Chapter Twelve

I needed to know more about Moore, but even more than that, I needed to know more about Sturdivant and Gaudios. I waited ten minutes for DA Cornwallis and his claque to emerge from the courthouse. While Cornwallis orated and struck Kim Jong Il-like poses for the TV cameras, I caught Joe Toomey’s eye and he came over.

“How’s it going, Strachey? Did you catch the real killer yet, like OJ?”

“I’m flummoxed, Joe. I admit it. How about yourself? Have you come up with any forensic or other genuine evidence besides the pathetic circumstantial crap that Thorny is retailing to a credulous public over there?”

“No, but what we’ve got is good for a conviction. Don’t get me wrong, though. If you or anybody else can come up with a better candidate for a two-hour guilty verdict on this, I’m all ears. But you haven’t and you won’t. I haven’t located anybody who really loved Sturdivant except his boyfriend and his mother. But I haven’t heard of anybody who hated him enough to kill him either – or would have anything to gain by making him dead.”

“Who’s in his will?” I asked. “Sturdivant was a wealthy man.”

“Half of the estate goes to Gaudios, who’s already got some big bucks of his own. Anyway, his bridge-club alibi checks out. The rest of the estate is divided among Sturdivant’s aged mother, who gets a million and a half, and then local arts organizations, the state Republican Party, and the local Boy Scouts council.”

“There’s your answer, Joe. Find out who’s in charge of the budget for the Scouts, and see if he’s got an alibi for Wednesday night. It’s a cunning move on the Scouts’ part. Bulk up the treasury, and rid the world of another fag in the process.”

He looked at me quizzically. “The Scouts do a lot of good, you know.”

“I do know. I used to be one.”

“Both of my sons are Scouts. They get a lot out of it.”

“Well,” I said, “I hope neither of them is gay, or he’d be tossed out on his ass.”

Toomey looked at me steadily and said, “One of them is gay. Gary. He’s fifteen. He’s trying to decide whether or not to come out and challenge the Scouts’ national no-gays policy – which the Supreme Court already upheld as being legal, since the Scouts are a private organization. Or, he might stay closeted until he’s out of the Scouts, because he enjoys it so much. Whatever he decides to do, I told him, I’ll support him. His mother said the same thing. And his brother and three sisters, too.”

Never assume. I said, “A lucky kid, your son is.”

“It’s hard. Pittsfield is a conservative city, strait-laced, historically blue-collar, very Catholic. He goes to church and gets this garbage from the priests. Gary would be smart to wait until he’s away at college to come out. That would be easier. But we’ll see. He’s torn.”

I said, “Jim Sturdivant is from Pittsfield originally. Do you know his family?”

“Not really. His mother is Mount Carmel. We’re Sacred Heart. And we’ve only lived in Pittsfield for five years.”

I recalled something Preston Morley said, and asked, “Have you ever heard anything about something shady in Sturdivant’s family history? Someone who knows Pittsfield said there might be something there.”

Toomey shook his head. “Sometimes I think everybody in Pittsfield ’s got something shady in their past. But that’s just a cop’s cynicism talking. You see a lot.”

I said, “I know you know about Sturdivant’s loans-for-sex hobby.”

“It’s disgusting,” Toomey said, and looked ill.

“I’m checking out the borrowers.”

“Good for you. If you come up with anything, let me know. I’ll be interested.”

“But why,” I asked, “aren’t you looking at other avenues in this? Sturdivant has a long history of all kinds of connections with all kinds of people – corporate, social, charitable, and who knows what all. He was a man who got around and who liked to influence people and events. People I’ve talked to have used words like controlling and manipulative when describing Sturdivant. My own experience with him bears that out. This is a guy who could well have made some serious enemies along the way, and you’re ignoring that.”

Toomey looked as if he was about to choose his words with care. “Two things. One is, Thorny and the CPCU guys like Barry Fields for this. Okay?”

“I see.”

“Thorny is both an elected official who never gets less than seventy percent of the vote, and he is very old Pittsfield, very old Democratic machine. This is the reality.”

“Uh huh.” I glanced over at the DA, still doing his Kim Jong Il act for the cameras.

“The second thing is, I think Thorny is right on this one.”

“Nah.”

“You’re being naïve, Strachey. Fields is plainly unstable. He flies into rages. He once nearly lost his job at the Triplex for getting into a fight with a patron.”

“Actual fisticuffs?”

“A man complained about some talkers sitting behind him during a movie. Fields went in and told the people to shut up. They told him to fuck off, apparently, and he blew up and dragged two people outside, a man and a woman. For some reason, the couple took off and didn’t press charges, so there’s no record of it. But I have witnesses to the incident.”

“Yes, he threw those blabby creeps out,” I said, “but he didn’t shoot them. Even though he probably should have. I would have.”

Toomey got on his puzzled look again. “The point is, this is a guy who can lose control and you don’t know what the hell he’s going to do.”

I said, “The person who shot Sturdivant seems to have been in total control of his actions. The act was calculated and it was deadly. It was not somebody losing it and popping off the way you’ve described Fields.”

“Strachey, Fields told Sturdivant in front of three witnesses that he was going to get rid of him.”

“That could have meant anything,” I said. “Get rid of him socially, or something.”

This sounded painfully lame as I said it, and Toomey just looked at me for a long moment. He said, “Hey, I know you want to stick up for another gay guy. I appreciate that. And Fields has had some kind of rough time in his life, and you want to see that he gets a break. But you really have to face the facts here. I’m telling you. The guy lost it and killed a man, and now he has to suffer the consequences.”

I said, “How do you know he had a rough time in life? What do you know about Fields’ life I don’t know about?”

Toomey shrugged. “I just meant he was gay, and I know that’s not easy. As for who Fields actually is and where he came from, I’m still working on that.”

“Yeah, me too.”

I thought about asking Toomey if he’d checked out Bill Moore’s whereabouts on Wednesday night at nine – or Moore’s murky background as possibly some kind of government agent – but decided not to implicate my own client unless and until the facts required it.

Toomey left with the DA’s office crowd, and I waited a few more minutes until Myra Greene came out, accompanied by Radziwill and the two friends who had bailed her out. Radziwill helped her extract a cigarette from a pack in her side pocket, and then helped her light it.

“Hey, Donald, I got sprung out of there just in time. I was about to go bonkers in the lockup and start screaming like Jimmy Cagney in White Heat.”

“I just want you to know I didn’t rat you out, Myra.”

“I know you didn’t, dear. That was Susie Schwartz, whose house I was looking after. But I don’t blame Susie either. Thorny went at her with a rubber hose, I’m sure.”

Myra sounded game, but she was walking unsteadily and seemed unable to move her neck at all. I said, “Once we get Barry out of this, you’ll be okay, too. Don’t worry.”

“Oh, I’m not concerned, Donald. Now, what time is it? I’ve got to back get to the theater.”

“Don’t you want to get some rest first?”