by JJ Partridge
“These were blowin’ around early this morning outside the Refectory. With this wind, even with them soppin’ wet, they were all over the place before Security was alerted and we picked them up. No idea how they got there or who produced them.”
We fingered our copies. Jesse Kingdom is Providence’s Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or Martin Luther King, depending on your outlook, and W.A.R., Kingdom’s We’re Against Racism organization, has long been a hair shirt for Sonny Russo and Chief McCarthy, even more so after the ugliness of last August’s night of violence in mostly black South Providence. With bullhorn in hand, surrounded by belligerent supporters, Jesse Kingdom’s rallies and speeches decried Sonny’s and his police department’s “record of shame”: discrimination, brutality, racism, and the bullying of minorities. Kingdom had entered into our crisis early on, denouncing the Providence cops as incapable of “finding their own behinds with both hands when it came to a white man attacking black women.” The announcement of a Kingdom rally on our campus at the invitation of the Black Student Caucus had infuriated Sonny and he let it be known, through a call from Puppy Dog to me, that he viewed it as nothing less than a “hostile act” by the President and the University.
“The Reverend sure has enemies,” Puppy Dog said, addressing the Provost. “Violence breeds violence. As I said to you earlier, Artemus, the Mayor wants you to consider postponing Kingdom’s appearance until everything calms down. You’re inviting trouble. Why take the huge risk of letting him rile up your students? They’re already worked up and when he shows up with his rabble-rousers, there’ll be an explosion. You watch!” When the Provost didn’t even flick an eyelid, Puppy Dog shrugged, picked up his raincoat, and stood. “Our men are stretched as it is, and if it gets unruly ....” The sentence ended in a weary rasp.
Loose translation: You want our help, then cancel Jesse Kingdom. The bullying had been so blatant that it even got to the Provost. “I don’t think we have to go that far, Leon,” he said slowly and almost dismissively. “In any event, we expect the police to take it seriously.” He tapped his finger on his copy of the flyer and addressed Tuttle. “Make sure Reverend Kingdom is informed about this, whatever it’s supposed to mean, in case he wants to postpone—”
McAllister thrust a flyer across the table at Puppy Dog and barked, “Are you going to ignore this?”
Puppy Dog responded as though addressing a not very bright child. “Oh, let’s not overreact! God knows where it came from. Some crank, no doubt.” A cunning expression crept into his face. “Of course, people like Jesse Kingdom love the publicity of a threat. Know what I mean? Creates sympathy.”
I thought McAllister was going to lose it. He pushed back his chair as though to reach over the table and grab his nemesis by the throat, prompting Puppy Dog to snatch a flyer off the table and take a backwards step toward the hall. “I’ll bring this … threat…”—his eyebrows rose in a question—“… personally to Chief McCarthy” and with that, he smirked at the Provost, nodded to me, ignored McAllister and Tuttle, and left us.
Nobody spoke. Sometimes, in the aftermath of a situation like this, you wonder if you should give voice to your inner thoughts or you should best ignore that which you have to ignore. The Provost decided the issue.
“What a jerk!” he said, wearily. A smile played at the corner of his lips—that was about as much as you could ever get from him—and disappeared as he said, “Look, this isn’t easy. Like it or not, we’ve got to keep communications open with City Hall.” He took off his glasses, found a handkerchief, breathed on the lenses, and methodically began to polish them. “I don’t see a lot of options. We’ve had Security on overtime, patrols everywhere, buddy-up programs, escorts, what else is there? We can’t get into their apartments. We can’t protect everybody all the time, and certainly not someone who dropped out of here!” He paused for a moment and, maybe, there was a trace of a sigh. “But, we move on. The President has ruled out closing down. Meanwhile, we’ve got to get ahead of the reaction—”
“We shouldn’t assume it was The Stalker,” I offered.
The Provost put his glasses back on and joined the others in their puzzled expressions.
