“Graduate student? Who’s he talking about?”
“He was talking about you. F. Horton Caldwell. I told him that it was just a ruse.”
“Uh-huh.” I was starting to get a very bad feeling about this. “And who did you say I was?”
“V. S. Mohle.” We moved back down the hallway toward the nurses’ station.
“That must have been a bit of a shock to him.”
“It was.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said that can’t be V. S. Mohle. And I said, but it is. Rex hired him to come down and teach for a semester. I explained about how it was all so hush-hush and how the students had to sign those confidentiality agreements. Please, he said. Enough. I know V. S. Mohle. I’ve met V. S. Mohle.”
“He claimed he met me? Ho-boy. Now, that really takes the cake.”
“He said he flew up to Maine a few summers ago to try to talk you into taking the Vita Nuova Prize.”
“Ramona, my God, what a liar the man is!”
She shot me her best Perry Mason stare. “We called him.”
“Called who?”
“V. S. Mohle. Last night. Stainforth had his number in his address book and somehow he was able to set up a three-way conference call. I spoke to him.”
I rubbed at the corners of my eyes. The hall smelled vaguely of whatever it is they pickle frogs in. “Ramona, do you think there’s someplace we could go to talk about this? A coffee shop, maybe?”
“It must have been after midnight there. You can imagine how upset he was. He said he’d called and left a message for Wayne at the institute at the end of August, explaining that he’d been having some health problems and wouldn’t be able to come.”
You ever wonder what an onion feels like being peeled? That was me.
“But that doesn’t make a bit of sense,” I said. “This guy knows about Wayne? I have no idea who this character is, but it wasn’t me. This is getting way too deep.”
An orderly strode past us, giving me the fish-eye. “It was him,” Ramona said.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“It was V. S. Mohle that I spoke to. So the question is, who are you? And where did you come from?”
“Ramona, listen to me. I know this must be very confusing and we’re both very tired. What do you want to do? Check on me? Go ahead, go check on me. Meanwhile, Stainforth is playing Rex like a violin and I can prove it. You want someone to call? Call Günter Grass. I’ll give you his number.”
Ramona cupped her hands over her nose and mouth as if she were about to weep. I reached out to comfort her, but she jerked away. A surgeon checking his charts glared at me over the top of his ultra-cool reading glasses. Everybody at the nurses’ station was alert as deer.
“Please, don’t,” she said. “I need to see about Rex.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “But I just need to say one more thing. You’re the one who’s supposed to protect Rex from people like Stainforth. That’s why he hired you.”
She pivoted away from me and began to sob, her shoulders rising and falling. “Here,” I said. I tugged my handkerchief from my trousers pocket and, as I did, heard something slap softly at my feet. Ramona and I both stared down at the checkbook with the monogram etched in gold.
“What’s that?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said. I bent down, snatched the checkbook, and stuffed it back in my pocket.
“Excuse me, but I think that’s Rex’s checkbook.”
“Rex’s checkbook? Ramona, that’s ridiculous.”
“Let’s see it, then.”
“I can’t believe it’s come to this, I really can’t.”
She grabbed at my trousers pocket, but I fended her off, clutching her wrist. “Would you let go of me? Please, let me go.”
I did as she asked. She was humiliated, flushed, out of breath. For a moment neither of us was sure what to do, or what the other would do. Then she turned and raised a hand to the nurses’ station. “Miss? Miss! Would you please call security? This man is a thief!”
It seemed as if we had the attention of half the staff of the hospital, not to mention some fat kid sitting on the radiator with his finger up his nose. One of the nurses reached for the phone. I sprinted for the stairs.
Chapter Nineteen
Iraced up the ramps of the parking garage, screeches of birds echoing all around me. They were recorded on some sort of tape loop to frighten off grackles and keep them from crapping all over the doctors’ BMWs, but to me they sounded like the hyenas in those freaky nature documentaries.
