“You want us to find that out?” Hawk said.
Nevins thought about this for a while, sipping his coffee slowly, looking past the cup at the long corridor of time past.
“No,” he said. “Don’t matter.”
We were quiet.
“Tell me ‘bout the murder and blackmail.”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” I said, “and what I’m guessing.”
Which I did.
Nevins didn’t say a word as I talked. His gaze was steady and somehow both benign and stern. When I was through I looked at Hawk.
“You got something?” I said.
“Un huh.”
“Were you planning to share it?”
“Un huh.”
I cut another small piece of corn bread. I had learned from Susan that cutting off one small piece at a time was better for you even if you ate the whole thing one small piece at a time. Hawk got himself some more coffee. He looked at Nevins.
“Bobby?” he said.
Nevins shook his head. Hawk looked at me. I shook my head. Hawk came back and sat down.
“Been watching Walt and Willie,” Hawk said.
He looked at Nevins.
“They the people inherited OUTrageous I told you about.”
Nevins nodded. He was nearly motionless as he sat. Time made no difference to him.
“Might be they knew about the blackmail. Might be they carrying it on. So I’m watching them, see what develops.”
“Sneak up on them in the dark better, too,” I said.
“Like you could in a snowstorm,” Hawk said. “Which one is the little blond queen?”
“Willie.”
“He stepping out on Walt,” Hawk said.
“Walt know this?”
“Don’t know. Don’t seem mad when he around Willie. Want to know who he stepping out with?”
“Yes I do.”
“Your friend and mine, Amir Abdullah.”
“Oh ho,” I said.
“Oh ho?”
“Yes. That’s what you say if you’re a top-level sleuth and a clue falls out of a tree and hits you on the head.”
Hawk looked at Nevins.
“Honkies are strange people, Bobby.”
“What’s the clue?” Nevins said.
“The connection between the OUTrageous folks and the tenure folks. Amir’s the one who told the tenure committee that Robinson had an affair with Prentice Lamont. OUTrageous had a list of possible people to out with your son’s name on it and the phrase ‘research continues.’”
“So what does that mean?”
“Research continues?”
“No, what is the, ah, significance, of all that?”
“Hell, Mr. Nevins, I don’t know. It’s just more than we knew before. And maybe Abdullah got it from Willie, or maybe Willie got it from Abdullah – which would be my guess.”
“Don’t help my son get tenure.”
“Not yet.”
“Strange system,” Nevins said. “Keep you for life or they fire you.”
“I know.”
“Robinson wants to be a professor at the university,” Nevins said.
“We going to get that for him, Bobby,” Hawk said.
I would have been happier if he hedged it a little, but Hawk wasn’t much for hedging.
“I hope so,” Nevins said.
Me too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I was taking a walk. Sometimes when I had to think I liked to walk along the river. Today was especially good for that because it was raining pleasantly. It was warm and there was no wind, just the steady moderate rain coming straight down and dimpling the dark surface of the river. I had on jeans and running shoes and a windbreaker and my old Boston Braves baseball hat. Impervious.
Before I got Robinson Nevins tenure at the university, I had the issue of Louis Vincent and KC Roth to resolve. I didn’t have it in me to walk up and kill him. I’d killed people. And maybe I would again, but I’d always thought it was because I had to. Hawk would do it. He was more practical than I was. He didn’t wait until he had to. He’d do it if it seemed a good solution to the problem – which it did. But I couldn’t ask Hawk to do things I was too squeamish to do. What I needed to do was figure out what I was not too squeamish to do.
I crossed the little footbridge over Storrow Drive and onto the Esplanade and turned west and strolled upriver. The narrow strip of parkland ran along the Boston side of the Charles River all the way out to Watertown and beyond. In good weather it was crowded with people walking and jogging and walking dogs and bicycling and Rollerblading and sunbathing. Today, except for a few people who owned intrepid dogs, the space was pretty much mine. Not everyone understood about a walk in the rain. Pearl, for instance, despite her great hunting lineage, would not walk in the rain. Even for a cookie.
Squeamish was actually the wrong word for my hesitation. I would have, in fact, loved to throw Louis Vincent off a bridge. But it seemed somehow the wrong thing to do, and while I tried not to get hung up on abstractions more than I had to, I couldn’t seem to get around this one. I could tell the cops he was the man, but as long as KC wouldn’t testify, what could we do that was legal? Hitting him hadn’t worked. I could hit him more, and harder. Which would be heartwarming, but if he was as obsessive as he seemed, it might merely wind him tighter. I needed KC to testify.
The racing crews in their eight-man shells were on the river, men’s teams and women’s teams, which meant, I supposed, that some of the shells were eight-woman shells, or that all of the shells were eight-person shells. The crew coaches, in motor-boats, hovered near them like sheepdogs. During rest periods the rowers slumped over their oars as if they were dead, letting the rain beat down on them without regard.
I thought about Susan’s analysis. KC’s refusal to identify Louis Vincent seemed to be as much about her ex-husband as it was about Louis Vincent.
At the B.U. Bridge I turned back, my collar up, my Braves hat pulled down over my eyes, liking the feel of the rain as it came down in a straight easy fall, watching the idea coalesce. By the time I got back to my place the idea was nearly complete, or as complete as it could be.
I stripped off my wet clothes and tossed them in the washer, took a hot shower, toweled off, and put on fresh clothes. Then I went to the kitchen. It was 5:20 in the evening. Time enough for the first drink of the day, maybe past time. I filled a pint glass with ice, put in two ounces of scotch, and filled it with soda. I took the first sip. The first sip wasn’t the best thing in the world, but it was in the top five. And trying to recapture the first sip is a reminder that maybe you really can’t go home again. I picked up the glass and inspected my food supply. It was embarrassingly similar to Susan’s. But there was a head of garlic and a can of black beans and some linguine and some biscuits left over from breakfast.
I put the biscuits in a low oven to warm. The coalescing idea unified and I knew what I was going to do. I drank a toast to my brain. Then I tucked a dish towel into my belt to make a little apron, the way my father used to, got out a knife and separated the garlic head into cloves and peeled the cloves. I cooked the garlic on low heat with some olive oil in a fry pan for a while, and while it was cooking I heated a large pot of water. When the water boiled I added a dash of olive oil and a little salt and put the linguine in. When the garlic cloves were soft I added some sherry, and as it began to cook down I opened the can of black beans and drained off the liquid and dumped them in with the sherry and olive oil and garlic and put a lid on the fry pan. I toasted my coalesced idea again and the glass was empty and I mixed another. It was still good, but it wasn’t the first one. The first one wouldn’t be available until tomorrow.
I sprinkled a little cilantro in among the black beans, garlic, olive oil, and sherry. When everything was cooked I tossed the black beans with the linguine and got out the biscuits and sat at my kitchen counter by myself and ate the pasta and sipped the scotch and soda and wondered if my plan would work. There was a lot I couldn’t control, but it was a better plan than any of the others, except maybe just shooting Louis Vincent. But since I didn’t think I should do that, and wouldn’t ask Hawk to do it, and had promised KC that Louis Vincent would bother her no more, and since I had had two scotch and sodas, it seemed a very fine plan indeed, with every chance of succeeding. Of course, a lot depended on Burton Roth. But he’d seemed a solid guy when I’d met him, and I had hopes. On the other hand, if I didn’t have hopes what the hell was I doing in this business. I could always make a fine living creating great suppers out of nothing.