Richard Stevenson - Death Vows

“A man complained about some talkers sitting behind him during a movie. Fields went in and told the people to shut up. They told him to fuck off, apparently, and he blew up and dragged two people outside, a man and a woman. For some reason, the couple took off and didn’t press charges, so there’s no record of it. But I have witnesses to the incident.”

“Yes, he threw those blabby creeps out,” I said, “but he didn’t shoot them. Even though he probably should have. I would have.”

Toomey got on his puzzled look again. “The point is, this is a guy who can lose control and you don’t know what the hell he’s going to do.”

I said, “The person who shot Sturdivant seems to have been in total control of his actions. The act was calculated and it was deadly. It was not somebody losing it and popping off the way you’ve described Fields.”

“Strachey, Fields told Sturdivant in front of three witnesses that he was going to get rid of him.”

“That could have meant anything,” I said. “Get rid of him socially, or something.”

This sounded painfully lame as I said it, and Toomey just looked at me for a long moment. He said, “Hey, I know you want to stick up for another gay guy. I appreciate that. And Fields has had some kind of rough time in his life, and you want to see that he gets a break. But you really have to face the facts here. I’m telling you. The guy lost it and killed a man, and now he has to suffer the consequences.”

I said, “How do you know he had a rough time in life? What do you know about Fields’ life I don’t know about?”

Toomey shrugged. “I just meant he was gay, and I know that’s not easy. As for who Fields actually is and where he came from, I’m still working on that.”

“Yeah, me too.”

I thought about asking Toomey if he’d checked out Bill Moore’s whereabouts on Wednesday night at nine – or Moore’s murky background as possibly some kind of government agent – but decided not to implicate my own client unless and until the facts required it.

Toomey left with the DA’s office crowd, and I waited a few more minutes until Myra Greene came out, accompanied by Radziwill and the two friends who had bailed her out. Radziwill helped her extract a cigarette from a pack in her side pocket, and then helped her light it.

“Hey, Donald, I got sprung out of there just in time. I was about to go bonkers in the lockup and start screaming like Jimmy Cagney in White Heat .”

“I just want you to know I didn’t rat you out, Myra.”

“I know you didn’t, dear. That was Susie Schwartz, whose house I was looking after. But I don’t blame Susie either. Thorny went at her with a rubber hose, I’m sure.”

Myra sounded game, but she was walking unsteadily and seemed unable to move her neck at all. I said, “Once we get Barry out of this, you’ll be okay, too. Don’t worry.”

“Oh, I’m not concerned, Donald. Now, what time is it? I’ve got to back get to the theater.”

“Don’t you want to get some rest first?”

“No, dear, I’ll be getting plenty of rest when it’s my time for the – ” she glanced at her friends and then back at me ” – for the big you-know-what.”

Then she wobbled away, trailing ash and fumes.

The first thing Jerry Treece said was, “Steven is calling in the loans.”

“Can he do that? I thought Sturdivant was the lender.”

“It’s in the contract I signed. If Sturdivant were to die, Gaudios would automatically take over as the lender. And the deal was, the loan could be called in on a week’s notice.”

“That last part sounds kind of mob-like.”

“It seemed like a bargain at the time,” Treece said resignedly and sipped from his own Sam Adams as I contemplated mine.

We were in a place called The Brewery just north of town, where the potato skins were as rustic as the decor. Treece was a light-skinned black man in his thirties with a high forehead, a shiny beard and a sedate manner. He worked for a photography restoration company in nearby Housatonic and lived there with his partner, Greg.

Treece said he’d met Sturdivant at the Supper Club and had heard from others that Sturdivant lent money at a below-market rate. Treece had heard rumors of the unwritten conditions of Sturdivant’s loans, but he said that that would not have been a problem unless it involved unsafe sex. And when the time came for Treece to collect the car loan he requested, the requirements were minimal and unobjectionable. His biggest problem, he said, was keeping from laughing when the dog had his martini.

I asked, “How much did you borrow?”

“Twelve thousand. But I’ve been paying it off in big chunks whenever I could, and I’m down to eighteen hundred. So Greg and I can get it together by next week without borrowing somewhere else. It was just kind of a shock, especially after what happened to Jim.”

“And Gaudios just phoned you this morning and told you to pay up?”

“He said a registered letter was in the mail, but he was just giving me a heads-up on what to expect.”

“For some of the other borrowers, this is probably going to be a real problem,” I said. “Did Gaudios say what would happen if you didn’t pay the loan off within a week?”

“He used the words ‘legal action.’ I told him to be cool, that I got the picture and I’d pay up. I told him I was very sorry to hear about Jim’s passing, and then Steven got weepy and said he and Jim had been together for forty-six years, and how was he going to live without him? He cried on the phone and said he didn’t think he could bear it. Both those guys were a couple of scuzzy characters in a lot of ways, but I do feel sorry for Steven. He’s totally devastated. Even people who are not very nice are capable of love, and in their weird way these guys had one of the solidest marriages around.”

“I don’t think they were married,” I said. “In fact, Jim told me they were not – for family reasons, he said.”

“They wore matching silver wedding bands,” Treece said. “I saw them.” He laughed and added, “They were the same design as their cock rings.”

“Oh, goodness.”

“Maybe they had a non-legal union ceremony and exchanged rings at that time.”

“Could be,” I said. “Though I think not at Mount Carmel Church in Pittsfield, where Sturdivant’s mother is a parishioner. Maybe at their house.”

Treece laughed at the idea of a gay union ceremony at Mount Carmel. “I don’t think Jim was even out with his family. Steven either. Everybody who was gay knew they were a couple, and so did a lot of other people down here in South County. But Pittsfield is another world. It’s a kind of gay pit of shame, where only the bravest of the brave come out. For instance, Jim and Steven gave a lot of money to arts organizations and charities, but they were never listed as joint donors. You’d see their names in theater programs as patrons, but unlike most gay couples these days they were always listed separately. It’s a schizoid kind of existence, and it has to take a toll on a person.”

I said, “Are you from the Berkshires, Jerry?”

He smiled. “Nope. I grew up in Batavia, New York. Would I have come out there? Noooo way. I was too much of a coward. People who come out in their hometowns are the bravest people in the world. But I’m not one of them. Were you, Donald?”

“Nah.”

“It’s never too late.”

“Yeah, it is. Anyway, I’m from New Jersey, where the ex-governor recently did all the coming out the state will be needing for the next several decades.”

“Yeah, I read about that.”

“How could you not have?”

Treece asked, “When did you come out, Donald?”