Crime of Privilege: A Novel (23 page)

“Marion doesn’t live here anymore,” he said.

“But you do.”

“You’ve been a busy boy.” Roland Andrews came close to smiling. “Somebody has to look
out for you.”

I may have sworn at him then. I can’t think of any other reason why Roland’s eyes
suddenly lit up, why he grabbed my wrist, jerked me into the apartment, flung me against
the wall, and kicked the door shut in one continuous, fluid movement. I was bigger
than Roland, taller, heavier, but there I was, my feet dangling above the parquet
floor, his forearm across my neck. “What did you say?” he demanded.

I did not tell him. I didn’t say anything else, either. At that moment I thought there
might be a certain poetic justice in him hanging me on my ex-wife’s wall. There was,
from what I could see, nothing else on the walls—no pictures, no art. Just me.

Roland applied one last bit of pressure to my throat and then let me slide down the
wall to my feet as he backed away. He had hurt me, but I was not going to let him
see that. I did not touch my throat or my wrist. I stood still and waited for my functions
to return.

“Figured you’d be here sooner or later,” he said, as if now that he had asserted physical
mastery we could move on to convivialities. He was wearing a gray T-shirt with a faded
insignia over his heart that said Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. The T-shirt fit tightly,
particularly over his arms, and it was tucked into jeans that seemed equally tight.
Tight, tight, tight—the man radiated tightness. I wondered what would happen if my
fist shot out and hit him in the nose. Probably my hand would shatter.

“Why?” I said, when I had enough air in my lungs to get the word out cleanly.

“Well, after you learned about Marion and Buzzy, I assumed you’d want to talk to her.”

I looked around the living room. It was clear Marion was not living here anymore.
There were no books in the bookshelves. Wherever Marion went, there were books. “You
tell him to tell me?”

“No, sir. Never met the gentleman.”

“But you have met the Macs, I’m guessing.”

“And who might the Macs be?”

“Mike McBeth, Jerry McQuaid, Declan McCoppin, maybe.”

“Ah,
those
Macs.” He grinned in what was meant to pass for irony. Grinning did not become Roland
Andrews. It made you want to cover his mouth with your hand. “Fine fellows, one and
all. Would like to change the legal establishment down in your neck of the woods,
from what I understand.”

“And why are you involved? What’s in it for you?”

“Why, I’ve got a job to do, Georgie. I told you that back in Philly when we first
met. And here I am, lo these many years later. Still doing it.”

“Screwing up my life, you mean.”

“Hey, you screwed up your own life, son. Threw in your lot with the Gregorys.” His
eyes, small to begin with, narrowed into mere slits.

I had not moved from my position in front of the wall. I would have moved, but I wasn’t
sure where to go. The living room was not that big. It had black-leather-and-chrome
furniture and all of it matched. Quite different from what she had bought for our
house.

“What’s your relationship with her?”

I didn’t have to use her name. He knew whom I meant. That was why he smirked. Given
how thin his lips were, it came more naturally to him than a grin. “You might say
employer to employee.”

My knees wobbled. I wanted very much to sit down. No, I wanted to run. Run right at
Roland Andrews. Run through him and then through that window that ran the length and
breadth of the wall behind him, get myself up in the air six floors above Storrow
Drive, pumping my legs and swirling my arms just as I had when I’d leaped off the
cliff in Idaho. Run, leap, fall.

“You shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “I told you that things were going to happen
that never would have if you hadn’t done what you did.” Somehow Roland had gotten
his hand on my arm. He was not gripping it like he was going to break it this time.
He was guiding me into a seat, into one of the black-leather-and-chrome chairs.

“You want some water, Georgie?”

I didn’t answer and he didn’t get it. I think he was afraid of what might occur if
he left the room.

When Marion lived here she had African masks, Tibetan prayer rugs, a photograph of
a hillside village in Italy that she said was her ancestral home. She had … stuff.
Now there was nothing personal at all. It could have been a hotel room.

“Where is she?”

“Gone back to Washington. She wanted to do it long before she did. We convinced her
to stay on for a while, that was all.”

