Crime of Privilege: A Novel (25 page)

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.

M
ITCH 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.

S
EAN 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?”