The Skelly Man

by David Daniel

  Westrake stubbed out the cigar. “I give Corbin his due. The man is a household name. That’s an achievement of a sort, I suppose. But pop culture weighed against all this tradition?” His glance took in the rows of books. “Ah, it’s humbug. I won’t be bothered by this Gong Show silliness. For me personally, his being here is an inconvenience. I’ve got a play to put on. Not Hamlet, in answer to your question. Traitorous Gifts. I’ve adapted Shakespeare. Two acts, fewer characters—but the heart is still beating, I hope. I was counting on the use of that auditorium. Instead they’ve consigned me to a broom closet. But I’ll make do. And now, sir, if there’s nothing more—”

  I took a chance and said, “I overheard your run-in with Corbin’s assistant.”

  “That one. What is he supposed to be, some sort of cowboy? He was out of line.”

  “He says you think Corbin should change his jokes.”

  “I do. Corbin has been lampooning Harvard on national television for years. He goes too far. He should be careful, get some new material.”

  “Why Harvard?” I asked. “I haven’t figured that out.”

  He frowned at me. “You don’t know the genesis of that?”

  “It wasn’t in the press kit.”

  Westrake said nothing for a moment. Beyond the office window, the campus blazed with autumn. Finally he said, “In the fifties there was a television quiz show which pitted colleges against one another for scholarship money. Matches were held regionally, with victors advancing through several rounds for a chance to compete nationally. I assembled a team here, and we entered. We did well, and we drew Harvard for the regional finals. When that was announced, it got a lot of interest. Bear in mind, in those days, we were a parochial little teachers’ college. Harvard must have seen it that way as well. Perhaps they didn’t take the challenge seriously enough. As it turned out, we beat them. Only a few points, but it didn’t matter. It was a stunning upset. A team of state-school kids overcoming Ivy League blue-bloods.”

  He reached and lifted one of the old photographs from the wall near his desk and handed it to me. “That’s us.”

  There were six people in the photo, one of them a crew-cut Jerry Corbin. The names were printed underneath. With Corbin, similarly dressed in blazers with a college patch on the pocket, were three other young men, a young woman identified as Flo Ryan, and Westrake, without the long hair. He said, “I selected Jeremiah over more purely intellectual students because he was a cool customer. I felt he would be able to deliver under pressure. And here”—he took down a second photograph—“was the foursome we vanquished.”

  He waited until I finished jotting the names from both photos into my notebook before he asked why. I shrugged. “I’m in information management, just like everyone else.”

  When he had replaced the photographs on his wall, he said, “People labor under the delusion that one more fact, one added bit of data, and the world is going to crack open for them like an oyster. It’s a myth. You have to grasp the underlying principles to get any place in this life.”

  “Probably,” I said, “but I’m a creature of habit. Of course, I haven’t gotten anyplace.”

  I drove down to the city library and did some digging in the microfilm collection. Alfred Westrake had been understating it when he said that the local college’s win over Harvard had got some notice. Photographs in the Sun showed downtown sidewalks deep with celebrants as Lowell welcomed the team back from New York City. The losing squad, by contrast, had cried sour grapes, the account stated, with someone from Harvard protesting “irregularities” in the show’s format. The irregularities weren’t spelled out. One file photo I came across showed Alfred Westrake and a youthful Jeremiah Corbin, both in tuxedos, clenching cigars in their grinning mouths. Something about the picture struck me, and I pondered that for a moment, then knew what it was. I took out the envelope Ross had given me and drew out the little pasteboard skeleton. The face glued to it wasn’t identical to the one in the file photo, but it clearly had been taken around the same time, perhaps on the same occasion. So?

  Okay, I had a few more bits of data. I sat for a moment trying to grasp some underlying principle. Then I gave up and left.

  11

  WHEN I GOT to my office shortly past noon, I phoned police headquarters. The desk officer put me through to Ed St. Onge.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Tending my orchids. What do you want?”

  I gave him the names of Corbin’s teammates from the quiz team. “I’m curious to know if any of them has been in trouble.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Thirty years ago, they were college students.”

  “What the hell? Is this what Mr. Good Night America has you doing for him?”

