Crime of Privilege: A Novel (29 page)

“And you can’t go home.”

“Burned my bridges there, didn’t I?”

“Where did she get the money to buy the boat, Howie?”

“Same place she got the money to live here without workin’. I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“I asked.” Howard Landry was still watching the ocean as it broke into little swells
that lifted and flopped back down again in no particular pattern. “She told me it
was something I shouldn’t know about. Me being a cop and all. So I figured it was
drugs and stopped askin’.”

“You didn’t care if it was drugs? You weren’t worried that—”

Howard held up his index finger and I thought he was telling me not to say another
word. But then he began slowly arcing it back and forth in front of him. “I didn’t
care because the woman, despite everything else, the woman had an ass like a Metrodome.”

It took me a moment. “Metronome,” I said.

He shrugged. “It was like the Eighth Wonder of the World.”

I watched the finger continue its arc. I watched the smile break the corners of his
mouth.

“Tell me, Howard, did it ever occur to you that the money she was spending might be
coming from someone else?”

The finger movement stopped. So did the smile. “Like who?”

“Like the Gregorys.”

“Why would they be giving her money?”

“Keep her quiet.”

“About what? She didn’t know nothin’.”

“Maybe you did.”

Howard Landry raised his hand, palm up, and then let it fall back onto the arm of
the chair. He looked confused. “I didn’t know nothin’, either.”

“Perhaps you did and didn’t realize it.”

“Realize what? I’m tellin’ ya, in all the time I was on the case, I never found a
single bit of evidence that Heidi Telford was at the Gregorys’ that night. Not one
bit.”

He had raised his voice to tell me that. Now he turned his head away and let his chin
drop. “This thing that happened with Leanne, that was something that just happened.”
He seemed to be staring at his stomach. “It was something else altogether.”

I thought back over everything he had told me. I had to do it quickly because I could
see his chin beginning to moor at his chest. I
leaned toward him and gave him a shove. “Maybe they were trying to keep you away from
Jason Stockover. I mean, Leanne was your connection there, wasn’t she?”

Howard’s eyes popped. “You keep bringing that guy up. How about you don’t do it again,
okay?”

“Okay. Leanne, where did she go? When she left you, I mean.”

“With the exterminator.” Howard spread his shoulders until his arms were almost akimbo.
Then he made gorilla noises.

“What’s his name?”

“Bob. Bob the Exterminator. That’s all I know. I didn’t pay the bills.”

“Are they still on the island?”

“Nope. Gone to Las Vegas. Him and her were gonna set up a new business there.”

“Exterminating business?”

“Far as I know.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation to you, they picked the wrong time to do that. Las
Vegas has been hit harder than anyplace by the economy.”

“Good. May they rot in hell.”

“So maybe she’ll come back.”

Howard Landry’s eyes closed and I assumed he was thinking about the prospect. When
they did not open, I had to decide if it was worth trying to rouse him one more time.

I decided it wasn’t and got up to leave. I took about three steps when something hit
me in the back. I looked down at the grass. It was a crushed beer can, probably the
very can I had given him. I turned and stared at the pathetic old bastard, still sitting
in his lawn chair, daring me to do something about this insult he had just dealt me.

Except he was not all that old. He only looked it. And the lawn chair was broken and
the cement-block condo complex he was running was either empty or virtually empty
and it sat above a beach that was so rocky you couldn’t even go in the water. I picked
up the crushed can, retraced my steps, and gently placed it in his lap.

SAUSALITO, July 2008

W
HAT
’
S THE PROPER PROTOCOL FOR GETTING THE ATTENTION
of someone aboard a sailboat berthed in a slip? I stood on the dock and yelled—“Hello!”
and “Tyler!” and even “Yo, anybody aboard?”—and people from several slips away poked
their heads out of their quarters and regarded me as if I was pissing in the water.

Tyler Belbonnet’s sailboat was about thirty-five feet long, white with teak decking,
with the name
Pretty Hat
scrolled on its stern. The boat to its starboard side was much bigger, with a black
hull, and a muscular, gray-haired woman in a cut-off sweatshirt looking at me with
great concern.

