“And you decided to take off together for Hawaii?”
“It wasn’t like that. Look, we both knew it wasn’t a good thing to do and she told me she was gonna put an end to it, get away as far as she could.”
“And she had enough money to do that?”
“All I know is she did it. Moved to fuckin’ Hawaii.”
“And you followed.”
“Not right away.”
“But you stayed in touch.”
“What she told me was”—his sad face re-formed into an expression that could have passed for pride—“I should come over and see her.”
I nodded encouragingly, but he wasn’t looking.
“I mean, it wasn’t like things were Goin’ so good between me and my wife. And the kids, they were outta the house by this time, so this was like, wow, I can go to Hawaii, say it’s part of an investigation.”
“The chief gave you permission to do that?”
“I told DiMasi I was Goin’ on vacation. Told my wife I was Goin’ on an investigation. Fucked up, I know. But that’s what I did.”
“And you came here.”
“Nope. Went to Maui, because that’s where she was. Had a great time. Time of my life, as a matter of fact. And I’m lookin’ around, I’m lookin’ at the fishin’ boats in Lahaina Harbor, and I’m thinkin’ this’d be the perfect life.” He stared out at the water in front of us. There were no fishing boats there. Just rough waves and water that stretched on forever.
“I mean,” he said, “I had a boat back on the Cape. Wasn’t licensed to do fishing charters or nothing, but I was pretty damn good at it, and I figured if you can fish off the Cape you can fish anywhere, so I start lookin’ into it. Gotta get a master’s license, get some time on the water out here, take a course, take a test, but I can do all that because, what the hell, my retirement’s comin’ up if I want it. See how everything was coming together?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Only problem was, Maui’s pretty developed by this time. Not exactly in need of any more mainlanders coming over and cutting into the existing guys’ operations. I tell all this to Leanne and then I end up Goin’ home without doin’ nothing. Next thing I know, she’s callin’ me on the phone, tellin’ me all about Kauai, how it’s just perfect for what I want to do, how she’s gone over and checked it out already, and I’m thinking, You’re doin’ that for me?” Even telling the story this many years later, Howard Landry still seemed overwhelmed by the wonder of it all. “I’m thinkin’,” he said, “I’m in fuckin’ love.”
“Information I have, Howie, is she bought you the boat.”
“Bought me the boat.” The man’s face went back to looking worn and weathered. He made a spitting sound through his teeth. “Got me to leave everything I had, move here, and then, boom, all of a sudden it’s Nine-Eleven and there’s no more tourists. Nobody wants to get on a plane anymore, and I’m out on the water, tryin’ to catch fish, and this girl I’m livin’ with is stayin’ on shore, runnin’ around with a crowd half my age. God knows what she’s doin’, because she ain’t working, that’s for sure. Then one day she just takes off and I’m stuck with the boat, stuck on this fuckin’ island, stuck with my thumb up my ass.”
“And you can’t go home.”
“Burned my bridges there, didn’t I?”
“Where did she get the money to buy the boat, Howie?”
“Same place she got the money to live here without workin’. I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“I asked.” Howard Landry was still watching the ocean as it broke into little swells that lifted and flopped back down again in no particular pattern. “She told me it was something I shouldn’t know about. Me being a cop and all. So I figured it was drugs and stopped askin’.”
“You didn’t care if it was drugs? You weren’t worried that—”
Howard held up his index finger and I thought he was telling me not to say another word. But then he began slowly arcing it back and forth in front of him. “I didn’t care because the woman, despite everything else, the woman had an ass like a Metrodome.”
It took me a moment. “Metronome,” I said.
He shrugged. “It was like the Eighth Wonder of the World.”
I watched the finger continue its arc. I watched the smile break the corners of his mouth.
“Tell me, Howard, did it ever occur to you that the money she was spending might be coming from someone else?”
The finger movement stopped. So did the smile. “Like who?”
“Like the Gregorys.”
“Why would they be giving her money?”