I didn’t have a minute to waste. I fired up my car, backed out, and spiraled down, level after level, tires screaming on the turns, throwing the fear of God into a thick-legged woman suffering from varicose veins and sending her clumping for the safety of the stairwell. At the tollgate I handed the attendant three dollars with trembling hand, half expecting a squadron of security police to come hustling out of the hospital any second.
I gunned across Thirty-fifth Street, running a red light at Guadalupe. If Ramona really had talked to Mohle, there was no telling who Mohle must have called by now—good old Wayne for sure, and maybe even the police.
What I was dying to do was zip by my house and grab the thirty grand in cash tucked under my mattress, but I didn’t dare. The house would be the first place the cops would go. But what I couldn’t do without was the manila envelope full of false credit cards, drivers’ licenses and bogus Social Security numbers I’d taped to the bottom of my desk at the Fiction Institute.
When I got to the institute I circled the block, just to be on the safe side, and then parked out in front of the building so I could make a quick getaway. Striding down the walk, I fished my keys out of my pocket, but it turned out I didn’t need them. I was astonished to find the front door unlocked and the alarm making low, annoying beeps. I pushed the door open about a foot and stared inside. The house was dark, all the shades drawn, and across the room, on Mildred’s screensaver, big google-eyed fish swam back and forth, going nowhere.
I tried to tell myself it was probably nothing. Mildred was always complaining about the cleaning crews not locking properly when they left and Wayne had given a couple of the students keys so they could come in on the weekends to watch Lannan Foundation tapes in the library. It seemed stupid to let myself be scared away so easily. I probably could have survived without my stash of credit cards, but if I had it, life was going to be an awful lot easier.
I slid my keys back in my pocket, stepped inside, and closed the door quickly behind me. I was all the way to the stairs before I heard the rustling, like rats in an attic. I stopped and stared up at the landing above me. There was no sign of a light.
The voices in my head telling me to get the hell out of there kept getting louder. The problem was, nothing made any sense. Wayne had his own key; he had no reason to break in. Ditto the campus police. Who could it be, then? Some student fiddling with the VCR up there in the dark? Maybe one of those homeless guys who lived along the creek had busted in, looking for the petty cash box. But what would they be doing upstairs?
I crept noiselessly up the stairs and paused on the landing. I heard the hollow thump of the wastebasket in my office. My heart was racing now, but I had come too far to turn back. I inched forward, sliding my back along the wall, and peered around the edge of my door.
The office looked as if it had been run through a Cuisinart. Books and manuscripts were heaped on the floor, the couch was pulled away from the wall and stripped of its cushions. The fabric of one of the overturned chairs had been ripped away, exposing metal springs.
The man was so still I didn’t see him at first. He stood motionless on the far side of my desk, like a plaster saint tucked away in the alcove of some gloomy church. For one crazed moment I thought I was staring at my reflection in the dusty window behind him, but it wasn’t a reflection. The last time I’d seen this guy was at Kennedy Airport. We were the same height and roughly the same age, with
the same narrow shoulders and gaunt, hangdog faces. The only big difference was that, in flannel shirt and black turtleneck, he was dressed way too warmly for Texas in November.
He didn’t seem to be aware that I was there. Head slightly bowed, he gazed down at what looked like my grade book. After several long seconds, he began to thumb through it, breaking the spell.
“How’d you get in here?”
Startled, he jerked to attention. As he closed the grade book, I saw that he had all my credit cards lined up on the desk in rows, like a dummy’s hand in bridge. The manila envelope lay crumpled and torn next to the wastebasket.
“I mean, goddamn it,” I said. “Look at my office.”
“Your office? Your office? Who the fuck do you think you are?” It really was amazing how much he looked like me.
“And who the fuck do you think you are?” I said.
“You asshole! You stupid, stupid asshole!”
I put up a hand. “Hey,” I said. “Watch your language, okay? Seriously. We’re not going to get anywhere standing around and calling each other names. I’ll tell you what. You give me my cards back and I’m out of here. I’ll never bother you again. Scout’s honor.”
