Crime of Privilege

I moved aside as he opened the screen door and came out of the kitchen. He looked up at the blue sky with its bright gray and white clouds rising from the horizon and said, “Nice day.”

From the kitchen came a series of muffled noises. The assistant no doubt scooting off. I wondered if he would try to make it to the pickup truck or just hide in the main part of the restaurant. The cellar or the attic, perhaps. Maybe dash away on foot, head for the marshlands.

“I need to ask you about a job you used to have, Chris.”

“Sure.” Ask away. Look at my smile. Don’t pay attention to what’s going on behind me.

“With the Gregorys.”

“The Gregorys?” Chris Warburton’s smile got even bigger. “I was a kid then.”

It was nine years ago. The man was not yet thirty.

“You used to, what, be a gatekeeper for them?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I mean, mostly I sat in a Jeep Wrangler and checked who came in, kept the gate closed to those who weren’t supposed to be there. A lot of tourists would show up, try to peer through the bars.” He showed me, holding his hands to the sides of his face, making his job seem both glamorous and boring at the same time. I had the feeling he could do that about anything, tell you how mundane his life was and make you wish you were doing it with him.

“When you were there, were there other people working at the compound? People who weren’t just friends or family?”

“Oh, sure. Lots of ’em. Housekeepers, yard guys; they had care-givers for old Mrs. Gregory, the Senator’s mom. And then she died, of course, so they weren’t around after that. It was a group of Irish la—”

“You remember,” I said, cutting him off, “an au pair that Ned Gregory and his wife used for their kids?”

The smile stayed. The eyes roamed. I wondered if I had gone too far. Chris may have been a beneficiary of the Gregorys’ largesse, but he had gone out and made it on his own. Barbara had told me that. I was counting on that. Chris Warburton, chef, beholden to no one. Except, looking at him, it didn’t seem like such a sure thing anymore. The Gregorys, Barbara said, had sent him to culinary school, got him his first jobs, put him on the path to success. How can you not be beholden to someone like that?

He was stroking his chin, thinking about how he could best answer. Au pairs? he could say. There were so many of them. They would come and go. Ned would give them a poke or two and they’d be on their way.

“This one came from a wealthy family,” I said. “Her father owned movie theaters.”

I heard an engine starting. It was a rough sound, not the kind a BMW would make.

“Lexi,” Chris said, rather more loudly than he needed.

From the other side of the building I could hear pebbles being splattered.

“Lexi what?”

“Lexi Sommers,” he almost shouted.

There were very tiny beads of sweat on Chris’s broad forehead. I deliberately turned my own head in the direction of the engine and the flying pebbles.

“I heard she got married.”

“That’s right.”

“You know what her name is now?”

The pebble sound was over now. The engine sound was fading. Chris moved just enough to intercept my long-distance gaze. “Why, Lexi done something wrong?”

“Just give me her name and tell me where she is,” I said softly, “and I’ll be on my way.”

Chris heard the change in my voice. But with each passing second his task became less difficult. Stall, stall, say nothing.

“You were both about the same age, both working for the family. With them but not part of them. You must have at least gotten to know her, Chris.”

“I did.”

“So I’m expecting you stayed in touch.”

The engine sound had completely disappeared. The fleeing Latino helper could be on 6A now. I looked at my watch. It was just a show. I didn’t even note the time.

And Chris, for his part, simply let the time go by.

“Letters, pictures of the kids. Things like that.” I was thinking about what Barbara had done at Jason Stockover’s prep school.

When he still did not respond, I got out my cell phone. “You get invited to the wedding?” I asked.

He snorted. “We weren’t that kind of friends.”

He could have been saying any number of things. I didn’t bother to work them out. I hit a button and put the phone to my ear.

“What are you doing?”

“Seeing if I need to stop that pickup truck, Chris.”

“He’s a good guy, just trying to support his family.”

“Helpless guy, too, I imagine. Not like Lexi. She’ll have all kinds of support. I talk with her, she’ll probably have a lawyer sitting right there with her. Not that she did anything wrong or that she’s going to be in trouble, but just to protect her against the things that all the rest of us have to deal with.”

“Like you.”

“Like me. That’s right, Chris.”

He shook his head. The drops I had seen at his hairline flew off. “I can’t do anything to hurt the Gregorys.”

“And I’m not asking you to do anything other than give me a name and address.”

Chris Warburton cranked his neck back and looked up at the sky, which probably did not look as bright as it had when he came out of the kitchen.

“Hello, Sergeant?” I said into the phone. “It’s Assistant D.A. Becket—”

“I might know where there’s a Christmas card you could look at,” the chef said, putting his hand out. And when I didn’t lower the phone, he added, “Might still have the envelope.”

“I’ll get back to you,” I said to the phone.

1

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NEW YORK CITY, September 2008

ICARRIED MY SUIT JACKET IN A GARMENT BAG. CARRIED IT ONTO the airplane. Carried it in the taxi on my way into Manhattan from LaGuardia. It was a light gray Zegna suit, purchased at a post-Christmas sale at Saks, tailored by a taciturn, chain-smoking Russian in the South End of Boston. My tie was a $150 red silk item from Louis Boston, a Christmas gift from Marion. At the time she bought it, I thought it was special because it was something I never would have bought for myself. This was the first I had worn it since she left.

I primped by marking my reflection in the passenger window of a Lincoln Town Car parked on the corner of 87th and Park Avenue. Then I walked a block north to an apartment building and presented myself to the doorman. Doormen. An army of them.

“I’m here to see Lexi Trotter,” I a

“Yoor name, sir,” said the doorman sitting at the desk in pretty much the middle of the lobby. Behind him stood two others, both in doorman’s uniforms with hats and epaulets. The guy seated didn’t have the bandleader jacket, just a white shirt and tie.

“George Becket.” I handed him my business card.

The man looked at it, fingered its edges, turned it over, looked at the front again.

Beyond him, behind his two buddies, there was a large atrium with a garden on the ground floor. The apartments rose up in two high-rise buildings on either side of the atrium. I resisted the urge to show the doormen what a regular, friendly guy I was by commenting on the attractiveness of the plants and the water features among them.

“I don’t got you in the computah,” said the man at the desk. “Was she expecting you?”

“No. I was just hoping she’d see me.”

He looked at the card again. “Is this a legal mattah?”

“Personal.”

The uniformed boys shifted their feet. One of them looked at a fourth doorman, who was sitting in an anteroom off the lobby watching a bank of television screens, perhaps getting ready to rush out and spray me with Mace.

“Do you have Ms. Trotta’s phone numbah, sir?”