Crime of Privilege: A Novel (32 page)

I thought of things to say. I said none of them. What kept going through my mind was
the idea that the farther they dragged me the worse it was for me. I could see nothing
through the hood and what I could hear was mostly the sounds of my body bumping and
scraping. And then my captors began to argue.

The two men were going at it in a language that was not Spanish. One of them wrapped
his arm around my chest and hoisted me to his
hip as if I were a sack of potatoes. I tried to knee him in the back of his thigh
and he rewarded me by flinging me away from him. I had the sensation of flying through
the air and was certain I was being tossed off a cliff. The air surged out of my lungs
and then almost immediately my shoulder hit something. My shoulder, my hip, my side.
I had been thrown inside some sort of structure. I landed on my left side and slid
across a wooden floor, but I did not slide too far because the planks of the floor
were pitted and worn. Splinters stabbed into my arm and stung my leg. Once again I
tried to keep my head up, my face away, and then I stopped moving.

I told myself this was good.

If they wanted to kill me they would not have brought me here, to a house, a cabin,
a room, a shack. They would have just shot me and dumped me in the rain forest. Dumped
me anywhere. Not here. Unless. Unless they were going to light the place on fire.
Take the American to a cabin in the woods. Lock him in. Burn it to the ground. I wouldn’t
even be able to find my way out.

“Hey,” I shouted. “Hey!”

Nobody cared.

I
TOLD MYSELF A LOT OF THINGS. GRACE UNDER PRESSURE. KEEP
my breathing in control. Don’t say anything more. Don’t beg. What would it accomplish?
These men obviously were just doing a job. Doing a job for someone. For Jason. Leanne.
Peter Martin. All the people who got me here.

I could hear cans being opened. I heard cracking and crunching sounds, the sounds
of teeth biting into chips. A radio was turned on and I could hear music that was
fast and jittery and was overlaid by a male’s voice singing happily, as though he
and everyone who was listening were at a celebration.

No one made any effort to speak to me. Not in English, Spanish, or the language I
had heard them using.

I wanted to tell them that I was not who they thought I was. That I was nobody. Nothing
to anyone. Just a man trying to do another man a favor. A man who was not even my
friend. I didn’t owe him anything. I just was trying to do … 
something
. Something that meant something. But I didn’t have to do it. I could just go home.
Say I couldn’t find anything. My boss would actually like that.

Except my boss didn’t even know I was here.

Nobody knew I was here.

Okay. That was okay. It meant I could go home without anybody asking any questions.
Go right back to prosecuting OUIs. I’m good at
that. In fact, I’ve never lost a case. Never lost a case and never been promoted.
And I’m perfectly happy, how about that? Take off my hood and I’ll show you. I’ll
smile.

But the hood stayed where it was, pressing into my nostrils every time I tried to
inhale, sticking on my lips whenever I tried to breathe through my mouth. I thought
if I could just get some water I would be all right. They wouldn’t even have to lift
up my hood. They could just pour it over my head.

And then I freaked at the idea of what they might pour over me and I said nothing.

I
T WAS HARD TO TELL HOW MUCH TIME PASSED. IT WAS POSSIBLE
that I was becoming delirious. Or at least dehydrated. I heard a motor and was not
sure it was a motor at all. But then I heard metal bouncing, heard the softer sounds
of springs expanding and contracting, heard rubber tires slide to a halt.

This is it, I told myself. This is where someone is going to do terrible things to
me. I will be brave as much as I can, as long as I can.

I heard footsteps. I heard the door open. I waited for the steps to quicken. I waited
for a shot to my stomach, a blow to my head. I tensed my whole body, curved my shoulders,
drew up my knees, did everything I could to make myself as small a target as possible.

I heard voices. I could not hear who was speaking or what was being said, so I stayed
curved and prayed silently as though somehow I could be made so small I would be overlooked.

Something was scraped across the floor. A hand slid under my armpit and guided me
to my feet. I was turned, repositioned, dropped onto a wooden stool.

A voice close to my ear said, “Boss want to know, who you are?”

