Crime of Privilege: A Novel

by Walter Walker

  If, in fact, the Gregorys had financed his getaway, why hadn’t they come to his rescue? Their crisis wasn’t over. Their crisis wasn’t ever going to be over because there was no statute of limitations on murder. An unhappy police detective who knew too much was a threat to them and would stay a threat.

  Unless, of course, he didn’t really know too much. Or anything at all. Except what he had put in the file. Which didn’t include anything to do with the Gregorys because that would just distract everyone’s attention. Some people get their mitts on the file, all they’re going to see is something to shame the Gregorys. What are the Gregorys up to now? Sailing boats, getting drunk, having sex with the au pair. Letting their friends screw skanks on their beach.

  Skanks. That was McFetridge’s term. That was what he had called them.

  McFetridge had probably played wingman that night because, horny a guy as he was, he just wasn’t likely to go after a girl like Patty Afantakis.

  A hand closed on my shoulder. Ki’anna had come up behind me. “You sad man, you,” she said.

  I told her I wasn’t really. She didn’t believe me.

  “You not s’pose to be sad in Kauai.”

  Which was pretty close to what I was thinking about Howard Landry.

  She stuck her finger in my cup. “Your coffee cold.”

  “I’m all right.” I forced a smile.

  “I wish I could do something for you.”

  My smile got more genuine. “Would you? Do something, I mean.”

  She sucked the coffee off her finger and put her hand back on my shoulder. “Oh, can’t date guests. But you like to snorkel? I can show you secret place. Can’t be unhappy with all the fish and coral, you. Too pretty.”

  I stumbled a bit, trying to tell her that a date wasn’t what I meant. “What I would like you to do, if you could, is put in a call to one of your connections and see if you can find out what happened to Captain Howie. Why he went bust. Why he lost his boat.” I closed my hand on hers. “Could you do that for me?”

  “I try.” She squeezed my shoulder in a way that she could not possibly do to all the guests. “But only if you snorkel while I doin’ it.”

  5.

  IN THE MORNING, KI’ANNA LAUGHED AND PUSHED ME PLAYFULLY in the chest. “What the matter? You didn’t like snorkel?”

  “It was the best snorkling I’ve ever done.” In truth, I had not gone. I had spent the day in the town of Hanalei at a bar called the Tahiti Nui, drinking beer and worrying.

  She raised her eyebrows, but let the lie pass. “I got something good for you,” she said, and handed me a piece of lined paper with handwritten notes on it.

  I read: “Princess Lea, Bertram 38 Twin Diesel bot January 2001 by L. Sullivan title trans. H. Landry June 01 taken by bank September 2005. Sold auction February ’06.”

  “See,” she said, pointing with her finger, “Princess Lea. Like the lady in Star Wars.”

  “That was Leia, with an i in there somewhere.”

  “Boddah you? L. Sullivan. L for Lea. Thing is, he bought wrong time.” She moved her finger to the purchase date. “Summer’s pau here. Then Nine-Eleven, you know. Not so many people come after that. See, I been knowing him maybe five years.” She counted off her fingers. “Two t’ousand t’ree. And the reason I know him is when we couldn’t get nobody else, I would call him and he always there for me. You know?”

  “Wasn’t he a very good captain?”

  “Fishing boats. Not hard. They all have sonar, go same place. T’row the lines in the water and fish jump on board. Tourists go home happy.”

  She pulled my face down close to hers and kissed me loudly on the cheek. “Now you go home happy, my friend.”

  6.

  PRINCESS LEA. LIKE STAR WARS. ONLY HOWARD LANDRY DID not strike me as a Star Wars kind of guy.

  And as it turned out strike was the operative word when he saw me at his door. He looked like he was going to attack me, put his head and shoulder down and bull-rush right through the screen. He also looked like he had already had his daily ration of beer, even though it was barely 10:00 in the morning.

  “Get the fuck outta here, you moron,” he bellowed.

  “I want to know what really happened, Howie.”

  “What happened is I’m gonna punch your teeth down your throat.”

