Richard Stevenson - Death Vows

“What’s that, a camp for the performing arts?”

“Nuh uh. A penitentiary. Used to be called Walpole.”

“Ah.”

He must have weighed 300 pounds. He was in brown work pants whose contents spilled over the barstool like the great Boston molasses flood. His dark green T-shirt was fresh and clean and had the number 74 stenciled on the front. O’Toole was fiftyish, with soft, gray eyes and a flat nose. He smelled of cigarettes, aftershave and the Budweiser he was drinking. He had arms like stone Buddhas, and they made me contemplative, as they no doubt did others.

“Thorny could’ve put Vincent away for ten to fifteen, but he only asked for five,” O’Toole said. “Mitzi appreciated that, and so did I. The gambling stuff, there was no getting around that. The assault with intent was not so clear-cut, though – everybody knew that flaming asshole had it coming – so Thorny let it go. I’m beholden to him because of it. And that, my friend, is why you are here.” He looked at me with no particular expression.

I sipped my beer and then O’Toole sipped his. I said, “Jim Sturdivant. What do you know?”

“What do I know about what, Jim Sturdivant?”

“He was killed on Wednesday.”

“Yeah. The guy was a pansy.”

“You think that’s why he was killed?”

“It’s a good enough reason.”

Could I just adroitly back out of this place? Yes, but then what? I said, “No, that’s a poor reason. I disagree with you, Tom.”

He shrugged, and something in the game caught his attention. He said, “Fuck.”

I said, “It doesn’t look so good for the Sox this year.”

O’Toole looked back at me and said, “Jim Sturdivant was a pussy, that’s what that fucker was.”

“A pansy and a pussy. He was all over the place.”

“The guy was older than me and I didn’t know him, but I didn’t like him,” O’Toole said.

“How come?”

“How come what? What’s to like?”

I said, “Cornwallis thinks a guy from Great Barrington shot Sturdivant, but I think he’s wrong.”

O’Toole eyed the Yanks’ pitcher with disdain. He said, “Barry Fields. I don’t know him. Works at the movie down there. He’s a gay.”

I said, “Cornwallis says the murder was about sexual jealousy. But Fields wasn’t sexually jealous. Have you picked up anything about why Sturdivant might have been shot? If it wasn’t sex-related, what else could it have been? Was Jim ever involved, for instance, in the kinds of activities his biological father was once involved in?”

O’Toole smirked. “You mean like sticking his dick in the hole nature intended? Nah, I never heard that about Jim.”

“No, I mean loan-sharking or other organized crime activities.”

He looked at me carefully now. “That was a long time ago. A lot of old people in Pittsfield remember Phil Murano.”

“What I’m wondering, Tom, is if we have a case here of like father, like son. I know that Jim made a lot of money as a corporate flack. But maybe he had some other financial practices that weren’t so well known. Not because he needed the money, but for sentimental reasons. Is that possible?”

Now O’Toole gave me the look he had just given the Yankee pitcher. “You mean like he was a chip off the ol’ block? No. Jim Sturdivant was no Phil Murano in any way, shape or form. You got your head up your ass on that one.”

“So you’ve never heard of Jim involved in any kind of what Thorne Cornwallis would consider illegal?”

He almost smiled. “Only butt-fucking.”

“But, Tom,” I said, “butt-fucking is legal now, too. There was a US Supreme Court decision several years ago. It helped pave the way, in fact, for the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts. Sturdivant and his boyfriend, Steven Gaudios, never married, however. Before he died, Jim told me family considerations prevented them from getting married. I guess the family would have objected.”

“Objected!” O’Toole said, and grunted. “Jesus, Anne Marie would’ve fucking dropped dead! She’s a frail old lady, and her son marrying a fag would’ve killed her on the spot.”

All right, that was enough. “Tom,” I said, “before we go any farther, I think I should tell you something about myself.”

“Yeah, okay, just don’t say you’re queer too. If you did, this conversation would end right then and there.”

So that’s how it was going to be? Apparently. I said, “No, it’s that I’ve been trying to place you since I walked in here. I think I remember you from college. Did you go to Rutgers, by chance?”

“Nah, Pittsfield High.”

“It wasn’t you then. There was a linebacker named O’Toole. I was an English major, but I always noticed the football players.”

“Yeah.”

What a dork. I said, “What about other members of Jim Sturdivant’s family? Have any of them followed in Jim’s father’s footsteps?”

O’Toole puzzled over this. “Depends on what you mean by footsteps .”

“Gambling, loan-sharking, assault, whatever.”

After a moment, O’Toole said, “Well, there was Butch Murano.”

“Who is he?”

“Jim’s second or third cousin, he’d have to be. Butch ran a game for years in the back room at the Lakewood Grill.”

“But not anymore?”

“That’d be hard. Butch passed on five or six years ago. Cancer of the tongue. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Any others? More recently?”

“Not any Muranos or Sturdivants that I can think of. Most of the stuff people used to deal in – your card games, your numbers, your horse betting, your whores – a lot of that’s gone now. The Indians in Connecticut have ahold of the casinos. Hey, who says the white people won the war? The fucking Indians, they don’t go to jail, plus they make out like bandits. You got your drugs, of course, but the blacks and the Mexicans control it all, basically. No Irish need apply. There’s still lots of sports betting here in town, and it’s still a nice, clean white people’s way of doing business. It’s seldom anybody gets hurt – not your blacks with their Uzis and their pit bulls chewing people’s throats off. It’s just roughing somebody up once in a while who bets and loses and neglects to meet their obligations. I’ve seen that happen.”

I didn’t ask O’Toole if he had seen that happen firsthand. I said, “What about Sturdivant’s brother, Michael? He told a man who had him removed from a movie theater one time that the guy had better back off or he might get his leg broken.”

O’Toole thought about this. “I’ve wondered about Michael.”

“Wondered what?”

“People know him in Providence.”

“Which means what?”

“Hey, you know Rhode Island.”

“I guess you don’t mean that in colonial times Rhode Island was a haven of religious tolerance.”

“Nah, the mayor’s in a federal prison. You don’t get that in most places.”

“Buddy Cianci. What was it? Rigged contracts? Kickbacks?”

“Yeah, nickel and dime stuff for a fucking mayor. What a putz.”

“And Michael Sturdivant has friends of a certain kind in Providence?”

“I heard that. But what do I know?”

“Does Michael come to Pittsfield often?”

“I see him once in a while,” O’Toole said and signalled the bartender for another Bud and another Sam Adams. “At mass at Mount Carmel with Anne Marie. He’s a good son; you gotta give the guy credit. Unlike Jim. That fucker gave all his dough to the ballet and shit like that, and you seldom saw him in church. And he just lived down in Sheffield, unlike Providence two or three hours away.”

“Michael must be in Pittsfield for the funeral. It’s on Monday.”

“Yeah, I saw him at mass yesterday. He was here earlier in the week too. I saw him over at Ern’s Lounge on Fenn Street.”