Crime Of Privilege: A Novel Part 3

He spooned up his chowder. He spooned it away from him, the way you are supposed to do it, the way n.o.body does. "So," he said, taking his napkin from his lap and dabbing his mouth, "a college girl's body is found on a golf course in Osterville, the local police are programmed to think, well, she must have been murdered by somebody from Mashpee, Yarmouth, Truro, anyplace but here."

"And you don't believe that's what happened to your daughter?"

"No, Mr. Becket, I don't." He ate some more, sparing me any slurping sounds. I found myself liking Bill Telford just for the way he approached his chowder.

"My daughter was an exceptionally pretty girl. A bright girl. Size you up in a jiffy. She was going to Wheaton College. Do you know it? Didn't know anything about it myself until they came and got her. But it's a wonderful inst.i.tution, and they recruited her right out of Barnstable High on her guidance counselor's recommendation. Didn't give her quite a full scholarship, but made it possible on my salary. I was an insurance adjuster, Mr. Becket. My job was to go out and a.s.sess damage, mostly on homeowners' claims. I'd go into some of these multimillion-dollar properties here in Osterville, do my work, then I'd say to the homeowners, these people who had done so well in life, what can you tell me about Wheaton College? To a person they said good things. They were all familiar with it, all had somebody in the family or knew somebody who had gone there, so I said, that's it. Whatever it takes, my daughter's gonna go there."

All I had done was ask him whether he believed his daughter had been killed by someone from outside Osterville. I wasn't going to ask anything more for fear he would start telling me where he bought his clothes, ga.s.sed his car, went to the grocery store.

"Point is," he continued, not caring that I wasn't asking, "Heidi was meeting her share of rich and successful people at Wheaton. Maybe not famous people, I don't know, but she had learned how to handle some of these kids who had a lot more than she did. Went to mixers at Brown, dated boys from Harvard. So I don't see her as being overly impressed by somebody just because he came from a famous family."

Heidi Telford died when I was still in law school. Her death was old news by the time I started in the Cape & Islands district attorney's office. All this talk about Heidi and her dates and famous families meant nothing to me. I tried to make that clear by sc.r.a.ping the bottom and sides of my cup for the last bits of chowder. Then I started casting my eyes about for John.

"Being an insurance adjuster gave me the opportunity to do some investigating on my own, Mr. Becket. Or at least gave me some of the skills I needed to do it. And whenever I came up with anything, I'd bring it right to District Attorney White. I expect you know all that."

Now I had to answer. He was waiting, looking right at me, seeing that I was not watching the game anymore, that until the rest of my food came I didn't have anything to do except listen. "I really haven't been involved, Mr. Telford."

"Nice fella, Mitch.e.l.l. Takes what I give him, tells me he'll have someone look into it. I never hear anything more."

"Maybe because he doesn't have anything to tell you."

"Except I'm telling him things. I talk with Heidi's friends, with her friends' friends, and even friends of those friends, and whenever anybody says anything, no matter how small, I write it down, pa.s.s it along. Then I follow up. Ninety percent of the time I find that the people whose names I pa.s.s along never hear word one from the police or anybody else."

"Mr. Telford, why are you telling me all this?"

He put his spoon down. He wiped his lips one more time. He fixed a pair of blue-gray eyes on me. "Because, Mr. Becket, I been hearing good things about you."

"Like what?"

"Like you're a straight shooter. Don't appear to be obligated to anyone or anything but the truth. You see something that's not a crime, you stand right up to your boss or the police chief or whoever says it is and tell 'em so. You see something that is a crime, you go after it."

I choked on my Manhattan.

Mr. Telford's eyes narrowed with concern. "You want some water?"

John never gave me water because I never drank it. I started hacking, trying to clear an air pa.s.sage. John came running from somewhere. So did one of the waitresses. Somebody was pounding me on the back. It took a few seconds to realize it was Mr. Telford.

"I'm okay," I gasped. "Something just went down the wrong way."

John and the waitress, whose name was Fiona, both glared at Mr. Telford as if my travail was his fault. I had to tell everyone all over again that I was all right.

When we were left alone at last, when John had gone back into the kitchen to get my dinner and Fiona had wandered off to do whatever she had to do, I said to Mr. Telford, "Look, I don't know where you're getting your information from, but I'm just an a.s.sistant D.A. I'm not even a first a.s.sistant. I'm a.s.signed cases, I work on those, and that's all I do."

"I heard you backed down Chief DiMasi. I heard he wanted to prosecute some colored boys for running a bicycle-theft ring and you said no."

