Crime of Privilege: A Novel (45 page)

“Do you have Ms. Trotta’s phone numbah, sir?”

“Don’t you?”

The seated man stuck out his hand. In it was my card. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said with
just a trace of menace in his voice, “you don’t got an appointment, you can’t see
none of the guests. You wanna see Ms. Trotta, you got to call her beforehand, get
her to call down to us or leave your name wit us.”

I wanted to point out the quality of my suit, my tie, even my Bally shoes, but it
was not going to get me anywhere. I thanked the man at the desk and said I would be
back.

He didn’t seem to care. Neither did the guys in the bandleaders’ garb.

I HAD A PHOTOGRAPH
. It was on the Christmas card. It
was
the Christmas card. A family shot of a mom and dad and what appeared to be twin girls,
all of them lying on their stomachs facing the camera, all of them laughing, all of
them quite handsome. From what the black-and-white picture showed, Lexi had dark hair,
a dark brow, and a slightly rounded face. Only her face, shoulders, and one arm were
shown in the picture, and it was not possible to tell how tall she was,
but she appeared to be well proportioned. It would, I realized, be best if she came
out of the building lying down, the way she was in the picture. Barring that, I would
have to watch for a dark-haired, dark-browed, well-built woman in her mid-twenties.

Fair enough, except I had no place to stand at 88th and Park with my Christmas card
picture in my hand. The apartment building was on the southwest corner of the intersection,
and I particularly did not want to loiter there because one of the doormen had come
to the entrance to hold his hands in front of his crotch while he stared at me. I
went through a quarter of an hour pretending to make cell phone calls while I waited
for something to happen. Nothing did.

I crossed 88th and looked back. I crossed Park and looked back. I had no place to
sit on that side of the street, either. There was not even a shop I could go in. I
went south across 88th and west across Park, and this time I had a little bit of luck
because the doorman was no longer at the entrance. I did the circuit again. My feet
were beginning to hurt. There are many things about detective work that should not
be taken for granted.

AT 3:00
in the afternoon she emerged from the building. At least I had reason to believe
it was her. A dark-haired woman wearing a dark blue sweat suit, white trainers, and
a Yankees hat, pushing a double baby stroller. She came out the door, turned left,
went to the corner of 88th and turned left again in the direction of Central Park.
I caught up with her when she stopped at the traffic light at Madison.

“Hello, Lexi.”

I got no hello in return. She stared at me, tightened her grip on the handle of her
carriage, and looked impatiently at the light.

“My name’s George Becket. I’m from the Cape and Islands district attorney’s office
in Massachusetts. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

The light turned and she flat-out ran across the intersection. On the other side of
Madison she pushed the stroller up onto the sidewalk, looked over her shoulder at
me walking after her, and kept on running.

I stayed back a block and watched her run all the way to the sidewalk
on the far side of Fifth Avenue, turn north, and keep going. I crossed 88th, mingled
with the crowd in front of the Guggenheim Museum and kept my eye on her as she ran
to 90th, turned left, and entered Central Park. Then I ran, too: a guy in a suit sprinting
along Fifth Avenue.

Enter Central Park at 90th and you come to a road, and on the other side of the road
is the reservoir surrounded by a fence and a running path. I wondered if she could
have gone there, thought it unlikely with her baby carriage, and looked to my right
and left. There was another path, this one paved and just inside the park wall. Heading
south, still running behind the carriage, was Lexi. Between us were at least a dozen
people walking dogs. Purebreds, mostly. Airedales seemed to be extremely popular.
I used the dog walkers as a cover, stayed back, wished I wasn’t the only guy in the
park in a suit and tie. People I passed shot me quick looks as if I must be a strange
fellow indeed. I took off my coat and carried it over my arm. She went around a corner
and I lost sight of her.

