She looked at her hands as if unable to envision them holding anything as delicate as china.
"My job is pretense, Alex. I'm a glorified mailing service. But I'll not leave," she insisted, debating an unseen adversary. "Not yet. Not at this point in my life. I wake up and see the lake. I have my books and a good stereo. I can pick fresh blackberries not far from : ere. I eat them in the morning with cream."
I said nothing.
"Will you betray me?" she asked.
"Of course not, Margaret."
"Then go. Forget about including Jedson in your story. There's nothing here for an outsider."
"I can't."
She sat straight in her chair.
""""" "Why not?" There was terror and anger in her voice, something decidedly menacing in her eyes. I could understand her lover's flight to solitude. I was certain the mental deadness of Jedson's student body wasn't the only thing he'd been escaping.
I had nothing to offer her that would keep our lines of communication open, other than the truth and the chance to be a coconspirator. I took a deep breath and told her the real reason for my visit.
When I was through she wore the same possessive-dependent look I'd seen in her photograph. I wanted to back away, but my chair was inches from the door.
"It's funny," she said, "I should feel exploited, used. But I don't. You have an honest face. Even your lies sound righteous."
"I'm no more righteous than you are. I simply want to get some facts. Help me."
"I was a member of SDS, you know. The police were pigs to me in those days."
"These aren't those days, I'm not a policeman, and we're not talking about abstract theory and the polemics of revolution. This is triple murder, Margaret, child abuse, maybe more. Not political assassinations. Innocent people hacked into bloody gobbets, mashed into human garbage. Children run down on lonely canyon roads."
She shuddered, turned away, ran an unpolished fingernail along the top of a tooth, then faced me again.
"And you think one of them--a Jedsonite--was responsible for all of that?" The very idea was delicious to her.
"I think two of them had some involvement in it."
"Why are you doing this? You say you're a psychiatrist."
"Psychologist."
"Whatever. What's in it for you?"
"Nothing. Nothing you'd believe."
"Try me."
"I want to see justice done. It's been eating at me."
"I believe you," she said softly.
She was gone for twenty minutes and when she returned it was with an armful of oversized volumes bound in dark blue Morocco leather.
"These are the yearbooks, if your estimates of their ages are correct. I'm going to leave you with them and search for the alumni files. Lock yourself in when I'm gone and don't answer the door. I'll knock three times, then twice. That will be our signal."
"Roger."
"Ha." She laughed, and for the first time looked almost attractive.
Timothy Kruger had lied about being a poor boy at Jedson. His family had donated a couple of buildings and even a casual reading of the book made it obvious the Krugers were Very Important. The part about his athletic prowess, though, was true. He'd lettered in track, baseball and Greco-Roman wrestling. In his yearbook pictures he resembled the man I'd spoken to days before. There were shots of him jumping hurdles, throwing the javelin, and later on, in a'section on drama, in the roles of Hamlet and Petruchio. The impression I got was that of a big man on campus. I wondered how he'd ended up at La Casa de los Ninos operating under a phony credential.
L. Willard Towle's photo showed him to have been a Tab Hunter-type blond in his youth. Notations under his name mentioned presidency of the PreMed Club and the Biology Honor Society, as well as captain of the crew team. There was also an asterisk that led to a footnote advising the reader to turn to the last page of the book. I obeyed the instructions and came to a black-bordered photograph--the same picture I'd seen in Towle's office, of his wife and son against a backdrop of lake and mountains. There was an inscription beneath the photo:
In Memoriam Lilah Hutchison Towle
1930-1951
Lionel Willard Towle, Jr. 1949-1951
Under the inscription were four lines of verse.
How swiftly doth the night move
To dash our hopes and dim our dreams;
But even in the darkest night
The ray of peace yet beams.
It was signed "S."
I was rereading the poem when Margaret Dopplemeier's coded knock sounded on the door. I slid open the latch and she came in holding a manila envelope. She locked the door, went behind her desk, opened the packet and shook out two three-by-five index cards.
"These are straight out of the sacred alumni file." She glanced at one and handed it to me. "Here's your doctor."
Towle's name was at the top, written out in elegant script. There were several entries under it, in different hands and different colors of ink. Most of them took the form of abbreviations and numeric codes.
"Can you explain it to me?"
She came around and sat down next to me, took the card and studied it.
