Flynn's World

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “He said just to call the Pittsburgh number. Tea?”

  “Good man!”

  Flynn waited until Cocky had left the office before dialing the phone.

  “Thirteen,” he said into the phone. “Zero.”

  Instantly, John Roy Priddy’s voice said, “Good morning, Flynn.”

  “Sir.”

  Flynn knew John Roy Priddy could be anywhere in the world, at any time in his day or night. John Roy hated sleep. He hated the accompanying nightmares.

  “How’s Elsbeth?”

  “Fine, sir.”

  “Todd?”

  “Fine.”

  “Randy?”

  “Fine.”

  John Roy seldom talked to Flynn without asking for each member of his family individually.

  “Jenny?”

  “Fine.”

  “Winny?”

  “Fine.”

  “Jeff?”

  “Rollicking.”

  “That’s good. Louis Loveson?”

  “Not so good.”

  “I hope I didn’t put you in line for just a baby-sitting job with him, Flynn.”

  “I’m not baby-sitting him. In fact, for some reason, I’m having one of the easiest weeks of my life.”

  “It’s just that the President of Harvard expressed concern to me about him, and, luckily enough, you’re in Boston . . .”

  “Was Loveson a professor of yours?”

  “Yes. I’m personally very fond of him.”

  “He’s not cooperating even slightly.”

  “He has his own mind.”

  “Indeed he has. He can’t deny his colleagues are giving him the cold shoulder. That much is obvious. He denies he’s being threatened in any way.”

  “All respects due the President,” N. N. Zero posited slowly, “Loveson isn’t really being threatened, is he?”

  “His ex–teaching assistant, Dr. Francine Huong, says that three weeks ago she saw a childish note threatening his life, and, within the month. Loveson grabbed the note away from her. He would not answer her questions about it. In fact, he expressed anger at her having seen it at all. I personally have seen no such written threats. When I was with him in his apartment night before last, I believe he received a threatening phone call. He denied that.”

  “I saw the attack upon him and his work on the Net yesterday.”

  “Yes. He demonizes the computer. Or those who relegate their personalities to it.”

  “I had a great-grandaunt who thought the radio caused lightning storms.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “What’s causing this assault upon Louie Loveson, Flynn?”

  “Well, it is the beginning of a new century, isn’t it?”

  “Could you possibly be less precise?”

  Flynn chuckled. “I’ll try. Loveson seems to believe these generations, his junior colleagues, have thrown away our usable past. Without any such past, he sees chaos in our future.”

  “Try our present,” Priddy said.

  “He believes teachers should act as navigators.”

  “That assumes we came from somewhere and presumes that we are going somewhere.”

  “Not a novel idea.”

  “Flynn, isn’t this all just academic nonsense? The junior colleagues having a bit of nasty fun with the old boy?”

  “I’m not sure. Are you?”

  “I think maybe that nonsense on the Net yesterday was there because technology permits it to be there. Anonymously. Haven’t you ever wanted to assault a superior anonymously, Flynn?”

  “Assault you, John Roy? Beggar the thought! Of course there have been a few times I’ve found myself in uncomfortable places in the world not immediately sure what precisely I was doing there . . .”

  “Have you ever once failed to figure it out?”

  “. . . those times my heartbeat reached a thousand and two to the minute.”

  “Flynn, do you believe Louie Loveson is in physical danger?”

  “Yesterday afternoon, my sergeant-assistant felt he had to scoop Loveson up in his arms in the middle of a road and drop him on the sidewalk to avoid his being run over by an accelerating vehicle.”

  “Oh.”

  “The sergeant definitely thought the driver of the vehicle was trying to kill the professor.”

  “What did Loveson think?”

  “He thought the driver probably had too much wine with his lunch.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think either is possible.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked. I guess there’s enough reason for you to keep a watch on Louie Loveson.”

  “It is much harder to protect the alleged victim without his cooperation.”

