Heidi Telford investigation. Before the whole world gets the wrong impression.”

  “Before some guy can use it against me in next year’s campaign.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still haven’t told me who that guy is.”

  I told him.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said Mitch White. But he knew I wasn’t, and he seemed to be just as worried as he had been before.

  5.

  SEAN MURPHY.

  I didn’t know Sean all that well. He was younger than I was, had been in the office only two or three years, but he was already doing felonies. He had gone to law school at Northeastern and interned at the Suffolk County D.A.’s office in Boston. That was a big deal to our guys. Reid Cunningham, in particular, loved him. He called him Murph-Dog and treated him like a hound, to be loosed on the most deserving of criminals—the home invaders, child molesters, wife beaters.

  “George, old buddy,” Sean said. He had something under his arm. A clipboard and some papers. He was smiling at me. He appeared to have been waiting for me to come out of Mitch’s office.

  “Sean,” I said. I was prepared to walk past him, but he put out a hand.

  “You’re the only one I haven’t got yet,” he said.

  “For what?”

  He untucked the clipboard and held it in front of him as if it was self-explanatory. He had now smiled at me for longer than he had done so in all the time we had been in the office together. “The Pan-Mass Challenge. It’s a bike race across the state. Well, not a race, exactly. One hundred and ten miles one day, ninety the next. Sturbridge to P’town, and I’m doing the whole thing. Got to get four grand in sponsors. You in?”

  “You want me to sponsor your bike ride?”

  All I had to say was that I was doing the ride myself, but I didn’t. I looked down the hallway instead, hoping someone else would come along and demand my attention.

  “Well, not you by yourself. I’ve got every prosecutor in the office to put up a hundred bucks.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone except Mitch. Got Cunningham and O’Connor, though. I just haven’t seen you around for a few days. That’s why I’m getting to you last.”

  “You got Barbara Belbonnet?”

  “Sure. It’s for a good cause, George. Children’s cancer fund.” He was beginning to falter in his bonhomie, as if he had known all along that I wasn’t going to do what everyone else had done.

  I signed the form he held out to me. Pledged $100. I was now into the ride for $2,600.

  1.

  KAUAI, July 2008

  FLYING FROM BOSTON TO HAWAII CAN BE A VERY LONG JOURNEY if you don’t like the person you are with. Especially if that person is you.

  Things did not improve once I arrived. Perhaps I thought it would be lik
e Bermuda: hop on a motor scooter and cruise the entire island in an hour.

  The airport was small, one story, and there seemed to be a dearth of walls, but there were plenty of people, and while most were in tropical clothing, virtually everyone was too intent on finding someone or someplace to help out a stranger who apparently thought he had landed in some Polynesian Mayberry.

  It took me more than an hour to rent a car because I had not thought to reserve one, being under the illusion that I was going to take a taxi into town. “Which town?” the first cabdriver asked in response to my question, and I knew I was in trouble.

  I told him I was staying in Princeville.

  He shook his head as if there was something wrong with me. “Long way, man. Cheaper to rent da car than take da cab.”

  So I did.

  At least the hotel was nice, and it had a concierge named Ki’anna, a dark-hued, zaftig young woman with waist-length black hair, who assured me she knew everything that was worth knowing about the island. One thing she didn’t know was the whereabouts of a man named Howard Landry. She did the logical thing and looked him up in the phone book. No Howard Landry was listed. She went to her computer and found no reference to Howard Landry there. I would have despaired except I was beyond that point. I just stood in the open-air lobby and wondered what I was going to do next.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon. I had the option of walking a quarter-mile down to the beach, which, from where the hotel was, perched on top of a cliff, did not look as nice as a Hawaiian beach was supposed to look, or going to the pool and having a waiter bring me drinks.

  I went to my room, changed into a bathing suit, and walked back to the pool, which had various arms and inlets and vaguely Asian-style pedestrian bridges and which dominated the grounds. I dove in, swam a half-dozen laps without disturbing the water for the wild children and passive adults who were using the pool for everything but swimming, then climbed out and dropped onto a lounge chair. I was in Hawaii and someone else was paying for it. I should relax, take my time. I didn’t have to do everything in an afternoon.