Now and Then s-35

by Robert B. Parker

  “That will be between you and my editor,” I said. “Won’t do any harm to have some pictures, however, in case we need to use them in the story.”

  “You mean we might end up in the magazine?” Sheila said.

  “Definitely your names, parts of the interview. Pictures is up to the photo editor. We just send in the undeveloped fi lm.”

  “I don’t see any harm, Lyn,” Sheila said.

  He shrugged.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “But I’m not signing any photo release until I see what’s in the story.”

  I nodded and looked at Chollo.

  “Okay, Casey,” I said. “Just get some informals while we talk.”

  “Sí,” Chollo said.

  They both stared at him as Chollo took a big 35mm camera out of the bag and began focusing.

  “He used to be a crime photographer,” I said.

  Chollo clicked off a couple of shots. They kept trying to smile into the camera as he moved around the room.

  “Pay him no mind,” I said. “They’ll never use anything smiling into the lens.”

  They looked quickly away. I got out my notebook.

  “So,” I said. “How long have you known Perry Alderson?”

  “Since we started grad school,” Sheila said. “We took his seminar and it blew us away.”

  She looked at Lyndon. He nodded.

  “Did you two know each other before you came here?” I said.

  “No, we met in Perry’s class,” Sheila said.

  “Where did you do your undergraduate work?” I said. Chollo drifted around pretending to be Francesco Scavullo.

  “Wisconsin,” Sheila said.

  “Berkeley,” Lyndon said.

  I wrote diligently in my notebook.

  “And did you come here because of Professor Alderson?” I said.

  “No,” Sheila said. “At least I didn’t. I hadn’t heard of him until I got here.”

  “You?” I said to Lyndon.

  He shook his head.

  “Why did you come here?” I said.

  “I liked the college,” Lyndon said. “It had a reputation for, you know, diversity and inclusiveness.”

  Sheila nodded.

  “I wanted to come to Boston, too,” she said. “You know? See what it was like?”

  “Whaddya think?” I said.

  The power drive on Chollo’s camera whirred in the background. The shutter clicked.

  “It’s not as liberal as I’d heard,” she said.

  “More repressive than we thought,” Lyndon said. “But we were naïve, you know? Repression fl ourishes in every climate.”

  “Even Cambridge,” Sheila said.

  “So what drew you to Professor Alderson.”

  “There was a lot of buzz,” Sheila said. “You know? I mean, he’d been in the movement since it began, almost.”

  “Movement?”

  “The fight against imperialism, and conformity,” Lyndon said. “The struggle for personal authenticity. The man was there. He was there in the sixties. He’s been there.”

  I nodded and wrote yikes! in my notebook.

  “The sixties,” I said.

  “He was at Kent State,” Sheila said. “When they shot those students.”

  I wrote 1970? in my notebook.

  “He was with SNCC,” Lyndon said. “The Weathermen, everybody.”

  “A hero of the counterculture,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Does Professor Alderson use his experience as a basis for his seminar?”

  “He’ll hate it if you refer to him as Professor Alderson, ” Sheila said. “He wants to be called Perry.”

  “Titles are elitist,” Lyndon said. “They reinforce an oppressive system.”

  “Is there a Mrs. Alderson?” I said.

  “If there were,” Lyndon said, “he would not call her Mrs., as if somehow he owned her.”

  “Is there anyone with whom he is sharing his life?” I said.

  “Perry shares his life with many people,” Sheila said. “I don’t think he’s ever felt any need to limit himself.”

  “You folks married?” I said.

  “We have committed to each other,” Lyndon said. “We need no stamp of acceptance from the state.”

  “Do you fi nd that shocking?” Sheila said.

  “No,” I said. “Do you happen to have a syllabus for, ah, Perry’s seminar?”

  “See,” Lyndon said. “You just don’t get it. Perry, and by extension we, are no more bound by college structure than we are by governmental structure.”

