Crime of privilege : a novel.

Walter Walker.

PALM BEACH, March 1996.

ALMOST EVERYONE HAD HEARD OF THE FAMILY'S MANSION on Ocean Boulevard, but very few had been there. A large part of the reason I had agreed to go to Florida, to spend my spring break with McFetridge, was simply to get inside. We were staying at his parents' place, down the road in Delray, but every night we were invited to a party or a gathering somewhere, and this was the crowning event, c.o.c.ktails at the iconic Spanish Revival house on the beach, where, it was promised, the Senator himself would be present.

I would speak to him as a guest of a guest in his house. Senator, yes, George Becket here. I admire your work on ... What did I admire his work on? Any liberal cause, I suppose. I was twenty-two and filled with grandiose ideas. And then I was there, in his house, surrounded by people wearing silk and linen for a supposedly informal gathering where everyone acted as though it was normal for men in white jackets to park your car and women in black pinafores to serve champagne in crystal flutes carried on silver trays; and I had no opportunity to say anything more than, "h.e.l.lo, Senator, thank you for having me."

I had entered in McFetridge's wake and we had been greeted by several family members who were not so much stationed in the foyer as conversing in its vicinity. I stood to the side while McFetridge went about kissing women's cheeks and shaking men's hands.

McFetridge seemed to know everyone. He knew them from a sailing race he did each May between Hyannisport and Nantucket, from Christmas-week ski trips to Aspen, from clubs to which his parents belonged, from prep school. "Nan ... Eastie ... Harlan ... this is my friend Georgie."

I had gone to prep school, too, but not Hotchkiss, St. Paul's, Groton, or even Milton. In my brief exchanges with his friends, I found myself mentioning the dominance of my school on the athletic fields, courts, tracks, and pools of New England. We didn't even play their schools. We played Andover, Exeter, Choate, Deerfield, and beat them all. I caught looks that said, You want to talk about that? And I would scramble for something else to say. "You guys always had a good crew team, didn't you? Going to Henley this year?" Sometimes I would be ignored, sometimes abandoned. George thought he was having a conversation one moment; George was all by himself the next.

I wandered through large rooms with red tiled floors, nodding at everyone who caught my eye and smiling at those who seemed to be wondering who I was. There were pictures on the walls, pictures in bookcases, pictures on shelves and on top of the grand piano. Pictures of members of the family with the pope, Churchill, Desmond Tutu. I wondered if Desmond Tutu had the same picture in his house. I wondered if the pope did.

Eventually I found myself standing next to a striking young woman who seemed similarly out of touch with everyone else at the party. She had thick black hair that swept past her shoulders and green eyes that probably sparkled when they weren't so glazed with drink. Kendrick Powell, she said her name was, and she was a student at Bryn Mawr. I had been there once, for a mixer, and I knew just enough about the school to keep the conversation going. And then one of the cousins appeared holding two very large c.o.c.ktails in his hands. Palm Beach Specials, he said they were, and he had just made them.

He handed a drink to each of us and then he was gone, and we were left sipping fancy combinations of liquor and fruit juice out of tall frosted gla.s.ses. "Are you part of the family?" she asked, and I told her no, I was a friend of a friend. She looked as though she had to consider that, whether it was worth her time to continue talking to me if I was only a friend of a friend of the family, and then the friend himself appeared. Paul McFetridge, with his dangerous smile and his air of knowing exactly what was going on, delivering yet another Palm Beach Special to the already intoxicated Ms. Powell. He rather absently handed me one as well, and now I stood with a Palm Beach Special in each hand, feeling rather like McFetridge's butler, his man George, as he shouldered his way between Kendrick and me. Elliot was here, did she know Elliot? She didn't know Elliot. Wonderful squash player, Elliot. She didn't play squash.

I finished one of the drinks in a single long swallow and put the gla.s.s down on whatever surface I could find. It was immediately scooped up by one of the waitstaff, who was gone before I could even say "Sorry."

And then McFetridge, too, was gone, replaced by two more of the cousins, Peter Gregory Martin and Jamie Gregory, and I was pushed to the outskirts of the conversation once again. It had been Kendrick and me. Then Kendrick and McFetridge and me. Then Kendrick and Peter and Jamie, and I was left with no one to talk to, nothing to do but hold my place while Peter chatted her up.

What had they talked about? What do rich girls discuss when they are at the homes of even richer people whom they do not know personally, but whom they know all about? Peter had offered her things. You ever Jet Ski? We've got a couple, you want to go out on the ocean with us? Maybe tomorrow. Oh, wait, there's a polo match. Have you ever been to a polo match? Jamie, half a head shorter, had chimed in, telling her what a hoot they are, spread out a blanket, get a couple of bottles of champagne. What did I have to offer? I had no place to go tomorrow. No place to go even while they were talking to her.