“Tyler’s not here,” she said. “He’s doing the TransPac.” She spoke as if everybody
should know that.

I gathered the TransPac was a race. I further assumed it meant Trans-Pacific. “When
will he be back?”

“Well,” she said, as if that was a most peculiar question, “he’s on a fifty-two-foot
Santa Cruz, which should get to Kauai in ten days if they catch the right winds. Then
they’ll have about an eight-day layover, and then he’s one of the short crew sailing
her back, which ought to take him a couple of weeks. So I’d say you’re looking at
about thirty-three, thirty-four days from when they set sail.”

I was not sure I had heard right. “He’s on his way to Kauai?”

“He’d better be. Race ends in Hanalei Bay.”

I, of course, had just been in Hanalei Bay, had just left Kauai that very day. The
fact that I did not know what to do next probably explained my hanging jaw. “And when
did they set sail?”

“ ’Bout three days ago.”

Which meant it would be a month before Tyler Belbonnet returned.

“You look like that’s a problem,” said the muscular mistress.

“I was supposed to meet him,” I said, as if somehow she could fix that, make him come
back, do something so that my short time in California would not be wasted.

I had arranged my return flight to Boston so that I could have a stopover in San Francisco.
Barbara had called Tyler and made the arrangements. She had told him when I would
be arriving and he had said sure, come around. And he had given her directions. Explicit
directions. Go to Sausalito, just across the Golden Gate Bridge; drive all the way
through town to the last marina on the right; park where you can and look for the
houseboat that resembles the Taj Mahal at the far end of one of the docks; walk straight
down that dock till you get to slip 23B on your right. Which was where I was. Where
he wasn’t.

The plan had been for Tyler to put me in touch with Peter Martin. A friendly meeting.
Between a couple of old pals.
Greetings, Peter. Good to see you, Georgie. I wonder, Peter, if you would mind telling
me why you bashed in a young girl’s head with a golf club?

No, that wasn’t how it was supposed to go. If I were just going to accuse him I could
have set up the meeting myself. No, the idea had been to talk to him, gather what
I could without arousing suspicion. And to do that I needed Tyler. “Hey, Peter,” he
would say, “look who I got here. My wife’s office-mate. Just passing through town.
Says you and he are old friends.”
Why, Georgie, is that you?

We would have drinks together, Peter and I. We would laugh about the fun times we
had back in Florida. Remember Kendrick Powell?

And then we would go on from there, talking about all the things he had done to women
over the years, including driving a golf club into the skull of Heidi Telford.

“I assume,” I said to the woman watching me, “it takes some time to get ready for
a race like that.”

“Oh, Lord, yes. Six months, at least.”

In other words, a long time before Barbara spoke to him, told him I was coming. Yet
Barbara said he would be here, waiting for me.

“Are you all right, young man?”

I gave her half a wave. Sure, no problem. Set up an appointment from three thousand
miles away, show up, and nobody’s there. Happens all the time.

“Because you might want to check with his friend Billy.”

I stopped.

“Why?”

“Well, Billy’s boat-sitting for him.” She gestured to the
Pretty Hat
, as if it was obvious.

“Where can I find Billy?”

The woman cast an eye up into the cloudy sky, as if that would tell her. “Well,” she
said without bringing down her gaze, “I’d say it’s not too early for him to be at
Smitty’s.”

I asked who Smitty was and she gave out with a hoot, as if she had misread me. “Smitty’s
is a bar over on Caledonia, darling,” she said, pointing back the way I had come.
“Walk two blocks inland, turn right, go two blocks down the street and you can’t miss
it.” Then she added, as if she had her doubts about me, “At least I don’t expect you
will.”

QUITE A PLACE, SMITTY
’
S
. A big open room with a bar on one side and Formica tables scattered around the floor.
It was obvious you could push the tables anyplace you wanted, either because you had
a large group that wanted to sit together or simply because they were in your way.
At three o’clock in the afternoon they were in somebody’s way. The juke box was blasting
Steppenwolf and two rough-looking men were dancing. Only their dancing looked more
like fighting. Their legs were wide apart, their arms were swinging, and they were
taking up lots of space as they kicked and flailed, first rocking toward each other
and then much more forcefully pulling away.

