“Maybe. Mob guys think that way. Even when family members are involved. Maybe especially when family members are involved.”

“So,” I said, “what we have to find out is, how healthy is Anne Marie, and who is in her will?”

Moore thought about this and said, “What else have we got?”

I thought about it too, and it just didn’t feel like the answer. It was too tidy, too small, too shabby. Not that people’s lives weren’t sometimes snuffed out by smallness and shabbiness. The horror of that ugly truth – that the Clutter family could be massacred by a couple of dim punks, that JFK could be deleted from the American landscape by a bitter and confused creep who got off a series of lucky shots – was why so many people chose instead to believe in fate, or divine retribution, or vast conspiracies that don’t exist. That people’s lives could be ended for dumb, trivial reasons was just too awful for some people to contemplate, even though it was all too grotesquely true.

And yet, I still felt this wasn’t about money. Jim Sturdivant’s life had been too complex, too fraught, and his killing too seemingly out of the blue.

I said, “Bill, I’m sorry I called you an assassin. I wish you had told me the truth. I’d have been understanding, as most people would be.”

He shrugged weakly. “I just don’t want to be the man that people look at and say ’that’s the man who… you-knowwhat.’ I don’t want to be that guy to anybody except myself. Which is hard enough, believe me.”

“I understand now why both you and Barry first bonded over your carrying secrets that haunted both of you. But Barry’s secret might soon be revealed, and I can’t help suspecting that he’ll be stronger and healthier for it. He won’t be carrying the load nearly all alone. And maybe that could also be the case for you.”

“Barry has been my savior, that’s for sure,” Moore said, his voice unsteady now. “He’s been the one person who’s been able to drag me kicking and screaming out of myself. And I didn’t move to Massachusetts for its gay politics. I came here because Jean has been a real pal to me. But now that I am free and out of the closet, I just feel so goddamned lucky I live in a state where two men who love each other and are devoted to each other can stand up in front of their families and friends and the whole fucking town and proclaim their love and commitment, and then get recognition from the state for doing it.”

“It’s a truly wonderful thing,” I said.

“I feel bad for people in other states who can’t do it,” Moore went on, “and also for people right here in Massachusetts who for religious or family reasons can’t just go down to town hall and get hitched, even though they know in their hearts that their relationships are as deep and good and true as anybody else’s.”

I thought of Preston and David and how fortunate they were – maybe Timmy and I would have the chance to do this one day also – and I remembered at lunch on Saturday noticing Preston and David’s twin silver wedding bands. Then I remembered someone else I had just been with who was wearing a silver band on his ring finger, and that’s when it all came together.

Chapter Twenty-six

On the way back down to Sheffield, I phoned Ramona Furst. She said Massachusetts state offices wouldn’t be open until Monday morning, but it would be no trouble retrieving the information I was looking for. Meanwhile, she said, she was joining Bill Moore on his visit with Barry Fields, aka Benjamin Krider, at Berkshire Medical Center. I asked her to set up a meeting later that afternoon with Joe Toomey, and she said she would try. I told her it was crucial that we coordinate our plans for solving the Sturdivant murder case, for Toomey had the wherewithal and I had the facts.

Steven Gaudios was in the driver’s seat of his convertible, his back-up lights on, about to head off somewhere. I pulled in behind him, the rental car’s front bumper touching the BMW’s rear. I got out, and he said, “Please move. I am expected for lunch, and I am already quite late.”

“I haven’t had lunch myself, Steven, but that’ll have to wait.”

“No, in my case lunch will not have to wait. Now please move your car! We have had our discussion, Donald, and there is nothing more for you and I to say to one another.”

I said, “His family killed Jim because he got married to a man. That man would be you.”

Gaudios gagged, and I was afraid he would retch on his car’s leather upholstery or on his beautiful white shirt.

“Somebody in or close to Jim’s family,” I said, “discovered that you two were married and told Michael. He was afraid

Jim’s mother would find out, and the news would break her heart and embarrass her with the ladies at bingo and with the priests at Mount Carmel and with other family and friends around Pittsfield. So Michael hired a Schenectady enforcer named Cheap Maloney to kill Jim, ending the ungodly and embarrassing same-sex marriage and punishing both of you for your gross insult to diocese and mob ethics.”

Gaudios was staring up at me wild-eyed and still coughing up a storm.

I said, “Then they told you to get the hell out of Berkshire County before they did to you what they did to Jim. And they no doubt told you that if word of the marriage ever came to light, you were finished.”

Gaudios suddenly opened his car door and bolted toward the back of the house, still sputtering. I followed him as he zigzagged past the back porch, around the pool, and over to the hot tub, where he vomited into the still waters.

I stood aside as Gaudios retched copiously, gagged dryly a few times, and then fell back gasping against a chaise lounge. He noticed that his pretty shirt was spattered, and he pulled out a handkerchief to wipe away some of the mess.

I said, “I would be far more sympathetic, Steven, if you hadn’t been so eager to let Barry Fields take the rap. What a despicable thing to do to a person.”

Now he began to snuffle piteously. I didn’t know whether to take him into my arms and comfort him or kick him in the teeth. I did neither.

Finally, through his tears, he said, “I thought Barry would get off. I never thought he would be convicted. Really, Donald, I didn’t!”

“How can you say that? You knew Thorne Cornwallis lacked both the guts and the fluency of mind to hold out for the truth. You were going to let him lock Barry away for life in some savage behavioral sink while you went off to a tropical isle and set up another jolly blowjobs-and-martinis hot-tub operation. Steven, I feel like puking myself.”

“Oh, you’re so sanctimonious, Donald! But you don’t know. You just don’t know.”

“I don’t know what?”

“What they said they would do to me!”

“What who said?”

Terror filled his eyes. “Michael. He told me if any of this ever got out, it would kill Anne Marie, and he would come after me wherever I was, and he would torture me like in Iraq with an electric drill. And I believe him. Jim always said Michael was a sadist with no class.”

I seated myself on the edge of another chaise and looked down at Gaudios as he sat slumped and slobbering. I saw the silver band on his finger and asked, “When did you and Jim marry?”

He shook his head. “No. Oh no.”

I said, “Ramona Furst will know in the morning when the state Division of Vital Statistics, Department of Public Health, opens. All marriages in the state are public records.”

He began to weep again. After a moment, he croaked out, “It was last June twelfth. In Weston. We were married by a justice of the peace.”

“Who was the witness?”

“A secretary in the office of the Weston town clerk on her lunch hour, Angie DiCello. She was so sweet. She said it was her first gay wedding, and she said she was proud to be part of history.”

“Why Weston?”