by David Waters
Yesterday, I thought I had my life all sized up. A journeyman reporter who had done nothing in thirty years to warrant distinction. I had filing cabinets full of work to prove it. Yet today two people had asked me to do things for them that were way out of my league. Ironic I thought. Pitiful even. Were we all desperate people ground down by desperate times? It’s been a lousy century, I thought, as I watched the birds circle the empty feeder. Many ups. Massive technological leaps. But the downside had shattered all our complacencies.
When Gina Montini returned later that day we wandered down to the nearby chicken Bar-B-Q restaurant for supper. She placed the backpack on the bench beside her. The waitress plunked down two glasses of water. We placed our orders. Along with the food, I ordered my usual half-liter of red wine. Gina Montini ordered milk. The waitress brought the milk and the wine. While we were waiting for the food I told her what I had done.
Her eyebrows rose. “So you will help me.” She seemed surprised.
I sipped my wine and nodded. “For what it’s worth.”
“For what it’s worth? Are you planning to charge me?” She fidgeted with her water glass. I tried to look appropriately offended.
“No. Of course not. I’m not a private detective. I’m not for hire. Eventually I may write something and I’ll bill the newspaper.”
“I have some money left from my father’s insurance,” she said defiantly.
“Enough to have hired a qualified detective?”
She stared at me. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. But a detective was not what I wanted. I felt that most of the people we would have to talk to would talk more readily to a journalist.”
“Why? I mean what gave you that silly idea?”
She shrugged. “I did my degree in communications. Most people subconsciously want the media on their side. And most people don’t want to trust the police, or even private detectives.” There was an elitist assurance in her voice. Having a degree in communications will do that.
I said nothing.
“Did you do your degree in journalism?” She asked.
“No. Such things didn’t exist in my day.”
“Oh.”
I did my major in philosophy.”
“A philosopher!”
“No.”
“But did you ever want to become one?”
I hesitated. Then I smiled. “I started out wanting answers. Modern philosophy has none.”
“And so you turned to journalism.”
I shrugged. But I wondered to what extent my cynicism, my wish to be just an observer, my habit of despondent introspection was due to the influence of my philosophy professors over thirty years ago. Surely, life was not that simple. While the waitress slid our plates of chicken, fries, sauce and coleslaw in front of us, Gina Montini removed a large photograph from her backpack. She handed it to me. It was a picture of seven people, all smiling, with their arms around each other. I recognized her father. He was thin and short. Some of the other faces were vaguely familiar.
“There are four in particular who were, supposedly, close friends of his. I mean they all formed a group on campus who hung together. But they all avoided him when he needed them. I think they shunned him because whoever was the real murderer kept the doubts about his guilt alive even after the charges were dropped.”
“Why do you think that?”
“It’s my mother who thinks that. But she couldn’t be more specific.”
“Maybe it was just an enemy, not the murderer who kept those doubts about him alive.”
“True. But it’s still a starting point. We have to start somewhere. We’ll find out what we find out.”
I wondered how she would react if she found out that her father was as guilty as hell. I decided it was time to see how emotionally brittle she was.
“Maybe his friends continued to shun him because he had had an affair with the murdered man’s wife.” That affair had been one of the reasons he had been arrested.
Her eyes blinked open. There was the hint of anger in them, but she controlled it well. “Back in those days,” she flung at me, “fooling around seems to have been the rule rather than the exception.”
“Back in those days?” The implication of a generation gap made me smile. “Does your generation really behave so much differently than mine?”
“Yeah, probably.” There was still the flash of battle in her eyes. “But that’s beside the point. Unless you can say you behaved better than my father did, I’m not going to let you cast stones at him.”
“That was not my intention.”
“It was there in your tone, Mr. Webster. You know. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Maybe he deserved his fate because he got caught with his shorts down. It’s bullshit and you know it.”
Emotionally brittle? Maybe. But when she took a hit, she could hit back. I don’t remember her father being like that. Maybe she had her mother’s genes.
“After his trial was squashed, life for your family must have been difficult. You were what? Thirteen?”
“Fourteen. Worse for my parents than it was for me.” She picked at her french fries. “Everyone treated me sympathetically. Besides, I had still had a future to look forward to. They didn’t.”
I was tempted to suggest that her parents could have faced the future differently. But it would have been presumptuous. And besides I knew better. At some point the damp rot of the past just weighs too heavily. Hope smoulders out. She handed me a sheet of paper with the names, current addresses and phone numbers of the people in the photo.
“Have you tried to contact any of them yet?”
She hesitated. “No. I haven’t quite summoned the nerve to do that.”
“Good.”
“Why is that good?”
“If your father was innocent then one of them might consider that your snooping around poses a danger to them.”
She ate a small piece of chicken before replying. “I’m not a fool. I would have taken the appropriate precautions.”
“That’s not the issue.”
There was gender resentment in her voice. “Yes it is. You’re being condescending.”
“I was not being condescending.”