"First of all, they were from the Cape Verde Islands, those kids. Second, they were stealing bikes, but it wasn't anything so sophisticated as a ring. They were just stealing them and selling them. And third, I did prosecute them inasmuch as I got them to plead to misdemeanors."

"And sent to a diversionary program."

I shrugged.

"When the chief wanted them sent to prison as felons."

"The chief can be aggressive sometimes."

"About teenagers with no connections stealing bicycles."

He was not far off the mark. But he was also just a guy sitting next to me in a restaurant. I was glad when John came out and put my plate in front of me. I was even more glad when Mr. Telford picked up the check John had put in front of him and took out his wallet.

"All I'm asking," he said, as he got to his feet, "is if maybe you could do some checking yourself. See if these little things I'm givin' District Attorney White are going anywhere other than the circular file." He put a five-dollar bill down on the bar, then looked at the check again, then selected two more dollars to put on top of it.

"You see, sometimes"-he hesitated, his hand covering the money as though he were holding his place until he got the phrasing just right-"sometimes I'm afraid Mitch.e.l.l may not want the information I'm giving him. Sometimes I wonder if Mitch.e.l.l isn't a little too close to some of our better-known residents."

"Meaning anybody in particular?"

"Meaning the Gregory family, Mr. Becket. Very much in particular."

EVEN NOW THERE ARE TIMES I LIE AWAKE AT NIGHT, UNABLE to sleep, playing and replaying the events of that distant night in Palm Beach, thinking about how the lives of so many people were ruined by what took place in a period of no more than one hour, imagining what might have occurred if only I had acted differently. What would have happened if I had pulled Peter off her? Knocked Jamie away? Tried to raise Kendrick to her feet, shake her out of her stupor?

Was she in a stupor? She had not said anything. She had made noises. They had sounded like ... moans. Is that what they were? And if they were moans, were they indications of pleasure or the fact that she could not formulate words?

She had formulated words later. "f.u.c.k you," she had said. "f.u.c.k off," she had told me. And she had driven that car. Without her shoes. Without a purse. When young women go to a c.o.c.ktail party at a place like the Gregorys', don't they bring purses? If she had left it there, wouldn't the Gregorys have found it? Somebody in the Gregory family had to have known who she was. Somebody had invited her.

I get lost sometimes, conjuring up things I do not know, or that I know only in part. And then I can't get to sleep at all. I lie there until the sun comes up, not sure if I am remembering things as they actually happened or if I am just remembering what I imagined on other nights that I have lain here like this.

And now Bill "Anything New" Telford tells me what a straight shooter I am, how I am not obligated to anyone or anything but the truth, how I see a crime and go after it. Stand right up to the people in power.

Poor Bill Telford.

LIKE ME, MITCH WHITE WAS NOT FROM THE AREA. THAT SHOULD have been a point to bond us, outsiders in a provincial legal setting in which many of the regular players could trace their local roots back for generations. In fact, it only made District Attorney White highly suspicious of me. He knew how I had gotten my job.

The same way he had.

In the ten or so years Mitch had been D.A., he had tried hard to adapt to the culture. He had the requisite sports memorabilia around his office, but one had the sense he could not withstand a grilling about Bobby Orr, Carl Yastrzemski, or maybe even Larry Bird. He bought a table for the Boston Pops concert that was held on the town green every summer, but people who were forced to sit with him reported he never seemed interested in the music and spent most of the time scanning the other tables for celebrities, officials, and people to whom he could wave. He did not have a boat, did not golf or fish, did not seem to care about the beach.

Among the things Mitch had clearly never mastered was the art of dressing like a native. He was p.r.o.ne to short-sleeved dress shirts, even when he wore a tie. In the summer he liked to wear seersucker suits that could not have cost him $200 and tended to show both wrinkles and the damp spots of perspiration that came from sitting in a leather chair. He had a mustache that no doubt was meant to distract viewers from his underslung chin and wore dark-framed gla.s.ses in which the lenses were fitted into frames shaped liked oxbows. His arms, sticking out of his short sleeves, were remarkably thin. On his left hand he wore a very prominent gold wedding ring. I might have been overly critical, but to me everything about him screamed Not From Here!

Nevertheless, each time Mitch was up for reelection he ran virtually unopposed. I had no involvement in the process, but it seemed to me that the decision was made as to who would be district attorney before the matter went to the voters, and as long as Mitch didn't p.i.s.s off the wrong people, the job was his.

That did not make Mitch a secure man, however. And among his insecurities was me.

