“I know you’ve called in some personal loans,” I said. “Loans with acquaintances in this area.” He looked at me hard. “I’m trying to determine if any of the borrowers might have been involved in Jim’s murder.”
“That is absurd!”
“I have five names.” I rattled them off. “Were there others?”
“You are barking up the wrong tree, Donald. Yes, Jim and I lent money to a number of friends over the years as personal favors. But that has nothing to do with anything, I can assure you. I know you’re determined to get Barry Fields exonerated. But you won’t because you can’t, and you can’t because he is an angry young man who lost control and let his hatred spew out, and he killed Jim over… over nothing!”
“Why,” I asked, “did you and Jim hire me to investigate Fields? You both told me it was to keep your dear friend Bill Moore from making a terrible mistake by marrying Fields. But Moore doesn’t consider either of you dear friends. He thinks of your actions as outrageous butting in where you don’t belong.”
Gaudios considered this and reddened. I thought, Good grief, he may be about to say something truthful.
He said, “The thing was, Jim didn’t like Barry.”
“Uh huh.”
“He offended his mother.”
“His mother?”
“Jim’s mother and brother were at the Triplex one time seeing Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith. Anne Marie is hard of hearing, and Michael was telling her what the movie was about. Somebody complained about them talking, and Barry came in and told them to keep it down. He was extremely rude in the way he went about it, apparently. Anne Marie told him she couldn’t understand the movie without Michael explaining everything, and how was she supposed to enjoy the movie? Barry told them they were disturbing the other patrons, and he’d give them their money back and they’d have to leave. They thought that was unreasonable – they wanted to see how the story turned out – and they refused to go. Barry lost his famous temper, and he grabbed Michael by the arm, and Anne Marie swung her handbag at him. Somebody called nine-one-one on a cell phone and yelled that the police were on their way. Anne Marie and Michael were humiliated and furious, but not wanting to be in the middle of something that would end up in the Eagle, they left. Without even getting the refund they had coming, Anne Marie said.”
They disturbed people while watching Star Wars? So it wasn’t even The Seventh Seal.
I said, “Did Barry know the yackers were Jim’s mother and brother?”
“No, there’s was no point in telling him. Michael and Anne Marie wanted to let it go. They don’t like to make a fuss.”
“And that was the beginning of some grudge by Jim against Fields?”
“Well,” Gaudios said, “Barry was known to be some kind of weird character. He made up stories about his past – all that BS about Colorado – and he hung around with that annoying Bud Radziwill. Kennedy cousin, my ass! If Jackie O ever met Bud Radziwill, she’d have him arrested for impersonating a Radziwill.”
“Is that a crime in Massachusetts?”
“Now you look here,” Gaudios snapped. “I’ve had just about enough of your smart-ass meddling and insinuations and following me around! I’ve lived a life of law-abiding taste and elegance, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll go back to seedy old Albany and leave us alone to worry about our own problems. Thorne Cornwallis is a man not to be trifled with, and if you get in his way in this, he’ll take you apart. Thorne is going to put Barry Fields in Walpole, where he belongs, and if you don’t watch your step, you’re liable to end up there, also. Now, I’ve got stuff to do, so please, Donald, take your ugly accusations and just get the frig out of here.”
I said, “I didn’t accuse you of anything, Steven. Should I have?”
He stood up, stalked to the door, and held it open for me. “Just please go!”
I went.
Chapter Fourteen
I checked my cell phone to see if Bill Moore had called, but he had not. I was meeting George Santiago, one of the other borrowers, at five, so I headed back toward downtown Great Barrington. I reached Ramona Furst on her cell and asked her if I could visit Fields in jail over the weekend, and she said she would set it up. We made a plan for dinner at eight at an Indian place she said was good.
As I drove up Route 7, I tried calling Lewis Bushmeyer again. The hot-tub borrower who had hung up on me the first time I called was now willing to talk, and he was still angry and upset, but this time not at me.
“Did you say you’re working for Barry Fields?” he said.
“I am.”
“And not for Steven Gaudios?”
“No. Gaudios thinks Barry shot Jim Sturdivant. Or says that’s what he thinks, anyway.”
“Are you aware that Steven called in my loan? And probably other people’s, too?”
“I heard that, yes.”
Bushmeyer said in a shaky voice, “I don’t happen to have access to four thousand dollars. And my credit is all shot to hell. I can’t go to any commercial lender.”
“That’s bad.”
“I told Steven this, and do you know what he said?”
“What?”
“He said, ‘Just. Get. The. Money.’”
“So, he was not sympathetic.”
“He said – it’s hard to believe this – but Steven said, ‘How would you like to have both your legs broken?’ Can you believe it?”
I said, “That’s not very tasteful and elegant.”
“Tasteful and elegant? He talked to me like he was some fucking gangster.”
I assured Bushmeyer that I was not a party to any of this and said, “I know of five borrowers.” I named them. “Do you know of any others?”
“No, I don’t. And I didn’t know Bill Moore borrowed money from Jim and Steven,” Bushmeyer said. “I thought Bill didn’t much like Jim and Steven. And I know Barry couldn’t stand them. He always referred to them as the toads. In fact, that name kind of caught on.”
“It’s my impression that nobody was crazy about Jim and Steven, but their charitable largesse and their generous loan terms won them a certain amount of deference and even social standing.”
“People put up with them,” Bushmeyer said. “They were part of the scenery in gay Berkshire County. But really an embarrassment to everybody.”
I said, “So, speaking of embarrassments – did you visit the hot tub in order to procure your loan, Lewis? I am not one to judge. I’m just fact-gathering.”
There was a long pause. “It was humiliating.”
“Sorry.”
“I am twenty-five years old and extremely handsome, and I am very particular about who I have sex with.”
“Good for you.”
“I have very beautiful genitals, men say.”
“That, too. Or, those.”
“And I gave myself over to those two – for money. If my credit had been better, none of this would ever have happened. I am so ashamed. And now I’m paying for my misdeed.”
“Good luck getting the money together. But four thousand is not as bad as it could have been.”
Bushmeyer said, “You don’t have any extra, do you? You sound like somebody I wouldn’t be so embarrassed to get into a hot tub with.”
“I’m not easily embarrassed, either. But I’m afraid I’m not in a position to be helpful, Lewis.”
“Then just – just fuck you!” he yelled at me and rang off.
Financial pressures can lead to both recklessness and rudeness, and my heart went out.
I phoned Timmy at his office and described my varied day: Barry Fields’ arraignment and his outburst over Myra Greene’s needless incarceration by the hard-ass DA; Joe Toomey’s warning not to mess with Thorne Cornwallis; Jean Watrous’s indignation over my description of Bill Moore as an assassin, after he had run off to Washington or elsewhere for unknown reasons; Jerry Treece’s revelation that all the loans were being called in, as well as his description of Pittsfield, the city where Sturdivant grew up and in which he was still closeted, as a “gay pit of shame”; Steven Gaudios’s distress over being shut out of the funeral and other final rites for the man to whom he had been effectively wed for forty-six years, as well as Gaudios’s goofy story about bad blood over Fields offending Jim’s mother by asking her to pipe down during Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith; and Lewis Bushmeyer’s report on (a) the beauty of his own genitalia and, arguably more importantly, (b) Gaudios’s threat to have Bushmeyer’s legs broken if he didn’t pay up.