Crime of Privilege

But this was P’town. People could wear anything they wanted.

The vehicle’s door opened, and I realized it was not a Jeep but a Hummer, the smaller model, the one they called the Hummer 3. “Hey, Georgie!” a voice called. A male voice.

I squinted, trying to get a better look.

The man was holding something in his hand, something like a bag. I remembered the hood in Tamarindo and it occurred to me that I should run. Except there was nothing behind me but the motel and the long rock jetty. I stood my ground while the man approached. A big man, wearing shorts. Red shorts. Nantucket Reds, knee-length, salmon-colored, popular among the summer crowd on the islands. The object in the man’s hand was a piece of dangling cloth, a blanket maybe, or a jacket. Below the shorts he was wearing Top-Siders; above them he had on a sweater and a polo shirt with the collar popped. The man was gri

He stopped when he got an arm’s length away from me. He did not try to embrace. He did not even offer his hand. What he offered was the cloth, which turned out to be a sweatshirt. A crimson sweatshirt.

“Pe

I caught the sweatshirt in one hand, looked down at it, saw the word “Harvard” emblazoned with white letters and continued holding it, dumbstruck.

“Want some coffee?” He slung a thumb over his shoulder. “I got a whole Thermos. Got some Dunkin’ Donuts, too, if you’re hungry.”

I was hungry. I did want some coffee. I said, “No, thank you, Peter.”

He nodded. He looked as if he was going to try some other friendly acts, suggestions, gestures, and then he wiped the condensation from his brow and said, “I was wondering if I could talk to you.”

“We’re talking now, aren’t we?” I still had not put on the sweatshirt.

“I guess you don’t want to get in the car, huh?” Then he answered himself. “Yeah. I don’t blame you. You’ve been through a lot because of us, and that’s what I wanted to talk about. To apologize, really. Listen, can we go for a walk at least? You mind? How about out on that jetty?”

Go out on the jetty. In the fog. With Peter Gregory Martin.

“How about we go into town?” I said.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “We could. Except you can never tell who’s around.” He looked around. “Always seems to be somebody with a camera when you least expect it.” He inclined his head toward the jetty as if it were the only possible place for two men to walk if they wanted a little privacy.

“Which begs the question: What are you doing here, Peter? Outside my motel at eight in the morning? You follow me here?”

“Not really.” He gri

I tried to think. Nobody had followed me. At least I had not seen anybody follow me. “Peter, I didn’t know I was coming here. It’s just where I ended up.”

He waved his hand in the direction of Route 6, as if that was where somebody had seen me. Of course, it was also the direction of everything else in the country, everything except the motel itself. I looked at the motel office. He saw me looking.

“Nah,” he said, interpreting. “What, do you think we have some big network of informers or something? You check in someplace and the desk clerk immediately calls us up?”

He acted like it was a joke, but that was exactly what I was thinking. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but neither did the idea that someone could have been with me on a trail that did not allow motor vehicles and then tailed me all along Route 6, where I had not seen a single other cyclist. And then it came to me.

“You put a tracking device on my bike, didn’t you?”

“C’mon, Georgie.” Peter Martin swatted me playfully on the shoulder.

I recoiled. “Where is it? Under the seat?”

Peter stopped gri

“You wanted to talk to me, you could have come to my house. Called me on the phone.”

“I wanted to see you in person. That’s why I came across country. Didn’t think it was going to be fucking winter.” He wiped his brow a second time. The fog was so wet it was matting our hair into strands that plastered our skulls and created little follicular runways for drops of water. “I didn’t want to come to your house because, like I said before, you never know who’s around.”

Peter Martin did not want to be seen with me. Peter Martin was standing with me in a fog so thick there could have been a troop of soldiers arrayed fifty yards from us and I would not have known.

“Could be anyone,” I said.

He agreed.

“Could even be Josh David Powell.”

“His people, yeah.”

“All kinds of folks following me, aren’t there, Peter?”

“It’s part of what I want to apologize about. Look, can we please walk? Just in case Powell does have somebody around, can we not stand here like this?”

He wanted to go on that jetty. I looked and couldn’t see anything. Just the first few gray-black boulders that made up the riprap that curved its way into the ocean. A foghorn sounded again, warning me away.

Prosecutor found dead floating off Provincetown jetty. He must have slipped on the rocks and hit his head. He was wearing bicycle shoes with metal plates on the soles.

“No,” I said. “This is as good a place as any.”

Prosecutor found dead in parking lot. Strangled, garroted, beaten to a pulp. I would take Peter down with me. I would make him pay. Hit me, motherfucker, and I will carve you up. With what, I didn’t know. My fingers, if that was all I had.

Peter sighed. He shrugged. “At least put on that sweatshirt if we’re going to stand here. You don’t need to freeze to death.”

Prosecutors don’t freeze to death in September on Cape Cod. Nevertheless, I draped the sweatshirt over my shoulders, crossed my arms, and waited.

“I know,” Peter said, starting slowly, “that you were there when Jamie was murdered.” He threw up his palm quickly to stop me from responding. “I even know what you said to him. I’m not here to argue about it. What I am thinking, however, what the family’s thinking, is, okay, Jamie’s dead, what good does it do to drag all this out?”

Now? Did he want me to answer now? No.

“Powell and his thug there,” he went on, “they’re not going to admit what they did, and we’re asking ourselves if we really want to go after them.”

Yeah, right. And bring into the open why Powell’s man would want to shoot Jamie. I might have been sneering as I stood in the street at the end of the world.

“So,” he said, “the next thing we have to consider is you, and how you feel about it. And we’re thinking, you know, we’ve always been able to count on Georgie, count on his discretion. So what about now?”

“I’ve already talked, Peter.”

“Yes. But you’ve talked to the police, to the folks in the D.A.’s office. That can all be taken care of. The question is, what do you really want to do?”

Peter, his neck extended, his head pointing toward me, seemed really to want to know. It took me a moment to understand he was not just asking my opinion, my preference, he was offering me something.

“What do you have in mind?” I said.

“You know,” he answered, his eyes on mine, keeping contact, “Mitch White would like nothing better than to get out of here, go back to D.C. He’s up for reelection in a couple of weeks and everybody figures he’s a shoo-in, but the right job came along, he’d leave the Cape in a minute.”

“Senate Judiciary Committee, perhaps?”

“Maybe even better than that. Democrat gets elected to the White House, a number of favors can be called in.” Peter shrugged. That’s the way things work, he was saying.