Maybe that was why I agreed to join the tour when Peter and Jamie offered to show Kendrick the rest of the house. They said, "C'mon," and I went. Tagged along. Not to have done so would have meant standing alone.

THE THING ABOUT THE SENATOR WAS THAT DESPITE HIS FLAWS, and he had many of them, he was an incredibly nice guy. He was also very polite. When he saw what was happening-when he opened the door and stuck his head into the room, saw that the girl was not protesting, saw that her eyes were open-he simply pulled his head back and shut the door. This was no place for him.

The thing about me was that I wasn't doing anything, which was both my saving grace and my ultimate shame.

I had thought we were going to look at pictures, such as the ones I had seen already. Oh, my, look. There's Jacques Cousteau! w.i.l.l.y Brandt! James Earl Jones! I had been thinking that we were going to visit rooms where important people had gathered: statesmen and politicians, artists and actors and writers and singers, educators and generals, industry leaders and social activists. That we were going to stop to admire mementos given by one celebrity to another. But instead we went directly to the far end of the house, down a long hall and away from the rest of the revelers to the library. Where it was quiet. Where we shut the door behind us.

Except the door did not quite shut before Peter stopped in his tracks and looked rather blearily at me. He was a fairly large man, his face pink, his eyes light blue, and for a moment he seemed uncertain who I was or what I was doing there. And then it came to him, I was McFetridge's friend. "Georgie," he said, as though he was responding to a quiz.

"Yes?"

"Why don't you go and get us another round of those specials?"

I still had one in my hand. I didn't need another round. I had done nothing but drink since I arrived. I looked at Kendrick. Her gla.s.s was empty except for the ice. She had drunk two to my one, and neither Peter nor Jamie seemed to have anything. I tilted my gla.s.s to my mouth and for the second time drained everything in it in one very long swallow. "Okay," I said.

When I left, Kendrick was standing in a corner of the library, staring at a painting. When I returned, she was on the couch. Both shoes were off. Her feet were up on the cushions. Her knees were up and her black dress had slid a fair way down her thighs.

I had four red drinks and was clutching them together so that extraction of any single gla.s.s had to be done quite carefully. "Oh, thank you!" she cried as I bent at the waist to give her first choice. I turned then to Peter, who was positioned down by Kendrick's feet, one haunch on the couch cushion, one leg extended behind him, almost as if he was ready to start a sprint. "Put them over there, Georgie," he said, waving to a credenza that was under the painting I had seen Kendrick admiring.

The painting turned out to be a Winslow Homer. I was pretty sure it was a Homer. A seascape illuminated by a spotlight that did little more than emphasize how dark and dusty the painting was, as though n.o.body had paid attention to it for a very long time. Kendrick was drinking. Peter and Jamie had taken up positions on either end of her. And I was staring at the Homer. Ah, the patina provides a palpable sense of the perils of pursuing a large poisson in a small boat on the open sea after dark.

I think the Senator looked in when Peter was still half on the couch and half off. When he was still wearing his blazer. When it was possible to look from the door to the couch and not be absolutely positive what was going on.

But what was going through my mind?

Was anything? Was I just there, holding the remains of my third Palm Beach Special? Kendrick, by this point, had had at least three, which was why she was in the condition she was, more or less spread-eagled on the couch in the library, saying nothing, doing nothing, while Peter and Jamie moved their hands over her. While I stood by, a half-smile on my face.

Was I smiling?

I try to imagine that I wasn't. But what else would I have been doing? Peter wasn't paying any attention to me, but Jamie kept looking up and grinning almost maniacally. What are you supposed to do when someone grins at you like that? When you barely know him? When you are a guest in his family's house? Like the Senator, I was being polite.

I think now I should have slapped that grin off Jamie's face. Now when I see his picture in a newspaper or a magazine I remember the way he looked at me and it literally makes my stomach turn. Sometimes I gouge his face out of the picture, leave just a hairline and a body, usually clad in a sport coat, a white shirt, a loose tie, khaki pants. Even when I do that you can still tell who it is, by the hairline and the family uniform.

Back then I didn't slap, didn't gouge. I just watched. It was only when I thought Peter was going to hurt her that I stepped in. Hurt her. Jesus, what was I thinking before, that she wasn't being hurt? Hurt, harmed. I didn't want him to do physical damage to her. Permanent damage. Go ahead, abuse her. Foul her. Debase her. But don't hurt her.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. What was I thinking?

Peter was looming over her, looking like a Cape buffalo eyeing its prey. He had one hand on the back of the couch, one hand on the coffee table. She was leaning back. To lean back meant tucking herself into the corner of the couch. Was she trying to escape or was she relaxing? One bare foot was on top of the couch. A narrow foot at the end of a long, slender, well-tanned leg.

Why do I remember that part? Was that what I was looking at?

