The Green Revolution (17 page)

“You're an economist. There must be a lot better jobs than this.”

“No doubt.” No doubt. Thelma had not understood the addictive power of academic discontent. Had his griping put it into her head that he wanted out of academic life? Find me a professor who doesn't sound as if he were the lead man in a Volga boatmen crew. He suggested that she read the dialogues of Plato. She preferred Stephen King.

It was after one of their four-alarm arguments that she stormed out of the house, jumped in the car, and tore down the driveway. He heard the crash from the kitchen, where he had gone for a beer. He stood very still, refusing to think what he was thinking. He carried the still unopened bottle of beer into the living room and looked out. The street looked like a demolition derby.

Thelma had been hit first by a northbound vehicle, and that sent her spinning into the path of a southbound vehicle. Rimini had stood at the window for minutes, transfixed. The sound of their argument seemed still to be echoing in the house. A neighbor put in a call to 911. Squad cars and ambulances came screaming. There was a traffic jam for miles in either direction. Rimini waited in the house until someone rang the doorbell.

*   *   *

At the wake, after the funeral, he had longed to tell someone how their marriage had ended. He accepted the inarticulate condolences of friends and colleagues. He realized he was regarded as a tragic figure. Who would understand that, under a minimum of sorrow and sadness, what he really felt was relief?

Now, all these years later, he told George Wintheiser how Thelma had died.

“Right in front of your house?”

“We'd just had an argument.”

The remark seemed not to register with George. But then he said, “All married people have arguments.”

“You, too?”

“I may get an annulment.”

“At least she remembers what brand of shoes you wear.”

“Yeah. Look, I'm giving you a chance to redeem yourself.”

“Redeem myself?”

“Consider what your talking to reporters stirred up. I've talked to my director at ESPN, and he likes the idea of a professor who is a former player defending the team on our channel. What do you say?”

Rimini was excited, and terrified. “Let me think about it.”

“It's too late. I already said you would do it.”

It helped to think it wasn't an act of free will. If he bombed, he could blame Wintheiser.

5

“First Lipschutz, now Roger,” Phil said solemnly when Jimmy Stewart arrived at the Knight apartment on campus.

“You think they're connected?”

“He has an office near Roger's.”

“Did you call there?”

“It's the first thing I did.”

“Well, as long as it's pointless, let's go have a look.”

They walked across campus. It was mottled with gold and brown leaves, but there were still many on the trees, providing a vision of loveliness that did not match Phil's mood. Going to Roger's office at least was doing something, however futile.

“No clue in the apartment?” Jimmy asked.

“None. I don't think he was there all night. I went to bed early.” And feeling no pain, but Jimmy probably guessed that.

“There are faculty offices down here?” Jimmy asked as they were going down the steps beside Brownson.

“Roger prefers it.”

“This has got to be one of the oldest buildings on campus.”

“I'm told it was once a convent.”

Jimmy said nothing to that. What was there to say?

The door was locked, but Phil used the key Roger had given him. “Just in case.”

The fear went through Jimmy that this might be the case Roger had had in mind. It was with trepidation that he unlocked Roger's office. He took a deep breath and entered, flicking on the light. He went to the desk and peered over it, half fearing to find the fallen Roger lying there. But the office was empty.

“Where's Lipschutz's office?”

They went down the hall to a door that was unlocked. This office, too, was empty, but it looked messed up in a way that suggested this was not its normal condition. The wastebasket was overturned; papers had slid from their piles on the desk.

“Looks like he left in a hurry.”

They went back to Roger's office to give the matter thought before they did anything else. They would have to make the rounds of everyone Roger knew, professors and students.

“Can I smoke in here?” Jimmy asked.

“Only if you light up. I'm going to call Father Carmody,” Phil said. He dialed the old priest's number at Holy Cross House.

Father Carmody answered in a hearty voice.

“Father, something terrible has happened,” Phil said without preamble.

“Tell me.”