  I wrote no in my notebook.

  “Any texts?”

  “The texts are being written by events,” Sheila said.

  “No textbooks? Grades?”

  “The college has imposed pass/fail. But for Perry the only failure is the failure to be free.”

  “So what is class like?”

  “We talk about life today as it is unfolding,” Lyndon said.

  “Perry helps us put it in historical perspective,” Sheila said.

  “Drawing upon his own experience,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “A woman was recently killed at the college,” I said. “I understand she had been dating Perry.”

  “Perry had been seeing her,” Sheila said.

  “Did you know her?”

  “Casually,” Lyndon said.

  “Police talk to you about the killing?”

  “Of course,” Lyndon said. “Police. FBI. Any chance they get to bring Perry down.”

  “They think Perry was involved?”

  “They are trying to make it look that way,” Lyndon said.

  “But he wasn’t?”

  “Of course not,” Sheila said. “They just want to smear him.”

  “We didn’t tell them one damned thing,” Lyndon said. “And you can print that.”

  “Name, rank, and serial number.”

  “Exactly,” Lyndon said.

  “You say you knew the woman casually,” I said. “You ever, ah, what, go out with them?”

  “Now and then for a drink after class,” Sheila said. “She was nice. She taught postfeminist literature.”

  I wrote postfeminist? in my notebook.

  “I’m not comfortable,” Lyndon said, “discussing this. I am not going to participate in any attempt to smear Perry.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I don’t blame you a bit. Did you know she was the wife of an FBI agent?”

  “Isn’t that delicious?” Sheila said. “We used to joke about it.”

  “Sheila,” Lyndon said. He looked at her in a very unliberated way. “I don’t think we should discuss this any further.”

  “Oh, Lyndon, don’t be such a prig,” she said.

  Lyndon’s face reddened. In my notebook I wrote prig.

  “I’m afraid this interview is at an end,” he said priggishly.

  “Oh, Lyndon.”

  “Damn it, Sheila, be quiet. The interview is over.”

  I winked at Sheila.

  “Free to be you and me,” I said.

  33.

  Iam but a poor peasant,” Chollo said. “But Señor Perry seems to be a hero of the counterculture.”

  “Peasant?” I said.

  “Sí.”

  “You never saw a shovel in your life,” I said. “You were born here. You speak better English than the president.”

  “Many people do,” Chollo said.

  “Good point,” I said.

  “I am simply playful,” Chollo said, “like a Guadalajara armadillo.”

  “Armadillos are playful?”

  “I do not know,” Chollo said.

  My cell phone rang.

  Susan’s voice said, “We’ve had an adventure.”

  “We?”

  “Hawk and Vinnie and I,” she said.

  “You’re okay?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You’re home?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m
in Central Square,” I said. “I’ll be there shortly.”

  Which I was.

  Susan had a spare room and full bath on the ground fl oor across the hall from her office. She occasionally used it for conferences, or now and then when she was teaching a seminar. But mostly it was empty. Hawk and Vinnie had set up in there. Susan and Pearl were in there with them. Pearl came and jumped up on me like we’d taught her not to do, and I bent low enough for her to lap my face for a while.

  “Déjà vu,” Hawk said. “Again.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The first go-round with the Gray Man, as I recall.”

  “Was,” Hawk said.

  Pearl tired of lapping and went back to the couch and jumped up beside Susan.

  Hawk looked at Chollo.

  “Chollo,” Hawk said.

  “Hawk,” Chollo said.

  Chollo looked at Vinnie and nodded. Vinnie nodded back. He had earphones on and was listening to an iPod.

  Susan said, “Hello, Chollo.”

  She had a drink. It looked like vodka on the rocks.

  “Is that vodka?” I said.

  “On the rocks,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure I had ever seen her drink vodka on the rocks. No one else was drinking.

  “In honor of your adventure?” I said.

  “Want to hear about it?” she said.

