Deep Pockets (18 page)

“He store his kayak here?”

“I didn’t even know he had a boat. Look, maybe he was into loan sharks. That’s all I can figure.”

“I told you. He had money.”

“Well, shit, maybe that’s where he got it from. Jesus, he finally gets some money and now he’s dead. You know, I ain’t gonna go to work today after all. What the fuck good is money anyway? Get some, you die. Your buddy’s dead, you should get to take the fuckin’ day off, right?” He lifted the bottle and took another swig.

I tried to get him back on the track, but the liquor glazed his eyes and made him repeat my questions instead of answering them. He grew increasingly maudlin and increasingly incoherent, and I didn’t learn much beyond the fact that he wasn’t Benjy’s partner in blackmail. I figured I ought to cut my losses and get out before somebody stole my car. Church told me to be sure and drop by again. I think he’d forgotten who I was and why I’d come.

I kicked the board out of the way so the vestibule door would shut. Let the construction workers press the buzzers and wake the tenants. Two Latino boys had materialized on the basketball court. They looked at me with dead eyes. I walked down the narrow path to the parking lot, then stopped and turned suddenly. The boys were shooting hoops, feinting and dribbling, trash-talking in Spanish. No one else was there, but I had the same feeling I’d had when Leon walked away from my house in the darkness — that someone was watching. I walked some more, listening for footsteps behind me. Nothing. Probably someone looking down from one of the apartment windows.

My car was there, unharmed. I checked the time on the dashboard clock and decided I could afford a brief detour. I took Market Street through Allston-Brighton, sneaked onto Parsons behind St. Columb-kille’s Church, then drove the loop of the Birmingham Parkway, looking for the place where Benjy Dowling’s life had come to an abrupt end. No broken glass on the pavement. No brownish stains. A Buick honked as I slowed to check for yellow crime-scene tape. I didn’t see any. Nor did I see any pedestrians, not even in the middle of the day. A couple of bicyclists, yes, but no walkers.

Damn it, I wanted the accident report. I wanted details. I phoned Todd Geary and left a message on his line, telling him to get in touch with the officer in charge, have the police report Xeroxed and sent to my house.

From Greenough Street on the Cambridge side of
the river, the Charles looked gray and sullen. I scanned the riverbank as I drove, looking for boathouses, wondering whether Dowling, who’d used the river as a road the night of the money drop, might have traveled it again the night he died. Stands of high cattails blocked my view.

By the time I found a parking place in the Square, I was eight minutes late for my appointment with Chaney’s enemy and department chair, George Fording. I donned my jacket, smoothed my hair, and then dodged Rollerblading students over the cobblestone paths, wishing I’d worn sneakers and a fuller skirt. I had no trouble entering the building or making my way unchallenged to the third floor. The olive-skinned young man behind the desk in Fording’s outer office gravely informed me that Fording was also running behind schedule. It would be another five minutes, possibly more.

I told the young man I’d be back, then retreated down a flight of stairs. I sat on a bench underneath a poster advertising an upcoming lecture in Askwith Hall. The subject: “Theory vs. Research in Education.” It was subtitled “Intended and Unintended Consequences.”

I grabbed my cell phone, dialed information, and got the number for Groton Academy before I realized I didn’t know Mrs. Chaney’s son’s last name. Damn. It wouldn’t be Chaney. It would be her first husband’s surname. I asked for the headmaster’s office, identified myself as Mrs. Chaney’s personal assistant, and asked whether Byron had safely returned from his weekend.

There was a pause. “Let me check,” quavered a middle-aged alto.

I was zapped on hold and treated to symphonic dreck, the sort of middle-of-the-road slop no one would listen to outside a dentist’s office or an elevator. Two chattering students passed, hunched under heavy backpacks. I checked my watch again. I’d stay on hold three minutes, no more.

The shaky alto interrupted. “Excuse me, but Byron has no scheduled overnights until the end of term. Byron Chase?”

“Right.”

“He hasn’t been off campus in weeks.”

“I must have misunderstood.” I apologized for taking up her time and crossed Byron off my list of suspects. Good. I didn’t have to worry about some stepfather-stepson intrigue.