She smiled down at her plate. I wondered if she was testing me. “Are you sure? You know. Big, experienced, Mr. Webster will be okay because he’s male. He can recognize danger and handle it. But I’m a bit on the petite side. Too innocent or inexperienced to deal with real danger.”
I began to wonder what I was getting myself into. There was a trace of annoyance in my voice when I spoke. “That’s not what I meant at all. I may be old enough to remember when someone like you would have been treated condescendingly, but I’ve worked beside women, even petite women, who were tougher than I was. I’m in less danger because I’m a reporter. It’s that simple. Hurt a reporter and half the country’s media will be shoving their mikes down your throat before you can rustle up an alibi. Even sociopaths think twice before touching a reporter or a policemen. We have institutions behind us. A simple individual like you doesn’t.”
She gave me a smile. A private smile. There was something hidden behind it. But what? I decided to change the subject again. “So how did you track down their addresses and telephone numbers?”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“For being antagonistic. It’s important that we get along. That we trust each other. And so I should tell you that what I said earlier is not quite accurate. I haven’t tried to contact any of those people personally. But when I was going through my father’s things prior to the funeral, I came across some very short letters he had written to all of them asking them to help clear his name. But he never mailed the letters. I phoned the university and found out that Professor Gooden and Professor Hendricks were still at Winston. I mailed those letters from Oregon. I guess I thought I might set a cat loose among the pigeons.”
I did not know what to say. I had the feeling that Gina Montini would prove
a constant surprise to me.
“I got the addresses and phone numbers,” she went on, staring at the food that remained on her plate, “through the university registrar. He had known my father. I told him I wanted to let my father’s former friends know about his death.”
“And he believed you?”
“Why not?” She gave me a crooked smile. “But he looked a little doubtful when I asked if he had Naomi Monaghan’s address and telephone number.”
“The wife of the murdered professor.”
“And the woman my father had had the affair with,” she said. “But I got lucky. One of his elderly female assistants had kept in touch with Naomi Monaghan. Good thing too because she’s gone back to her maiden name of Bronson. The woman seemed hesitant, at first, but she finally gave me an address and a telephone number.”
I glanced down the list and noticed that the address was in the east end of Montreal. A district almost exclusively French speaking. I finished my wine. “I told you I spoke to the policeman who handled the case. I doubt if many people are going to be very co-operative. He, for example, is still convinced your father was guilty.”
“He didn’t know my father.”
There was not much I could say to that. Who knows a father best? A cynical policeman? Or a loving daughter?
CHAPTER TWO
The next morning, I decided to walk over to the campus of Winston University. I felt a need to revisit the scene of the crime, to try to recapture something of what I had felt back then. Walking one of the corridors of the engineering department I passed a door with Dean Peter Gooden’s name on it. He had been the youngest of the seven people in the photo Gina had left with me. On instinct I walked into his outer office. I handed his secretary my card. On it I wrote two names: that of Gina’s father and that of the murdered professor. I asked her to take it in to the Dean. She studied the card. She wore no make-up. Her hair was soft and blow-dried. She was wearing a jean jacket with an expensive designer’s label on it. I figured she was five years younger than Gina.
“He only sees people by appointment,” she said. Obviously my business card had not impressed her. The names on the card, including mine, were probably unknown to her. Or maybe she had been instructed to stay clear of the press. Most secretaries are. Most bureaucrats are understandably jittery of any publicity they don’t initiate themselves.
“I’ll mention that in the paper tomorrow. I’m sure everyone will be impressed.”
She was not amused. Her boss was an important person. I was just someone to be viewed with suspicion. I went and sat down in one of the three chairs provided for those who were fortunate enough to have scheduled appointments with the Dean.
The three chairs were empty.
The secretary frowned in displeasure. After a few moments she offered what she may have thought was a civil concession. “If you want to phone later I can try to make an appointment for you.” I just shook my head. “I’ll wait until he turns up or comes out that door,” I said, as if I had all the time in the world. I prefer to talk to people before they’ve had a chance to rehearse all their answers. But I was not about to explain that to her.
A buzzer rang on her desk. She rose, went to the door, and after a polite knock, went through it. She shut it very carefully behind her.
In the photo, he had looked too young to be a professor. I assumed he was reading my card and debating whether to see me. In a few minutes, his secretary re-emerged. With a studied indifference she said, “He can see you, but only for a few minutes. He has a meeting at eleven.” She stood aside to let me through, then closed the door behind me.
It was the change in the way he was dressed which struck me first. In the photo he had been wearing a pair of crumpled cords and a cotton t-shirt with some writing on it. He was now dressed like the CEO of a power utility. All I could see as he rose from behind his desk was a blue blazer with silver buttons and a pink striped shirt with a starched white collar. The tie that went with it had been carefully selected to match. He had also gained weight and his blonde hair had begun to thin.
As he motioned me towards a chair, his slate-gray eyes studied me: but like my usual first meeting with a banker, they were careful to reveal nothing: not even curiosity. “So what can I do for you?” He said as he sank back into his chair.
I went straight to the point. “I’ve decided to re-examine the circumstances of professor Monaghan’s death.”
