Crime of Privilege: A Novel (14 page)

I hung up and found Barbara watching me. “You want Cory’s number, why didn’t you ask
me?”

“You know her?”

“Only all my life.”

Of course. Barbara was an Etheridge. Etheridges knew everybody on the Cape.

“You know, George, there’s lots of things I could tell you if you’d only ask.”

Because Barbara was tall, because she had perfect posture even when she was sitting,
she was able to look at me over the top of her computer screen. And I was able to
look directly back at her. Her face was so often worked up in emotion that it was
hard to remember it was startlingly pretty when, like now, it was in repose.

“Want me call her for you?”

I
T WAS ARRANGED THAT I WOULD MEET HER AT BREAK A
’
DAY, A
coffee shop across the street from Pogo’s. The meeting was to be at 10:00 a.m. on
Saturday morning. I got there at 9:30 to make sure we got a table. Break A’Day was
not a large place. In the summer, Break A’Day had tables with umbrellas outside on
the patio, but this time of year the seating was only on the inside and it was crowded
with locals and weekenders. There was a counter for twelve and another twelve tables
that would seat two to four people, depending on how much you were willing to be jammed
together. Nine-thirty on a Saturday morning, it turned out, was too late. All the
tables were taken and the waiting list was forty minutes.

The hostess was a small woman with a round face and dark skin, her hair pulled back
in a careless ponytail. Her name tag said Di. I gestured for her to move closer. She
did not, but she allowed me to lean forward enough to whisper in her ear. “I’m meeting
one of the Gregorys here at ten. It’s a business matter, and I really need one of
the tables, preferably in the back or one of the corners.”

Di made a noise with her lips, pulled her head, rolled her eyes, all of which was
meant to show my request was inappropriate; famous people came in here all the time,
and we could wait in line like everybody else.

I leaned in again. “You don’t want there to be all kinds of commotion,
people coming up to her, trying to talk to her, clogging things up while we’re standing
around waiting. So if it would be at all possible to kind of move us up if something
opens—” I tried to slip her five dollars and she reacted as if I were trying to hand
her a toad.

A couple got up from a table along the far wall. I looked. Di looked. She lifted a
clipboard, called the name of the next people on the list, and directed them to take
their place. At this point, I had not even given her my name and was not sure what
I should do. She walked off with her clipboard to greet some new arrivals. Two more
times she called out names to replace departing customers and then she walked by me
and threw her arm toward a newly opened table in the far corner. “Take that one,”
she said, and I had what I wanted.

At 9:55 a large black man entered. There was nothing unusual about that, in and of
itself, except this man was ebony black, wore a blue topcoat, had a shaved head and
a diamond stud in his ear, and in general was not the kind of fellow one usually saw
on Cape Cod, at least in the off-season. He looked around the room, looked at each
and every person sitting there, looked no longer at me than anyone else, then turned
and left. By bending various ways, I could see him outside on the patio, talking on
a cell phone. Then I could see him walk to what looked like a large Jeep, get in behind
the wheel, shut the door. But it was not a Jeep. It was a Hummer, and it did not move.

At exactly 10:00, the door opened, the people waiting for their tables parted, and
Cory Gregory, smiling and saying, “Hello. Hi. Hi. Hi,” made a beeline straight to
my table. “Hi, Georgie,” she said, grabbing my hand and kissing me on the cheek before
I was halfway to my feet. I melted back into my chair.

She was dressed rather mannishly, wearing a pair of what we used to call “white ducks”
for slacks, a white polo shirt, and a blue pullover windbreaker. On her feet were
a pair of two-tone suede shoes that would not have been out of place in a bowling
alley.

“I love this café,” she said, picking up her menu, bouncing around in her seat.

And I loved her. I didn’t say that. But I felt it. I also felt the burn on my cheek
where she had kissed it. Cory Gregory had kissed me. And now she was sitting directly
across from me at this tiny table, where
anytime I wanted I could reach out and lay my hand on top of hers, maybe slide it
along her forearm, feel that slender but no doubt powerful wrist honed by chip shots
and spinnaker raisings.

