THE SECOND ENVELOPE arrived as mysteriously as the first. Percy was tucked away in his room, sleeping off a late night of partying at the Hasty Pudding Club, while I was heading out to my morning chemistry lecture. Dalton had told me that if I didn’t receive another invitation inside of a week, I should consider myself another punch casualty. Only two-thirds of the punchees would be lucky enough to make it to the next round.
Same envelope and stationery stock. Same meticulous calligraphy. No postal markings.
The President and members of the Delphic Club invite you to the annual outing. Saturday, November 5. Please bring a change of outdoor clothes and sneakers. We will meet promptly in the courtyard of the clubhouse at 7 AM. Enter through the side gate.
Regrets only 876-0400.
I called Dalton. “Another invitation,” I said when he picked up the phone. “Must’ve come last night.” I was standing in the middle of the common room with the invitation held up to the naked bulb.
“And it’s legit?” Dalton asked.
“JPM inside the ring.”
“What does it say?”
“The outing is next Saturday. We’re meeting in the courtyard first thing in the morning.”
“They’re probably taking you to some alum’s house for the day,” Dalton said. “This is perfect. We’ll have our talk with Dunhill before then.”
“What time are we leaving tomorrow for Miami?”
“First flight at seven thirty. I booked us two rooms at the Raleigh. I don’t feel like trekking all the way to my parents’ place in West Palm. Besides, we’ll have a lot more fun in South Beach.”
“Do you think Dunhill will have anything important to tell us?”
“A treasure trove,” Dalton said. “I found out something else yesterday at the alumni office. Dunhill knew Abbott long before Harvard. They both went to Choate, this exclusive little prep school in Connecticut.”
* * *
I SLEPT MOST OF THE WAY to Miami, thanks to the thrilling offerings of Immanuel Kant and his meditations on reason and freedom. I was excited to be in Miami for the first time, especially after hearing so much about the occasional topless sunbather and the white-sand beaches. The Florida heat smothered us as soon as we stepped off the plane, and when we walked into the terminal, I caught my first glimpse of the paradise I had always imagined—vivacious, curvy women strolling through the airport in tight shorts and tiny minis with deep tans that glowed like the setting sun. Children frolicked in bright clothes and flip-flops, and I couldn’t help but think about the hardened Bostonians back up north, layered in their thick wool sweaters and thermals, hunkering down for another frigid winter.
We jumped in the back of a cab, and Dalton gave the driver the address to the Raleigh. As we set out toward the beach, our strategy session began.
“Dunhill comes from Omaha, Nebraska,” Dalton said. “His father was a banker and his mother a music teacher. He had one younger sister who also went to Harvard and an older brother who died in high school from polio.”
“How in the hell did you find all this out?” I said.
“There are a few situations where the Winthrop name means something,” Dalton said. “The Harvard alumni office is one of them, especially while they’re in the middle of a university fundraising campaign. They were falling over themselves to help me out.”
“I think Dunhill’s gonna be a hard nut to crack,” I said. “There’s no doubt he’ll want to know why we’re snooping around about Abbott’s death. And even if we tell him, there’s no guarantee he’ll give up anything.”
“We’ll get him to talk,” Dalton said. “Just stick to our story. We’re writing a paper on Harvard history. During our research, we came across the Abbott death and got curious about it. How could he resist two charming and studious undergrads?”
“Speaking of charming, I saw Ashley Garrett yesterday,” I said.
“The dining hall girl?”
“Yes, my future wife. She was buying books at the Coop.”
“Schoolbooks?”
“She’s a student at some school called RCC. Ever heard of it?”
Dalton shook his head. “How did you get that out of her?”
“Sure in hell wasn’t easy. She’s a really smart girl.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She was standing there, flipping through Locke and Rousseau.”
“Jesus Christ! Looks and brains. A double threat. Did you ask her out?”
“Sort of. I asked her if she wanted to go to Emack’s.”
“And?”
