One Fell Swoop

by David Linzee

  “They’re not wrong.” Peter was about to go on, but noticed that Renata was trying to catch his eye. She must be thinking there was a way to describe their suspicions that would go down better with Hannah.

  She said, “The man Don is working for is some kind of big-time crook. He found out somehow that Adams was going to buy Parkdale. He’s far away and nobody knows his name. He’s willing to kill people to keep it that way. He tried to have me killed. That’s why I have to talk to Don now.”

  Hannah rolled her head back till she was looking at the ceiling. She was still for a long moment. Abruptly she pitched forward, putting her forearms on her knees. “All right. You’ve managed to get me worried, too. Come on.”

  She rose and headed for the door. Renata and Peter rose, too. He said, “Where are we going?”

  “To the last place I saw Don.”

  “But you said you last saw him when he left here,” Renata said.

  “I lied.”

  She twisted the key, unlocking the door, and walked out. Peter and Renata exchanged a look and followed. He took the opportunity to whisper to her, “Actually I have been celibate while you’ve been away.”

  “I didn’t ask. Thanks for telling me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Hannah had an old pickup truck. Its bed was empty but redolent of mulch. Renata was in the passenger seat, with Peter behind her in a sideways jump seat. Hannah was hunched over the wheel, lips compressed. She made Renata think of a cyclist bracing before starting up a steep hill.

  Finally she spoke. “When Don left my place last night, I followed him. That’s where I’m taking you. I don’t know if he’ll still be there.”

  Renata did not know what to say. She looked in the mirror, trying to catch Peter’s eye.

  Hannah laughed raucously. “You two are hilarious, with your significant looks. ‘What do you make of that?’ ‘Shall I talk to her now?’ ‘No, you try it.’ And after one of you talks, the appreciative look from the other one. ‘Well said!’ ‘Another good one!’ Don used to say, the world doesn’t think much of them, but at least they’ve got each other.”

  “Charming,” Peter said. “We’ll have to double-date sometime.”

  “Oops, I’ve offended The Man. He’ll sulk for a while. Over to you, Renata. What have you got to say to my humiliating confession?”

  “Perhaps you were more worried about him than you let on before,” Renata said.

  “Even worse. I was jealous. I was stalking him.”

  Hannah drove with the same vigor she brought to every other activity, wrenching the wheel to left or right, thrusting the long gear shift lever forward or hauling it back. They crossed the highway bridge to the Central West End.

  “Every relationship has a clock,” she went on. “Including yours. You’ll find out. I could tell Don’s and mine had just about timed out. And I’ve got nothing to complain about. He’s been good for me.

  “There wasn’t much left of me when my ex got done. I was just mooching around the apartment. Too scared of the neighborhood to go out the door. My kitchen faucet had a leak that kept getting worse. Finally I had to call. And this English guy shows up at the door, says he’s my new landlord, here to fix the—what did he call it?—the ‘tap.’ Only he didn’t really know how and I had to help. He let me—unusual for a man. It took ages and when we got it done we laughed and hugged.

  “He took me out to eat a lot. I only eat locally sourced fresh vegetables, so that means they had to be expensive restaurants. He never whined. He’s a charming guy. And a great lay. And he talked me into taking on the community garden. Now the phone’s ringing off the hook. People are always coming to the door. So it’s not like he’s leaving me with nothing.”

  Renata asked gently, “When you followed him, where did he go?”

  “Oh, I got what I deserved. He walked up to a door, and before he reached it, it opened. She was waiting. I got a good look at her. And I thought, No need to wait around. He’s staying the night.”

  Peter said, “Was she about five seven, slender, medium-length dark hair, possibly smoking a cigarette?”

  Hannah looked at his reflection in the mirror. “You’ve seen him with her too?”

  “Yes. And she was at the Adams party.”

  “Was she? I didn’t notice her then.”

  “I talked to her. She’s on the faculty She wouldn’t tell me her name, but she did tell me two things. One, that she and Don had never met. Two, that the Parkdale buy was a complete surprise to her.”