“Keep her quiet.”
“About what? She didn’t know nothin’.”
“Maybe you did.”
Howard Landry raised his hand, palm up, and then let it fall back onto the arm of the chair. He looked confused. “I didn’t know nothin’, either.”
“Perhaps you did and didn’t realize it.”
“Realize what? I’m tellin’ ya, in all the time I was on the case, I never found a single bit of evidence that Heidi Telford was at the Gregorys’ that night. Not one bit.”
He had raised his voice to tell me that. Now he turned his head away and let his chin drop. “This thing that happened with Leanne, that was something that just happened.” He seemed to be staring at his stomach. “It was something else altogether.”
I thought back over everything he had told me. I had to do it quickly because I could see his chin beginning to moor at his chest. I leaned toward him and gave him a shove. “Maybe they were trying to keep you away from Jason Stockover. I mean, Leanne was your connection there, wasn’t she?”
Howard’s eyes popped. “You keep bringing that guy up. How about you don’t do it again, okay?”
“Okay. Leanne, where did she go? When she left you, I mean.”
“With the exterminator.” Howard spread his shoulders until his arms were almost akimbo. Then he made gorilla noises.
“What’s his name?”
“Bob. Bob the Exterminator. That’s all I know. I didn’t pay the bills.”
“Are they still on the island?”
“Nope. Gone to Las Vegas. Him and her were gonna set up a new business there.”
“Exterminating business?”
“Far as I know.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation to you, they picked the wrong time to do that. Las Vegas has been hit harder than anyplace by the economy.”
“Good. May they rot in hell.”
“So maybe she’ll come back.”
Howard Landry’s eyes closed and I assumed he was thinking about the prospect. When they did not open, I had to decide if it was worth trying to rouse him one more time.
I decided it wasn’t and got up to leave. I took about three steps when something hit me in the back. I looked down at the grass. It was a crushed beer can, probably the very can I had given him. I turned and stared at the pathetic old bastard, still sitting in his lawn chair, daring me to do something about this insult he had just dealt me.
Except he was not all that old. He only looked it. And the lawn chair was broken and the cement-block condo complex he was running was either empty or virtually empty and it sat above a beach that was so rocky you couldn’t even go in the water. I picked up the crushed can, retraced my steps, and gently placed it in his lap.
1.
SAUSALITO, July 2008
WHAT’S THE PROPER PROTOCOL FOR GETTING THE ATTENTION of someone aboard a sailboat berthed in a slip? I stood on the dock and yelled—“Hello!” and “Tyler!” and even “Yo, anybody aboard?”—and people from several slips away poked their heads out of their quarters and regarded me as if I was pissing in the water.
Tyler Belbonnet’s sailboat was about thirty-five feet long, white with teak decking, with the name Pretty Hat scrolled on its stern. The boat to its starboard side was much bigger, with a black hull, and a muscular, gray-haired woman in a cut-off sweatshirt looking at me w
ith great concern.
“Tyler’s not here,” she said. “He’s doing the TransPac.” She spoke as if everybody should know that.
I gathered the TransPac was a race. I further assumed it meant Trans-Pacific. “When will he be back?”
“Well,” she said, as if that was a most peculiar question, “he’s on a fifty-two-foot Santa Cruz, which should get to Kauai in ten days if they catch the right winds. Then they’ll have about an eight-day layover, and then he’s one of the short crew sailing her back, which ought to take him a couple of weeks. So I’d say you’re looking at about thirty-three, thirty-four days from when they set sail.”
I was not sure I had heard right. “He’s on his way to Kauai?”
“He’d better be. Race ends in Hanalei Bay.”
I, of course, had just been in Hanalei Bay, had just left Kauai that very day. The fact that I did not know what to do next probably explained my hanging jaw. “And when did they set sail?”
“ ’Bout three days ago.”
Which meant it would be a month before Tyler Belbonnet returned.
“You look like that’s a problem,” said the muscular mistress.
