Crime of Privilege: A Novel (39 page)

Andrews’s chin lifted. He dropped his eyes, wanting mine to follow them, wanting me
to look at the floor. To remember I could be there again.

I said, “The whole reason they’ve promoted me, moved me upstairs next to them, is
so they can monitor me, stifle whatever it is I might learn.”

“Which is why we probably will need a candidate.”

When I didn’t speak, he added, “And that’s why we want you to feel comfortable with
whoever we put up to run against Mitch.”

And then I understood. “Because when Mitch doesn’t use what I give him, you want me
to give it to his opponent, is that it?”

Roland Andrews clapped his hands in reward of my perspicacity.

“And the moment I give it to his opponent, Mitch’ll fire my ass.”

“I think you’ll find that’s not going to happen, Georgie.”

“Why not? He’d know I was working against him.”

“Oh, he’ll head you off if he can. But if you turn around and give information to
us, I can virtually guarantee you he won’t do anything about it. He doesn’t want any
more spotlight on his relationship with the Gregorys than he absolutely has to have,
and he knows that if he fights back the next step is for us to make this personal.”

“Personal in what way?”

Andrews laughed. It was not the kind of laugh most human beings use to express mirth.
It was more like a puff of air escaping from his lungs. “Ever seen his kid?”

I was not sure I had heard right.

“Look at the kid next time you’re wondering how a simple staff attorney on the Senate
Judiciary Committee got to be district attorney in the Senator’s home district. And
if that picture doesn’t do it for you, I’ll show you a few of Stephanie White when
she used to dance at the Gaslight Club in Washington, D.C., where the Senator has
been known to take a lunch or two over the years.”

I
T WAS ALL SET. I WAS TO DO WHAT JOSH DAVID POWELL HAD WANTED
me to do all along. I was to do what I had wanted to do ever since I hadn’t done
it. Absolution from Mr. Powell, redemption for me. Sort of.

We would expose Peter, the Saint of San Francisco, because he deserved to be exposed,
because no matter how many lives he was saving now, he had to pay the price for the
one he had ruined a dozen years ago, the one he had taken three years after that.
He deserved it. He deserved to be punished. Mr. Powell was entitled to closure. I
was entitled to closure. I would get it, I would move on, leaving heads bobbing in
my wake. Peter’s. The Senator’s. Mitch’s.

I thought I might leave Barbara’s, too, until she appeared in my office ten days after
she had abruptly disappeared. She had her hair brushed long again, the way she’d had
it the day she had come to my house. She was more tanned than she was when I had seen
her last, but not so tanned as to indicate she had been lying on a beach somewhere.

“Got a minute?” she asked.

I rose to my feet. “Of course.”

She came in and shut the door behind her. She was wearing a pale blue blouse over
a black silk sleeveless top. You could see through the blouse and I had the feeling
she had just put it on for propriety, because she was coming to the workplace and
wearing a sleeveless top would
not be appropriate, not even a silk one. Her pants were white and clung to her legs
and purposely did not reach her ankles. The pants had little zippers at the bottoms.
Then there was bare skin. Then black woven sandals that matched her belt. I watched
as she walked to a chair in front of my desk.

“May I?” she said, putting her hand on the back of the chair.

I nodded and she sat. She arranged herself gracefully, one leg over the other, and
then inclined slightly forward. “We didn’t part on such good terms. I’m wondering
if you’re still mad at me.”

I took my own chair. It wasn’t as big as Mitch’s, but it was leather and it swiveled.
“I wasn’t mad at you, Barbara.”

“Suspicious, then. You doubted me.”

I admitted as much by flexing my fingers. Then I shrank into my chair, put my elbows
on the arms, and clasped my hands in front of my stomach. I was acting like Mitch
did sometimes. I wished I wasn’t.

“I was hurt by the things you said. By what you were thinking. That night, the next
day, I wanted to come see you, try to make you understand how wrong you were about
me. Then I had to ask myself why you should believe me. And so I decided to prove
myself to you.”

“I heard you went on leave.”

“They wouldn’t give me a vacation. Not on short notice. So I just said I had a family
emergency and I had to go out.”

