Last Things

by Ralph McInerny

  “Who’s Mabel Gorman?”

  Tuttle shrugged.

  “She has called several times.” Hazel waited. “She says she’s a student at St. Edmund’s.”

  “Ah yes.”

  “Ah yes, what?”

  Tuttle adjusted his tweed hat. “I befriended her.”

  Hazel observed a moment of silence, as if for the future departed. “Keep it up, and you’ll need a lawyer yourself.”

  She huffed out, and Tuttle turned to the paralegal’s papers.

  Barbara was good; there was no doubt of that. She had gathered all the legal precedents. There were photocopies of newspaper accounts of local cases, written by Tetzel. He would have to talk with the reporter. So well organized were the materials Barbara had prepared that something like a strategy began to form in Tuttle’s mind. The essence of the law is to avoid going to law. What he needed was to intimidate the college into buying off his client before he was turned down for tenure. The basic complaint was that Andrew Bernardo’s presence on the committee made it impossible for Cassirer to get a square shake. And that Andrew himself lived in flagrant violation of the college’s requirements for the lifestyle of its faculty.

  On another visit with his client, Cassirer had all but salivated as he discussed Andrew Bernardo’s living arrangement. Professor St. Clair had looked in, and Cassirer waved her to a chair.

  “My only regret is that this will involve Gloria,” Lily St. Clair said.

  “The friend of my enemy is my enemy,” Cassirer announced.

  Cassirer’s notion was that Tuttle should sit down with Box and let him know the kind of rotten publicity the college faced if it didn’t come through with a tenured appointment for Horst Cassirer. The prospect of meeting with Box again did not exhilarate Tuttle. Box was a clone of Amos Cadbury, a man who regarded Tuttle as he might the squirming creatures discovered by turning over a rock. At least Cadbury had earned his righteous air of superiority. But Box?

  Resentment is a powerful incentive. Tuttle began to write on a yellow legal pad, outlining what he would lay before Box. With that objective in mind, he finally read systematically through Barbara’s materials. He could cite precedents, although the cases Barbara had found were after-the-fact suits, brought when the plaintiff had been formally turned down. At the moment, all Cassirer had was hearsay of what a supposedly confidential committee meeting had voted.

  “Everyone knows,” Lily St. Clair had assured him.

  In the course of the little confab a man named Zalinksi came in, adding his own two cents. It was difficult for Tuttle to tell which of them held the college in greater contempt, making it a puzzle why they were there and why Cassirer was willing to declare World War III in order to be there permanently.

  The intercom crackled, and Hazel’s voice asked if he had read the stuff.

  “Very interesting.”

  “I’ll call and make an appointment for you with Box.”

  Before he could delay her, she had switched off and he saw the light on his phone go on. Two minutes later Hazel was once again heard electronically.

  “Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock.”

  “Did you tell him the purpose of the visit?”

  “He already knew.”

  She switched off. Box’s expecting the call seemed ominous to Tuttle. He was going up against a local institution, one highly respected, with a history that claimed the loyalty of many. Of course he could expect Box to exude confidence with all that goodwill behind him. The crux of the whole argument came down to the fact that Andrew Bernardo was shacking up with a colleague. That was almost as bad as being caught lighting up in one of the smoke-free buildings on campus.

  Hazel left at four. Tonight was her night to play duplicate bridge, and her competitive juices were flowing. She was a black belt or something in bridge and had tried to interest him in a hand or two of honeymoon bridge. The thought terrified Tuttle. He had no doubt that Hazel had designs on him. Where else could she find someone that looked like so much malleable putty? If she could shape him to her wishes at the office what might she not do in the privacy of their own home? Tuttle was a celibate by inadvertence and because by and large women frightened him. He sat alone in the inner office, tweed hat pulled low over his eyes, communing with his late father. The other Tuttle in Tuttle & Tuttle was his constant point of reference. He prayed that his father had not heard of Hazel in the next world. Since he was sure his paternal parent was in heaven, that seemed unlikely. He sought advice from his father, and the advice came, almost audible. He picked up the phone and called Peanuts.

