Now he was relaxed and enjoying me. Cornwallis had hated me only minutes earlier, but now I was giving him huge pleasure. I couldn’t wait to tell the guys back on Gordon

Street that I had won over the fearsome Berkshire County district attorney.

Cornwallis consulted his computer while I waited and looked out the window. I watched a couple of three-car rollovers down on hectic Park Square, and some antiwar activists waving signs that read Honk If You’re for Peace. The din was intermittent.

Soon Cornwallis wrote three names and phone numbers on a slip of paper and handed it across his desk to me.

He said, “You can say these referrals came from me, but I’m not sure how forthcoming any of these people will be.” Then Cornwallis grinned – I didn’t know he knew how – and said, “Don’t hurt yourself now.”

Back in my car, parked on a side street near the Crowne Plaza Hotel, I phoned the numbers Cornwallis had given me. At one number, I got the voicemail of Johnny Montarsi and chose not to leave a message but to try him later. The second number was answered by the name Cornwallis had written down, Daniel Travio, but when I explained who I was and why I was calling, Travio told me to fuck off and hung up. Thorne Cornwallis’s name was not yet working its magic.

Then I reached Tom O’Toole on his cell. Here was a last name with the vowel on the wrong end – had he changed it from Alioto? – which just went to show how thoroughly the forces of ethnic dilution and integration in America had done their job in recent decades. O’Toole said he was at that moment watching the Red Sox-Yankees game at an East Pittsfield bar, but the game was going badly and why didn’t I drive over and distract him from the disaster?

G’s Place was on Newell Street, near the now all-butabandoned General Electric plant. The sports field across from the bar appeared shiny and new and looked like one of those let’s-make-the-best-of-it civic projects where kids cavort above residues of toxic waste. The bar had the worn but durable feeling that’s so appreciated in working-class neighborhoods where there isn’t much work anymore. The place was nearly empty on this late summer Saturday afternoon, and I had no trouble locating O’Toole where he said he would be, on a barstool under the flat-screen TV, which as I came in showed a Sox batter chopping air.

“I’m Don Strachey.”

“Tom O’Toole. Brew?”

“Sam Adams.”

O’Toole sent an invisible message to the bartender, who produced a bottle and moved back down the bar.

“Thorne Cornwallis sent you over here? I haven’t laid eyes on Thorny since he sent my brother-in-law Vincent to Cedar Junction four years ago.”

“What’s that, a camp for the performing arts?”

“Nuh uh. A penitentiary. Used to be called Walpole.”

“Ah.”

He must have weighed 300 pounds. He was in brown work pants whose contents spilled over the barstool like the great Boston molasses flood. His dark green T-shirt was fresh and clean and had the number 74 stenciled on the front. O’Toole was fiftyish, with soft, gray eyes and a flat nose. He smelled of cigarettes, aftershave and the Budweiser he was drinking. He had arms like stone Buddhas, and they made me contemplative, as they no doubt did others.

“Thorny could’ve put Vincent away for ten to fifteen, but he only asked for five,” O’Toole said. “Mitzi appreciated that, and so did I. The gambling stuff, there was no getting around that. The assault with intent was not so clear-cut, though – everybody knew that flaming asshole had it coming – so Thorny let it go. I’m beholden to him because of it. And that, my friend, is why you are here.” He looked at me with no particular expression.

I sipped my beer and then O’Toole sipped his. I said, “Jim Sturdivant. What do you know?”

“What do I know about what, Jim Sturdivant?”

“He was killed on Wednesday.”

“Yeah. The guy was a pansy.”

“You think that’s why he was killed?”

“It’s a good enough reason.”

Could I just adroitly back out of this place? Yes, but then what? I said, “No, that’s a poor reason. I disagree with you, Tom.”

He shrugged, and something in the game caught his attention. He said, “Fuck.”

I said, “It doesn’t look so good for the Sox this year.”

O’Toole looked back at me and said, “Jim Sturdivant was a pussy, that’s what that fucker was.”

“A pansy and a pussy. He was all over the place.”

“The guy was older than me and I didn’t know him, but I didn’t like him,” O’Toole said.

“How come?”

“How come what? What’s to like?”

I said, “Cornwallis thinks a guy from Great Barrington shot Sturdivant, but I think he’s wrong.”

O’Toole eyed the Yanks’ pitcher with disdain. He said, “Barry Fields. I don’t know him. Works at the movie down there. He’s a gay.”

I said, “Cornwallis says the murder was about sexual jealousy. But Fields wasn’t sexually jealous. Have you picked up anything about why Sturdivant might have been shot? If it wasn’t sex-related, what else could it have been? Was Jim ever involved, for instance, in the kinds of activities his biological father was once involved in?”

O’Toole smirked. “You mean like sticking his dick in the hole nature intended? Nah, I never heard that about Jim.”

“No, I mean loan-sharking or other organized crime activities.”

He looked at me carefully now. “That was a long time ago. A lot of old people in Pittsfield remember Phil Murano.”

“What I’m wondering, Tom, is if we have a case here of like father, like son. I know that Jim made a lot of money as a corporate flack. But maybe he had some other financial practices that weren’t so well known. Not because he needed the money, but for sentimental reasons. Is that possible?”

Now O’Toole gave me the look he had just given the Yankee pitcher. “You mean like he was a chip off the ol’ block? No. Jim Sturdivant was no Phil Murano in any way, shape or form. You got your head up your ass on that one.”

“So you’ve never heard of Jim involved in any kind of what Thorne Cornwallis would consider illegal?”

He almost smiled. “Only butt-fucking.”

“But, Tom,” I said, “butt-fucking is legal now, too. There was a US Supreme Court decision several years ago. It helped pave the way, in fact, for the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts. Sturdivant and his boyfriend, Steven Gaudios, never married, however. Before he died, Jim told me family considerations prevented them from getting married. I guess the family would have objected.”

“Objected!” O’Toole said, and grunted. “Jesus, Anne Marie would’ve fucking dropped dead! She’s a frail old lady, and her son marrying a fag would’ve killed her on the spot.”

All right, that was enough. “Tom,” I said, “before we go any farther, I think I should tell you something about myself.”

“Yeah, okay, just don’t say you’re queer too. If you did, this conversation would end right then and there.”

So that’s how it was going to be? Apparently. I said, “No, it’s that I’ve been trying to place you since I walked in here. I think I remember you from college. Did you go to Rutgers, by chance?”

“Nah, Pittsfield High.”

“It wasn’t you then. There was a linebacker named O’Toole. I was an English major, but I always noticed the football players.”

“Yeah.”

What a dork. I said, “What about other members of Jim Sturdivant’s family? Have any of them followed in Jim’s father’s footsteps?”

O’Toole puzzled over this. “Depends on what you mean by footsteps.”

“Gambling, loan-sharking, assault, whatever.”

After a moment, O’Toole said, “Well, there was Butch Murano.”

“Who is he?”

“Jim’s second or third cousin, he’d have to be. Butch ran a game for years in the back room at the Lakewood Grill.”