  “You’ve got this fixation with Corbin,” I said. “From what I read in the tabloids, he’s not the marrying kind; but if you’re extra good, maybe I can get you an autographed eight-by-ten.”

  “Don’t shit me. I hope it doesn’t end up I’m taking his picture.”

  I was silent.

  “No snappy reply for that one, do you. Well, I heard from All Saints this morning. The woman who was attacked over at the university is on the mend. Guess whose name came up?”

  “What did she say?”

  “I haven’t heard her say anything yet, but her husband has been in. Turns out one of her classmates was Jerry Corbin. Small world.”

  “Do you know what her name was back then?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact I do.”

  “Was it Flo Ryan?”

  “Then what’re you asking me for?” he growled.

  As I hung up the phone, the paralegal from the office down the hall came by for take-out orders for lunch. I put in my request, then sat back to think. On a pad I jotted words randomly, clustering them the way I’d seen a creativity consultant do on TV. Supposed to help you find hidden links between ideas. Maybe I could even find an underlying principle or two. I could use some. One word that came up several times was college. Alfred Westrake had been Corbin’s professor, and Florence Murphy his classmate. I dug out my notebook and thumbed to the notes I had taken an hour ago. Flo Ryan—now Murphy—had been on the quiz-bowl team with Corbin. That got a couple question marks. The university was where I had first seen Chelsea Nash. Then there was Harvard—as in losing team, the butt of Corbin’s jokes, the meat of Westrake’s warning, lodgers of a protest over their loss to Lowell, situated in Cambridge, where note number three had been mailed. More question marks.

  Meanwhile, St. Onge’s crack about taking Corbin’s picture nettled me. I didn’t want to think about crime-scene photos. But I had to wonder: was I doing the job? When I met with Corbin that night, I wanted something to hand him that said yes. So far, I seemed to be dealing with people and events from three decades ago. I needed to gather more facts.

  The demographers kept insisting that the northeast was losing bodies to the Sunbelt, but no one had told the greater Boston phone book. It clumped on my desk like a cinder block. I checked the listings for Harvard, which filled more pages than most Arizona towns. I found the department I wanted and dialed.

  “Office of Alumni Affairs,” intoned a vintage telephone voice. “Ms. Bishop speaking.”

  I gave my name. “I’m trying to get information on four men who would have been at Harvard in the late fifties, early sixties,” I said. “If I provide names, would it be possible for you to get me current addresses?”

  “Why do you need that information, Mr. Rasmussen?”

  I could hand her the truth and maybe get shot down outright, or try something else. “I represent UMass Lowell,” I said. “We’re planning to honor our quiz-bowl team from long ago which, ahem, beat Harvard? The men I’m seeking were the Harvard team. We want to do a puff piece—‘how-soon-we-forget, where-are-they-now?’ All in good fun, of course.”

  “I see. Well, you’d have to speak with Mr. Stahl, the director.”

  “Could I do that?”

&
nbsp; “Just a moment, please,” Ms. Bishop said.

  She dumped me into a musical hold pattern. “Uptown Girl.” The paralegal brought my sandwich and I paid her. I reread the names I had jotted in Professor Westrake’s office. The music went on. I thought Ms. Bishop had forgotten me. I was getting ready to hang up when she came back. “Mr. Rasmussen, are you still there?”

  “Just me and Billy Joel,” I said.

  I think her laugh was throaty. “I got hold of Mr. Stahl. He’s on his way to a luncheon meeting. May I have him return your call?”

  I supposed I could sit there for a spell and answer my phone, “Good afternoon, University of Massachusetts at Lowell Publicity Office…” I glanced at the Italian sandwich oozing grease through the wax wrapper in front of me. “Actually, I’m about to take a lunch meeting myself, but I’m going to be in your area this afternoon. Would it be convenient if I came by in person?”

  “Um, all right, sure. If you want to.”

  We settled on 3:00. She told me to come to Wadsworth House, opposite the Holyoke Center in Harvard Square, and ask for her—Ms. Bishop. She would get me to Mr. Stahl.

