"Death Vows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stevenson Richard)

Chapter Five

Having moved on to some routine background-checking for an Albany lawyer friend, I phoned Preston Morley in Stockbridge on Thursday morning, two days after my Great Barrington visit. I told him, “Thanks for sending the toads my way. You’re a sweetheart, Preston. I plan on returning the favor some day, so I’d advise you to be on the lookout for skunks in your garbage can or the odd moose stepping on your car. When it happens, I want you to know I was the man behind it.”

“Donald, my friend, what’s this you say about skunks and moose and amphibians? Are we doing Carnival of the Animals? Or is it The Wizard of Oz? And instead of ‘lions and tigers and bears!’ it’s ’skunks and moose and amphibians!’ Clue me in, Donald, on the significance of these obscure literary or natural references, and then let’s see where we might go from there.”

Morley was the resident dramaturge and a frequent director of plays at the Stockbridge Theater Festival, and a Georgetown classmate of Timmy’s. Two summers before, we had attended Morley’s wedding to David Murano, a Pittsfield elementary school teacher, an event so thrillingly emancipating that Timmy and I had considered abandoning Albany and moving thirty miles eastward to the Gay Peoples Republic of Massachusetts. That way, we too could legitimize our foul-in-the-eyes-of-the-state union and flaunt our lifestyle in Antonin Scalia’s front parlor, in the unlikely event that we should find ourselves down at Nino’s house being served prune juice with rue. It was mainly Timmy’s longtime financially rewarding and otherwise satisfying job with Assemblyman Lipshutz and both of our morbid attachments to the mauve charms of socio-political Albany that kept us where we were.

I said to Morley, “You don’t know who I mean by the toads?”

“I do not. Is this an Old Testament reference, Donald? If so, I should be getting it, being a Georgetown alum. Although the New Testament did receive considerably more attention at that resplendently Jesuit institution, as I recall.”

“Didn’t you refer Jim Sturdivant and Steven Gaudios to me? They said you did.”

“Oh, those toads.”

“They hired me at your suggestion, Preston. That’s what they said. Thanks ever so much.”

“God, aren’t they awful? I did run into Jim recently, and he asked if I knew of any private investigators, and before I could catch myself your name just popped out. You’re not only the only private eye I know, you’re the only one I’ve ever even heard of in this area. So maybe I was just showing off saying I knew a real-life gumshoe. I take it that your experience with Jim and Steven has not been fulfilling. If so, I do beg your forgiveness for my even mentioning your name. Go ahead. Have a moose step on my car.”

I said, “I should have called you before I got mixed up with them. So it was my mistake. Anyway, it didn’t work out. I did a little work for them, decided I did not wish to continue in their employ, and then phoned them yesterday morning and cut myself loose. So it’s yet another lesson for me in checking out clients, especially before I check out anybody else for them.”

“Timmy says you’ve had some doozies over the years.”

“Most of my clients have been decent, ordinary people who have felt victimized or potentially victimized in ways where legal action was inappropriate or would have been personally awkward for one reason or another. But sometimes clients want to use investigators for their own dubious or even illegal ends. It’s a hazard of the profession. When I get one of those – and when I manage to find out in time – I provide a refund and disengage. It’s part ethical, part a matter of hanging on to my license.”

“And were Jim and Steven crooks or just dubious types?”

“I can’t really go into the details of what they wanted,” I said. “Suffice is to say they misrepresented themselves and they misrepresented the facts, and yesterday I suggested they drop the matter they hired me to look into.”

Morley said, “Could a Barry Fields have been involved? Something about protection from Barry Fields? I realize you may not be in a position to answer that question.”

What was this? “Why do you ask?” I said.

“Because Barry Fields attacked Jim Sturdivant in a grocery store yesterday afternoon. It’s in today’s Berkshire Eagle. You don’t know about this?”

“No. Unless it’d been a homicide or it involved a New York State elected official or his mistress or his underage boyfriend, it wouldn’t make the Albany paper. What’s the story?”

“It happened in Guido’s, a fancy market in Great Barrington. Do you know it?”

“Of course. People from Albany drive over to Great Barrington just to shop there.”

“So apparently Jim and Steven were in there yesterday around two doing their shopping when they ran into Barry Fields, a local gay guy who is about as fond of them as most people are, and they got into an argument about something. Anyway, Fields ended up screaming at the toads, and he hit Jim with a wheel of cheese.”

“Was Sturdivant hurt?”

“Not badly, according to the paper. Not hospitalized, at any rate.”

“Perhaps it was a fine, aromatic, soft cheese.”

“The report didn’t say. The Eagle is not what it once was, Donald. It’s owned by a cheap chain now, and you’re lucky if they don’t spell cheese with a z. The old Eagle would have described the area in western France where the cheese originated and included a sidebar about the editor’s mother’s visit there in 1958.”

“So was Barry Fields arrested?”

“The altercation was broken up by store employees and bystanders, but the police were called and Fields was hauled off. There was a hearing in Southern Berkshire District Court, and Fields was released on bond and ordered to stay away from the toads. The judge probably didn’t state it exactly that way. Presumably he used their actual names.”

