Crime of Privilege: A Novel (13 page)

“It’s around somewhere.”

“Did you contact any of them? The people on the list, I mean?”

And just that quickly Mitch wasn’t sure about the rules of the exercise anymore. If
I was asking these questions on behalf of his friends and mine, why didn’t I already
know whether he had contacted them? He rolled his chair back from his desk, extended
his legs out in front of him, put his elbows on the arms of the chair, and folded
his hands about chest high as he stared that question at me.

I tried to look back as innocently as I could.

After maybe thirty seconds Mitch began speaking in measured terms. “Look, I’m sorry
for Bill Telford and his family, I really am. I’m sorry for all the victims and their
families on the Cape and Islands. I hope I can bring the perpetrators of their misery
to justice. I hope I can do that every time. But I can’t go off on every wild-goose
chase every one of them wants me to go on. Bill, he didn’t have much for us in the
beginning. Didn’t understand how his daughter could be dressed like
she was. Didn’t understand how she could have ended up in Osterville when she was
walking into Hyannis. Gave us names and phone numbers of everyone she knew, told us
all the places she might have liked to have gone. Even dug out old credit card receipts
to show where she’d gone in the past. Police did the best they could and they came
up with nothing. They searched for her bag, the clothes she was wearing when she left
home, the weapon that was used. Nothing. Unfortunately, crime on the Cape didn’t stop
with this murder and we’ve had to deal with other things, too. So, simple fact of
the matter is, it became time to move on.”

It was unclear whether Mitch was trying to convince me or was rehearsing for someone
else. Either way, I was listening dutifully. Seeing that, he opened his hands and
flared them, an indication of hopelessness.

“We didn’t close the case, but we’re tapped out. Something comes up that’s viable,
fine, we’ll look into it. We don’t like having a citizen’s murder go unsolved. It
doesn’t look good for us; it doesn’t look good for the Cape in general.”

Mitch sat up straight, pulled his chair back to the desk so he could make sure that
all our attention was focused on each other, that it was just him and me, talking
in our private tunnel. “Bill wants to do his own investigation; we’re not going to
stop him, as long as he doesn’t break the law himself. Okay, Bill, let us know if
you come up with anything. Years go by. He’s out there. He’s in here. He’s over at
the police station. He’s got nothing. At some point he comes up with this Gregory
theory. Well, I’ll be damned! Good God Gertie! The Gregorys—what a concept! I mean,
you know every bit as well as I do, George—”

Here, he paused.

“—the Gregorys are fair game wherever they go. It’s the downside of being who they
are. So now we’ve got this poor old guy, can’t come up with anything else, so he fastens
on them? Gets some poor clerk in a grocery store, nine years ago thought the world
was going to be at her feet, now here she is, fifty pounds of brownies later, realizes
she’s not going anywhere, least of all to a Gregory wedding, and suddenly she remembers
something? You know what I’m saying?”

I didn’t tell him.

“Okay, well, let’s assume that her sudden restoration of memory is one hundred percent
accurate. What have we got? Heidi Telford, young, beautiful, and maybe just becoming
aware of her own sensuality, talks to a kid from a famous family, then a couple of
hours later sneaks out of the house. Mr. Telford puts it all together and decides
she had to be going to a party at the famous family compound. Teases the boys with
her boobies hanging out—he’s not saying that, but you know that’s what he means, all
that bra talk and stuff. They want the boobies, she doesn’t give them up, they hit
her over the head with a golf club and kill her. You like that story, George? Like
it in terms of buying it? Think anybody would? The Gregory boys can get any titties
they want. They don’t have to go hitting people over the head. They’re done with some
girl for whatever reason, they just call a cab, send her packing. Hell, the worst
of them would just open the side gate, tell her to walk home.”

He laughed. A little
heh, heh
. It was a typical Mitch White laugh, with no real humor behind it. He thought this
was the kind of thing guys thought was funny. When I didn’t laugh, he stopped.

“So you see, George,” he said, wiping his mouth uneasily, “I wasn’t going to inflict
an investigation on them. Certainly not on the basis of what Telford came up with.”

I wondered if looking at Mitch White was like looking in a mirror. If that was what
made me hate him as much as I did.

