“Yes, and I’m sure that’s what happened because that was what she thought she was doing. But she’ll be unfaithful to Bass again.”
“Because what she really liked was the sex?” I said.
“As long as she could disguise it under a mound of high-mindedness.”
“My guess is that Bass is not Lionel Trilling.”
“No,” Robinson said. “He’s just your standard academic opportunist blessed with a good voice and nice carriage.”
“We might have saved a lot of time and aggravation,” I said, “if you’d told me all this at the beginning.”
“Or if you’d asked,” Robinson said.
I nodded. “Both had the same reasons, I guess. Can you prove you had a relationship with her?”
“Obviously I can’t prove I, ah, penetrated her. I’ve got some pictures of us together.”
“I’d like the best one of you both,” I said. “You meet anyplace where there’d be a witness?”
“Witness?”
“Did you check into a motel, have drinks together in Club Cafe? Spend the night at a friend’s house on the Cape?”
“We spent several nights together at a little place in Rockport that is hospitable to black people.”
“What’s the name?”
“Sea Mist Inn,” Robinson said.
“When’s the last time?”
“We went up there last Labor Day weekend. Last time we went out.”
“Thank you.”
“I don’t want to cause her trouble,” Robinson said.
“Me either.”
We were quiet then. The old fat black woman had shuffled out and we were alone in the empty dining room.
“You know,” Robinson said after a while. “My father named me after Jackie Robinson.”
“No one better,” I said.
“I know. I guess I’ve always felt I never lived up to it.”
“Nobody’s Jackie Robinson,” I said. “You’re doing pretty well.”
“I wish you were right,” he said.
“I’m always right,” I said. “I have a smart girlfriend.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
I was asleep when my car blew up. The sound of it woke me, and I got to the window in time to see some of the fragments land on Marlborough Street. Aside from the post-explosion fire, there was no activity on the street. I looked at my watch, 3:35 in the morning. I couldn’t think of anything to do about my car. I didn’t see a felon fleeing the scene. But I was too wide awake to go back to bed, so I stood and watched. In about ten minutes a police cruiser pulled up Marlborough and halted near the now declining embers where once my car had been. I got dressed and went down, and announced myself as the owner. While I was talking with the cops, the fire department arrived and then a couple of arson investigators, and my night was shot.
When I got to my office about ten in the morning, less rested than I was used to, there was a message on my machine to call Captain Healy at State Police Headquarters.
“Plane you were asking about,” Healy said when I got him. “Private plane owned by an outfit called Last Stand Systems, Inc. Flew from Logan to Bangor, Maine.”
“Do you know anything about Last Stand Systems?”
“No.”
“Got an address for Last Stand Systems, Inc.?” I said.
“Beecham, Maine.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Healy said. “You ever heard of Beecham?”
“No.”
“Me either.”
“It’s a wonder you got promoted to captain,” I said.
“No wonder at all,” Healy said and hung up.
I got out my atlas and looked up Beecham. It was on the coast, southeast of Bangor. I called the office of the Maine Secretary of State in Augusta and, after a while, learned that Last Stand Systems, Inc. was a not-for-profit corporation. After another while, I got the names of the principal officers, and the members of the board. According to their incorporation papers Last Stand Systems was committed to social and political preservation. After I hung up I looked at the list of names. None of them meant anything to me. The CEO was somebody named Milo Quant.
I called information and asked for Last Stand Systems, Inc. and got it. I called them and asked for literature. They asked my name and address. I told them I was Henry Cimoli and gave them the address of the Harbor Health Club.
Then I called Henry and told him to look for the literature and asked him to have Hawk stop by. Which Hawk did in about an hour. There was always something lustrous about Hawk. His shaved head gleamed. He moved as if he were spring loaded. And there was about him a kind of genial absence of affect that made him seem almost otherworldly.
“I think we might have buzzed somebody’s button,” I said. “My car blew up last night.”
“Trying for you?” Hawk said.
“I don’t think so. It went off at three thirty-five in the morning, a guy who could have rigged that device wouldn’t have gotten the timer so far off.”
“Want to kill you he ties it to the starter anyway,” Hawk said.
“Yes. But there’s no way to know what I’m being warned about, yet.”
“So they going to have to follow up,” Hawk said.
“Un huh. Call me, write me, come and visit me.”
“They’ll come calling,” Hawk said. “Show you they can reach you whenever they want.”
“Yes,” I said, “and see how I take the warning.”
“You talk to anyone since we sat with Amir?”
“No.”
“So maybe talking with Amir was the buzzer.”
“Maybe. Or maybe busting Louis Vincent was the buzzer, and they just got around to following up.”
“Nope,” Hawk said, “this a warning. Too late to warn us off Vincent.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”
“Who that plane belong to?” Hawk said.
“Last Stand Systems, Inc.,” I said. “Out of Beecham, Maine.”
“Beecham, Maine?”
“I never heard of it either,” I said.
The door to my office was open so that Hawk and I could keep an eye on Lila in the design office across the hall. Six men in close formation came through the open door like a drill team. Two moved to the left of the door, two to the right, and two marched straight up to my desk.
“Maybe these guys know,” Hawk said.
“You guys know where Beecham, Maine, is?” I said.
They looked like Secret Service men or IBM executives. They were all in dark suits and white shirts. They all wore ties. They all had short hair. They all were of northern European descent. When everyone was in place the suit closest to the door pushed it shut.
One of the two men in front of my desk said, “Spenser?”
He was wearing horn-rimmed glasses, which made him look smart, probably why he was the designated speaker.
“Yes,” I said. “Is it on the coast?”
“Is what on the coast?”
“Beecham.”
Horn Rims shook his head in dismissive annoyance.
“You’ve been put on notice,” he said. “As of this morning at three thirty-five.”
I looked at Hawk.
“Did you take those library books back like I told you?” I said.
Hawk was leaning against my file cabinet as if he might fall asleep. He smiled softly.
“Can’t be librarians,” Hawk said. “Librarians would know where Beecham is.”
Horn Rims didn’t change expression.
“You are to stay entirely away from Amir Abdullah. Repeat, entirely. If you fail to comply you will be incinerated as was your car.”
“How come,” I said.
“You’ve been informed,” Horn Rims said. “Your Negro friend as well.”
“You guys associated with Last Stand Systems?” I said.
One of the guys in the back opened my door, and four of them marched out. Horn Rims and his partner marched out after them. At the door, Horn Rims’ partner turned and aimed a semiautomatic pistol with a silencer. He squeezed off three rounds; each shot broke one of the three coffee cups that were lined up on the file cabinet about a foot from Hawk. Hawk never moved. The gun disappeared. The door closed. We were left with the silence and the smell of the gunfire.