There were twenty-three prosecuting attorneys in our office. A couple of them were stationed in Falmouth, a couple more in Orleans, and then there were a few on the islands, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. The rest of us were located at the main office in the "new" building at the courthouse complex just off Route 6A, on the bay side of the Cape in the town of Barnstable. I was relegated to the bas.e.m.e.nt, down the hall from the jail cells. I had been there by myself for years and had come to think of it as my private domain. For a period of several months before my meeting with Bill Telford I had been sharing my office with a woman named Barbara Belbonnet, whom I would have thought quite attractive if her primary interest in life had been something other than making arrangements to have her children picked up after school. Barbara was neither a bad person nor a bad attorney. It was just that her husband had left her with two kids and moved off-Cape, and she had gotten the job with the D.A.'s office because her father was an Etheridge and somebody owed him a favor and told Mitch he had to hire her.

So there she was one day, following behind a couple of staffers pushing a desk and carrying a computer, telling me she was sorry, but she was a new hire and this was where she was told to go. I was not given the option of complaining. "Welcome to the dungeon," I said.

It turned out to be no different for Barbara than it was for me. In general n.o.body other than an occasional secretary or messenger ever came to see either one of us. If we were wanted, someone would call over the intercom and direct us upstairs, usually to one of the first a.s.sistant D.A.'s, Reid Cunningham or d.i.c.k O'Connor.

It was not that Mitch himself openly avoided me. He would greet me with a "h.e.l.lo" and use my name on those occasions when he happened to see me in the hallways or at an office birthday, Christmas, or farewell party. "h.e.l.lo, George, how's it going?" he might say, although he would not wait for an answer. He would respond to my questions if asked, but mostly he steered clear of situations where I would have the chance to ask. He knew my connection but wasn't sure how deep it ran. His own, apparently, wasn't deep enough for him to find out.

By sequestering me in the bas.e.m.e.nt, Mitch was able to limit my exposure to whatever was occurring in the office. He couldn't keep me from talking with the other lawyers or going on coffee breaks with them, but he kept my workload restricted to matters that generally did not require interaction. Here, George, here's twenty-seven drunk drivings for you. You be the OUI specialist. As for Barbara, she was given the domestic disturbances. The small ones. The pushings and shovings and throwing of plates. The ones n.o.body else in the office wanted to go near. Here, Barbara, you take these. You have a problem, we'll be right upstairs. Better yet, ask George. That way, you won't even have to come upstairs.

I wondered sometimes if anyone would even say anything if I didn't show up. But I did show up and I worked hard, in large part because I had nothing else to do. My fellow prosecutors did not, as far as I knew, have anything against me personally, but they recognized my lowly status in the office, my office in exile, and understood that friendship with me was not going to advance their careers. Besides, most of them were married and I no longer was, which limited opportunities for social interaction outside the office.

Strangely-to me, anyhow-some of my better friends were the defense counsel I opposed in court on a regular basis. Guys like Jimmy Sh.e.l.ley, Alphonse Carbona, Buzzy Daizell; guys with senses of humor about their place on the legal food chain, guys who took their victories where they found them: getting a felony reduced to a misdemeanor, getting a not-guilty on five counts even if it meant being hit on another ten; securing a Colombian client.

"Colombians are near and dear to my heart," said Buzzy one time. "They pay in cash." That was defense-counsel humor.

Sometimes these guys would invite me out for a beer, or to attend a cookout, or even to a Red Sox game. But I had to be careful. It would not look good if I appeared to be too close to any of them, and while I was relatively sure that there was almost no offense that would cause Mitch White to fire me, I did not want to be ostracized any more than I already was.

In my eight years as his employee, I could remember being in Mitch White's commodious corner office only three times. Once was on the day he hired me. Once was on the day he found out my wife was divorcing me. And I cannot remember the third occasion. Maybe it was when he told me I would be getting all my a.s.signments directly from d.i.c.k O'Connor, but mostly I was going to be the office's "Operating Under the Influence" guy.

My visit after my conversation with Bill Telford was, therefore, my fourth to Mitch's inner sanctum. It took just two calls to his secretary.

MITCH GREETED ME WITHOUT getting up from his desk. Like every other male in the office, he worked without his suit jacket when he was not in public. Unlike every other male, Mitch kept his tie in a knot pulled tightly to his neck. Even though I had put on my suit jacket for this visit, he made me feel I was a little more casual than the situation required.

"Yes, George." Yes, George, I'm a busy man. See all these papers on my desk?

"Last night I talked to a guy who indicated he was having a problem with our office."

