Hush Money (19 page)

“While you been vacationing,” Hawk said, “I been detecting.”

“Good,” I said. “You can use the practice.”

“Every Friday Amir go up to Bangor. Every Sunday he come back. So I figure I better see what he doing up there, and I drive up to Bangor International Airport…”

“International?” I said.

“Sure,” Hawk said. “You think they hay shakers up there?”

“Well,” I said. “Yes.”

Hawk shook his head. He was doing some dips as he talked, and if there was any effort involved it didn’t show in his voice.

“Anyway, I’m there on a Friday afternoon sitting in my car, and about five o’clock here come Amir out of the terminal with his little overnight case. Black Lincoln stretch limo waiting. Driver gets out, opens the door. Amir hands him the overnight case, driver puts it on the front seat, Amir hops in the back. You want to guess the license number on the limo?”

“Don’t remember but I’ll bet it’s in my notes.”

“Same one,” Hawk said.

“You follow them?” I said.

“Yep.”

“To Beecham.”

“Yep.”

“Last Stand Systems, Inc.”

“Yep.”

“Stayed the weekend and came home Sunday night.”

“Yep.”

“You got any theories on what he’s doing up there?” I said.

“Visiting.”

“You got any thoughts on what he does while he visits?”

Hawk was doing pull-ups. He did five more after I asked the question, then let himself down slowly and dropped to the floor.

“We know Amir is queer.”

“Nice rhyme,” I said.

“And we know he, ah, hyperactive.”

“Nice phrase,” I said. “You think he’s got a boyfriend in Last Stand Systems, Inc.?”

“Somebody send the company plane down for him.”

“You think it’s Milo Quant?”

“There a Mrs. Quant?” Hawk said.

I didn’t say anything for a minute.

“You think there’s hanky-panky between Milo and Amir?”

“Amir was a white woman, what would you think?” Hawk said.

“That there was hanky-panky between Milo and Amir.”

Hawk smiled.

“That what I’d think,” he said.

“So,” I said. “We don’t want to be homophobic about this.”

“So hanky-panky it is,” Hawk said.

“On the other hand,” I said, “you’ve read the literature. For the leader of this movement to be having an affair with a gay black militant is not just miscegenation, for crissake, it’s treason.”

“You right,” Hawk said. “Couldn’t happen. Be like J. Edgar Hoover running around in a dress.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Impossible.”

I did some curls. Hawk worked on his triceps a little. I did some dips. Hawk worked on his lats. Henry strolled past us and explained to someone that the leg extension machine gave you a better workout if you put some weight on it. He showed them how to set the weight, then he walked back past Hawk and me without looking at us.

After a while Hawk said, “I feelin‘ short on electrolytes.”

“Me too,” I said. “Luckily Henry keeps some in his office.”

We went back into Henry’s office that looked out over the harbor and got some beer out of the refrigerator.

“Milo is speaking out in Fitchburg,” I said. “I thought I’d go out and listen.”

“Why?”

“Why not? Right now I got so little that knowing what he looks like will help.”

Hawk nodded.

“I had a lover in Maine,” he said, “and he coming to Fitchburg, maybe I arrange to meet him.”

“Why don’t you stick with Amir,” I said. “And I’ll tag along behind Milo Quant. And we’ll see.”

“Say we catch them doing the hoochie coochie,” Hawk said. “What we got?”

“More than we got now,” I said.

“That much,” Hawk said.

“Well, we’ve got some stuff,” I said. “We’ve already got Amir connected to an outfit that is capable of pitching someone out a window.”

“True.”

“What we don’t have is proof that they did it, or any reason why.”

“Prentice a blackmailer,” Hawk said.

“Could be a reason,” I said.

“Don’t forget why we doing this,” Hawk said.

“I know. Robinson’s tenure,” I said. “I think we’ve got enough now. But it’s messy. I want it clean.”

“How often you get clean?” Hawk said.

I grinned.

“Figure I’m due,” I said.

“I’m sorry about the other day,” she said.

“Un huh.”

“I guess I’m a little crazy right now.”

“Probably.”

“It’s not easy being me, you know.”

“I know.”

“I’m alone, I have no prospects, I need support. I guess sometimes I get a little too aggressive.”

“Nothing wrong with aggressive,” I said. “But you need to focus it properly.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not alone.”

“The question isn’t whether it’s easy for me to say. The question is am I right?”

“I didn’t call up for you to give me advice,” KC said.

“No,” I said. “Of course you didn’t.”

“It’s frankly none of your goddamned business.”

“It was,” I said. “But now it isn’t.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t call you up and have a civil conversation, does it?”

“No it doesn’t,” I said.

“Well fine,” she said and slammed the phone down.

I seemed to be in a lovers’ quarrel with someone who was not my lover. I hung up the phone and looked at it for a moment and then got up and went to get my car.