I
WENT FOR A RIDE. I GOT MY BIKE OUT FOR THE FIRST TIME THAT
spring, pumped up the tires, oiled the brakes and the Derailleur, and loaded it onto
the rack on the back of my old Saab. I drove east on the Mid-Cape Highway to Exit
9A and turned south. In half a mile I was at the Rail Trail.

This time of year there were hardly any vehicles in the parking lot, and within minutes
I had the bike off the rack, my helmet secured, my shoes locked into the pedals, and
I was cruising the smooth pavement that covered what had once been a railroad corridor.
This was not a hard ride. In fact, it would be difficult to find an easier one, but
I could go twenty-two miles to Wellfleet, turn around and ride back, and feel I had
a pretty good workout.

I cruised past river swamps, cranberry bogs, an abandoned lumber mill, ponds that
would soon be teeming with swimmers and small sailboats. I rode faster and faster
because there was virtually nobody else on the trail: an inline skater, a woman with
a dog, a man with some sort of baby carriage affixed behind his bike.

It was good, I told myself, to be doing something other than thinking. And then I
realized that was exactly what I was doing. But I wasn’t brooding. No. I was doing
something positive. Yes. That’s what I was doing. I was preparing myself for something
in the future. The Pan-Mass Challenge, 110 miles from Sturbridge to the Cape Cod Canal
the
first Saturday in August. Preparing meant going forward, and that was good. Go forward,
George. That’s good. That’s good. Keep pumping. Get in shape. Raise money. Children’s
cancer fund. The Jimmy Fund. Pump your legs, raise money. Forget old man Telford and
the Gregorys and Mitch White and your lost wife and anybody else you can think of
forgetting.

Except I wasn’t really raising money, was I? I was contributing it. I had pledged
$2,500 back in January, the minimum for the one-day ride that I was planning to do.
Riders were supposed to get sponsors, send out solicitation letters, hit up friends
and relatives, but I hadn’t done that. I didn’t have anybody I thought I could ask.
Try my colleagues at work, maybe; make things awkward for everyone, those who gave
and those who didn’t.
The guy in the basement wants me to give him a hundred bucks. Look out for George,
he’s asking people for money
.

How much would I raise? Whatever. It wasn’t worth it. If I was going to pay $2,000
of my own money, I might as well pay $2,500. Pump, George, pump.

I was beginning to tire as I reached Nickerson State Park. Drop down. Pass through
the tunnel beneath Route 6A, go back uphill and head toward Orleans Center. It wasn’t
much of a hill. I pushed myself harder. Go faster, George. What are you saving yourself
for?

Guy my age ought to have friends he could call on. I had dozens of friends in college.
A whole fraternity full of friends.

And I hadn’t seen a single one of them in twelve years.

I
STILL HAD THE TELEPHONE NUMBER OF THE APARTMENT IN
New York City.

When I called, a woman made the word “hello” last about three seconds.

I told her who I was and she made the silence last even longer.

I told her that I was Paul’s roommate at Penn.

“Oh, yes.” She still did not know. She was only pretending. Being polite. Mrs. McFetridge
was always polite.

At the graduation party, I had seen her talking to my mother. Or, rather, I had seen
my mother talking to her. Talking and talking and talking. I had drifted over to perform
some kind of rescue operation, but when I got close enough I realized my mother was
telling her all about my friends the Gregorys, who had been kind enough to have me
to their house in Palm Beach. Mrs. McFetridge had grown up with the Gregorys. She
had known some of the Gregory sisters and wives at least since Miss Porter’s School.
And here my mother was, name-dropping, no doubt making up a few disparaging comments
in her effort to be
en famille
. I hesitated now to bring up anything that would remind Mrs. McFetridge of that painful
moment. I told her instead that I had been a guest at her place on a few occasions
when Paul and I spent the weekend in New York.

She responded by saying, “How nice of you to call.” Perhaps she thought I was soliciting
for the alumni fund.

“I was wondering if you could tell me how I could get in touch with Paul.”

“He doesn’t live here anymore.”

Of course he didn’t. He was thirty-four years old. But I just murmured as though that
was my bad luck.

“He lives in Idaho. He’s sort of an adventurist.”

