Timmy said, “Were there just the five borrowers?”
“I still don’t know.”
“Maybe there were others, and their loans were called in earlier in the week. And one of them who couldn’t pay freaked out and decided to get rid of Sturdivant.”
“But,” I said, “the loans I know about weren’t called in until after Sturdivant was killed, and apparently as a result of his death.”
Timmy said, “Well, Donald, I’d say ‘apparently’ is the operative word there.”
“Maybe,” I said, “you should come over here and tell me what to think and what to do. And then I can wrap this up in no more than ten minutes.”
No reply. I could hear his breathing and smell his Colgate breath.
I said, “Oh, yes. Yes, I am frustrated, and yes, I am pissed off.”
“But you’re not frustrated with me, are you? Or pissed off?”
“Nuh uh.”
“Should I come over after work?”
“Yes. Come for the weekend. Bring me some clothes and my toothbrush and things, will you?”
“Okay. I’ll help if I can. But don’t snap at me if things don’t go your way. I’m not the problem here.”
“If I can’t snap at you, then who can I snap at?”
“You usually have a list.”
“One other thing, Timothy. Bring my nine-millimeter. It’s in the bedroom closet.”
“Oh. Why?”
“I think Sturdivant and Gaudios might have mob connections.”
“Now, that makes me nervous.”
“Me too. It’s nuts, but there’s this talk of leg-breaking – usually a giveaway. Gaudios told me he worked in financial services. That could mean loan-sharking, and I don’t mean the kind of loan-sharking Visa and MasterCard carry on legally with the enthusiastic endorsement of their dear friends in Congress. I mean the illegal mob kind. And Sturdivant’s family apparently has some kind of shady past in Pittsfield. I’ve got to check all that out.”
“But,” Timmy said, “loan-sharking means extortionate interest rates. Sturdivant’s rates were actually lower than market. That doesn’t sound like the Mafia to me.”
“And that’s the part of it that’s really screwy. But the other thing is, Sturdivant’s murder is looking more and more like a mob hit. So, if I’m getting into something here, I just want to be armed and alert.”
“Do you think maybe Barry Fields crossed the mob in some way, and they’ve set him up to take the murder rap?”
“Possibly.”
“But what could his involvement have been. He’s just some gay-guy, movie-nut, theater employee, isn’t he? Is it Fields’ mysterious past that might be mob-connected?”
“It could be. But a better bet is, he earned their enmity when he told an old lady to shut up, and this particular old lady was the mother of two men who weren’t used to having their mom get dissed.”
Chapter Fifteen
I made a plan with Timmy to meet at Aroma, the restaurant where I was to dine with Ramona Furst at eight. Then I called Preston Morley and set up a lunch meeting on Saturday with him and his spouse, David Murano, in Pittsfield. Murano’s family was old Pittsfield, and he would likely know something about the nature of the Sturdivant family’s alleged shady past.
I called Bill Moore’s cell phone and got no answer. I left this message: “Hi, Bill. This is Strachey. Did you work as a mob hit man when you lived in Washington? Or were you some kind of fed going after the mob? Or some combination of both? Clue me in. It would be awfully helpful.”
I drove into Great Barrington in a steady stream of weekender traffic. It was Friday late afternoon, and the tourists and second-homers were still restless, even the weekend after Labor Day. I spotted Guido’s Market on the left, and the parking lot was jammed. I decided to have a look at the site of the wheel-of-cheese attack, and pulled in.
As I drove around the lot searching for a vacant parking space, a dude in a Range Rover zoomed into a handicap space and bounded out of the car and into the market. He was not handicapped in any visible way, had no handicap sticker, and was wearing about ten thousand dollars worth of clothes. I found a vacant space in a far corner of the lot, parked, and made my way back to the Range Rover. With a ballpoint pen, I let the air out of all four tires. A Guido’s bagboy came up to me and asked me what I thought I was doing, and I explained. He said, “Cool,” and walked on.
Twenty minutes later, back at The Brewery again, hot-tub borrower George Santiago was another noble-browed attractive fellow of thirty or so, a social worker employed by the state. He had no complaints about beautiful-genital effrontery – or didn’t mention them – and he was philosophical about Gaudios calling in Santiago ’s six thousand dollar loan to him. He had only about thirteen hundred dollars left to pay off, and he said his mother in Connecticut had agreed to lend it to him. I asked Santiago if he knew of other borrowers, and he named Treece but had heard of no others. I asked him if Gaudios had threatened him in any way.
“No,” Santiago said. “Steven was actually apologetic when he called. He said he was so upset by Jim’s death that he was leaving the area, and that’s why he was asking that the loan be repaid. He said it was best if he cut all his ties here. That didn’t seem wise to me. He’s going to lose all his emotional support systems just when he needs them most.”
“I’m not sure Steven had any emotional support systems beyond Jim Sturdivant. That’s what’s so awful for him. Where did he say he was going?”
“ Ibiza. He said he and Jim had a house there.”
“Not Palm Springs? He told me Palm Springs.”
“No, I know it was Ibiza, because I know the island. My ex and I went there once and enjoyed it.”
“So you’re single, George?”
Santiago sipped his Coke. “Yeah, I’m actually a little man-shy at this point. I’ve had four relationships in six years that didn’t work out. I seem to have an unfortunate knack for ending up with Mister Wrong.”
“I’ve seen that knack often enough. It’s like a pernicious virus that’s hard for some men to shake. And a lot of women, too.”
“One guy was a boozer,” Santiago said. “Two were too young and immature, and one guy was so traumatized and depressed it was sometimes actually physically painful being around him. The depressed guy was almost five years ago, and apparently he’s doing better now. You must know him, in fact. It’s Barry Fields’ boyfriend.”
“Bill Moore?”
“We were together for about four months not long after he moved to the Berkshires. But it was heavy going. It’s a shame that after Bill pulled himself together and seemed to be doing well, his boyfriend – or fiancé, I guess you could say – has been accused of murder.”
I said, “Bill is actually the person I’m working for, to clear Barry. I know of his depression. Did he tell you why he was depressed?”
“That was part of the problem,” Santiago said. “He would never talk about it. His depression was so disabling, Bill could barely function. He found a job, and he got through that during the day. But after work he’d drink beer and watch sports on TV, and if he could stay awake long enough we’d make love with this incredible intensity. But that was it. Bill is an attractive man, and I wish things had gone differently with us. But he was just too closed up. And it wasn’t just intimacy issues, so-called. The guy really seemed to have been psychically wounded in some horrible way that he could never talk about. It was just so sad.”