Hawk said, “Be quiet, Amir.”
“We know that you yourself were having a sexual relationship with Prentice Lamont before his death.”
Amir opened his mouth, looked at Hawk, closed his mouth.
“We know that Prentice was blackmailing gay people who didn’t want to be outed, and we know that you knew about that.”
Amir sat with his mouth clamped shut, trying to look intrepid, determined to make a virtue of necessity.
“What else do we know?” I said to Hawk.
“We know you a chicken fucker, Amir,” Hawk said.
Amir tried to look haughty. He was, after all, a professor.
“I don’t even know what that means,” he said.
“Sure you do,” Hawk said. “Means you’d fuck a young snake if it was male and you could get it to hold still.”
Hawk’s expression was, as always, somewhere between pleasant and noncommittal. Amir’s expression failed at haughty. It was more a kind of compacting silence, as if he was becoming less, dwindling as he listened, freezing in upon himself.
“We know you advised the current staff of OUTrageous, namely Walt and Willie, that they should continue the blackmail,” I said. “We know you declined to be a financial part of it because you said you didn’t need the money. We know you are currently having an affair with Willie, which is causing Walt to refer to you as a son of a bitch.”
“And,” Hawk said, “we know you went away this weekend in a private plane.”
“And here’s what we don’t know,” I said. “We don’t know if you made up the story about Nevins, or if it’s true. We don’t know why you told the committee about it in either case. We don’t know why you condoned the blackmail. We don’t know why you didn’t then take any money from it. We don’t know why you claim not to need money. We don’t know where you went this weekend. We don’t know if you are responsible for Prentice Lamont being dead.”
The silence in the thick sweet stench of the living room was palpable.
Hawk said very softly, “We’d like to know.”
“I didn’t do a thing to Prentice,” Amir said.
“Know who did?”
“Prentice killed himself.”
“No,” I said. “He didn’t. Do you know who did?”
“Prentice killed himself,” Amir said again.
“Who’d you go to see this weekend?”
“I didn’t go anywhere,” Amir said.
“You took a private jet out of Baxter Airways at two thirty-five last Friday.”
“I didn’t.”
“We can run that down,” I said. “You think people who are gay and don’t want the world to know should be announced?”
“There’s nothing shameful about being gay.”
“I agree. But my question stands.”
“Every gay person who announces himself proudly to the world is another step toward full recognition of our sexual validity.”
We were beginning to discuss abstractions, and Amir was on firmer ground. His voice was less squeaky.
“Unless they pay off,” I said.
“I think of it as a fine for noncompliance,” Amir said.
“But you wouldn’t take any of the money.”
“I do very nicely thank you on my salary and my lecture tours and my writing.”
“You have an affair with Prentice Lamont?”
“Prentice and I were lovers. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“While he was in love with Robinson Nevins or before?”
Amir hesitated. He could sense a pitfall in the question.
“While,” he said.
Wrong answer.
“So he was willing to cheat on Nevins but when Nevins left him he was so heartbroken that he killed himself?”
“You don’t understand the gay life,” Amir said.
“Why do you think Prentice killed himself?”
“Everyone thinks so,” Amir said.
“And why did you tell the tenure committee?”
“I felt honor bound to do so.”
“Honor bound,” Hawk said.
Amir looked at Hawk sort of sideways trying to seem as if he weren’t looking at him.
“I know you from before,” he said.
“Sure, we come to your office, couple weeks back,” Hawk said. “Boogied with some of your supporters.”
“No, I mean a long time ago. I know you from a long time ago.”
Hawk didn’t say anything. His face showed nothing. But something must have stirred in his eyes, because Amir flinched backward as if he’d been jabbed.
I let the silence stretch for a while, but nothing came out of it. Amir was rigidly not looking at Hawk.
“Amir,” I said. “I don’t believe a goddamned thing you’ve said.”
Amir stared straight ahead. I nodded at Hawk. We stood and went to the door. I took off the chain bolt. We opened it and went out. Before he closed it Hawk looked for a time at Amir. Then he closed the door softly.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I was with Robinson Nevins at the university in the faculty cafeteria, drinking coffee. I was currently experimenting with half decaf and half real coffee. Not bad.
“I met your father the other day,” I said.
“Most people are impressed when they meet him,” Nevins said.
“He’s impressive,” I said.
“Hawk’s affection for him is sort of touching,” Nevins said. “Since, as you must know better than I, Hawk shows very little of anything, let alone affection.”
“You like him?” I said.
“He’s my father,” Nevins said. “I guess I love him. I’m not very comfortable with him.”
“Because?”
“Because he is from a different world. Machismo is the essence of his existence, and I am remote from that.”
“Is he disappointed in you?” I said.
Nevins looked startled.
“Why I… no… I don’t think he is.”
“I don’t think he is either,” I said.
“You talked about me?”
“Yes. He asked me if I thought you were queer.”
“And?”
“And I said I didn’t know. And he said he didn’t know either, but that it didn’t matter much one way or another. You were still his son.”
“I knew he wondered,” Nevins said. “Forty years old and unmarried.”
“I guess the time has come, I need to know,” I said.
“If I’m queer?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” Nevins said. “I’m not.”
“Might have saved you some grief if everyone knew that.”
“Might have,” Nevins said. “But I have always thought that it is entirely corrupt to judge people based on what they do with their genitals in private with a consenting adult.”
“I think that’s right,” I said. “Here’s an even worse question. Can you prove it?”
Nevins stopped with his cup half raised to his lips and stared at me a minute, then he put the cup down, and folded his hands and rested his chin on them and looked at me some more.
“Just how do we go about that?” he said. “Go down to the Pussy Cat Cinema, perhaps, see if I erect?”
“Maybe the testimony of satisfied females?” I said.
He nodded slowly, an odd half smile on his face.
“I don’t like this much better than you do, but everybody’s telling me nothing, and I need some kind of fact to wedge in with.”
“What is really, what, ironic, I guess, is that at least one member of the tenure committee knows perfectly well that I’m heterosexual.”
“Care to share the name?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Look,” I said. “It would have to be a female. How many are there on the tenure committee?”
“Four.”
“For crissake,” I said. “I’m a detective. You think given four names I can’t find out which one it was?”
“If I tell you, can you keep it to yourself?”
“I can keep it from anyone who doesn’t need to know it,” I said.
He still looked at me above his folded hands. The odd half smile faded. Finally he spoke with no expression at all.
“Lillian Temple,” he said.
“If that’s true,” I said, “Lillian Temple knowingly lied about you in the tenure meeting. She was the one who introduced the business about Prentice Lamont.”