I glanced at my watch again and considered calling Leon. Later, I told myself. Not enough time now. I went back upstairs, and as I approached Fording’s office, the olive-skinned man stuck his head out the door and waved me onward. He rapidly ushered me to an inner office door, rapped three times, and shoved the door ajar.

Dr. Fording sprang out of his chair, a small man in a three-piece suit. He stood by his desk, bobbing his head, and declaring himself delighted to meet me. His assistant’s eyes took in his smile and raised me from the level of peon to prospective lecturer at the ed school. I attributed Fording’s courtly greeting to Mrs. Chaney’s self-trumpeted influence.

He was narrow across the shoulders, long-waisted, and short-legged. His gold-rimmed spectacles shortened the bridge of a snub nose. He had smooth pink skin, silvery hair, the genial features of an aging elf. He wore pinstriped navy wool and invited me to sit with a smooth and practiced gesture. When he sat, he looked taller than he was.

The olive-skinned man closed the door with a discreet click.

The carpet was a vintage Oriental, the desk antique cherry. The chair into which I lowered my rear end was covered in a rich tapestry-like fabric. I wondered if Fording had another office somewhere where he worked. This one looked like a stage set. It was so perfect and the little man fitted into it so perfectly that it made me suspect him of something: impersonating a Harvard professor, if not actively pursuing a career as a blackmailer on the side. I inhaled the aroma of apple-scented wood from the picture-perfect logs on the fireplace and automatically scanned the mantelpiece for a pipe rack. Surely such a carefully cultivated image required a pipe. Bet he used to smoke one before the threat of mouth cancer made him give up the show.

“Bad business, this,” he said.

Out of sheer perversity, I said nothing. I like silence myself. Doesn’t bother me at all, and I find it revealing to watch others squirm their way through it. The two windows were draped in heavy velvet, the lighting indirect.

“I understand you work for Wilson’s attorney?” Fording said.

I nodded.

“May I see some identification?”

It amazes me how often otherwise-responsible people accept strangers for who they say they are. My respect for the man shot up. Of course, if I’d wanted to fool him, I’d have taken pains to provide myself with exactly the sort of laminated photo ID I now passed politely over the desktop.

He scanned it briefly. “Well, anything I can do to hurry Wilson’s return, I’m more than happy to do. I just don’t understand what that can be.”

“Why did you feel it necessary to restrict Dr. Chaney’s teaching? He hasn’t been charged with any crime.”

“Nor do I believe he will be. The idea that anyone could imagine Wilson Chaney running down a stranger in cold blood! I work closely with the man. His judgment is not impaired. He is not an alcoholic or a drug abuser.”

“I don’t think anyone claimed he was.”

“Then what? Do the police believe he did this as a deliberate act? What reason have they given? Are they implying he did it to test some psychological theory? Some Raskolnikov crime and punishment thesis gone mad? Guilt and its repercussions are not Wilson’s areas of study.”

Fording used his hands when he spoke, waving them in the air. I bet he missed the comforting business of his pipe.

“Then why isn’t he teaching?” I asked. “If you believe so strongly in his innocence?”

“Dr. Chaney is simply taking some personal time off, by mutual agreement. He is not forbidden to teach his classes. Far from it, in fact. He’s working very hard under considerable pressure, and we agreed that, with this added complication, perhaps it would be best for all concerned if he were to concentrate on his Medical School responsibilities and his very substantial research.”

He gave the impression of absolute sincerity, but Chaney had reported the event differently — as a suspension. I wasn’t sure which one to believe. After all, Chaney had lied about being home with his wife, thought it better not to mention that Denali had died by her own hand.

One corner of Fording’s elegant desk held a glass bowl filled with smooth dark pebbles. He seized one and placed it in his palm. It weighted his hand, restricted his gestures, and seemed to calm him. “What is it you want?” he asked. “How can I help?”

“Dr. Chaney maintains that his van was stolen.”

“If he says, so, I believe him. Absolutely.”

“If he was not driving his van, someone went to considerable trouble to make the police believe that he was.”

He smiled. His top teeth were white and gleaming, but no one had taken the same care with his unevenly spaced lowers. “Surely it’s more likely that the police are mistaken, or actively malevolent. He is a black man. Possibly they act out of prejudice. You know what they are.”