  “Come on over.”

  “No way.”

  “She’s gone.”

  “For good?”

  “For the day.”

  Peanuts grunted and hung up. Twenty minutes later Tuttle heard the huffing sounds of Peanuts, who had mounted the four flights from the street floor. He looked in warily, fearful that he had been lured here under a pretext. But he was satisfied that Hazel was not there.

  “You come by car?”

  “I was in my car when you called.”

  “Good.” Tuttle got to his feet. “We’ll load up with take-out food first.”

  “First.”

  “We’re going to do a stakeout.”

  “I want a hamburger.”

  With Peanuts you never knew. Had he thought Tuttle meant Steak ‘n’ Shake? In any case, Peanuts changed his mind when Tuttle mentioned Luigi’s, adding that this was his treat. After all, Peanuts was providing a tax-payer-owned car; the least he could do was feed him.

  An hour later, with Styrofoam cartons of lasagna, house salad, and a bottle of zinfandel, they set up shop across the street from the condo where Andrew Bernardo allegedly lived with Gloria Monday.

  “What we looking for?”

  “That depends.”

  But Peanuts had exhausted his curiosity and returned to his lasagna. He had expressed reluctance to drink wine out of plastic cups, so Tuttle had snatched some glasses from a table on the way out of Luigi’s. He poured; they toasted. This was living. As for what they were parked there to see, Tuttle could not have said, but he had the sense that he was following paternal orders. Something would turn up, as his father had often said. Against that possibility, Tuttle was equipped with a fancy camera Hazel had insisted must be part of his standard equipment.

  “I don’t handle divorces.”

  “You couldn’t handle a marriage.” She tried to chuck him under the chin, and he danced away. She insisted that a camera with lenses like this had multiple uses. It was digital, and one could scan the memory to see what he had taken. Hazel had spent a day taking candid shots of Tuttle in the office. Later, when he looked through them, he was glad he had been wearing his tweed hat. For a time, Hazel had tried to snatch it from his head every chance she got until she decided it was his persona.

  Twilight came, but there was still light when Andrew pulled up in a rust bucket and handed a gorgeous girl out of the car. Tuttle had the camera up and took some lovey-dovey shots of the couple on the way to the door. Andrew fished in his pocket and came out with a key but the woman had already taken one from her purse. She let them in.

  “Who are they?” Peanuts asked.

  “My ticket to fame and fortune.”

  “Take a look at that car.”

  “Yeah.” Tuttle’s own wasn’t much better, which is why he preferred riding at city expense with Peanuts at the wheel. Amos Cadbury had a driver. So in a way did he.

  They could have left then, but it was not unpleasant sitting there with Peanuts, belly full of Italian food, night coming on. He had got what he came for, but Peanuts did not realize it. Besides, he seemed as content as Tuttle.

  For such accidental reasons they were there when a young woman came briskly down the walk, her purse swinging from her skinny shoulder like a pendulum. Mabel Gorman, the girl who had guided him about the campus. She turned in and went to the door through which Andrew and the woman had gone. She did not let h
erself in but rang the bell. She cupped her hands around the intercom when she spoke, but Tuttle could not have heard her anyway. What the hell was she doing here? He recalled her lament about his representing Cassirer. The woman he had seen with Andrew had to be Gloria. Mabel pulled open the door and went inside.

  A man appeared from behind a hedge, pushing a bicycle. Hand on the seat, head thrust forward, he turned into the same building and studied the list of occupants. Had he too been a witness to the little parade into the building? Tuttle willed himself, Peanuts, and the car into invisibility when the man turned from the door and pushed his bicycle to the sidewalk and prepared to set off. But first he looked up and down the street. His gaze went over the car and on down the street. He soon followed it, flinging his leg over the bicycle and pedaling away into the night.