"There's nothing mysterious about any of it. The abbreviations are meant to save space. The five digits after the name are the alumnus code, for mailing, filing, that kind of thing. After that you've got the number 3, which means he's the third member of his family to attend Jedson. The med is self explanatory--it's an occupation code, and the F:med means medicine is also the family's primary business. If it were shipping, it would say slip, banking, bnk, and so on. B:51 is the year he received his bachelor's degree. M: /, 148793 indicates that he married another Jedson student and her alumnus code is cross referenced. Here's something interesting--there's a small d in parentheses after the wife's code, which means she's deceased, and the date of death is 6/17/51--she died when he was still a student here. Did you know that?"
"I did. Would there be any way of finding out more about that?"
She thought for a mgment.
"We could check the local papers for that week, for an obituary or funeral notice."
"What about the student paper?"
"The Spartan is a rag," she said scornfully, "but I suppose it would cover something like that. Back issues are stored in the library, on the other side of campus. We can go there later. Do you think it's relevant?"
She was flushed, girlish, given over totally to our little intrigue.
"It just could be, Margaret. I want to know everything I can about these people."
"Van der Graaf," she said.
"What's that?"
"Professor Van der Graaf, from the history department. He's the oldest of the Old Guard, been around Jedson longer than anyone I know of. On top of that he's a great gossip. I sat next to him at a garden party and the sweet old thing told me all sorts of tidbits-who was sleeping with whom, faculty dirt and the like."
"They let him get away with it?"
"He's close to ninety, rolling in family money, un married with no heirs. They're just waiting for him to croak and leave it all to their college. He's been emeritus from way back. Keeps an office on campus, sequesters himself there pretending to write books. I wouldn't be surprised if he sleeps there. He knows more about Jedson than anybody."
"Do you think he'd talk to me?"
"If he was in the right mood. In fact I thought of him when you told me over the phone that you wanted to find out about illustrious alumni. But I figured it was too risky leaving him alone with a reporter. You never know what he's going to do or say."
She giggled, enjoying the old man's ability to rebel from a position of power.
"Of course now that I know what you want," she continued, "he'd be perfect. You'd need some kind of story about why you wanted to talk about Towle, but I don't imagine that would be very difficult for someone as artful as you."
"How about this: I'm a reporter for Medical World News. Call me Bill Roberts. Dr. Towle's been
elected President of the Academy of Pediatrics and I'm doing a background story on him."
"Sounds good. I'll call him now."
She reached for the phone and I took another look at Towle's alumnus card. The only information she hadn't covered was a column of dated entries under the heading $--donations to Jedson, I assumed. They averaged ten thousand dollars a year. Towle was a faithful son.
"Professor Van der Graaf," she was saying, "this is Margaret Dopplemeier from Public Relations. I've been fine, thank you, and yourself? Very good--oh, I'm sure we can work that out, Professor." She covered the receiver with her hand and winked at me, mouthing the words 'good mood." "I didn't know you liked pizza, Professor. No. No, I don't like anchovies either. Yes, I do like Duesenbergs. I know you do... Yes, I know. The rain was coming down in sheets, Professor. Yes, I would. Yes, when the weather clears up. With the top down. I'll bring the pizza."
She flirted with Van der Graaf for five more minutes and finally broached the subject of my visit. She listened, gave me the okay sign with thumb and forefinger and went back to flirting. I picked up Kruger's card.
He was the fifth member of his family to attend Jedson and his degree was listed as having been granted five years previously. There was no mention of current position--the family was recorded as being active in stl, slip, and rl-est. No mention of matrimony was present, nor had he donated money to the school. There was however an interesting cross-reference. Under REL-F: it said Towle. Finally, the three letters DLT were written in large, block characters at the bottom of the card.
Margaret got off the phone.
"He'll see you. As long as I come along, and quote: Give me a brisk massage, young lady. You'll be prolonging the years of a living fossil, unquote. The old lecher," she added affectionately.
I asked her about Towle's name on Kruger's card.
"REL-F--related family. Apparently your two subjects are cousins of some sort."
"Why isn't that listed on Towle's card as well?"
"The heading was probably added after he graduated. Rather than go back and mark each card they simply used it on the new ones. DLT, though, is more interesting. He's been deleted from the file."
"Why's that?"
"I don't know. It doesn't say. It never would.
Some transgression. With his family background it had to be something big. Something that made the school want to wash its hands of him." She looked up at me. "This is getting interesting, isn't it?"
"Very."
She put the cards back in the envelope and locked it in her desk.
"I'll take you to Van der Graaf now."
22
A gilded cage of an elevator took us to the fifth floor of a domed building on the west side of the campus. It relaxed its jaws and let us out into a silent rotunda, wainscoted in marble and veneered with dust. The ceiling was concave plaster upon which a now faded mural of cherubs blowing bugles had been painted: we were inside the shell of the dome. The walls were stone and gave off an odor of rotting paper. A stationary diamond-paned window separated two oak doors. One was labeled MAP ROOM and looked as if it hadn't been opened in generations. The other was blank.
