Death Vows

by Richard Stevenson

  Moore had been meticulously unhelpful in speculating on where Fields had run off to. He said Fields had had no contact with his own family in years, and Moore stated implausibly that he didn’t even know where they lived. He said all of Fields’ current friends were in the Berkshires and each had told him that they had no idea where Fields went after he left in his car early that morning. Someone with a police scanner had tipped Fields off that Sturdivant had been shot, Moore said – he claimed not to know who – and Fields had sped off in his car at one in the morning, declaring that he would not return until the real killer had been caught. He had fled just in time, for the police came looking for him just twenty minutes later.

  Moore had given me Fields’ cell number, and I called it and got no answer. I left a message saying I wanted his help in finding the real killer and to please call me, and I was on his side.

  None of Moore ’s story quite added up – his knowledge and understanding of Fields’ behavior was far too selective – and on impulse I phoned an acquaintance at FBI headquarters in DC. I asked about the circumstances of William Moore’s retirement from the bureau five years earlier. My contact, a former Albany cop drawn southward by the cachet and the eventual good pension benefits of federal employment, called me back in ten minutes with this information: four men named William Moore had been agents at the bureau during the past thirty years. Two were long since deceased; one was currently a twenty-seven-yearold special agent assigned to the San Diego field office; and the other William Moore was a man in his mid-sixties working as a ballistics expert at Washington headquarters. My contact said he had seen this Bill Moore in the lobby of the FBI building just a few days earlier. There was no William or Bill Moore in his late forties who had retired from the bureau five years earlier.

  I thought, Swell. I had a retainer check in my pocket from Moore, and I decided I needed to get it back to Albany and into my bank fast.

  I walked across Main Street under a gauzy late summer sky. Only a few of the leaves had begun to turn, and it felt more like August than September – except for the absence of the tourist-season throngs, many of them New Yorkers, the visitors and second-homers for whom downtown Great

  Barrington functioned as a kind of Columbus Avenue North. Though on this post-Labor Day lazy Thursday afternoon, the town felt more like a Truman-era burg, with maybe a car gliding by with its windows open and its radio tuned to a World Series with the Yanks and the Cards.

  The Triplex Cinema, down a business-block passageway and out back beyond a parking lot, was plenty up-to-date. It looked like it had been smartly refashioned in recent years out of a warehouse or other non-artistic space. It was playing one pop hit of a not entirely repellent nature and two art-house features. A few customers had ambled in for the matinee showings, and I waited while Myra Greene sold them their tickets and gave the robot projectionists their orders.

  As she led me up the stairs to her office in a loft over the concession stand, the tiny theater manager creaked and wheezed and showed the effects of what Bill Moore had told me were her eighty-nine years. Greene was bent and unsteady in her blue work pants and faded gray sweater, but peering out from her ruined face were alert black eyes, and when I introduced myself, her smile was a cracked version of Rita Hayworth’s. The distinct odor of nicotine and tar that trailed behind Greene was not abhorrent on her, the way it usually was in our fresh new largely tobacco-free world; on Greene it was pleasantly anachronistic, as if she were a grainy old newsreel from a more innocent time.

  She saw me eyeing the Save-the-Thalia poster on the wall behind her desk, and as I took a seat across from her, Greene croaked out, “You old enough to remember the Thalia? I ran it for eleven years, ya know.”

  I did recall the long-gone famous repertory art house on Manhattan ’s Upper West Side, and I said I was impressed.

  “Nowadays you can watch Shoeshine or Nights of Cabiria at home, so who gives a damn about the communal experience. Television didn’t just kill the movies; it killed sitting in a dark theater with five hundred other people and keeping your mouth shut and feeling your common humanity.” Greene tried to gesture with her head at the poster behind her, but she seemed to have trouble moving her neck.

  I said, “This place seems to be carrying on at least part of the tradition nicely.”