“They’re looking for a boyfriend, too ....” I glanced at Tuttle, who nodded. “It was Friday night, not Saturday night. And, as important as anything else, she’s not black! This is different ....” Tuttle began another affirmative nod but stopped, hesitant about going too far with me. “We’ve got to have a response. Sure. But let’s not make the message self-fulfilling.”
Even as my words were spoken, I recognized they sounded hollow and disingenuous. The killer had to be The Stalker. It had only been a matter of time for his rampage to reach the level of a death. Why did I get this far on a limb?
My assertion, however, struck a chord with the Provost. He left his chair, a familiar move at prescient moments in his meetings, and walked behind me to face the window, his hands linked behind his back. After at least a long pause, he turned and said, “I agree. We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, even if turns out to be The Stalker. What we put out to the campus and in the President’s statement for the media and the Crier should be consistent with what we know, not what we might assume. And we need a show of security today and tonight, Bill, especially in and near the women’s dorms and at the Refectory. Dwayne, you have to get to the off-campus kids …, e-mail, calls, visits, whatever you have to do.”
McAllister’s face remained stoney.
The Provost then raised a palm to his mouth, surely considering what else might be done. “Maybe, the President goes to the Refectory and into dorms tonight and…” —his face revealed an idea being formed— “…unannounced, without a retinue, speaks to small groups, especially to black women. He’ll know what to say and how to keep moving….” He was on a roll. “And Alger…” —he never used my nickname— “… with Larry out, crank out a draft statement so the President’s got something to review.” He paused and directed himself to Tuttle. “See what you can find out about this flyer and get the information to the police. If the Kingdom rally goes off, it has to be as secure as we can make it.” With that, he nodded to each of us, as though affirming our respective duties, and returned to his office.
My companions stirred. McAllister, visibly upset, stood as Tuttle gathered the victim’s photograph, the flyers, and his pad into his folder. In contrast to McAllister, Tuttle had relaxed. “The Detective Division and the patrols gotta jump into this now. We’ll get cops for sure this weekend, whether Sonny likes it or not. Has to. The girl is Terry Sullivan’s daughter. Been a cop longer than me. Big McCarthy supporter. Very big in the Fraternal Order of Police, the FOP. Different ball game now.” He shook his head, put on his cap and his raincoat, and exited.
I packed away my pen and picked up my unmarked pad, feeling a little pleased with myself until McAlister grumbled, “Won’t fool anybody. The kids will think it’s a ploy if we ignore The Stalker. A murder? Can’t hide that. We’re heading for shutdown, Algy.”
I didn’t want to agree with his characterization of our plan as a “ploy” although I recognized that it was defensive and smacked of a stratagem. After two weekends, including the long Thanksgiving weekend, without a reported assault, I had hoped that Tuttle’s much derided security operations had finally been effective. Maybe The Stalker, although not caught, had been scared away from the campus. Now it seemed that The Stalker had taken the weekends off to build up to this tragedy.
McAllister reached into his suit coat pocket, removed a folded sheet of paper, and handed it to me. It was captioned “Black Student Caucus” and “Speakers” over a list of names. One was brightly highlighted in yellow: Martine Danby, the daughter of Carter University’s new President. “She’s completely wrapped up in this rally. I thought you ought to know.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said, my face certainly betraying my concern. When Sonny Russo found out, the “hostile act” would become open war.
CHAPTER TWO
I trudged up a flight of stairs.
My paralegal, Marcie Barrett, was in her office; Maria Lopes, our shared secretary and imperturbable veteran of two previous University Counsels, was in command at her imposing desk in the middle of our suite. Each looked up at me in expectation; their greetings were barely audible so I surmised that news of the murder had reached the third floor. I stood between Marcie’s office and Maria’s desk and confirmed the murder of Anne Sullivan, a former student—I stressed former—on Friday night, not Saturday night, that the cops hadn’t actually said it was The Stalker, and that the victim wasn’t black. Marcie’s face registered a lot more than professional concern as I finished; Maria, her Azorean features darkly troubled, returned to her computer and started keyboarding.
