As of now, from what I knew, Diane remained in a coma at the Exonia Hospital’s ICU, just a twenty-minute drive from Falconer.
As of now, police and others were still looking for the Nuclear Freedom Front leader, Curt Chesak, whom I had seen with my own eyes pummeling Diane with an iron pipe.
And as of now, Felix and I had been trying to talk to BU History Professor Heywood Knowlton about his connection with Curt Chesak. A police source had earlier told me that Professor Knowlton was friends with Curt and had supported him through his rise in the ranks of the NFF.
Our goal was to get to Curt before the police, and so far it had been a bust.
I thumbed through the rest of the paper and then tossed it back on the floor. A car alarm kicked off just up the street. I turned off the light and tried to sleep with a glowing Virgin Mary staring down at me, probably in disapproval for what I had in store for Curt Chesak.
Some draggy hours later, I joined Felix and his Aunt Teresa in the tiny kitchen for a brunch, which she had expertly prepared while she and Felix chattered at each other in Italian. Her kitchen looked like it could have been highlighted in the September 1959 issue of House Beautiful, with linoleum, an old-style white Frigidaire refrigerator with a big silver handle, and a skinny three-burner stove. Aunt Teresa looked a shade under five feet tall, with her gray hair tightly secured in the rear in a bun, bright brown eyes, and a wrinkled face and a quick mouth. She had on a long black dress with a yellow apron tied around her, and sensible black shoes.
But even in the kitchen’s close quarters, she turned out a meal of strong black coffee, orange juice, fresh pastries, eggs, sausages, and oatmeal. I ate as well as I could while Felix sat across from me, and each time she came over to take away a plate or refill our coffee cups, she would gently caress Felix’s shoulders or give him a kiss on the top of his head. I had on yesterday’s shirt and khaki slacks, while Felix was making do in a blue bathrobe that had belonged to dear old departed Uncle Joseph.
Aunt Teresa came over and dropped three more links of sausage on my plate. She said something in Italian to Felix, and he laughed and said to me: “Aunt Teresa wants to know if a good-looking man like you is married.”
“Go ahead, tell her the answer.”
Felix replied and there was another back-and-forth, and Felix said: “Why, she asks. Haven’t you found the right woman yet?”
I halted with my knife and fork. What a question. “I think I have,” I said. “It’s just that . . . well, circumstances. I’m in New Hampshire, and she’s in Washington, trying to get Senator Jackson Hale elected president. Not sure what’s going to happen when the election is over.”
Felix translated that to Aunt Teresa, and then she stood there, glaring at me, and went into a long speech, waving a spatula around for emphasis. She went on and on, and I tried to keep up and look interested, and when she was done, she looked at Felix with emphasis and then stomped back to her stove.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
Felix picked up his coffee cup. “Aunt Teresa said you find the right person, don’t let her go.”
“Excuse me? I think she said a hell of a lot more than that.”
Felix shrugged. “Just old family history. You don’t need to know.”
“But I want to know.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say morbid curiosity. She seemed to have a lot to say.”
Felix laughed. “Morbid. Good guess. Okay, she said you find the right person, you don’t let them go. That in the years that God has put her on this earth, that her true love was her first husband, Peter, God rest his soul, whom she married in 1936 and who died in Anzio in 1944, God rest his soul and may the souls of the Nazis burn in eternity.”
“That sounds—”
“Wait, I’m not finished. She said that she rushed into her second marriage, with Michael, who was a drunk and bitter man who chased women in the neighborhood and embarrassed her and his family, who beat her children. And then when her marriage to him ended, thank you Mother Mary, she was so lucky to find her sainted Joseph, who treated her as a princess and who raised her three girls as his own, God preserve him. And when he died, she went into mourning and never left it. So, young man, she says, she was lucky twice, but you may only be lucky once, and don’t tempt the fates by ignoring this offering.”
Felix picked up a napkin, wiped his fingers. I waited for a moment and said, “Is that all?”