  “It’s good in the summer, and we make it through the winter. And we’re appreciated. I’d like to screen some of the classics, though. We tried it, but too few people showed up. What does anybody need us for, when they can get Rules of the Game from Netflix?”

  “I understand that Barry Fields is a real movie nut like yourself.”

  Greene squinted at me and said, “So you’re a real-life private eye?”

  “I am. Licensed by the state of New York.”

  “You’re no Dick Powell and no Bogie either. And not at all Elliott Gould – though in a lot of ways he was my favorite Marlowe. Altman’s The Long Goodbye is a wonderful picture, funny and textured, about awful old LA and the thug-ridden movie business. Pauline Kael, who loved it, said it finished off the hard-boiled genre. But luckily people like Frears and Curtis Hanson don’t seem to have noticed.”

  I said, “I wish I had more time to delve into my fictional antecedents. But it’s hard to do that when you’re mainly trying to earn a living. Myra, I’m told you’re going to retire next year, and that Barry Fields is going to take your place.”

  “So, Donald, give it to me straight. Are you packing heat?” She let loose with a phlegmy laugh, but this too seemed to hurt her neck and so she just grinned.

  “I am not carrying a gat, Myra. I rarely do. Are you disappointed?”

  “Let down, but not surprised. Anyway, you wouldn’t want to get into a shootout around here. The Barrington cops were trained by the Ottoman Turks, and you wouldn’t last long.” Another hoarse chuckle.

  “I’ve only met a statie so far,” I said. “Trooper Joe Toomey. He’s in charge of the Jim Sturdivant homicide. Did you know Sturdivant?”

  Greene got a sour look. “I’m sorry Jim was killed. But, in truth, he was a pisher. The man charmed or intimidated or bought the people he needed. He ignored or walked over everybody else. I won’t miss him, and you won’t find many who will.”

  “The police think Barry Fields shot him. What do you think?”

  “Not a chance,” Greene said, stiffening and trying to throw her head back, except her neck wouldn’t let her. “Barry hasn’t got a violent bone in his body. He’s tetchy and he can blow off. But that kid would never physically hurt a soul. It’s asinine!”

  “He did hit Sturdivant with a wheel of cheese yesterday.”

  She chortled again. “I saw that in the Eagle.”

  “And maybe one thing led to another?”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  “You read about the fight in the grocery store in the paper. Didn’t Barry tell you about it himself?”

  “He didn’t mention it to me,” Greene said and lowered her eyes from my gaze, as if she was embarrassed over telling this fib. “Barry just called me last night and said he needed to take some time off, and sorry about the short notice. I was lucky I was able to get somebody to cover for him tonight, this kid Annette who works for us part-time.”

  “What time did Barry call? As I mentioned on the phone, I’m trying to track him down. It’s important for his defense that I get to him before the police do.”

  “It was late,” Greene said. “I stay up all hours. I get by with four hours of sleep a night. I’ll get plenty of rest any year now when it’s time for me to sleep the you-know-what.”

  “The Big Sleep?”

  She said, “Donald, very good.”

  “And do you own a police scanner, Myra? I’m just curious.”

  “No, Donald, as a matter of fact, I don’t own one of those obnoxious squawk boxes. Why would I want to know what the real cops are doing, when I can pop The Naked City into my DVD player? Or Kubrick’s The Killing?”

  “
But perhaps, Myra. you have a friend with a scanner?”

  She looked down again and, I think, blushed. She was a fundamentally honest woman. And a good-hearted, well-intentioned co-conspirator for Fields, just not a very effective one.

  “I won’t ask you any more about that, Myra. But you really must try to understand what I’m saying. I can help Barry best if I know where he is and can speak to him personally. So where do you think Barry might have gone?”

  She sighed and made her neck do something and said, “Beats me, kiddo. I wish I could help you out, but I can’t. You… you have to understand.”

  “Bill Moore told me you’re one of Barry’s best friends in the Berkshires. A true friend in your situation would put Barry in touch with his most ardent advocate and protector. And that’s the job I’ve been hired to do.”