Fitchburg is a little working-class city of 40,000 people about fifty miles west of Boston. It is also south of Ashby and southeast of Winchendon and north of Leominster, and a great many people don’t care much where it is. The state college is up the hill from Route 2A. There were signs directing me to the evening’s event. When I got to the auditorium there were several Fitchburg Police cars and at least three blue and gray State Police cruisers parked around the place, taking all the best spots. I parked in a slot that said
Faculty Only,
and walked over to the auditorium. There were cops in the lobby, cops at the entrances, standing around talking to each other. There were also several Ivy League-looking guys in shirts and ties and dark suits, clustered near the main entrance door, scanning the crowd. One of them was the guy with the horn-rimmed glasses who had come to my office with his associates and spoken unkindly to me and Hawk about Amir Abdullah. He had also spoken even more brusquely to us in Beecham, Maine. I had the impulse to step into his line of sight and say, “booga, booga,” but I was there to observe, and I usually observed better if no one was paying any attention to me. I went in another entrance, and took a seat in the back. The room was full. Mostly students. From their conversations I gathered that not all of them were fans of Milo Quant. At 7:30 Horn Rims and his fellows walked out quietly and stood at parade rest on the floor of the auditorium between the front row of seats and the stage. I noticed that there were state and local cops along the walls on both sides of the auditorium. A heavyset woman in a pale blue pants suit came onto the stage and stood behind the lectern. She waited for a moment and when she saw that the audience wasn’t going to quiet, she began.

“I’m Margaret Dryer,” she said. “I’m the dean of student affairs here. Like many of you present I do not agree with Mr. Quant’s view of the human condition.”

The audience quieted a little as she spoke.

“But I agree with his right to hold those ideas and indeed to espouse them, however repellent I personally find them to be. That is the meaning of free speech, and I hope each and every one of you in the audience will respect Mr. Quant’s right to free speech. There has been talk of disruption. I have heard it, just as you have heard it. The police are here. We have asked them to be here. We have asked them to protect everyone’s right to civil discourse. We have also asked them to prevent any infringement on those rights, and they will do so.”

She paused for a moment. The audience was quiet. Then she turned and gestured toward the wings of the stage.

“May I introduce our guest, Mr. Milo Quant, of Last Stand Systems, Incorporated.”

The audience booed the minute his name was mentioned. The booing magnified when he strolled out from the side and replaced Dean Dryer at the lectern. He stood silently for a time, smiling down at the audience, allowing the roar of boos to roll over him. He was a short fat man in a well-made blue suit, a white shirt, and a maroon silk tie. It was hard to be sure from where I sat, but his shoes looked as if they had lifts in them. His nose was sharp and curled a little at the tip like the beak of a falcon. His mouth was wide with thick lips. His face was fleshy. He had thick eyebrows that V-ed down over the bridge of his nose. His upturned smile was V-shaped so that he looked sort of like a devilish Santa Claus. The boos continued. He stood quietly smiling. After a while the students tired. The boos dwindled. Finally it was nearly quiet.

“There,” Quant said. “Feel better?”

There was some more booing, but there was also a scatter of laughter. Quant beamed down at us.

“There, I’m not such a monster now am I? Look a little like your grandfather, maybe.”

Somebody laughed. Somebody yelled “Fascist.”

“Do you know where the word
fascist
comes from?” Quant said.

He leaned slightly forward at the lectern, so that his mouth was closer to the microphone. He let his folded hands rest quietly on top of the lectern.

“It comes from ancient Rome. It derives from the word
fasces
which refers to the symbol of Official Power, a bundle of reeds with an axe head protruding. We at Last Stand are hardly fascists. We don’t symbolize official power. We oppose it. We oppose a government hell-bent to dissemble my country, your country, our country. We oppose a government which will make us not Americans, but mongrelized members of a world government where every Arab despot and cannibal dictator may say yea or nay to us.”

He was good. The audience was listening.

“And we ask you to join us in that opposition. We are not asking of you the sacrifices that were asked of the men who founded this country.”

“And women,” someone shouted.

Quant smiled.

“They made their own sacrifices. But I’m talking about the men who were asked to fight and often die for liberty. We don’t ask that of you. We ask only that you keep yourself worthy of the liberty they died for. We ask that you keep yourself clean and straight. We ask that you value marriage. That you respect the God of our fathers. That you honor your ethnic purity. That you fulfill the destiny for which so many of those men suffered and died.”

He paused. They listened. He smiled warmly at us all.

“If this be treason,” he said slowly, “let us make the most of it.”

Some people clapped. A few hooted. Most were quiet. Quant went on. If he spoke ill of other races and religions, if he said that all American values were to be found only in white Christian males, he said it obliquely, sliding it in always in terms of honor and cleanliness, heritage, straightness, and respect.

He spoke until 8:15, and then took questions. The majority of the questions were hostile. He handled them easily. He had heard them before. He never said nigger, or queer, or Jew, or dyke. He managed also to be more magnanimous than his questioner, and he always had a gracious and convincing answer for even the most difficult questions.

