“Nice to meet you, Mr. Rook. Dean Pindar’s in a meeting. But she should be done any minute now. Can I get you some coffee or cold water while you wait?”
“Water would be great. Thanks.”
Nathalie disappeared into a kitchenette beyond a large display case. When she brought a dripping bottle, I pressed the icy plastic against my forehead and neck. Her grin heated the room, but I cooled off anyway.
I took one of four violet-and-white striped arm chairs at the far end of the office suite. In front of me was a stuffed book case; framed photographs hung on the wall above it. As the minutes dragged on, I had time to study the display.
I thumbed through brochures stacked on the bookcase. The exhibit celebrated the recent publications of three professors who were finalists for the Blackistone Prize, the university’s highest award for scholarly achievement. The first academic in the running turned out to be someone I knew: the anthropologist Gerald Keith. Lucky me. Copies of his new book on Annie’s cleaning company, The Dirty and the Clean: Authenticity Among Miami’s Underclass, were piled in a pyramid on the top shelf right below a flattering picture of the great man himself.
Anger, fierce and unexpected, pounded behind my eyes. Gerry Keith seemed every bit as smug in this still photo as he had in real life the night we met. I wondered again about the nature of his connection to Annie. How had he reacted to her death? Did he even care that she’d been killed? I ran a finger over the nugget of coral in my pocket. Had it fallen from Keith’s ring when he visited Annie in her hotel room that night? Had it broken off in a struggle before he shot her?
“I apologize for the wait, Mr. Rook. Can I get you another bottle of water?” Nathalie’s voice wavered across the room. “I’m sure Dean Pindar will be with you in just a moment more.”
The brittle crackle of plastic in my hand jerked me to consciousness. I set the crushed water bottle on the side table. Scaring the secretary was a lousy move. “Sorry. I got carried away by some bad memories. Nothing to do with you.”
Nathalie brought a fistful of paper napkins from the kitchenette. We knelt on the grimy carpet to dab the puddle. The water turned the napkins muddy brown as we worked.
Cheery Nathalie made the most of the situation. “Maybe this way we can get a bit of the dirt out of this grungy rug. It used to be pretty swirls of lilac, now it’s just ugly. I’ve been trying to persuade Dean Pindar to have it replaced for months.”
She laughed, I smiled. Handing her my wad of soaked paper, I repeated my mantra: “Sorry for the mess. I got distracted.”
No need to scare her by reporting Gerry Keith’s self-satisfied mug had sparked my angry spasm. To divert the sharp-eyed assistant, I unspooled my softest voice: “I’m hoping to visit the anthropology department next. What’s the quickest way there?”
“Did you pass under the arch at the center of campus?”
“Yes.” I stood, brushing my hands together.
“Then walk back the way you came. But at the arch continue north for a block to the Barstall Building. You can’t miss it. Giant glass cube with ugly metal ducts in red and purple laced around it. Anthropology is on the third floor.”
“Thanks. I’ll find it.”
I returned to my chair and Nathalie went to her desk. To cool my temper, I examined the photo of the second contender for the Blackistone Prize. James Nakamura was a professor of American Studies. He looked somber in gray tweeds and violet-striped tie. The title of his book, Hot Plate, Hot Type, was far more intriguing than his wan face and blank stare. Maybe Nakamura’s work covered some sizzling topic that would steam the judges’ lenses. Hope sprang eternal.
The third nominee was Smoke’s cousin, the accomplished Galaxy Pindar. The dean’s book was called The Navel of the World. Its back cover said she’d written a comprehensive history of the Nigerian town of Ile-Ife, which Yoruba people consider the birthplace of humankind. I scanned the dense text on the cover and inside flap, learning more about African history than I’d ever known before. In her photograph, Pindar’s unsmiling face was pale and plump, framed by a mass of light-brown dreadlocks that snaked across her shoulders. She looked nothing like her hip-hop cousin Smoke.
“What’s this prize all about?” I waved the brochure in the air. Nathalie might think I was unhinged; maybe my question would assure her I was tame.