The wheels on his chair made scuttling noises as the D.A. pushed himself back from the edge of his desk. He used his hands to position himself at exactly arm's-length distance. George from the bas.e.m.e.nt is telling me this?

I nodded, confirming the question he had not actually vocalized. "He feels we're not paying attention to a very serious matter."

Now I wasn't just from the bas.e.m.e.nt, I was George with friends in high places, conveying a criticism of his operation. He gripped the edge of the desk until his fingers blanched. "Who we talking about?"

"Bill Telford."

"Anything new." It was hard to tell if he was making a statement or asking a question, but the color returned to his fingers. Anything New Telford wasn't quite as much of a threat as, perhaps, others were.

"He says he's been handing in stuff on his daughter's murder for some time and n.o.body is following up on it."

"There's no case, George. No suspect, no file, nothing for this office to do except pa.s.s along what we get to the police." He lifted his hands about six inches, dropped them quickly to the security afforded by the edge of the desk. Having done that, he waited.

"If I read him correctly, he seems to be of the mind that we're not doing anything because the Gregorys might be involved."

The name. The magic word. Mitch White's muddy brown eyes popped from their sockets, his pupils magnified by his ugly oxbow gla.s.ses. And then, within the s.p.a.ce of a second, his expression changed. But wait, it seemed to say, the Gregorys are your ticket, too, George. Now he saw me sitting before him not as a threat but as an ally. I had come not to attack him but to warn him. And to work with him. We had done it before, right? The time that young Kirby Gregory had gotten arrested for driving with a .20, we had made it go away-he and I.

"That's a lot of horse manure," he said, raising one eyebrow tentatively, making sure I agreed.

"I was wondering if I might take a look."

Now both eyebrows went up, and then they softened. Of course. George Becket, friend of the Gregorys, checking on the Gregorys, what better solution?

"This goes back," he said, sitting up straight, pulling himself into the desk, "almost ten years, you know. Bill and his wife, Edna, are fine people, and the murder has devastated them. They still keep Heidi's room just as it was, you know that? Kind of creepy, I know, but that's how much they were affected."

He peered through his lenses. Did I see how difficult this was?

"Bill quit his job. I don't know, he may have lost it, but this search for the killer became an obsession with him. Always coming up with some theory or other."

Mitch stopped talking for a moment. His fingers began to beat on the desk. A rhythmless sound like typewriter keys clacking.

"After a while they all seemed to revolve around the Gregorys. There was a party that didn't really happen. A pickup at the general store that n.o.body is quite sure actually took place. You know the kinds of things I'm saying. A horrible thing happens in the Gregorys' neighborhood and all of a sudden conspiracists are everywhere, feeding the grieving parents information that doesn't really have any factual basis. All that does is make us have to be extra-careful on our end. Pressure like the kind Bill puts on almost makes you push back harder than you otherwise would. You listen, sure, but after a while you grow pretty skeptical and you just say, okay, show me what you've got, but I'm not carrying the water for you just because some right-wing nut who has it in for the Gregorys says one of them was seen talking to a pretty blonde girl on the night Heidi died. Heck, that's what the Gregorys do. Probably isn't a pretty blonde girl on Cape Cod who hasn't been talked to by at least one of the Gregorys."

He gave a modified laugh. It sounded like a steam heater. His mouth laughed, his chest laughed, his eyebrows stayed put, elevated above his gla.s.ses. Like his mustache, they were too dark for his pale skin. The image they presented distracted from his message.

Still, I smiled, because that is what he wanted me to do. Eight years we had barely spoken to each other and now, in a matter of minutes, we were so inextricably intertwined that we could make little in-jokes about our mentors. If things kept improving like this, I might soon get out of the bas.e.m.e.nt. Maybe even get invited to the Pops concert. Sit at a round table and help Mitch look for celebrities.

Hey, there's Regis Philbin.

"DON'T WE PAY FOR ALL THE THINGS WE DO, THOUGH?"

Who said that? Hemingway. Lady Brett to Jake Barnes, the protagonist in The Sun Also Rises.

What had she ever done to compare with what I had?

Better yet, is what she said even true? Or is it true for some but not for others? Was Peter Martin paying now that he was a doctor in San Francisco, living in Pacific Heights, attending opening night at the opera in black tie? What about Jamie Gregory, now a Wall Street banker, living in a landmark four-story townhouse in the Village?

The one who really paid was Kendrick, and all she did was get drunk.

Kendrick. Her father. Her mother. And, oh yes, George Becket, living by himself on the Cape, working out of the bas.e.m.e.nt office of a political hack, lying awake at night thinking about how different things might have been.