“I’ll bet they’re back there saying the same thing,” I said.
CHAPTER FIFTY
I had the mystery ride all put together. Until I figured out exactly what Hawk and I were going to do about Last Stand Systems, Inc., I wanted the time I spent with Susan to be covert. I was in a profession where getting threatened was part of the deal. So was Hawk. But Susan was not. So I left Hawk to look out for himself for a long weekend and took Susan for a few days to Lee Farrell’s empty condominium at Sanibel Island on Florida’s west coast. It was late June, and as out of season as you could get. But I was pretty sure no one would shoot at us while we were down there.
It was all right on the plane, and in the car rental office, and the car we rented was air-conditioned. The walk from the car to the elevator and the ride up in the elevator was not air-conditioned, and we were near collapse by the time I got Farrell’s door unlocked. The condo was roasting. It had been closed since Farrell’s last vacation. I staggered to the thermostat and turned the air-conditioning on high. In a few minutes the crisis had passed and we were breathing normally again.
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” I said to Susan after she had unpacked and hung up all her clothes and joined me at the little bar in the living room for a cocktail. “But Farrell made me promise there would be no heterosexual carnality in here.”
“Is this your way of telling me you want me to dress up in a man’s suit again?” Susan said.
“Lee says it’s in the bylaws of the condo association – hetero-sexuality is prohibited.”
“Oh boy,” Susan said. “Finally a real vacation.”
“Gee,” I said. “Usually when someone tells you that you can’t do something, you want to do it immediately.”
Susan sipped on the Bellini I had made her and looked at me and frowned thoughtfully.
“You know,” she said, “you’re right. That is how I am. The hell with the condo association. Let’s fuck.”
“That’s the Susan I know,” I said. “Did you say something about a man’s suit?”
“Just a little humor,” she said.
“How about maybe just the shirt and a tie,” I said.
“Stop it,” Susan said and got up and walked toward the bedroom. I followed.
“How about just the tie?” I said.
Susan unzipped her shorts.
“How about less talk and more action,” she said.
–«»-«»-«»-
LATER THAT NIGHT we had dinner at The Sanibel Steak House. The dining room was small and pleasant with glass at the far end looking out over some greenery. We both had martinis. They were excellent. We both ordered steak. For Susan to order steak was a breach of self-discipline comparable to masturbating in public. Salads arrived first. They were excellent. The steaks arrived shortly thereafter. Susan recovered herself sufficiently to cut her steak into halves and put one half aside.
“I guess we showed them,” Susan said as she chewed on a small piece of steak. “Sex, martinis, and steak. How much more carnality is possible.”
I took a bite of my steak. It was excellent.
“That can be our project while we’re here,” I said. “See how much carnality is possible.”
“Would you care to tell me exactly why we are here?”
“Haven’t been away in a while,” I said. “Lee offered.”
“Lee’s a cop,” Susan said. “He doesn’t spend all winter here either. Why now at the end of June?”
“Sure it’s out of season,” I said. “But everything’s air-conditioned.”
“I’m not complaining about the heat,” Susan said. “And so far I’m having a lovely time. But I think that there’s something lurking behind the arras.”
“A rat, maybe?”
“Or Polonius,” Susan said. “Shakespeare aside, I know you nearly as well as you know me. What’s up?”
I finished my martini, and in a burst of unbridled carnality, Susan finished hers. The waitress noticed our situation and came over. We ordered red wine. She went to get it. And brought it back and left.
“You remember Beecham, Maine?” I said.
She shook her head. I told her, all of it. She listened as I talked as she always did, with full attention, her eyes fixed on me. I could feel the charge in her. I could feel the energy between us. It made talking to her a lush experience.
“And you obviously believe them,” Susan said when I finished.
“That they’ll try for Hawk and me? You remember Clausewitz on war?”
“I should,” Susan said, “by now. You keep quoting him.”
“And what is the quote?”
“Something like ‘you must prepare for the enemy’s capability, rather than his intentions.’”
“Yes.”
“So you have to assume they might try.”
“If I assume they might try and I’m wrong, I’m inconvenienced. If I assume they won’t try and I’m wrong, I’m dead.”
“Which is why you brought me here. Because if we were to spend time together you wanted it where I wouldn’t be in danger by proximity.”
“Yep. I figure they follow us down here in late June and their bullets will melt.”
“And you still don’t know their connection with Amir?”
“Only that they sent a plane for him. And warned us away from him.”
“It’s the first time in this case that you’ve run into people who seem like they could have killed Prentice Lamont,” she said.
“Yeah, I noticed that too. Don’t know if they did, but at least we can assume they would.”
Susan had another bite of steak. I sipped some red wine. I had finished my steak and was keeping track of what happened to the half of her steak that she had put aside. It was still aside. I remained hopeful.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Keep pushing,” I said. “Something will pop out.”
“The police can’t help you?” Susan said.
I shrugged.
“We say they threatened us, they say they didn’t, what are the cops going to do?”