  “If almost being run over yesterday, after notes threatening his life—if there were such notes—didn’t wring cooperation out of him, nothing will.”

  “He does seem determined to hold his flag all by himself,” Flynn said. “Up high.”

  TWELVE

  “To be as frank as I can,” Flynn said in Dr. Bryce Fine’s office, “Professor Louis Loveson may or may not be receiving threatening notes and threatening telephone calls. You saw that attack upon him on the Net yesterday?”

  Behind his desk, Professor Fine answered simply, “Yes.” “Someone may or may not have tried to run over him in a car yesterday afternoon.”

  Sitting slumped sideways to his desk, Fine snorted. “With all your ‘may’s and ‘may not’s,’ I suspect the President has asked you to watch over old Louie. Correct? I’m not surprised old Louie has friends in high places. I’ve noticed your name in the newspapers, Inspector Flynn. I guess he deserves special attention. Seventy-six years old . . . Still, what may or may not be happening to Louie Loveson is nothing more or less than indicative.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Forgive me, I’m tired. I’ve just finished lecturing. Sherry?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Fine poured from a decanter on a bookcase a step from his desk. “Lecturing is a great deal more difficult than it used to be.”

  Under Dr. Fine’s good tweed jacket was a partially buttoned cardigan sweater. He wore a soft necktie. He carried perhaps twenty-five pounds he didn’t need. His thick black hair was graying.

  “One just can’t plow ahead and say what one is saying anymore. One must bob and weave, bob and weave.” He swung his glass, not enough to spill the sherry. “Reach out, up, down, genuflect to this bit of political correctness, that bit. Things used to be understood. Taken for granted. ‘Everyone must pass in his paper next Friday.’ A simple statement. ‘Everyone must pass in his or her paper next Friday.’ I’ll be damned if I’ll follow current trends and say, ‘Everyone must pass in their paper next Friday!’” He shot his sherry down his throat. “Sorry. It’s just that when I get done, having to take two steps sideways for every step forward, I have no idea what it is I’ve just said! Or if I’ve said anything. And I’m tired! Sure you won’t have some sherry?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Fine poured himself more. Sitting down at his desk, he sipped from his glass more slowly. “Not to worry. I guess I’m at the age where I shouldn’t care so much. I do my job as much as I’m permitted. And go home.” He smiled. “Working on the Great American Novel. Well, I’m trying to write a novel on current university life.”

  “Good luck.”

  “It’s balderdash, of course. What percentage of American professors are trying to write the definitive novel on contemporary university life? Trying to understand it?”

  “Is that what novel writing is?”

  “Having spent so much time in the contemporary university, unfortunately I find myself deconstructing before constructing.” He laughed ruefully. “Reminds me of the composer who decomposed before he composed. Wouldn’t leave much, would it?”

  “More to the point . . .”

  “In a way, I respect old Loveson. He still cares. He still believes Truth is to be pursued. At seventy-six, he’s still in there figh
ting.”

  Flynn cleared his throat. “More to the point . . .”

  “There is a point?”

  “For the moment, let’s pretend there is,” Flynn said, “seeing we’re in a room alone together.”

  “All this didn’t start with the destruction of the Harvard Freshman Union in 1996, you know, Flynn.”

  “I’m sure not.”

  “Besides the President of Harvard University, and other distinguished personages of course, Dr. Loveson also taught Theodore John Kaczynski, didn’t he? Class of 1962.”

  Flynn’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that what this is all about? The Unabomber?”

  “Kaczynski had a valid point, you know. Is Mankind— sorry, Personkind—better or worse off since the industrial and technological revolutions? Mao asked the same question. He thought it best to keep a billion Chinese occupied at manual labor than to take those first steps over the threshold in which human beings begin to become superfluous.” Fine finished his sherry and smiled. “Of course Kaczynski’s manner of addressing the problem, however dramatic, was not the best. I’ve always thought his insanity was that he thought himself some sort of a martyr, for asking the unpopular obvious.”

