Richard Stevenson: Death Vows

Now they both rolled their eyes. I was beginning to fear for the integrity of their optic nerves. Sturdivant said, “Well, how can he explain it? He can’t! He once told me he was related to the Kennedys by marriage, like his ‘Aunt Lee,’ as he calls her. When I pressed him, Bud said it was too complicated to explain, but the family didn’t make the petty distinctions I was attempting to draw. ‘The family‘! Can you believe it?”

Gaudios said, “Some of us wondered if Bud might be the illegitimate spawn of Teddy and some West Yarmouth bar girl, but Bud hasn’t got Teddy’s red nose!” They both haw-hawed over this and sipped their martinis.

I asked if it was certain that Barry and Bud had arrived in the Berkshires together, or if it was possible that they had met in Great Barrington and formed their friendship there.

“Oh no, they showed up together,” Sturdivant said and signaled the passing waiter for a refill on his drink. Gaudios gestured at his glass too. “I know they arrived together because they were looking for work, and Tom Weed hired them both to clean out his gutters and do some other jobs around his property. They had an old, red, beat-up pickup truck they drove around. They got a lot of the yard jobs the Mexicans didn’t get, because the Mexicans didn’t have trucks.”

“And the Mexicans probably weren’t gay. How out were Barry and Bud?”

“I know Bud flirted with Tom, even though it was Barry that ended up with him,” Sturdivant said. “Their gaydar must have picked up on Tom right away, perhaps because he was an antiques dealer in a town where so many of the antiques dealers are gay. These men, many of whom are our friends, don’t go around waving the rainbow banner the way the women do. But people in town know who is in bed with whom, believe me.”

I said, “And Barry and Bud somehow knew this too. Or quickly scoped out the situation. So, they arrived in town in this old truck?”

“Apparently, yes.”

“I don’t suppose you recall where it was registered, what state’s tags it had on it?”

They thought about this. Gaudios said, “Tom would know. But he’s not here to tell us. Tom was a marvelous man. We miss him tremendously. If Barry had just… on that horrible night…” Gaudios squeezed his fist, and the two men looked distraught and angry as they remembered their friend and his slow death in his garage.

The waiter brought me my gazpacho, and my two tablemates their mussels in lime broth and their fresh martinis.

I said, “I’m going to ask around about Barry and Bud as discreetly as I can without letting anyone know who I am and that I’m investigating them. You should know that this may involve a few minor misrepresentations on my part.”

I thought that might bring out some squeamishness, but Sturdivant just chuckled. “I had a long, successful career in public relations, Don.” He grinned, as if this needed no further explanation.

“It’s a black art, I know. The practice of making bullshit exquisite.”

Gaudios looked startled. “Jim had many major corporate clients!” He glanced over at Sturdivant, perhaps to see if he was going to slap my face with his lap linen.

But Sturdivant just smiled and said, “A smallish distortion in the service of a larger truth is something I became comfortable with a long time ago.”

“Who were your clients?” I said. “Maybe I should be asking for my money back from some of them.”

Sturdivant named four Fortune 500 companies which, according to environmental, consumer and human rights groups, were brazen in their regular employment of the Big Lie. I said, “Jim, you’re under arrest. Eliot Spitzer is waiting outside with his paddy wagon, and I’d much appreciate it if you would come along with me without making a fuss.”

He smiled. “I spent years taking grief from the goo-goo types. The Sierra Club, Consumers Union, all the rest. I knew them all, got along splendidly with most of their people, and wined and dined many of them right here in this very room. But in my retirement, these are the types of people up with which I no longer have to put.”

“Right,” I said. “Fuck them and the horse in upon which they rode.”

Gaudios looked at me in annoyed disbelief. I was disrespecting a man he must have thought of as a great American and who perhaps gave excellent handjobs.

I said, “Tell me about your friend Bill Moore. He retired to the Berkshires from a government job?”

“Bill moved to the area about five years ago from Washington, DC,” Sturdivant said. “He’s originally from the Midwest somewhere, but he retired here at the suggestion of another federal retiree, Jean Watrous. Jean is a dyke friend of Bill’s whose family is from Lee. It was after nine-eleven when a lot of city people with second homes here were moving up permanently or spending long weekends, so real estate was tightening. Bill got here just in time, before the market went through the roof. He’s retired, but Bill is not as old as some of us lovelies of a certain age, and he still works part time for a Springfield computer firm. Currently he’s helping install a new computer system in the Lenox school system.”

I said, “Bill and Jean Watrous are close friends?”

“They play golf together, and we see them eating together at Twenty Railroad, the tavern down the street from here. Sometimes they’re with Barry; sometimes it’s just the two of them. Jean’s ladyfriend, Gwenn, is in Romania teaching journalism for six months, but Jean had to stay behind to look after her elderly mother.”

“And what does Jean think of Bill marrying Barry?” I asked.

Sturdivant and Gaudios looked at each other. “There is no way we could possibly know what Jean thinks,” Gaudios said. “Jean is not someone who particularly likes men.”

“But isn’t her good friend Bill Moore a man? I’m confused.”

“Well, they have this work connection,” Sturdivant said. “But Jean has never been especially fond of Steven and me.”

“I’m sure you know the type,” Gaudios said, and when I could think of no reply to that, he made what I surmised to be a whinnying sound. Then he and Sturdivant chuckled.

How had I gotten mixed up with these two? Oh, right. Sturdivant was paying me a fat fee. Timmy would be proud that I had not reached over and tipped the two plates of mussels in a lime broth onto their tastefully appointed laps.

I said, “Tell me more about your own friendship with Bill. You’re not close enough to him to tell him you’ve hired me to investigate his boyfriend and not have him object. But you see yourselves as close enough to care greatly about his wellbeing and to believe that if he were thinking rationally he would appreciate your efforts on his behalf. Can you clarify your relationship? The picture is hazy to me.”

“I do believe Bill would describe us as among his closest friends in the Berkshires,” Sturdivant said, in a tone that was both defensive and injured. “We met Bill soon after he arrived in the area, at a Supper Club dinner where he hoped to meet other gay men, and we immediately liked him and set out to be as helpful as we possibly could.”

“Bill was really terribly alone and forlorn when he arrived here,” Gaudios said. “We tried to include him and make him feel welcome, and I have to say that to a considerable degree we succeeded in doing just that.”

“When did you see him last?” I said.

They both peered into the pile of mussel shells they had been collecting in a bowl in the center of the table.

“I think last week,” Sturdivant said.

Gaudios said, “At the post office, was it?”

“Or at Guido’s?”

I said, “Who is Guido?”

“Guido’s is the upscale market where we all buy our groceries and wine,” Sturdivant said. “It’s just south of town. People from Albany drive over here just to shop at Guido’s. I’m surprised you don’t know it.” He looked at me as if I might have had a stick of beef jerky protruding from my breast pocket or from between my teeth.