  “The first was a lie, and you think the second was too?” Renata asked.

  “It’s possible. One thing I’m pretty sure of. Whatever her interest in Don was, it wasn’t romantic.”

  He put his hand on Hannah’s shoulder. Renata expected her to shrug it off, but she didn’t. In fact she looked somewhat comforted.

  They passed through a bustling corner of the medical center and turned onto one of the residential streets of the Central West End. They drove past tall trees and well-maintained old houses. Hannah parked in front of a row of small, brick, attached houses with a running terra cotta frieze. As they waited for Peter to wriggle out of the back, Hannah scanned the curbs. “His Jag’s gone,” she said.

  They went up the front walk and Peter knocked on the door, which opened promptly. The mystery woman was all Peter had promised, Renata thought. She had just the sort of coiffure Renata would have adopted if she could have afforded a weekly trip to the salon and a beautifully made-up face with eyebrows waxed into tapering pointed arches. She was wearing green corduroys and a gray turtleneck. She calmly looked them over, and her eyes came to rest on Renata.

  “You’re Renata Radleigh.”

  “Yes,” said Renata, surprised. She was sure they had never met.

  “I’ve seen you at Saint Louis Opera. Several times. You were Flora in La Traviata. And the year before, Siebel in Faust. And the year before that, you were in something Italian. Don’t tell me ….”

  It took her ten or fifteen seconds to recall that the opera had been Madama Butterfly, and during that time, she just let them wait. She was a professor all right.

  She was complimenting Renata on the way she had handled the role of Suzuki when she broke off. “Wait a minute. Radleigh. Is Don your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “It never occurred to me before. There’s no family resemblance.”

  “As it happens, we’re looking for Don,” Peter said.

  She turned to him as if she had forgotten he was there. “You’re the PR man.”

  “Peter Lombardo. This is Hannah Mertz. Your turn.”

  She smiled and said, “Dana Carmichael.”

  “And your appointment?”

  “Professor of comparative literature and associate dean of the faculty. But I’m afraid I don’t know where Don is.”

  “He was here last night,” said Hannah.

  “Yes. How did you know?” The professor gave her crooked, sardonic smile. “I have a feeling this conversation is going to get complicated. Come in.”

  They stepped into a dim room, smelling strongly of cigarette smoke and rather overcrowded with comfortable sofas and armchairs, colorfully patterned rugs, and large landscape paintings in ornate frames. She waved them to chairs and sat down.

  “I’m expecting some of my grad students in about twenty minutes, so we’ll have to get right down to business. Peter, I’ve just remembered that I told you before I didn’t know Don. I slipped up. How embarrassing.” She did not look embarrassed.

  “No need. I knew then you were lying.”

  “I had a feeling you did. Do you mind telling me how you knew?”

  “I was following Don Tuesday, when he met you at the bar.”

  Her gull-wing eyebrows took flight. Her gaze shifted to Hannah. “And you must have been following him last night. Pavement artists everywhere! You recognize the reference, of course. What, none of you? It’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Don and I are both huge fans of John
Le Carré.”

  “What else do you have in common?” Peter asked.

  Dana reached for a brushed silver box on the coffee table, extracted a cigarette, lit it, inhaled, and exhaled. Renata could see the plus side of smoking. This routine allowed her to put the discussion on hold for a minute while she thought about how much to tell them.

  She said, “You said you were looking for Don. He’s missing, then?”

  “There’s a big meeting on campus to close the Parkdale deal. He’s not there.”

  “That is strange. I have to tell you, I can’t imagine where else he would be.”

  “Why did he come see you last night?”

  “Because I invited him.” She took another puff. “But I’d better start at the beginning.”

  She sat back and crossed her legs. Evidently she had decided there was no harm in leveling with them. “I belong to an informal group of deans and department heads. We call ourselves Cambridge Circus. Le Carré again. Our purpose is to try to find out, by any legal means, what Chancellor Reeve is going to do next.”