“She really never answered. She had to go to class.”
“In other words, you got shut down,” he laughed.
“Down but not out,” I said. “She at least told me her favorite ice cream flavor.”
“Doesn’t get rid of her boyfriend.”
“She didn’t mention him. Maybe he doesn’t exist.”
“The eternal optimist,” Dalton said. “I haven’t seen her again in the dining hall.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll find her.”
“Be careful. Her boyfriend’s from Somerville.”
“And I’m from the South Side of Chicago.”
“Yeah, but you’re a Leaguer now, a long way from the South Side. You study Machiavelli and Rembrandt. That guy probably pounds nails into roofs for a living. I wouldn’t want him to do the same thing to that pretty face of yours.”
The driver pulled up to a tall art deco hotel on a street full of other gigantic hotels and colorful low-rise apartment buildings that looked like they were stuck in a Cuban time warp. The palm trees soared overhead, and all the hotel workers were dressed in white linen pants and floral shirts with permanent smiles fixed across their heavily tanned faces.
“We’ll check in, then get over to Dunhill’s,” Dalton said. “He’s about a twenty-minute cab ride from here. Then we’ll come back and hit the beach.”
The icy air-conditioning blasted us as we walked into the lobby, but the woman greeting us behind the front desk was anything but chilly. She was Latina, almost as dark as me, and with a body that could stop traffic. I put her somewhere in her twenties, and she had a personality that filled the lobby. Dalton nudged my leg as we approached and wasted no time starting to flirt.
We checked into our rooms, changed our shirts, and met back in the lobby. Dalton was standing outside, talking to the bellhop when I arrived. The Thompson Home for the Aging was not in a heavily traveled area where it would be easy to hail down a cab for our return trip, so the bellhop gave us a card with the name of a car service company. He told us to drop his name, Juan Carlos, and they’d not only give us the friends and family discount, but make sure two beautiful señoritas would accompany us on the ride back to South Beach too. “Welcome to Miami,” he said with a wink as he ushered us into the back of a cab. “Anything you need for the rest of your stay, Juan Carlos will take care of it.”
* * *
THE THOMPSON HOME for the Aging was perfectly situated on Biscayne Bay, nestled between a yacht club and the Crandon Golf Course. It was one of those expansive plantation affairs with sweeping lawns and cascading water fountains fronting an audaciously columned entrance. Several elderly residents sat out on the front veranda in bright-colored cardigans and long polyester pants, canes at their sides, and tall glasses of iced tea sitting atop silver trays.
We walked into a spacious lobby decorated with shiny Italian marble and calming pastels. Two women sat behind a large glass-and-chrome desk underneath a domed roof. One was talking on the phone, so we approached the other, who was typing on her computer.
“How can I help you gentlemen?” she asked.
“We’re here to see Mr. Kelton Dunhill,” Dalton said.
“Is he expecting you?”
“We have a meeting with him at twelve thirty.”
The woman asked us our names, typing something into her computer. She picked up a phone and told someone that Mr. Dunhill had two visitors. When she hung up
, she turned to us and said, “Mr. Dunhill will be meeting you shortly under the portico out back. Please follow me.”
She led us through a maze of open hallways and cozy sunlit rooms. An army of young Cuban and Haitian women went about their work quietly, arranging vases and dusting ledges. We eventually walked through a set of tall French doors that opened onto a lawn running down to the water. A slightly elevated white columned portico sat at the end of a narrow strip of lawn. She pointed us toward a table and told us that Dunhill would be joining us soon.
“Pretty spiffy place to die,” Dalton said as we walked out on the lawn. “Nice view of the water, a bunch of pretty girls in tight uniforms running around. I’m already liking our man Dunhill.”
“Seems depressing to me,” I said. “Sitting around all day with a bunch of old people waiting to see whose number is up next. Not the way I wanna go.”
“But that’s why the señoritas are running around,” Dalton said. “Keeps the blood rushing through their veins.”
