Hush Money (3 page)

“So,” Hawk said when we were through. “Nobody actually claims to have seen Robinson and the Lamont kid together in any romantic fashion except these two professors.”

I looked at my photocopy of Belson’s report.

“Lillian Temple,” I said, “and Amir Abdullah.”

“Amir,” Hawk said.

He was looking at a squirrel who kept skittering closer to us, and rearing up and not getting anything to eat and looking as outraged as squirrels get to look.

“You know Amir?” I said.

“Yeah, I do,” Hawk said.

“Tell me about him,” I said. A man in an oversized double-breasted suit walked by eating peanuts from a bag.

“Gimme one of your peanuts, please,” Hawk said.

The man in the big suit looked flustered and said, “Sure,” and held the bag out to Hawk. Hawk took a peanut out and said, “Thank you.” Big Suit smiled uncomfortably and walked on. Hawk gave the peanut to the squirrel and then said again, “Amir.”

I waited.

“Amir embarrassed as hell he didn’t grow up poor. And he embarrassed as hell he lived where there was white folks and he been working for the Yankee dollar all his life.”

“Most of us do,” I said.

“But Amir, he never had no ghetto to drag himself out of, and been treated decent by all the white folks he met along the way, and he got a scholarship and then he got another one and he got a nice middle-class income and now he got a Ph.D. and he can’t stand it.”

“Poor devil,” I said.

“So to make up,” Hawk said, “Amir so down even I don’t understand him when he talk.”

“So he’ll be really pleased to help me with this investigation,” I said.

“Can’t hide the fact that you a blue-eyed devil, but I maybe talk to him with you,” Hawk said. “Give you some, ah, authenticity.”

The aggressive squirrel returned and looked at Hawk, sitting up on its hind legs, balancing on its disproportionate tail.

“Give a squirrel a peanut and you feed him for a moment,” I said. “But teach him to grow peanuts…”

“You and Amir going to get along so good,” Hawk said. “Can’t wait to watch.”

“How about Ms. Temple,” I said, “I don’t suppose you know her.”

“How I going to know her?” Hawk said.

“Well, for a while you were running a sub-specialization in female professors,” I said. “She coulda been one of them.”

“Good-looking female professors,” Hawk said.

“How do you know Prof. Temple isn’t good-looking?”

“Don’t,” Hawk said. “But the odds are with me.”

“Just because she’s an academic?” I said.

“Where she live?” Hawk said.

I checked my notes. “Cambridge,” I said.

Hawk smiled.

“Well, it doesn’t actually prove she’s not a looker,” I said.

Hawk continued to smile.

“This is bigotry,” I said. “You’re generalizing based on profession and residence.”

“Yowzah,” Hawk said.

“She might be a beauty,” I said.

“What you figure the chances of that are?” Hawk said.

I shrugged.

“Slim and none,” I said.

Hawk smiled more widely.

KC’s apartment was neat enough, but it had been built for the builder’s profit. The doors were hollow core. The finish work was minimal, mostly quarter round molding. The floors were plywood, covered wall to wall with inexpensive tan carpeting which didn’t wear well, but showed the dirt easily. The furniture was fresh from the warehouse at Chuck’s Rent-All, Everything for the Home.

“Well,” KC said when I introduced myself, “so that’s what you look like.”

“This is it,” I said.

“Susan spoke of you a lot, but I never knew what you looked like.”

“But from the way she talked, you were picturing Adonis,” I said.

“I guess,” she said. “Come on in.”

KC was wearing a man-tailored white shirt and blue jeans. She was amazingly good-looking. Thick black hair worn a little too long, large green eyes, wide mouth, flawless skin.

“You are so nice to come by,” she said when we were sitting in her ugly living room. “How about a nice cup of coffee, or a drink? Do private eyes drink before lunch? I have some vodka.”

“I don’t need anything,” I said. “Tell me about your problem.”

“Oh boy, all business,” she said.

She was sitting on the couch with her feet tucked up under her. I sat across in an uncomfortable barrel-shaped gray plush armchair.

“Well,” I said, “not
all
business.”

She smiled brilliantly. There was something about her that seemed to require flirtation. And when the requirement was filled, it pleased her.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” she said.

“So how about the harassment?” I said.

“The son of a bitch won’t give up,” she said. “Can you make him stop?”

“The son of a bitch being whom?”

“Burt, the bastard – I hope you don’t mind swearing, I can’t help it, I have a terrible mouth.”

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Burt is your husband?”

“Ex-husband,” she said.

“And you know he’s doing this?”

“Who else.” She leaned forward and her voice became a little girl’s. “Could you beat him up for me?”

She had more affect than a Miss America contestant. Her voice went from contralto to soprano in an easy glissade. Her eyes widened and narrowed as she spoke. Everything she said, she dramatized. She went from seductress to child in an exhale. I was willing to bet she’d cry before I left. I was pretty sure she could cry at will.

“We’ll see,” I said. “Could anyone else be harassing you?”

She cast her eyes down.

“No,” she said softly. “Who else but Burt would have any reason?”

“Tell me about your boyfriend,” I said.