She was eager to describe the competition. “The Blackistone is the top prize for professors at Alexander. It’s worth fifty thousand dollars to the winner. Can you imagine that?”
“No, I can’t.” I leaned forward in the plush chair.
“Each year the three finalists say the same thing: the prestige and recognition are all that matters. Maybe so. But you better believe the money comes in handy even for them making full professor salaries.”
“I guess it’s an honor just to be nominated in such distinguished company, right? Like the Oscars.”
Nathalie wrinkled her snub nose. She wasn’t buying the appeal to academic modesty. “Sure, it’s an honor. No doubt about it, Mr. Rook. But I guarantee you the chance of winning all that money sets their oversized brains on fire too.” A cynic after my own heart: sweet, sassy, and realistic.
I didn’t tell Nathalie I knew Gerry Keith. And I couldn’t bear to read how Keith had written his research into Annie’s company: too close, far too soon. I didn’t let on I wanted to visit his office when I was done with Dean Pindar. So, as the wait dragged, I resigned myself to a sprint through James Nakamura’s book.
I’d just cracked a copy, when the door to Dean Pindar’s office swished and the man himself rushed out. Nakamura was compact and muscular, neatly dressed in dark slacks and a purple pullover. Giant tortoiseshell-framed glasses covered the middle of his face. His straight black hair was streaked with white at the temples; this dashing look probably earned him a clutch of female devotees. Brina once used the term, “silver fox,” to describe a graying senior she admired in a restaurant. She would put Nakamura into that glamorous category. In contrast to his staid portrait, the American Studies professor brimmed with vigor. Red flashing along high cheekbones underlined his energy.
Professor Nakamura threw a brilliant smile in Nathalie’s direction. She giggled. Then he sped across the reception area before I could rise from my chair. With that exit, the admin assistant waved me into Dean Pindar’s private office.
I often fall for women on the spot. I’m a sucker, sue me. Galaxy Pindar was not “my type” of woman. But I fell for her anyway.
The dean was short and round as a basketball. Layers of fabric curtained her figure from shoulder to ankle. She wore black leggings and short boots under a tunic in wheat-and-gray stripes. On top of the tunic, she piled a long vest featuring the inevitable violet required of all loyal Alexander University staff. Eyeglasses in red frames dangled from a purple cord around her neck. The smooth face above this drapery flushed in pretty shades of gold and rose. The pink flooding her cheeks mirrored the red streaks on James Nakamura’s face moments ago. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not. Her light brown eyes, though shrewd, were inviting. Their directness was seductive: I was hooked. And the dreadlocks, which had seemed stiff and forbidding in her formal portrait, danced across her shoulders like loops of honey. Forty reduced to thirteen again, I longed to curl her locks around my fingers. With effort I suppressed the impulse. The dean wrapped my hand in hers, preventing me from assaulting her gorgeous hair.
“Please excuse the delay, Mr. Rook. You were kind enough to come to campus and I was rude enough to keep you waiting. Bad job on my part. James and I had things to discuss and we just didn’t seem to get to the end of it.”
“No need for apologies, Dean Pindar. James is Doctor Nakamura?”
“Yes, chair of American Studies and a dear old friend of mine.”
“And your rival for that big prize, right?”
Her smile, which had been formal, burst into full bloom. Laughte
r bubbled from her deep bosom. My crush raged on.
“Heh, yes. You saw that display out there? I cringe every time I walk past it. An ugly show of ego. If you haven’t already figured it out, self-satisfaction is the cardinal attribute of our little academic world.”
The scholar huffed and turned down her mouth in a sardonic grimace, inviting me to join the disapproval. “I told Nathalie that display looks like I’m stuck on myself. Garish. But she said it was the job of the dean’s office to celebrate our faculty and it just so happened this year the Blackistone committee picked me as a finalist.”
She sighed, tossing the ropes of light brown hair away from her face. Her modesty seemed real. In my smitten state, I was ready to award her first prize. Especially given her other opponent. “Professor Gerald Keith is also in the running,” I said.
