“Can I help you?” John asked.
“My name is Arnold Ott and I’m here to talk to you man-to-man.” This curt introduction, John was sure, had been practiced many times.
“Come in, Mr. Ott, have a seat.”
With clenched fists and lips compressed Arnold sat down hard, taking his anger out on the chair.
“How can I help you?” John asked. “Um... Arnold you said?”
“You know damn well who I am.”
“I do?”
“I’m Carlinda’s boyfriend.”
“Oh? Miss Elmsford mentioned that she had a boyfriend but if she said his name it was only in passing.”
“What is it between you two?”
“I’m her professor.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“Because I thought that maybe you were, um, like her lover.”
“There’s no love between us,” John said confidently. “Physical or otherwise.”
A tremor went through Arnold’s boxy frame. He brought his fists up then slammed them on his knees.
John wondered if he’d have to kill Arnold as he had Chapman Lorraine. This errant thought started as a mild buzzing, a background noise, but, John knew from experience, it could become a roar.
“What are you doing with Carly?”
“Like I told you, Mr. Ott, I’m her teacher. She’s considering me for her senior thesis advisor so we meet and talk about her checkered educational history and her fear of what her studies might bring to the surface. She’s a very serious student.”
“I know she stayed on campus over the break. Was she seein’ somebody?”
“We haven’t discussed her love life,” John admitted. “But if we had I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Are you lyin’ to me?”
“Arnold, you said you want to talk man-to-man but I’m still a professor while you are a student. You asked me if I was your girlfriend’s lover and I told you that there is no love, physical or otherwise, between us. I answered your question because you seem distressed but I am not answerable to you. If you suspect her of having some kind of liaison you’ll have to ask her.”
“I think it’s you,” Arnold said in a vulnerable, pleading tone.
“Why? Have you seen us together? Has someone told you that we’re having an affair?”
“I saw the way she looked at you when you gave that Trash Can Talk.”
“And how was that?”
Arnold flinched, lifting his fists again.
“She leaves her dorm room some nights and doesn’t come back till the next day. One night I parked out in front’a faculty housing and called her dorm room. She was there at first but then she went out. I stayed in front of where you lived until midnight but she never came. She didn’t go home either.”
“Doesn’t that prove it’s not me?” John asked.
“It’s not you?” Arnold’s holy eyes bothered John. He imagined that a deity in such close proximity could obliterate a mortal soul.
There came a knock at the partially open door.
“Come in,” John said.
Willie Pepperdine stuck his head out past the door looking in.
“Should I come back?” he said.
“No. Mr. Ott and I have finished our meeting. Haven’t we, Arnold?”
“I, I guess.”
“Then if you’ll excuse me...”
Arnold’s steps had a wooden quality as he lurched toward the door. Willie stepped aside allowing the boxy, brooding, beautiful-eyed youth to go past.
When he was gone Willie closed the door and sat without asking.
“That kid looks like an explosion waiting to happen.”
“Hormones rage well into the twenties for young men.”
“He looks like a jilted lover. That virus can hit man or woman at any age.”
“What can I do for you, Willie?”
“It’s what I can do for you.”
“And that is?”
“I’d like to offer you, on behalf of the board of directors, one million dollars.”
John heard the words clearly but they failed to achieve meaning. It was like a familiar phrase in a foreign tongue that he barely knew.
“Come again?”
“It’s about the suit Mr. Farr has brought on your behalf.”
“And, and... and you want me to drop it?”
Willie smiled and nodded.
“It was a good countermove,” the self-described philosopher of currency acknowledged. “Eubanks has been begging the school to retain a lawyer for her defense.”
“Why not do it? I mean, that would cost a lot less than a million dollars.”
“If we won,” Willie allowed. “But if we associate ourselves with the case Farr could conceivably expand the suit to include the entire school. Our lawyers believe that he, you could win.”
“And so...” John stopped to appreciate the progression of the hour since the end of his class. “And so you’ll pay me a million dollars to save money?”
“We want the faculty to know we stand behind them. Refusing to retain representation would look bad.”
“So this is the path of least resistance.”
“Exactly.”
“A Platinum Path.”
“Precious,” Willie said with a smile.
“One million dollars.”
“It’s not as much as it used to be. A million dollars in today’s world is like a, a small nylon pillow on a business class cross-country flight.”
“Why’d you decide to audit my class, Mr. Pepperdine?”
“Because you are by far the most interesting lecturer at the school. We knew that years ago when President Luckfeld asked the regents to allow you the position.”
“The board okayed me?”
“They were impressed with your credentials. I was excited about your take on history itself. We all know that without a past there is no future but no scholar I knew of has said that by re-forming the past we change the future.”
John tried to wrap his mind around the immensity that Willie and Carlinda, Tamala and Arnold Ott had to offer.
“Keep your money, Willie,” he said.
“You’re going to continue with the suit?”
“I’ll call Buddy in the morning and tell him to drop it,” John said. “I’d call him right now but he goes to bed in the afternoon and gets to work at three in the morning. Says it’s a habit he developed working for farmers.”
“You’re going to drop a multimillion-dollar lawsuit just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Why?”
“It’s those cave fish.”
“The blind sturgeon?”
“Sometimes, when I can’t get to sleep because my mind is racing, I think about those fish gliding in cold water, knowing things no sighted creature could imagine. Just the thought exhilarates me and then, suddenly, I’m asleep. That was one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given. And you know I’ve led a fortunate life.”
Willie sat forward, elbows on knees, fingers laced together. Resting his sharp chin on the crest of knuckles he gazed into the young man’s eyes, slowly allowing a smile to form.
“You’re something else, Professor. I haven’t met many men who would turn down that kind of money.”
“I got what I need, Willie. I might not want it but I have it just the same.”
14
There was no recent reference to Lucia Napoli anywhere on the Internet, neither was she in any local area phone directory. John became a regular at the coffee shop but she never showed. His search was a daily, futile effort. He considered retaining a private detective from Phoenix but the name Napoli would almost certainly be associated with the New York investigation of Cornelius Jones and bring him to the attention of Colette Van Dyne née Margolis.