by Otto Penzler
and
Robert B. Parker
The lettering on the door said GALAHAD, INC. When Jamal Jones opened the door and went in, there were two white people. The woman was blond with big blue eyes and a wide mouth. Jamal stared at her for a moment. Bitchin’ body. The man was tall and had a mustache. They both smiled at him. Having entered, Jamal didn’t know what to do next.
“I’m Nick West,” the man said. “This is my wife, Holly.”
“Jamal Jones.”
“Come in,” Holly said. “Have a seat.”
Jamal sat. They looked like money to him. White money. Good clothes. Nice perfume. View of the harbor. He felt uneasy. It made him aggressive.
“You ever hear of me?” he said. “I play basketball at Taft.”
“You been suspended,” Nick said.
Jamal had cornrows and baggy clothes and tattoos on his neck.
“Tha’s a bad rap, man,” Jamal said.
“Which is why you’re here,” Holly said.
“I read that article about you in the paper,” Jamal said.
Nick grinned at him.
“The Couple of Last Resort,” Nick said.
“Huh?”
“That was what the paper called us,” Holly said.
“Yeah,” he said, “well, I got suspended for groping some broad at a party and I don’t even know the bitch… excuse me, ma’am.”
Holly smiled. “What’s the bitch’s name?” she said.
“Tricia Clark,” Nick said.
They both looked at him.
“She says at a party you came up behind her and put your hand down the front of her jeans.”
“I never even seen her,” Jamal said.
“How do you know all this?” Holly said to Nick.
“I read the sports pages,” he said.
“Sports pages are boring,” Holly said.
“Only to the unenlightened,” Nick said. “Anybody believe your story?”
Jamal shook his head.
“White girl,” he said.
Nick nodded.
“And a black boy with cornrows and tattoos,” Nick said.
“It’s my look, man. It’s Jamal Jones, and I gonna be Jamal Jones and fuck anybody don’t like it.”
“Temperate and well spoken as well,” Nick said.
“You raggin’ me, man?” Jamal said.
Nick nodded. “A little,” he said.
“Nick rags everyone a little,” Holly said. “But there’s a point there.”
“I didn’t come here to take no shit,” Jamal said.
Lotta times you could give a white guy the angry-brother look and he get scared. Nick didn’t seem to.
“Thing is you look like Whitey Suburban’s worst nightmare,” Nick said. “You’re black. You look black. You sound black. Of course you’d feel up a white coed at a party.”
“Fuck you, man,” Jamal said.
“So what’s your side of it?” Nick said.
“Huh?”
“What’s your side of the story?” Holly said.
“I got no side, except I didn’t do it. Nobody believes it. Soon as the A.D. heard the story he had Coach suspend me. They takin’ ’way my scholarship. I don’t get money I can’t go to school. I don’t go to school I got no shot in the pros.”
“Kids your age are playing in the pros,” Nick said.
“Sure, like LeBron. Well, I ain’t no LeBron. I’m pretty good, but I’m not ready yet and I know it. Couple years, Division I, make a name for myself, I be ready.”
Everyone was quiet. Nick and Holly looked at each other.
“Okay,” Nick said. “You didn’t do it, we’ll prove it.”
“You gonna represent me?”
“Yep.”
“I ain’t got no money.”
“Pay us when you make the pros,” Nick said. “Besides, Holly’s rich.”
“We have money,” Holly said. “We do this because we like to.”
“You know what you doing?” Jamal said.
“Nick was a police detective for twenty years,” Holly said. “I was a prosecutor.”
“You a lawyer?” Jamal said.
“Uh-huh.”
She looked so hot Jamal couldn’t imagine her being something.
“So how you get rich?” he said.
“My daddy,” Holly said.
“Your daddy give it to you?”
“In a trust fund.”
Jamal wasn’t entirely sure what a trust fund was. It was a white thing.
“How you gonna help me?” Jamal said.
“We’ll go over it,” Nick said.
“Tha’s it?” Jamal said. “You gonna go over it? You got a ghetto black man accused of feelin’ up Miss White Sorority Prom Queen. And you gonna go over it.”
“You were at the party?” Nick said.
“Yeah.”
“Anyone see you do it?”
“Course they didn’t see me do it,” Jamal said. “I didn’t do it.”
“And it’s pretty hard to find somebody who saw you not do it,” Nick said.
Jamal gave Nick another hard look. Was Nick putting him down?
“Jamal,” Holly said. “Getting tough with Nicky doesn’t work. It has no effect on him. It’s like he doesn’t notice.”
Jamal looked at her. She smiled. He almost smiled back before he caught himself. She was money for sure. Everything she wore was probably silk.
“Hell,” Holly said. “Even I don’t scare him.”
Jamal nodded. She was something.
“So it’s your word against hers,” Nick said.
Jamal nodded.
“And you don’t know why she would lie about this?”
“No, man. I don’t even know the bitch.”
“Okay,” Nick said. “We’ll talk with her. Here’s what I need from you. You go home. You stay there. You don’t get drunk or do dope or get laid or have a fight or do anything but homework and sleep.”
“I be keepin’ the low profile,” Jamal said.