“This is so exciting,” she said, leaning across that very same tiny table, bathing
me in breath that was imbued with honey, locking brown eyes on me that said I was
the only other person in the universe despite the fact that everyone in the little
café was looking at us, “to hear about Paul. I didn’t know you knew him.”

Paul. Of course. McFetridge. She didn’t know I knew him. She had met me one time,
across a table, in a brew pub, and she was surprised that hadn’t been revealed.

“We were roommates in college,” I explained.

She was listening, I’m sure, but she was also taking off her windbreaker, pulling
it over her head, getting it caught in her hair. I had the briefest glimpse of her
breasts poking through the cloth of her polo shirt, breasts the size of sparrows.
Delicate little things.

“Fraternity brothers,” I gasped.

“Oh, at Cornell.”

“No. Penn.”

The slightest furrow appeared in her brow. I had the irrational fear that we might
be talking about two different Paul McFetridges, and I quickly played my trump card.
“He and I went down to Florida one time, hung out with your cousin Peter.”

“Oh, Petey. He’s such a big bear.”

With that, the image of Peter Gregory Martin looming over Kendrick Powell filled my
mind. I stopped feeling so giddy.

“That’s what I used to call him,” she said, “Big Bear.” She was the one sounding giddy.

The waitress appeared next to us, pad in hand. “Good morning. My name is Maxine.”
She looked at Cory with frank curiosity. “All the muffins are fresh this morning,”
she told her, ignoring me. “Corn and bran are the best.” She said “cahn” for
corn
.

“I’ll just have coffee,” Cory said, handing back the menu without even glancing at
poor Maxine. “Decaf.”

I ordered coffee and both the muffins Maxine had suggested.

“That it?” she wanted to know.

I nodded and she went away disappointed, apparently having been laboring under the
impression that a Gregory and her companion would be issuing multiple orders for eggs
Benedict, eggs Florentine, eggs with oysters and big chunks of lobster.

“So,” Cory said, smiling at me, just at me, only at me, “what is it you can tell me
about Paul?”

“Well, no. I’ve lost him. That’s the thing.”

I stopped because Cory appeared confused. Her distinctive features molded to ask what
“the thing” could possibly be.

“I tried reaching him through his mother,” I said. “I got the impression she hadn’t
seen him in some time.”

I stopped again because Maxine was already back with the coffees, a pot in each hand.
I waited until she had finished displaying her ambidexterity and meandered off. I
watched as Cory filled her cup to the brim with cream, lifted the cup toward her mouth,
and the mixture slopped onto the table. “Whoops. Umm. Ahh,” were some of the sounds
she made before she put the cup back down.

“Mrs. McFetridge,” I said, feeling a little more uncertain about my love than I had
a minute ago, “said he was off in Idaho somewhere, working as a river guide.”

“You’re kidding!” Cory said, thrusting her upper body forward, her voice soaring.

That movement, the jolt against the table, not only spilled more coffee but seemed
to bring the general hubbub of the café to a halt. Cory, however, was oblivious.

“You know,” she said, “he always liked the outdoors, but …” Like Mrs. McFetridge,
she did not want to appear too judgmental. “In a way, that kind of explains everything.”

“Explains what?” I said, purposely keeping my own voice low.

“Well, he hasn’t been around here since … I don’t know, years. And he used to come
regularly. He used to do the Figawi race with us.”

“The one to Nantucket?”

“Yes, we do it every Memorial Day. At least one boat. Sometimes my uncle enters his
boat, too, but Paul used to always be there and I bet we haven’t see him since—”

“Nineteen ninety-nine?” It was a guess, but not a wild one.

She moved her lips, counting to herself. “You know, it could have been. I really don’t
know. It’s been a long time.” She took another somewhat sloppy sip of her coffee.
“A river guide, huh?”

“I was just wondering if anything happened the last time he was here. I mean, I know
he loved to come to the Cape and he loved the race and he was good friends with Peter.…”
I ran out of reasons why I might be asking these questions and hoped she would pick
it up from there.