“It's Roger. He's disappeared.”

“That would take some doing.”

“Father, I'm serious. Roger's gone, and Professor Lipschutz has disappeared as well.”

A slight pause. “You'd better come here so we can discuss what to do.”

“I have Jimmy Stewart with me.”

“Good, good. A wonderful man.”

Phil hung up. “He says you're a wonderful man.”

“Only my confessor knows for sure.”

It was the kind of remark that reminded Phil that he was surrounded by Catholics.

Jimmy just shrugged when he said so. “You could always join the football team, Phil.”

“He wants us to come to Holy Cross House.”

They were outside when Phil said this. Jimmy stopped. “You mean walk?”

“We could go back to the apartment and get my car.”

“That's as far as Holy Cross House.”

So they walked, two middle-aged men who needed the exercise but didn't enjoy it. On this walk they were silent in order to save their breath. When Holy Cross House came in sight, Phil had a stitch in his side and Jimmy was breathing with an open mouth.

*   *   *

Father Carmody came to the big bowed reception desk to fetch them. The little priest was brisk, bouncy, and seemingly pleased with himself.

“Father,” Phil began, but the priest held up a staying hand.

“We'll talk in my room.”

Down the hall, then, where Father Carmody pushed his door open and went inside. Phil and Jimmy followed.

Roger was enthroned in the center of a sofa, a book in his hand, a beautiful view of the lake from the window he faced.

“Phil!” he cried and made a rocking motion in preparation for getting up.

“No, don't.” He put a hand on Roger's shoulder and felt a great wave of tenderness go through him. That was soon followed by anger. “Have you been here all the time?”

“Well, since last evening.”

“You didn't call! You didn't tell me where you were!”

Father Carmody intervened. “That was at my suggestion, Phil.”

“Even so,” Roger said. “You're a detective. I thought you would figure it out.”

6

The network television crew was staying in a motel on 31, but their trucks were parked next to the stadium, where they had been throughout the season, it being more economical to just leave them there. Inside, technicians were at work and the directors confronted a huge console with a dozen or more screens. On one of them, Piero Macklin was testing field locations. He moved around as he talked, bobbing and weaving, like a boxer, like a dancer.

“Switch to Betty Boop.”

This seemed to be their name for the female analyst who tossed her head, made love to the camera, and talked a mile a minute. Back to Piero then.

On one of the screens, there was an image of George Wintheiser, waiting patiently, silent. Beside him sat a nervous Professor Rimini.

“Where is he?” Jimmy asked.

“The press box.”

Everything pointed to George Wintheiser. His wife, Pearl, had called to tell them her husband wore Stromberg shoes. Not an indictable offense, and Jimmy didn't want to rock the boat until he had more than the word of an obviously estranged wife. Then Larry Douglas had come in and put a plastic bag on Jimmy's desk and sat, smiling from Dumbo ear to Dumbo ear.

“What's this?”

“A present.”

Jimmy looked in the bag. Shoes. Strombergs.

“Look inside them.”

Jimmy looked and saw the name George Wintheiser.

“You been breaking and entering?”

“Let me tell you how I got hold of those.”

Jimmy listened. He owed the kid that much at least. So it was as much dumb luck as anything that Larry had got hold of them, but nonetheless here were the shoes that matched the prints taken from the putting green and from the ground around the ball washer on the first tee. They went together, he and Larry, to the evidence room to confirm the match.

“He must have run up those stairs, down the mall, then stopped and took off his shoes and threw them in a trash barrel.”

“Why would he do that?”

“We'll have to ask him.”

We. Fair enough. He took Larry along when he went to have a talk with George Wintheiser. At the motel, they learned that the crew was at the stadium. Jimmy told himself that the campus was Larry's turf, he wasn't doing him any favors, but the truth was he was proud of Larry. Jimmy should have paid more attention to the story about the two women on the cleanup crew. When he dismissed them from his thoughts, it was with the notion that they couldn't tell him anything that he didn't already know.

