“Maybe because it’s true.”

“I doubt it. Fields just told me Moore really did work for the FBI, but changed his name when he left the bureau and moved up here. If it had been the CIA, I’d have to wonder what violence he might have perpetrated in the name of Jesus and George Tenet. But post-Hoover-era FBI agents tend to be law-abiding citizens. One possibility, of course, is that Moore killed somebody accidentally, and that’s the source of his terrible shame and regret. Anyway, Fields says Moore is in DC digging into Sturdivant’s family now, so we’ll see how that goes.”

Timmy said, “Maybe you could find out who Fields used to be by ID-ing his fingerprints. It’s old-fashioned and low-tech. But I’ll bet it would work.”

I helped myself to a sip of his tepid latte. “Maybe. I could easily get his prints on something. And now the Great Barrington cops must have his prints on file too, if I could get hold of them.”

“And your old flame Lyle Barner at NYPD could run the prints through the national data center.”

“The DA here has probably had Fields’ prints checked. Anyway,” I said, “it’s possible Fields – or whatever his name used to be – was never fingerprinted. If he was never arrested or never served in the military or worked for the government, he might not have been inked.”

“Sometimes elementary school children are fingerprinted now. Though you have to wonder if Fields’ family would have allowed that. Anyway, maybe to the rest of us Fields’ allegedly vile family wouldn’t seem so rotten. Maybe they’re just eccentric.”

“No, Radziwill knows about Barry’s family, and he told me they are truly wicked. Much worse than his own family, he said, and apparently the not-really-Radziwills are bad enough. And Moore doesn’t dispute it either.”

Timmy said, “I wonder what the Republican family-values crowd would make of Fields’ family.”

“Maybe they’d approve. They’re often pretty daffy.”

“Or maybe the Republican family-values crowd are Fields’ family.”

“Don’t think that hasn’t occurred to me.”

“Li’l Barry Falwell.”

I said, “Timothy, I want you to go to Virginia and get me a sample of Jerry Falwell’s DNA.”

“Okay. Will a strand of hair be okay?”

“No, I want one of his jowls. Or a couple of hemorrhoids. Are you up to it?”

“As soon as I check my appointment book. I have a busy schedule.”

“Meanwhile, let’s have lunch with somebody who might actually be forthcoming with useful information instead of acting cagey and evasive.”

Timmy said that sounded refreshing.

Preston Morley and David Murano lived in a pleasant, maple-shaded, two-family Edwardian frame heap on Gordon Street, not far from Pittsfield High School. Their side of the house had a yard sign for a candidate in the upcoming primary election, and the other side of the house had a sign for another candidate. The non-Morley-Murano section of the house also had a sign in the window that read Jesus is Coming Soon. It felt a little like Sunnis and Shias trapped in the same dwelling, though as Timmy and I walked up the porch steps a middle-aged woman emerged from the Shia side and offered a smile and a hearty “G’morning.”

Morley greeted us on the Sunni side and led us through rooms full of theatrical posters and memorabilia to the kitchen, where we met Murano, who was fixing lunch. He was large and dark-eyed, with a bushy black mustache, and the nimbleness of the dancer Timmy said he once had been. Morley, Timmy’s old classmate, was, like Timmy, not much changed from their track-and-field Georgetown days, except for their matching extensive bald spots. They chortled over their missing-hair situations, and Morley led us to the back porch, where a table had been laid with cheery care, including a centerpiece of many-colored nasturtiums from the flower garden below us. Here was the Massachusetts gay-marriage hell over which much of the nation was at that time clutching its head and recoiling in horror.

Once the gazpacho and green salad were served, and a few mildly racy Georgetown stories retold, Murano said, “I guess you want to hear about my cousin.”

What was this? “Your cousin?”

“Jim Sturdivant was a distant relative of mine. Though I hardly knew him. He was older, and anyway he left Pittsfield when he went to college, and he was really pretty much a South County second-homer until he retired. And even then he didn’t set foot in Pittsfield a whole lot, I don’t think.”

Morley added, “Miss Jimmy apparently would not have been welcomed by the other Sturdivants, who suspected that he was maybe a little bit that way.”

“Not that Jim’s that-way-ness was ever spoken of in the family,” Murano said.

I said, “It sounds as if Jim didn’t even speak of it himself, his being gay.”

“Within his circle of gay friends, yes. Outside that circle, never. I met a Whitney Defense Systems gay guy one time when I knew Jim was their company spokesman, and I asked the guy if he knew Jim. He did, and he was surprised to hear that Jim was gay. And he didn’t know anything about Steven, even though Jim and Steven had been together since college. It’s really sad, but I understand it because I grew up in Pittsfield too.”

Morley said, “ Pittsfield is the Paris of the Berkshires. Too bad it’s Paris, Illinois.”

Timmy said, “It’s a very pretty old city. I can see that part of its beauty, however, is its many fine Catholic churches. I know too well what that can mean.”

“It’s a priest-ridden old blue-collar city,” Murano said. “I still love the Catholic church for its esthetics and the decent parts of its morality and its history. And in some parts of the world the church is actually a force for social justice. But the church’s ideas on sexuality are soul-destroying, and Pittsfield is a poisonous place to grow up if you’re gay. Jim Sturdivant got out when he could, but not before he became so terrified and ashamed of his sexuality that it made him kind of bonkers – schizoid and twisted and with some kind of need to control and humiliate other gay men.”

Morley said, “I told David about Jim’s unusual lending practices.”

“How come you survived Pittsfield?” Timmy asked Murano. “I saw the rainbow sticker on your car, and I take it you two were licensed to be married at Pittsfield City Hall.”

“Let me explain,” Morley said, “just how unusual my husband is. David was the first teacher in a Pittsfield public school to come out, and that was twenty years ago. He was hugely popular and indispensible, so that helped. But this was before there were any serious legal protections, so it was a brave and gutsy thing to do. Not many gay teachers here are out. Either they’re afraid a bigoted parent will complain, and the school committee will be too gutless to back them up. Or they’re infected with the same shame and embarrassment Jim Sturdivant lived with. But far more are casually out now than was the case when David came out, and I just admire the hell out of them. The bravest people I know are gay men and women who stay in hometowns like Pittsfield where they grew up and simply refuse to live lives of secret shame and humiliation.”

Timmy said, “I never came out in Poughkeepsie. I snuck around until I got out of town.”

“I barely managed to come out in college,” I said. “Never mind back home.”

“I could never have done it back in West Gum Stump,” Morley said. “My Little League coach would have called me queer.”

Timmy said, “I didn’t know you played Little League, Preston. You never told me that. It’s not how I ever thought of you.”

“I’d go to ball practice and then go home and play my Ethel Merman records. This was known about me.”

Timmy said, “Ah, there’s my Preston.”

“In Pittsfield,” Murano said, “you would have kept your Ethel Merman habit carefully concealed. Or paid a heavy price. Or been afraid you would.”