“Pretty much.”
“What do you mean, pretty much?”
“Let’s just leave it at that.”
So I finished my coffee and Aunt Teresa came back, picked up our plates, and when I tried to follow her to the sink, she shooed me back and gave me a slap to my hand. Felix laughed. “You’ll learn, like the others, you don’t mess with Aunt Teresa.”
Something nudged at me, and I said, “Her second husband. Michael, the one who drank and beat her three children. She said that marriage ended. How? Desertion? Divorce?”
“Death,” Felix said.
“Oh,” I said. “That must have been rough.”
“Sure was,” Felix said. “Was years before I heard the real story.”
“Which was what?”
Felix seemed to ponder that for a moment, and said, “All right. Family secrets revealed. Just don’t let on that you know this, and don’t let it affect your view of Aunt Teresa.”
“Except for the fact she doesn’t like help in the kitchen, I think she’s an old sweetheart.”
“Thanks, I’ll make sure she knows that. Anyway, it was 1950, about four years after she remarried. Like she said, Michael was a creep. Drank too much, beat on her and the kids, and chased women all around the North End and beyond. He also managed to tick off some . . . independent businessmen who lived here.”
“Your future employers?” I asked innocently. Felix always claimed that he listed “security consultant” on his 1040 tax return form every year, and I loved trying to get a rise out of him by poking holes in his so-called employment history.
“This is Aunt Teresa’s story, not mine,” he said, with a disapproving tone. “So here it was, summer of 1950, a scorching hot day, no A/C back then, just open windows, fans, and sleeping out on the fire escapes at night. Michael comes stumbling in about six A.M. or thereabouts, demanding breakfast, and Teresa says something like, well, you weren’t here for supper last night, why should I make you breakfast? And in the kitchen, he cold-cocks her right in front of her three girls. She picks herself up, tells the girls to go back to bed and stay there, and they do. Michael sits his wide butt in that very same chair that you’re sitting in, picks up his copy of the Record-American, and starts picking his races for Suffolk Downs.”
Aunt Teresa was at the sink, singing some tune with a high, lilting voice.
“So while Michael is smoking a cigarette, picking the races, Aunt Teresa sets down a plate with bacon, toast, and two eggs over easy, and when Michael starts digging into his first meal of the day, Aunt Teresa steps behind him, grabs his hair, tugs his head back, and with her best kitchen knife she slits his throat.”
“Tell me you’re kidding.”
He shrugged. “You asked, I told. And I never joke about family stories.”
More singing from the old woman at the sink.
“What happened to her?”
“Short-term, she grabbed Michael’s plate and ate her own breakfast. Didn’t want good food to go to waste. Long-term, the police came by, local businessmen and others vouched for her good nature, and the charges eventually got swept. So there you go.”
I wiped my own fingers on my napkin. “I get the feeling dear old Uncle Joseph was either very brave, or very loving.”
“A bit of both.”
Aunt Teresa came over, smiling, and spoke a rapid sentence. Felix said, “She wants to know if you need anything else.”
I smiled up at her. “Not a thing.”
CHAPTER THREE
After breakfast, I gave Felix fi
rst crack at the bathroom, and then it was my turn, and I had to make do in the large tub with a hand-held shower fixture that had weak water pressure that barely dribbled on my hair and skin. Plus, since Felix had gone before me, the water had started off lukewarm and got colder from there.
I got dressed in my clothes from the day before, spent a second or two looking at the mirror, and then picked up my cell phone. No missed calls, no texts, no messages. I dialed a number from memory, where it went straight to voice mail, and after Annie Wynn’s recorded voice warmed me, I said, “Just checking in. Off to work again. Hope you’re hanging in there. Will try later.”
Then I tried the phone of Kara Miles, Diane Woods’s fiancée, and found that her phone was busy. I left a message with her as well, and then went out to the living room.