Looking out the window I could see the Charles River and Cambridge on the other side.
I could see sailboats on the water and cars on Memorial Drive. People enjoying themselves,
driving home, going on
errands, living normal lives. Not me. I couldn’t even marry normally. “So this whole
thing was just work to her?”

“I didn’t say that, Georgie. I think there was a time she really liked you.”

Until when? The Berkshires? Until she didn’t move down the Cape? Until she met Buzzy?
Out loud, I said, “Until she met you?”

“Well, you gotta figure, Georgie, here you were, right in the Gregorys’ home base,
right in their nest, so to speak. But you don’t join any clubs, don’t go out partying;
you don’t even date. The only thing you ever did was ride your damn bike. Hard to
make contact with someone on the road cruising by himself. So we made contact with
her, instead.”

I was fumbling with the math. Twelve years since I had witnessed Kendrick Powell being
violated. Eleven and a half since I had last seen this evil little creature in front
of me. Eight since I had joined the D.A.’s office.

Andrews read my mind. “Mr. Powell is a patient man, Georgie. He’s had to be. He tried
to act quickly once, and that’s when you let him down.”

Five years since she reappeared in my life.

“So you sent her down the Cape to hook up with me, huh?”

“No. We just saw her with you, recognized her from that little stunt she pulled with
the police in Old Town, Alexandria, and thought, well, she might be game.”

Spring of my first year of law school. Nineteen ninety-seven. Eleven years ago. They
recognized Marion from then. My breath was coming in short spurts. I looked at Andrews.
I looked past him to the window. I wanted to run again.

Roland had been standing the entire time. Now he took a seat on the black-leather-and-chrome
couch at right angles to my black-leather-and-chrome chair. It was a good place for
him to sit. He could block me if I moved. Tackle me if I bolted.

“She did have a job up here,” I asked, my voice tight. “Didn’t she? With a law firm?”
I didn’t want to sound as though I was pleading, but I knew I was.

“Oh, yes. Got the job, contacted you, came down to see you all on
her own. At first, we were just watching, hoping she’d loosen you up a bit. Talk you
into going to some of those Gregory soirées.”

Of course. The ones to which I had never been invited.

“But you proved to be a tough nut to crack, Georgie. As far as I can tell, you’ve
never even been in the Gregory compound. With or without Marion.”

“What good would it have done you if I had?”

“Who knows? But there would be something. With the Gregorys, there always is.”

“So it all proved to be a big waste of time, didn’t it?” I was trying to be smug.
“All that watching, all that scheming.”

“Not really. We’re here now, aren’t we?” Andrews smiled. It was an ugly thing. A fissure
in a glacier.

“We’re here because you paid my wife to spy on me.”

“No, George. We’re here because the Gregorys murdered Heidi Telford.”

My head was suddenly too light to stay upright. It wanted to fall forward onto my
chest. It wanted to drift away. It wanted to spin in different directions. Somehow
I kept my eyes on Roland Andrews. I wanted to search his face, look for clues as to
how one thing had led to another, but for several moments I could not quite get it
in focus.

“I’m not going to help you,” I said at last. It was a statement of desperation, a
claim more of spite than of purpose.

“Oh, but you already are. I mean, you just led us to Patty Margolis, didn’t you?”

Sometimes you get hit with so many things you become inured. You start looking for
them, expecting them, almost not caring when they rip into you. “You followed me?”

“I’d say it’s a safe bet someone’s always following you, Georgie. Pull up at a red
light, look at the guy in the car next to you. Think, Does he know Roland? Is he one
of Roland’s guys?”

Was it possible? Twelve years of watching me go to school, go to work, go home at
night and watch television?

“How about the people on that airplane that flew you into Indian Creek? They legit
rafters or they working for Mr. Powell? Tell me, Georgie, you see anybody on that
raft trip that maybe shouldn’t have
been there? Any couple that struck you as maybe not being a couple or who didn’t do
the things everybody else did?”

“You had me followed to Idaho?”

Roland Andrews laughed. At least that is what I think he was doing. It came out in
a gruff barking sound, like he was spitting up a hairball. “Maybe I was there myself.
You check out that little landing strip at Loon Creek?”