  “Who’s he?” Peanuts asked. So he was awake.

  “A client.”

  “Can’t he afford a car?”

  29

  They had just gotten out of their coats when the bell rang and Gloria went to the intercom. Andrew stopped as the nervous voice of Mabel Gorman crackled into the room. Gloria turned to him, her brows arched.

  “One of my students.”

  Gloria pressed the button that opened the front door and then went down the hall to her study. Professional courtesy.

  Mabel came shivering into the room some minutes later when Andrew opened the door. She stood hugging herself and looked around.

  “He’s been following you.”

  “Who?”

  “Cassirer.”

  Andrew wished she would stop shivering. On the other hand, it gave him an excuse for not asking her to take off her coat. He was very conscious of Gloria down the hallway, within earshot. He knew that Cassirer had been making a pest of himself with Raymond and Jessica. Andrew had tried to dismiss this, telling himself that even if worse came to worst and Cassirer decided to inform the world that Andrew Bernardo and Gloria Monday shared an apartment, no one would care. Except himself, of course. He did not want his parents to face more trouble than they already had. He had already lost any moral superiority over Raymond. Jessica didn’t really know Gloria, but she knew who she was from her student days. Mabel made a face, wrinkling her nose. What would Jessica make of Mabel Gorman?

  Mabel had stopped shivering, but she still stood there hugging herself. She looked past Andrew and whispered, “Is she here?”

  “Professor Monday answered your ring.”

  “I could hardly hear her.”

  Outside, voices over the intercom had to compete with all the street noises, the wind, whatever.

  “How do you know Cassirer is following me?”

  “I’ve been following him. The man’s mad. He’s capable of anything.”

  “Andrew?”

  It was Gloria, an admonitory call as she came down the hallway from her study. Her face lit up with a professorial smile when she saw Mabel. She strode toward her, hand outstretched. For a moment, it seemed that Mabel would go on hugging herself, but she warily put out a hand.

  “What class are you in?”

  “I am a junior.”

  “I meant what class of Andrew’s? Professor Bernardo’s.”

  “I came to warn him that Cassirer is following him around.”

  Gloria’s manner changed abruptly. “That’s nonsense.”

  “It may be, but it’s true. He’s crazy.”

  Mabel looked a little crazy herself. A strand of hair emerged from her woolen cap and lay across the bony expanse of her forehead. Gloria became patronizing.

  “Please sit down.”

  A shake of the head, and the strand of hair moved like a windshield wiper over her glasses.

  “I don’t know what you know about academic procedures,” Gloria said soothingly. “Horst Cassirer is being considered for tenure, and these are tense moments for us all.”

  “He should be fired. He’s a disgrace.”

  Gloria hesitated. Was this an abused woman crying out to an older woman for help? That would have changed her whole attitude toward Cassirer. “Has he been bothering you?” she asked delicately.

  Mabel’s laugh could have been her fortune on the soundtrack of animated cartoons. “Yes, he’s been bothering me!”

  “In what way?” Gloria moved toward the girl.

  “He is quite simply the worst professor I have ever had. He shouldn’t be allowed in the classroom. He mocks his students as well as the authors he teaches.”

  Gloria moved back. “That’s quite an accusation.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Gloria sat on the arm of the sofa, crossed her arms and looked wise. “These are judgments that will be made by his peers. There are procedures …”

  “They don’t have to sit in his classes.”

  Gloria might have been remembering the irate letters that had appeared in the student paper. Light came. “What did you say your name was?”

  “This is Mabel Gorman,” Andrew said. He had been content to let the two women deal with this. He had no idea what Mabel expected of him, now that she had delivered her warning.

  As if in answer to this thought, she said, “You have to notify the police.”

  “The police!” Gloria cried.

  Mabel ignored her. She came to Andrew and put her hand on his arm. She might have been making a claim on him. My God, was that it? Students got crushes on professors and harmless platonic exchanges went on in faculty offices with no harm done. But Andrew had never suspected this of Mabel. Her hand on his arm was warm and insistent.