Felix was sitting on one of the overstuffed couches, reading that day’s Wall Street Journal. He looked up. “What’s the plan for the day?”
I sat down across from him. “The plan is . . . the plan is we’re going to change things up.”
“Fair enough. What do you have in mind?”
“We’ve been skulking around, planning to . . . entice the good professor to join us, where we’d have what the diplomats call a ‘frank and open discussion.’ I still want the discussion, but I’m tired of skulking around. I’m looking for a direct approach this time.”
“Why not?” Felix asked, folding his Wall Street Journal in half. “So, when do you want to go?”
“Still have your laptop?”
“Unless Aunt Teresa’s checking out Chippendale models, yeah, I still have my laptop.”
“Let me do a little research, and we’ll be on our way.”
An hour later, Felix dropped me off at 226 Bay State Street in Boston, near Storrow Drive and the Charles River. The street was narrow and tree-lined, with a narrow grassy median strip with trees growing in the center. The buildings up and down the street all belonged to Boston University. He pulled the Cadillac to the side of the street. “Got your cell phone?”
“As much as I hate the evil device, yes, I do.”
“Carrying?”
“Felix, I’m going on a college campus. What, you think I’ll get assaulted in the faculty lounge?”
Two young coeds with long brown hair ambled by, stopped, looked at Felix, and then hesitantly regained their step. If Felix noticed it, he kept it to himself. Instead, he said: “You’re setting to confront a guy who’s supposedly helped and supported the low-life who’s pretty much killed off your best friend. You better keep that in mind.”
“She’s not dead.”
Felix sighed. “My friend . . . where she is and what happened to her, it might be merciful to let her go. Otherwise she has long decades ahead of her . . . not knowing who she is, not recognizing friends and family, and—”
“I’ve heard enough, thanks.”
Felix said, “Yeah, I’m sure. Look, I’ll be right out here waiting for you. Okay?”
I looked at the parking signs. “But you don’t have a university parking sticker.”
“No, but I got my winning attitude. What can possibly go wrong?”
The fall air in the city was so different from what I was used to. There was no smell of ocean, or autumn leaves, or seaweed and wet stones tossed up by my house. There was just the stench of exhaust and the continuous hum of traffic, punctuated by horns and sirens.
The sidewalk was made of brick, with attractive shrubs and plants at the base of the buildings, but to me it all looked too enthusiastic, as if some designer was desperately trying to soften the hard edges of this city.
I went up the steps to 226 Bay State Street, to a wooden front door with a large glass window. To the right of the door, bolted to the concrete wall, was a gold-and-red sign that said, in descending order:
226
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
AMERICAN
STUDIES
PRESERVATION
STUDIES
And underneath, in a much smaller typeface: RAMP AT REAR OF BUILDING.
I opened the door and went inside.
I meandered my way through the corridors, past wall decorations and bulletin boards with lots of flyers and posters pinned up. There were small clusters of students talking, and I could sense them checking me out as I went by. Some decades ago, I had been one of them, planning and hoping to change the world. Then I had left and gone to the place where I thought I was changing the world, and was then dismissive of the innocence and high thoughts of my college years.
Now I didn’t have such complicated thoughts. Now I just wished these young people the very best, for what their supposed elders and betters were leaving them: lots of IOUs and trouble spots in the world that always flared up and never quite went away.
Outside the office of Professor Heywood Knowlton, a young man with a tan knapsack at his side was sitting on the floor, back up against the wall. He was busily texting someone with a pair of very dexterous thumbs, and he had a thin beard and very thick brown hair.
“Hey, buddy,” I said.
He glanced up, still texting. Impressive.
“Yeah?”
“You have an appointment to see Professor Knowlton?”
“So?”
So far, so good, even with the one-syllable responses. I took out my wallet, passed over a fifty-dollar bill. “This is for you if you let me have it.”
He looked confused. “You mean you want to take my appointment?”
“That’s right.”
