I made a plan with Timmy to meet at Aroma, the restaurant where I was to dine with Ramona Furst at eight. Then I called Preston Morley and set up a lunch meeting on Saturday with him and his spouse, David Murano, in Pittsfield. Murano’s family was old Pittsfield, and he would likely know something about the nature of the Sturdivant family’s alleged shady past.

I called Bill Moore’s cell phone and got no answer. I left this message: “Hi, Bill. This is Strachey. Did you work as a mob hit man when you lived in Washington? Or were you some kind of fed going after the mob? Or some combination of both? Clue me in. It would be awfully helpful.”

I drove into Great Barrington in a steady stream of weekender traffic. It was Friday late afternoon, and the tourists and second-homers were still restless, even the weekend after Labor Day. I spotted Guido’s Market on the left, and the parking lot was jammed. I decided to have a look at the site of the wheel-of-cheese attack, and pulled in.

As I drove around the lot searching for a vacant parking space, a dude in a Range Rover zoomed into a handicap space and bounded out of the car and into the market. He was not handicapped in any visible way, had no handicap sticker, and was wearing about ten thousand dollars worth of clothes. I found a vacant space in a far corner of the lot, parked, and made my way back to the Range Rover. With a ballpoint pen, I let the air out of all four tires. A Guido’s bagboy came up to me and asked me what I thought I was doing, and I explained. He said, “Cool,” and walked on.

Twenty minutes later, back at The Brewery again, hot-tub borrower George Santiago was another noble-browed attractive fellow of thirty or so, a social worker employed by the state. He had no complaints about beautiful-genital effrontery – or didn’t mention them – and he was philosophical about Gaudios calling in Santiago ’s six thousand dollar loan to him. He had only about thirteen hundred dollars left to pay off, and he said his mother in Connecticut had agreed to lend it to him. I asked Santiago if he knew of other borrowers, and he named Treece but had heard of no others. I asked him if Gaudios had threatened him in any way.

“No,” Santiago said. “Steven was actually apologetic when he called. He said he was so upset by Jim’s death that he was leaving the area, and that’s why he was asking that the loan be repaid. He said it was best if he cut all his ties here. That didn’t seem wise to me. He’s going to lose all his emotional support systems just when he needs them most.”

“I’m not sure Steven had any emotional support systems beyond Jim Sturdivant. That’s what’s so awful for him. Where did he say he was going?”

“ Ibiza. He said he and Jim had a house there.”

“Not Palm Springs? He told me Palm Springs.”

“No, I know it was Ibiza, because I know the island. My ex and I went there once and enjoyed it.”

“So you’re single, George?”

Santiago sipped his Coke. “Yeah, I’m actually a little man-shy at this point. I’ve had four relationships in six years that didn’t work out. I seem to have an unfortunate knack for ending up with Mister Wrong.”

“I’ve seen that knack often enough. It’s like a pernicious virus that’s hard for some men to shake. And a lot of women, too.”

“One guy was a boozer,” Santiago said. “Two were too young and immature, and one guy was so traumatized and depressed it was sometimes actually physically painful being around him. The depressed guy was almost five years ago, and apparently he’s doing better now. You must know him, in fact. It’s Barry Fields’ boyfriend.”

“Bill Moore?”

“We were together for about four months not long after he moved to the Berkshires. But it was heavy going. It’s a shame that after Bill pulled himself together and seemed to be doing well, his boyfriend – or fiancé, I guess you could say – has been accused of murder.”

I said, “Bill is actually the person I’m working for, to clear Barry. I know of his depression. Did he tell you why he was depressed?”

“That was part of the problem,” Santiago said. “He would never talk about it. His depression was so disabling, Bill could barely function. He found a job, and he got through that during the day. But after work he’d drink beer and watch sports on TV, and if he could stay awake long enough we’d make love with this incredible intensity. But that was it. Bill is an attractive man, and I wish things had gone differently with us. But he was just too closed up. And it wasn’t just intimacy issues, so-called. The guy really seemed to have been psychically wounded in some horrible way that he could never talk about. It was just so sad.”

“Did he talk at all about his life in Washington? That’s where he apparently lived before coming to the Berkshires.”

“Just in a general way. But I don’t even know what kind of work he did. Something official or semi-official. I do know that he gets a retirement pension that’s fairly substantial for someone who retired at such a young age – early or mid-forties.”

“Did he receive checks in the mail?” I asked.

“For a while, I think. We never actually lived together, but I slept over at his place often enough. I think he went to direct deposit at some point, but I do remember seeing these envelopes from the United States Treasury. And I assumed they were Bill’s retirement checks.”

“Because they were government checks and they were addressed to William Moore?”

“Yes.”

“Did Bill ever say he worked for the FBI?” I asked Santiago.

“No, he never said. If he mentioned his pre-Berkshires life at all – and he seldom did – Bill just said he had left all that behind. He said he wanted to start his life over and get it right this time. He did say that a couple of times. He said coming up to the Berkshires was his chance to do things right and not fuck up this time.”

“George, did Bill ever refer to any violence in his past life? Violence that he did, or that was done to him?”

Santiago looked uneasy. “Why? Do you think Bill might have had something to do with Jim Sturdivant’s murder?”

“Not necessarily. Anyway, the guy is my own client. I wouldn’t be working for him if I thought he was involved in a murder.”

Santiago looked at me peculiarly, and if I had been looking at me I would have looked at me peculiarly, too.

He said, “Jean Watrous is the person to talk to about Bill. They were friends in DC, and she’s closer to him and knows more about him than anybody, I think.”

Something occurred to me, and I wrapped things up quickly with Santiago. I thanked him for his perspective and wished him well paying off his loan to Gaudios in a timely way that would not lead to the need for hospitalization and several weeks in a wheelchair. He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, and he said he wasn’t worried.

In The Brewery parking lot, I phoned my FBI contact in Washington. Luckily, he had not left for the weekend – in fact, he said, he’d been working late and on most weekends since 9/11 – and I asked him about an FBI retiree named Jean Watrous. No more then two minutes later, I was told, yes, Jean Watrous was retired from the bureau. She had been an employee, assigned throughout her career to headquarters in Washington, from March, 1969 to January, 2002. I asked if she worked in the anti-mob-activities section of the FBI. My source said, no, Watrous had worked in counterterrorism.

Timmy said, “You know, your name is Ramona, and we’re eating in a restaurant called Aroma. That’s almost an anagram.”

“Yes,” Furst said. “Too bad my name isn’t Ramoa. Then it would be an anagram.”

“You could change it,” Timmy said. “That seems to be what a lot of people do here in Massachusetts. People like Bud Radziwill and Barry Fields, your client.”

Furst said, “And if you changed your name from Timothy Callahan to Malb Loovinda, that would be an anagram for what I’m about to order for dinner. God, I’m starved.”