  * * *

  In the movies, the guy shows up in doctor’s whites and strolls past police guards to get at the surviving witness. I carried a dozen roses from the hospital gift shop. At the nurses’ station on the third floor, I identified myself as a visitor for Florence Murphy.

  Standing outside the hospital-room door was Gus Deemys. He pushed away from the wall when he saw me.

  “Well, what do you know,” he said. “It’s Coin-op. Back to finish the job?” He had on an olive suit, a matching shirt, and a bright yellow tie.

  “Hi, Gus,” I said. “Nice getup. I didn’t know the racetracks were open.”

  St. Onge appeared in the doorway. “Forget it,” he said.

  “Ain’t he a riot?” Deemys said. “They get funnier every year, don’t they, Ed? Another ten years, I might even smile.”

  “Inside, Gus,” St. Onge ordered.

  Deemys blinked. “What?”

  “Rasmussen—with me.”

  We strolled down the corridor a distance and stopped. Folding his arms across five-inch lapels, St. Onge leaned against the glazed-block wall. “So?”

  “I figure I’ve got a stake in how she’s doing.”

  “Yeah? I don’t. But maybe we can do this tougher. Maybe you’re a threat to my witness.”

  I looked at him. His hard dark eyes didn’t flicker. “Convince me,” he said.

  It wasn’t going to end unless one of us waved a flag. I said, “You already know who my client is, and that he and Florence Murphy were classmates. He’s been getting weird notes lately.”

  “Kind of weird notes? Threats?”

  “Not exactly. But they’ve got a crazy tone. It could be just a sick joke.”

  “Or a stalker,” St. Onge said. “That what you’re saying?”

  “I’m trying to find out. But Corbin doesn’t want bad press.”

  “He won’t get it from me.”

  “Maybe what happened to Florence Murphy has a connection. I’d like to ask her a few questions.”

  “Whose were those names you gave me?”

  “More classmates. They were on a quiz team together.”

  “And you’re playing Sherlock Holmes.”

  I shrugged. “Eliminating the impossible.”

  St. Onge chewed his mustache a moment. “The woman’s out of danger, but she’s still foggy. I can’t let you in. Suppose though—” He broke off to watch a cluster of nurses walk by. Their uniforms were a rainbow of colors. “None of them wear white anymore,” Ed said.

  “Deregulation.”

  “I like nurses in white, nuns in black.”

  “And cops in blue,” I said. “Suppose what?”

  He sent a last look at the departing nurses. “You’re the one who got the medics in fast. Her doctors say that was important. Maybe when she comes around more fully, she’ll look kindly on it.”

  “And want to reward me?”

  “She could remember something important.”

  I nodded. “All right. Thanks.” I gave him the roses. “For her. Let me know.”

  12

  IT TOOK ME forty minutes to reach Harvard Square and ten more of cruising before I gave up on finding street parking and stashed the car in a multi-tier garage that had sprouted since I was there last. There had been a time when my former wife and I had been regulars in the square. Lauren was finishing a degree at Lesley. I would drive in to meet her after my shifts on the cops, and we’d hang out. The best places were the hole-in-the-wall bars, the ratty bookstores, and the basement cafés. Our favorite was the Algiers. For the price of a cup of coffee, you could sit for hours in the dim room, amid the waft of Gauloise smoke from adjoining tables, and talk. Didn’t matter what: Sartre or laundry soap, it all took on a weight of Left Bank seriousness. Ah, youth!

  But Harvard Square had changed. The funk had fled south to Central Square, the old places yanked out like bad teeth, replaced with gleaming edifices of steel and glass. It was an economy of scale, and cash always tipped the balance away from charm. What once had been a crossroads where Nobel laureates mingled with backpack poets, and tourists from Altoona crossed paths with Dinka tribesmen, was different now. It glittered and sang and made cash registers ring, but it would always be a second-rate Rodeo Drive. Ah, middle age.

  For the college that surrounded it and gave it its name, old was measured in red brick and centuries. Holyoke Center was definitely new Harvard: ten floors of prestressed concrete with bright shops at the street level, and not an ivy leaf in sight. I passed through the concourse and crossed Mass Avenue to Wadsworth House, a yellow wood-frame where, according to a faded sign, George Washington had once resided. I climbed to the second floor.