“I used to be one,” I said.

He shrugged, as if to say he meant no offense. “There is also an ancient prejudice at work here, town versus gown. I understand the man who was run over was an ordinary working-class type?”

“An ex-convict.”

“Ah. The new working-class hero. Now, it’s my belief that a man like Wilson Chaney ought to be the working-class hero, a man of no particular background, who by the sweat of his brow has made himself into someone who can and should be held up as an example to others of his race.”

I hadn’t been in his office five minutes and Fording had mentioned Chaney’s race twice.

“Chaney lied to the police,” I said. “They don’t like that.”

“Wilson must have had a reason.”

“He said he was at home; his wife says he wasn’t.”

He shook his head with a rueful grin. “You have met Margo?”

I nodded.

He passed the smooth pebble from palm to palm. “Well, frankly, I adore her — not for who she is right now, but for the memories I have of her. I always try to humor her when I can.” He stopped, and it became clear that he was not about to proceed without prompting.

“She rarely leaves home, I understand.”

“Well, believe me, it wasn’t always like that. She is a very unusual woman. You know she divorced her first husband to marry Wilson? Margo is a — she was a magnet, a glorious presence, ten, fifteen years ago, a dynamo, a force of nature. If she wanted Wilson, and she did, no one would wager against her.”

“Why him?”

He smiled and clasped the pebble in his right hand. “I’m an educational pychologist, not a psychiatrist. It’s easy to sit on the outside and speculate, isn’t it? Tempting, too. I’m not saying it was a question of race, but Margo’s first husband was Caucasian, and her family disapproved strongly. Wilson was Harvard, plus he was black, and that must have seemed a potent combination.”

Three times
. Oh, he was good. He was “not saying,” but he
was
saying in terms so twisty, I wondered if he could keep track of his implications and inferences. Race kept coming up in responses that required no reference to race.

“As for the conflict in what the police no doubt call Wilson’s ‘alibi,’ I will say that lately poor Margo has not been as much of a companion as she might have been in previous years. You might wish to discreetly ask Dr. Chaney whether he’s having some kind of an affair. I know that would be the old-fashioned, honorable type of thing he’d be likely to do. If he was with someone other than his wife, in that way, well, he wouldn’t want to harm the other party’s reputation or hurt his wife’s feelings. Margo is quite a wealthy woman, with a battery of lawyers, and they say that once a woman has weathered that first divorce, well, some do get the hang of it.”

“Are you married, Dr. Fording?”

“No.” He was too surprised at the question to refuse to answer.

“Do you know for a fact that Dr. Chaney’s having an affair?”

He hesitated, fiddled with the pebble, and popped it back in the bowl. He smiled slowly, then shook his head to indicate that he didn’t. I was sure he had more than an inkling that Chaney had strayed.

“When I spoke to Mrs. Chaney earlier, I asked her whether her husband had any enemies,” I said. “She sent me here.” I left it deliberately ambiguous to see how he’d handle it.

That smile again as he carefully rephrased my statement. “To inquire whether Dr. Chaney had enemies? Enemies.” He tasted the word. “So melodramatic. Has Margo filled your ears with tales of academic back stabbing? I assure you we have no junior faculty members stealing cars and running down strangers in an attempt to move into positions of seniority. We tend to confine our battles to committee assignments and class schedules. Don’t get me wrong: It’s not peace and bliss at all times. We disagree on methods of defining learning disorders, the effectiveness of biofeedback techniques, and behavior-modification strategies. We are becoming more aware of the biochemistry required for proper learning. Our Mind, Brain, and Behavior Program, with its cross-disciplinary thrust, is a model for other universities. Many of our educators are close to becoming psychopharmacologists. It’s a vast new field, and an exciting one.”

He came up for air and quickly interpreted my glance. “Ah, a scary one, you think?
Brave New World
and all that.”

“It crossed my mind.”

“And yet you wouldn’t raise an objection if I said every child ought to have a nutritionally sound breakfast before beginning the school day. Education on an empty stomach is wasted education. The school breakfast program is valid; it’s a great success. But children are regularly sent to school who can’t organize, who can’t process information, who can’t differentiate between important and unimportant data.”