Margaret knocked on the unadorned door and, when no answer was forthcoming, pushed it open. The room it revealed was high-ceilinged and spacious, with cathedral windows that afforded a view of the harbor. Every free inch of wall space was taken up by bookshelves crammed haphazardly with ragged volumes. Those books that hadn't found a resting place in the shelves sat in precariously balanced stacks on the floor. In the center of the room was a trestle table piled high with manuscripts and still more books. A globe on a wheeled stand and an ancient claw-footed desk were pushed in a corner. A McDonald's take-out box and a couple of crumpled, greasy napkins sat atop the desk.
"Professor?" said Margaret. To me: "I wonder where he's gone."
"Peek-a-boo!" The sound came from somewhere behind the trestle table.
Margaret jumped and her purse flew out of her hands. The contents spilled on the floor.
A gnarled head peeked around the curled edges of a pile of yellowed paper.
"Sorry to startle you, dear." The head came into view, thrown back in silent laughter.
"Professor," said Margaret, "shame on you." She bent to retrieve the scattered debris.
He came out from behind the table looking sheepish. Until that point I'd thought he was sitting. But when the head didn't rise in my sight I realized he'd been standing all along.
He was four feet and a few inches tall. His body was of conventional size but it was bent at the waist, the spine twisted in an S, the deformed back burdened with a hump the size of a tightly packed knapsack. His head seemed too large for his frame, a wrinkled egg topped by a fringe of wispy white hair. When he moved he resembled a drowsy scorpion.
He wore an expression of mock contrition but the twinkle in the rheumy blue eyes said far more than did the downturned, lipless mouth.
"Can I help you, dear?" His voice was dry and cultured.
Margaret gathered the last personal effects from the floor and put them in her purse.
"No, thank you, Professor. I've got it all." She caught her breath and tried to look composed.
"Will you still come with me on our pizza picnic?"
"Only if you behave yourself."
He put his hands together, as if in prayer.
"I promise, dear," he said.
"All right. Professor, this is Bill Roberts, the journalist I spoke to you about. Bill, Professor Garth Van der Graaf." /
"Hello, Professor."
He looked up at me from under sleepy lids.
"You don't look like Clark Kent," he said.
"I beg your pardon."
"Aren't newspaper reporters supposed to look like Clark Kent?"
"I wasn't aware of that specific union regulation."
"I was interviewed by a reporter after the War-the big one. Number two--pardon the scatological entendre. He wanted to know what place the war would have in history. He looked like Clark Kent." He ran one hand over his liver-spotted scalp. "Don't you have a pair of glasses or something young man?"
"I'm sorry, but my eyes are quite healthy."
He turned his back to me and walked to one of the bookshelves. There was queer, reptilian grace to his movements, the stunted body seeming to travel sideways while actually moving forward. He climbed slowly up a footstool, reached up and grabbed a leather bound volume, climbed down and returned.
"Look," he said, opening the book which I now saw was a looseleaf binder containing a collection of comic books. "This is who I mean." A shaky finger pointed to a picture of the Daily Planet's star reporter entering a phone booth. "Clark Kent. That's a reporter."
"I'm sure Mr. Roberts knows who Clark Kent is, Professor."
"Then let him come back when he looks more like him and I'll talk to him," the old man snapped.
Margaret and I exchanged helpless looks. She started to say something and Van der Graaf threw back his head and let out an arid crackle.
"April Fool!" He laughed lustily at his own wit, the merriment dissolving into a phlegmy fit of coughing.
"Oh, Professor!" Margaret scolded.
They went at each other again, verbally jousting. I began to suspect that their relationship was well established. I stood on the sidelines feeling like an unwilling spectator at a freak show.
"Admit it, dear," he was saying, "I had you fooled!" He stamped his foot with glee. "You thought I'd gone totally senile!"
"You're no more senile than I," she replied. "You're simply a naughty boy!"
My hopes of getting reliable information from the shrunken hunchback were diminishing by the moment. I cleared my throat.
They stopped and stared at me. A bubble of saliva had collected in the corner of Van der Graaf's puckered mouth. His hands vibrated with a faint palsy. Margaret towered over him, legs akimbo.
"Now I want you to cooperate with Mr. Roberts," she said sternly.
V
an der Graaf gave me a dirty look.
"Oh, all right," he whined. "But only if you drive me around the lake in my Doosie."
"I said I would."
When the Bough Breaks Page 26