  The engraved-plastic name plate on Ms. Bishop’s desk actually said “Ms.” She was a trim forty, with crisp dark hair and a spray of tiny freckles across her nose. Seeing me, she sat back, framed me with her hands, and narrowed one gray eye. I squared my shoulders.

  “Love your chapeau,” she said. “That’s high camp.”

  I took it off, and shaped it, and said, “Around here, maybe. Where I come from, no one’s ever quit wearing them long enough for them to become a fashion statement.”

  Her laugh was throaty. “I’m in love with old cinema, when every woman wore a pinch-waist dress and every man a suit and hat.”

  “And they all smoked Luckies,” I said.

  She made a face. “Just give me the dark suit and fedora and that film-noir feel.”

  I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a film-noir kind of guy.” I gave my name.

  “No kidding? You don’t look the academic type.”

  I thought about it a second, then decided to confess. I had no reason to blacken the name of UMass. I gave her one of my cards. She read it with a raised brow. “That was a pretty bold lie,” she said.

  “But I’m as honest as the day is long once I get my foot in the door.”

  “Do you do that often?”

  “Get in the door?”

  “Make up stories on the telephone.”

  “Happens mostly when Channel 56 is rerunning The Rockford Files.”

  Ms. Bishop’s smile was a sparkler. “Well, have a seat. May I keep this?”

  She slipped my card into her blouse pocket, then pointed at a door covered with crimson leather studded with brass tacks. “If I’m to get you past that door, I’m going to have to know the true story. Mr. Stahl is class of sixty-seven, B.A. in management, and strictly business.”

  “A person I’m working for once appeared on a TV quiz show on which the men I’m interested in were also contestants. I’m trying to backtrack to see if any of the men have been in touch with my client lately.”

  “Wouldn’t your client know that?”

  “Not if the contact was made anonymously.”

  “Hmm. Sounds sinister. Is there a crime involved?”

  �
��Not that I know of,” I said.

  “And Lowell really beat Harvard?”

  “So I’m told.”

  She seemed to find the fact impressive. “Well, forewarned is forearmed. Mr. Stahl is protective of alums. Of course, he does manage to relieve them of the burden of several millions of dollars in gifts and donations each year.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “That’s a heavy burden. Tell me, will I have to untangle my lie with him?”

  “You’re in luck. We’re getting ready to begin our fall telephone canvass, so he’s just back from a strategy session. I haven’t done anything yet but write your name on his calendar. But I spelled it differently than on your card.”

  “Good for you. That’s a printer’s error.”

  “And you let them get away with it?”

  “They’re a small operation, and so am I. And this way, maybe people remember me.”

  She smiled again. “I started remembering you the minute you walked in.”

  The intercom on her desk buzzed. “Is my three o’clock here yet, Ms. Bishop?” piped a brisk voice. “Mr. Rasmussen?”

  She looked at me. “Yes, sir. I’ll send him in.”

  She pointed a finger at the leather-clad door.

  * * *

  Mr. Stahl was standing beside a big cherrywood desk reading a report. On a wall behind him was a pair of lacrosse sticks, or racquets, or whatever they called them. There was also a poster that said: NOTHING IS FOREVER EXCEPT DEATH, TAXES, AND HARVARD. He glanced at me over half-frame tortoiseshell glasses, then put the report down and came over, hand extended.

  “Bart Stahl,” he said. “Class of sixty-seven.” His cheeks were shiny with a shave that looked ten minutes old, and there was high wattage in his smile.

  I smiled back. “My name’s Rasmussen, Mr. Stahl. No class at all. I’m a private investigator.”

  The smile did a brownout, then dimmed altogether when I handed him my license.

  He was medium height, with sandy hair combed the way it would have been in his yearbook picture. He had on a herringbone tweed jacket with a white oxford button-down shirt and a red club tie, gray wool slacks, argyle socks and brown Weejuns. There was a class ring on his hand that could dent a Saab. He would have chuckled at the primitive ritual of motorcycle club members wearing their colors. He gave back the license.