Kathryn Cohan was not in her office. A secretary told him that she might be attending a faculty meeting at McNiel Hall.
McCall checked the front office for Perry Eastman’s address and was just stepping out into the corridor when he heard a crash of glass. A coed walking by shrieked and broke into a run.
A man came running up the hall. McCall stopped him. “What’s going on?”
“They’ve started again!”
McCall stepped across broken glass. Students were boiling around the entrance to the administration building; all he could see were enraged faces and gaping mouths. They were shouting obscenities. They wheeled like a stampeding herd of range cattle and started back across the campus.
The man McCall had stopped in the hall joined him on the steps.
“I’m Dean Gunther’s assistant,” the man said nervously. “You’re Mr. McCall, down from the capital, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve just had to call for the regular police, Mr. McCall.”
“What’s this one about?”
“What’s it ever about? They want to run the college! If I were in charge, I’d kick the lot of ’em the hell out.”
At this moment President Wade came out of the building, looking hunted. He paused on the steps and stood there helplessly. He did not notice McCall.
A group of students separated themselves from the crowds and began silently to form ranks. They were all blacks. They broke into a run, shouting.
McCall turned to Gunther’s assistant.
“Where’s McNiel Hall?”
“You don’t want to go over there, Mr. McCall. That’s the center of the trouble. There must be a thousand students there trying to tear the place down.”
“Where is it?”
The man told him.
McCall left on the run. He soon had to slow to a walk, using his shoulders, slipping through the shrieking crowds. There were man-to-man fights all over the place. It had the looks of something nasty, all right.
McNiel Hall was a round arena-like building. It was under attack from students hiding behind the thick privet hedges bordering the building. They were hurling rocks at the windows. Wherever McCall looked he saw broken glass.
The campus police were taking shelter in the entrance to the Hall. They were largely middle-aged men; some were white-haired.
“Pig meat!” screamed the students.
One grizzled cop broke his cool. He lunged down the steps, waving his billy. A strapping student in a white sweater rose from nowhere and slugged him in the face. The man fell over with a bleeding mouth and began to scramble away. The student kicked him in the rump, laughing. Then he went back to throwing rocks.
McCall suddenly spied Damon Wilde leading a group toward the entrance, evidently to storm it. He kept waving them on, shouting encouragement.
Then McCall heard the sirens, and a moment later police cars roared into view.
It was miraculous how quickly the campus turned from crashing chaos to peace. The Tisquanto police piled out of their cars with their riot guns and tear gas and plunged into an immediately ambling, quiet student body. The group headed by Damon Wilde simply melted into the crowd.
Their discipline impressed McCall. The police mingled with innocent-looking students, baffled. There were no targets for their clubs and canisters. Everybody moved away from McNiel Hall as if a rally had been called, held and concluded. The most curious murmur, an almost silence, settled over the campus. It seemed to say, “We have the power to exercise — or not — as we see fit.”
Behind the almost-silence lay a threat.
It became evident to McCall that Damon Wilde was a force to be reckoned with; he must certainly be one of the inner ring of the student rebellion leadership. He was an articulate, directed young man with clear ideas and a strategic sense. By contrast Dennis Sullivan was a disjointed sophomore. McCall sensed that Sullivan was a follower, on the periphery of the unrest, being swung along with the rest.
McCall turned back toward the administration building. The way the students had turned meek and mild at the appearance of the regular police disturbed him almost more than their previous violence. This thing is organized, he thought. Today they preached a sermon; tomorrow they might call for blood.
As he slid under the wheel of his car, McCall thought of Kathryn Cohan and wondered if she had been inside McNiel Hall during the trouble, and how frightened she must have been. By God, I’m feeling protective! he thought, and hastily turned to thoughts of Perry Eastman, next on his list, and what he would be like. Would young Eastman offer a lead?
McCall drove away longing for a cigarette.
12
He drew up to a four-storied brick building with a patchy lawn in front and three diseased elms. The building looked dirty and old, like a skid-row derelict. It was only two blocks from Floyd Gunther’s house. The contrast in neighborhoods was depressing.
Someone was playing Bach as rendered by the Swingle Singers. Well, that was one thing in the joint’s favor.
About to mount to the porch, McCall glanced over a rusty iron railing and saw a door under the porch marked “1.” Number one was Perry Eastman’s apartment.
Basement affluence.
He went on down. The Bach became louder. Dirty windowpanes were darkened further by heavy drapes. He heard laughter that sounded hysterical.
There was a brass knocker on the door in the shape of a naked girl. McCall lifted the girl and rapped her backside against the panel.
“Entrez!” a man’s voice said.
McCall opened the door and stepped into a cavern-like place, shadow-filled from candles that burned everywhere. One huge brass candelabrum before a yellow-brick fireplace was taller than McCall. Posters covered the walls; a heady incense filled the room, but it did not entirely blot out the acrid odor of marijuana. The incense was curling lazily from a brass Indian urn on the mantelpiece, at least five sticks’ worth. The pixillated Bach was coming out of a cheap record player.
“Bet you’re McCall. Sure. I saw you in the dean’s office. So you’re here in my pad. So be it. The moment of truth, eh?”
Eastman, who was on his spine in a cracked red leather chair, wavered to his feet. He looked more than ever like a slat, and he was in the same pullover and tight jeans he had worn the day before. He badly needed a shave, and his long hair had not felt a comb for a week. It occurred to McCall that he might have been up all night.
Eastman took a step toward McCall, bowing. He almost fell. He was obviously high. McCall quickly glanced over by the chair. An ashtray held a smoldering butt that, from the odor, was marijuana. And from the looks of his eyes he might also have been using crystals, or methedrine. McCall did not admire speed freaks. They were notoriously unreliable and might explode like land mines. “I’ve seen the papers,” Eastman said. “Gunther... it’s a crusher, man. Y’know? The dean wasn’t a bad deal, just square. And this business of Laura and Lady G and all. It grabs you, doesn’t it? I mean, we have so much to contend with at ’Squanto, we hardly need murder and beating up on chicks. Do we, Mr. McCall?”
Eastman was tripping, all right. He spoke and moved dreamily. He stepped over to the mantel, took down huge round sunglasses, put them on.
“Now I can see you, Mr. McCall. Won’t you sit down?”
There was a chair, and McCall sat down. Eastman kept moving as if he were wading through surf.
“You no doubt want to know all about me, and why not? What is more absorbing than the study of man? Essentially, Perry Eastman — that’s me — deals in truth, Mr. McCall. The basics. A, B, and C. The foundation that props us, the motivations that afflict us. Truth is a mighty hard thing to come by. You ever really try to dig it, Mr. McCall? Prolly you’re the type who might dig me. But it’s a fact, people don’t dig that even when we think we’re speaking truth we’re glossing it over. What does McLuhan say? I forget. The hell with McLuhan.”