The Death of a Constant Lover

by Lev Raphael

  Pouring dish soap into the receptacle and snapping it shut, Stefan closed the dishwasher and started it. The quiet chugging seemed to mirror his musing about what I’d explained. “I don’t think I would have come to the same conclusion,” he said as we moved back to the table. “My money’s been on Didier lately.”

  “The wronged husband? That’s always a popular selection, except he wasn’t wronged, since they hadn’t slept together, and even if they had—”

  Stefan shook his head. “I still don’t believe he’s that open.”

  We read on in Delaney’s diary and found a passing reference that stunned me: Delaney had slept last year with Serena Fisch, the EAR professor on sabbatical whose courses were being covered by Juno.

  “Serena!” I said. The former chair of the once-independent Rhetoric department, fiftyish Serena, dressed like one of the Lost Andrews Sisters. It was hard enough for me to imagine her out of costume, let alone in anyone’s arms.

  “Maybe—” Stefan said, putting it together, “maybe that’s why Serena was a little strange last year.” Serena was always a little strange, but I knew what he meant. Reading further, we discovered Delaney’s connection to Bullerschmidt, or at least what he had written down about it. Who knew how much was accurate? Delaney described going to the dean, asking for a guarantee that he’d be accepted into the EAR department for his doctorate, with a teaching assistantship to boot.

  “Unbelievable chutzpah,” I practically yelped.

  The dean made a deal with him: Delaney would keep his ears open for any scandal about Coral. For the first time that evening, we both laughed. Dirt about Moral Coral? She wasn’t any Jimmy Swaggart with a secret scummy life—which is exactly why the department had elected her chairman almost unanimously.

  But if Delaney found anything, Iris Bell would be the dean’s candidate to replace Coral, who’d have to resign. Iris and Carter Savery, deeply embittered it seemed, were also “working for” Dean Bullerschmidt.

  “Why would he write that down?” I asked Stefan. “Why would he write any of it down? It’s crazy.”

  “The same reason he told Polly what he did: bragging. Can’t you see him poring over this like pornography?”

  “Jeez, if I were a thug like Delaney, I could use this to get tenure. Wait—tell me what you were saying before about tenure?”

  Stefan grinned. “It never rains…. Just before you got home, I heard a call on your machine from Verity Gallup. She’s got a Wharton project she wants to get rid of. I picked up the phone and took the details. It’s an introduction to an English edition of The Glimpses of the Moon.”

  “Get out!” Verity was another major Wharton scholar who’d lost interest in her subject, and Glimpses was one of my favorite late Wharton novels.

  “Don’t you want to know what she’s offering?” Stefan said. “It’s the same deal as Jones. You get the advance, $1,000, and your name’s on the book with hers. That’s two books you’ll have coming out.”

  “Edited books,” I had to point out, aware of the status distinction between those and a monograph, which was a narrowly focused obscure work buzzing with modish words like relativize.

  Stefan was insistent “Two more than you had last year, or the year before, or—”

  “Stop, I get it! And you’re right, my chances for tenure are much better now.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “Does tenure matter? Do I want to stay here? Do we?”

  Ever practical, Stefan said, “Let’s worry about that after you get tenure, okay? You can do both projects in the next year, and Verity said that she and Jones would write you strong letters for your tenure file.”

  I looked down at the loathsome diary and shoved it across the table away from me.

  “Polly must have known more than she told me. She was protecting Delaney,” I said.

  “That would make her an accessory. Just like us.”

  We mused over this until I said, “Holy shit! Bill! Bill Malatesta—we have to turn this in right away to prove he’s innocent, but look at all the people who’ll be devastated when this comes out. What do we do?”

  “There’s no question about it. We have to call Valley. It’s our civic duty.”

  “Our civic duty?” I mocked. “You want us to uphold the values of Western civilization?” I shook my head. “You mean the same civilization that threw your parents and your uncle into concentration camps, and would have murdered them if the war had lasted any longer? That civilization?”

  We stared at the diary where it lay on the table.

  “The honorable thing,” I quoted Benevento. “He said he’d do the honorable thing. Suicide. So do we turn Benevento in and guarantee a horrendous trial, humiliation, and at least life in prison? Or let him killl himself? You know that’s what he meant.”

  “It’s not our choice to make,” Stefan contended. “You have to call Valley right away, give him the diary, and tell him everything.”

  I knew he was right. Valley had given me his card once, and I dug it out of a box of business cards in my desk drawer and called his direct line at campus police, but got a dispatcher instead who told me he wasn’t available.

  “Listen—I have crucial evidence that will free Bill Malatesta! I have to speak to Detective Valley right away.”

  “We appreciate good citizenship,” the cool voice replied, and I knew I was being “handled” as if I were claiming that Elvis had killed Delaney. Frustrated, I left my name and number, repeating that it was urgent.

  “So we’ll have to wait until he calls,” Stefan said.

