Crime of Privilege: A Novel (21 page)

“Look, Buzzy, Mitch is one of those guys that just kind of goes along, and most people
in the community couldn’t even tell you who he is. If he’s pissed somebody off, I
don’t know who that could be. So
I’m just kind of wondering who’s come to you, who has decided it’s time to take on
and kick out a sitting D.A.? And more important, why?”

“If I tell you, I’ve got to swear you to secrecy.” He didn’t look at me when he said
this. Most people, they swear you, they look you right in the eyes.

“Swear,” I said.

“It’s the Macs,” he said.

I watched his face. He still didn’t look at me. His Adam’s apple went up and down.
“You want another beer?” he asked, and busied himself in his cooler getting one for
each of us.

“Okay,” I said, taking the cold can so that now I had a beer in each hand, “what’s
their deal? Why do they want him out?”

“They’re not telling me. They just say it’s time for a change and they’d like to get
a local guy in there. They’ve got plenty of financial backing, they say.”

I finished the old beer, cracked the new one, sampled it. “If you’re asking me,” I
said, “and I assume you are, I wouldn’t do it. There’s something funny about this,
at least the way you describe it. I mean, the Macs are small businessmen. What do
they care who the district attorney is?”

“Don’t know. I just know it’s an opportunity for me.”

I decided to give him advice. I decided that was what he really wanted from me. “Listen,
Buz, running for D.A. is not like running for any other office. For a D.A. to get
voted out he has to have really screwed up in some way. Nobody in our office likes
Mitch, but they’re not going to come out against him.”

“I’ve already agreed to do it, George.”

The batter at the plate got hit by the pitch. He was gesturing at the pitcher and
the pitcher was stomping down off the mound, gesturing back. The about-to-be-famous
Cotuit catcher got between the batter and the pitcher. The umpire tried to get between
the catcher and the batter. Players, coaches, and managers poured from both dugouts,
and the crowd loved it.

“You know,” I said, “my job sucks bad enough already. I really can’t do anything to
make it worse. I mean, I’ll give you money, vote
for you, obviously. But I’m not going to say anything quotable or let you use my name
on your literature. So, great, you’ve got me and the Macs and your high-school buddies
showing up at a fund-raiser for you, and Mitch has Senator Gregory showing up at a
fund-raiser for him—who do you think’s going to get the short end of the stick on
that one?”

Buzzy shifted in his lawn chair as if to get a better look at the brouhaha on the
diamond. But he was not really watching it. “What I wanted to speak to you about,
what I asked you to meet me for, was to see if I could get you to not make my campaign
any worse.”

“By what, holding a press conference, telling everyone what a lush you are?” I was
making a joke. I didn’t really know anything bad about Buzzy. He drank no more than
anyone else, from what I could see.

Only he drank now. He drained the whole can of beer in one long gurgle.

Out on the field, the umpire was having a high old time throwing people out of the
game. He would point at someone, then turn half a turn away and sling his arm up in
the air as if he were casting a fly rod. Each time he did it the crowd cheered or
booed.

“These guys are saying, and it’s mostly McBeth, he’s like the spokesperson, that if
there is anything bad in my background … anything unsavory, then Mitch White’s going
to come up with it. Maybe not Mitch so much, but the people who want him around, the
people who support him.”

I waited to see if he would say it. When he didn’t, I did. “The Gregorys.”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re going to throw in with some anti-Gregory faction. What are they, Republicans?”

“Fuck no, and that’s not what I said.”

Buzzy’s anger startled both of us. He dragged his hand across his mouth to calm himself
down. The combative baseball players and coaches were still milling around. Cotuit
was going to have to get a new pitcher. The game was going to be delayed for a while.

“Look, George, I want this job. I seriously would like to get my life together and
be somebody, get on track for something. And these
guys, they came to me. I didn’t go to them. They say they want me because of my family,
my roots. They say I’m personable. The other thing they’re saying is that I’m telegenic,
although I don’t know what good that does me in this race. They just want to know
if there’s any shit in my past, anything that the Gregorys could dig up that would,
you know, make me look … less than honorable.”

