“Is this true, Amir?” Milo wheezed.
“No. No. No.”
“You can consult with Chuck,” I said. “See what he says.”
Amir broke for the door.
“Let him,” I said to Hawk. “How far can he get?”
Hawk smiled and Amir Abdullah, naked, burst out of the room and disappeared down the corridor.
On the bed, Milo began to blubber. I could pick out the train of his complaint at first.
“I fought it,” I think he said. “I fought it day and night… but it consumed me… it is my sin… my corruption. I gave in to my corruption. And it has brought me to this.”
The ratio of blubber to clarity diminished so quickly as he continued that the rest seemed all blubber and I couldn’t understand it.
“What I think we need here now,” I said to Hawk, “is some cops.”
Hawk grinned and went to the chair and picked up the handset and reattached it to the phone. I took it and called the cops while Milo sat in the bed with his face in his hands and sobbed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Pearl was visiting for the day. She and I had some donuts while I read the paper, and around 10:30 in the morning I put her leash on and took her for a stroll. As we walked down Boylston Street, realized that I had picked up a tail. By the time we crossed Arlington Street I realized that the tail was KC Roth. I crossed Boylston at the light and went into the Public Gardens. I let Pearl off her leash so she could point pigeons and barrel fruitlessly after squirrels. KC came behind me. I thought about what to do. Pearl spotted a duck and went into her full point, elongating her body, sucking up her stomach, one paw raised, head extended, tail motionless. I stopped beside her and aimed my finger at the duck and said “Bang” loudly. The duck flew up a few feet and resettled near the small bridge. Pearl seemed satisfied and began tracking Devil Dog crumbs among the shrubs.
KC was still behind me. I could confront her. I could lose her. Or I could ignore her. It was Wednesday. Susan didn’t see patients on Wednesday. She taught a seminar Wednesday mornings and took Wednesday afternoon off. It was our day to have lunch together. I smiled – a solution had presented itself. Pearl and I strolled and KC stalked us until we got back to the office at 11:30. Pearl and I went up. Pearl drank some water and then flopped on the rug. I stood and looked out my window. KC had taken up a position across the street outside F.A.O. Schwarz where she could gaze up at my window. I felt like the Pope.
Susan was due at noon. She arrived of course at 12:20.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry I’m late,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re always late. I expected you to be late.”
She came over and gave me a large kiss, which, I thought, boded well for later. When she was through kissing me she went directly to the mirror over my washbasin and began to reapply lip gloss.
“Where shall we lunch?”
“We could go straight to my place,” I said.
“Un uh,” she said. “And eat about four in the afternoon?”
“We could order out,” I said.
“Sure, and while we waited…? I don’t think so.”
“Where would you like to go?” I said.
“Anyplace where you won’t try to undress me.”
“You’re the one that came in here with the big kiss,” I said.
“Because I love you, does that mean I have to lie down immediately on my back?”
“I think so,” I said. “Though I’ve never been a stickler for position.”
“I’ve noticed,” Susan said. “Let’s go to the Ritz Cafe.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
I smiled to myself.
“Why are you smiling.”
“Just happy,” I said.
We walked Pearl down to my place and put her in my living room. I put fresh water in Pearl’s dish, and turned on the radio so she’d have music to listen to. She hated talk radio. Susan kissed her good-bye, and we went out. We came back out of my apartment and turned left on Marlborough Street and right on Arlington.
“Talk to me a minute about people who stalk people,” I said.
“Sure,” Susan said. “I suspect you know what I know. It is some sort of attempt to maintain or, I suppose, acquire the feeling of power over someone. Following a person may not give you real power, but it gives you the feeling of it. You watch them. You know where they go, what they do, who they see.”
“Knowledge is power,” I said.
“Exactly,” Susan said.
“Are stalkers dangerous?” I said.
“Not necessarily. Sometimes the need for power extends to physical coercion, sometimes not. Sometimes dirty tricks, sometimes not.”
“And the purpose?”
“Fear of loss,” Susan said. “A lover, say, from whom you are estranged. You fear if she gets out of your power you’ll lose her. And the feeling of power is a way to feel as if you haven’t.”
We were at the corner of Commonwealth less than a block from The Ritz when Susan spotted KC Roth. She stopped dead in her tracks and stared at her. KC realized that Susan had seen her and tried to look as if she were just strolling along and didn’t notice us.
“What the hell is this?” Susan said to me.
“The lovely and tenacious KC Roth,” I said.
“She’s stalking you again?”
“Yep.”
“You knew it?”
“Yep.”
“And you didn’t say anything?”
“I thought it would be more dramatic if you discovered her yourself.”
“It is,” Susan said.
She was quiet for a moment, then she turned toward KC Roth and yelled.
“KC!”
KC tried to look startled.
“Susan?”
“Get over here,” Susan said.
KC walked over to us.
“Susan, what are you…?”
“Shut up,” Susan said.
She jabbed at a bench on the mall.
“Sit down,” she said.
Her teeth were clenched and her face was hard-edged and kind of white except for red splotches on her cheekbones. I stood a few feet away. Oh boy!