As I hung my suit jacket on the hook behind my office door, my Blackberry—compact in its cell phone, e-mail, and some other features I’d never learn to use and mandated by the Provost for all senior staff—vibrated at my belt. I checked the caller ID. Puppy Dog! Damn! Circumstances grant him unwelcomed access to my otherwise private number. Without any salutation, he recapped his argument of thirty minutes ago, this time without any subtleness: if Providence politics has a texture, it is sandpaper. “It’s budget time, ya know, and Sonny’s got the University down for four million.”
What was I suppose to do, have a case of the vapors? Arguing would be futile. In each municipal budget since his first election, Sonny had put in a revenue estimate for the property tax-exempt University, knowing full well he wouldn’t get a dime unless he would engage in good faith negotiations, trading in-lieu-of-tax money for better municipal services for the University. When he didn’t, because good faith was alien to Sonny and he liked having the University as a convenient whipping boy, he had his annual excuse for another tax increase on Providence’s long-suffering ratepayers.
“Too bad you can’t see Sonny’s position on Kingdom.”
I didn’t respond. My gaze fell on two silver gelatin prints of Providence’s WaterPlace Park and RiverWalk behind my desk. Sonny got a lot of credit, most of which he didn’t deserve, for the city’s recent economic and cultural resurgence. I thought of the dichotomy: the revitalized, attractive city and the mendacity of its mayor.
“You just don’t know what Kingdom’s rabble is gonna do. Look what’s happened to your buddy Tramonti ....”
At that, I took in a deep breath. One way I’ve learned to deal with Puppy Dog is to take the posture that I had no idea what he was talking about and let him ramble on until he was over his latest gripe; however, I couldn’t do that after his potshot at my closest friend, Police Commissioner Tony Tramonti. Another tactic is prolonged silence since it irritates him and he would eventually fill the void. I mentally started to count the seconds. Through the room’s only window, the granite dome of Shay Library masked all but the upper floors of the office buildings downtown; in the distance, an American flag waved from the top of an orange and red crane at some unseen building site. At fifteen, he said, “Ya know, a little help on this would go a long way to patch things up.”
“Leon, it’s not going to happen. With what we’ve been experiencing, Jesse Kingdom is the least of our problems. We can’t get into it—”
“You’ve got to be practical,” he whined. “Practical ....”
I got to ten studying a recent addition to the office, an earth-tone monotype of the Tuscan Crete, its chalky cliffs and orangey light captured by a Providence artist, when he resumed bellyaching. I interrupted. “Look, if anything changes with Kingdom, I’ll let you know. But don’t count on it,” and got off the call. I would speak to the Provost even though nothing was going to change: neither the Provost nor the President could be intimidated or would make a deal with crooks. Puppy Dog’s crack about Tramonti, to let me know that he was aware of my relationship to Sonny’s nascent political rival, also sharpened my aversion to any deal. Six degrees of separation? Not in Providence, the home of the “knowing wink,” where ignoble politics and “doin’ business” are joined at the hip.
“Ugh,” I said aloud.
* * *
University Counsel, according to the position description, is “... the principal legal counsel to the Board of Trustees, the President, and the Officers of the University ....” Since I had been my alma mater’s litigation counsel at Champlin & Burrill, Providence’s largest law firm, and had worked with my predecessors, the advantages of the “in-house” university position were known to me when I accepted the offer: no time sheets, a single client, the stimulation of an Ivy League campus, regular hours instead of a schedule set by arbitrary demands from clients and court calendars, and the end of the peaks and valleys of a litigator’s life—intense trial days, followed by weeks of reading memos, depositions, and client hand-holding. The disadvantages? I could accept that I’d be more of a legal manager than before but I did not foresee the effects of three occupants of the President’s office within six years—the one who hired me retiring after a heart attack, the one in the middle a disappointing academic politician, and the third, Charles Danby, Jr., only six months from his inauguration—and I was naive as to the enervating, dopey, schedule-filling effects of what Marcie and I call the “Carter dialectic.”