  I didn’t laugh, although I could have. If he tried to carry out his threat, the only thing the American Dental Association could look forward to was Howard falling over, hitting his mouth on the floor. “Shouldn’t say such a thing to a district attorney, Howie. Not when he’s on official duty. You know that.”

  “You’re not on jack-shit duty, pal.”

  “You obviously didn’t call my boss.”

  “Fuck your boss.”

  “Did you call Chuck Larson?”

  His rage stalled. His expression clouded. “Who?”

  And then I knew. He had not been sent into exile by the Gregorys. Or at least not directly. I had an initial clue of somebody who bought a boat for him. Somebody named L. Sullivan, and the L was probably for Lea. It all came together almost without me thinking about it. “What happened to Leanne, Howie?”

  He did not ask me who Leanne was. Instead, he waved his arm. He was still a good ten feet and a screen door away from me and he had not gotten his body focused enough to mount the charge he had been intending. “Gone.”

  “She left you?”

  The former detective was swaying. He had to grab the counter to make his next pronouncement. “It’s not just she left me.” He held on tighter. “It’s how she left me.” His voice rose a couple of decibels. “It’s who she left me with.” And then his eyes opened wide in surprise at what he had just said. “Or for.”

  I guessed again. “She leave you for Jason Stockover?”

  “Yeah, right,” he howled. He put his hand under his chin and began flapping it up and down. “That twit,” he said, and I realized he was simulating an ascot. “Mr. La-de-da.”

  “Who was it, Howie, that she left you for?”

  “That’s my point. Who? A fuckin’ exterminator, that’s who.” He thumbed his chest. Unlike the last time I saw him, he was wearing a shirt, but it was made of burlap, like an old flour bag, and his thumb got tangled in the cloth. “My exterminator,” he said as he struggled to extract it. “That I hired. Coming to my house all the time while I’m out on the water. Supposed to kill the bugs. What’s he doin’, really?” His eyes grew even wider than before. “Killin’ bedbugs?”

  He was expecting a reaction to his line, his little joke, and was going to keep looking until he got one. But then he started to topple over.

  I opened the door just as he caught himself and yelled at me to stop. “I used to shoot fucks like you,” he said, pointing a shaky finger in my direction.

  I told him I didn’t want to hear that. I was just there to learn about Leanne Sullivan.

  “So you know,” he said, as if we had not just been discussing her. And then he busied himself holding on to the counter again. He appeared to be riding waves. “Cutest angel you ever seen. But inside? Inside she’s the fucking devil.” His voice took off again, soaring until the last syllable was almost deafening.

  “Why don’t you come out here with me, Howie?” I figured that was the safer alternative to me going inside. There were fewer things he could throw if he were outdoors. More room for me to maneuver. “We’ll sit like we did the other day.”

  “Fine,” he said. “And then I’m gonna bust your head open.”

  “Fine,” I agreed. “And bring me a beer when you come, will you?”

  He said fine to that, too.

  I waited until he came out and negotiated a position in one of the broken lounge chairs before I sat down myself. He did not have Sams this time. Sams were probably too expensive for the type of binge he was on. He was holding two cans of Miller and I had to pry one from his hand.

  “You know what the worst part is?” he asked, just as if our conversation had not be
en interrupted. “Worst part is it makes me feel so fuckin’ old. I never felt so old in my life.”

  “How old’s Leanne?”

  “Leanne’s …” He tried to count. “Thirty-three, maybe. But it started before that. Started like when she was thirty, or gonna be thirty. I think that’s when she felt she was old. She was old and I was older. She used to like it I was older. She used to like it I was a big-shot detective.”

  “You met her on the investigation?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who told you about her?”

  “The fat girl.”

  “Patty? Patty Afantakis?”

  “Yeah.” He managed to get the top of his can open. It was a struggle. It nearly cost him his seat in the chaise longue.

  “How did you find Patty?”

  “I was a local cop. You think I’m stupid?” This was not a question to be ignored or sloughed off.

  “No,” I said, and Howard grumped his acceptance.

