Catch a Falling Knife

by Alan Cook

  “Because he’s too nice a guy. I talked to him in his office and he was a perfect gentleman. He didn’t come on to me.”

  No surprise there, but I didn’t see how this would help Mark. I said, “Perhaps you could be a character witness for him.”

  She laughed, shortly, and said, “I don’t think they allow character witnesses. But I was wondering if you know Dr. Pappas.”

  My guard immediately went up. I said, “I think I’ll make it a point to meet him.”

  “If you do meet him could you pass on a message? Just don’t tell him I gave it to you.”

  “What’s the message?”

  “Tell him that he should go to the Club Cavalier and look for the Shooting Star.”

  “Why should he do that?”

  “He might find out something that would help him.”

  “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

  She looked nervous. “I can’t get involved. Please, would you do it?”

  “You could send him an anonymous note.”

  “Notes can be traced. Please.”

  She wouldn’t be satisfied until I promised. “If I talk to him I’ll tell him.”

  “Thank you. Remember: the Shooting Star at Club Cavalier.” She turned to go.

  “Wait,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  She raced back toward the Administration Building without answering. I couldn’t catch her; I could follow her into the building, but I decided I’d better not risk running into Patricia Estavez or Mark’s accuser again.

  Mark’s accuser. This girl must know her name. She had announced her to Ms. Estavez and she had chatted with her. Again I was tempted to go back into the building. But if I nosed around too much it could only hurt Mark. I restrained my impulse for the second time.

  As I strolled among the students I thought about what she had told me—that she had heard me mention Dr. Pappas. I tried to reconstruct the sequence of events and was positive that I hadn’t mentioned Mark until after she had passed on her message and left the office. That meant she had been listening outside the door.

  ***

  I pondered what to tell Mark about my activities as we drove back to Chapel Hill late that afternoon. I hadn’t seen him since the morning class. He had been tied up with office hours and other appointments. He had also started a research project and had been busy at lunch.

  After leaving the Administration Building I had strolled around the campus for a while, nostalgically remembering my days in academia and wondering whether I still had the stamina to teach. I didn’t see any more demonstrations against Mark, for which I was thankful.

  When I became tired of walking I repaired to the library and found a book on chess to while away the time. I had started to carry a miniature chess set in my purse because it bugged me that Wesley played a better game than I did. I used my set to work through some problems in the book.

  I ate lunch in a cafeteria full of laughing and shouting students and remembered that one of the reasons I had retired was to gain some peace and quiet. I did one more thing: I found a telephone book and looked up the address of Club Cavalier.

  “I hoped you weren’t bored out of your mind all day,” Mark said, interrupting my reverie.

  Some of his normal good spirits seemed to have returned. I envied him because he never stayed depressed for very long.

  “Answer some questions for me yes or no,” I said, still not sure what to tell him. “Was your accuser present in class this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she sitting in the top row?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she wearing…? Never mind. All the girls were wearing the same damn thing.”

  Mark actually laughed.

  “What will you do if you get suspended or fired?”

  “Go back to bartending. I made good money as a bartender.”

  Bad question. I tried another one. “What do you know about Club Cavalier?”

  Mark took his eyes off the road to look at me. “Where did you hear about Club Cavalier?”

  “I heard some people talking about it. What kind of a place is it?”

  “It’s a local topless bar. A hangout for students, among others.”

  “And girls dance there?”

  Mark looked at me again. “Why the sudden interest in topless bars?”

  “Have you ever been there?”

  “Lillian! What kind of a question is that?”

  “An unfair one, but, nevertheless, humor me and answer it.”

  “No, I’ve never been there. I won’t try to make you believe that I’ve never been to a topless bar, but I figured that a brand new instructor should conduct himself in an impeccable manner. A lot of good that did me,” he added, bitterly.

  “Well, if you get fired you can always tend bar there,” I said, trying to cheer him up.

  “Yeah, wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony? But you still haven’t told me what you did all day.”

  “Oh, I hung out,” I said, using a student expression I had overheard. “Walked around, played some chess. Nothing very exciting. Oh, I did have a nice meeting with Patricia Estavez.”

  “I’ll bet. Tell me about it.”

  Chapter 4

  “The meeting will come to order,” I joked, striking my coffee cup with my spoon in lieu of banging a gavel. It was Saturday, the day after my visit to Crescent Heights College with Mark.

  I was holding the meeting in my apartment at Silver Acres and the participants included Mark, Tess and Wesley. We sat at my small dining table, drinking coffee and eating carrot and celery sticks. Wesley’s health kick since his wife had died included an improved diet as well as exercise. Tess and I often ate dinner with him in the main dining room so we were influenced by his diet. Thus the veggies instead of gooey rolls or cookies.

  King circled the room, placing her nose on one lap after another, begging to be scratched behind her ears. I should have chained her outside, but these people were all her friends and she enjoyed the attention.

  I quickly outlined Mark’s predicament to Tess and Wesley. Then I had Mark tell about the meeting that had occurred between him and his accuser in his office. He told it the same way he had told it to me, almost word for word. Tess exclaimed, “I don’t believe it,” from time to time and Wesley got a very concerned look on his face.