His answers were largely bullshit, but they were good bullshit. I had years ago learned that it was useless to debate zealots. They had spent most of their adult life thinking intensely about the object of their zealotry. Normally their debaters had not. I wanted to stand and ask him if in fact he were wearing lifts in his shoes. But I was there to watch and listen and I didn’t want to get into it with Horn Rims or any of the other preservers of our heritage. So I shut up. Which is a ploy that often works well for me.

When it was over, Quant was escorted out by his keepers and the cops. It was raining. A small group of students were standing across the street, getting wet, chanting “Two, four, six, eight, USA can’t use your hate.” I wondered why protesters so often demeaned their deepest-held convictions by reciting them loudly in doggerel. Nobody in Quant’s party paid any attention to them. And, in fact, neither did many people in Quant’s audience. Shielded by an umbrella one of the security guys deployed, Quant got into his black Lincoln and departed with three bodyguards. The other security guys got into a large van. The protesters chanted at them until they were out of sight. Then they stood somewhat aimlessly for a few moments and then drifted away in various directions.

I suspected that Quant hadn’t convinced anyone who hadn’t come convinced. But he had made them see that he was pleasant, and that he spoke as if what he espoused was both reasonable and kind, and they were puzzled. And maybe they didn’t enjoy doggerel much, either.

My car had a parking ticket on the windshield issued by the Fitchburg State College Campus Police. I took it off my windshield and tucked it carefully under the wiper of the car next to me. Then I got in and drifted along behind Quant with the windshield wipers making long steady sweeps across my glass, their sound like the rhythm of music that wasn’t playing.

“Ah ha!” I said.

“Ah ha indeed, my good man,” Hawk said. “The game’s afoot.”

“Amir,” I said.

“Yowzah,” Hawk said. “Rents a car this afternoon, comes out here ‘bout three o’clock. I see him pull in and I take a chance and get into the lobby ’fore he do. There a phone booth right by the desk. I’m in it with my back turned and the phone at my ear when he gets to the desk. He’s got a reservation. He’s in room four seventeen.”

“Good to know,” I said.

“Well, I got nothing much else to do so I hang around, sit in the bar, read a paper, drink some Perrier with a nice wedge of lime, have a club sandwich, drink some more Perrier and about five minutes ago in come a group of people and one of them is our man with the horn-rimmed glasses. They got reservations. Their rooms are four fifteen and four nineteen.”

“Either side,” I said.

“Un huh.”

“There were four bodyguards, right?”

“Including the limo driver,” Hawk said.

“Plus Quant.”

“Two bodyguards in four fifteen,” I said. “Two bodyguards in four nineteen. Where’s Quant go?”

“Four seventeen,” Hawk said. “Want to take a look?”

“Sure,” I said. “Why don’t I register and we can look at the room setup.”

“Call from the car,” Hawk said, “make sure they have a room.”

I did. They did.

“Okay,” I said. “Stay here. I’ll call you.”

I left the motor running, took a gym bag from the trunk of my car, and walked toward the lobby. The gym bag looked right, but all it contained were burglar tools. I checked into the lobby. They gave me room 205. I went up and let myself in and put the gym bag on the bed and called Hawk.

“Room two-oh-five,” I said.

“Fine. Is the desk clerk a man or a woman?”

“Woman.”

“Good. I’ll come in tell her I’m Amir and I’ve lost my key.”

“They often want to see ID,” I said.

“She’d be scared to ask me,” Hawk said. “Scared I say she racist for asking.”

“And if she remembers Amir at all it’ll be that he’s black and so are you, so you must be him.”

“Un huh.”

“See you soon,” I said.

And I did. In about ten minutes he knocked on the door and I let him in. He smiled at me and held up the plastic key card.

“She thought I look like Michael Jordan,” Hawk said.

“You know how to play that old race card,” I said. “Don’t you.”

“I do,” Hawk said.

The room was standard B-class hotel. Tile bath and shower in the short hall as you came in the door, king-sized bed, small table and two chairs by the window, built-in bureau with a large television set on top of it. The door unlocked electronically with the plastic card and could be chain bolted from the inside. I looked at the chain bolt. The chain was attached to the door frame by two small brass screws. I took a small pry bar from the gym bag.

“Bolt the door,” I said.

I took the room key and went out and shut the door. I heard Hawk set the chain bolt. I opened the door with the plastic card, slid the pry bar in through the opening, and popped the chain loose without much effort. I went back into the room and closed the door.

“Shouldn’t be hard getting in there,” I said.

“Once we in what we going to do?”

“I guess we’ll ask them what they’re doing here,” I said. “And then we’ll see what happens.”

“What you want to happen?”

“I want everyone to get so percolated that they start saying things they will later regret and we might finally know something concrete.”

“And what we going to do they start hollering and the bodyguards come dashing in?”

“I thought you had that covered,” I said.

“‘Course I got it covered,” Hawk said. “I just meant you want me to shoot them or quell them with a stern look?”

“Stern look will probably cause less ruckus,” I said.

“I’ll work on it,” Hawk said, and we went out and took the elevator to the fourth floor.