  “I knew about the post-race thingamajig. The girl walks into town, makes sense she’s Goin’ there, right? But she brings a change of clothes. You know what I’m sayin’? Why’s she do that? You can wear anything you fuckin’ want to that party. Some people, you know what? They wear costumes.” He elongated his face, emphasizing the strangeness of the world in which we live. Then he negotiated the beer can to his mouth.

  I drank from my own can and waited for him to get back on track.

  “So she’s got a change of clothes, means she’s expectin’ to go someplace. I can’t find she got a boyfriend, so I’m castin’ around. Know what I mean?”

  It was tiresome to keep reassuring him, but we were getting somewhere and it did not require much more from me than a nod or a single word of affirmation.

  “Who’s at the party? Who’s at the party she might know is gonna be at the party? Huh?” He drank. “Huh?”

  I tried to move things along. “The Gregorys.”

  I got rewarded with one finger raised from the hand holding the beer can. “There you go. They’re the obvious ones. So I go check ’em out. No reason other than that. Go to the house, talk to the gatekeeper. The security guard, whatever. He’s just a kid. Knows somebody, so he gets the job. Black kid. Nice kid.”

  Howard had gotten distracted. I had to bring him back. “What did you learn?”

  “What did I learn? I goes, ‘Was there a party here the other night?’ I’m talkin’ about a party after the party. Black kid goes, ‘There wasn’t a party, but there was people here.’ This is early in the investigation, so nobody even knows I’m lookin’ at the Gregorys. Why not answer the question? Nobody’s told him not to. I mean, all I’m lookin’ for is where did Heidi Telford go? Is it possible she ended up here?”

  “And what did he tell you?”

  “He gets out this list. Like I said, nobody’s tellin’ him shut up, don’t talk to the cops. I think all anybody cares about at this point is don’t let nobody know Ned’s rammin’ the babysitter.”

  Once again, Howard Landry stretched his face in a show of amazement.

  “Except you didn’t know that at the time, did you?”

  The face-stretching ended. “No. I didn’t know nothin’ except here’s something I might as well go check out. The black kid goes, ‘Here’s the people was here.’ Blah, blah, blah, and the fat girl.”

  “Patty Afantakis.”

  “Yeah, got her name and car registration, both. But there was no party. And he don’t remember seein’ Heidi. Don’t mean she wasn’t there because, look, the Gregory kids are drivin’ in and out and they don’t keep a record of that. She coulda been in one of their cars. I mean, this isn’t like Stalag Thirteen or anything. The kids wanna bring friends in, nobody asks who they are. They’re friends, right?”

  I didn’t get the Stalag reference, but I told him right.

  “So that’s all I got. Wait, no.” He had to take a long drink before he could continue. “There were a couple of guys had cars, but they had been there all weekend. The only car come in and out that night was the fat girl’s.”

  “Patty’s.”

  “Yeah. So I get the number and I track her down.”

  “But you didn’t report this anywhere.”

  “Nah. Because all I’m doin’ at this point now is I’m castin’ pearls before swine.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a sayin’. It’s like … I don’t know, maybe I got the wrong one. I’m just castin’ about. I’m just fishin’, that’s all I’m doin’. Maybe I wanted a trip up to Boston. What time of year was it?”

  “Heidi was killed the end of May.”

  “Right. So maybe I wanted to go to a game. The team any good that year? Probably not. They sucked until ’04. Anyhow, I goes up there, I talk to Patty. At this point, you know, she’s another one got no reason not to talk to me. Well, she’s got a reason, it turns out, but she’s willin’ to tell me some stuff. Yeah, her and her friend went to the Gregorys’ that night. They met these guys, the guys with the cars I was tellin’ you about. Met ’em at the after-race party, and the guys told them there was another party at the Gregorys’. So they go there and there wasn’t no party, so they left. That’s what she tells me. Just to be sure, I get her friend’s name, because I can tell, like, this Patty’s holdin’ back. Holdin’ something back.”

  “So you went to see her friend and the friend turns out to be Leanne Sullivan.”

