The Skelly Man

by David Daniel

  “What was it you wanted, Mr. Rasmussen?”

  “I’m hoping to get some current information on several alums.”

  When I had laid it out in brief for him, he frowned, cleared his throat, and said, “I see.” I had the feeling he was getting ready to give me the Ivy League version of the bum’s rush. “I had assumed that this was college business,” he said, “that perhaps you had attended Harvard yourself.”

  “I once spent a fair amount of effort trying to make a young woman think so,” I said.

  “Well, I’ll be direct. While it may be true that we are not talking about state secrets here, I do feel sufficient uncertainty about your request to make me hesitant. Furthermore, I’m not sure I like the precedent this might set. Therefore, I’m going to exercise my discretion and decline.”

  “That wasn’t that direct,” I said.

  He didn’t smile. “I don’t want to have to call campus security.”

  “All right. You don’t have to throw in the combination to the office safe.”

  He picked up his telephone. There was a cherrywood chair in front of the desk, with the college emblem and Veritas stenciled in gold on the back. I sat in it. His hand hung frozen with the phone in it. I leaned forward and set my hat on the edge of his desk. He hesitated a few seconds, maybe wishing he could lay one of the lacrosse sticks across my skull. Then he hung up the phone. “Look,” I said, “I’m not in the business of being indiscreet. In fact, just the basic information can probably clear up any questions I have, and I’ll be on my merry way.”

  He went behind his desk and sat in his own chair. He cleared his throat again. “Our alumni organization is the finest in the world. We’ve got more than a quarter of a million members. We have a responsibility to them.”

  Keep those checks and endowments coming, I thought. I said, “Understood. I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you the names, you tell me addresses, without mentioning whose is whose, and if I can rule out any of them on that basis, I will.”

  He sighed. I wrote out the four names, and he called in Ms. Bishop and gave her the list. “Jacket data only,” he instructed.

  When she had gone, he swiveled his chair to face away from me at an angle. From a sideboard he took a briar pipe, clopped it loudly in his palm, stuffed the bowl with Leavitt and Peirce Cake Box and applied a match. The aroma was a lot sweeter than Westrake’s cigar. Ms. Bishop returned in a few minutes and handed him a sheet of printer paper. She moved gracefully, as if she was being careful not to disturb the smoke. As she turned to go, she gave me a surreptitious wink. I liked the way it crinkled the freckles across her nose.

  “Okay,” Stahl said when he had replaced his half-frames, “we’ve got one in Yakima, Washington.” He glanced at me, looking for reaction. “Another in Brussels, Belgium. Like the first, he’s been there for more than a decade.”

  “Is anyone still in the Boston area?”

  “One of them lived here in Cambridge … before he passed away two summers ago.”

  “And the other?”

  “The other lives in Cohasset.”

  It was on the South Shore, twenty miles from Boston. I glanced at the names in my notebook and took a shot. “Ralph Tatum.”

  Stahl set down his pipe. “I don’t know if I want to take this any further.”

  “You’ll be saving me time, is all. I can check all four names in the directory.”

  “Pickering. Noel Pickering. One-forty-four Jerusalem Road.”

  “Thank you.”

  In the outer office, I leaned close to Ms. Bishop’s desk and asked quietly, “Is that Ms. a miss or missus?”

  “Part of your private investigation?”

  “Lively curiosity,” I said.

  “It’s the former.”

  “As in the former Mrs. Bishop?”

  “As in not latter. I’m single.” She smiled. “First name’s Judy.”

  “Hi, Judy,” I said. I put on my hat, gunned her with a finger pistol and walked through the door.

  Outside, sycamore leaves spun on the sidewalk, chasing scraps of Barron’s and flyers for dulcimer lessons. I found a phone booth and made a call. I looked at my watch. Almost 3:30. If I hustled I could get into the front wedge of southbound traffic. There was a Cohasset exit off Route 3.

  13

  ADD CYPRESS TREES and Japanese golfers, and Cohasset could be Monterey East. Jerusalem Road gave rugged ocean views as it twisted along the rocky shore. The homes were a mishmash of styles, with the only thing in common being that they were expensive. I almost missed the mailbox with 144 on it. I backed up to where I could peer past a rustic wooden fence.