“He must not have been acquainted with them.”

“The other thing was – and this seems to me rather serious – Fields threatened to kill Sturdivant, according to some of the witnesses. Or at least to get rid of him. That’s what the witnesses said Fields said. They said he said he was going to get rid of Jim once and for all, and that people would thank him for it. Now there’s a remark that’s not going to help him if he goes on trial for assault.

“So, Don,” Morley asked, “what can you tell me? Do you know about what’s going on here?”

“I think I do know, but I can’t tell you, Preston. At least not until we see what’s about to leak or spew out. Do you know Fields yourself?”

“Slightly. He lives with Bill Moore, a computer guy we once had in here to solve a box office crisis. Our computer was printing tickets with the number seven in front of every word on the ticket. Bill got rid of the sevens. We never knew what he did with them. I’ve heard Moore and Fields are getting married later this month. David and I know some people who are going to the wedding.”

“Do you know either Fields’ or Moore’s families?”

“No. I don’t think either of them is local.”

“How about Bud Radziwill? He’s a pal of Fields’.”

“Oh, sure. The Kennedy cousin, so-called. So-called by Radziwill, but not by anybody else.”

“That’s the one.”

“The thing is, there are some actual Kennedy cousins around here, and they laugh when anybody asks them about Radziwill. He claims to be related to Lee Radziwill, the Bouvier with the Polish aristocrat ex-husband. I know somebody who dated Bud for a while several years ago, and this guy said Radziwill did seem to speak with a slight Polish accent.”

I said, “What have you heard about the toads’ financial affairs? Anything about money-lending?”

“Do you mean like banking?”

“Like banking, but more informal.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. But the two do seem to be well off. Jim cleaned up, I’m sure, doing PR for defense and utilities companies, and Steven made money in investment banking, I believe. They always donate to the theater. That’s basically how I know them.”

“Have you ever been to their house?”

“Once, yes. They did a cocktail-party fundraiser before our annual gala. Nice place. Gorgeous big Victorian manse. Gardens, pool, hot tub. No tennis court, as I recall.”

“Did you slide in, Preston?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you get in the hot tub with Jim and Steven?”

A pause. “You know, Donald, I’d forgotten those stories. If you’re referring to what you seem to be referring to.”

“I am.”

“Well, most of the STF board was there when I was there, and twenty or thirty other theater donors. The hot tub was not being operated on that occasion. There were lovely hors d’oeuvres, I’m sure, but I expect that the snacking was limited to mushrooms with goat cheese in a light phyllo.”

“Did you ever hear of Jim and Steven coercing men into their hot tub? In exchange for financial favors?”

Another pause. “Not for money, just for… oh. Oh crap.”

“Oh crap what?”

“Oh crap.”

“Yeah?”

“I know somebody who borrowed money from Jim once. A young actor who returns here every summer. I’d better not mention his name. You would recognize it.”

“And?”

“Oh crap.”

“Were there unconventional conditions attached to the loan agreement? Is that the oh-crap part that you just figured out?”

Morley said, “I assumed the upsetting conditions were financial when the borrower alluded to them. But he said something that afternoon about being exhausted from collecting his loan, and it struck me as odd at the time. Oh… yeeesh!”

“You bet.”

“So… was Barry Fields another of the toads’ banking customers? Do you think that’s what the fight was about in Guido’s yesterday?”

“I can’t say any more about it just yet, Preston. But I appreciate your pretty much confirming someone else’s story of similar bad behavior by those two. It’s no surprise to me that someone would wallop one of them with a wheel of cheese. It’s amazing they have avoided even worse, and it’s good that the law is restraining Barry Fields from further contact.”

“You know, Donald, I seem to recall David saying something about Jim having something shady in his past, but I can’t remember what it was. Jim is originally from Pittsfield, and I think David’s family might have had some distant connection to the Sturdivants. I’ll ask him.”

“Thanks, I’d be curious. Though I’m well out of Sturdivant’s life now. I got out before he got hit with the groceries, so at this point it’s mainly just gossip to me.”

Mainly gossip but, I understood, not entirely gossip. It was I, after all, who had stuck my nose into Barry Fields’ business, probably triggering his violent tantrum over the toads’ meddling, which had included me as their perhaps too willing instrument.

I forgave Morley for mentioning me to Sturdivant. His intentions were good – sending business my way – and he had guessed rightly that I had suffered far worse clients over the course of my checkered career.

I went back to my phone and Internet digging. I spent half an hour gathering information on the deadbeat Hummer-dealer husband of an Albany nail-parlor operator who had hired a lawyer friend of mine to extract additional support for the couple’s four children from the bad-citizen/bad-dad.

Then, around ten-fifteen, my cell phone rang, and it was Preston Morley again.

“Donald! Donald! Have you heard?”

“Heard what? I guess not.”

“Someone in the office heard it on the radio. Jim Sturdivant was killed last night. Murdered!”

I asked myself two things. One, was I going to see the Berkshires again without having to wait for the next Tanglewood season? I guessed I would. The second question was, had I somehow done this?