Richard Stevenson - Death Vows

“No. There was just a message he left in my office saying he’d be back in town for the dangerousness hearing on Monday. I asked Radziwill about Barry’s anger after the altercation in Guido’s on Wednesday – I was looking for some mitigating circumstances for the blow-up – and Bud just said Barry’s whole family is like that, and Barry is actually the calmest, least dangerous person in his whole brood.”

“Where did the two of them meet?” I asked. “Bud the phony Kennedy cousin has his own mysterious past, and I wonder if the key to Barry’s troubled history lies with Bud’s.”

“They met in college or just before college,” Furst said. “Bud told me that much. When I asked him where that was, he just said ’the Emerald City,’ and laughed. He wouldn’t tell me any more. Bud would only say that they weren’t wanted by the law anywhere, and not to worry about that.”

Timmy said, “They must have followed the yellow brick road.”

We looked at him.

“To the Emerald City.”

I said, “I’ll bet you’re right, Timothy. But what does that mean? As a practical matter.”

He looked blank. He brightened then and said, “Maybe they’re from Kansas.”

“Bud sounds as if he’s from Texas,” I said.

“So maybe they didn’t follow the yellow brick road. They took I- 10.”

Our assorted meat platter arrived, and we helped ourselves to the aromatic morsels.

Furst told me she had arranged my visit with Fields at the Berkshire County House of Correction in Pittsfield Saturday morning at ten. “But,” she said, “I’m not sure what you’re going to get out of Barry that’ll be of any use. He claims not to have known Jim Sturdivant well enough to have any idea who would want to kill him, and I tend to believe him. Sturdivant and Gaudios were both icky guys, but the kind that inspire annoyance rather than homicide. I take it you’ve checked out the guys who borrowed money from Jim at below market rates in return for blowjobs. Anything there?”

Timmy examined his mint sauce. I said no, I hadn’t come up with anything, except Gaudios, as co-lender, had called in the loans within the last two days, and this had upset some of the borrowers. I said, “Ramona, doesn’t Sturdivant’s murder look to you a bit like a mob hit? I’m talking methodology.”

She said, “It does. I wondered about that.”

“What do you know about Sturdivant’s background? I mean, before he became a precious Sheffield homosexual.”

“I don’t know anything, really. He’s from Pittsfield. I grew up in Lowell. I came out here to be a post-hippie and somehow ended up in law school. So Pittsfield is relatively new to me. And Gaudios is from… where?”

“ Springfield, someone said.”

“A sad town. Pittsfield is an old industrial city that’s trying to make a comeback with cultural tourism and the quality of life that comes with the natural surroundings. Springfield is an old industrial city that’s been sinking for decades and has nothing to grab on to. Gaudios is lucky to have fled when he did.”

I said, “I want to check out if Sturdivant and Gaudios might have had mob ties. Unlikely as that sounds. They used lending money not for profit but for sex with otherwise unattainable attractive men – a kind of ugly twist on loansharking. The murder looks like a gangland hit job. And Gaudios told me he made his money in what he called financial services, though he was adamant in not explaining to me what that meant.”

Furst said, “Half the people in the United States work in financial services now. It’s what the country produces these days instead of widgets.”

“And the other thing is,” I said, “Sturdivant’s family in Pittsfield has some kind of shady past. I’m going up there tomorrow to find out what that’s all about.”

Timmy said, “Why wouldn’t the DA have thought of that? He’s there in Pittsfield, and he must know about any organized crime that goes on.”

Furst reached for her drink and finished it off. She said, “Thorny would know about such things, yes. But Thorny is a man in love with the obvious. Or what’s obvious to him, anyway. And what’s now obvious to Thorny is, the Sturdivant murder is an unfortunate spat involving a couple of South County fags.”

I said, “Might I convince him otherwise?”

“You could try,” Furst said. “But you’d probably have to drag in the actual mob contract man to do it. That sounds risky, Don. Probably impossible.”

Timmy said, “Anyway, you’re probably imagining all that mob stuff. The Mafia is a dying institution. Black gangs have taken over the mob’s most popular function, keeping a sizable percentage of the population narcotized. The mob in this country exists mainly on HBO now, doesn’t it, Ramona?”

She said, “No, not really. They’re actually still around,” and we all wondered what that could possibly mean in a place as sweetly benign as the Berkshires seemed to be.

The Berkshire County House of Correction was off a main highway a few miles north of Pittsfield, near a shopping mall and a cement plant. The place was on the new side, with the let’s-not-overspend look of something put up by the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans – or maybe an especially brutal high school. A light drizzle was falling Saturday morning just before ten, a bummer for the weekenders in Great Barrington but probably no loss to the men and women who had been locked indoors for having behaved incorrectly, or for seeming to Thorne Cornwallis to have done so.

I went through the security rigmarole – multiple ID checks, heavy metal doors opening and closing electronically – and was led eventually to a small room with a window to a corridor where corrections officers were stationed. I sat on one side of a metal conference table, and Fields was led in and left alone on the other side.

He looked awful. His blue eyes were bloodshot and his red lips dry. Fields’ orange jumpsuit was a size too big for his mid-sized frame. He was subdued, as if he were resigned to spending the rest of his life in this building, even though no matter what happened he would not. Fields had a bruise on his left temple, and I asked him about that.

“Did you get hit? You’re bruised.”

A wan shrug. “An inmate. Last night I tried to change the TV to the Independent Film Channel.”

“And somebody preferred Bill O’Reilly?”

“No, sports.”

“The inmates are learning about fair play. This is good, maybe.”

“Not fair play. Jumping on people.” He said, “I appreciate your coming here.”

“Glad to help. I’m getting paid. And in some weird way, I may have set all this in motion. I mean, myself and Jim Sturdivant and Steven Gaudios. So I have to get you out of this.”

Fields said listlessly, “Yeah, that would be good.”

“You didn’t shoot Sturdivant, did you?”

“No.”

“But you did hit him with a large cheese.”

“He had it coming,” Fields said. “I know, I know. Assault is assault. And I don’t believe in violence. In Guido’s that day, I just lost it. I do that sometimes, as you have no doubt heard. Apparently it’s congenital, not that that’s any excuse.”

“What did Sturdivant say that set you off?”

“He… well, he insulted my mother.”

“Uh huh.”

“The funny thing is, my mother is a horrible human being.”

“How so?”

“I was reacting to the fact that what he said about her is all true. When I heard it, I just blew up.”

“Understandable. What did Jim say?”

“Anyway, he didn’t even know my mother.”

“He didn’t?”

“How could he? Or at least there’s no way he could know that the woman who is my mother is my mother.”