THERE WAS A CHILDREN
’
S
playground just south of the Metropolitan Museum. She wasn’t there. No one was. I
kept following the path until I got to a second playground below 75th Street. That
was where I found her, sitting on a park bench in an area where young mothers and
older nannies ruled. There were sandboxes and slides and fortresslike mazes with no
sharp edges. Her kids, who looked to me to be about two years old, were still in their
stroller, craning their necks to see what the older kids were doing while their mother
pushed the stroller out and pulled it back, never letting it go more than a couple
of feet. Mom was doing this while she talked to a woman dressed much like she and
doing the exact same thing with her stroller from the other end of the bench.

I walked up and stood in front of them, halfway between them.

“Lexi,” I said, “can I just show you my identification?”

She was already getting to her feet.

“Here,” I said quickly, “I’ll hand it to your friend here.”

Lexi hesitated just enough for me to get my D.A.’s card and my driver’s license into
the other woman’s hands. The woman looked startled, as though I had just handed her
a melting ice-cream cone.

“Read them out loud,” I urged.

The woman held up the license, stared at the photo, and said, “All right. It says
you’re George Becket. And this other one says you’re an assistant district attorney.”
She glanced at Lexi, as though she might not be the person she had assumed her to
be, sitting on a park bench with adorable little twins. Not if an assistant D.A. was
trying to talk to her. “You want to see?”

“I don’t care about his ID,” Lexi said. But she didn’t flee.

“Look,” I told her. “I’m going to stay back here, behind this crack in the pavement.
What is that, about seven or eight feet away? I won’t move in front of it unless you
give me permission, okay?”

The other woman did not want my cards in her hand. She was waving them at me. I saw
that with my peripheral vision, saw her put them down on the bench next to her, saw
her start to stand.

“Please,” I said, holding out my hand toward her, “just for a second.”

Lexi was looking back toward Fifth Avenue, no doubt making escape calculations.

“I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“About what?” she said, her head still turned.

“The night of May twenty-fifth, 1999.”

“Nineteen ninety-nine? I was only eight— Oh, God.” Her eyes sought out mine. “I’ve
got nothing to say.”

With that, the woman next to her was gone, racing away with her stroller at arms’
length in front of her.

“Lexi,” I said gently, “I can subpoena you.”

“And I,” she snapped, “can make your life miserable. My father happens to be a very
rich man, Mr. Becket. You have no idea what he can do to you.”

“Oh, I think I have an excellent idea what a very rich man can do, Lexi. Especially
when his children are involved. I hope this won’t come to that.”

“You should be afraid, you junior shoeshiner.”

It was not an insult I had heard before, but I got its meaning. I also understood
she could say it because her anger was as great as her fear.

“I should be afraid. Ned Gregory should be afraid. But most of all, Peter Gregory
Martin should be afraid. Don’t you think?”

At the mention of the Gregory names, Lexi’s chin shot up, as though questioning who
I was even to mention them. The stroller began moving in and out twice as rapidly
as before. “Seriously, do you have any idea who you’re talking about?”

“I’m talking about what happened to Heidi Telford, and I’m almost there, Lexi. I am
this close.” I held my thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “I have been practically
all over the world, and I know who was at the party that night. I know where Ned was
and where his wife wasn’t. I know about the fight between Peter and his cousin Jamie.
I know what Peter did to her.”

“Did to who?” she said, her voice dripping with scorn.

“To Heidi.” I was bending forward at the waist, trying to keep my promise to stay
behind the crack in the pavement, trying to speak so just she could hear. “Heidi Telford.”

“You think Peter did something to her?”

“I know he did.”

“Peter, the AIDS doctor? That’s what you’re saying?”

“It is, Lexi.”

“Hah.” She laughed a single sharp note, its meaning clear: You, George Becket, are
an idiot.

“I know he saw her at the Bon Faire Market. I know they met up at the post-race party
in Hyannis. I know he brought her back to the Gregory compound and things didn’t work
out the way he wanted, and I know he hit her over the head with a golf club.”

“I am so out of here,” she said, and this time she did get to her feet. She was already
moving when I said, “She was just a young girl, not much older than you were that
night. She was young and pretty, like you, and filled with promise, like you, and
she was somebody’s daughter, Lexi.”