Apparently Boss had not been listening when I was shouting in the house back in Tamarindo.
Apparently my interrogator had not been, either.

“My name is George Becket and I’m an assistant district attorney in Barnstable, Massachusetts.”
I was pleased that I got that out. Pleased that I sounded calmer than I was.

The person went behind me. I tried to keep him from doing that. I tried to turn. His
arm went around my throat and I realized it was the big guy again. Every fiber of
my body went rigid, but he merely held me while he ripped my wallet from my back pocket.
Then he let go. Then he was gone, fat-padding his way back toward the door.

He had left my passport, the one I had gotten in San Francisco for $200 and a claim
of emergency, left it in the front pocket of my cargo shorts. I was absurdly grateful.
I would need that when I was found. When my body was found.

There was considerable whispering. Voices going back and forth.

“Boss want to know what you do here.”

I was not in a good position to lie. “I came to talk to Jason Stockover, to ask him
questions about a party he attended many years ago.”

There was more whispered conversation, just close enough for me to realize it was
going on, just far enough away for me not to be able to distinguish any of it.

My captor spoke up. “Why you ask Jason about this party?”

Now I had to clear my throat, which was not good. I wanted to appear strong. At ease
with a hood over my head, talking into the dark. “A young girl who was at the party
died that night. I’m supposed to ask questions of everybody who was there.” I paused,
sucked in air as best I could, then used my trump card. “The government sent me.”

There were more whisperings.

“Why you don’t ask someone else?”

“I’m trying to ask everyone.”

“You think Jason know how the girl die?”

I had to choose my words carefully. Show I was just Good Old George, doing a job.
Gets his information, moves on. “No. All I want him to do is tell me what other people
were doing that night.”

Whisperings again.

Something may have gotten lost in the translation because the voice asked, “Why you
don’t think Jason know?”

Why I don’t think Jason know—how the girl died? That was the question I answered.
“Jason was with a girl of his own that night.”

It is possible the whispering was a little louder; more likely my hearing was better
attuned. I still could not make out what was being said or who was saying it, but
I was part of the rhythm now. The whispering would occur, the Tico would speak, I
would answer, we would do it all over again.

“Who? Who this girl Jason with?”

“A beautiful girl named Leanne Sullivan.”

The rhythm picked up. The stream of words flowed faster.

“No Jason here.”

“No reason for me to stay, then.”

“Why you think he here?”

“He was seen at a sailing race in Ensenada, talking to Peter Gregory Martin, the man
who was with the girl who died that night. He told Peter this was where he was.”

There was a long pause, then a long exchange.

“Wha’chu know about Leanne Soolivan?”

“Leanne Sullivan and a friend got invited to a party at the home of Senator Gregory.
When they got to the Senator’s house, there wasn’t much going on, so Leanne and her
friend went down the beach with two guys, one of whom was Jason. By the time they
got back to the house there was nobody around, so Leanne and her friend left.”

“It’s all?”

“Leanne liked Jason. He liked her. They wanted to get together again after that, but
the Gregorys didn’t want anybody talking about the girl who died. The Gregorys are
very rich and very powerful people. To keep people from talking they found out what
each of them wanted most in life and gave it to them. Leanne wanted to move to Hawaii.
They made it possible for her to do that. Then, when she’d done what she had to do
there, she came here to be with Jason.”

There was a quick movement, too quick to come from the fat guy. Somebody grabbed my
hood and pushed it down hard on top of my head. There was a sudden swooshing noise
next to my ear, and something
gave way. I tried to jerk my head to one side, but the hand held me in place. And
then the hood was ripped off and I was left staring face-to-face with Leanne from
the restaurant, Leanne wearing shorts and flat shoes and a man’s dress shirt untucked
and rolled up at the sleeves. Leanne with a vicious-looking knife in her hand.

I
BLINKED
.

“How did you know it was me?” she said.

“I didn’t.” My eyes were on the knife. It was not the kind of knife that one brought
to the dinner table, or even kept around the kitchen. It was very long, and its point
was very sharp.