  “Is that necessary?” Peter asked.

  “The chancellor comes from the military, as you know. He doesn’t believe in collegiality. He believes in chain of command. After a number of nasty surprises, we decided we would have to becomes spies.”

  “Nasty surprises?”

  “Budget cuts, basically. Are we going to have to merge departments? Eliminate tenured positions? Terminate full-time faculty and turn their courses over to adjuncts? It’s nice to know these things in advance. Especially when you have to fire your friends.”

  “So you can oppose them?”

  “So far it’s been so we can cope. Opposition is the next step.”

  “I don’t get the budget cuts. Adams has a fifteen-billion-dollar endowment,” Peter protested.

  “The chancellor would prefer to spend money elsewhere. Kutar, for instance.” Dana put out her cigarette. “Anyway, when an Englishman suddenly popped up in Parkdale and started buying apartment houses as if they were going out of style, we noticed. We wondered if he might be hoping to sell them to Adams.”

  “That was pretty shrewd of you,” Peter said.

  “College professors aren’t as dumb as people think. Several million dollars spent on real estate would mean the chancellor’s number-crunchers on the phone, telling us to tighten our belts another notch. So I volunteered for the job of pumping Don for information.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “Nothing. Don was more than polite. He enjoyed talking to me. Fencing with me. That was where Tinker Tailor came in. I kept asking if he had a ‘mole’ at Adams University. Naming my suspects. We had a fine time. But his line was, he had no reason to believe Adams was going to buy any buildings from him.”

  “Did you ask him about his source of capital?” Renata asked.

  “Did I ever! He never let anything slip. Your brother’s a very clever man.”

  “You’re wasting your time, complimenting him to her,” said Hannah. “The things Don is good at, she has no respect for.”

  “I’ve been wondering where you fit in,” said Dana. “You’re the girlfriend, aren’t you?”

  Hannah said nothing.

  “I hope I haven’t caused you any distress. We were having clandestine meetings, but there was nothing going on between us. He’s not my type.”

  “I don’t view you as a threat. I just think you’re contemptible. Plying your feminine wiles.”

  That brought Dana’s eyebrows into play again. “Let me be absolutely clear. I would unhesitatingly go out on the street and peddle my ass, if it would save Adams University. I’ve been here since I was a freshman. BA, MA, PhD. I love this place. Now it’s being ransacked by an egomaniac who thinks he has a vision.”

  Peter said, “When you told me yesterday that the announcement of the buy was a complete surprise to you—”

  “That was the truth. I’m sorry to say.”

  “But why did you want to see Don again, after the announcement? I would think you’d be pissed off at him.”

  “Actually, I never liked him better than last night. He was high as a kite. Not booze so much as exhilaration. But he did accept my invitation to come by out of a sort of compunction. Even brought me a bottle of wine, because I’d picked up most of the bar tabs. He seemed to be in the mood for an indiscretion. I was certainly hoping so.

  “I’ll tell you what I told him. He was sitting where Hannah is. I said, ‘Don, it doesn’t matter anymore, so just tell me. Who tipped you off that Adams was going to buy Parkdale?’ ”

  They waited. She enjoyed their suspense for a while.

  “He said, ‘I’ll answer, because I don’t want you to suspect any of your colleagues unnecessarily. There never was a mole. I dealt directly with the chancellor.’ ”

  “I said, ‘Come on. The chancellor himself tells you what he’s going to do?’ He replied, ‘No, I tell him what he’s going to do.’ ”

  “What could he possibly mean by that?” asked Renata.

  “I don’t know. And I’ve thought about practically nothing else since. I considered Don as, well, rather a lightweight. Maybe I was wrong.”

  The three of them waited, but that was all she had to say. Peter rose and put his card on the coffee table. “If anything does occur to you,” he said.

  Renata was also on her feet. “When he left, did he say where he was going?”