Galaxy snorted. Not the polite simper of a well-bred socialite. Or the coy titter of a shy undergrad. The dean grunted like a pro linebacker. “Gerry Keith may be my rival, but he’s never going to be my equal.”
“You know him?”
“Of course. Gerry is the biggest of big shots at Alexander. Just ask him. We’ve entertained our colleagues for years with disputes over tenure, core curriculum, faculty appointments, departmental budgets, and diversity. You name the issue, Gerry and I have fought about it. At least twice a year he questions my academic credentials in a faculty senate meeting. He calls me an affirmative action fraud, but in the most elegant terms imaginable. And that’s just the overt crap. He takes micro-aggression to a whole nother level.”
“You two don’t get on.” Understatement was my game.
The dean hoisted her eyebrows and sighed. “Gerry is a self-regarding piece of shit. But he’s got the best student evals of any professor in the School. And he’s adored by experts in his field. His rock star status is entirely justified. I’ve read his book. It’s solid and innovative research. He deserves to be considered for the Blackistone Prize.”
“When do they announce the winner?”
“Next Friday, thank God. I don’t expect to win. I’m just looking forward to getting the whole thing behind us. And dismantling that snotty display.”
This was the kind of character detail about Keith I’d come to campus to collect. I wanted to build a portrait of the man based on the observations of his colleagues. Dean Pindar was doing me a solid. But if I was going to have time to catch Keith in his office, I needed to turn this conversation to the original purpose of my visit. I smoothed imaginary wrinkles from my collar. “Dean Pindar, your cousin said you had a concern you hoped I could help you with.”
“Oh, please, call me Galaxy. That dean stuff is for tenure battles and trustee meetings.” She waved her fingers as if shooing away flies. “How is Smoke anyway? I haven’t seen him since a family reunion in Chicago a few years back.” She swept her hand in the direction of a round table in a corner of the office. I took one of the four seats. She sat in the chair opposite me, her elbows planted on a vibrant yellow table cloth.
“I can’t really say. I met him for the first time this morning when he took over my desk. Like he owned it.”
“Yeah, sounds like Smoke. Jackie was the bad boy in the family, always running the streets. Broke a few windows, lifted a few beat boxes, stole a few cars, hustled a little weed, got a girl pregnant in high school. Everything dangerous, mischievous, or illegal, Smoke did it. And got away with it. You know why they called him ‘Smoke?’”
“No, why?” Brina had already told me a version of his street handle, but I wanted to hear the family take.
“Because he always got away. Always. Poof! That boy managed to vanish before the chickens came home to roost. Every damn time. Forced me to play the good girl in the family. I always did resent Smoke for that.” The chuckle and head shake suggested no lasting bitterness toward her delinquent cousin. Bygones were past, if not forgotten.
Galaxy stretched her spine, tipping back her chair. “Maybe he told you. Our mothers were sisters. Mine worked in the admissions office at the University of Chicago, which is how she met my dad, who was an accountant in the bursar’s office. Bringing home a white boy in the early sixties wasn’t cool. At all. So, my mom got plenty of grief inside and outside the family. But they stuck together through it all. Auntie Delphine, Smoke’s mother, always stood up for her baby sister, no matter what. My mother was no angel, but Delphine sure was.”
As she spoke, I scanned her spacious office. Three books were stacked between us, holding down the yellow tapestry table cloth. Sagging book cases lined two walls of the square space. The third wall featured a massive window looking out over the quadrangles of the campus. In front of the window were three pedestals supporting wooden sculptures: carved figures of a warrior on horseback, a mother holding a child at her breast, and a crowned head with deep scars across both cheeks. These souvenirs of her work half-way around the world were visible reminders of how Africa touched her life.
“Well, Rook, now you know way more about my family than you ever wanted to learn.” Her soft drawl and informal use of my name drew me back to our conversation. “But your patience is a good sign. You’re a private detective, aren’t you? Your work must be like field research: it requires tolerance for human foibles, a sense of humor, and a truckload of patience to do it well. Sensitive snowflakes and wimps with attitude need not apply.”