  After Tess and Wesley had been filled in on the facts, I said, “Our purpose here is to help Mark come up with a plan of action. We discussed getting him an attorney, but he can’t have an attorney present at his hearing and he can’t face or cross-examine his accuser so there doesn’t seem to be much point to him having one.”

  “When is your hearing?” Wesley asked Mark.

  “The exact date hasn’t been set yet,” Mark said, “but probably sometime next week. I gather that there is a separate hearing first for my accuser.”

  “And who is present at these hearings?”

  “A panel of about five people. One of them is Patricia Estavez, who Lillian met yesterday.”

  “I don’t mean to sound negative,” I said, “but if she is the deciding vote your goose is cooked. And I suspect she leaked the information about you to the protestors to create a negative buzz. Presumably, that will make your firing easier for your students to accept.”

  Mark grimaced in agreement.

  “If the policy states that information about the case is confidential, the leak may be grounds for an appeal,” Wesley said.

  “Except that an appeal is handled by basically the same group,” Mark said. “It’s called the adjudicating panel. In addition to Ms. Estavez, it also includes two deans and a faculty member, all specially trained in sensitivity to sexual misconduct.”

  “Which apparently means sensitivity to women but not men,” I said.

  “What kind of testimony can you give?” Wesley asked. He was a CPA and had been an accountant in the world of business, so he took a practical approach to problem solving.

  “Basically, a
ll I can do is tell my side of the story. That’s about it. There won’t be any witnesses because there weren’t any. As I said, I can’t question my accuser. She won’t be present when I am.”

  “So it’s your word against hers,” Tess said. “I would believe you before some dippy girl.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Unfortunately, none of you can attend the meeting.”

  “How about character witnesses?” I asked, remembering the girl from the Administration Building.

  Mark shook his head. “I asked about that. I was told that I might produce a dozen witnesses and they would turn the proceeding into a farce.”

  “I’m sure you can produce a hundred character witnesses, but the proceeding is a farce anyway,” Tess said. “And since it’s done in secret, it will be impossible to appeal or correct any bias, intentional or otherwise, on the part of the panel.”

  Speaking of bias, it was obvious that we all had the same opinion. I should have invited Priscilla Estavez to give her side of the story. I felt I had a moral obligation to stand in for her. I said, “I understand that the reason for the policy is that students—meaning coeds—had previously found it difficult to file rape charges. They had to cut through a lot of red tape and the college officials tried to downplay problems.”

  “But now they’ve swung the pendulum too far in the other direction,” Wesley said, “Out the window go due process and other protections our country is grounded on. Does the charge in your case include rape?”

  “I don’t see how it could,” Mark said, “but Ms. Estavez implied that it did. I guess rape is as good as any other charge because I can’t understand how any charge could have been made. But the policy is worded so loosely that what actually happened might be used against me if my accuser had some kind of mental and/or physical impairment that I should have been aware of.”

  “Such as having a crush on you?” I asked.

  Mark shrugged. He wasn’t conscious of his attractiveness to women, which of course made him that much more attractive.

  “All right, this is what we’re going to do,” Tess said. “We’re going to write a script for Mark to use when he testifies. Lillian, do you want to take notes? No, I’d better do it because my handwriting is better than that of anyone else here and I have experience because I acted as Lillian’s secretary when she solved Gerald’s murder.”

  Tess produced a yellow pad and her glasses from her purse, which she put on, being careful not to disturb her perfectly coifed white hair. She had come prepared.

  “In many enterprises, the secretary runs the company,” Wesley said, with a smile. “I’m sorry; I should have said administrative assistant. I understand that there aren’t any secretaries any more.”

  “I may not have a lot of work experience, like the rest of you,” Tess continued, “but I was a member of my local school board and I ran into people like those who are likely to be on the panel. I had to deal with issues like school busing to achieve integration, so I understand the politics of victimhood.”

  “Who are the victims here?” Mark asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious? The women students. They are so fragile that they have to be protected from their tormentors and can’t even be in the same room with them. Now Mark, you’re going to tell what happened pretty much as we heard it, but you’re going to do it in a sensitive manner. For example, when you tell about pushing your accuser away you’re going to say that you were trying to protect her because you understood that she might have a crush on you that could affect her judgment.”

  Although Tess had not held a job most of her life—her career had been that of a housewife—she had a truckload of common sense and she was a lot better at the sensitivity thing than I was. My advice to Mark might have been to tell everybody involved with the case to go to hell, which wouldn’t have gotten him anywhere except thrown out on his ear. Knowing my weakness, I was happy to let Tess take the lead.

  As the others talked and Tess took notes, I thought about my next step. I needed a man to help me. Ordinarily, I would have asked Mark, but I had to disqualify him because he was the defendant. Wesley was too old. He didn’t drive much at night and he was too far removed in years from his youth to be able to think like a young man. I had only one logical choice—my son, Albert.

