Richard Stevenson: Death Vows

Radziwill didn’t look much like a Kennedy, nor an offshoot of the Polish aristocracy either. He was willowy and wan in his jeans and T-shirt, with an oval face, watery blue eyes, straw-colored hair, and a sizeable tattoo on his right forearm that appeared to be an image of a right forearm with an open hand at the end of it. Fields was similarly dressed, and also light-haired, but sturdier, and with eyes more of an electric blue, and those ample and unnaturally red lips which Jim Sturdivant had noted were a big draw for Bill Moore. I saw why.

Radziwill had nailed me after I did the responsible thing and used my real name and occupation while making inquiries about the two men with a clerk at Southern Berkshire District Court. The clerk, it turned out, was the sister of a man Radziwill had once dated, and she phoned Radziwill as soon as I hung up, and blabbed. Never trust anybody in small towns seemed to be the overly broad and cynical lesson here, though now I was the untrustworthy character in the eyes of my present interrogators. Also, the discretion I had promised Jim Sturdivant was kaput, and I had these two angry young men badgering me to identify the sinister power that was probing into both their lives.

I said, “Unreasonable as it sounds, I cannot divulge to you who my client is. If you hired me, you would insist that your identity be kept confidential. It all has to do with the ethics of my profession.”

“Horseshit,” Fields said reasonably.

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Radziwill said, “but I do believe it is we who occupy the ethical high ground here. Doesn’t your client have to… show probable cause or something before you have the right to start snooping around in innocent people’s private lives? Well, not legal probable cause, but just some… reason for investigating somebody?”

“In this guy’s line of work,” Fields said, “the only justification necessary for him to go crashing around in somebody’s personal life is a big, fat cash retainer. Isn’t that a fact, Don?”

“I’ll check the rule book when I get back to my office, Barry, but what you say sounds familiar.”

They glared at me. Fields said, “So what are we, under investigation for terrorist activities? Is it that training camp in Afghanistan we went to during our junior year abroad? What set this off, Don?”

“No,” I said. “If that was the case, it wouldn’t be me; it would be Dick Cheney in here with his battery pack and electrodes. Speaking of junior years abroad, by the way, do you mind if I ask a harmless, non-intrusive, pertinent question? Where did you two go to college?”

Radziwill was draped over an easy chair, but Fields was poised and alert on a metal folding chair across from the sagging couch I was seated on, and he replied without hesitation. “I am certainly providing you with no information whatsoever about myself or anybody else until you tell me who it is who is investigating us and why. And Bud is not telling you anything either, are you, Bud?”

“Nuh uh. I’m certainly not gonna say where I went to college. That’s personal data, so to speak.” When he pronounced college, it came out caahhlllege, and I thought, Texas – he’s from Texas . Radziwill had lost much of the accent, but there were lingering traces I had been hearing since I had met him, and this clinched it.

I said, “Here’s the deal, guys. My client or clients is or are concerned that neither of you seems to have existed in any official record prior to your arrival in the Berkshires six years ago. Give me some plausible benign explanation for this mighty peculiar set of circumstances, and I’ll consider naming my client or clients – or at least urge him or her or them to waive the standard confidentiality agreement and give the okay for me to tell you who he or she or they are.”

“So there’s definitely more than one client,” Fields said, sneering. “If there was only one, you would just refer to your ‘client.’ You wouldn’t be talking to us like some pedantic twit. This is quite helpful. We’re making steady progress here, Don.”

I said, “No, we’re not. We’re making no progress whatsoever, Barry. Progress would be if you quit trying to change the subject to English usage from your highly suspect non-past. Where did you attend college? Where did you go to high school? Who was your kindergarten teacher, and did she sit you on her knee and press your face against her bosom, and did she smell of gardenias? These are questions no person whose past is other than shady would object to answering. But you two refuse to do so. I can only conclude that my clients – yes, there are two or more of them – that my clients are right to have you investigated. And I plan to continue to do so, with or without your cooperation or your opinion of me improving or falling even lower than it is now.”

Radziwill said, “So it’s our past that your clients are interested in? Not our present?” He looked a little confused by what he seemed to think my answer would be, and Fields looked eager, too, to hear what I might say.

“Past is prologue, somebody once said…”

“Shakespeare,” Radziwill put in eagerly, except it came out more like Shükespeare.

“…And it’s the continuum of your lives that is going to tell me whether or not you have something to hide, something from the past or the present or both. But I have no picture of a life narrative, in either of your cases, prior to your arrival in Great Barrington, despite my access to a variety of official and semi-official sources that can generally be relied upon to provide basic statistical and demographic information on American lives. Now that’s really weird, wouldn’t you say?” I didn’t mention rural Colorado and the parents with the internal diseases, since I was unsure how many people beyond Sturdivant and Gaudios to whom Fields had told this story.

They looked at each other and then at me. Fields said, “We can’t tell you. I understand why there are certain things about our backgrounds that appear bad. Look, can we confide in you?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t mean confide in you totally. We just can’t do that. I mean, can I just admit to you that there are certain things about my life and about Bud’s life that are best left unexamined? I’m actually relieved that it’s our past you seem the most worried about, and not our present.”

“Why? Because you’re feeling nervous and guilty about something you’re doing at the present time, or are about to do?”

“No,” Fields said, “it’s because… because today both our lives are an open book. There’s nothing for a detective to uncover. I’m actually getting married in a few weeks. To a wonderful man, Bill Moore. I assume you know I’m gay, as is Bud. Everybody around here knows that.”

“I was told that, yes.” And also about your red lips and radiant blue eyes, now just across the coffee table from me. I reached for an imaginary cigarette.

“So it’s really disturbing that at this basically happy time of my life somebody is trying to find a way to fuck things up for me.”

“I know you’ve had some bad luck and sadness in your recent life, Barry. I heard about Tom Weed.”

Fields and Radziwill exchanged quick glances.

“What did you hear?” Radziwill asked.

“That you two had been lovers and he died in a carbon monoxide accident in the garage of the house where you both lived.”

Fields winced. “Tom and I were not lovers.”

“Oh?”

“Tom was forty years older than I am, for chrissakes. We had sex a few times when we first met – his idea, not mine. But basically I looked after his gorgeous house and he let me live there, and we did some social things together. I suppose some people thought we were boyfriends. And Tom probably fed this impression with some people. It was good for his ego, and I knew it and didn’t much mind. But when he died his sister inherited the house. The fact that I was not in his will tells you a lot about how close our relationship really was – and wasn’t.”