Just as we sat on the wicker chairs surrounding a small table that had been set up for lunch, a man in a lime green suit with a towel over his arm approached us, carrying a silver tray of glasses and a pitcher of iced tea. He poured the chilled tea, then left the pitcher and the remaining glass on the table. We were nearly halfway through our drinks when a short, stocky man walked out the back door and onto the path. He had thick silver hair, heavy eyebrows, and deep lines carved into his leathery skin. He wore a pair of khaki pants and a short-sleeved white shirt that was opened wide enough to show a little of what was once a muscular chest. He walked with a slight limp, but he was far from feeble. He shook our hands with a firm grip and took a seat across from us. The stoic expression on his face matched the gruffness in his voice.
“Well, boys, so you made it to Miami,” Dunhill said, taking a sip of iced tea and stretching back in his chair. “Shouldn’t you be studying for midterms this time of year?”
“They’re a couple of weeks away,” Dalton said. “We wanted to get down here before things got too busy.”
“What’s your interest in the Abbott affair?” Dunhill said, getting straight to the point.
“We were doing some research and found some articles about Abbott’s disappearance in the Crimson,” Dalton said, sticking to our script. “It seemed interesting, so we decided to follow up on it and see if there was anything there.”
Dunhill looked over at me. “Is that true?”
I nodded my head.
A young boy in uniform approached us with an open box of Davidoff cigars and held it out to Dunhill, who took one, then offered the box to us. When we refused, he waved the man off and then burrowed his eyes into Dalton.
“You’re bullshitting me, Winthrop,” he said. “And I don’t like it. There’s no way the two of you would fly all the way down here just because you read some goddamn articles. There are more than three centuries of Harvard history you can dig through up in Cambridge. The Abbott case amounts to nothing more than a footnote. Either you come clean or this little meeting is over before it even starts.”
Dalton looked at me and I looked at Dunhill.
“Okay, we’re not just doing some random research,” Dalton said. “We’ve been looking into the final clubs and came across an old article about Abbott’s disappearance and started looking into what happened. Your name was mentioned in the article, so we looked up your information in the alumni directory. We figured you might tell us in your own words what happened that night.”
Dunhill looked at me for confirmation. I nodded my head. He then clipped the end of the cigar, lit it, and relaxed in his chair. He took a long puff on his cigar, then said, “So all of this out of simple curiosity.”
“It sounds like a really interesting story,” Dalton said. “Mysterious.”
“Most people don’t even remember Ras,” Dunhill said. “We were kids back then. Most of us who knew him are either dead or half out of our minds. I’ve been lucky enough to keep everything together. My memory is starting to leak a little, but I still have most of my life stored away.”
“So, do you remember if Abbott was trying to break into the Delphic’s secret room?” Dalton said.
“Is that what the article said?”
“At least one of them,” I said.
Dunhill nodded slowly. “That damn room was his obsession,” he said. “That’s all he ever talked about.”
The waiter returned, refreshed our glasses, and took our lunch orders. When the waiter asked Dunhill how he wanted his steak cooked, he said, “I want to see the blood.” After we ordered and the waiter had left the portico, Dunhill leaned his head back, blew a cloud of smoke in the air, then said, “Does Aurelius know you’re down here, Winthrop?”
We were both startled by that question.
“No, sir,” Dalton said. “This trip has nothing to do with him. You know my father?”
“Not personally, but everyone knows of him. From what I’ve heard, he’s a coldhearted bastard. No offense.”
“None taken,” Dalton said. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“But your uncle Randolph was a different story,” Dunhill said. “I met him at a couple of the reunions. He was a complete gentleman in the old tradition, generous with his money and without pretense. Is he still alive?”
“He’s hanging on,” Dalton said. “He’s got some kind of lung disease that’s been slowly eating away at him. But he’s still with us.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Dunhill said. “Through the years, he’s represented your family with distinction.”
“So, what exactly happened that night in 1927?” I asked.