“You wouldn’t go to the police anyway,” Susan said. “And certainly Hawk would not.”
I didn’t say anything. Susan put her knife and fork down, and folded her hands under her chin and gazed at me in silence.
“Don’t let them kill you,” Susan said.
“I won’t,” I said.
She thought for a minute, looking at me, and then said, “No, you won’t, will you.”
“No.”
We sat and our eyes held like that for a long minute.
Finally I said, “You going to eat the rest of that steak?”
She kept staring at me and then began to smile and her eyes filled up, and then she began to laugh and the tears spilled onto her cheeks.
She managed to say, “No.”
“Good,” I said.
I forked the steak onto my plate and sliced off a bite.
“Do you have a plan for tomorrow?” Susan said.
She had herself back under control but her face was still flushed the way it gets when she cries, or laughs, or both, and there was still some wetness on her completely sensational cheekbones.
“I thought we could sleep late, have a leisurely breakfast, once again defy the condo association for much of the afternoon, have a swim and go for dinner at a place called the Twilight Cafe. I hear they have a steak with black beans that you won’t be able to finish…”
She was laughing again. There was a slivered edge of fear behind the laugh, but it was real laughter.
“As I think about it,” she said, “I don’t think anything can kill you.”
“Nothing has,” I said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
We were lifting weights at the Harbor Health Club. Hawk in a tank top is a fairly scary sight, and a number of the other patrons glanced at us covertly from time to time. Hawk knew this. He never missed anything going on around him, and while, as usual, he paid no attention
to anyone, I think it amused him. Now and then he would do something showy like handstand push-ups, to impress the rubes.
“While you been vacationing,” Hawk said, “I been detecting.”
“Good,” I said. “You can use the practice.”
“Every Friday Amir go up to Bangor. Every Sunday he come back. So I figure I better see what he doing up there, and I drive up to Bangor International Airport…”
“International?” I said.
“Sure,” Hawk said. “You think they hay shakers up there?”
“Well,” I said. “Yes.”
Hawk shook his head. He was doing some dips as he talked, and if there was any effort involved it didn’t show in his voice.
“Anyway, I’m there on a Friday afternoon sitting in my car, and about five o’clock here come Amir out of the terminal with his little overnight case. Black Lincoln stretch limo waiting. Driver gets out, opens the door. Amir hands him the overnight case, driver puts it on the front seat, Amir hops in the back. You want to guess the license number on the limo?”
“Don’t remember but I’ll bet it’s in my notes.”
“Same one,” Hawk said.
“You follow them?” I said.
“Yep.”
“To Beecham.”
“Yep.”
“Last Stand Systems, Inc.”
“Yep.”
“Stayed the weekend and came home Sunday night.”
“Yep.”
“You got any theories on what he’s doing up there?” I said.
“Visiting.”
“You got any thoughts on what he does while he visits?”
Hawk was doing pull-ups. He did five more after I asked the question, then let himself down slowly and dropped to the floor.
“We know Amir is queer.”
“Nice rhyme,” I said.
“And we know he, ah, hyperactive.”
“Nice phrase,” I said. “You think he’s got a boyfriend in Last Stand Systems, Inc.?”
“Somebody send the company plane down for him.”
“You think it’s Milo Quant?”
“There a Mrs. Quant?” Hawk said.
I didn’t say anything for a minute.
“You think there’s hanky-panky between Milo and Amir?”
“Amir was a white woman, what would you think?” Hawk said.
“That there was hanky-panky between Milo and Amir.”
Hawk smiled.
“That what I’d think,” he said.
“So,” I said. “We don’t want to be homophobic about this.”
“So hanky-panky it is,” Hawk said.
“On the other hand,” I said, “you’ve read the literature. For the leader of this movement to be having an affair with a gay black militant is not just miscegenation, for crissake, it’s treason.”
“You right,” Hawk said. “Couldn’t happen. Be like J. Edgar Hoover running around in a dress.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Impossible.”
I did some curls. Hawk worked on his triceps a little. I did some dips. Hawk worked on his lats. Henry strolled past us and explained to someone that the leg extension machine gave you a better workout if you put some weight on it. He showed them how to set the weight, then he walked back past Hawk and me without looking at us.
After a while Hawk said, “I feelin‘ short on electrolytes.”
“Me too,” I said. “Luckily Henry keeps some in his office.”
We went back into Henry’s office that looked out over the harbor and got some beer out of the refrigerator.
“Milo is speaking out in Fitchburg,” I said. “I thought I’d go out and listen.”
“Why?”
“Why not? Right now I got so little that knowing what he looks like will help.”
Hawk nodded.
“I had a lover in Maine,” he said, “and he coming to Fitchburg, maybe I arrange to meet him.”
“Why don’t you stick with Amir,” I said. “And I’ll tag along behind Milo Quant. And we’ll see.”
“Say we catch them doing the hoochie coochie,” Hawk said. “What we got?”
“More than we got now,” I said.
“That much,” Hawk said.
