Aunt Teresa was at the sink, singing some tune with a high, lilting voice.
“So while Michael is smoking a cigarette, picking the races, Aunt Teresa sets down a plate with bacon, toast, and two eggs over easy, and when Michael starts digging into his first meal of the day, Aunt Teresa steps behind him, grabs his hair, tugs his head back, and with her best kitchen knife she slits his throat.”
“Tell me you’re kidding.”
He shrugged. “You asked, I told. And I never joke about family stories.”
More singing from the old woman at the sink.
“What happened to her?”
“Short-term, she grabbed Michael’s plate and ate her own breakfast. Didn’t want good food to go to waste. Long-term, the police came by, local businessmen and others vouched for her good nature, and the charges eventually got swept. So there you go.”
I wiped my own fingers on my napkin. “I get the feeling dear old Uncle Joseph was either very brave, or very loving.”
“A bit of both.”
Aunt Teresa came over, smiling, and spoke a rapid sentence. Felix said, “She wants to know if you need anything else.”
I smiled up at her. “Not a thing.”
CHAPTER THREE
After breakfast, I gave Felix first crack at the bathroom, and then it was my turn, and I had to make do in the large tub with a hand-held shower fixture that had weak water pressure that barely dribbled on my hair and skin. Plus, since Felix had gone before me, the water had started off lukewarm and got colder from there.
I got dressed in my clothes from the day before, spent a second or two looking at the mirror, and then picked up my cell phone. No missed calls, no texts, no messages. I dialed a number from memory, where it went straight to voice mail, and after Annie Wynn’s recorded voice warmed me, I said, “Just checking in. Off to work again. Hope you’re hanging in there. Will try later.”
Then I tried the phone of Kara Miles, Diane Woods’s fiancée, and found that her phone was busy. I left a message with her as well, and then went out to the living room.
Felix was sitting on one of the overstuffed couches, reading that day’s Wall Street Journal. He looked up. “What’s the plan for the day?”
I sat down across from him. “The plan is… the plan is we’re going to change things up.”
“Fair enough. What do you have in mind?”
“We’ve been skulking around, planning to… entice the good professor to join us, where we’d have what the diplomats call a ‘frank and open discussion.’ I still want the discussion, but I’m tired of skulking around. I’m looking for a direct approach this time.”
“Why not?” Felix asked, folding his Wall Street Journal in half. “So, when do you want to go?”
“Still have your laptop?”
“Unless Aunt Teresa’s checking out Chippendale models, yeah, I still have my laptop.”
“Let me do a little research, and we’ll be on our way.”
An hour later, Felix dropped me off at 226 Bay State Street in Boston, near Storrow Drive and the Charles River. The street was narrow and tree-lined, with a narrow grassy median strip with trees growing in the center. The buildings up and down the street all belonged to Boston University. He pulled the Cadillac to the side of the street. “Got your cell phone?”
“As much as I hate the evil device, yes, I do.”
“Carrying?”
“Felix, I’m going on a college campus. What, you think I’ll get assaulted in the faculty lounge?”
Two young coeds with long brown hair ambled by, stopped, looked at Felix, and then hesitantly regained their step. If Felix noticed it, he kept it to himself. Instead, he said: “You’re setting to confront a guy who’s supposedly helped and supported the low-life who’s pretty much killed off your best friend. You better keep that in mind.”
“She’s not dead.”
Felix sighed. “My friend… where she is and what happened to her, it might be merciful to let her go. Otherwise she has long decades ahead of her… not knowing who she is, not recognizing friends and family, and—”
“I’ve heard enough, thanks.”
Felix said, “Yeah, I’m sure. Look, I’ll be right out here waiting for you. Okay?”
I looked at the parking signs. “But you don’t have a university parking sticker.”
“No, but I got my winning attitude. What can possibly go wrong?”
The fall air in the city was so different from what I was used to. There was no smell of ocean, or autumn leaves, or seaweed and wet stones tossed up by my house. There was just the stench of exhaust and the continuous hum of traffic, punctuated by horns and sirens.
The sidewalk was made of brick, with attractive shrubs and plants at the base of the buildings, but to me it all looked too enthusiastic, as if some designer was desperately trying to soften the hard edges of this city.
I went up the steps to 226 Bay State Street, to a wooden front door with a large glass window. To the right of the door, bolted to the concrete wall, was a gold-and-red sign that said, in descending order:
226
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
AMERICAN
STUDIES
PRESERVATION
STUDIES
And underneath, in a much smaller typeface: RAMP AT REAR OF BUILDING.
I opened the door and went inside.
I meandered my way through the corridors, past wall decorations and bulletin boards with lots of flyers and posters pinned up. There were small clusters of students talking, and I could sense them checking me out as I went by. Some decades ago, I had been one of them, planning and hoping to change the world. Then I had left and gone to the place where I thought I was changing the world, and was then dismissive of the innocence and high thoughts of my college years.
Now I didn’t have such complicated thoughts. Now I just wished these young people the very best, for what their supposed elders and betters were leaving them: lots of IOUs and trouble spots in the world that always flared up and never quite went away.
Outside the office of Professor Heywood Knowlton, a young man with a tan knapsack at his side was sitting on the floor, back up against the wall. He was busily texting someone with a pair of very dexterous thumbs, and he had a thin beard and very thick brown hair.
“Hey, buddy,” I said.
He glanced up, still texting. Impressive.
“Yeah?”
“You have an appointment to see Professor Knowlton?”
“So?”
So far, so good, even with the one-syllable responses. I took out my wallet, passed over a fifty-dollar bill. “This is for you if you let me have it.”
He looked confused. “You mean you want to take my appointment?”
“That’s right.”
He reached up, snapped the fifty-dollar bill from my hand. “Shit, bud, I would have done it for twenty.”
The next generation gathered up his belongings and, with a wide smile on his face, trotted down the corridor.
I took his spot, leaning against the wall instead of sitting on the floor. Checked my watch. At the top of the hour, the door to Professor Knowlton’s office swung open and a female student walked out, face clenched red, her knapsack clutched to her chest with both hands. She stifled a sob as she went past me.
After a second or two, I swung around and entered the office. It was large enough but cluttered, with a wide oak desk piled high with papers and folders. A window overlooked the street I’d just been on. Crowded bookshelves graced both walls, and in some of the spare wall space hung framed diplomas for Professor Knowlton, along with some interesting mementoes: a framed front page from The New York Times of August 8, 1974, stating NIXON RESIGNS; a copy of the famed Che Guevara print that has promoted the Marxist revolutionary over the decades by being used to sell everything from T-shirts to purses; and a photo of planet Earth, taken by one of the moon missions, with a caption stating DON’T TREAT YOUR MOTHER LIKE A TOILET.