  “More to the point . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you aware of any person or persons who feel so strongly about Dr. Loveson they sincerely might be threatening his life? For example, have you any clue as to who put that trashing of his work on the Net yesterday?”

  “Louie Loveson has become the antithesis of current academic trends. He insists in believing in the linear. He believes that what he calls civilization cannot continue without at least some people having a solid grounding in the historical, cultural, political, and scientific foundations of what he calls Our Society. In 1914, 82 percent of colleges required a math course; 86 percent required science. By 1993, the percentages had fallen to 12 percent and 34 percent. In 1914, 76 percent of the colleges required a philosophy course; by 1993, only 4 percent. Need I go on? Am I being didactic? You asked me to describe my opinion of Louie Loveson’s present difficulties. He who bucks the trend is apt to be unpopular.”

  “To the point of someone wanting to run him over with a car?”

  “Louie Loveson’s point is that those who make decisions ought to have a thorough background in decision making. This leads to at least two questions. Who gets to make the decisions for society? Some elitist group taught by Louie Loveson?”

  “And the second question?”

  Dr. Bryce Fine hesitated. He mentally framed the question before posing it.

  “If one disagrees with the person who insists one must have an education in making decisions, what does one bring to the decision to kill that person?”

  The instant Flynn rang the front doorbell, somewhere within the house a pane of glass smashed.

  He drew back.

  He wasn’t sure he should ring the doorbell again.

  He had made a lunch by stopping at a convenience store and buying a quarter pound of cheddar cheese and a half quart of orange juice. He ate and drank as he drove to the small stucco home of Assistant Professor Donald Carver in Arlington.

  He had needed to climb two flights of concrete steps through unkempt crabgrass and bits of glass, aluminum, cardboard to get to the front door.

  The second time he rang the doorbell a young girl screamed.

  The front door opened. The storm door was pushed out.

  A man wearing earphones sideways on his head said, “Inspector Flynn?”

  “Yes.” Flynn entered. “Dr. Carver?”

  The man caught the wire dangling from his head. “I wouldn’t have heard the doorbell, if Charley hadn’t broken the window from the sunroom.”

  “How fortunate,” Flynn drawled.

  Carver led the way into what had been originally designed as a parlor.

  Central to the room, a television blared. On the back wall glowed a computer screen. Next to it was a stereo turned on, but soundless.

  Apparently Carver had been sitting at the computer screen while listening to the stereo through earphones.

  Shaking his wire in his fist, Carver hummed loudly the theme of “Ode to Joy.”

  Broken glass from a sunporch window was on a section of the living-room floor.

  Otherwise, the room, including the single worn couch and the glass-topped coffee table, was strewn with plastic toys, most of them broken, children’s socks, underpants, other articles of clothing, plus some of the vast quantities of paper and cardboard advertisements sold by the fast-food chains. There were also eleven empty cans of soft drinks, and two empty wine bottles visible in the room; a half-empty bottle of beer was next to the computer keyboard.

  “I see you were expecting me,” Flynn said.

  “Yes . . . The office of the President called . . . I have to work here today. Charley and Bess were sent home from school. My wife works, of course.”

  Carver was shoving stuff from one cushion of the couch to another. “Beer?”

  Two men, one light, one dark, dressed only in what appeared to be metal loincloths, each armed with a broad sword, poised to try to kill each other, were frozen on the computer screen.

  “Sorry to disturb your work,” Flynn said.

  A young girl’s voice sounded from somewhere in the house. “Charley! Bastard!”

  Carver turned his computer chair around to face the couch. Indicating the couch with the beer bottle he invited Flynn to sit.

  Carver followed Flynn’s eyes. He, too, looked at the computer screen. “Popular culture.”

  “Is it?” Flynn asked.