  Chapter 5

  Albert had some of the same flowers blossoming on his farm that I had seen at Crescent Heights College, including daffodils and forsythia. In addition, he had flowering quince, star magnolia, plum trees and some early roses. A warm spell at the end of February had followed a snowstorm and prompted the flowers to make their appearances, causing the earth to look and smell like spring. I hoped that the quick freezes we were subject to wouldn’t kill them all off.

  The four generations of our family had a tradition of eating Sunday brunch at the farm. I brought baked goods while Albert and Sandra prepared the main meal. Sandra’s two-year-old son, Winston, brought his charming and inquisitive self.

  As I drove along the mile-plus length of the gravel road leading to the farm I couldn’t help but shiver when I passed the spot where I had almost been killed the previous summer in order to keep me from exposing the murderer of Gerald Weiss. But as time went by the shivers decreased and I could look back on the experience from a distance, as if it hadn’t really happened to me.

  Mark had been a regular at these brunches for many months, but he had declined to come today, saying that if Sandra didn’t want him to live with her she wouldn’t want him to eat with her, either. Instead, he went to the Durham restaurant where he had been a bartender while attending the University of North Carolina to see about getting his old job back. He wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence about the outcome of his “fact-finding procedure,” as the Crescent Heights College policy manual called it.

  The only vehicles parked beside the large brown house were Albert’s pickup truck and Sandra’s red Toyota. Albert got razzed by his colleagues about being a college professor who drove a pickup truck, but he shrugged it off. He often invited one of what seemed to be an endless stream of girlfriends to brunch, but perhaps we would be alone today. I hoped so.

  Romper, Albert’s yellow Labrador retriever, came bounding up to the car to greet King and me. I let King out of the back seat and she immediately ran off with her friend. Here on the farm was the only place I allowed her to run free without a leash.

  I entered the house by the door near the kitchen, carrying an apple pie, and found my three descendants busily working on brunch. Albert and Sandra cooked while Winston ate. I got hugs from Sandra and Albert. This gratified me because I had been a little worried about Sandra’s reaction to my harboring of Mark.

  Albert was his usual cheery self, but Sandra had a grave expression on her beautiful face and her long blond hair looked as if it hadn’t been brushed.

  I kissed the soft cheek of Winston, which would much too soon be rough with whiskers. He said, “Great-grandma, do you have your car keys?”

  He checked out everybody’s car. I gave him my key case and he promptly picked out my car key from among the others. Then he snapped it shut and said, “We don’t want your keys to get lost.”

  I determined not to be the first to bring up the subject of Mark. No one mentioned him until we were eating. Then Albert said, “All right, you two. Tell me what’s happening with Mark. I’ve only heard bits and pieces.”

  Sandra and I looked at each other. He was her boyfriend. She spoke, somewhat reluctantly. “Mark has moved out.”

  Albert said, “The way I heard it, it sounds as if you kicked him out.”

  Mark had called Albert yesterday from my apartment, but I hadn’t heard their conversation.

  “We came to a mutual understanding.”

  That was baloney. But I was only the grandmother and I wasn’t going to interfere.

  “Let’s not run around the bush,” Albert said. “Tell me what you know about the charges against him.”

  “Charges, not conviction
,” I said, unable to hold my tongue.

  I saw tears in the corners of Sandra’s blue eyes. But she remained silent. So I told Albert what I knew while the tears ran down Sandra’s cheeks.

  When I finished, Albert said, “That is the worst harassment policy I’ve ever heard of. It could ruin his career and there doesn’t appear to be anything he can do about it. It sounds like a modern version of the Spanish Inquisition.” Albert taught history at the University of North Carolina.

  “It’s his word against hers,” I said. “And I’ll give you one guess as to who will be believed. It’s even more unfair than that. Somebody tipped off a radical group on campus about Mark, and they staged a nasty protest in front of the building where he was lecturing.”

  Albert turned to Sandra and said, “Honey, if Mark gets convicted, you’re still not going to know anything more than you know now. And we won’t ever know whether he received a fair trial. It’s a question of whether you trust Mark or not.”

  Sandra’s tears now fell freely. She struggled to speak and finally said, “I don’t know what to do. Why would somebody accuse him falsely?”

  “Do you want me to tell him to find somewhere else to stay?” I asked.

  Sandra shook her head and barely uttered the word, “No.”

  At least she was emotionally involved. I believed she loved him. That thought afforded me some relief. On the other hand, her mental state precluded her taking him back. But I had the motivation to do what I had been thinking about.

  I volunteered to wash the dishes and hung around until Sandra was ready to leave, saying that she had some papers to grade. She taught English at a local high school. When I kissed her goodbye I said, “Don’t give up on Mark. He’s as torn up about this as you are. He needs you.”

  She said, “Gogi, I can’t make a decision right now.”

  “I understand. Maybe something will turn up.” I tried to appear more cheerful than I felt.

  “Take care of your blue car,” Winston said to me as he left with Sandra.

  I promised him I would. When they had driven into the woods and disappeared I walked back to the kitchen with Albert. I didn’t know of any way to edge into this topic, so I said, “I want to check something out that may have a bearing on this case, but I need your help.”