They rose in the elevator to the top, coming out into a large reception area off which the descending levels of the press box opened. George Wintheiser was talking at the camera now. Jimmy went down to him, got his attention, and showed him his ID. The big man looked at it, nodded, and went on talking. When he was done, he swung his chair toward Jimmy.

“We found your shoes.”

“How did you know they were missing?” He thought a moment. “You?” he asked the nervous bald man beside him.

“I swear to God,” said Rimini.

“Tell them,” Wintheiser urged.

Jimmy said, “I'd rather hear it from you.”

“Someone stole a pair of my shoes. They have my name in them. You say you found them?”

“I want you to come downtown where we can talk at leisure.”

“Downtown.”

“To my office.”

Wintheiser looked at Jimmy as if he must be kidding. “You're arresting me because someone stole my shoes?”

“No one's arresting anyone. I just want to talk.”

Wintheiser thought about it. After a minute, he pressed a button and announced, “Look, I have an errand to do. Any need for me to stick around?”

A voice as if from the heavens told him he could go. He turned to Rimini. “It's up to you.”

When he stood up, Jimmy saw that he was wearing shoes just like the pair Larry had brought downtown.

*   *   *

About an hour later, George Wintheiser decided to take the advice Jimmy had given him at the outset. First he called the network, taking down what they told him. Then he made a call to a local lawyer, Alex Cholis, who soon arrived and went into conference with his client, after which Wintheiser answered Jimmy's questions.

“A pair of shoes,” Cholis said with a sad smile. Jimmy expected the lawyer to wag a disapproving finger.

“With George Wintheiser's name in them.”

“They're custom made,” George said.

Cholis ignored his client. “How did you come into possession of these shoes?” Jimmy had them on his desk, huge, not as shiny as the ones Wintheiser now wore, but obviously well made and expensive. Jimmy reviewed what Larry Douglas had learned.

“One of your men?”

“He's in Notre Dame campus security.”

“Not one of your men.”

Cholis would not have had the reputation he did if he couldn't get half an hour's diversion out of that. Had Douglas made a report? How was anyone to know whether what he had told Jimmy was true or false?

“There are the shoes,” Jimmy said patiently. He liked Cholis. Everybody liked Cholis. That was how he got through your defenses.

“Indeed they are. Shoes with the name of my client in them. But what on earth significance do they have?”

Jimmy reviewed what had happened last Sunday morning on campus: the cleaning crew, the discovery of the body of Ignatius Willis on the putting green. Cholis nodded through the recital with an approving smile, as if he might prompt Jimmy if needed.

“Very good. Very good. Now what connection is there between those shoes and the suicide found on the putting green?”

“There were footprints that match these shoes, on the green and at the first tee, where the towel from the ball washer was missing.”

“The towel from the ball washer was missing,” Cholis repeated with obvious delight.

His major point had been slipped in like a stiletto. The suicide on the putting green. If that was how Willis had died, they could find footprints all over the campus, they could find them on the body itself, and it would make no difference.

Jacuzzi, the prosecutor, was sitting in. He wanted to see Cholis in action. He still didn't know if they had any kind of crime here.

“The verdict of suicide is not firm.”

“Either he committed suicide or he didn't. If he did, you are wasting my time and my client's.”

“You know Feeney,” Jacuzzi said.

“Ah.”

“He thinks it might possibly have been suicide.”

Cholis threw up his hands. “Gentlemen, this has been most interesting. My client and I are now going to leave.” He turned and looked sadly at Jacuzzi. “Did you encourage them in this, Emile?”

The two lawyers went off down the hall, chattering away. George Wintheiser stopped in the doorway before following them.

“Can I take my shoes?”

“Not yet,” Jimmy said.

He was relieved when Wintheiser left. If he had just walked over, picked up his shoes, and gone, there wouldn't have been a thing Jimmy could have done about it. It had been a miserable performance. He felt like an idiot—and he blamed Larry Douglas.