Dunhill put down his glass, twirled the cigar in his mouth, then pulled it out and rested it on the edge of the table. He folded his hands across his stomach and looked out into the water. His eyes were a million miles away.
“It was Halloween night, and our regular crew had gotten together for dinner,” he began. “There were five of us. Benny Shelton from Philly, Jasper Cummings from New York, and Thaddeus Arrington from Boston. Then, of course, Ras and me. We ate together most nights. A good group of guys.” Dunhill smiled softly as the memories played back in his head. “We had a some good times in those days. Anyway, that night, Ras kept talking about breaking into the Delphic. We never paid him much attention, because he was always going on about finding a way to get in there and penetrating the secret room. But that night, I believed him. There was a look in his eyes that I had never seen before.”
“Why was he so obsessed with the Delphic?” Dalton asked.
“Ras was always out to prove he belonged. He was the same way in boarding school. We were hall mates. He wasn’t an athlete like the rest of us, so he always felt a little slighted. We’d heard about the Delphic’s secret treasure room, and I think Ras felt that if he could break into it, he would prove that he was more than just another trust fund kid waiting for his inheritance to kick in.”
“Do you believe there really was a secret room?” I asked.
“That’s what was whispered for years,” Dunhill said. “Some believed that J. P. Morgan Jr. had it secretly built on the third floor of the mansion and filled it with a lot of expensive paintings and artifacts that he had purchased in Europe. There was also a rumor that they held séances and communicated with the dead in there. Back then, there was so much being said that it was hard to separate fact from fiction.”
“But what did you believe?” Dalton asked.
Dunhill took a couple of puffs on his cigar. His face cloudy in the smoke, he said, “I believed there was definitely something going on in that old mansion. The members were too quick to deny the rumors, and they were overly secretive about their affairs. My club, the Spee, and many of the others would let nonmembers occasionally come in for lunch or dinner, but not the Delphic. Their door was always closed. But secret treasures and all that jazz? I think it’s all imagination.”
“Did you know any of the Delphic members?” I asked.
“A few,” Dunhill said. “And don’t think we didn’t try to work them over for information. We’d get them drunk till they couldn’t stand, and they still wouldn’t say a word. But then something strange happened. One of the workers, some little Irish guy, was out one night at a bar in downtown Boston. He had too many shots of Jameson and started blabbing that he knew all the secrets buried in the Delphic mansion, and how if he wanted to, he could bring down some of the most powerful men in the country.”
“Did he ever tell the secrets?” Dalton asked.
“Never had a chance,” Dunhill said. “Two days later, they found him floating in the Charles down behind MIT.”
“Was this before or after Abbott disappeared?” I asked.
“About a year before Ras disappeared.”
“That Halloween night that Abbott tried to break in, what did the other guys at dinner think about his plans?” I asked.
“Benny and Jasper told him he was crazy. Thaddeus egged him on. I agreed to go with him because I was afraid he was gonna do something stupid and get in trouble.”
“You told Fleming from the Boston Evening Transcript that you walked up to the club with Abbott,” Dalton said. “But the article never said if you actually saw him go in.”
“Archie Fleming was a piece of slime,” Dunhill said. “I’d spit on his grave if I could find it. I never should’ve spoken with him. He was one of those sleaze reporters looking for a big break. He promised me what I said would stay off the record, and then he turned around and twisted almost every damn word I told him. I wanted to strangle him when I read that article. Made me look like a piece of shit.”
“Did you tell him everything?” Dalton asked.
“He thought I did,” Dunhill said. “But there was something about him that made me reluctant, so I just fed him a little to see what he would do with it. He betrayed me, so I never spoke to him again.”
Two waiters arrived with our dome-covered plates, arranged the food in front of us, and at once lifted the shiny domes in grand fashion. I had ordered pasta and Dalton the lamb chops. Dunhill’s steak looked as if it had just been killed on the plains and sliced on the plate. He wasted no time attacking the heavy slab of meat.
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