  The Pickering house was smaller than most, a cedar-shingled Cape Cod with an ell, weathered silver and grown with vines that would have bloomed with color in June but were only a net of crisp leaves now. I pulled into the crushed-shell driveway, parked behind an old station wagon and a white Lexus, and got out. It was 5:00. I stretched and replaced the fumes in my lungs with salt air. The sea and sky were blue, and gulls cried over the foamy inlet below. The commute from the city would be a bitch, but once you were here, life would be worth every mile.

  The front door was fashioned from oak planks and set in a low frame. I didn’t need to knock. A woman approached from the side yard. She had on work gloves, a cell phone in one hand and a gardening spade in the other. “Hi,” she said. “I’m mulching the iris beds. If only this weather would last!”

  “It never does,” I said. “Mrs. Pickering?”

  “Yes. Mr. Rasmussen?”

  I said I was. We had spoken briefly on the phone through a bad connection, and I realized now she probably had been talking from her garden. She was a pretty woman, tall and slender, with eyes of the same soft blue as her velour sweat suit. She pushed back a spray of ash gold hair with her wrist. “Come on in.”

  I needed to duck to get through the front door. I followed Mrs. Pickering through several low-ceilinged rooms into a large, well-equipped kitchen. She set the phone in its cradle and offered me coffee, then gave me a hand-thrown ceramic mug to hold while she poured from a vacuum carafe.

  “I’m Missy, by the way.”

  “Alex,” I said.

  I had gotten the phone number from directory assistance and called from Cambridge. Through the static, Mrs. Pickering had told me that Noel was working but would be done at 5:00. I said I’d drive down.

  I guessed Missy Pickering to be fifty, give or take a few years. Hers was the kind of bred beauty that ages well. Like the house. It was an antique, restored and furnished in what I took to be authentic style, if you didn’t deduct points for the kitchen gizmos.

  “Noel will be done just about now,” she said. “He’s precise about his schedule. Bring your coffee.” She led me into the ell at the rear of the kitchen. “This weekend the clocks go back, and he frets all winter about losing the good north light.”

  I was slow grabbing that. “He’s a painter?” I asked as we stepped into a small backyard.

  She turned to look at me, her forehead crinkling with fine lines. “You don’t know him?”

  “We’ve never met,” I said. “I’m a private investigator from Lowell.”

  “Goodness, I thought … Well, it wasn’t clear on the phone. He knows some Rasmussens. An investigator. Is anything wrong?”

  “I just want to ask him a few questions about someone else he may know.”

  She hesitated, uncertain all at once, maybe sorry her good breeding had made her so hospitable. “Well, he’s out here.”

  In the backyard was a shed perched near the edge of the drop-off to the inlet below. I could hear the ocean as we walked out. Missy Pickering opened a door and called in, “Noel, Mr. Rasmussen is here. He’s a private investigator.” She said to me, “Go right in.”

  As she retreated to the house, I stepped into the shed. Against a huge window, a tall man stood in silhouette before an easel. He was wiping brushes with a cloth and paid no attention to me. I didn’t mind. On two of the w
alls hung a lot of unframed canvases, bright in the incoming light. They were seascapes mostly, depicting the view beyond the big window in an array of moods. The paintings were good.

  The man at the easel came over now. He had on a backyard chef’s apron, from the paint-streaked front of which Paul Prudhomme eyed me; or was it Dom DeLuise?

  “Hi. Noel Pickering,” he said in a voice more suited to a clap on the back than the almost-delicate handshake he offered. His hand left a scent of turpentine on mine. He was my height, with a slight stoop—probably from going in and out of his front door—and sandy hair flecked with white. Like his wife, he would be good-looking all his days.

  “These are good,” I said, indicating the seascapes on the walls. “Working on a new one?”

  He smiled. “Come have a look.”

  I did—and felt my body tighten. I was staring into someone’s sliced-open stomach. The painting was full-size, in living color on canvas board. The viscera seemed to glisten and throb. I know mine did.