Kendrick wasn't saying anything. Had she not paid attention when Jamie kneeled on the floor behind her head? Did she not care when he put his hands on her shoulders, when he started rolling his wrists to make the transition from black cloth to bare skin? Wasn't he making little cackling sounds like a roulette ball makes when it drops into a slot?

Peter was stroking her ankle, her shin, sliding his hand up to her knee, sliding it back down her calf. Couldn't she have pulled the leg away? Especially when his hand, on the third or fourth pa.s.sage, went over the apex formed by her knee and slid down her thigh? The front of her thigh. And then around the side, to someplace where the black dress had bunched. Peter's hand disappeared, then came into sight again as it traced its way along the back of her leg to the crux of her knee. Where it lingered. Where it twisted and turned in a gentle little s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g motion designed to open the angle between calf and thigh. And all the while he was talking to her, complimenting her, murmuring something about her perfume. He recognized her perfume.

If you are just standing there and a girl, a college girl, who seems to know so much more than you about things that count, isn't protesting that two men are touching her with increasing intimacy, is it up to you to tell her she should be? Is it up to you to ask if she is all right when she isn't saying anything about the one man's hands down the top of her dress and the other man's up the bottom of it?

Was it enough for me to be on alert in case she got hurt?

Peter's hands went under her b.u.t.tocks, lifted her up, and came out from under her dress with her panties, black silk underwear with a filigree front on which was embroidered an intertwined set of vines. I didn't know that detail when he took them off her, when he tossed them back over his shoulder. I knew only that the panties were black. And small. With a front panel that you appeared to be able to see through.

I waited for her to say something. She didn't. I didn't.

Peter took a red candle out of a bra.s.s candlestick.

She didn't say anything and I didn't.

His blazer came off. His pants and boxers went below his knees. He took her legs and put them on either side of his waist. He held the candle in front of him and moved forward, grinning at Jamie. And Jamie grinned back.

She didn't say anything and neither did I.

It was only later, when he dropped the candle and I realized what he meant to do with the bra.s.s candlestick, that I acted.

"Hey, that's not cool," I said, putting one hand on Peter's shoulder. I was still holding what was left of my drink in my other hand.

Peter twisted his head predatorily, looked at me as if my opinion meant nothing. How did I know what was cool? He had gone all his life without taking advice from me, or the likes of me. Who was I to tell him what was cool in his family's house?

I squeezed his shoulder, tugged on his striped shirt.

Peter was big, but he wasn't strong. I squeezed harder, pulled more. My fingers were digging deep into his flesh.

He could have swung the candlestick at me, but Peter was not interested in fighting. He just kept looking at me, his pink-and-white face slightly flabby and dissolute, his pale blue eyes seeming not quite to recognize me or understand my message.

I was trying to smile while I squeezed. It wasn't a real smile, my lips never opened, but it served its purpose. I was telling him it wasn't my house. Not my party. The girl wasn't my friend. But guys don't do this sort of thing.

I just wanted him to stop, that was all.

THE PLACE I LIVED MY SENIOR YEAR AT PENN WAS FOUR BLOCKS from campus. It was a house with antique oak floors, built-in bookcases, a leaded gla.s.s front window with a window seat, three bedrooms and a bath on the second story, another bedroom and a bath in the bas.e.m.e.nt. It was trashed most of the time. McFetridge wouldn't wash dishes or put food away. Ellis took a vow that he would not do McFetridge's cleanup for him. Tuttle was oblivious.

On any given day, pizza boxes, beer cans, soda cans, and newspapers covered the chairs, the couch, the coffee table, the dining room table, the kitchen table. If we needed the s.p.a.ce, if we wanted to sit down, we pushed the clutter aside.

One problem with throwing out boxes or cans or containers was that any one of them could be a repository of sc.r.a.ps and b.u.t.ts of marijuana, and there were times when those roaches had to be stripped down and consolidated into re-rolled joints. These times usually occurred around 10:00 p.m., when someone made a hoagie run. It was spring of senior year and the only one who was still studying was Ellis. He was hoping to become a doctor.

It was not likely that anybody would ring our doorbell at 9:30 in the morning, but there it was. Ellis was off at cla.s.s; McFetridge was out; Tuttle wasn't going to get up for anything or anyone. The bell rang and rang until I had to come down from the second floor to get it. I did not even brush my teeth. I should have at least done that.

A grown man was standing on our front porch. He wore a plaid shirt, jeans, running shoes, a gray jacket that was unzipped. Could have been a neighborhood guy, come to complain about the music, the junk in the yard, the lights that stayed on all night. Except he had an air of authority about him. If he had flashed a badge, I wouldn't have questioned it. But what he showed instead was a cardboard tray holding two coffees, a couple of small containers of cream, stir sticks, and half a dozen packets of sugar.

"You George Becket?" he wanted to know.

I told him no.