  “He would kill you if he could.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Gloria said, standing. Her eyes were riveted on that clinging hand on Andrew’s arm. Andrew put his hand over Mabel’s, then patted it.

  “I am very grateful for your concern, Mabel. But perhaps you are making too much of this. Academic quarrels are mainly smoke and noise.”

  “We’re both grateful,” Gloria said icily and moved toward the door. Andrew escorted Mabel as if he were about to give her away. Gloria opened the door. Mabel looked at the door, at Andrew, at Gloria, then at Andrew again. She could not keep the pathetic affection from her eyes.

  “Be careful,” she whispered. And then she was gone.

  Gloria shut the door and turned. “Be careful indeed.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake.”

  “Do all your female students have a crush on you?”

  He dropped a chin. “Gloria, please. We are not going to quarrel about that pathetic girl.”

  And so they got over it. But in his heart of hearts Andrew was grateful to Mabel. Her heated imagination and absurd devotion had a kind of nobility. Gloria’s hand came to rest on the arm where Mabel’s had lately lain.

  30

  “Is everything all right in there?” Margaret asked, glancing toward Fulvio’s home office.

  “He was very neat about everything.”

  “That’s what Jessica said.”

  “Jessica?”

  “She had a look around too.”

  “When?”

  Margaret wasn’t sure.

  “Before I looked?”

  “Perhaps. Yes, I think so.”

  My God. Eleanor was flooded with the certainty that her niece had found those letters. Worse, Jessica’s manner convinced her that she had removed the ones signed Eleanor. Anger rather than embarrassment came. She could hardly wait for late afternoon when Jessica would return to her apartment from work. After taking Margaret to the hospital, just dropping her off, she drove around, distractedly, just wasting time, and finally parked across the street. Eleanor waited in a fever of excitement, scenarios of the coming confrontation rocketing about in her mind. But Jessica did not come. Eleanor took a phone from her purse and called the hospital. She asked for Fulvio Bernardo’s room.

  A half minute went by. “He’s in intensive care.”

  “I know.”

  “We don’t put through calls to intensive care.”

  “I
am a relative. I know others are with him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Is there a phone in the waiting room there?”

  “You want the waiting room?”

  “Please.”

  A phone began to ring. Eleanor thought of the ugly little room where Margaret sat praying when she wasn’t at Fulvio’s bedside. Would no one ever answer? But someone did.

  “This is the waiting room.”

  “Is that you, Raymond? This is Eleanor. Is Jessica there?”

  “She just left.”

  Eleanor remembered to ask how Fulvio was and fidgeted through Raymond’s report.

  “I drove Margaret there,” she said.

  “I appreciate that. I’ll take her home.”

  “You have the car?”

  “I had some errands to run.”

  He sounded as if she had wanted an explanation. “How odd everything must seem to you after all these years.” At the moment, she felt an extra kinship with Raymond, those letters establishing her own position as a family renegade.

  “It gets more familiar all the time.”

  “Have you gone out to …”

  “St. Edmund’s? Yes.”

  “Now, that place has changed almost beyond recognition.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  But Eleanor had all the surprise she could handle in her conviction that Jessica had found and removed her godawful letters to Fulvio. Of course she would have found them. Anyone making the most cursory inspection of that file cabinet would have found them. Her cheeks burned in memory of the identifying label for the folder that held the letters of Fulvio’s conquests. Gatte. She had looked it up. Female cats.

  Would Jessica never come? She should have asked Raymond if his sister were going home, but would he have known? She had no idea of how Jessica lived her life, other than writing silly novels. She banged her gloved hands impatiently on the steering wheel and accidentally hit the horn. Just then, Jessica drove up and waved. Eleanor beeped the horn again on purpose and got out of the car.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Come on in.”

  Eleanor followed Jessica to the door of the building, where her niece opened the door and then held it for Eleanor to precede her.