War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel (27 page)

“Let me come to you,” he said, and no amount of argument would change his mind.

Jimmy wasn’t happy with me.
H
e had planned
an entire
day
of sightseeing New Haven places that could only be reached by car and spending time doing “things” that he wouldn’t describe.

I told him that we’d be able to start as soon as the professor left. Even if the professor gave us tips as to where Daniel might be, I wasn’t about to follow up on them with Jimmy at my side.

Professor Whickam arrived about a half hour after we spoke on the phone.
He drove a brand-new Ford station wagon that he kept so clean it looked like it was never used.
I watched him get out of the car.
He was a bald, lanky man who wore loose-fitting white cotton clothes that made him seem vaguely counterculture.

As he scanned the rooms looking for mine, I opened the door.
“Professor Whickam?”

He seemed surprised at my appearance.
His gaze ran up and down my khakis and short-sleeved shirt.
Jimmy peered out next to me, startling Whickam further.

“I’m Bill Grimshaw,” I said. “This is my son, Jim.”

Whickam came closer, extended his hand, and introduced himself, although it wasn’t necessary.
His accent was very faint but noticeable.
I couldn’t quite tell its origin, but the softened consonants led me to believe he was either from Europe or from one of the Caribbean islands.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I thought you were some kind of professional investigator.
I did not realize that you were a family man.”

“Professional investigators can be family men,” I said with a smile.
“Until I got here, I actually thought this would be an easy search.
I had hoped to have a bit of a vacation with Jim after we found Daniel, but it’s not proving that easy.”

“I do understand.” Whickam stood awkwardly in the doorway. The warmth of the early afternoon floated in on the breeze.

“Come on in,” I said, indicating the chair beside the table.

Whickam sat.
Jimmy crawled onto his bed and leaned back, closing his eyes like we had discussed. I figured it might be easier for Whickam to talk if he thought Jimmy was dozing.

I took the chair across from Whickam.
I told him a modified version of my search for Daniel, leaving out some of the more graphic details, but not sparing the Yale administrators in any way.
Then I told him that I had tracked Daniel through a series of apartments, with one left to check.

“Where is it?” Whickam asked. “I’ll go with you.”

“I wish I knew,” I said. “It’s a place called the Barn.”

He blinked.
“I have never heard of this place.”

“Neither have most people.
I’m tracking it down now.”
I leaned back.
I hadn’t told him that I knew Rhondelle was missing.
“A number of people told me that Daniel and Rhondelle were an item.
I was wondering if you knew where she was.
I figure if I can find her, she might lead me to Daniel.”

Whickam ran a hand across his mouth.
For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to tell me about his missing daughter.

“I have not seen Rhondelle since Christmas,” he said.
“She left just after the break, telling me she was headed back to Vassar, but she never arrived.
In fact, she hadn’t even registered for the semester.
I didn’t discover this for weeks, and by then I had no way to find her.
I have been looking.
I have hired a private detective in Poughkeepsie who charges a small fortune and tells me nothing.
My wife has gone to every fair and festival within a two-day radius.
She looks through the crowds of young people, hoping to see Rhondelle. I spend my own vacation time searching.
But I cannot find her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

He raised his chin.
“She is our only child, and we are frightened for her.
She has not been the same since that incident this fall.”

“I had heard that it was nothing more than threats.”

“Perhaps to people who were not there.” Whickam glanced at Jimmy, then back at me, apparently satisfied that Jim wasn’t paying attention.
Still, Whickam lowered his voice. “Rhondelle would not talk to me about it.
The one time we did speak of it, she demanded that I quit my job at the fascist university.
That is what she called it.
Just last summer, she hoped to be
transferred
here.
Those boys damaged her somehow, but no one will tell me exactly how.
Even Danny, he says to me,
‘
Professor, I took care of it, you need not worry.
’
As if a father cannot help but worry.”

He twisted his hands together.
I tried not to look at them, long and thin and manicured.

“How well did you know Daniel?” I asked.

“How well does any father know his daughter’s boyfriend?
I had seen him at school.
He was in my first-year French seminars, very driven, quite focused.
He learned quickly and never seemed out of line — at least, not until his second year.
There is such anger in him, Mr. Grimshaw.
I fear for my daughter if she is with him.”

“Do you think he’d harm her?”

Whickam folded his hands together, almost as if he were offering up a prayer.
“The police, they say he nearly ripped that boy apart.”

“That boy hurt your daughter,” I said.

“Yes, I probably would have attacked him as well.
But it takes a particular kind of man to so damage another, does it not?”

It did.
A man who felt a very deep rage and had finally found an outlet for it. But I saw that rage differently than Whickam did.
From what I had heard, Daniel had suffered humiliations at Yale he had never faced before.
I suspected the attack on Rhondelle — particularly by legacy students and rich kids — had
finally
broken Daniel.

“I am concerned,” Whickam was saying.
“No one has told me the entire story, so I do not know if that young man’s injuries are justified or if they are some kind of overreaction on Daniel’s part.”