But not Lexi’s daughter. She was getting into full stride and I had no choice but
to follow. “Her parents were waiting for her, Lexi.
Doesn’t that mean anything to you? They were just a couple of miles away and she never
made it back to them. They could have been there in ten minutes to pick her up if
she needed a ride, and instead the next thing they heard was that their child had
been tossed onto a golf course like a bag of trash.”

She kept going, her hands white on the handlebar, her feet a blur.

I was moving as fast as she, trying to keep my feet close to the pavement so I did
not appear to be running. “It’s all coming out, Lexi. It’s been buried for a very
long time, but I have tracked down everyone who was there and I know what happened.”

“You obviously don’t.” She spoke as we were going up an incline. She was in better
condition than I was. She was not breathing half as hard.

“I do, Lexi. I’ve found Paul McFetridge, Jason Stockover, the two girls they brought
to the compound that night—”

Lexi braked. She did it so suddenly her kids began to cry and I nearly banged into
her from behind. “If you knew so goddamned much, you wouldn’t need me, would you?”
she said.

“Look,” I told her, holding my hands wide to show that the near contact had been a
mistake, “I know what you’re concerned about. The thing is, if you don’t talk to me,
it’s all going to come out. If your husband and his family don’t know already, they
will. If your own family doesn’t know, it will. And since it’s the Gregorys, you can
be sure they will not let Ned take the blame for having an affair with his babysitter.
They will fight back, somehow, some way. And it will be in
Star
magazine, and
Us
and
People
, and it will be on the celebrity television shows, and men and women you never have
seen before will be all over you wherever you go. Microphones in your face, taking
pictures of your babies, disturbing your neighbors to the point where you might not
even be able to stay in your building.”

“Screw you,” Lexi said. Her face was twisted. But she wasn’t moving.

“The only way you can keep that from happening is to help me present a case behind
the scenes that is so strong they won’t fight us. We’ll be able to arrange a plea
bargain for Peter Martin. He no doubt deserves first-degree murder, but he’ll probably
get a deal for second- or
even manslaughter. And the most important thing will be that there will be some justice
for Heidi Telford and some closure for her family.”

I tried to speak with concern, care, reasonableness, even anguish. But I needn’t have
wasted my energy.

“You obviously don’t know shit, Mr. Becket, and I, for one, am not going to help you.
Okay? Now leave me alone before I start to scream.”

“Lexi,” I pleaded, “Lexi, I do—”

She was about fifteen yards up the path when she turned her head and shouted, “If
you think it was Peter, then you clearly don’t. You schmuck.”

I watched until she disappeared and then I went back to the playground. My driver’s
license and district attorney ID had disappeared as well.

I
CALLED BARBARA
’
S CELL PHONE
.

“I’m in New York.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to need some help.”

“What kind of help?” Barbara had not hesitated before. Why now?

“An address, to start with.”

“If I can, I will.” Barbara, my collaborator, coming through again.

“And I’ll need one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You to go there, to the address I want you to give me.”

“Depends on where it is, doesn’t it? I mean, I’ve got the kids—”

“It’s here. In New York.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Tomorrow night. When can you do it?”

“Oh, God. I don’t know, George. I’ve only been back to work a few days.”

“Please, Barbara.” I took a deep breath. I forced myself to say it. “I need you.”

T
HE TOWNHOUSE AT THE END OF MORTON STREET WAS MADE OF
red brick. Smooth red brick, neatly mortared. A brief walkway led in from the sidewalk
to half a dozen concrete steps that rose to a small landing at the base of the front
door, which was painted a glossy black and had brass fixtures. The face of the house
was protected by a tiny yard filled with ivy plants and fenced off by curling wrought
iron that matched the door in color and gloss.

It was dark when I rang the bell. It grew darker while I waited.

Out on the sidewalk, at the base of the railing, a figure in a soiled and ripped synthetic
fur coat and a crushed felt hat sat down, hunched over, contemplated the gutter.