  And on the television screen, all in a row, sat six huge humans in big wigs and tight dresses. A line running at the bottom of the screen identified them as U.S. AND CANADIAN TRANSVESTITE WRESTLING TEAMS.

  A mustached man in a slim gray suit approached one after another with a phallic-shaped traveling microphone. He kept shouting, “But you don’t really mean that!”

  “I do!” one of the wrestlers insisted through cherry-colored lipstick. “I’ll twist his head off right here, right now, for all to see!” The person tugged at his bra. “I’ll throw his head into the audience! They can use it for a football!”

  The audience gasped.

  “But you don’t really mean that!”

  Bringing the mascara around his eyes closer together, the person said, “I do!”

  “I called Wincomb,” Carver said. “He said you’re hot on the trail of whoever is upsetting old Loveson’s feathers.”

  The television said: “Bastard!”

  “I’m a bastard? You’re a shmuck!”

  “Bastard!”

  Somewhere in the house, the young girl’s voice screamed, “Charley bastard bastard bastard!”

  Flynn stood up from the couch. “If you don’t mind . . .” He turned off the television.

  “About time someone put Loveson down.” Carver sucked at his beer bottle. “I use that expression in the veterinarian sense.”

  Flynn sat again on his square of couch cushion. “You mean, kill him.”

  Carver shrugged.

  Flynn’s ears told him some heavy, square, wooden object fell down the stairs from the second floor.

  “Has an actual crime been committed against Loveson yet?” Carver asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Flynn said. “I don’t think much about crime, per se.”

  “But you’re a policeman!” Carver giggled.

  “What is your criticism of Professor Loveson?” Flynn asked. “In one hundred words or less?”

  “He’s a liar.”

  “A liar?”

  “Dishonest. A hypocrite, anyway.”

  A boy of about seven presented himself in the living room. He was barefooted. He wore baggy green shorts that reached below his knees. His T-shirt read: LIFE SUCKS. His skin was sallow, his eyes sullen. He had more hair on one side of his head than the other.

  “Charley, my friend.” His father held out a hand to him. “I want
you to do me a favor.”

  To Flynn, the boy looked as if he were about to explode with unhappiness.

  “Would you please get the broom and the dustpan and clean up this glass for me? I’ll appreciate it.”

  The boy looked at the broken glass in the corner of the room.

  “If you do a good job, I’ll give you a candy bar later.”

  “There is no later.” The boy turned on the television set.

  A girl about nine came into the room. She was dressed in a red nylon bra and bikini. Her toenails were painted red.

  Flynn dug his fingers into his stomach. When he mixed orange juice with cheddar cheese for lunch he did not know he would see such sights this afternoon.

  “Charley’s a bastard,” she notified her father.

  Carver laughed. “Now, Bess. Technically, you do not know that.”

  “In what way,” Flynn asked over the roar of applause from the television, “do you consider Professor Loveson a hypocrite?”

  “He lies to protect himself. To protect a dead world. He insists there’s a logic—what, God given?—some sort of a line of reasoning throughout history that leads to our present state of perfection. His perfection. Our imperfection.”

  “Does he indeed?”

  Bess had darted out of the room.

  “Embedded in everything Loveson has ever written, ever taught is racism, anti-Semitism, sexism.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Sure. The superiority of the white male. He’s still trying to justify all the evils of history as some sort of intellectual, spiritual progress. He ignores the destitution of all the oppressed peoples this so-called progress has caused.”

  On his bare feet, Charley walked on the broken glass.

  “He’s defending the indefensible establishment.” Carver noted what his son was doing, but continued what he was saying. “He still believes in an elite, the idea of a group of people taught to make and exercise value judgments for all of us, for society. Needless to say, these navigators, these decision makers, this elite is comprised of only people taught by Louie Loveson, Ph.D., squatter in the Samson Chair at Harvard University, Queen’s Knight, and et cetera ad nauseam!”

  On the television ran a commercial for pills to take an hour before eating, to avoid excess stomach acid.