“How did Rhondelle act around Daniel afterwards?”

Whickam waved a hand, then shook his head.
“My daughter, she is in love with him. To her, he can do no wrong.”

“Did you search for her here in New Haven?”

“She went to Vassar,” he said.

“So that’s a no?” I asked. “You haven’t looked here in New Haven.”

“If she were in New Haven, why wouldn’t she come home? We made flyers.
We even put an announcement in the paper. Why wouldn’t she come forward?”

I didn’t know how to answer that.
Rhondelle had never been my focus.
But I had some difficult things to say to her father now.

“In the last few days, I’ve encountered a number of people who said that Rhondelle and Daniel were together and living in various apartments in New Haven.”

“I would have seen her.”

“She probably knew how to avoid you,” I said.

“Why do you insist on telling me that my daughter would not come home?” he asked.

“I’m wondering if there was another incident over Christmas, perhaps a break within the family, maybe even a fight over Daniel.”

Whickam shook his head.
“Daniel was always well behaved in our home, although my wife asked him not to discuss politics.
His attitudes offended her.”

“But not you?”

Whickam gave me a small smile.
“I grew up in Paris.
People there, they argue about all things.
It is a form of entertainment.”

“You’re French, then?” I asked.

“I am American, born to American parents, raised in France because my parents believed in equality.
They could not receive it here, so they joined the expatriate community.
They will never come back.”

“But you’re here.”

He nodded, extended his arms, and looked around.
“I am here, a college professor at an Ivy League school.
Well respected, well treated, things my parents did not have and could not have.”

“I’ve run into discrimination in New Haven,” I said.

“I am not saying it does not exist,” Whickam said.
“But here it is more of a class issue than a race issue.”

“That’s not what the black students say. I understand they formed their own group to protect their rights.”

“To expand their rights,” Whickam said. “They do not realize they are a part of the international community, that they must learn about all culture, white and black and any other color you might designate.”

That sounded like a canned speech.
I wondered if he had given it to Daniel.
“Has Rhondelle lived here her whole life?”

“She has spent most summers with her grandparents in Paris,” he said.
“But she was born at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She is truly a local girl.
That is why I have trouble believing that no one would come to me if they had seen her in town.”

“Let me give you the addresses,” I said. “The second is in the Hill.
You probably don’t want to go to either alone.
But the first is in a neighborhood not far from Yale.
Check it out.
Then we can talk.”

I wrote down the addresses and the few names I had learned. I slid the slip of paper toward him.
He studied it for a moment, then folded it and put it in his pocket.

“Did your private detective look for her here?” I asked.

“He did work by phone,” Whickam said. “He wanted to come, but I assured him she couldn’t be here.
I would have seen her.”

He put extra emphasis on those last five words.
He was wedded to his denial.

“Would you mind bringing me a picture of Rhondelle?” I asked.
“Maybe I was mistaking her for someone else.”

He smiled, then nodded once, a courtly gesture.
“I shall bring several.
I have one of her with Daniel from the holidays that I might part with.
Perhaps that will help as well.”

Whickam touched the folded slip of paper in his pocket.
“Do you believe that my daughter is here with Daniel?”

“I believe they were together as recently as April,” I said.

“What could they be doing that would cause her to give up her life, her future?”

“I don’t know,” I said quietly. “When I called you, I had hoped you could tell me.”

TWENTY-FIVE

After Whickam left, I woke Jimmy and we drove to the Green to meet Malcolm He had had a more successful day than I had.
When we met him on the Green, he came with three separate addresses for the Barn, all of them vague and none of them in Branford.
He also discovered other rumors, the most common being that Daniel and his group had left New Haven in May, after the Black Panthers had been arrested for murder.

The conflicting rumors on Daniel’s departure all agreed on one other thing: that he had taken the group to the center of “imperialistic capitalism” in the United States.
I certainly hoped that wasn’t true, because tracking Daniel in New Haven was difficult, but tracking him in New York would be almost impossible.

We decided that Malcolm would have the van the next day.
He would drive past all three addresses, see which if any of them looked like the Barn, and let me know. He would also see if he could track down the New York rumor, and maybe get some kind of address.

* * *

An early morning phone call changed my plans.
After he had left me, Professor Whickam had gone to the row house and learned that his daughter had indeed been in New Haven.
Then he had gone to his office at Yale, looked up Daniel’s file, and gotten Grace’s phone number.
Whickam called Grace, and she had spoken highly of me.

Whickam wanted to meet me at the motel.
I told him I would be downtown, and he offered to meet me in front of the Beinecke Library.
When I suggested his office instead, he said no.
He would rather talk with me away from the prying ears of his secretary.

The Beinecke Library was somewhere between York and Grove Streets.
Jimmy and I wandered until we found it—an astonishingly ugly building that looked like it had been made of pap
i
er
-
m
â
ch
é
and glue.
It had no
exterior windows
and seemed like some architect
ure
student’s semester project.