I hoped neither of the dancers was Billy.

There were probably a dozen other people in the bar, most of them guys, a couple of
females who looked like guys. Virtually everyone wore blue jeans. A few were in long-sleeved
T-shirts, a few were in sweatshirts, a few in windbreakers. Summer attire, I gathered,
for the fog-bound Bay Area.

I ordered a bottle of Anchor Steam and asked the bartender if Billy was around. He
surveyed the room, which was bathed in natural light coming through large front windows
and an open door, and said, “Billy who?”

I said, “Billy who’s a friend of Tyler Belbonnet’s,” and hoped that sufficed.

“Ty’s racing,” he said, focusing someplace above my head.

“I know. That’s why I’m looking for Billy.”

“And you don’t know what Billy looks like?”

“No. That’s why I’m asking you.”

The bartender nodded toward the dancers. “That’s him,” he said, with just enough cant
to his head that I assumed Billy was the dancer on the right, the smaller one, a wiry
guy who looked like the sort of person who would crawl through drainpipes or shinny
up flagpoles for the amusement of his friends. I waited until the song was over and
then stepped in between Billy and his buddy before they could start flailing about
to Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

“You Billy?”

“What’s it to you?”

It occurred to me that people were not as friendly in California as I had imagined.

“I was looking for Tyler.”

“Ain’t here.”

“I know. He’s sailing the TransPac. But I was supposed to meet him.”

“Yeah, well, he ain’t here.” Billy wanted to get back to dancing. His buddy was playing
air guitar without him. His buddy was making terrible faces, as though that was what
was necessary to get the notes out of his imaginary instrument.

I wanted to put my hand on Billy’s arm and steer him away, but I
had the feeling that Billy, his joints warmed and his spirits fired up, would not
accept physical maneuvering. “I’m a friend of his from back home,” I said.

That earned me a squint. “You from the Cape?” he asked.

I told him I was. “You?”

“Nah,” he said. Yet he obviously had some familiarity with it.

“Where you from?”

“Martha’s Vineyard.”

Martha’s Vineyard, sitting about seven miles off the Cape, but not the Cape itself,
according to Billy. I said, “You know him back east?”

He looked at his friend having all the fun. “Yeah.”

“Then you must know his wife, Barbara.” I had to stretch matters a little. “I got
a message from her I have to give to him.”

“From Barbara?” Billy’s eyebrows went up.

“Can we go outside and talk for a minute?”

He said to his friend, “Be right back.” But his friend didn’t care. He was stuttering
his way through “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.”

Billy grabbed a bottle off the bar that may or may not have been his, chugged it,
and led the way to the sidewalk, where a man was sitting with his back against the
outer wall of the building, selling paintings that were spread around him. From what
I could tell, he had taken several mass-produced pictures of sea and landscapes and
then slapped great gobs of dark blues and greens and reds on the canvasses so that
the otherwise peaceful or idyllic scenes looked as though they were being ripped apart
by explosives shot from outer space. That was my only explanation.

“Hey, Taquille,” said Billy, and threw the artist a couple of quarters. Then he turned
to me. “ ’Sup?”

“I was supposed to meet Tyler to talk with him.”

“He’s—”

“I know, sailing. Look, my name’s George Becket. Did he leave any kind of message
for me?”

This gave good old Billy a chance to show how clever he was. “I thought you was s’pose
to give a message to him.”

“I was, and he’s not around, and I’m trying to figure out why.”

Billy looked at Taquille scrambling around on the sidewalk, trying
to pick up the quarters he had failed to catch. Taquille appeared to be cursing his
benefactor. I said, “I was wondering if maybe this was kind of unexpected, him sailing
this race.”

“Oh, man, if anybody could do it, it’s Ty. He knows that boat better’n anyone.”

“But he wasn’t part of the original crew, is that it?”

“Well, man, the TransPac’s got this whole social thing to it. All those dudes from
the Saint Francis Yacht Club, the San Francisco Yacht Club, the Corinthian, they all
want a ride. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you get some good sailors comin’ outta those
places, man, but they’re not like Ty and me. You know what I’m sayin’?” He slapped
my arm with the back of his hand.