“That’s not quite right,” he replied.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean it hasn’t yet begun.”
“This isn’t a game, John.”
It was a game, he thought, a game that she was forcing him to play. He didn’t care about tenure. But there he was listening to her deny, and believe in the denial of, her own actions. It was like listening to an accident victim talk about her car insurance while blood flowed from an open wound in her chest.
At the far southern end of the campus sat Deck Recreation Center: a huge white-paneled, black-ribbed geodesic dome covering a deep crater. Deck contained restaurants, the student cafeteria, four auditoriums, recreation rooms and meeting halls.
John was just about to go through the double doors when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Professor.”
Willie Pepperdine stood there smiling beneficently as a steady stream of students flowed around them.
“I thought you were headed for Ho Chi Minh City, Willie.”
“I was. But then I heard about the inquisition that Carmody and Eubanks had engineered.”
“Why would you be concerned with that?”
“Same reason I’m taking your class,” Willie said. “I’m interested in how you perform inside your chosen environment.”
“But isn’t your vocation the transformation of currency into significance?”
Willie smiled at all the big words and John felt a little embarrassed.
“I’m a rich man, Professor. I can afford to do what I want, when I want.”
“Would you have really come to blows with Ira?”
“I’d’a stomped his prissy ass into the linoleum. Can’t stand bullies.”
“You’re the bigger man,” John reminded him.
“But,” Willie said with a grin, “Ira has a second-level black belt in Tae Kwon Do. He can bench-press one hundred eighty-seven pounds.”
“How would you know that?”
“Did you know that there’s an enormous underground lake below this campus?” Willie asked instead of answering the question.
“No.”
“There is. It’s populated by a wholly unique breed of large, blind, freshwater sturgeon, some of which weigh upwards of two hundred pounds.”
“Really?”
“I’ve seen them with my own eyes,” Willie assured John.
“How?”
“When the board of directors bought this property the lake was discovered. A team of private and state investigators had to study it to test for the environmental impact of the buildings we planned to erect. I went along on the dive.”
“What does that have to do with your knowledge of Ira’s strength?”
“I saw those blind fish, crayfish and albino water worms in their natural environment. The only way you could know those fish and other creatures was by getting down there with them. As you said in your very interesting lecture, Professor — in order to know a man you need to understand his environment.”
“And I’m the man?”
Pepperdine smiled and tilted his head to the side.
“Almost sounds like you’re stalking me, Willie.”
“So this fellow, this HJ,” Willie said. “What you were saying was that he alone knew the history of his world because he could see the lies that the people who thought they owned history were telling themselves.”
“Yes.”
“And that only a man in HJ’s situation can even hope to understand what has happened.”
“Absolutely,” John said.
“Not stalking, Professor, but learning. I’m learning how to articulate an argument as rare as those fish hundreds of meters below our feet.”
“Why, Willie?” John asked. He was captivated by the billionaire’s motives.
“Like you said, Professor, there is no me without you and me.”
9
When John got home he expected Carlinda to be there but instead there was a camel-brown envelope on the kitchen-level table.
He pulled out a chair and sat in front of the letter, not touching it at first. There was no writing, no stain, crease or irregularity in the rectangular fold. It lay at an odd angle. Just dropped there, John thought; exactly what Carlinda would do.
What Carlinda would do? Did he believe that he knew this young woman? How had she gotten so deep into him after only two nights and two classes?
He picked up the brown envelope and tore it open. He read it then read it again — a dozen times over.
Dear Cornelius,
You probably believe that you are safe here in the middle of the desert while they search for you in New York. You think because they don’t have your fingerprints or DNA that they won’t be able to find you. But if this note has found you then anyone, given the proper motivation, might also. You have done an excellent job of hiding and making something of yourself after that craven act. It will be interesting to see where you go from here.
P. S. No one escapes without leaving at least one footprint behind.
The writing was educated; the hand unfamiliar. It posed no immediate threat but still there was the definite knowledge of his, John’s, guilt.
France Bickman? Maybe he was still alive. Or possibly the investigation turned up semen residue on the bedclothes beneath the trunk/casket. That didn’t make sense. No one could have located him within the last forty-eight hours. John’s mind felt like a mackerel flopping hopelessly on a pier. Maybe someone already knew who he was and somehow heard his name in connection with the murder investigation. But why not just turn him over to the police? Maybe someone had. Maybe Phoenix PD was coming to arrest and extradite him.
What most interested John about this letter was his response to it; he was confused by the implications but not worried, not even perturbed. Truth, he had often lectured, is never a threat. It is sometimes dangerous but all of life is danger. Only in death are we delivered from peril.
The interested party had transmitted truth.
He was still thinking about the letter, now in his pocket, when the hand touched his shoulder.
“I was expecting you to be here when I got home,” he said.
“I went to the Korean bathhouse in town,” Carlinda said, “to get a mineral oil enema.”
“Why?”
“For you.” Her fingers lifted from his shoulder to caress his ear. They had yet to face each other.
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“No. Arnold is always asking me. This morning we were fooling around and he asked me again. That’s when I decided to come do it with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you make me feel like I’m in charge.”
“It feels all greasy,” she said later that evening. They were lying naked on top of the blankets, a slight breeze wafting in from the window.
“You want to take a shower?”
“No. I like how it feels. It reminds me of you.”
“But I’m right here.”
“Yeah.” She reached out running her fingers across his right nipple. “You are here with me, here in my mind, and between my thighs. It’s like you’re everywhere and I am too.”
For a brief instant John caught a whiff of Senta’s after-sex cigarette. She was there too, he thought.
“What you thinkin’?” Carlinda asked.
“About you saying you won’t love me.”
“What about it?”
“If that’s so why are you here giving me what your boyfriend wants?”