  “No. Only that he was tired. I suppose he went home.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  As they returned to the truck, Peter called Roger Merck, who said that Don still had not appeared. His lawyer and accountant were representing him, but it was vital that Don show up to sign the contracts and appear with the chancellor in the photo op, which was now only an hour away.

  Peter clambered into the backseat of the truck, as before. Renata sat in the passenger seat looking at Hannah, who drove in silence. She looked more severe in profile, when you could not see her wide forehead and freckled cheeks, only her strong nose and jutting jaw. Renata tried to think of something friendly to say, something that would make her open up. But as they crossed the highway back to Parkdale, nothing had occurred to her, so she resorted to, “Well, Hannah, what do you think?”

  “About Don saying the chancellor takes orders from him?”

  “Yes. Can it be true?”

  “Oh, you know, Don says things just because he likes the sound of them.”

  Renata jumped.

  Hannah gave her a sideways look. “Isn’t that one of your cheap shots?”

  “Yes, it is. I wasn’t aware I’d said it to Don himself. “

  “You agree with the très soigné professor. Don’s a lightweight. This is just a real estate speculation to him. He doesn’t care about saving Parkdale or the community gardens or anything but the money. And he’s done God-knows-what to get some kind of hold over Chancellor Reeve.”

  “Hannah, enough,” said Peter. “You’re wrong.”

  “That’s not what you think?”

  “It’s what I think. To the letter. But Renata thinks Don’s trying to save the neighborhood. Only the man who’s putting up the money is lying to him and using him.” To Renata, he asked, “You do still think that, even after what Dean Carmichael said?”

  “I’m even more sure,” Renata replied. “How could Don get … leverage over the chancellor of Adams University? No, it’s something this London billionaire—this murderer—has done.” She turned in her seat. “And allow me to point out, Peter, that Don has saved the neighborhood.”

  They were back in Parkdale now, passing one of the buildings where a crew was painting the front door in Adams green and gray. Hannah gave her raucous laugh.

  “Yeah. He did that, didn’t he?” She turned to Renata. She was smiling.

  Renata smiled back. “Only we’re not making any progress in finding him.”

  “Dean Carmichael thought he was going home when he left her,” Peter said. “Do you have
the key to his apartment, Hannah?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “We might find something that will give us a clue to his whereabouts.”

  “So you’re going to search the place?”

  “Yes.”

  Hannah was silent as she pulled up in front of Don’s building. She didn’t turn off the engine. After thinking a moment, she reached for the carabineer on her belt loop. “I’ll give you the key. I have other stuff to do and … anyway, I don’t want to be around when you’re searching.”

  She detached the key and Peter took it. Then she pulled out her phone. “Can I have your number, Renata? If I hear from Don, I’ll call.”

  “Of course,” Renata said. “Thank you.”

  As the truck drove off, Peter led her around the building to a line of one-car, doorless garages. He pointed to the one at the end. “That’s Don’s.”

  “No Jaguar, unfortunately.” Peering into the empty garage, she saw beer cans, newspapers, and flattened cardboard boxes. “A lot of rubbish.”

  “Don lets a street person named Wayne sleep there on wet nights,” Peter said.

  “You see? He has his kindly side.”

  “All part of the act.”

  They went up the fire escape to the second floor, where he unlocked the door. They stepped into a galley kitchen. “As clean as it was when Don brought me here five days ago,” Peter said. “Our beer bottles are still in the sink.”

  “Don doesn’t use a kitchen much.” She shut the door behind her. “I don’t blame Hannah for bowing out. This is giving me a very creepy feeling.”

  “We don’t have much choice.”

  “But what if we find something awful? Like a … a gun.”

  “Renata, this is America. There’s a gun in every home.” He went on into the living room. “Looks the same as when I was here.”

  She walked around the living and dining rooms, which were comfortable and impersonal, like rooms in a good hotel. “There’s nothing here from his house in Webster Groves. He had quite a good collection of old opera posters. He must have sold the lot and started over.”