KC wasn’t brave, but she was stupid. She stood there looking at Susan.
“Wha…?” she said.
Susan took hold of her blouse with both hands and yanked her to the bench and slammed her onto it.
“Now listen, you asinine little shit for brains,” she said with her teeth clamped hard together. “This is the last time you bother him, you understand?”
“Bother?”
Susan still had hold of her blouse. She pulled her close for a moment and slammed her back against the bench.
“Call, follow, whine at, see, talk to, touch, look at, annoy, anything – you understand? Annoy him again and I will knock out every stupid fucking tooth in your stupid fucking mouth.”
KC began to cry. She twisted loose from Susan and stood up.
“I need him,” she screamed at Susan. “You have no right to keep him from me, if it weren’t for you…”
With her clenched fist Susan hit KC on the jaw with a left hook just like I’d taught her, getting her shoulder into it so that the power came from the body, not the arm. KC fell backward and sat down hard on the bench. Her lip was bleeding.
“Are we clear?” Susan said.
KC touched her mouth and took her hand away and stared at the blood on it.
“My God, I’m bleeding,” KC said.
“You’ll be sleeping with the fishes, you neurotic bitch,” Susan said, “if you don’t stay away from him.”
KC nodded, still staring at the blood on her hand.
“Say it,” Susan said with such force that I was a little scared.
“I’ll stay away.”
“You bet you will,” Susan said.
She turned and looked at me and said, “Come on,” and started off toward The Ritz at a very fast pace. I followed her. We went in the Commo
nwealth Avenue entrance and across the lobby into the cafe. The maitre d‘ put us in a window seat only a few inches from passersby on Newbury Street.
“My hand hurts,” Susan said.
I nodded.
“You didn’t tell me that it hurts your hand to hit someone.”
“Mostly,” I said, “if you hit them on the face or head. It’s why I try to use my forearm or elbow when I can.”
“I’ll try to keep it in mind.”
“Were you influenced by Freud or Adler,” I said, “when you gave KC a whack on the kisser.”
“Wonder Woman, I think. Not very shrink-like, was I.”
“No.”
“Did you mind?” Susan said.
“No. I liked it,” I said. “It was what I wanted to do, but felt I couldn’t.”
“You knew I’d blow my top,” Susan said.
“I was hoping,” I said.
“What do you think she’ll do?” Susan said.
“Dash back to the shrink you sent her to, that she stopped going to.”
“So she can report me,” Susan said.
“Yep.”
Susan smiled.
“So maybe it was just the right thing to do,” she said.
“I’m sure it was. Will your reputation be destroyed in the psychiatric community?”
Susan smiled again, more broadly than before.
“No, my colleagues will envy me.”
“Good,” I said. “Want to see if they’ll bring you some ice for your hand?”
“No, but they’d better rush a martini out here pretty quick,” she said. “Before I’m overcome with pain.”
I signaled the waiter.
“Right away, Mrs. Silverman, I sure as hell don’t want to cross you.”
The drink came promptly, and a beer for me.
“You think it worked?” Susan said. “You think she’ll leave you alone?”
“Oh, I’m sure it will,” I said. “But you better not let word get out about my sexual performance, or you’ll be beating up beautiful women every week.”
Susan raised her glass toward me and touched the rim of it against the top of my beer bottle.
She said, “Be my pleasure, big guy.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The university tenure committee held Robinson Nevins’ reconsideration meeting at the university on the third straight day of rain in late August in a room next to the president’s office. It was my first tenure meeting. The English department tenure committee, which had originally denied Robinson tenure, had voted not to reconsider, but the university committee, which had the right to overrule the department committee, agreed to a second hearing. This already seemed like several committees more than I wanted anything to do with, but Robinson needed some testimony. Robinson, and Hawk, and I all agreed that it was best not to turn Hawk loose among the academics.
The meeting was chaired by a professor from the Law School named Tillman. I sat against the wall behind Tommy Harmon, who sat at the conference table as Robinson’s faculty advocate. Bass Maitland and Lillian Temple were there representing the English department tenure committee. Maitland was speaking in his large rich voice.
“So whatever ex post facto changes may have occurred in the matter of Robinson Nevins’ tenure, the department feels that a decision arrived at in good faith should stand. To do otherwise would be to set a precedent that most of us would regret in the years to come.”
“Even though the basis for the denial of tenure turned out to be not only unfounded but part of a criminal conspiracy?” Harmon said.
“I believe it is an alleged criminal conspiracy,” Maitland said, “until a court of law reaches a judgment.”
He leaned back in his chair contentedly. Lillian patted his thigh. Professor Tillman looked a little tired.
He said, “Thank you for the reminder in law, Bass. Tommy, do you have a witness for us?”
Tommy Harmon said he did and introduced me.
“This is not a court of law, and you are not under oath, Mr. Spenser,” Tillman said. “Still the business of this committee, which today is particularly serious business, cannot proceed properly if you do not tell the truth.”
He was a spare man with a gray crew cut and half glasses. His light tan summer suit looked a little small for him, but you could see that he was not a rube.