He reached up, snapped the fifty-dollar bill from my hand. “Shit, bud, I would have done it for twenty.”
The next generation gathered up his belongings and, with a wide smile on his face, trotted down the corridor.
I took his spot, leaning against the wall instead of sitting on the floor. Checked my watch. At the top of the hour, the door to Professor Knowlton’s office swung open and a female student walked out, face clenched red, her knapsack clutched to her chest with both hands. She stifled a sob as she went past me.
After a second or two, I swung around and entered the office. It was large enough but cluttered, with a wide oak desk piled high with papers and folders. A window overlooked the street I’d just been on. Crowded bookshelves graced both walls, and in some of the spare wall space hung framed diplomas for Professor Knowlton, along with some interesting mementoes: a framed front page from The New York Times of August 8, 1974, stating NIXON RESIGNS; a copy of the famed Che Guevara print that has promoted the Marxist revolutionary over the decades by being used to sell everything from T-shirts to purses; and a photo of planet Earth, taken by one of the moon missions, with a caption stating DON’T TREAT YOUR MOTHER LIKE A TOILET.
Behind the desk a squat man sat, with a thick fringe of light brown hair about a bald head, eyeglasses perched up over his forehead, and a finely trimmed brown beard that was missing a moustache. He had on a black turtleneck, and both sleeves were rolled up. He was reading a stapled sheaf of papers when his glance shifted and took me in.
“You don’t look like Don Oliphant,” he said, his voice gravelly.
“I’m not, Professor Knowlton,” I replied, stepping in front of his desk. “My name is Lewis Cole, and Don graciously allowed me to take his appointment.”
He turned in his chair, dropped the papers on his desk. “Have a seat. You look too old to be a student, Mister Cole, so what brings you by today?”
I sat in a solid but comfortable wooden chair. “I was hoping I could ask you a few questions.”
“For what purpose?” he asked sharply. “Are you a lawyer or a member of law enforcement, Mister Cole?”
“Worse,” I said. “I’m a writer.”
That brought a laugh. “What kind?”
“Well, freelance right now. I used to be a columnist for Shoreline magazine, based here in Boston.”
“What did you write for them?”
“A column about the New Hampshire seacoast. Called ‘Granite Shores.’”
“Y
ou said you’re no longer with them. Quit?”
“Fired.”
He tidied up some of his papers. “Economic problems?”
“Let’s just say a personality conflict,” I said. “I had one, and my editor didn’t.”
Another laugh. “Okay. So what kind of story are you working on?”
“Research, right now. About the demonstrations up at the Falconer nuclear power plant.”
He frowned. “Nasty business.”
“Certainly was,” I said. “I was there in the crowd when Bronson Toles got shot.”
He shook his head. “No, I meant the entire power plant up there being nasty business. Should never have been built. But the corporations and their enablers in the NRC and Congress swept aside people’s concerns and had the damn place built. So nobody should have been surprised when the people finally spoke up and violence broke out.”
“I think a lot of people were surprised, starting with Bronson Toles. And the other people who got killed and injured when the Nuclear Freedom Front folks stormed the plant site.”
“That’s what happens when you give poorly trained security personnel firearms. The innocents get killed.”
“I think the forensics is still up in the air over who fired the fatal shots.”
He laughed again. “Some writer you are, taking the company line. Don’t worry, you won’t be contradicted. Enough people will get the word, and the right paperwork will get shuffled around, so those who got killed actually committed suicide. Or some gunmen on some grassy knoll somewhere opened fire. But whatever it takes, the ones in power won’t get blamed. It’ll be just like the Little Big Horn rebellion back in 1976; scores of Native American activists were later found dead, and most of them supposedly died of exposure or suicide. I’ve read some of those autopsy reports. Funny how government doctors missed a bullet in the head when they diagnosed some woman activist as having died of exposure, and another one who was found in a bathtub with numerous knife wounds supposedly died later of carbon monoxide poisoning.”
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