  “That stuff on the walls is my first love,” Pickering said. “But I can’t give it away—or just barely. This is my bread and butter.”

  “People buy this?” I said.

  He laughed. “Medical texts. I’m an illustrator. I work from photographs. And memory. I was a general surgeon for twenty years. I see Missy offered coffee. Would you care for something sneaky in it?”

  “As long as it isn’t paint thinner,” I said.

  From an old wooden cabinet he produced a bottle of Jameson’s. He refilled a mug of his own from a hot pot and splashed a dollop of whiskey into each of our cups. He lifted his. “What can I do for you, sir?”

  I gave him a card, which he looked at and said, “The people I know spell it differently.” I did too, but I didn’t go into it. Without mentioning Jerry Corbin I laid out a general idea of why I was there. He sipped coffee and listened, and finally said, “So you’re wondering if after all these years someone might be trying to even a score by sending scary notes.”

  “That’s about it,” I said.

  “Exploratory surgery. Hmm.” Pickering turned so we were both facing the large window, beyond which daylight was fading on the sea. The colors kept changing. I could see the wink of a lighthouse offshore.

  “‘I love you,’” Pickering said abruptly.

  “What?”

  “The blink pattern. Minot’s Ledge light. One, four, three. They call it Lover’s Light. Fog bank coming.” He pointed. “See it?”

  A luminous mist was visible on the southeastern horizon, as if someone had brushed it there with a delicate stroke. I wondered what it would be like to be a painter and know that if you didn’t grab something while you could, you might never see it the same way again. Maybe I did know. “Any ideas?” I asked.

  Pickering turned. “You’ve stirred up some memories here. That was a long time ago, but there are parts that are still in focus.”

  I waited.

  “After that last quiz show, the four of us went back to Cronin’s—remember that old place? Long gone. Partly we wanted to nurse our wounds—but hey, college, any excuse to get loaded.” His smile came and went. “Anyway, this one fellow got a little blabby and started talking about how we should get even.”

  “With the Lowell team?”

  “Frankly, I was surprised that he felt that way. It wasn’t the end of the world or anything. I mean, we’d won five or six weeks running, and taken some scholarship money. Even made front page of the Crimson. But he was talking himself into something, said we’d been dishonored, that we should redeem ourselves. And he said there was a way—that his club had an oath of allegiance to uphold its and the college’s honor if either were ever sullied. Well, okay, so maybe he was thinking about stealing a mascot, or painting ‘Veritas’ on their library steps. But he made it sound more … ominous.”

  “How?” I said.

  “Well, for one thing … are you familiar with Harvard’s club system?”

  “No sully intended,” I said, “but no.”

  “The college has no fraternities. It has clubs. Delphic, Porcellian, Hasty Pudding. I was in Phoenix myself. People think they’re about exclusion, and I suppose in days gone by there were unwritten sanctions—you know, only members who look like us, read WASPs. That’s changed. Some people like to believe that the clubs are old-boy networks that hard-wire you straight to seats of power. Right. Basically the clubs are about comradeship, and service. But, that said, there were always rumors of certain … secret clubs.”

  I set my coffee mug gently on the cabinet, not wanting to miss his words.

  “They certainly weren’t recognized as part of the system,” he continued. “And their aims tended more toward mischief. Outlaw clubs. I think that’s what this fellow was talking about. He was speaking in rather sepulchral tones—if one can be drunk and sepulchral at the same time.” Pickering laughed. “We didn’t pay much mind.”

  “Which one of your teammates was this?” I asked.

  “I wish I could remember. We’d been pulled together for the sole purpose of a quiz team. A couple of humanities types, an engineer. I was the science guy. Each bright enough in his own fashion, I suppose, but unintegrated. I mean, what do twenty-one-year-olds know? As to whether this fellow pursued it—God, I have no idea. I can’t remember his club, either. As I say, many of these things were rumor. After that boozy little breakup at Cronin’s I never saw any of those fellows again.”