“I was supposed to meet him,” I said, as if somehow she could fix that, make him come back, do something so that my short time in California would not be wasted.
I had arranged my return flight to Boston so that I could have a stopover in San Francisco. Barbara had called Tyler and made the arrangements. She had told him when I would be arriving and he had said sure, come around. And he had given her directions. Explicit directions. Go to Sausalito, just across the Golden Gate Bridge; drive all the way through town to the last marina on the right; park where you can and look for the houseboat that resembles the Taj Mahal at the far end of one of the docks; walk straight down that dock till you get to slip 23B on your right. Which was where I was. Where he wasn’t.
The plan had been for Tyler to put me in touch with Peter Martin. A friendly meeting. Between a couple of old pals. Greetings, Peter. Good to see you, Georgie. I wonder, Peter, if you would mind telling me why you bashed in a young girl’s head with a golf club?
No, that wasn’t how it was supposed to go. If I were just going to accuse him I could have set up the meeting myself. No, the idea had been to talk to him, gather what I could without arousing suspicion. And to do that I needed Tyler. “Hey, Peter,” he would say, “look who I got here. My wife’s office-mate. Just passing through town. Says you and he are old friends.” Why, Georgie, is that you?
We would have drinks together, Peter and I. We would laugh about the fun times we had back in Florida. Remember Kendrick Powell?
And then we would go on from there, talking about all the things he had done to women over the years, including driving a golf club into the skull of Heidi Telford.
“I assume,” I said to the woman watching me, “it takes some time to get ready for a race like that.”
“Oh, Lord, yes. Six months, at least.”
In other words, a long time before Barbara spoke to him, told him I was coming. Yet Barbara said he would be here, waiting for me.
“Are you all right, young man?”
I gave her half a wave. Sure, no problem. Set up an appointment from three thousand miles away, show up, and nobody’s there. Happens all the time.
“Because you might want to check with his friend Billy.”
I stopped.
“Why?”
“Well, Billy’s boat-sitting for him.” She gestured to the Pretty Hat, as if it was obvious.
“Where can I find Billy?”
The woman cast an eye up into the cloudy sky, as if that would tell her. “Well,” she said without bringing down her gaze, “I’d say it’s not too early for him to be at Smitty’s.”
I asked who Smitty was and she gave out with a hoot, as if she had misread me. “Smitty’s is a bar over on Caledonia, darling,” she said, pointing back the way I had come. “Walk two blocks inland, turn right, go two blocks down the street and you can’t miss it.” Then she added, as if she had her doubts about me, “At least I don’t expect you will.”
QUITE A PLACE, SMITTY’S. A big open room with a bar on one side and Formica tables scattered around the floor. It was obvious you could push the tables anyplace you wanted, either because you had a large group that wanted to sit together or simply because they were in your way. At three o’clock in the afternoon they were in somebody’s way. The juke box was blasting Steppenwolf and two rough-looking men were dancing. Only their dancing looked more like fighting. Their legs were wide apart, their arms were swinging, and they were taking up lots of space as they kicked and flailed, first rocking toward each other and then much more forcefully pulling away.
I hoped neither of the dancers was Billy.
There were probably a dozen other people in the bar, most of them guys, a couple of females who looked like guys. Virtually everyone wore blue jeans. A few were in long-sleeved T-shirts, a few were in sweatshirts, a few in windbreakers. Summer attire, I gathered, for the fog-bound Bay Area.
I ordered a bottle of Anchor Steam and asked the bartender if Billy was around. He surveyed the room, which was bathed in natural light coming through large front windows and an open door, and said, “Billy who?”
I said, “Billy who’s a friend of Tyler Belbonnet’s,” and hoped that sufficed.
“Ty’s racing,” he said, focusing someplace above my head.
“I know. That’s why I’m looking for Billy.”
“And you don’t know what Billy looks like?”
“No. That’s why I’m asking you.”