  To distract ourselves from the coming bombshell, we caught Executive Decision on cable, and all my tension disappeared as I watched people in far more desperate straits than I was. Not exactly schadenfreude, but close.

  Valley hadn’t called by the time we went to bed, and though Stefan fell asleep easily enough, I didn’t. Around 1:30 A.M. I slipped down to my study to call Sharon, who was never upset by late-night phone calls. I told her about talking to Polly and Benevento, and the diary, and that I was struggling to understand how Delaney could have created such a vile and disastrous set of circumstances.

  “Nick,” Sharon advised, “forget the motives, forget the psychology. Some people are just bad, and that’s all the explanation there is.”

  I found this sensible, and oddly comforting.

  TUESDAY MORNING WAS no less dramatic than Monday night. We got up very early, and when Stefan brought in the papers, he unfolded the Michiganapolis Tribune and stood motionless in the kitchen, reading aloud to me a story headlined PROFESSOR ASSUMED DEAD.

  Harry Benevento’s parked car—with the motor still running—had been found up north on his Lake Michigan-front property last night. Footprints led from the car down to the water, and police were assuming that he committed suicide because he left a signed note confessing that he had killed Delaney Kildare.

  Stefan tossed the paper onto a counter. “We know the rest,” he said wearily.

  “But why didn’t he wait to hear from me?”

  “He probably knew you’d have to call the campus police. He was just buying some time, I guess.”

  Stefan made us an omelette with shallots and cheddar cheese, which we had with whole wheat toast and Cross & Blackwell orange marmalade, hashing over the news.

  “It’s some kind of ruse,” I insisted. “Benevento’s probably alive somewhere. The car was left running. Why? To attract attention, to wake up neighbors, to make people think he drowned himself.” When Stefan challenged that, I admitted that I wasn’t sure how Benevento had worked the footprints.

  “So what if he is alive?” Stefan asked, forking up the last of his omelette. “Would you want to live with his memories, and try to start over somewhere else—at his age? Let it go, Nick. Now it really is over.”

  I shuddered as if physically ridding myself of some specter and nodded reluctantly. “But what about the diary?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “If we don’t hear
from Valley by noon, we’ll just drive over to the campus police building and leave the diary for him with a note.”

  “You’re right. I don’t want it in this house, either.” Now I wished that I hadn’t called Valley and had just burned the diary in our fireplace, even if it meant destroying evidence. Benevento’s suicide note would have cleared Bill Malatesta, and that’s all that really mattered.

  Perhaps following my thoughts, as he often did, Stefan said, “It has to come out.”

  “God, you sound like a dentist!”

  “No, seriously. It has to, but my guess is that the murders are so sensational, people won’t focus on the sex as much.”

  I disagreed. “Look at what’s happening in D.C. with Clinton. This stuff here is going to end up a movie-of-the-week, and Juno will want to play herself.”

  He smiled. “Who should play us?”

  “Oh, that’s easy: Alec Baldwin and Ben Affleck.”

  “But which one plays me, and which one plays you?”

  Feeling generous, I said, “Does it matter?”

  EPILOGUE

  But fame was a long way off. The first stage for everyone was infamy. After Bill was released, he sued the campus police and SUM for wrongful arrest, and President Littleterry settled quickly so as to hush it up. Details of Delaney’s diary leaked out to the press, and national magazines and newspapers spun SUM as a cross between Sodom and Gomorrah and the Wild West.

  The governor ordered a commission be setup to investigate the whole mess. There were calls for pretty much everyone involved to resign, even attacks on our half-wit president for letting it all happen. I think at one point if SUM’s campus had been razed to the ground and salt sown in the earth so that nothing would ever grow there, over 50 percent of Michiganders would have applauded and volunteered for the work themselves, or at least chipped in some cash.

  TV shows both in-state and across the country framed the story in predictable ways, depending on their views and whom they could snag as talking heads. Some billed it as “Sexual Degeneracy Rampant,” others as ‘The Crisis on Campus: Liberalism Run Amok,” and of course there were endless variations on “Devil Men and Spurned Women.” Larry King did three separate shows, alternately agreeing with Pat Buchanan, Gloria Steinem, and Dr. Joyce Brothers. For a while the all-news stations gave it as much play as Clinton’s various troubles.

  Stefan and I resolutely said, “No comment,” to every call and query, even the day several news trucks were camped out on our street to try pressuring us or Lucille and Didier to talk. Stefan’s agent was annoyed, assuring us he could build on the publicity to leverage a juicy book deal all about the scandal.

  After a few weeks of bluster and outrage, and swarms of pseudojournalists infesting SUM’s campus, the imbroglio seemed to fade away completely. Juno, Lucille, and other women Delaney wrote about had been uniformly portrayed as victims of a cunning, sick seducer preying upon them, so none were professionally damaged. Juno even seemed to relish the publicity, though Lucille talked to me and Stefan about quitting. While Bullerschmidt’s chances of becoming provost were over—as an administrator, he was supposed to be scandal-free—his position was still enviably secure. He denied everything Delaney had said about him, and who could say he was lying?