“The recommendations of this committee, when they are made, are just that, recommendations,” he said. “They are not binding on the university.”
Tillman glanced over his half glasses at Bass Maitland. He didn’t change his expression, but I got the sense that he and I would agree on Bass.
“But they are not to be cavalierly disregarded either,” Tillman said. “There is considerable at stake here.”
“I’ll try not to lie,” I said.
Tillman smiled very slightly.
“Thank you,” he said. “We have all, I’m sure, read the papers, but I would like to hear from you what you know, as succinctly as you can. And since I am the chair of this committee, I guess I can. You may remain seated there unless you wish otherwise.”
The various professors gathered around the long conference table shifted in their seats a little. Several of them seemed interested. Lillian Temple and Bass Maitland looked resigned to suffering fools as gladly as they could.
“There are police reports,” I said. “Both from the Massachusetts State Police who did some of the initial questioning, when Amir Abdullah and Milo Quant were arrested, and from the Boston Police Homicide Unit in whose jurisdiction the murder of Prentice Lamont took place and to whom the state cops turned them over. I assume you all have copies.”
Everyone did.
“Okay, here’s what I know.”
“Excuse me,” Bass Maitland said, “I think we’d all be more comfortable if you were a bit more precise in your choice of words. This is what you surmise.”
I looked at Bass Maitland for a minute without saying anything. Then I looked back around the table.
“Okay,” I said, “here’s what I know.”
Maitland started to say something and Tillman gestured him to be quiet.
“Prentice Lamont ran a newspaper called OUTrageous which, as the name might imply, was in the business of outing closeted gay people. He was also having a sexual affair with Amir Abdullah. Prentice started out high-mindedly, hoping to improve the lot of gay Americans by forcing prominent people who were gay to publicly proclaim themselves. But in a while – Amir has admitted that it was his suggestion – this became a vehicle for blackmail, and made both Amir and Prentice a considerable profit. Amir, however, ever the romantic, lost interest in Prentice and took up with Milo Quant, the head of an anti-gay, anti-black, anti a whole bunch of stuff group called Last Stand Systems, Inc. Prentice, the jilted lover, threatened to out them both if Amir didn’t return to his arms. This would work very badly for the man whose official position was white and heterosexual. Amir was frightened about what Milo might do, so without telling Milo, he asked a couple of Milo’s security people to shut Prentice up. He swears he thought they’d rough Prentice up and frighten him into silence. The security guys say Amir told them to kill Prentice. Which they did, leaving a kind of all-purpose suicide note.”
A thin wiry woman with short very curly hair raised her hand at the far end of the conference table. I nodded at her.
“Did the Last Stand whatchamacallit know about their boss and Amir?”
“No. Just the personal bodyguard. They would smuggle Amir up to a motel near the Maine headquarters, usually, but sometimes to other places, where he would rendezvous with Milo.”
“Classic fascist ambivalence,” the speaker was a small man with longish tan hair and horn-rimmed glasses, “to lust in private after everything they despise in public.”
“You bet,” I said. “So Amir decided that since he had a corpse handy, blame Robinson Nevins for it, and get a twofer.”
“Excuse me?” Bass Maitland said.
“Two fo
r one,” Tillman said brusquely. “Go ahead, Mr. Spenser.”
“Well, why on earth would he do that?” Maitland said.
“Amir is pretty pathological,” I said. “He couldn’t stand any competition, let alone competition from a black scholar as accomplished and as fundamentally decent as Robinson Nevins.”
“Nevins never had an affair with Prentice Lamont?” the wiry woman said.
“No. Robinson isn’t even gay,” I said.
I looked at Lillian Temple. Her face showed nothing.
“Well, for God’s sake, why didn’t he say so?” Maitland said.
“Because he felt that since the charges were specious regardless of his sexuality, proclaiming his heterosexuality was both undignified and perhaps in some way hostile to the interests of his many gay friends.”
“Bass wouldn’t understand that,” Harmon said.
“Tommy, please,” Tillman said.
“I resent that,” Maitland said.
“Bass,” Tillman said.
“To prove his heterosexuality would have required women to testify that they’d been intimate with him,” I said. “Several of them were not free to be. He declined to put them on the spot.”
Again I was looking at Lillian Temple. Her appearance remained rigidly unchanged.
“My God,” said the little guy with the big glasses, “he sounds like one of nature’s noblemen. And we’re denying him tenure?”
“Do you know who any of these women are?” the wiry woman asked.
“Yes.”
“May we know?”
I shook my head. Lillian Temple’s expression remained unchanged. She was so still that she was barely there.
“How do we know that this man is telling the truth?” Maitland said.
“Bass,” I said, “I don’t wish to appear uncouth, so I’ll let it slide that you’re kind of calling me a liar. But if you do it outside of these august proceedings, I will knock you on your Harris tweed tookus.”
Tommy Harmon chuckled. Maitland flushed.
“Mr. Spenser,” Tillman’s voice was like the thin edge of a piece of ice. “Whether or not these proceedings are august, they are serious. Bass, everything Mr. Spenser has said is corroborated in the police reports, generally in Abdullah’s own words.”
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