Crime of Privilege

Shortly thereafter, Reid came out with a program that included increasing prosecution of drug dealers, working with the federal government on rounding up illegal immigrants, and endorsing the Mashpee Indians’ plan for a casino.

WITH THE CANDIDATES now fully squared off, both campaigning for write-in votes, I gave an interview to the Cape Cod Times in which I identified myself as the deputy district attorney whom Mitch and Reid had put in charge of the Telford investigation. I explained I had started with Bill Telford’s list and tracked down anyone and everyone I could until I had come to the ineluctable conclusions that the murder had been committed by Jamie Gregory and the disposal of the body had been carried out by Jamie and his cousin Peter. I admitted that I was in the process of confronting Jamie when he himself had been shot. The shooter had been a man, I said, dressed as a homeless person, firing from the sidewalk and fleeing in a car that had pulled up behind him.

The Gregory forces struck back immediately. A spokesman named Larry O’Donald, a lawyer in New York, declared that the family was saddened to hear such unfounded accusations. The dead ca

Mr. O’Donald agreed with me about the shooter, however. All evidence pointed to a disgruntled, perhaps even deranged, investor, he said, and the family felt that should be the focus of law enforcement’s attention. As for Dr. Martin, there simply is and never has been any reason to involve him, a good man, a private man, who has not tried to capitalize on his family name but who has devoted his adult life to the betterment of others. He read a statement allegedly written by Peter in which he expressed sorrow for the Telford family and compared it to the sorrow his own family felt at the loss of Jamie. He asked the public to extend the Gregorys, all the Gregorys, the courtesy of allowing them to grieve; and as for him, he was going to continue to focus his energies on his practice and his attention on creating brighter days ahead for everyone.

Meanwhile, Sean Murphy, who had been appointed by Reid to take his former position as first assistant district attorney, informed the press that yes, indeed, George Becket was present when Jamie was shot, and that, in fact, George Becket remained very much a suspect in the shooting. He described me as a run-amok, a man who had been ba

It was then that Barbara came through for me. She spoke to the same reporter I had, and explained that she had been the assistant D.A. sent to New York to conduct the investigation to which Sean was referring, and she did not know what Sean was talking about, since she could confirm that I had been cleared by both the New York Police Department and her own office of any involvement. She pointed out that the actress Darra Lane had seen and heard me confronting Jamie Gregory from only two to three feet away, and the New York City coroner had unequivocally determined Jamie to have been shot from at least twenty-five feet away. “George Becket was not only nearly killed himself,” she said, “but he tried desperately to save Jamie Gregory’s life until the paramedics got there. My findings, as reported to and accepted by the office, were that George was a hero.”

The office waited until two days after the election before it suspended Barbara for insubordination and me for misuse of funds.

CAPE COD, February 2009

BUZZY MAY NOT HAVE GOTTEN ALL THE VOTES HE WAS SEEKING, but he got a lot of publicity, and the publicity has produced a fair amount of work. He has taken me on, even calls me his partner, although he continues to own the entire practice. I get paid half of what I bring in, which is almost nothing, and a third of whatever he gets for the work I do on his cases.

Mostly what I do is arraignments and preliminary hearings, which means I am in the courthouse a lot with my old colleagues. Protocol seems to be to ignore me, to pretend not to know me, never to use my name. I don’t see Reid, but Sean tends to glare at me, as if we might get into a fistfight at any time. Once I ran into Dick, but he looked away.

As for Barbara, well, her daddy came through. To an extent. He gave her the funds to open her own office in a little complex down by the harbor, where she has hung out her shingle among those displaying the services of insurance agents, realtors, and accountants. She is specializing in family law matters: divorces and custody proceedings. But like me, she gets little work. The people her parents know tend not to have those problems.

Little work gives us lots of time to lie around in bed on cold winter mornings, pulling the covers to our chins and talking about whether it is time for us to go off-Cape.

“Rome, Paris, London” are places she has thrown out when feeling particularly giddy and impractical.

“New Hampshire, Vermont, Wisconsin,” I say.

“Florida, California,” she counters.

“Buckthumb, Maine,” I suggest.

Her choices are fueled by romantic visions; mine by the desire for security and anonymity. Still, it is exciting to lie naked next to her, to be able to reach out and touch her anytime I wish, to know that she is here next to me because she wants to be. And so I encourage the thought that all things are possible.

“Maybe way up in Northern California,” I offer. “Eureka, someplace like that.”

When she doesn’t respond, I improve the offer. “It’s beautiful at Lake Tahoe,” I say. “Truckee, Tahoe City, they’re good places to live.”

Of course, we are hampered by the fact that we can only practice law where we are licensed, which means Massachusetts, plus, in my case, New Jersey. Barbara does not want to go to New Jersey.

I tell her there are nice towns in Jersey: Short Hills, Saddle River, Princeton, Morristown.

She lists nice towns in Massachusetts: Newton, Wellesley, Weston, Sudbury.

All are places we ca