Having moved on to some routine background-checking for an Albany lawyer friend, I phoned Preston Morley in Stockbridge on Thursday morning, two days after my Great Barrington visit. I told him, “Thanks for sending the toads my way. You’re a sweetheart, Preston. I plan on returning the favor some day, so I’d advise you to be on the lookout for skunks in your garbage can or the odd moose stepping on your car. When it happens, I want you to know I was the man behind it.”

“Donald, my friend, what’s this you say about skunks and moose and amphibians? Are we doing Carnival of the Animals? Or is it The Wizard of Oz? And instead of ‘lions and tigers and bears!’ it’s ’skunks and moose and amphibians!’ Clue me in, Donald, on the significance of these obscure literary or natural references, and then let’s see where we might go from there.”

Morley was the resident dramaturge and a frequent director of plays at the Stockbridge Theater Festival, and a Georgetown classmate of Timmy’s. Two summers before, we had attended Morley’s wedding to David Murano, a Pittsfield elementary school teacher, an event so thrillingly emancipating that Timmy and I had considered abandoning Albany and moving thirty miles eastward to the Gay Peoples Republic of Massachusetts. That way, we too could legitimize our foul-in-the-eyes-of-the-state union and flaunt our lifestyle in Antonin Scalia’s front parlor, in the unlikely event that we should find ourselves down at Nino’s house being served prune juice with rue. It was mainly Timmy’s longtime financially rewarding and otherwise satisfying job with Assemblyman Lipshutz and both of our morbid attachments to the mauve charms of socio-political Albany that kept us where we were.

I said to Morley, “You don’t know who I mean by the toads?”

“I do not. Is this an Old Testament reference, Donald? If so, I should be getting it, being a Georgetown alum. Although the New Testament did receive considerably more attention at that resplendently Jesuit institution, as I recall.”

“Didn’t you refer Jim Sturdivant and Steven Gaudios to me? They said you did.”

“Oh, those toads.”

“They hired me at your suggestion, Preston. That’s what they said. Thanks ever so much.”

“God, aren’t they awful? I did run into Jim recently, and he asked if I knew of any private investigators, and before I could catch myself your name just popped out. You’re not only the only private eye I know, you’re the only one I’ve ever even heard of in this area. So maybe I was just showing off saying I knew a real-life gumshoe. I take it that your experience with Jim and Steven has not been fulfilling. If so, I do beg your forgiveness for my even mentioning your name. Go ahead. Have a moose step on my car.”

I said, “I should have called you before I got mixed up with them. So it was my mistake. Anyway, it didn’t work out. I did a little work for them, decided I did not wish to continue in their employ, and then phoned them yesterday morning and cut myself loose. So it’s yet another lesson for me in checking out clients, especially before I check out anybody else for them.”

“Timmy says you’ve had some doozies over the years.”

“Most of my clients have been decent, ordinary people who have felt victimized or potentially victimized in ways where legal action was inappropriate or would have been personally awkward for one reason or another. But sometimes clients want to use investigators for their own dubious or even illegal ends. It’s a hazard of the profession. When I get one of those – and when I manage to find out in time – I provide a refund and disengage. It’s part ethical, part a matter of hanging on to my license.”

“And were Jim and Steven crooks or just dubious types?”

“I can’t really go into the details of what they wanted,” I said. “Suffice is to say they misrepresented themselves and they misrepresented the facts, and yesterday I suggested they drop the matter they hired me to look into.”

Morley said, “Could a Barry Fields have been involved? Something about protection from Barry Fields? I realize you may not be in a position to answer that question.”

What was this? “Why do you ask?” I said.

“Because Barry Fields attacked Jim Sturdivant in a grocery store yesterday afternoon. It’s in today’s Berkshire Eagle. You don’t know about this?”

“No. Unless it’d been a homicide or it involved a New York State elected official or his mistress or his underage boyfriend, it wouldn’t make the Albany paper. What’s the story?”

“It happened in Guido’s, a fancy market in Great Barrington. Do you know it?”

“Of course. People from Albany drive over to Great Barrington just to shop there.”

“So apparently Jim and Steven were in there yesterday around two doing their shopping when they ran into Barry Fields, a local gay guy who is about as fond of them as most people are, and they got into an argument about something. Anyway, Fields ended up screaming at the toads, and he hit Jim with a wheel of cheese.”

“Was Sturdivant hurt?”

“Not badly, according to the paper. Not hospitalized, at any rate.”

“Perhaps it was a fine, aromatic, soft cheese.”

“The report didn’t say. The Eagle is not what it once was, Donald. It’s owned by a cheap chain now, and you’re lucky if they don’t spell cheese with a z. The old Eagle would have described the area in western France where the cheese originated and included a sidebar about the editor’s mother’s visit there in 1958.”

“So was Barry Fields arrested?”

“The altercation was broken up by store employees and bystanders, but the police were called and Fields was hauled off. There was a hearing in Southern Berkshire District Court, and Fields was released on bond and ordered to stay away from the toads. The judge probably didn’t state it exactly that way. Presumably he used their actual names.”

“He must not have been acquainted with them.”

“The other thing was – and this seems to me rather serious – Fields threatened to kill Sturdivant, according to some of the witnesses. Or at least to get rid of him. That’s what the witnesses said Fields said. They said he said he was going to get rid of Jim once and for all, and that people would thank him for it. Now there’s a remark that’s not going to help him if he goes on trial for assault.

“So, Don,” Morley asked, “what can you tell me? Do you know about what’s going on here?”

“I think I do know, but I can’t tell you, Preston. At least not until we see what’s about to leak or spew out. Do you know Fields yourself?”

“Slightly. He lives with Bill Moore, a computer guy we once had in here to solve a box office crisis. Our computer was printing tickets with the number seven in front of every word on the ticket. Bill got rid of the sevens. We never knew what he did with them. I’ve heard Moore and Fields are getting married later this month. David and I know some people who are going to the wedding.”

“Do you know either Fields’ or Moore’s families?”

“No. I don’t think either of them is local.”

“How about Bud Radziwill? He’s a pal of Fields’.”

“Oh, sure. The Kennedy cousin, so-called. So-called by Radziwill, but not by anybody else.”

“That’s the one.”

“The thing is, there are some actual Kennedy cousins around here, and they laugh when anybody asks them about Radziwill. He claims to be related to Lee Radziwill, the Bouvier with the Polish aristocrat ex-husband. I know somebody who dated Bud for a while several years ago, and this guy said Radziwill did seem to speak with a slight Polish accent.”

I said, “What have you heard about the toads’ financial affairs? Anything about money-lending?”

“Do you mean like banking?”

“Like banking, but more informal.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. But the two do seem to be well off. Jim cleaned up, I’m sure, doing PR for defense and utilities companies, and Steven made money in investment banking, I believe. They always donate to the theater. That’s basically how I know them.”