Crime of Privilege

Of course, the Cape is a small place between October and May, and sooner or later a person in my position was bound to come into contact with one of the employees outside the restaurant. Jury duty, a domestic dispute, an unlawful detainer action, a kid in trouble, even a moving violation, was going to get one of them into the courthouse at some time or other; and I tended to be in one of the county courthouse buildings eight to ten hours a day. So at some point somebody was going to run into me.

The first time I recognized anyone from the restaurant was when a waitress named Meg appeared on one of my jury panels. Judge Wilkerson dutifully introduced me as the deputy district attorney representing the people of the Commonwealth and asked the courtroom full of citizens if any of them knew me or the defense counsel or the defendant in the case. Several people raised their hands, but none of them identified me and none of them was Meg. I had merely turned to the audience, let them see me, not searched their faces. It was only when Meg was called to the jury box that I realized she was there. I looked right at her, she looked right back at me, not a sign of recognition was passed.

The case, as I recall, was a break-in, the defendant a Brazilian. It was not a big deal to anyone but the victim and the accused. When it was my turn to question the prospective jurors, I addressed Meg. “Ms. O’Brien, do I look familiar to you?”

“I’m not sure. Should you?”

“You mentioned you work at Pogo’s restaurant in Osterville. I happen to eat there sometimes. I wonder if you recall ever waiting on me?”

Meg was a hard-faced woman with dun-colored hair, who wore her restaurant uniform with the hem of her skirt an inch or two higher than the other waitresses did. If I had to guess, I would have said she was about fifty, divorced, had raised or was raising two kids on her own, lived in a rented house, and depended on her unreported tips to survive. She was also none too bright, as evidenced by her answer to my question. “Not really. You usually eat at the bar, don’t you?”

The defense counsel exercised one of his challenges to take her off the jury, and later, when I ran into her at the restaurant, she asked me why I had brought up the fact that she knew who I was. “I wasn’t go

I told her I appreciated it, but it could have jeopardized the prosecution if anyone found out she really knew me.

She shrugged. “I figured the guy was guilty as sin anyway, or you wouldn’ta been chargin’ him. And if he wasn’t”—she shrugged again—“then I would have given you a raft of shit next time I seen you. So I figured the pressure was really on you.”

Somehow, in her mind, that all made sense. I tried to follow it through, but got only so far. In any event, she was off the jury, the Brazilian got convicted, and from that point on whenever I sat down at the bar I was addressed by John the bartender as Counselor.

In March, the main dining room was closed. There were about twenty patrons scattered in booths and at tables throughout the pub, which had logs burning in the brick fireplace and was where I always ate anyhow. I was alone at the bar, sipping a Manhattan and reading through the printed list of daily specials that was tucked into the menu, when a man came in and sat down next to me. There were three seats to my left, eight to my right. There wasn’t any need for him to do that.

“How’s it goin’?” he asked John.

“Goin’ good,” John said, as if it was none of his business, and slid him a menu, a black paper place mat, a set of silverware wrapped in a white napkin.

I turned my shoulder. I wanted to eat alone, watch the Celts. They were playing Phoenix, as I recall. “I’ll have the clams, John,” I said.

The bartender hesitated. I wasn’t sure if he cut his eyes to my neighbor, but it took him a few seconds to murmur, “I wouldn’t. Not many bellies, from what I could see.”

“What do you like?”

“Scallops look fat. Swordfish is good.”

“Fine. Give me the scallops.”

“Plate or roll?”

“Plate.”

“Squash, french fries, chowder okay?”

“Whatever you say.”

John took my order back through the swinging saloon door to the kitchen without writing anything down. The man next to me, a man with sparse white hair that tufted on the crown of his head and could have used a good clipping at the back of his neck, said, “He obviously likes you.”

“It’s just because I come in here all the time.”

“Sure. They only cheat tourists and drunks.” He was smiling. He had made a joke. He wanted me to know he didn’t really think they cheated anybody.

I turned away again.

“My name’s Bill Telford.” He was holding out his hand. He wanted me to shake.

The man had come in and seated himself next to me, told me a joke, and now he wanted me to be his friend. I wanted only to watch the game, eat di

“They need a real center,” he said, looking at the screen, not seeming perturbed in the slightest by my lack of ma

“Tim Duncan.” I shouldn’t have said anything.

“That’s the fella. What did we get? A bag of mulch.”

“Chauncey Billups. He’s a good player.”

“Yeah? Then why didn’t he do anything for us?”

“They traded him away after a couple of months.”

“Maybe that’s where we got the bag of mulch.”

He was right, but I felt no need to say so.

John returned with my cup of chowder and looked at Bill, who nodded at what I had and said he’d like a bowl of the same. And a glass of water. This was not going to pay John’s greens fees come May and he said nothing. He just plunked ice cubes in a glass, squirted in some water, plopped it on the bar, and stomped back to the kitchen.

“Don’t come in here much,” Bill said, looking around as though this restaurant, which could have been most anywhere on the Cape, was a very foreign venue.

The man was probably in his seventies. He wore a zippered fleece jacket and appeared to have a sweater and a collared shirt under that. His voice was not unpleasant and there did not appear to be anything wrong with him. He just wanted to talk. “Live over in Hya

I watched Paul Pierce heave in a twenty-five-footer for the Celts. Nothing but net. Hya

“Don’t know if you recognize my name, but I’ve got a case with you fellas.”

I froze. This was one of the reasons I did not go out of my way to tell people what I did.

“Perhaps you’ve heard talk about it around the office. Heidi Telford? My daughter. Murdered nine years ago.” He was not looking at me. He was looking at the screen. But he was concentrating on me. “Wia

I knew who Bill Telford was now. Anything New Telford. He was something of a legend, periodically calling, occasionally showing up, always asking the same question: “Anything new on the Telford case?” Everyone tried to avoid him, pass him on to the next-lowest person down the line, let him get told by secretaries, paralegals, summer interns, that no, there was nothing new about the case of the pretty young girl who had her skull crushed and was found on the sixteenth fairway of an ultra-exclusive private golf course.

From what I understood, it wasn’t that anyone had anything against Mr. Telford. He was unfailingly polite, never pushy, just persistent. If anything, the people in the office felt sorry for him. But there was nothing to report.