“You just go around telling strangers I’m beautiful?”

I moved my gaze and tried to focus on her face, tried to get past the bad haircut
to the freckles, the brown eyes, the full lips, the teeth that were white and straight
except where they gapped in dead center. “I thought you were Jason. I thought he’d
agree.”

The knife moved suddenly, as if she were going to thrust it into my eye. There wasn’t
anything I could do but throw my head back, try to take the knife on the cheek, the
shoulder, anyplace but the eye.

“Fuck you,” she said.

I had no response to that. I was feeling only relief that she had not actually stabbed
me.

But she was still bent forward, still poised to strike. “He’s got nothing to tell
you.”

He had nothing to tell me, he was hiding from me, and she was threatening my eyesight,
if not my life. I slowly unclenched. I did it like a man balancing on a log, letting
go of a branch, moving one millimeter
at a time. “Heidi Telford was just a girl out for the night, Leanne. Just like Patty.
Just like you.”

The knife was pulled back enough to give me room to square up with her again. “Well,
I was there,” she said. “And I never saw her.”

I couldn’t just keep my mouth shut. I couldn’t just nod and agree. I saw her backing
off and I went after her. “Which explains why you’re here now, hiding out with Jason
Stockover.”

She slapped me hard across the face. I didn’t see it coming. I had been conscious
only of her right hand, the hand holding the knife, and the slap came from her left.
My head rocketed to my shoulder and I left it there, my cheek stinging, making it
harder if she wanted to hit me again. Leanne Sullivan was a strong woman, and she
hit like she had done it before.

“We’re not hiding out,” she said, spit flying through the little gap in her teeth.
“We’re just living.”

“Living pretty well, too, it seems.”

“Jason’s got family money.”

“And what have you got?” I tried to rub off the spit by dragging my face over my shirt,
first one side, then the other.

“I’ve got the satisfaction of doing something good, of helping people who can do a
hell of a lot for our country if everybody just leaves them alone and stops trying
to screw them over.”

The surprise must have shown on my face because her expression turned both righteous
and contemptuous.

“You think the Gregorys have been set up?” I asked.

“I know they have.”

“By whom?”

“There’s a guy who thinks Peter Martin did something to somebody in his family. He
can’t get him on that, so he’s trying to get him on something else.”

“Josh David Powell?”

“I don’t know who the fuck it is. I just know it’s happening. That girl you’re talking
about, she was followed to the Gregorys’, and somebody picked her up on the street
when she left. The whole thing was arranged to make it look like Peter Martin did
it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Everybody knows that. The girl wasn’t sexually molested, was she?”

I was trying to put this together. I seemed to be missing giant pieces.

“Oh, people like you,” she said, as if she had known people like me all her life,
been abused by people like me, wanted to inflict pain and humiliation on people like
me. Her brown eyes drilled into mine. “You don’t have any idea what it’s like to be
in the Senator’s shoes.”

“Jesus, Leanne, I owe my job to the Senator.”

“Then why are you doing this?” The knife flicked, carving the air in front of my nose.

“This?” I said, backing my head away as much as I could. “Investigating a murder?
It’s what my job is.”

“But everybody knows it wasn’t any of the Gregorys. So why aren’t you doing what you’re
supposed to be doing?”

I waited for her to tell me what that was. She didn’t. She stayed bent, with the knife
poised. I was thinking she was a big girl. With a long reach.

“Look, Leanne, I’m going to give you a name, okay?”

There may have been a slight nod of her head.

“Chuck Larson.”

This time I did not even get the slight nod.

“He works for the Senator,” I said, encouraging her to remember. “He’s the one who
got me my job. He knows what I’m doing. And I have to think that having me go around
talking to everybody is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. What the Senator wants
me to be doing.”

“I’ve never heard of any Chuck Larson.”

Oh, God.

“No?” I tried to make my face convey that there must be some mistake. “Well, someone
sent you to Maui and then gave you money to buy a fishing boat to get Howard Landry
over to Kauai. I mean, you didn’t just get Howard over there on your own, unless—”