“Give you your cards back? You’ve got a hell of a nerve. After what you’ve done to me, you think I’m going to let you waltz out of here?”
I pressed my fingertips to my forehead. I could feel a migraine coming on. He came around the corner of the desk.
“You have harmed me!” he shouted. “You have harmed me deeply! You think this is a joke? You come down here, you cash my checks, you tell these students God knows what about what it takes to be a writer, you make a travesty out of everything I’ve ever stood for—”
“Everything you’ve ever stood for? And what is that exactly? You promised Rex Schoeninger you were coming to teach and you copped out on him. So I borrowed your name for a few months. Big fucking deal. The way I see it, I covered your ass. Maybe I can’t write for shit, but I know how to handle people. I gave them hope. I brought light into their eyes. And what have you been doing, up on that island of yours, resting on your laurels and shucking clams? No offense, but I was a better you than you’ve ever been.”
I could see him trying to figure out just how unbalanced I was. For all he knew, he was dealing with the same kind of psycho that killed John Lennon.
“You know where I just came from?” I said. “The hospital. Rex Schoeninger is on his deathbed. It was a hell of a wonderful thing he wanted to do, bringing you here. Imagine that, a great writer like him, doing something like that—”
“A great writer? Have you ever tried to read one of those things?” He tossed the grade book on the desk, his lips twitching with contempt. I could see why Rex had once been tempted to strangle the guy.
“So what do you say you let me have the cards back and we’ll call it even?” I said.
“No.”
“No?”
I surveyed the room, feeling a little dizzy. There was no time to waste. Under the legs of the side table was a CD of country songs Chester had burned for me. My coffee mug, handle freshly broken off, nestled in the strewn pages of student stories.
“Maybe I haven’t made myself clear enough,” I said. “I understand how you might be upset. I’m sorry about that. But let me assure you, there was nothing personal in what I did. I was just in a bit of a fix. I have the utmost respect . . . I’ve been over all your stuff. Everything you’ve ever written. Not that there’s a whole lot of it. I even gave a little reading for the students. They were blown away. The way I see it, we’re both in a jam here. If we get the cops involved and it ends up in the press, you’re never going to hear the end of it. Now, if you want me to write you a check for what I owe you, I’ll do that. But I would like my cards back.”
Mohle scooped a half dozen of the cards off the desk and began to flip through them. “So which one of these guys is you? Hugh O’Neill? Rick Archbold? Ricardo Rodriguez? Hard to imagine you passing yourself off as a Hispanic guy—”
I lunged for the cards. My mistake was forgetting Mohle’s reputation as a practitioner of the martial arts. Before you could say Jack Armstrong I was sailing headfirst across the desk. I did an ungainly half somersault to the floor, landing hard on my shoulder. I grabbed for the chair to use as a shield, but Mohle was on me like a panther. He yanked me to my feet and pinned my arm behind my back. Running me across the room, he slammed me into the edge of the door.
I crumpled to my knees and then, after a moment, bent down and rested my forehead against the metal grating covering the air duct. I clawed at the rug with my fingers, trying to get my wind back. My ears were ringing and the room rocked to and fro like a fishing boat in the swells. I could taste something salty in my mouth, and it felt as if he’d knocked a few of my teeth loose.
When I was finally able to raise my head, I could see Mohle standing in front of the window, looking like Jackie Chan—arms spread, palms open, ready to do battle. “Jesus Christ,” I said. I wiped some blood from my split lip. Mohle didn’t move. I staggered to my feet, slipping and sliding on the scattered books, and put a hand against the wall to steady myself.
“Okay, you win,” I said. “You want the cards? Take ’em. They’re yours.”
As he stepped away from the window, a flash of reflected light caught my eye. A black Escalade was pulling up in front of the building. Two goons got out. One of them was the guy who’d killed Barry, wearing a knit navy-blue cap that made him look like a longshoreman in On the Waterfront. The other was a skinny character buttoning up his vinyl coat. The skinny one just stood there, surveying the street.