“Like representing Colombians?”

“They don’t have any problem with that. I was just doing my job there.”

“Getting paid in cash.”

“Yeah, well, I had enough other people paying by check. I’ve never had any problems
with the tax folks.”

“So that’s not what you’re concerned about.”

“No.”

“It’s something personal.”

“Yeah.”

“Something you think I know about.”

The Adam’s apple went up and down again. It had now been several minutes since Buzzy
looked my way. “Something other people know about. Something I don’t think you do.”

There was a little fluttering in my heart, a cold bolt that went down my spine. The
things that went through my mind were all things that should not have affected Buzzy
Daizell in any possible way.

The words burst out of his mouth as if he could not wait any longer. “I had an affair
with Marion,” he said.

I looked at the top of my beer can and wondered if I should drink some more. “We’ve
been divorced for some time,” I said.

“It was while you were married.”

“I see.” I could trace my finger all around the top of the beer can, let it follow
the inside of the rim, fall into the hole, pop out again.

“Sometimes I would go up to see her in Boston. Sometimes, toward the end of when you
guys were together, when she didn’t come down on weekends, it was because she was
seeing me up there.”

“In her apartment.”

“Yeah.”

“When she said she had to work.”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” I said, “things were coming apart anyhow.” Except I wanted to crush the beer
can.

Order had been restored on the field. The new pitcher was heading to the mound to
start his warmup tosses. A pinch runner was trotting out to first base.

“This is like full disclosure, George. I mean, if this stuff comes out, you’re going
to hear about it and, well, I didn’t want that to be the way it was.”

“You didn’t want the
Cape Cod Times
calling me up and asking for a comment, huh?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, you’re not asking my permission or anything. You’re telling me you’re going
to do this and I should be prepared, is that it?”

“Well, you might say you were separated.”

“You want me to cover up the fact that you were having sex with my wife by saying
we were separated?”

“She told me things weren’t going particularly well for you guys in that department.”

I may have stopped breathing for an instant. There was a constriction in my chest
and my entire body went very cold and then very hot. I wondered if my friend had just
offered me an excuse or issued a quid pro quo.

“Except we weren’t separated.”

“Not all the time,” he said. “Except, you know, for her being in Boston—”

I tried to absorb all this information. Tried to parse it out. I kept coming back
to the part where she told him things weren’t going particularly well between us sexually.
“Anything happen between you two when I was around?”

“One time.”

“When?”

“You guys had us over for dinner.”

“ ‘Us?’ ”

“Me. Jimmy Shelley and his girlfriend. Alphonse and his wife, Caroline.” He took a
breath. “You were out in the backyard barbequing and we did something in the bathroom.”

“Who did?”

“Marion and me.”

I didn’t know if I wanted to ask another question. I didn’t know if I wanted to sit
there one instant longer. Everything around me was a blur. The only thing I could
sense distinctly was the spinning blade churning its way through my stomach.

“Well,
she
did something, really.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Buzzy.”

People hanging over the fence turned to look in our direction.

Buzzy covered his face. He may have done it because he was ashamed, or maybe because
he didn’t want the people to recognize him, remember this blasphemy when he started
his campaign.

“Did they know? Jimmy and Alphonse?”

“Jimmy, man.” Buzzy spoke from behind his hands. “He saw her follow me in. He opened
the door. He saw it.”

I leaned over. I tipped the lawn chair so it was up on one side, nearly touching his
with the other. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to hear how rotten this really
was. “You’re telling me Jimmy saw you screwing my wife while I was barbequing?”

“We weren’t screwing.”

I waited, hoping I had misunderstood his confession, hoping this was not going to
be so bad as I had thought.

“She was … you know … down on her knees.”

“Jimmy Shelley saw my wife giving you a blow job?”

“It wasn’t my idea, Georgie,” he yelped, his face still hidden. “I think she liked
the risk, man. I think she liked the possibility she might get caught.”