Gerry Keith had tried that same form of flattery. He set my teeth on edge. But this time it worked. Comparing my job to hers, Galaxy made me an ally. What can I say? I’m a sucker. “I don’t know about that. People who know me say anger, not patience, is my main trait. But I’m trying to turn that anger into positive drive.”
“That’s all anybody can do, right? Work on it.” She beamed until my throat warmed and I gulped. Then a cloud drifted across her eyes, dimming the smile. “Speaking of anger, let me show you why I need your help today.”
Galaxy moved to her desk. She opened the bottom drawer with a tiny key and pulled out a yellow folder. When she returned to the table, she pushed the folder to me with the tip of her index finger, as if the paper itself was poisoned.
“Pardon the drama of the locked drawer and all. But I don’t want this stuff to get out across the campus.” She propped her glasses on the tip of her nose and peered at me as I read.
Inside the folder were four creased pages of typing paper. Sentences formed from hacked words and letters were pasted on them. Each message began with the same salutation: “BITCH.” The content varied after that. One letter insisted Galaxy keep her hands off, “my man.” Another ordered Galaxy to quit messing around with what didn’t belong to her. The third and fourth threatened to humiliate or kill Galaxy if she persisted in stealing another woman’s husband. The language was crude, the imagery violent. There were no signatures or dates. Waves of fury rose from the jagged letters.
Galaxy lifted the eyeglasses from her nose and let them drop to her chest. “I received three more like this. I tore them up and burned the pieces at home.”
“Same message, same style?”
“Yes. At first, I thought they were just crazy outpourings from a lunatic. But then the messages started making specific threats: times, places, body parts. So, I decided to save the most recent ones. I got this last night, which is when I called Smoke for help.”
She shuffled the pages, putting a new sheet on top. Same lightweight paper, same ugly fury raging from shredded letters. “Look at this, it warns me against attending the faculty reception this evening.”
“Any idea who sent these?”
Before Galaxy could answer, her assistant Nathalie popped around the door without knocking. “I’m out of here early, like we talked about, Dean Pindar. Don’t forget you have that welcome back reception at the faculty club at five-thirty.”
“I remember. See you in the morning, Nathalie.”
“See you tomorrow. Good night, Mr. Rook.”
When the door closed, Galaxy explained: “The faculty senate stages a big, boozy reception to welcome themselves back to campus at the start of the new academic year. I’m expected to say a few bland words and try to smooth whatever feathers got ruffled during the past twelve months. Academics hang onto grudges like jackals gripping that last bite of carrion. Vicious and brutal.”
She shrugged, but without whimsy or nonchalance. The dullness in her eyes and the sagging lines around her mouth said she carried the toll of these academic resentments and skirmishes close to the heart.
“Which brings us back to these threatening letters, Galaxy. Something may go down tonight. But this resentment is older than yesterday. Or last month.” I picked up a page and read its twisted message again. “Hanging onto grudges like jackals, you said. If anyone wanted to harm you or even scare you this way, it wouldn’t be because of a new offense, some outrage from last week. This person sounds frightened as well as furious. The roots of this hatred go back years.”
Sadness narrowed Galaxy’s eyes. “Of course, you’re right about the past. I don’t want to think it’s possible. Denial is a river and all that.” Emotion splashed across her face in a wave of deep red. She held the clue to this mystery; my job was to poke until she was ready to share more.
As she opened her mouth to speak, the phone rang from her desk. “Sorry, got to take this one. The only person who calls me on a landline anymore is the president.”
She sat behind her desk and punched at the flashing button on her phone’s console. While she talked, I leafed through one of the books on the table. A private eye doling out privacy. If Galaxy wanted me to leave the room, she would have motioned toward the door as she started talking with her boss. But I could look like I wasn’t prying.
The book was James Nakamura’s prize nominee, Hot Plate, Hot Type. Below a glamour shot of the author, the text on the inside flap gushed his work was the definitive examination of the fierce newspaper rivalries that enflamed Chicago from 1920 to 1970. Not as sexy as I’d hoped. But then I wasn’t the book’s target audience. Maybe American Studies people lusted after old newsprint.
Murder My Past Page 17