  She was slightly drunk, which is generally as drunk as she ever gets. She wasn’t slurring her speech or anything. It was more something about the eyes, some change in their look that I could never quite explain, but I knew it when I saw it.

  “I do,” I said.

  Chollo went over and leaned on the jamb of the doorway that was open to the hall. Vinnie listened to his iPod. Hawk sat on the couch beside Susan with Pearl in between them. I pulled a chair around and straddled it backward and rested my forearms on the back.

  Susan sipped some vodka.

  “I went to dinner with my friend Anne Roberts,” Susan said.

  “At the Harvest.”

  She sipped her drink. There were window bays on the two exterior walls of the room. Outside in late November, the afternoon had already begun to darken. There was something almost formal in the way we had composed ourselves around her in the bright room. Four rather tarnished knights and a beautiful lady in the center. Actually, the world being what it is, even the lady was maybe a little tarnished.

  “Hawk and Vinnie came along behind,” Susan said. “I asked them to remain discreet. Ann might have been, ah, ill at ease with a couple of bodyguards.”

  Pearl shifted on the couch between Hawk and Susan so that she could rest her chin on Susan’s thigh. I smiled without showing it. Pearl, at least, was untarnished.

  “So they stayed at the bar. After dinner we came out. Ann went to Brattle Street to walk home, and I went down the alley toward Mt. Auburn Street to get my car. There were two men at the ATM machine near the end of the alley, you know, there on the right?”

  “I know,” I said.

  I could feel the center of my stomach begin to pinch. Susan was stroking one of Pearl’s ears as she spoke.

  “At the end of the alley there was a big van with a slidy side door,” she said. “The door was open. When I passed the two men they suddenly grabbed me and tried to drag me into the van.”

  I felt the muscles in my chest and shoulders begin to clench.

  “I punched one, and kneed the other one in the crotch, but it wasn’t hard enough, I guess. They had me halfway into the van when Hawk and Vinnie arrived.”

  She looked at Hawk.

  “After that it got a little confusing,” she said. “I know Hawk grabbed me away from them and shoved me against the wall and pressed against me like a shield.”

  Hawk nodded. Susan sipped her drink, playing absently with Pearl’s ear. Then she smiled.

  “Actually I kind of liked that part,” she said.

  “They all do,” Hawk said.

  Vinnie remained blank, listening to his iPod.

  “I get her away from them,” Hawk said. “And one of them comes out with a piece and Vinnie drills him. The other one dives into the van and the van boogies with the door still open.”

  “Vinnie’s knocking off witnesses as fast as we can discover them,” I said.

  Vinnie listened peacefully to his iPod. If he knew we were talking about him, he gave no sign.

  “Didn’t have much choice,” Hawk said. “We looking after Susan.”

  “Yes,” I said. “License plate?”

  “Mass plate,” Vinnie said without taking off his earphones.

  “ACE 310.”

  “Won’t help,” Hawk said.

  I nodded.

  “Probably stolen,” I said.

  I was looking at Susan.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Me and my vodka.”

  “Scared?”

  “Not at the time,” she said. “At the time I was furious.”

  “Fear usually sets in later,” I said.

  She smiled.

  “And you would know that how?” she said.

  “Everybody gets scared,” I said.

  She looked around the room at the four of us and didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this,” I said.

  “I don’t like to admit this in public,” Susan said. “But I’m with you. If this is part of the deal, it’s worth it.”

  We looked at each other for a moment. I nodded.

  “Chollo,” I said. “You stick with Susan.”

  Chollo widened his eyes a little, but all he said was “Sí.”

  “And me and Vinnie?” Hawk said.

  “You too,” I said.

  “What about you?” Susan said.

  “He won’t come for me as long as he doesn’t know where the tapes are,” I said.

  “So you think this is Alderson?”

  “Yes. He knows that if he gets you he can make me give him what he wants.”

  “So you don’t think he was going to kill me?”