She did. “Well, I’m six or seven years younger than those guys and I’m trying to figure
out the last time I saw Paul, whether I was in college or at Putney.”

Our muffins arrived, my muffins, with appropriate fanfare. “Here’s your muffins,”
said Maxine. One plate, two muffins, banged into the middle of the table. Cory absently
picked the edge off the bran muffin and began to nibble at it.

“Didn’t you guys used to have parties at your house after the race?”

“Well, usually, yeah. There was always something going on.” She must have liked the
bran muffin because she took another piece.

“And was there a party the last time he was here?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. The race back from the island is on Monday
and there’s always a post-race party in Hyannis and then people tend to wander over
to our house and stay the night, so, yeah, there could have been. But, see, 1999 was
the year I graduated from Putney, and graduation was the week after Memorial Day,
so I probably went right back to Vermont that day.…”

She was drifting off, so I gave her what I had, twisting it only a little. “Nineteen
ninety-nine was the last time I heard from him. He said he was coming up here to race
on
The Paradox—
”

“I don’t like that name,” she said. “I told Ned I wasn’t going to race on it anymore
unless he changed it—”

I talked over her, tried to get back on point. “He told me Peter was going to crew
and Jamie and you—”

“Peter? Well, that should be easy to figure out, because he hasn’t raced in years,
either. Let me see, he was just like a first-year med student at Northwestern when
he had that trouble down in Palm Beach and I know he was up here after that went away.
So what is it? How many years is med school—four? So, 1996, ’97, ’98, ’99. Yeah. And
after that he didn’t come anymore. He was an intern or whatever out in San Francisco
and said he couldn’t get the time off. So if Paul was sailing with him, the last year
it could have been was 1999.” She seemed pleased to have figured that out and ate
more of my muffin.

I was pretty sure I was no longer in love. It wasn’t fair, I realized. She was answering
my questions without guile or subterfuge, taking me at my word as to the reason for
my interest. And yet something about the way her mind meandered, the way she bopped
about in her seat when a thought occurred to her, the way bits of bran muffin stuck
in her teeth—I wondered what it would be like waking up next to her in the morning.
I wondered if she would be attractive at first light, if she would expect me to get
up first, open the curtains, run the shower till it was hot, water the plants.

Cory drank more coffee and smiled at me. It was a genuine smile, a lovely smile. The
bits of bran muffin had disappeared.

I said, “So Peter, I can understand. But I’m wondering if something could have happened
that weekend that affected Paul.”

Was I being too direct, too obvious?

“Like what?” Cory said, still smiling.

“Look.” Emboldened by what I had gotten away with so far, I set off on a new lie.
“That was the last time any of his old crowd heard from him, that weekend of the race.
After that he seems to have taken off out west, almost as though he was trying to
get away from everything in his old life. Sort of
escape
, maybe.”

She was still regarding me as if she and I were the only ones in the café, but the
look of confusion had crept back into her eyes.

“So there was your cousin Ned, your cousin Peter, your cousin Jamie—”

“Jamie’s my brother.”

“Sorry.” Cory’s appeal took another slight tumble.

“Okay, the three of them, plus you, Paul, and a guy named Jason Stockover—”

“Who?” She blinked, thought about it, then sparked again. “Oh, Jason, I remember him.
He was so cute. Okay, it
was
my graduation year, because that was the last time he ever came and I had such a
crush on him and then I never saw him again. So, okay, 1999 it was.”

“You know what happened to him? Know where he is?”

“No. Like I said, we never saw him again. He went to Deerfield or Dartmouth. One of
those green schools, because he had a dark green baseball hat with a white
D
on it.” She finished, and there was a new clouding on her brow.

I had to ask what was wrong.

“You know, it’s kind of funny because we had such a good time. But you think about
it and there were, what, six of us, and three of them never sailed again. I mean,
like I said, Peter has an excuse, but our two friends, to just never hear from them
after that …”

“Which is why I’m asking if something happened.”

And suddenly Cory Gregory was not having such a good time anymore. “George,” she said,
not Georgie but George, “what is it you do? For a living, I mean.”

“I work with Barbara Belbonnet. I thought she told you.”