“The best kind,” Nick said.
The sun flooded into the atrium breakfast room. It intensified everything. The orange juice in the emerald glasses. The yellow plates and cups. The persimmon chairs and the green glass table. Nick’s shirt was whiter than possible. Holly’s hair was bright gold. She was sipping orange juice and looking at a notepad. She put down her glass.
“Okay,” Holly said, “here’s what I found out in a mere three days.”
“I was hoping someone would find out something,” Nick said.
“I can find out anything,” Holly said.
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Jamal is a communications major,” Holly said. “Two point seven grade point average.”
“That’s like what, B minus?” Nick said.
“Uh-huh. No trouble in school. No police record. Same for high school.”
“He Muslim?” Nick said.
“Apparently.”
Nick nodded. He helped himself to some shirred eggs from the sunflower-yellow serving dish.
“What’s on these eggs?” he said.
“A reduction of sherry finished with butter,” Holly said.
“My mother used to give us Pop-Tarts,” Nick said.
“We’ve never doubted that you married up,” Holly said.
“I’ll say. Three days and already you know his grade point average.”
“What do you know?” Holly said.
“Jamal’s the oldest of seven kids. Father’s whereabouts unknown. Mother is a court officer. Jamal’s a point guard. His coach says he doesn’t see the floor well enough yet, and he needs to work on his outside shot. But he’s six feet four and strong and quick and works his tail off. The coach thinks he has a legitimate shot at the pros if he stays in school.”
“Does his coach think he did this?” Holly said.
“Coach is staying low,” Nick said. “I think it wasn’t his idea to suspend the kid, but Coach is a team player.”
/>
“How about the other players?” Holly said.
“They claim he doesn’t drink.”
“He has a Muslim name,” Holly said.
Nick shrugged. “Lot of sexual groping is alcohol-driven,” he said.
“I’ve noticed,” Holly said.
“Mine is hormonal,” Nick said.
“Uh-huh. What else from the teammates?”
“He’s a good guy, a good teammate, a winner, blah, blah. It’s pretty much see no evil, say no evil. They’ve obviously been told to shut up.”
“And they obey?”
“They have a lot at stake,” Nick said, “and they’ve had team player drilled into them since grade school. What about Tricia Clark?”
“Sophomore at North Atlantic University. Honor roll last year. Member of Omega Omega Nu sorority. No record of trouble. Parents divorced, father has money.”
Nick broke the end of a croissant and ate it. “Nothing wrong with a rich father,” he said.
“You should know,” Holly said.
“We’ve never doubted that I married up,” Nick said.
“You married me for my money?” Holly said.
“Your ass, actually,” Nick said. “You talk with Tricia?”
Holly shook her head. “I tried but we couldn’t seem to get a time.”
“Talk to anyone?” Nick said.
“I talked to the president of Omega Omega Nu.”
“Every time you called?”
“Yep.”
“Odd,” Nick said.
“What do you know about sororities?” Holly said.
“As little as possible,” Nick said.
“The prez says Tricia’s in seclusion. Have you talked to the campus police?”
“They seem to be in seclusion too,” Nick said.
Holly put some lime marmalade on the end of her croissant and took a bite. “So we don’t have a transcript of her interview with campus police?”
“No. All I know is what I read in the papers.”
Holly nodded. There was a glisten of lime marmalade on the corner of her mouth. She wiped it carefully away with her pale yellow napkin. Behind her in the atrium window the cityscape stretched to the water.
“I read the clippings,” she said.
“You remember what she was wearing when molested?” Nick said.
“She was at the party alone,” Holly said. “He came up behind her, put his left hand on her breast and slid his right hand down inside her jeans in the front and touched her, ah, flower.”
“Flower?”
“It’s what she called it,” Holly said.
“Flower,” Nick said.
Holly nodded.
“Do you have jeans you would wear to a frat party?” Nick said.
“I have clothes to wear to anything,” Holly said. “You know that.”
“What kind of jeans would they be?” Nick said.
“The ones that I wore wet for several days so that they shrank to my body so tight that I’d have to lie down to get them on.”
“Tricia look like she could wear something like that?”
“Pictures of her say she’s slim and pretty,” Holly said.
“You got jeans like that?”
“Of course.”
“Go put them on.”
“Now?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are we going to a frat party?”
“Just put them on,” he said.
Holly left the breakfast room. Jake poured himself a fresh cup of coffee from the silver carafe. He added cream from the matching silver pitcher and sugar from the matching silver bowl. It made him smile.
Long way from the brickyard, Nicky.
Holly came back in wearing low-slung slate-colored jeans and a cropped T-shirt, the color of amethyst, that exposed her navel. Nick nodded in approval.
“As long as I’m not required to breathe,” Holly said.
Nick stood and walked around behind her.
“Don’t get jumpy now,” he said. “We’re going to reenact the crime.”
“Reenact? Are you sure you’re not just trying to cop a feel?”
“Pretty sure,” Nick said.
He stood behind Holly and put his left hand lightly on her left breast, then put his right hand around her and tried to slip it down the front of her jeans. They were too tight. Nick couldn’t get his hand down the front of Holly’s jeans.