  “It’s a fact,” she said, “that Barry and I are pals. I’m retiring next year – not because I want to or have to but because the SOBs who own this place are heaving me out the side door when I hit ninety. I don’t know what they expect me to do. Dr. Greene, the dentist, who was twenty-six years older than I was, died while enjoying a full plate of rice, beans and ropa vieja in 1974. So what the hell am I supposed to do next? I’m married to this movie theater, and it’s what keeps me going. Otherwise, what’s the point? But Barry’s in line for my job, and he’s a good kid, and I hope he’ll at least allow me to clean the johns, ya know?”

  Greene’s story was sad and all too familiar, but I wasn’t sure whether she was telling it because it was what was on her mind or to stay off the subject of Barry Fields as long as she could get away with it. I guessed both.

  I said, “Where do you live, Myra? Is Barry hiding out in your home?”

  She rose an inch off her seat and fell back again. “Well, you’ve got balls of brass!”

  “Yeah, and you know what? I think you do, too.”

  She gave me a faint smile now. “So, Donald. Does this mean you’re going to send me over? I’m going to have to take the fall? Is it twenty to life in San Quentin for Myra?”

  I said, “That’s right, Myra. I’m not going to play the sap for you and I’m sending you over. But you’re an angel. I’ll wait for you. And if they hang you I’ll always remember you.”

  Greene grinned. “Sam Spade and Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Bogart and Mary Astor. The movie words are right from the book,” she said. “Huston told his secretary to type up the Hammett dialogue, and he pretty much wrote the screenplay from that transcript.”

  I looked at her and asked it again. “So, Myra, is Fields hiding in your house?”

  “Nah.”

  “He couldn’t have gone far. The police are looking for his car.”

  “Ce n’est pas mon affaire.”

  “Do you live here in town?”

  “I live in a lean-to out behind the theater. It’s handy, ya see?”

  “Like William Powell in My Man Godfrey.”

  “Or the squatters in Tsotsi. But I do it by choice.”

  She wasn’t going to budge, so I would have to learn elsewhere where Greene lived and then check the place out – not that the police wouldn’t have been there first.

  I said, “ Myra, what do you know about Barry’s personal history? Where’s he from, anyway? I haven’t been able to pick up much background on him.”

  “Oh,” she said, “Barry never talked much about his life before he came to the Berkshires. Barry is not someone to be a slave to the past. He’s a kid who’s always looking ahead.”

  “But you’re his friend. Aren’t you curious?”

  “Oh, sure, curious! But I’m a respecter of anybody’s privacy. And Barry never wanted to talk about certain things.”

  She was being so evasive that I could only conclude that Greene was in on the big secret, too. She knew it. Moore knew it. Probably Bud Radziwill, since he may have shared the secret. And they all claimed – or likely would claim – that Fields’ secret had nothing to do with Jim Sturdivant’s murder. I was getting nowhere.

  I said, “What do you know about Bud Radziwill?”

  “Why do you ask? He’s Barry’s chum.”

  “He has an unknown past. Maybe he’s an escaped criminal. That kid with a Texas twang can’t possibly be named Radziwill. What does anybody really know about this guy?”

  With a straight face, Greene said, “Bud is a Kennedy cousin. He spends holidays at the compound at Hyannis Port. ”

  “Which holidays? Battle of the Alamo Day? Laura Bush’s birthday? Come on.”

  She looked at me out of those dark eyes and tried to make a little shrug, but her neck misbehaved again and she grimaced.

  “And Bill Moore,” I said. “What do you know about Bill? Your friend Barry’s going to marry the guy, after all.”

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Greene said. “Who’d’ve thought I’d live to see the day when gays could marry in the United States. I can remember when most people didn’t even know what gay was. I had a cousin, Gabe Yellin, who lived for sixty years with a man named Amos, a plumber from New Rochelle, and people called them confirmed bachelors.”