I did not know what an adventurist was. She did not know who I was. Two people heaving
information into the dark.

“Um, can you tell me where I can get hold of him in Idaho?”

“Well, I don’t really know. You fly to Boise and then you wander off in the woods
somewhere until you get to a river. I believe he’s what is known as a river guide.”
She said the last two words going uphill with “river,” resting at the peak, then going
downhill with “guide.”

Mrs. McFetridge’s son had gone four years to St. Paul’s before going four years to
an Ivy League school. Eight years of very expensive education and now he was a river … guide.
I did not have the feeling Mrs. McFetridge was overly pleased to be telling me that.

“He likes to be outdoors,” she added. “Skis all winter, rafts all summer, heaven knows
what he does in between.”

“Is there a phone number where I could reach him?”

“Well, I don’t know. Why don’t I take your number and I’ll have him call you if I
hear from him? And if you should get in touch with him through another source, perhaps
you could have him call me.”

“Ah, yes, of course, Mrs. McFetridge.”

I
KNEW CORY GREGORY A LITTLE
.

I had met her once. We had been sitting at a big round table in the middle of the
floor at the British Beer Company on Main Street in Hyannis—some of the defense guys
and me—when she walked in with a couple of her friends. About five-feet-four, with
short, somewhat muscular legs that she was showing off in a pair of white shorts that
stopped halfway down her smooth brown thighs, she was not what you’d call classically
beautiful, but she caught your attention.

She had, in fact, just come off a tennis court, but there was nothing other than her
clothes to indicate that. Her shoulder-length brown hair, perfectly highlighted, did
not have a strand out of place. She looked cool and smooth and, if anything, probably
smelled of talcum powder. Her cheekbones were high and prominent, her jaw was strong,
and you knew right away who she was. She might not have been Cory, exactly, but there
was no doubt she was a Gregory.

Buzzy Daizell grabbed her wrist as she went by. She went ice cold for an instant and
there was a feeling that all kinds of things could happen and then she recognized
who it was and said, “Buzzy!” just like any other girl and bent down to give him a
hug. I watched as her arm, thin in comparison with her legs but just as tanned, just
as smooth, briefly encircled his neck and shoulders, and for one moment
the electricity was so strong that I felt almost as though it was wrapping around
me.

She straightened up again and looked at the rest of us with an expectant smile on
her face. Her lips parted and she flashed teeth that were slightly too long and blindingly
white. The woman was a collection of imperfections, put together in one exquisite
package. I got to my feet. So did everyone else at the table. We had never done that
for any other woman we had whistled down, called over, grabbed, or greeted when she
walked past.

I introduced myself, shook her hand, forced myself not to say I knew her cousin Peter,
and waited while the introductions went around the table. She waved her hand at her
friends, wanting us to meet them, too, and this time we all nodded and immediately
forgot their names. It was decided that they would join us, we would all squeeze in
together, four women and four men. Cory took a chair between Buzzy and Alphonse, and
I ended up with three girls on my right and Jimmy Shelley on my left. Since Buzzy
was talking to Cory, Jimmy had no one to talk to but me. Since the three girls with
Cory were bunched together, they talked among themselves. Occasionally I got in a
few words with the girl immediately next to me. So, where you from? Really? I was
there once. Just here visiting? Ah. How did the tennis game go? Aha. Oh, yes. Oh,
my. She would answer my questions and then go back to huddling with her friends.

They left after one drink. I could not say I really knew Cory Gregory.

I did know Buzzy, though, so I tried calling him. I was in the dungeon when I made
the call and Barbara Belbonnet was sitting at her desk. For once, she was not on the
phone herself, which meant she heard everything I said, most of which went along the
lines of, “I just want to talk with her.… No, I’m not going to ask her out.… We’ve
got a mutual friend, that’s all, and I’m trying to find him.”

It turned out Buzzy, for all his bravado, did not have Cory’s number. He had met her
at a charity auction. They had stood in a group drinking champagne and now, whenever
he saw her, he said hello and was lucky enough to have her remember who he was. So
no, he couldn’t
help me other than to tell me where she lived, which everyone knew was on Sea View
Avenue in Osterville. But there was a guard at the gate, and don’t even think about
trying to get past him just because you claim you want to see Cory.