The bartender nodded toward the dancers. “That’s him,” he said, with just enough cant to his head that I assumed Billy was the dancer on the right, the smaller one, a wiry guy who looked like the sort of person who would crawl through drainpipes or shinny up flagpoles for the amusement of his friends. I waited until the song was over and then stepped in between Billy and his buddy before they could start flailing about to Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
“You Billy?”
“What’s it to you?”
It occurred to me that people were not as friendly in California as I had imagined.
“I was looking for Tyler.”
“Ain’t here.”
“I know. He’s sailing the TransPac. But I was supposed to meet him.”
“Yeah, well, he ain’t here.” Billy wanted to get back to dancing. His buddy was playing air guitar without him. His buddy was making terrible faces, as though that was what was necessary to get the notes out of his imaginary instrument.
I wanted to put my hand on Billy’s arm and steer him away, but I had the feeling that Billy, his joints warmed and his spirits fired up, would not accept physical maneuvering. “I’m a friend of his from back home,” I said.
That earned me a squint. “You from the Cape?” he asked.
I told him I was. “You?”
“Nah,” he said. Yet he obviously had some familiarity with it.
“Where you from?”
“Martha’s Vineyard.”
Martha’s Vineyard, sitting about seven miles off the Cape, but not the Cape itself, according to Billy. I said, “You know him back east?”
He looked at his friend having all the fun. “Yeah.”
“Then you must know his wife, Barbara.” I had to stretch matters a little. “I got a message from her I have to give to him.”
“From Barbara?” Billy’s eyebrows went up.
“Can we go outside and talk for a minute?”
He said to his friend, “Be right back.” But his friend didn’t care. He was stuttering his way through “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.”
Billy grabbed a bottle off the bar that may or may not have been his, chugged it, and led the way to the sidewalk, where a man was sitting with his back against the outer wall of the building, selling paintings that were spread around him. From what I could tell, he had taken several mass-produced pictures of sea and landscapes
and then slapped great gobs of dark blues and greens and reds on the canvasses so that the otherwise peaceful or idyllic scenes looked as though they were being ripped apart by explosives shot from outer space. That was my only explanation.
“Hey, Taquille,” said Billy, and threw the artist a couple of quarters. Then he turned to me. “ ’Sup?”
“I was supposed to meet Tyler to talk with him.”
“He’s—”
“I know, sailing. Look, my name’s George Becket. Did he leave any kind of message for me?”
This gave good old Billy a chance to show how clever he was. “I thought you was s’pose to give a message to him.”
“I was, and he’s not around, and I’m trying to figure out why.”
Billy looked at Taquille scrambling around on the sidewalk, trying to pick up the quarters he had failed to catch. Taquille appeared to be cursing his benefactor. I said, “I was wondering if maybe this was kind of unexpected, him sailing this race.”
“Oh, man, if anybody could do it, it’s Ty. He knows that boat better’n anyone.”
“But he wasn’t part of the original crew, is that it?”
“Well, man, the TransPac’s got this whole social thing to it. All those dudes from the Saint Francis Yacht Club, the San Francisco Yacht Club, the Corinthian, they all want a ride. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you get some good sailors comin’ outta those places, man, but they’re not like Ty and me. You know what I’m sayin’?” He slapped my arm with the back of his hand.
He apparently thought I was like Ty and him. Being from the Cape and all.
“They got eight people Goin’ over,” he added. “Ty’s bringin’ the boat back with four. What’s that tell ya? We’re like the grunt guys, you know? The blue-collar guys.”
“So what I’m asking is if Tyler got put on the race crew at the last minute.”
Billy shrugged. “Coulda been, man.”
“Well, when did he ask you to boat-sit for him?”
“Just, like, a week ago.”
“So he wasn’t planning on sailing before then?”
Billy was distracted. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” was playing inside. His buddy was getting all the good chords. “Look, fact is, you can have all the big-shot friends you want on board, but you want to win, you need somebody like Ty.”
Crime of Privilege: A Novel Page 22