Very slowly, a smile spread across the man's mouth. It was not a wide mouth and the smile did not have far to go, but it was there. "I'm not a bill collector, kid," he said.

I figured he wasn't a coffee delivery guy, either. He was probably five-feet-ten, but looked taller, just by the way he carried himself. His hair was dark, cut short around the ears, combed carefully from left to right on top of his head. His eyes were as dark as his hair, his features narrow. There was, from what I could see, not an ounce of fat on him. Indeed, he seemed almost spring-loaded, as though he could bounce up and hit his head on the ceiling of the porch, come back down and not spill a drop of the coffee.

The longer we stood there the more sure he became that I was George Becket. Perhaps he had seen a picture. Perhaps it took him a while to realize that the tousle-haired, sleepy-eyed guy in front of him was, in fact, the same person who had appeared in a coat and tie for a fraternity or graduation photo.

"I've got a little something to talk to you about, Georgie," he said. He gestured to the porch, where perhaps he expected there to be chairs. He recovered fast enough to keep his hand moving until it ended at the top step. "We can do it out here."

I could have, I suppose, simply closed the door in his face. But I was not thinking clearly. I moved to the top step and sat down. I had nothing on but jeans and a gray athletic department T-shirt that had the number 46 on its chest. I shivered in the morning air and tried to place myself in as much sunshine as possible.

The man handed me one of the coffees, let me take a cream and a sugar and a wooden stir stick, and waited until I had mixed and stirred and sipped.

"My name is Roland Andrews," he said. "I work for a man named Josh David Powell." He let the name sink in before he continued. He wanted to see what kind of effect it would have. "I believe you know his daughter. Kendrick."

I gave a lot of thought to my next move. I, of course, had no idea what Mr. Andrews did for Mr. Powell, but I had my suspicions.

"She said you were very nice to her."

Nice. I helped clean her up. I walked her out of the party. Put her in her car. Kept her panties in my pocket.

I sipped my coffee and tried to buy time. How much time can you buy when a man on a mission is sitting right next to you, watching every breath you take, every flick of your eyes, every twitch of your face?

"She said you were there when she was raped by Peter Gregory Martin."

Raped. It was a word I had been thinking about for two weeks straight, ever since we returned from Florida. I had even looked it up. "Illicit s.e.xual intercourse without the consent of the woman and effected by force, duress, intimidation, or deception as to the nature of the act." Webster's Third New International Dictionary. I had carried that definition around with me for a few days, telling myself it did not apply to what Peter and Jamie had done. There had been no force, duress, intimidation, deception.

"I don't exactly remember it that way," I said.

"Which part don't you remember, son?"

I wondered if I could say I didn't remember any of it. But Kendrick had told him I had been there. She had told him, told someone, enough to track me down. Had I given her my last name? I must have told her where I went to school. She said Bryn Mawr, I said Penn. Just a few miles apart. See how much we have in common?

Had she been sober enough to remember any of it? She had been sober enough to drive. She had had a little sports car. A red one. An Alfa Romeo drop-top. With a stick shift. And I had let her get in it, get behind the steering wheel, go off down the gravel driveway and out the gate to Ocean Boulevard. But so had the valet. A smiling young black man, to whom I had given five bucks.

He should have said something.

"I was just there in the room when she was fooling around with those guys."

The man's breathing became more shallow, as if somehow I had just insulted him, the man who had brought me coffee, the man who had called me "son." "Fooling around?" he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Is that what you call it?"

I didn't answer. There was nothing I could say that was going to bring this conversation to a pleasant end.

"Do you know who Mr. Powell is, George?"

"No."

"You ever hear of CPA Properties?"

"No."

"CPA stands for Coltrane Powell a.s.sociates, out of Delaware. It's the largest developer of commercial properties in the Mid-Atlantic region."

I didn't know CPA. I didn't know the first thing about developers.

"Delaware, Maryland, eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey." He delivered the names of each place directly into my ear, as if he fully intended the acc.u.mulation to cause me to break down, beg for mercy, promise a lifetime of cooperation if only he would stop hitting me with geographic areas.

I said nothing, tasted my coffee, which tasted like nothing. My bare feet began to rattle on the stairs. I told myself it was just because I was cold and tried to hold them steady, press them down into the old wooden planks.

"Mr. Coltrane is dead."

Mr. Coltrane. Who was Mr. Coltrane, and why was that of any interest to me?

"Which makes Mr. Powell virtually the sole owner of CPA and a very wealthy man. A very. Wealthy. Man."

Did he just jab my knee with his finger? Was that what that sudden weight was? Was that why my leg went numb? I tried to kick it out. It wouldn't move.

"More wealthy, I would venture to say, than even your friends the Gregorys. The difference is ..."

I waited for him to tell me, waited for the numbness in my leg to clear. Both happened at the same time.