“What was phony about them that put you off?”

I though Radziwill would talk about the way the toads put on airs and patronized people, but that wasn’t it. “Being an imposter myself, I know one when I see one. Those two are fakes from the word go. Especially Jim. He wasn’t who he started out to be, I don’t think.”

“How could you tell?”

“They tried too hard. They were both always playing a part. And I heard once that Sturdivant isn’t Jim’s real name. Or he had it legally changed.”

“From what?”

“Dunno. Older people from Pittsfield might know. That’s where Jim was from.”

I said, “His obituary will be in tomorrow’s paper. That’ll have the accurate basic details of his life, we can safely assume.”

Radziwill said, “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

I met two of the hot-tub borrowers separately after a burger at the Union Bar and Grill on Main Street, and neither was helpful. Mark Berkowicz said the conditions of his car loan from Sturdivant were somewhat embarrassing, but that was all. He was not angry and said he didn’t know of anyone else among the borrowers – he supplied an additional name – who might be upset enough with Sturdivant to become violent. Ernest Graves, a comely, sloe-eyed man in his thirties, wasn’t even embarrassed by the loan conditions. He likened his multiple hot tub visits to getting a free set of champagne glasses from a bank.

I reached the three other borrowers by phone, and two – Jerry Treece and George Santiago – agreed to meet me the next day. The other, Lewis Bushmeyer, refused to see me and demanded to know who had given me his name. I said Bill Moore, and Bushmeyer hung up on me. He seemed not to want to be associated with the fiancé of a murder suspect, and in similar circumstances neither would I.

I was home in Albany by eleven, fell into bed with Timmy, laughed at Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, slept uneasily, and dreamed of Batman.

Friday morning, I deposited Bill Moore’s check first thing at my bank’s neighborhood ATM. I was back in Great Barrington at 7:30 and scanned the Berkshire Eagle at a Main Street coffee shop. The Sturdivant murder took up much of the front page, and accompanying the story was a photo of Sturdivant in the company of musicians and officials at Berkshire Opera, one of several arts organizations Sturdivant donated money to. The article told me no more about the crime itself than what I had learned from Trooper Toomey. It said Barry Fields, assistant manager of the Triplex Cinema, had assaulted Sturdivant in Guido’s on Wednesday, was now in custody, and was expected to be charged with the fatal shooting that came several hours after the attack in the market. Police said they were uncertain of motive. There was no photo of Fields.

The Eagle’s other front-page story – no Darfur, no Iraq – was WILD RIDE FOR MISSY, about a hamster that had survived a journey down the Taliaferro family’s malfunctioning garbage disposal. There was an immense photo of the grinning Taliaferros patting a mangled Missy, plus a sidebar story called LUCKY BREAK OR DIVINE INTERVENTION? DO HAMSTERS HAVE SOULS? WHAT DO YOU THINK? I recalled Preston Morley’s comment that the now-chain-owned Eagle had seen better days.

The homicide story provided little personal information about Sturdivant – Steven Gaudios was referred to as Sturdivant’s “roommate” – so I located the obituary page in the B section, where Sturdivant got plenty of ink. His corporate career was outlined at length, as was his history as a supporter of conventional good causes. Personal information was sparser. Born in 1939 in Pittsfield, Sturdivant was the son of Anne Marie and the late Melvin Sturdivant. The only survivors listed besides his mother were a sister, Rose Dailey, of Worcestor, and a brother, Michael Sturdivant, of

Providence, Rhode Island. Steven Gaudios did not make the cut as a survivor.

There would be no funeral-home calling hours, the paper said, and a private Liturgy of Christian Burial would take place at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Pittsfield on Monday at ten, followed by burial in St. Joseph ’s Cemetery. Whoever had supplied the obit data to the Eagle – probably a family member via the funeral home – had been careful to offer up only the public persona Jim Sturdivant had cultivated and approved of for himself. His public image in death was largely one-dimensional, as it had been in life.

I got directions at the coffee shop – MapQuest would have routed me through New Hampshire – and drove over to Southern Berkshire District Court. The building was an old schoolhouse behind a cemetery. The courtroom was what once had been an elementary school classroom, making it feel like a place for dealing not so much with the felonious as the naughty.

The room’s more serious purpose was evident, though, in the manner of the clerks, guards and other attendants, who comported themselves with the gravity appropriate to a murder case. Even the gang at the press table looked less nonchalant than usual. The small courtroom quickly filled up, and I was lucky to find a seat next to Bud Radziwill and his boyfriend, Josh.

“Where’s Bill?” Radziwill said.

“Bill Moore?”

“He’s not here, and I thought he might be with you.”

“He’s not.”

At ten to nine, a comely, auburn-haired woman in a dark suit and a briefcase that made her list to the right strode in accompanied by a younger woman with her own leather satchel, and they headed for the defense table.

“That’s Ramona,” Radziwill said. “She’ll give Thorny a run for his money. What a jerk he is. This is the DA who once indicted an old lady in Stockbridge for breaking wind in church.”

I said, “Was she convicted?”

But Radziwill’s attention was now focused on the arrival of the man himself. Thorne Cornwallis and his entourage entered the back of the room with the thuggish invincibility of a presidential convoy of black SUVs, though in fact it was just four guys in dark suits. Cornwallis was a squat man with cold gray eyes and a bad hairpiece, who looked as if he might be happiest standing on a concrete balcony watching his ICBMs roll by. His claque stood while he seated himself at the prosecutor’s table. One of them opened the DA’s water bottle, then screwed the cap back on lightly.

Barry Fields was led in by two bailiffs. He was wearing his own clothes, but he was shackled and seemed dazed. He did not look at us or anyone else in the room, but as Fields eased into a seat beside Ramona Furst, he suddenly came to life and began to talk animatedly to his lawyer. Furst listened and then wrote rapidly on a pad.

Trooper Toomey ambled in and joined the prosecutors. I asked Radziwill who the other suits were beside and behind Cornwallis, but he didn’t know. One, he thought, must be an assistant DA, and the others were “CPCU guys.” Radziwill said the CPCU was the DA’s investigative arm, the Crime Prevention and Control Unit. He said, “It sounds East German, but they’re local.”

Just after nine, Judge John B. Groesbeck made the Mamelike entrance that protocol required, casually instructed everyone to have a seat, and got down to business. Cornwallis was the first to speak, and said the commonwealth was charging Barry Fields with first-degree murder. Cornwallis larded his gaudy presentation with inflammatory adjectives – he called the crime heinous but pronounced it heen-ee-us – and reeled off the awful events we had all heard about. He offered no additional evidence, however, that Fields was the shooter. It was all circumstantial and centered on the assault in Guido’s, Fields’ lack of an alibi that night, and then his running away and hiding.

Fields sat stiffly through the accusations and didn’t visibly react until Cornwallis said, “Your honor, given the brutal nature of the crime, the commonwealth is asking for a dangerousness hearing in order to show that Mr. Fields should remain in custody until trial.”