I WAS BEING PLAYED BY PEOPLE WITH A LOT MORE RESOURCES THAN I had. I asked myself if that was the message Barbara had come to deliver. Barbara Blueblood Belbonnet. The game was between the Gregorys and Josh David Powell, and you’re just getting batted back and forth across the net, George.
Except Barbara had cried, hadn’t she? And what was in it for her, protecting Peter, running around the country, two countries, like she was? If, of course, she actually had been doing that. I had no proof that she had. No proof that anything she said was true.
I called Buzzy. It had been a long time since we had spoken and he seemed to jump when he recognized my voice.
I told him I needed a favor.
“Anything for you, buddy.”
I had to choke back my first reaction.
“Georgie? You all right?”
“What can you tell me about Barbara Belbonnet?”
“Your dungeon-mate? Used to be Barbara Etheridge?”
“She told me she grew up with you.”
“Well, she did, sorta. I mean …” Buzzy wanted to be helpful; he was looking for ways to do that. “I mean, she was one of the rich kids. Into sailing and all that shit, and I wasn’t. She was like Hyannisport Yacht Club and I was, like, the public golf course. She was also, I’ll tell you, about the best-looking girl around, so I knew who she was and everything. But as far as us hanging out together, no.”
He stopped then, thinking he had answered my question.
“But you did go to school with her, right?”
“Up to about, I don’t know, age fourteen, maybe. Then she went away to boarding school and, like, next time I saw her, she was married to Tyler Belbonnet. Or at least living with him.”
“Did that surprise you? Her and Tyler?”
“Okay, I gotta back up. When we were little, Tyler was, like, legendary. Like I said, I wasn’t into sailing, but everyone knew who he was. His picture was always in the paper, winning this or that race, and he was most definitely not a yacht-club kid. His father was a sailor, and Ty had his own boat and he only competed in the open races, but you’d hear people asking each other all the time, ‘How did you do compared to Ty?’—that sort of thing. And then you’d see him at parties and it was always a big deal for him just to be there. Of course, all of us watching him, admiring him, wanting to be like him, weren’t thinking so much about the fact that he didn’t seem to have any plans beyond sailing and partying. What we were thinking, back then, was that he was the one who had all the girls.”
“Including Barbara?”
“Oh, yeah. Early, early on. In fact, I think that was why they sent her away. It was pretty much common knowledge she was banging him.”
“Sent her away to prep school, you mean?”
“Yeah, Tabor, I think. Then four years to Sarah Lawrence or someplace like that. I’d see her around in the summers and we’d say hi and stuff, but that was all. And then, what I heard was that she was going to law school at B.U. and she ran into Ty again. By this time he’d been all over the world, and once he starts telling her about Saint Bart’s and the Greek islands and Tahiti, and it was like—fuck law school. That’s, I guess, when it happened.”
“When what happened?”
“She got knocked up. Preggers.”
“But Ty did marry her.” It was a question, really. I was trying to find out if anything she said was true.
“I don’t know if it was that time or the next. What I can tell you is he signed on to a crew that was competing for the America’s Cup and he was gone to Australia for a year while she was here by herself. Then he returns and everything starts up all over again. I think she and Ty were living in some dump down in Harwich while he was working in a marine supply store, and she was back trying to go to law school at night and you just knew that wasn’t going to last. She has the second kid and the kid turns out to have Down syndrome and Ty sails off to the Azores.”
“Before or after they had Malcolm?”
“I don’t know, George. From what I understand, the syndrome is something you can find out about during pregnancy, so they must have known. Or at least she must have.”
“You think it’s possible she didn’t tell him because she wanted to keep her hold on him?”
“Jeez, I don’t know, George. I’d like to think she’s not that stupid. I mean, I know she’s not stupid, but sometimes people do things … you know?”
“I know, Buz.”
“Look, I was shocked as hell when you told me she was working in your office. She was, like, one of the great tragedies of my lifetime. My lifetime—what am I talking about? Of the Cape … of … of … I don’t know, of all time. Here was this beautiful girl, rich family, has everything going for her, and she lets her life get all fucked up by the local cool guy who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything but himself.”
“I’ve heard about people like that.”
“I don’t know if I’ve talked to Tyler Belbonnet in twenty years, but I could sort of understand his appeal back then. He had this romantic pirate image, but, Jesus, you can’t let some guy like that ruin your life. Especially when he keeps going, doing whatever he wants, and you’re left behind to pay the consequences. You know what I’m saying?”
I told him I did.
“So I’m just sorry about the number he did on Barbara because she really could have been somebody.” Buzzy caught himself. “Not that being in the D.A.’s office isn’t being somebody. I mean, I’m obviously trying to do it myself … so to speak.”
“Yeah.”
“You still with me on that, Georgie?”
“Yeah, Buz, just as much as I ever was.”