“No, I do not. He is secretive about his past. His current identity goes back only about six years. Before that his life is a black hole.”
“What we discovered,” Cornwallis said, “is that Fields not only has no criminal record, he has no record of existing at all prior to his move to Great Barrington. Maybe in your mind, Mr. Strachey, that is a factor in his favor. In our minds it is the opposite.”
I said, “What do you know about Jim Sturdivant’s lending practices? His personal loans to acquaintances is what I’m referring to.”
Cornwallis blanched, a trick for a man so florid. “I know more about the Sturdivant-Gaudios hot-tub loan office than I care to think about,” he said. “The homosexual lifestyle is a mystery to me, and in my work I have become acquainted with practices that do not make it any less mysterious.”
“And you don’t think there’s any connection between Sturdivant’s financial practices and his murder?”
“Oh, but I certainly do see a connection,” Cornwallis said, leaning toward me and looking smug. “Bill Moore was one of Sturdivant’s borrowers. Steven Gaudios is prepared to testify to that fact and to produce records. Obviously, Moore was having a sexual relationship with Sturdivant – one of the terms of the low-interest loan – and Fields had a jealous fit and attacked Sturdivant and then killed him.” He sat looking at me coolly, as if my challenging this version of events would be foolhardy and stupid.
I said, “That’s nuts. Moore climbed into the Sturdivant-Gaudios hot tub just once. It was before he and Fields were a pair. Fields heard about the transaction later, and he found it gross. But he did not expect Moore to be a virgin when they wed, and he was not sexually jealous. Fields was mad at Sturdivant because Sturdivant hired me to investigate Fields before he married Bill Moore. Sex had nothing to do with it.”
Cornwallis almost smiled. He said, “What you apparently are not aware of, Mr. Strachey, is that Bill Moore happened to like getting into the Sturdivant-Gaudios hot tub. He did not visit it just once. He liked it, and he went back again and again. In fact, he visited the tub twice a week right up until the night of Jim Sturdivant’s death, on nights when Fields was at work at the Triplex movie house. Steven Gaudios will testify to that fact also.”
Gaudios. He was very deliberately framing Barry Fields, as if he knew who Sturdivant’s killer was and was desperate to deflect attention. Why?
I said, “Gaudios is lying.”
“I have no reason to believe so.”
“He told you Bill Moore was in the hot tub on the night of the murder? Not so. Moore was working on a computer job in Springfield. I’m sure that can be checked out. Anyway, how would Gaudios know who was there that night? He was off playing bridge somewhere.”
“Well, Gaudios didn’t say Moore was there that night. But on recent nights he had been. That is nights plural.”
I said, “You’re being conned. You’re so ready to believe that no man would ever turn down a blowjob when offered one – a conviction more commonly held by straight men than gays, I do believe – that you have been suckered into this horseshit story of Gaudios’s. You apparently believe that all gay men ever think about is dick, when in point of hard fact many of us have a variety of other interests.”
He peered at me confusedly. “You’re gay too?” My impulse was to bat my eyelashes, but I just nodded. “I have no problem with gays,” Cornwallis said.
“Peachy.”
“I have a lesbian on my staff.”
“You’re so advanced.”
“I’m not asking to be congratulated.”
“I’m relieved.”
“I happen not to agree with the church on homosexuality. We’re all sinners, but this ’disordered’ stuff is crap. I also know, however, that men do terrible things because of their sexual impulses. It’s not a gay thing. It’s a man thing. Gay men just happen to have more opportunities to fuck around and get in trouble and lose control of their emotions. The Sturdivant case is plainly one of those situations. It has crazed sexual jealousy written all over it. You’re deluding yourself, Mr. Strachey, to believe otherwise.”
Cornwallis was in love with a stereotype, and there was nothing I could do about it. To him this case was a simple queen-out-turned-violent, and he was stuck on that and not about to get unstuck. And it wasn’t as though his version of events would have been unprecedented. The murderously jealous queen stereotype had some basis in fact. But it happened rarely – never in all my years of PI experience – and the theory was all wrong here.
I said, “I’m going to prove you’re mistaken, Mr. Cornwallis. I’m going to ask you for some information about organized crime in Berkshire County and some names of people I can talk to about what’s going on currently, mob-activity-wise. And you’re going to give me that information just to watch me make a fool of myself. But then I’m going to surprise you and use this information and these contacts to find out who really killed Jim Sturdivant. And then you’re going to thank me profusely and eat shit.”
Cornwallis did not laugh uproariously at me, as I would have. He smirked. “Now there’s an offer only a total dickhead could refuse. Sure, I’ll point you in the direction of knowledgeable people. But if you lose a mouthful of teeth or get into a situation that ends up with organ failure, don’t come whining to me.”
Now he was relaxed and enjoying me. Cornwallis had hated me only minutes earlier, but now I was giving him huge pleasure. I couldn’t wait to tell the guys back on Gordon
Street that I had won over the fearsome Berkshire County district attorney.
Cornwallis consulted his computer while I waited and looked out the window. I watched a couple of three-car rollovers down on hectic Park Square, and some antiwar activists waving signs that read Honk If You’re for Peace. The din was intermittent.
Soon Cornwallis wrote three names and phone numbers on a slip of paper and handed it across his desk to me.
He said, “You can say these referrals came from me, but I’m not sure how forthcoming any of these people will be.” Then Cornwallis grinned – I didn’t know he knew how – and said, “Don’t hurt yourself now.”
Chapter Nineteen
Back in my car, parked on a side street near the Crowne Plaza Hotel, I phoned the numbers Cornwallis had given me. At one number, I got the voicemail of Johnny Montarsi and chose not to leave a message but to try him later. The second number was answered by the name Cornwallis had written down, Daniel Travio, but when I explained who I was and why I was calling, Travio told me to fuck off and hung up. Thorne Cornwallis’s name was not yet working its magic.
Then I reached Tom O’Toole on his cell. Here was a last name with the vowel on the wrong end – had he changed it from Alioto? – which just went to show how thoroughly the forces of ethnic dilution and integration in America had done their job in recent decades. O’Toole said he was at that moment watching the Red Sox-Yankees game at an East Pittsfield bar, but the game was going badly and why didn’t I drive over and distract him from the disaster?
G’s Place was on Newell Street, near the now all-butabandoned General Electric plant. The sports field across from the bar appeared shiny and new and looked like one of those let’s-make-the-best-of-it civic projects where kids cavort above residues of toxic waste. The bar had the worn but durable feeling that’s so appreciated in working-class neighborhoods where there isn’t much work anymore. The place was nearly empty on this late summer Saturday afternoon, and I had no trouble locating O’Toole where he said he would be, on a barstool under the flat-screen TV, which as I came in showed a Sox batter chopping air.