I slowly eased my chair back into its former position. I had gone from wanting to
hurt Buzzy to wanting to say something in my own defense, something to overcome my
inadequacies. “She usually liked doing other things in bathrooms.”

Sensing a reprieve, Buzzy lowered his hands. “Tell me about it,
man. She wanted to do it in the restroom of the fucking Locke-Ober restaurant one
time.”

I sat very still, thinking of Buzzy and Jimmy and probably Alphonse knowing what my
wife had done. Not telling me. Just knowing. “Well, thanks for letting me know,” I
said softly.

“I’m sorry, Georgie.”

I stood up then. Play had resumed on the field, but Buzzy was watching me, his face
in total disarray, as if he had no idea what I was going to do, what he should do:
stand up with me, beg for forgiveness, ask for another affirmation of loyalty from
me, his cuckolded friend.

“Thank you for the beer,” I said, and left him looking like one of those people who
are always at the foot of the cross in Renaissance paintings, gazing up in total mystification,
wondering what is to become of them.

I
COULD NOT BLAME MARION FOR HAVING A MISIMPRESSION. THE
first time I had sex with her was in the front seat of her Audi, the front passenger’s
seat, while we were parked at a curb on H Street in D.C. She was giving me a ride
home even though I lived only a few blocks away because we had been at the library
studying late for finals. We were giddy from effort and lack of sleep, and I am a
little vague as to how it was that she happened to fall into my lap after I was seated.
I know only that we started to kiss, then touch, then move about. I know there was
a sense of danger, a need to hurry, and that she got one leg out of her jeans and
underwear and straddled me as I partially reclined in the seat. It was dark and I
enjoyed it. From the sounds she was making, she enjoyed it every bit as much as I
did.

The second time was on the National Seashore, a public beach, where anybody walking
in the dark could have come upon us. After that, she could well have thought I wasn’t
just kinky but an exhibitionist.

I am sure I was an incredible disappointment to her.

C
HUCK LARSON WAS WEARING A SPORT COAT WITH ENOUGH
material to house a family in the Sudan. It would not have been an attractive sport
coat even in a smaller size on a much slimmer man. It did, however, project a certain
good cheer, with its faint yellow squares imposed on an olive-green background.

He was sitting on the couch in my living room. I had much nicer furniture than a bachelor
should have, at least a bachelor like me. Marion had picked it out. Paid for it herself.
Left it behind. Now Chuck was dwarfing it. His huge legs were spread apart, his hands
clasped between his knees. He wanted to know how my visit with Paulie went.

I told him I was shot at.

Chuck’s massive face crumpled. “By who?”

I shrugged. There was a certain amount of spite in that shrug.

“Paulie wouldn’t have had anything to do with shooting anyone. Least of all you. You
told me you used to be best buds.”

“I didn’t say it was McFetridge, Chuck.” I let the silence build just to see if he
would get uncomfortable. Chuck Larson was, after all, the one who had sent me to Idaho,
directed me there, at least, and I still had no idea who had shot at me.

But the big man outplayed me. His expression stayed mournful for so long that I could
not stand it anymore. “All I know is that it happened.”

“Where?”

“On a path, when I was walking through the woods on my way back from a hot spring.”

“And were there, like, other people around?”

“Only Paul. He came running up right after.”

“And what did he say?”

“Said he couldn’t believe it. It had never happened before.”

“Oh.” Chuck tilted his head back to give himself a full range of ceiling to survey.
“Could you have, like, been somewhere you shouldn’t have?” The marijuana-farm theory
again. I wondered if they had talked, if Chuck Larson already knew what had taken
place.

I could see only the underside of his chin, which was about the size of a dinner plate.
I spoke to that. “I was just doing what McFetridge told all the rafters to do. Only
I was alone and it was late and he was behind me and that’s all I can tell you.”

“Oh,” Chuck said again. He continued to search the ceiling.

I was sitting in a recliner chair. High leg, country style, it was called. It did
not match the couch. But the two items of furniture went together. The chair was “taupe”;
the couch was “smoke.”