“Police?”
“I’m just trying to be clear,” I said. “I don’t expect to tell anyone.”
“If you told anyone I’d die.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
We were quiet. She was thinking, and, as she did everything else, she dramatized thinking. Her eyes narrowed, she got a vertical wrinkle between her eyebrows. Her lips pursed slightly. I waited. Finally she leaned back and shifted on the couch so that she could hug her knees while she talked.
“When we were together,” she said, “we could barely breathe. We couldn’t eat. We didn’t want to drink. All we wanted to do was be together and look at each other and make love.”
I nodded. I knew the feeling, though love had never made me lose my appetite.
“If only we were both free,” she said.
“You’re free,” I said.
She shook her head sadly and a little condescendingly.
“He can’t leave his wife.”
“Why?”
She shook her head again. Men were so dumb.
“He just can’t. She’s too dependent on him, and men can’t do the hard things. He’s such a baby.”
“Might have been smart to wait until he left her, before you left your husband,” I said.
“I’m not that way,” she said. “When I commit, I commit entirely. I give everything.”
“Would you have left your husband if you hadn’t thought you’d be with him?” I said.
“And what? Live in this gruesome goddamned apartment by myself? Burt and I lived in a castle.”
“Do you still see your boyfriend?” I said.
Again the downcast eyes. Her mouth pouting like a sad child, albeit a cute one, she traced a small circle on her kneecap with the forefinger of her right hand.
“No.”
“Why not?”
She began to cry. I waited, letting the question hang. She placed both her hands over her face, being careful of her makeup, and cried some more. I was pretty sure I was supposed to go and sit on the couch and put my arm around her, in which case she would turn in and bury her head on my shoulder and weep as if her heart would break. I stayed where I was. Finally after waiting as long as was decorous she stopped crying and lowered her hands, and raised her head so she could look searchingly into my eyes.
“Men are such babies,” she said.
“Maybe not all of them,” I said.
“You’re not, are you?”
“Except when I don’t get my way,” I said. “How come you and the BF are not still an item?”
“Somehow, I know this sounds… something… anyway, somehow when we were both married and sleeping with each other it was, like even. But then I was divorced and he was the only one that was cheating. He couldn’t stand it.”
It did in fact sound… something.
“Sure,” I said. “What is his name?”
“Oh, I can’t give you his name,” she said.
“You can if you wish me to work for you.”
“Aren’t you already hired, I mean, I’ve told you all this stuff.”
“KC, the surest way to prevent the stalker involves knowing who he is. Probably is your ex-husband; but it might be your ex-boyfriend, it might be somebody else. If I’m going to do what you are trying to hire me to do, I will do it better and quicker if you tell me what I ask.”
She bit her lower lip gently and, with her hands laced over her knees, rocked slightly on the couch.
Finally she said, “Louis.”
“That’s a start,” I said.
More lower-lip biting until finally she said, quite tragically, I thought, “Vincent.”
“Louis Vincent,” I said.
Her voice softened almost reverentially. “Yes.”
“And where does he live?”
“Hingham.”
“Does he have a place of business?”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t seem discreet to approach him at home,” I said.
“Oh God, you can’t approach him. He’d never forgive me.”
“He’ll never know I got it from you,” I said.
Again a long and fully acted out period of silent pondering.
“He’s a stockbroker,” she said. “Hall, Peary.”
“Fifty-three State,” I said.
She nodded. I had made her thoroughly miserable.
“Would you feel safer if I had someone outside your house until I, ah, crack the case?”
“I went down to the police department,” she said. “The sergeant was so nice, really lovely to me.”
“I’ll bet he was.”
“He says they’ll keep an eye on my apartment.”
“Have you notified the phone company?”
“No.”
She seemed startled, either that she hadn’t thought of it, or that I had.
“You should probably do that,” I said.
“He never says anything when he calls.”
“Most people don’t,” I said.
If she thought I was amusing she didn’t let on.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hawk and I went to call on Amir Abdullah in his offices at the African-American Center at the university. A couple of hard-looking young guys in black suits and white shirts let us in. They eyed me like I was a case of the clap.
“Teaching fellows?” I said to Hawk.
Hawk smiled and let his stare rest on the two men.
“Dr. Abdullah,” I said. “He’s expecting me.”
They looked at me some more and at Hawk, who smiled at them engagingly.
Then one of them said, “Down this hall, third door on the left.”
Hawk and the two young men kept eye contact until we were past them and headed down the hall. There was African art on the walls, and some splashy posters advocating action. Everyone I saw was black.
“I feel like Casper the friendly ghost,” I said.
“You a pale one, all right,” Hawk said, and we knocked on the half-open door of Abdullah’s office.
A voice said, “Come!” And in we went.
The walls of the office were covered with some sort of pan-African proletarian art in which magnificent black men were throwing off yokes of oppression. The white men in the posters were all mean-looking fat guys. None of the white guys looked like me. None of the magnificent black men looked like Abdullah. Abdullah was very light-skinned. In the old days, before tans were unhealthy, Susan, in summer, was darker than Amir. He was skinny, and quite tall. His hair was short and militant-looking. He wore round gold glasses and a saffron-colored robe and sandals. His nails were long and clean and looked manicured. He wore rings on all four fingers of each hand. A Rolex watch peeked diffidently out from under the sleeve of his robe. He was smoking a long curved meerschaum pipe, and the room was rich with the pungency of his tobacco. A six-foot shield made of ornamented hide stood in the corner, with two long-bladed spears crossed over it. The bookcases were full of books. Many names I didn’t recognize, a few I did, Frantz Fanon, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright.
Abdullah nodded at Hawk.
“Do I know you?” he said to me.
“My name’s Spenser,” I said. “This is Hawk.”
Abdullah looked thoughtfully at Hawk, and nodded.
“S’happenin‘, bro?”
Hawk didn’t say anything. He moved to the left of the door and leaned on the wall. Abdullah looked back at me.
“Don’t get many white men in here,” Abdullah said.
“Too bad,” I said.
“Why?”
“I hate segregation,” I said.
“Don’t need no smartass honky jivin‘ me ’bout segregation,” Abdullah said. “Nigger’s got to get on with life. He do that best if he keep Whitey at a distance.”
I didn’t see anything there to help me with Robinson Nevins’ tenure problem so I let it slide.
“You’re on the English department tenure committee?” I said.
“Why you axin?”