“No flower,” Holly said.
“Of course maybe Tricia’s jeans were looser fitting,” Nick said.
“And maybe it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.”
“They’d be tight,” Nick said.
“Like a glove,” Holly said.
“So if it don’t fit,” Nick said, “you must acquit.”
They were still for a moment.
“You figured that out?” Holly said.
“I’ve often been thwarted by jeans,” Nick said. “It was a thought.”
“Are you still thinking?”
“Well, yes.”
“About Jamal Jones and Tricia Clark?” Holly said.
“Well, no.”
“But since we’re here in this compromising position, anyway…”
“Exactly,” Nick said. “When’s the last time we had spontaneous sex in the middle of the morning?”
“Yesterday,” Holly said. “On the living room rug.”
“Oh,” Nick said. “Yeah.”
“This time,” Holly said, “could we at least use the bedroom?”
Nick pulled the car in beside some shrubs outside the Omega Omega Nu house in the east quadrangle at North Atlantic University. He looked at Holly in the front seat beside him. She wore a tailored blue suit with an open-necked white shirt and a red silk scarf around her neck. She had on too much makeup.
“Perfect,” he said.
“I look like the traveling secretary of Omega Omega Nu?” she said.
“Exactly.”
“Have you ever seen a person from the national headquarters of a sorority?”
“No.”
“Are you sure it’s in Tulsa?”
“I looked it up,” Nick said. “You look just right.”
“If I had on any more makeup,” Holly said, “I’d have a stiff neck.”
“Remember, your name is Elinor Gilmore,” Nick said. “I looked her up too.”
“What if they ask me for a secret handshake or something?”
“Dismiss it haughtily,” Nick said.
Holly gave him an air kiss, took her big handbag and got out of the car.
They met downstairs in the sorority chapter room: Holly; Tricia; the president of Omega Omega Nu, whose name was Wilma Trent; and an Omega Omega Nu alumna named Evelyn Akers, who was an attorney and served as chapter adviser. There was tea and scones.
“How may we help you, Ms. Gilmore?” President Trent said.
She was slim and pale with a lot of blond hair, and she spoke with dignity and reserve, a kid pretending to be a grown-up.
“We at national,” Holly said, “are very concerned about what happened to Tricia. If a sorority means anything, it means sisterhood.”
Would she get away with that line?
“And a sisterhood cares equally for every sister.”
Everyone nodded.
“Is there,” Holly said, “anything we can do to help you?”
Everyone looked at Tricia. She looked startled.
“I don’t know. He groped me.”
“At a party.”
“Yes.”
“Were you wearing anything provocative?”
“Ms. Gilmore!” the lawyer said.
Holly shook her head and gestured the lawyer to be quiet.
“National needs the answer,” Holly said. “Just for the record.”
“No,” Tricia said. “I wasn’t. I had on jeans and a good T-shirt like everyone else.”
Holly smiled. “I remember,” she said. “I always wore jeans to parties. They were so tight I cou
ld barely sit.”
Tricia found herself on more familiar ground. “I know,” she said.
“Is that what you were wearing?”
“Yes. I stood up the whole time.”
They all laughed, except the lawyer, who glanced at Tricia and frowned.
“Trying to breathe,” Holly said, chuckling.
“I know,” Tricia said. “What we do to look good.”
“So how’d he get his hand down the front?” Holly said.
“Excuse me?”
“How could he get his hand down the front of your jeans when they were that tight?”
“I don’t know,” Tricia said. “He just did.”
“Must have been a struggle,” Holly said.
“It was.”
“And no one noticed?”
“No. Everyone was drunk. People were making out.”
Evelyn Akers suddenly leaned forward and put her hand on Tricia’s arm. “That’s enough talking,” she said.
“He did it, she can’t say he didn’t.”
“Stop talking, Tricia,” the lawyer said.
“We could re-create the scene,” Holly said.
“No. I’m not talking to you anymore. What kind of traveling secretary are you?”
“What are you implying?” the president said.
“Sisterhood requires trust,” Holly said. “Trust requires truth.”
Will I get away with that one?
“He did it,” Tricia said. “He really did. He pushed his hand down the front of my jeans. He did it.” She began to cry.
“Ms. Gilmore,” Evelyn Akers said, “this is very strange. Could you leave us alone for a moment?”
“Of course,” Holly said. “I assume my purse is safe here?”
“No one will steal it,” the lawyer said.
Holly left the room and stood in the small hall outside it.
Is there anything in the world as silly as sororities?
Holly looked at her watch. Two minutes.
Yes, fraternities.
She leaned against the wall and made a mental list of silly things.
After fifteen minutes Evelyn Akers came to the door and gestured for Holly to come back. Tricia was still sniffling when Holly sat back down.
“We are all Omega Omega Nus,” the lawyer said.
Holly’s purse was where she’d left it. It hadn’t been stolen.
Holly nodded.
“Omega Omega Nu is, of course, a secret society,” Evelyn Akers said. “And we have all agreed to that.”
Holly nodded again.
“So what is said here stays here?”