“But you didn’t. Have a family emergency, I mean.”

She shrugged. “My daughter, Molly, is on a tour of Canada with her soccer team, and
my parents, for once, agreed to take Malcolm. So, no, I didn’t.”

She might as well have thrown boiling water on me. “Malcolm is your son?”

“Whose son did you think he was?”

“I didn’t think.”

“Why do you suppose I had to take the job I did? Why do you suppose I have to spend
so much time dealing with kid problems?”

I probably stammered. If I didn’t, I might as well have. Barbara tilted her head and
held my eyes while she talked. “I used up a lot of favors this time, George. I told
my parents I was going to San Francisco to have it out with Tyler once and for all.
To tell him I wanted a divorce.
It was the one thing I could say that would get them to help me.”

I nodded, because it was what she wanted.

“I got on a plane and flew out there. I found that guy Billy, the one you said knew
me. It wasn’t hard. He was living on my husband’s boat. And”—she hesitated before
she brought up an old wound—“of course, I had those explicit directions I had given
to you.”

I nodded again. It was a conciliatory nod this time.

“I didn’t know him, George. In fact, I think, when he found out who I was, I rather
scared him.”

I could see that happening. I couldn’t imagine Billy ran into many women like her
at Smitty’s bar.

“It took me all of about twenty minutes to get the truth out of him.”

The truth. I felt a tingle go up my spine. It made me bristle. She was going to tell
me the truth. Something I didn’t know. Something I hadn’t been able to find out on
my own.

“Did you have to buy him a couple of beers?” I asked. I was only partially joking.
I was still chagrined by my misreading of the Malcolm situation. And I was uncomfortable
because of the intensity with which she was looking at me.

“Sushi,” she said. “Over a hundred bucks’ worth. We went to a place on Caledonia Street
with outdoor tables. Found out later it had a Michelin star. My mistake, I let him
order whatever he wanted. By the end of his first tiger roll he had told me that Peter
Martin had known you were coming all along.”

All along? Since I had questioned Howard in Hawaii? Or since Barbara had suggested
it? But all I asked her was, “How?”

“I don’t think Billy was in a position to know that, but I can pretty much tell you
from everything else I’ve learned that someone you talked to earlier was in touch
with Peter.”

She waited while I counted off the possibilities in my mind: Cory, McFetridge, Patty,
Howard. Her.

“Only thing was,” she said, “nobody knew when you might be coming, and Peter was sailing
in the TransPac, and when I called Tyler
to tell him about you, well, I guess Ty saw it as a way to get on the boat. To get
into the race itself.”

“And you know this because …?”

“I just know Ty, that’s all. He would have done anything to get in a race like that.”

“Including lie to you?”

“Oh, like he’s never done that before.”

Barbara smiled at her own failings, inviting me to smile with her. Barbara Belbonnet.
It was hard to see her as a victim.

“Don’t ask,” she said.

“You want me to believe you.”

“What I want is for you to understand what happened.” Her voice had suddenly grown
taut. Just like that. As though I, somehow, was making things more difficult than
they had to be.

I gestured, indicating she should go ahead, that I wasn’t going to interfere anymore.

“When I told Ty you were coming, he must have gone to Peter and claimed he was the
one you were coming to see.”

“Had you told Ty that I wanted to talk to Peter about Heidi Telford’s death?”

“Yes, probably. Yes, I did. Yes, and I’m sorry.” Barbara Belbonnet wasn’t looking
so intense anymore. Her eyes were wavering, blurring, and suddenly she was in tears.

It was so unexpected I did not know what to do. For a moment, I fought the urge to
get up, go around the desk, take her in my arms. Tell her I was sorry. For everything.
I could not hold off beyond a moment.

“No,” she said, sticking her hand out, making me stop, sending me back into my chair.
“I want to tell you why.” The one hand stayed up. The other went to the back of her
head so that her elbow was aimed at me and her face was hidden. “I wanted to help
you. I wanted to do something for you, George, something only I could do. When Ty
asked why I wanted him to set up a meeting between you and Peter I should have made
something up, but I didn’t. He knew about Heidi. Everyone on the Cape knew about her,
and I thought … I thought …
I don’t know what I thought. I thought it would help you get what you want. That’s
what I’m sorry about, George.”