“So just answer me this,” I said. “If you hated him so much, why did you ever agree to come down here? You just want to spit in his eye one more time before he died?”
“None of your damn business.”
“That’s a lot of help.” I glanced down at the man in the vinyl coat, who was staring up at our window.
“What are you looking at?” Mohle said. One of my ears still buzzed.
“Nothing,” I said.
He backed off, hands still cocked, and then bent to scoop the scattered credit cards off the rug. “I’m going to go outside now and wait for Wayne,” he said. “You can go or stay, whatever you want. But I’m going to take these with me.”
I could have warned him, but I wasn’t exactly in a charitable mood. I watched him gather the rest of the cards, drivers’ licenses, and Social Security cards and stuff them in his trousers pockets; he was daring me to stop him. I stood silently, nursing my swollen lip, as he strode past me and moved quickly down the stairs. Once I heard the front door slam, I returned to the window and peered out the curtains.
The man in the vinyl jacket shielded his eyes as he scrutinized the backseat of my car. His buddy had gone around to check out the driveway. When Mohle walked out the front door, the head of the man in the blue knit cap came around like the head of one of those bobble dolls. Mohle stepped off the curb and looked down the street. The man in the vinyl jacket rose slowly, like a snake rising to the sound of a flute.
His partner must have said something, because Mohle turned back to him, smiling, but as they talked a little more and the man in the knit blue cap began to move toward him, the smile went away. The killer gestured to my car. Mohle shook his head no. The killer gestured to the house. Again Mohle shook his head no. The thug in the vinyl jacket circled behind the cars so they would have him penned in. In my mind I was thinking, Do I make my break now, or do I wait?
When the guy in the vinyl jacket put a hand on Mohle’s arm, Mohle took care of it with a nifty whirling motion like something out of a samurai movie, but the guy in the vinyl jacket didn’t seem to get the message. He grabbed Mohle around the neck, trying to throttle him; in a second he was doubled over, coughing and holding his stomach, and in a second after that, he was facedown on the asphalt, felled by a karate chop.
The problem was that in all this commotion, the killer in th
e blue knit cap had come up with a snub-nosed revolver, and by the time Mohle had spun around, the killer had it trained on him and was hollering and waving him toward the house.
At first Mohle just stood there as if he couldn’t believe what was happening, but he was no idiot. Raising both hands, he backed over the curb and across the lawn. The guy in the vinyl jacket was on his feet again, but wobbly; his partner gestured furiously for him to come on.
I heard one door slam and then another as everybody rumbled into the house. There was all this shouting going on, but I couldn’t make out any words.
I scanned the room wildly, looking for a place to hide. There was a low closet behind my desk, but it was chock-full of the files of rejected applicants. There was the window, but it was a good twenty-foot drop to the sidewalk. The last thing I needed now was a broken leg. There were other windows in the library that opened onto the roof, but the floor was creaky. I was afraid that if I moved at all, I would be sure to alert them.
I jumped at the sound of a gunshot. I heard glass shattering and then there was utter silence. I stood stock-still, blinking. I was already responsible for the death of one great American writer; was I now going to be responsible for the deaths of two?
It felt as if the silence went on forever, but finally I heard a low murmuring coming through the metal grating in the floor. I got down on my knees and put my ear to the checkerboard of metal bars, but I still couldn’t hear clearly enough.
The grating was held in place by three tiny screws—the fourth was missing. I undid them carefully with my thumbnail, put them in my pocket, and then lifted the grating with the kind of caution a father might use to lift a sleeping child. I set it on the rug next to me.
At the bottom of the air duct was a second grating, but the voices were clearer now. I could even see, through the crosshatch of bars, the three men directly below me. Mohle was curled in a fetal position in a chair, covering his head with his arms. The glass in the framed poster above him had been smashed by the bullet; jagged shards glistened everywhere on the carpet.
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