  It turned out that the man I’d seen in front of Lucille’s and Didier’s house was suspicious and dangerous, but not Lucille’s brother-in-law. He was actually Merle Flockhart, Polly’s sad-sack ex-husband, and had been checking out the street and her house; he tried to break into her house one night and was spotted by one of our insomniac retired neighbors, who called 911. Flockhart had a blackjack on him, which he tried to toss into a hedge, but he said he only wanted to “talk to” Polly.

  Stefan wouldn’t let me claim I had been even one iota right, because when Lucille saw Flockhart’s picture in the Michiganapolis Tribune, she hooted at me, “You thought that was Napoleon!? There’s no resemblance at all.”

  “They’re both dark-haired.”

  “And they’re both white. End of story.”

  In an odd way, all the tumult seemed to cheer Stefan up, even though there was continued bad news from his agent about placing his novel. Stefan was a “prisoner of his numbers.” Other publishers balked at picking up someone they considered a failure, even when they were enthusiastic about his new book. “You’d be better off as a first-time novelist,” was his agent’s sad comment.

  Yet Stefan was happy. Perhaps because after the recent nightmare, he could shout like D. H. Lawrence, “Look, we have come through!” Or perhaps it was the wonderful spring we were having, with not even many of the typical “partly cloudy” days that were endemic in Michiganapolis.

  My situation at SUM had improved considerably. Since I had “braved the killer’s den,” as one paper told it, and secured important evidence that I passed along to the campus police, I had surprisingly earned a compliment from Coral Greathouse, who told me I “handled myself with dignity.” Given that I was suddenly in Coral’s favor, Stefan insisted that Iris and Carter were unlikely to scotch my tenure chances, since they’d been publicly painted as scheming against Coral.

  We were talking about this one Sunday a month after Harry Benevento killed himself—or disappeared—when the doorbell rang. Polly? Lucille and Didier?

  Stefan went to the door, and I heard his startled, “Sharon, hi!”

  Disbelieving, I followed him to the front door, and it was indeed my cousin Sharon, looking tired but as graceful as ever in a fawn linen pants suit and mocha cashmere scoop top. Stefan took her Chanel bag and small Louis Vuitton suitcase, and when I hugged her close, I whispered, “Boyfriend trouble?”

  “Trouble, all right.”

  I took her out to the sunroom, sorry that she hadn’t been to visit us here in over a year—when we saw her it was usually in New York. “This house is so beautiful,” she murmured, looking out into the backyard, “so quiet. I forgot.” I had filled a vase with branches cut from our lilacs, and Sharon leaned over them, breathing in deeply. We made pleasant conversation about her flight until Stefan brought us all iced tea and we sat down, Stefan and I looking at her expectantly. Her supernal elegance reminded me more than ever of Lisa Fonssagrives, the classic Dior model of the 1950s.

  “I couldn’t say this over the phone,” she began. “I haven’t even told my parents yet. Remember those tests I said I had to schedule?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t want you to worry, but the hearing’s gone in my left ear, almost completely, and I’m having these strange little twitches on that side of my face.” She ran a lovely index finger in a line from her forehead to her jaw as if we could actually see the problem. “It’s pretty definite that I have a brain tumor—it’s called an acoustic neuroma?—on that side. They say they need to operate, fairly soon, and one of the best neurosurgeons east of the Mississippi for this is at your medical school.”

  Stefan and I both said, “Here?”

  The words “brain tumor” shrilled inside me like a car alarm.

  Sharon nodded. “So I came out to consult with him before I decide what to do, exactly.”

  We all smiled inanely at each other as if contemplating a picnic. Then Stefan moaned a soft, “Oh, God.” I heard him but couldn’t speak. Sharon reached over and grabbed my hand. “It’s a benign tumor, but it’s still growing. It has to be stopped, somehow.”

  I had to ask what I didn’t want to. “What are the chances…with the surgery?”

  “Pretty good, actually, but I’ll lose all hearing in that ear, and I may have paralysis on that side of my face, too. You know, like Bell’s palsy?” She was being very brave, but as I began to cry, she did, too, and we fell into each other’s arms, while Stefan clumsily tried embracing both of us.

  Sharon broke away when she started hiccuping, and got herself under control. She pulled some wadded tissues from her jacket pocket “Of course, there are doctors in New York who could do the surgery, but when I checked out all the experts aro
und the country, I figured that I’d be better off here, with you guys.”

  Once again, Stefan and I spoke at the same time. “Why?”

  “Call me superstitious, but you have to admit, nobody ever dies of natural causes when you’re around.”

  About the Author

  LEV RAPHAEL has been a newspaper columnist; a radio talk show host and producer; a print, radio and on-line reviewer; a blogger—and an academic. He is the author of seven Nick Hoffman mysteries and his web site is http://www.levraphael.com.