“So Peter got him out of there. Took him on the boat.”

The hand stayed behind her head, the elbow stayed pointed. Her hair seemed to be going
out in every direction. “Billy told me that when Ty asked him to boat-sit he also
told him you would be looking for him. And he said when you got there he was to call
a certain number, find out what to do next.”

I looked at the hair. Looked at the elbow. Looked at the person who had set this in
motion.

“That story Billy had about running into Jason in the restaurant in Ensenada, it wasn’t
true?”

“I don’t know. I just know that if you asked about Jason Stockover, he was to tell
you he was in Tamarindo.”

Six people have a party of sorts. Four of them Gregorys. Something goes terribly wrong.
First bury it, then deny it, then, if somebody has to be thrown under the bus, pick
one of the non-Gregorys. Send me to Tamarindo. Where Jason is.

Except Jason’s not there. Jason has been tipped off. Run, Jason. Run, and he’ll think
it’s you. Except we won’t tell you that part. Because you’re not one of us and you’re
not even a friend from childhood. Like McFetridge. You’re only a friend from college.
Which puts you in an outer circle, Jason.

First the family. Then lifelong friends. Then other friends. Then all those who want
to be friends. Like George.

Oh, and by the way, do you need anything while you’re running away? A new sailboat,
perhaps?

Barbara was speaking. She was telling me she was sorry she didn’t have every detail
right as to what little Billy said and did. “But I didn’t stop there,” she said.

I looked up, shifting my attention to her again.

“I went to Tamarindo myself.”

Another piece that didn’t fit. If she was part of the scheme to get me to go there—Barbara
to Ty to Peter to Billy—why would she go after I left?

Barbara was waiting. She clearly had expected a different reaction
from me. I did the minimum. I murmured, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

And then she, nearly six feet of long-limbed powerful female with big yellow-brown
eyes and just possibly the disposition of a sadist, said she wasn’t.

“You went to California, then continued right on to Costa Rica.” I was thinking that
meant she had brought her passport, which meant she had been planning to do that all
along.

“I had my mom’s ATM card.”

“Your mom financed this whole trip?”

“My parents,” she corrected. Then she unwound her legs. Then she rewound them, switching
the one that had been on top. “Remember, they thought I was going to California to
have it out with Tyler once and for all.”

Still, she needed a passport.

“I get to Tamarindo,” she said, her tone telling me I was going to hear this whether
I liked it or not, “and it’s a strange little place. It’s kind of like being at the
far end of the universe.”

She paused, perhaps to see if I would say no, no, no, it’s perfectly normal. Like
Orlando or Las Vegas.

“The other thing is, and I don’t know if this happened to you, but it rained most
every day. I mean, what are you supposed to do in a beach town when it rains? I end
up going from one bar, one shop, one restaurant, to another, and whenever I see anybody
who looks like an American living there, I try to strike up a conversation.”

“Hi. How are you? You know Jason Stockover?”

Her eyes flicked, rolled; her mouth grimaced. “Pretty much. Until I get to this one
man, owns a restaurant on the beach.”

“Wouldn’t be the place with coconut pies, would it?”

“You’ve been there, I see.”

“That’s supposed to be the place Jason owns.”

“Well, the real owner’s name is J. T. Bauer. Balding guy, pretty muscular, about forty-five.
He comes from Key West.”

“Doesn’t sound like Jason.” I remembered what Howard Landry had said. I had a flash
of Howard flapping his hand under his chin.

“Nope. What’s more, he claimed never to have known any Jason in
Tamarindo. What he admitted, and this is what I’ve been trying to get to, George,
is that he did know Leanne.”

She clearly thought this was going to detonate, bring me flying out of my chair. She
was disappointed when it didn’t.

“Leanne couldn’t have been there by herself.”

“J.T. said she came into town, met him, hooked up with him, as the kids say these
days. Stayed a couple of weeks, even helped him run the restaurant. Then she moved
on.”

It was possible. If someone had told Peter what I was doing enough time before I got
to California, he could have called Leanne, gotten her to go down to Tamarindo knowing
I would be coming.