  “No. Not until he’s used you to leverage me,” I said.

  “But one of them pulled a gun,” she said.

  “Good help is hard to find,” I said. “He got scared. Probably going to shoot at Hawk.”

  “Vinnie can’t take that chance,” Chollo said.

  Shooter camaraderie.

  “No, he couldn’t,” I said. “None of you can. You protect Susan. Kill anybody you have to, as soon as you need to.”

  I had just articulated Vinnie’s guiding principle. Still listening to his iPod, he almost smiled. Then he shot at me with his forefi nger.

  “If you’re so safe,” Susan said to me, “why did you ask Chollo to come here?”

  “I thought he might come in handy,” I said.

  “I am very handy,” Chollo said. “I can shoot, I can speak Spanish, I can pick beans. And I am a very fun hombre.”

  “And we’ve all missed you,” I said.

  “Sí,” Chollo said.

  “If you give me all the protection and go it alone,” Susan said, “and something happens to you, how will I feel?”

  “And if I don’t give you enough cover, and something bad happens, how will I feel,” I said.

  “He hard to kill,” Hawk said.

  “What if they try to force him to give up the tapes?”

  “He hard to force,” Hawk said.

  “I can’t function unless I know you’re safe,” I said to Susan.

  “She be safe,” Hawk said.

  “But why not just give him his damned tapes,” Susan said.

  “And wash your hands of it.”

  “Couple reasons,” I said. “I’ve heard the tapes. Once he gets the tapes he’ll try to kill me.”

  “And Doherty’s wife cheated on him,” Susan said.

  “This needs to come out right,” I said.

  “This being what happened to Doherty recently,” Susan said,

  “or what happened to us years
ago, or both?”

  “Goddamn it, Susan, this is what I do. I don’t tell you how to do what you do.”

  Susan nodded. Had he been capable of it, Hawk might almost have looked shocked. I had probably never raised my voice to Susan in Hawk’s presence. I wished I hadn’t now.

  “I think your work and mine may be intermingled here,” she said. “But the problem is better dealt with by you than me.”

  “I’m sorry I yelled,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry I kvetched.”

  “I know,” I said.

  Chollo looked at Hawk.

  “I miss something?” he said.

  Hawk shook his head.

  “Long time ago,” Hawk said.

  “No. Not until he’s used you to leverage me,” I said.

  “But one of them pulled a gun,” she said.

  “Good help is hard to find,” I said. “He got scared. Probably going to shoot at Hawk.”

  “Vinnie can’t take that chance,” Chollo said.

  Shooter camaraderie.

  “No, he couldn’t,” I said. “None of you can. You protect Susan. Kill anybody you have to, as soon as you need to.”

  I had just articulated Vinnie’s guiding principle. Still listening to his iPod, he almost smiled. Then he shot at me with his forefi nger.

  “If you’re so safe,” Susan said to me, “why did you ask Chollo to come here?”

  “I thought he might come in handy,” I said.

  “I am very handy,” Chollo said. “I can shoot, I can speak Spanish, I can pick beans. And I am a very fun hombre.”

  “And we’ve all missed you,” I said.

  “Sí,” Chollo said.

  “If you give me all the protection and go it alone,” Susan said, “and something happens to you, how will I feel?”

  “And if I don’t give you enough cover, and something bad happens, how will I feel,” I said.

  “He hard to kill,” Hawk said.

  “What if they try to force him to give up the tapes?”

  “He hard to force,” Hawk said.

  “I can’t function unless I know you’re safe,” I said to Susan.

  “She be safe,” Hawk said.

  “But why not just give him his damned tapes,” Susan said.

  “And wash your hands of it.”

  “Couple reasons,” I said. “I’ve heard the tapes. Once he gets the tapes he’ll try to kill me.”

  “And Doherty’s wife cheated on him,” Susan said.

  “This needs to come out right,” I said.

  “This being what happened to Doherty recently,” Susan said,