“Then you can believe it. Jean would know.”

“But how can Jim be helpful to me in Washington?”

Fields considered this. “Bill knows people there who can probably give him information about Jim Sturdivant. Okay? Just be patient, Donald.”

“Is Bill a former mob wiseguy?”

He laughed. “Jesus, no.”

“He told me he worked for the FBI. But I checked. No William Moore fitting Bill’s description ever worked for the FBI. So, what’s the story, Barry?”

After a moment, Fields said, “The thing is… Well, actually… Bill changed his name, legally.”

“After he left the bureau?”

“Just after.”

“How come?”

Fields stared at the table and did not reply.

I said, “Did the bureau help him change his identity? Was it their idea?”

Fields shook his head once. “No.”

“He changed his name on his own?”

“You’d have to ask Bill about that,” Fields said. “It’s something that he wants to keep private.” He looked straight at me, poker-faced, and waited.

I said, “Bill changed his name. You seem to have changed your name. Bud Radziwill seems to have changed his name. There must be something in the water in Massachusetts. Maybe Myra Greene is really Suzanne Rockett, and Thorne Cornwallis is actually Duncan N. Cadwallader. And before I leave the state I will have turned into somebody else too. What the hell is this all about, Barry, this business of just about everybody involved in this weird, ugly mess wearing masks?”

“We all have our reasons,” Fields said.

“Oh, you do.”

“You better believe it.”

“I might believe it if I only knew exactly or even approximately what it was I was supposed to believe.”

Fields looked at me with what I took to be pity. “Look,” he said. “My family are monsters. I’m ashamed of them. Bud feels the same way about his. So, please. Just drop all that. I understand why you’re frustrated and confused, Don. But just try to understand. And Bill… well, he did something he’s ashamed of, and he’s trying to forget it. Not to forget it – he never can. But just to not have it coming up all the time. Okay?”

I said, “Could any member of your family have been involved in Sturdivant’s shooting?”

Fields looked startled. “They don’t know where I am. Or even who I am.”

“How can you be sure?”

He shuddered. “Anyway, they don’t go around shooting people. They don’t have to.”

So, what were Fields’ horrible family? Third World arms merchants? The Ceausescus of Romania?

I said, “You told me yourself, Barry, that you were afraid that your family had found you. When you discovered that I was checking up on you, you thought it might be your family I was working for. Maybe somebody from wherever you came from did track you down. And set you up for the Sturdivant murder. Is that how your family operates? Your loathsome, despicable family?”

Fields slumped. “I wish.”

“You wish what?”

“That they were that subtle.”

“I want to pursue this. Along with other angles, including a possible mob-hit scenario.”

“My family are not gangsters. That I can guarantee you,” Fields said and rolled his eyes toads-style.

“But maybe Jim Sturdivant’s family has mob ties. This I’m about to look into.”

Fields said, “I guess that’s what Bill might have meant.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he wanted to talk to some people and look at some computer files that might have something on Sturdivant’s father and brother. Something at the Justice Department. Jim still has friends there. I met some of them once. They’re not as hard on Jim as he is on himself. Most of them aren’t, anyway.”

I wondered about something. “Barry, if Jim is onto what he thinks might be a mob connection to Sturdivant’s murder, why doesn’t he just pursue that himself? Why spend money on me? Why bring me into it at all?”

“Because,” Fields said without hesitation, “I don’t think he wants to solve the murder. He wants you to do it.”

“Why?”

“If he solves the crime, people will wonder how he did it and ask a lot of questions about Bill’s past. And that is exactly what he doesn’t want to happen. But if you solve the crime, he can resume his life as William Moore and I can resume my life as Barry Fields. It will be almost as if nothing ever happened.”

“What’s your real first name? Does it start with a.?”

Fields smiled. After a moment, he said, “Benjamin.”

“Do you and Bill call each other by your real names sometimes?”

“Yes. Those are our affectionate names for each other. Our former names. We use them when we make love, and other times too, sometimes, when nobody else is around.”

“And does your former last name start with an.?”

Fields grinned again. “Nope.”

“Barry… I mean Benjamin…”

“No,” he said, “you have to call me Barry. That’s really who I am now. To you, and even to myself. I really have reinvented myself, Donald, and you have to respect that. As for my family, and any possible connection to Jim’s death, I’ll have to think about that. If it makes any sense at all, I’ll tell you what you’d have to know to check it out. But I have to say, I doubt that’s the answer. These people are worse than mere homicidal maniacs. And if you never have to get anywhere near them, be grateful. Just be grateful for that.”

“I hope I don’t have to meet them, Barry. But you should know, I will do what I have to do to get you out of here.”

Fields suddenly teared up and looked away from me. In a thick voice he said, “Good. There’s no time to waste. This place is starting to get me down.”

I met Timmy at the Starbucks where I’d dropped him off in a shopping center down the road from the jail. He was going at the Times crossword puzzle, all his mental resources cocked, loaded and firing sporadically. To see Timmy attack the Saturday or Sunday puzzle was like watching Washington commanding his troops at Yorktown. Timmy was barely aware that I had entered the coffee shop, and while he dealt decisively with some linguistic threat on his left flank, I looked over the day’s Berkshire Eagle.

The Fields arraignment made page one, with a color photo the size of a beach blanket above the fold showing Fields being led into the Great Barrington courthouse. A smaller picture of Cornwallis bloviating on the courthouse steps bore the caption “DA Thorne Cornwallis called the murder of a Sheffield man on Wednesday ‘heinous.’”

The accompanying story contained no new information, but the reporter had dug up several witnesses to Barry Fields’ assorted outbursts of temper. One woman said she had seen Fields “drag an old lady” out of the Triplex one time for talking. The old lady was not named. A separate story on Myra Greene’s indictment on harboring-a-fugitive charges centered on the popular local woman’s overnight incarceration. Three of Greene’s friends said this time Cornwallis had gone too far and he would surely pay at the polls in November. There was a photo of Greene in chains entering the courthouse, an unfiltered cigarette dangling from her lips.

Timmy gradually became aware that he was in a room with other people, one of them me, and I described my visit with Barry Fields. I said I was pursuing two angles now, the mob-hit possibility, and the long-shot chance that some member of Fields’ horrible family had set him up.

Timmy said, “How can you look at Fields’ family when you have no idea who they are?”

“I might be able to persuade Moore or Radziwill to tell me who Fields really is – or used to be, as he thinks of it – if I can convince them it will help get Fields out of this fix he’s in. Or maybe Jean Watrous can be brought around – even though I did not win her over with my characterization of Moore as an assassin. That really sent her into a swivet, and I wish I knew why.”