“Well, we’ve got some stuff,” I said. “We’ve already got Amir connected to an outfit that is capable of pitching someone out a window.”
“True.”
“What we don’t have is proof that they did it, or any reason why.”
“Prentice a blackmailer,” Hawk said.
“Could be a reason,” I said.
“Don’t forget why we doing this,” Hawk said.
“I know. Robinson’s tenure,” I said. “I think we’ve got enough now. But it’s messy. I want it clean.”
“How often you get clean?” Hawk said.
I grinned.
“Figure I’m due,” I said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
I was getting ready to drive out to Fitchburg when KC Roth called me on the phone.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” she said.
“Un huh.”
“I guess I’m a little crazy right now.”
“Probably.”
“It’s not easy being me, you know.”
“I know.”
“I’m alone, I have no prospects, I need support. I guess sometimes I get a little too aggressive.”
“Nothing wrong with aggressive,” I said. “But you need to focus it properly.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not alone.”
“The question isn’t whether it’s easy for me to say. The question is am I right?”
“I didn’t call up for you to give me advice,” KC said.
“No,” I said. “Of course you didn’t.”
“It’s frankly none of your goddamned business.”
“It was,” I said. “But now it isn’t.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t call you up and have a civil conversation, does it?”
“No it doesn’t,” I said.
“Well fine,” she said and slammed the phone down.
I seemed to be in a lovers’ quarrel with someone who was not my lover. I hung up the phone and looked at it for a moment and then got up and went to get my car.
Fitchburg is a little working-class city of 40,000 people about fifty miles west of Boston. It is also south of Ashby and southeast of Winchendon and north of Leominster, and a great many people don’t care much where it is. The state college is up the hill from Route 2A. There were signs directing me to the evening’s event. When I got to the auditorium there were several Fitchburg Police cars and at least three blue and gray State Police cruisers parked around the place, taking all the best spots. I parked in a slot that said Faculty Only, and walked over to the auditorium. There were cops in the lobby, cops at the entrances, standing around talking to each other. There were also several Ivy League-looking guys in shirts and ties and dark suits, clustered near the main entrance door, scanning the crowd. One of them was the guy with the horn-rimmed glasses who had come to my office with his associates and spoken unkindly to me and Hawk about Amir Abdullah. He had also spoken even more brusquely to us in Beecham, Maine. I had the impulse to step into his line of sight and say, “booga, booga,” but I was there to observe, and I usually observed better if no one was paying any attention to me. I went in another entrance, and took a seat in the back. The room was full. Mostly students. From their conversations I gathered that not all of them were fans of Milo Quant. At 7:30 Horn Rims and his fellows walked out quietly and stood at parade rest on the floor of the auditorium between the front row of seats and the stage. I noticed that there were state and local cops along the walls on both sides of the auditorium. A heavyset woman in a pale blue pants suit came onto the stage and stood behind the lectern. She waited for a moment and when she saw that the audience wasn’t going to quiet, she began.
“I’m Margaret Dryer,” she said. “I’m the dean of student affairs here. Like many of you present
I do not agree with Mr. Quant’s view of the human condition.”
The audience quieted a little as she spoke.
“But I agree with his right to hold those ideas and indeed to espouse them, however repellent I personally find them to be. That is the meaning of free speech, and I hope each and every one of you in the audience will respect Mr. Quant’s right to free speech. There has been talk of disruption. I have heard it, just as you have heard it. The police are here. We have asked them to be here. We have asked them to protect everyone’s right to civil discourse. We have also asked them to prevent any infringement on those rights, and they will do so.”
She paused for a moment. The audience was quiet. Then she turned and gestured toward the wings of the stage.
“May I introduce our guest, Mr. Milo Quant, of Last Stand Systems, Incorporated.”
The audience booed the minute his name was mentioned. The booing magnified when he strolled out from the side and replaced Dean Dryer at the lectern. He stood silently for a time, smiling down at the audience, allowing the roar of boos to roll over him. He was a short fat man in a well-made blue suit, a white shirt, and a maroon silk tie. It was hard to be sure from where I sat, but his shoes looked as if they had lifts in them. His nose was sharp and curled a little at the tip like the beak of a falcon. His mouth was wide with thick lips. His face was fleshy. He had thick eyebrows that V-ed down over the bridge of his nose. His upturned smile was V-shaped so that he looked sort of like a devilish Santa Claus. The boos continued. He stood quietly smiling. After a while the students tired. The boos dwindled. Finally it was nearly quiet.
“There,” Quant said. “Feel better?”
There was some more booing, but there was also a scatter of laughter. Quant beamed down at us.
“There, I’m not such a monster now am I? Look a little like your grandfather, maybe.”
Somebody laughed. Somebody yelled “Fascist.”
“Do you know where the word fascist comes from?” Quant said.
He leaned slightly forward at the lectern, so that his mouth was closer to the microphone. He let his folded hands rest quietly on top of the lectern.
Hush Money s-26 Page 19