To describe this phenomenon succinctly, you first have to appreciate that an Ivy League campus is a distracting, noisy place, populated with concentrations of the politically correct and culture war militants, all of whom have micron-thin skins and memories like elephants. Thus, even mundane University decisions require multiple discussions with various interest groups who argue interminably with throbbing moral certainty among themselves, causing issues to end up in our office in a convoluted, legalist form. Ironically, the web of administrative rules and regulations that created these obstacles to action has one positive effect: Presidents and Provosts involve me in administrative and policy matters that are only remotely legal, such as dealing with the contentious city politicians. A sympathetic colleague at another Ivy League school located in a town not unlike Providence once described his own job this way: it’s like being Attorney General in a mini-state inhabited exclusively by the smart, the opinionated, and the stubborn, surrounded by antagonists who would like nothing better than to rub our collective faces in the merde!
* * *
The office had begun to percolate: a phone rang and was answered by Maria, the fax machine began to chirp away, I heard the mail messenger arrive, and above us on the fourth floor, an electric drill whirred, stopped, whirred, and stopped. I settled in behind the old yellow oak desk that had once been my grandfather’s and entered my password on my iMac. On my desk lay this morning’s Crier, the tabloid student daily, along with manila folders, redwell files, the mandatory name plate identifying me as “A.M. Temple” in case I harassed someone, and a photograph of a smiling Nadie Winokur under a red umbrella on the patio of Osteria Pazanzo in Chianti. I touched Nadie’s photograph and felt a tad better. She’d be back in town today after spending Thanksgiving with her mother in Miami. I missed her; a few days without her and my senses dull.
Marcie came in, brusquely I thought, carrying a brown folder and a legal pad. Always put together for work, she wore a blue tweed suit and white blouse accented by a strand of amber beads. The only thing out of the ordinary was the solemness of her normally lively face. She removed a document from the folder, placed it on the desk blotter, and took the chair in front of the desk. She sat rigidly.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Fine,” she said in non-response. Anger stirred in her washed-out, greenish eyes.
Evidently, she wanted to know more about the Provost’s meeting and our course of action so I expanded on Puppy Dog’s outrageous attempt at intimidation and my “ploy” for handling the expected campus reaction to the Stalker’s latest outrage. She listened; her fingers went to her beads as the intensity in her eyes suggested the active mind that had earned a degree in English at Carter and, years later, a paralegal degree at Roger Williams Univ
ersity. Since she abhorred anything that was even a tiny bit devious, I expected a complaint and was surprised when she said with rigid certainty, “Of course, it wasn’t The Stalker. Anyone can see that. Why would he rape and murder a white girl after weeks of attacking only blacks?” Her fingers brushed her curly, prematurely white hair. “It’s not him.”
She said it so confidently that I sat back, needing a few seconds to formulate my response. That gave her the opportunity to click her ballpoint pen, open her folder, and begin our Monday morning rundown of litigation, campus appeals, and miscellaneous projects in the office. Crisply, she described a series of evidentiary motions in a highly publicized sexual bias and harassment case that was our litigation priority, followed by a summary of a meanly fought tenure denial coming our way from the English Department. I made notes, more like doodles, on my copy of her memo, more intent of formulating my challenge to her than listening carefully. She finished with routine real estate and contract issues, a list of speech code and student rights appeals, and importantly, the status—almost done—of her draft of the federally required Campus Crime Report.
Finished, and before I could get back to The Stalker, she abruptly stood to leave, saying, “In case you missed it, the Reinman memorial service is scheduled for tomorrow morning. First Congregational, at eleven. Heard we can expect all the conservative poobahs from the cable networks to be there. Details in the Crier.” A wry smile was playing on her face when she sniffed, “You really should be there.”
I nodded—which she took at point taken—because I had read his obituary in the Sunday Journal and because I didn’t want to get into the political discussion that clearly was her purpose. Marcie, whose politics is the stuff of NPR and Bill Moyers, loathed Carl Reinman, Carter’s most well-known and most controversial faculty member. More than once over the years, she had referred to Reinman by the nickname hung on him by his enemies on campus: the “apostate”.