“You shoot at me, Roland?” It was the first time I had ever used his Christian name.
It was meant to reduce him to my level. To show that he was every bit as venal as
I was.

“Do you really think I’d miss if I shot at you?”

No, I didn’t think that. But maybe his henchmen would. The couple that had been blown
off the raft, the ones who had declined to go to the hot springs.

Except why would they want to shoot me? Josh David Powell wanted me to do something
for him, and that wasn’t going to be accomplished if I lay dead on a trail in the
Idaho wilderness. “You would,” I said, “if you wanted me to think it was McFetridge.”

“Yeah? And why would I want you to think that?”

Why, indeed. It was something more complicated. More complicated and yet more obvious.
The Powell faction was watching me; they knew where I was going, what I was doing.
Perhaps they knew it was Chuck Larson who had sent me to Idaho, directed me at least.

I threw it out there. “The Gregorys send me into the wilderness, you make it look
like they’re trying to kill me because I’m getting too close to the truth about Heidi
Telford. Is that it? Do I have it right, Roland?”

He said nothing. He didn’t move.

“Then what? Then I’m supposed to hate them, give you whatever you want?”

Roland Andrews appeared more than willing to let me work this out.

“I mean, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Everything you’re doing? Using me to
get to the Gregorys? You pay Marion, that doesn’t get you anywhere, so you start digging
around, discover old Mr. Telford and his idea about the Gregorys killing his daughter.
You put him onto me,
then you follow me around, see what I come up with, hope it’s enough for you to give
to some muttonhead like Buzzy to use in a campaign against Mitch White. ‘Senator’s
Protégée Covers Up Murder Investigation,’ is that it? And of course you don’t care
about Mr. Telford or even about defeating Mitch, no matter what you may have said
to the Macs. All you care about is hurting the Gregorys.”

I was getting somewhere. That much was clear from Andrews’s continued silence, from
his failure to scoff at me—to put out his hand and make me stop.

“Couldn’t you just get somebody to write a book?
Murder on Old Cape Cod
, how about that? Get some police detective or one of those guys who likes to do exposés
on the rich and famous. Let him write up Telford’s theory, speculate on who did what
and why.”

“Then we wouldn’t be able to have so much fun with you, would we?”

“Fun? That’s what this is all about, fucking with me because I got manipulated by
some paid-off prosecutor when I was a kid?”

“No. The fact is we’re on a mission here, Georgie. Fucking with you is just a side
benefit.”

“Well, fuck all you want, Roland.” I practically spit out his name. “But I don’t know
shit. I haven’t learned shit. And I’m not going to do shit. Not anymore.”

“What did Patty Margolis tell you?”

“Nothing. She wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“At least you found her,” he said calmly, using his voice to emphasize how out of
control I was. “Tell you the truth, we hadn’t been able to do that.”

“So what? She’s not talking.”

“Let me tell you what we’ve learned in the few days since you uncovered her. Patty
Margolis, born Patricia Afantakis in Roslindale. Age thirty-three. Earned an accounting
degree at Babson two years before Heidi Telford was killed. At the time of the murder,
she was working for a Big Eight accounting firm as assistant to Nick Margolis, a CPA
who she was screwing after hours. Mr. Margolis was looking to get out, start up a
firm of his own. Three months after the Telford murder, he did just that. Opened his
own shop with Patty as his office manager.
Within a year they were married. Now have two kids. Homely little suckers, but I’m
sure their parents love them.”

Andrews sat forward, the better to hold me in his sight, the better to keep me from
thrashing around and looking away from him. “Most interesting thing we’ve learned
is that the office lease is in Patty’s name. Patty pays the extraordinary low rent
of three hundred dollars a month to a company called Arrangement Property that is
located in the Cayman Islands and seems to have no other property anywhere that we
can find. We’re still tracing Arrangement Property’s ownership, but we have every
confidence that it will lead, sooner or later, to the Gregorys. Now, why would the
Gregorys do such a nice thing for a hunk of blubber like Patty? Could it have anything
to do with where she was on Memorial Day night 1999?”

“I … don’t … know.”

“Sure you do.” He slapped my knee. “And it’s the very reason why she wouldn’t tell
you anything.”