  “Best-lookin’ girl you ever seen. Got this red-blond hair, goes all the way down to her waist. Little freckles on her nose. Body that won’t quit.” He sighed, probably inadvertently, then started up again. “And she tells me the truth. Her and Patty met these guys, went to the Gregorys’, had sex with them on the beach, went back up the house. Just comes right out and admits it. She says there were other people there, all kinds of commotion, she says. Couple of the Gregory boys were having a fight with each other, but the guys the girls was with kinda whisked them outta there before she could learn what that was all about. I show her the picture of Heidi and she can’t remember one way or another whether she seen her.”

  Howard’s beer was gone. He looked at the can regretfully. I gave my own can to him and he gurgled it for me.

  “Thing was,” he said when he was done, which took about two seconds, “thing that was different was that Leanne was still in touch with the guy she was with.”

  “Mr. La-de-da.”

  “Yeah, him.” Howard crushed the can. “I mean, it wasn’t him wanted them to leave after the beach thing. He knew a good thing when he seen it. It was the other guy, wanted to get rid of the fat girl. So Leanne gives La-de-da her phone number and the fucker calls her. Wants her to go down to New York to visit him.”

  “I thought he lived in Connecticut.”

  “She tells me New York,” Howard said, “and I tell her, next time he calls, I’d like to talk to him.”

  He stopped then. He looked at the crushed can and dropped it on the grass next to his chair.

  “And did you?” I prodded. “Talk to him, I mean.”

  “Well, first I go back to the Gregorys’, start askin’ questions for real, because now I know there been at least a couple people at their place that night Heidi Telford gets killed.”

  “Who did you ask?”

  “I asked whoever was there, okay? The one with the babysitter, definitely him. And one other.”

  “Could it have been Peter Martin?” I was surprised that my heart raced when I said the name.

  “That little shit.”

  “Peter’s a big guy.”

  “He’s still a little shit. Mr. La-de-da’s friend, Mr. Ha-ha-ha.”

  “He laughed at you?”

  “Fuckin’ wise guy. Thinks he’s a fuckin’ duke or something just because he’s a fuckin’ Gregory.”

  “But you didn’t put anything in the file about talking to him.”

  “Okay, here’s the thing. Ned, that’s the guy with the babysitter, he admits to what he was doing. Asks me to keep it qui
et unless I really have to use it. Obvious reasons, he says.”

  “And you agreed?”

  “Well, I talked to the chief. And the chief talked to Mr. Fuckhead, and everybody said all right, keep it quiet unless you need it. And then, like, nothing else came up so it went like, pfft, under the door.”

  “Who’s Mr. Fuckhead?”

  “The other guy there.” Howard closed one eye to help him concentrate. He put both arms on the arms of the lounge chair to ride out some particularly bumpy waves. “The real D.A., Mr. White.”

  All right. So both Mitch and the chief at least knew the lead investigator was talking to the Gregorys. And both had to know there was nothing in the file about such talks. Pfft, as Howard had just said.

  “So was this when you stopped writing everything down?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Because nobody wanted to get the Gregorys in trouble.”

  “That wasn’t really the order. It was more like, don’t put anything in writing unless you really got something.”

  “And you didn’t.”

  Howard thought about it. At least that is what I assumed he was doing, because he was quiet for a long time. “Here was the thing,” he said at last. “By this time, we’re like weeks afterward, you know? I’d talked to everybody I could. And there still wasn’t anything tyin’ Heidi Telford to the Gregorys, which is why, I’m guessing, nobody wants to mess up Ned.”

  “Who did you talk to besides Ned and Peter?”

  “I don’t know. The girls, I talked to the girls.”

  “How about Jason Stockover? Ever get hold of him?”

  “Leanne never gave me his number.”

  “You were staying in touch with her?”

  “Yeah. I was. I mean, it was supposed to be about the case.”

  “Only you started having an affair.”

  “I …”

  “With a witness.”

  “… yeah.”

  “Were you married?”

  “Yeah.” Howard’s mind was drifting and I had a good idea where it was going.