His only response was a slightly raised eyebrow.
“I gather you were part of a group he hung out with around the time of his death.”
There was a hint of a frown. “I wouldn’t quite put it that way. He was one of my professors. I was one of his graduate students.”
“But you attended some of the same parties.”
“I suppose so. A few. We all did. But it would surely be an exaggeration to say that we hung out together, as you put it. May I ask just what reason motivates you to, as you put it, re-examine the circumstances surrounding Professor Monaghan’s unfortunate death?” I felt his slate-gray eyes boring into me. For the first time I actually felt uncomfortable.
“Because Professor Frank Montini died recently.”
He stared past me as if he was trying to recall the last time he had heard Frank Montini’s name mentioned. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said finally in a distinctly neutral tone of voice, “but then I hardly knew him. He was in a different department.”
“He protested his innocence to the very last,” I said.
“To be expected, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps. But if he had really been guilty, he could have simply remained silent.”
He shrugged his indifference.
“Did you have an opinion at the time?” I asked.
“About his guilt or innocence?”
“Yes.”
“No. Not really. Why would I? None of my business really. Which brings me to what is indeed my business now, and my reason for agreeing to see you on such short notice.” He leaned forward. There was just a hint of a smile. “My responsibility is to the department of Engineering as it exists today, not to whatever might have happened decades ago when Professor Monaghan was prominent in it. I don’t mean to seem unfeeling,” he said, “but Monaghan and Montini are echoes from a distant past. Almost all of my present faculty were not around then, and as for the students, most of them were probably in kindergarten. A pointless replay of a scandal would be needlessly unsettling.”
As a reporter I had heard so many similar speeches that I just ignored it. “Did the police question you at the time?”
A shade of annoyance had crept into his voice. “No. Why should they?”
“I’m bothered by the fact that the charges against Montini were dropped very suddenly. And that no one else was ever charged.” I tried to make it sound ominous. But he just shrugged. “As I’ve said before, none of my business really.”
He held his hands open, as if to say, well, there you have it, what else is there? He glanced at his watch. “And as I pointed out before, my responsibility is to today’s department which has more than tripled in size since then.” His slate-gray eyes seemed to be testing me. “I would like to see it protected from any spurious muckraking through the past.”
Although I wasn’t ready to concede that raking through the past was necessarily detrimental to any of his students or professors, I suddenly felt out of my league. I didn’t know where to go from here. I thanked him for his time and left. Once in the corridor I cursed under my breath. I had gone into his office on the vague assumption that I could get any academic talking. And I probably could. Most of them enjoy reliving the past, and the spicier the better. But he was now a bureaucrat, with a secretary who made sure that students, academics, and, of course, journalists knew their proper place. I knew I needed to be better prepared if I was intending to snoop around Winston University. I decided to go home and regroup.
When I got back to my seventy year old semi-detached house, there we
re two messages on my answering machine. One was from Gina. I decided to ignore it for the moment. Last night I had driven her to the motel where she was staying. I did not tell her that it was often used by prostitutes working at a strip joint a short distance down the road. Before she had got out of the car I had invited her to come to the baseball game with me that weekend. I told her I wanted her to meet the cop who had arrested and charged her father. In fact, my motive was the opposite. I wanted Phil Ryan to meet her and decide for himself whether he was still convinced that her father had been guilty.
The other message was from the university’s public relations director, Joe Gibbs. Dean Gooden had obviously not wasted any time. Joe Gibbs and I had met before. I liked him. I decided I would call Gibbs after lunch. A good public relations officer is not necessarily a reporter’s enemy.
I sat down at my computer and made a few notes about my encounter with Dean Gooden. By then it was lunch time. I placed my lunch on the kitchen table and went to retrieve the photo and addresses that Gina had given me. Before sitting down to my lunch I went out on to the balcony and refilled the bird feeder.
As I ate, I studied the photo. The sharp clarity of the enlargement suggested an expensive camera. Examining the accompanying list, I wondered why Mrs. Monaghan was not in the photo beside her husband. Perhaps it was she who had taken the picture. Dean Gooden I had already met. I wondered how much the others had changed. Next to Gina’s father was a short, gnome-like figure with sandy colored hair. He was smiling broadly: a forced smile as if he was anxious to please the photographer. To his right was Professor Monaghan, now long dead and buried, a big stout man smiling arrogantly into the distance. Next to him were, according to Gina’s notes, Steve and Stella Symansky. He was wearing slacks and an open necked shirt. She wore form fitting jeans, and a cream colored blouse and red jacket that put her in a class apart from the others. They looked like a very self-assured couple. The accompanying notes told me that he was now president of Boulder College in New England. At the end of the line was Gina’s mother. She had obviously been pretty back then. Maybe still was. But her smile was timid and uncertain. Was that a part of her character, or had she already known that her husband was having an affair with the person I presumed to be the photographer. On a pad I made notes of the questions that were beginning to occur to me. As I finished my lunch, I glanced at the bird-feeder. Two birds were perched on it, and below a squirrel waited patiently,