She kept her eyes downcast and was silent. It was a pose, but I didn’t think it was an insincere one. In fact I didn’t find her insincere at all. Rather she seemed to have been playing this role, whatever it was, for so long, that she probably didn’t have any idea when she was sincere and when she wasn’t.

“I can’t talk about him,” she said.

“Why not?” I said.

She raised her head and she was angry, or seemed to be.

“I’m not hiring you to cross-examine me.”

“You’re not hiring me at all, yet,” I said. “This is foreplay. See if we like each other.”

“You only work for people you like?”

“I only work for people I want to,” I said.

She smiled suddenly. It was quite spectacular.

“You’ll want to work for me,” she said.

“So what about the boyfriend?”

The smile went away.

“Must you?”

“‘Fraid so,” I said.

“Is it confidential?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “But it’s not privileged.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you hired me through your attorney,” I said, “under certain circumstances what you told him, and he told me, could be privileged. As it stands now, I won’t tell anyone, but it is not privileged. If it is information required by the police in the course of an investigation, or a prosecutor in the course of a trial, then if I’m asked I have to tell.”

“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.

“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?”

The strain of talking like a homeboy was palpable in Abdullah, you could tell he had to rephrase things in his head so he wouldn’t sound like Clarence Thomas. Leaning against the wall, Hawk looked like he was fighting a yawn.

“You caught me,” I said. “Actually I know you’re on the tenure committee of the English department, I guess I was really wondering why you don’t have an office there.”

“Ain’t my business solvin‘ yo’ problems,” Abdullah said.

“Of course not,” I said. “You ever see Robinson Nevins in a sexual circumstance with the late Prentice Lamont?”

“You ain’t no cop,” Abdullah said.

“How can you be sure?”

“You’da hassled me when you came in.”

“Private cop,” I said.

“And him.” Abdullah nodded at Hawk.

“Amir,” Hawk said. “You refer to me as ‘him’ again and I will slap your skinny ass around this office like a handball.”

Hawk’s voice was calm and his diction was better than Tony Blair’s. Abdullah flushed. He was so light that it was visible.

“Only way you talk to a brother like that, is if you a damned Tom,” Abdullah said.

Without a word Hawk stepped toward Abdullah, who flinched back involuntarily behind his desk.

“Hawk,” I said. “It won’t get us what we’re after.”

Standing directly at Abdullah’s desk, Hawk kept his eyes on Abdullah.

“No white man calls me nigger,” Hawk said quietly, “no black man calls me Tom.”

He leaned across the desk and grabbed a handful of Abdullah’s saffron robes. Abdullah screeched for help and several of the hard young men in dark suits came dashing down the corridor. Hawk slapped Abdullah across the face forehand and backhand, hard enough to rock his head back. Abdullah was all skinny arms and legs scrambling to get away. Hawk slapped him again as the first of the hard young men rushed into the room. Hawk dropped Abdullah, turned, and flattened the hard young man with a left hook. Three more crowded through the door. I took in a deep breath and let it out, and hit one of them on the back of his neck behind his right ear, and the fight was on. There were four of them and two of us, but one of us was Hawk and one of us was me, and they had Abdullah on their side. Having Abdullah on your side was like subtracting one, so the fight was almost even. The young men were all aficionados of some sort of Asian fighting technique, at which they were technically skilled. But they’d used it mostly to frighten college kids and intimidate professors. By the time the university cops arrived, the fight was over, we had won, and the militant Professor Abdullah was trying to crawl out of his office door from behind his desk, before Hawk got hold of him again.

“He assaulted me,” Abdullah shrieked to the first cop through the door. “He assaulted me.”

The university cops were followed in pretty close order by a couple of Boston cops, one of whom I knew. The university cops wanted to arrest us, but I explained what I was doing there and swore that Abdullah had started it, and the Boston cop that I knew interceded and eventually Hawk and I walked, though we were to stay close in case Abdullah pressed charges.

When we left the university police station we headed for the Harbor Health Club. After Henry Cimoli had stopped fighting, and before he opened what at that time he’d called a gym, on the waterfront, he’d worked corners for a while as a cut man. I had a cut under my eye, and a puffy lip and the knuckles on my left hand were scraped and swollen. Hawk had a black eye and a cut on his bald scalp that bled a lot. We needed Henry’s repair service.

“Well,” I said, “a fine mess you got us into this time, Ollie.”

“He hurt my feelings,” Hawk said.

He was pressing a folded paper towel against the cut on his head.

“You don’t have feelings,” I said. “I’ve heard blacks call you Tom, and whites call you nigger, and for all you cared they could have been singing ‘Louie, Louie.’”

“I know.”

“And all of a sudden you have a NO-BLACK-MAN-CALLS-ME-TOM fit and we’re fighting four martial arts freaks.”

“I know. Done good too,” he said. “Didn’t we.”

“We’re supposed to,” I said. “What was all that wounded pride crap.”

Hawk grinned.

“Scrawny fucker annoyed me,” Hawk said.

“Well, of course he did,” I said.

“Hate phonies,” Hawk said.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s the right thing to do. But if it comes up again, could you hate them on your time?”

Atlantic Avenue was generously dug up and intricately de-toured as the Central Artery project lumbered ahead. I pulled in and parked in among some heavy equipment near the Harbor Health Club.

“Can’t promise nothing,” Hawk said.