“Michael must be in Pittsfield for the funeral. It’s on Monday.”
“Yeah, I saw him at mass yesterday. He was here earlier in the week too. I saw him over at Ern’s Lounge on Fenn Street.”
“Earlier in the week? Before Wednesday?”
“Monday, Tuesday. Dunno.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“I said hi. What was I gonna say?”
“Who was Michael with when you saw him?”
“Anne Marie in church, and Rose, his sister. And in Ern’s some guy, Cheap, from Schenectady.”
“A man named Cheap?”
“They call him Cheap.”
“What do you know about Cheap?”
“Nothin’. He’s cheap, I guess.”
“Maybe it’s that he does bird imitations.”
“Nah. He’s too heavyset.”
“What’s Cheap’s last name?”
“I think it’s Maloney. Like baloney, but not.”
“What does Cheap do?”
“Dipped if I know. He’s just this guy you see once in a while.”
“Who is Rose married to? Jim’s sister.”
“Some guy in Worcester, but they’re divorced. She’s a bitch, Mitzi says.”
“Mitzi’s your wife?”
“And the mother of my children.”
“How many have you got, Tom?”
“Heather and Shaun. Shaun was a son of a bitch coming out, so Mitzi got her tubes tied. Father Ryan gave her some shit, and I had to talk to him, priest or no priest.”
“Do Michael and Rose have children?”
“Maybe, but not around Pittsfield. They’d be in Providence and Worcester.”
I said, “Except for Anne Marie, none of the Sturdivants stayed in Pittsfield. Why do you think that is?”
O’Toole shifted on his barstool, which creaked. “Lack of job opportunity. When power transformer went, Pittsfield went with it. We gotta get the GE back, is what this town’s gotta do. But the mayor, those pricks. They don’t do diddley. They’re all in it for themselves.”
“What do you do for a living, Tom?”
Now he chuckled. “I’m retired. What do you do, Don?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“Oh yeah. You said. Like Kojak.”
“I think Kojak was a police detective, wasn’t he? I’ve never been a cop.”
“Keep it up,” O’Toole said and raised his glass. “I have a niece who’s on the police. She’s a disgrace to the family. She’s a dyke too. I don’t know which is worse.”
“Pittsfield sounds like a rough town to grow up gay in,” I said.
“Gotta take pride in somethin’, my friend.”
From the car, I phoned a cop friend in Albany who had family and other connections in Schenectady. I asked him for information about a man known as Cheap Maloney, like baloney but not. He said he’d check. Then I tried Johnny Montarsi again, and this time he answered.
“I’m Don Strachey, a private investigator working on the Jim Sturdivant murder. Thorne Cornwallis said you might be willing to talk to me and give me some background information.”
“What kind of information? I’m busy.”
“Was Sturdivant involved in any kind of loan-sharking or other possibly illegal activities?”
“I wouldn’t know. Thorny thinks I’d know about that, he’s full of it.”
“He didn’t say that. He just thought you might have picked something up.”
“Nah. I can’t help. Anything else? I’m on my way somewhere.” I said, “Do you know Michael Sturdivant, Jim’s brother?”
“Why? No.”
“What about a guy named Cheap Maloney from
Schenectady who comes to Pittsfield?” Now I could hear Montarsi’s breathing, even over our cell phones. He said, “Tell me your name again?”
“Don Strachey.”
“Where do you work out of, Don? Springfield?”
“Albany.”
“Uh huh. Hey, I wish I could help you out. Tell Thorny I wracked my brain. But this one I know nothing about. Honestly. Are you here in Pittsfield, Don?”
“Right now I am. I’m staying at a motel in Great Barrington, the Boxwood Inn. Maybe we could get together.”
“Nuh uh, I’m tied up. Good luck with that Sturdivant thing.”
“Thanks. Have a nice day, Johnny.”
“You too, Don Strachey.”
Chapter Twenty
I picked Timmy up, and on the way back to Great Barrington I told him, “I want you to take a separate room at the motel. Somebody might be coming after me there.”
“Coming after you? What’s that supposed to mean?”
I explained that Johnny Montarsi, one of the well-informed local goons Thorne Cornwallis had referred me to, seemed to know who Michael Sturdivant and a dubious character from Schenectady named Cheap Maloney were, and Montarsi seemed inordinately interested in where I was staying and the fact that I was somehow connecting these two men to the Sturdivant killing.
“Jeez, Don!”
“And the thing is, this might be my most direct route to these two bozos. That is, baiting them.”
“Baiting them to do what?”
“To show up. So I can talk to them. It’s Cheap Maloney who’ll have some insights to offer, I’m willing to bet.”
“What if Cheap’s most insightful expression comes by way of a lead pipe?”
“I can still handle situations like that. Are you suggesting that I’m over the hill, Timothy?”
“You? Oh, honey, never. Just because the AARP has your mailing address doesn’t mean the Cosa Nostra does.”
“This is not Cosa Nostra, not that big, I don’t think. But I do believe Jim Sturdivant was involved in something that made some branch of organized crime want him eliminated.
The hot-tub loans? No, I don’t think it’s connected to that. That was just some weird perversion Sturdivant enjoyed. Getting off by humiliating gay men because he was so ashamed of being gay himself. This is something else he did that got him killed, and there’s circumstantial evidence that his brother, Michael – who may have mob connections in both Providence and Schenectady – is somehow involved.”
“What evidence is there besides the fact that Michael was in the area earlier in the week before the murder?”
We were attempting to pass through the charming town of Stockbridge, with its Norman Rockwell Main Street and SUV gridlock. The rain had let up, and I could make out blue sky off to the west. As we sat stalled in the cloud of carbon monoxide that provided a cheap high for the tourists in rocking chairs on the front porch of the Red Lion Inn, I said, “Michael was here just before the murder. He’s a wiseguy. The killing has the earmarks of a mob hit. This Montarsi mob guy seemed freaked that I was making the connection.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, what I’m saying here is, a man may have been involved in the murder of his own brother. I hate to think that.”
Timmy said, “It does sound pretty biblical for Berkshire County.”
“Not so Tanglewood-on-Parade, no.”
“But Shakespeare and Company is just up the road in Lenox. That’s a Berkshire institution, and there’s plenty of fratricide in Shakespeare. In Lear, Richard the Third, Macbeth. And of course Claudius and Hamlet the father.”
We edged forward another eight feet, and I said, “And Michael Corleone had Fredo shot.”
“That isn’t so Berkshires, except for the operatic score.”
“I’m beginning to think the Sturdivants might be even worse in their own way than the Corleones,” I said, as the car inched past the Red Lion and around the corner onto the road to Great Barrington. “Which would make sense. In my limited experience, real-life mob guys are much dumber and meaner than the Puzo-Coppola crowd, entertaining though they were. That’s why mobsters love the Godfather movies. The films make them look tragic instead of like the worthless narcissistic twits they really are.”
Timmy said, “What about Barry Fields’ family, the ones he was so worried would show up? He insists they’re not criminals, you said. Where do they fit in?”