  Beyond the big window, the sea and sky had darkened. Noel Pickering said, “Boy, I haven’t thought about this in a long time.” He drank some coffee and set his cup down. “Come on into the house a moment.”

  Missy Pickering was at a sink in the kitchen’s center island, washing zucchinis. She looked up suddenly, perhaps expecting to see her husband in handcuffs. Pickering said, “Honey, are those old yearbooks still around?”

  In the front room he rummaged in a bookcase and brought a volume over to the lamplight and began paging through it. I stood by, watching a man take a stroll down memory lane. He didn’t exclaim “Eureka!” but after a moment he turned the book so I could see what he had found. It was opened to a teams-and-clubs section, and there were the four young Harvardians I had first seen on Alfred Westrake’s wall. Pickering tapped his finger on one face. “Tom Chapman. He was the engineer, went on to found his own company. Electronics, I think. He’s the fellow I told you about.”

  From the doorway across the room, Missy Pickering said, “Isn’t Tom Chapman the one who had the accident a couple years back, Noel? We saw the notice in the alumni bulletin.”

  “Jesus, that’s right. A sailing mishap off Cape Ann.” Noel Pickering turned to me. “You can cross Chapman off your list. The poor bastard drowned.”

  I asked about the other two teammates, but Pickering had little to offer beyond what the Alumni Affairs office had told me. He did say that the notion of them sending the notes seemed very unlikely.

  Outside I stood in the dusk for a few moments and watched Minot’s Light sending its love note into the gathering fog. Then I headed for the highway.

  14

  IT WAS PAST 7:00 when I got back to Lowell. I drove over to the university. Classes were long over for the day, students off in the dining commons, or beginning Hump Day parties; a few might even have been studying. Guessing that emeritus status carried light official duties, I had no logical reason to expect that Professor Westrake would still be in his office. But he was. He was at his desk, reading. He glanced up as I knocked on the open door.

  “You’re persistent,” he said, with only slight surprise.

  “You’re stealing my lines,” I said. I nodded at the extra chair. He shrugged.

  He was in a faded work shirt and brown cords. His hair, freed from the ponytail, hung in a pale fringe over the collar. He adjusted his glasses. “Are you here to question me?”

  “Just to chat.”

  “About Jerry Corbin.”

  “That must be a source of pride,” I said. “
To have had him as your student.”

  “I’ve had thousands of students. What does it amount to? They pass in this dreck.” He lifted the page he had been reading, ripped from a spiral notebook. The handwriting looked none too neat. “You try to leave a little something with them. Most take it as their due, and in the end they leave, without so much as a fart or a fare-thee-well.”

  What did you say to that?

  He said, “I’ve had a dream. I guess you would call it recurrent. In it I’m walking on a city street. Maybe it’s Boston. It doesn’t matter. I see someone walking toward me and realize she’s a former student of mine. Then, as I look around, each of the people passing on this busy sidewalk—every one—is a former student. But none of them knows me. They show no recognition whatsoever. I may not even be there. Dreams tell us a lot, don’t you think?”

  “I never remember any of them long enough to know,” I said.

  “Well I do. And mine tell me that the labor of teaching drama is the most hazardous in the world. Grappling forever with the skepticism of humankind’s big minds. There is no certitude in books. There’s nothing sure. And with each passing year, the vagaries of the job befuddle you more. Even the basic questions, rather than grow lucid, get more enigmatic.”

  “I’d guess that emeritus status means you could hang it up for good,” I said.

  He frowned at the idea. “The only principle I cling to is that no one inherits a life. You work damn hard to build one. The past—tradition, the canon—helps.”

  I said, “What kind of life did Jerry Corbin build?”

  “He’s your client. Wouldn’t he be the one to ask?”

  “I plan to,” I said.

  From his shirt pocket Westrake drew out a packet of small black cigars. Fortunately, he didn’t offer one. “I started out in the theater as an actor,” he said, tamping a cigar on the desk. “I kicked around awhile, but I realized that if I labored a hundred years, the most I was ever going to get to play was Laertes. I was never going to be Hamlet. So I left it and got into teaching. It’s steadier work.” He looked at me. “Have you ever been a teacher?”