  “Yes, but what about Moore? Is he a good match for Barry? Barry’s so much younger, for one thing.”

  Greene grew somber. “It’s not the age difference. I was twenty-six years younger than Dr. Greene, and I had no complaints and neither did he.”

  “Uh huh.”

  She said, “Isn’t Bill your employer in this? You said he hired you to get Barry off the hook.”

  “True. I’m just trying to get a picture of Barry’s life. It will be easier to convince others that he could not have killed Jim Sturdivant once I have convinced myself of this and fully understand the reasons for which I have come to believe absolutely in Barry’s innocence. Myra, Bill Moore is Barry’s fiancé, and you seem to have some reservations about him.”

  Her face crinkled up, and she looked her age more than ever. She said, “I don’t know about Bill. I suppose he’s fine if Barry says he is. But… I don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  She hesitated, and said, “Maybe Bill killed somebody once. More than one person.”

  What was this? “What makes you think so?”

  She looked over my shoulder, puzzling it out. “Bill always seemed depressive to me.”

  “Depressive?”

  “He gets this haunted look. Especially after he’s had a few beers.

  I waited.

  “He was drinking over at Twenty Railroad with Hal Stackmeyer one night, and he told Hal he had killed people and it was eating him alive. That’s how he phrased it, Hal told me, ‘eating him alive.’ Hal was so shocked, he didn’t ask any questions. And Bill didn’t say any more. Just that he knew what it was like to take human lives and he didn’t like the feeling. So I think Bill is not a happy person and maybe he can’t ever be a truly happy person. And I sometimes wonder if Barry isn’t making a mistake by hooking up with this depressed man. And Bill is even more depressed when he drinks. Which maybe he does too often. That’s never a good sign.”

  I said, “ Moore didn’t give any indication of the circumstances of these murders?”

  “Hal said no.”

  “Not whether or not it was work-related – military or law enforcement?”

  “No.”

  “ Myra, have you ever heard that Bill worked in law enforcement before he came to the Berkshires?”

  “He’s a computer guy. I thought that’s what he did for the government.” Then she thought about it and said, “Maybe CIA or something, and had to assassinate people. In Afghanistan or somewhere.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Though the timing isn’t quite right for that. Unless it was pre-nine-eleven.”

  “Or maybe he killed people… like a criminal and he’s wanted. Or he served time in prison and now he’s out.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Or maybe he was drunk and he just made the whole thing up.”

  “Any of the above,” I said.

  Chap
ter Ten

  The police found Barry Fields not in Myra Greene’s house – which, being competent, they had had under surveillance since the night before – but in a summer house on nearby Lake Buel that was owned by a friend of Greene’s and for which she had a key. A neighbor had spotted Fields moving his car into the garage just after dawn – as a Triplex employee, he had a familiar face around town – and when word got out that Fields was wanted in a murder investigation, the neighbor did his duty and called the cops. Fields was taken to the Great Barrington police lockup, pending a bail hearing at his arraignment the next morning.

  I learned all this from Bill Moore, who called my cell phone just as I was leaving the Triplex and heading for Bud Radziwill’s apartment, where I was to meet the famed Kennedy cousin.

  “Barry was right here in town all along,” Moore said.

  To which I replied, “How astonishing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You aren’t straight with me about much of anything, Bill. Neither is anybody else I talk to in this town. Is Great Barrington the liars’ capital of the Northeast, or what’s the damn deal, anyway?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re referring to, Strachey.”

  “Of course you don’t know which lie I’m referring to. There are so many of them. For one, you never worked for the FBI, Bill. I checked.”

  I could hear him breathing. Then he said, “You’re good.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “But why is any of that relevant?”

  “I don’t know that it is relevant, Bill. Nor do I know that it isn’t. How am I supposed to know the difference when everybody involved in this miasma is wearing a mask, and it seems as if just about everybody in town knows who is actually behind that mask except me. This leaves me at a distinct disadvantage. And it annoys the crap out of me, too.”