The Right Jack

movement. John was president of McClellan's SDS that year. Val was a cute little undergraduate full of innocence and optimism. Flower children hoping to better the world. I was old enough to know better, but I was just as naive. We thought we could make a difference.'

'And you did, didn't you?' She took a second sandwich and cut it in half. 'The war ended.'

'Not soon enough,' he said and sat lost in dark memory until Sigrid pushed half her sandwich at him. He looked at it, then began to munch absent-mindedly.

'John Sutton,' she prodded.

'Bright. Wacky sense of humor. Played the guitar. Used to make up parodies of Bob Dylan songs-the whiney ones. Val played the autoharp. Quick ear. They hadn't met before, but one night when he played for us, she started echoing his tunes, then embellishing them. Solemn as a churchwarden the whole time. Her face-' Nauman took another bite of his sandwich, waiting for the right words to convey the odd attraction of Val Sutton's face. 'What are those cats that look like Siamese except they're all brown? Burmese? Abyssinian?'

Sigrid shrugged, not being a pet owner.

'Think of a triangular face that's a cross between Nefertiti and an Abyssinian cat, with sleek brown hair falling to her waist. That was Val. You'll see. Not beautiful. Men don't notice her right away; but once they do,, they don't forget her. John never had a chance.'

He grinned, describing how artfully Val had managed John's wooing; how John, if he had been aware of her wiles, hadn't struggled against them.

Sigrid, who had never so far as she knew turned any man's head but Nauman's, listened and briefly wondered how it must feel to have such power over someone's heart.

'John loved to argue. We had several all-night sessions that summer, but I'd almost lost touch with them when he and Val came east four or five years ago. Vanderlyn's history department offered him an associate professorship and Val audited some of my classes. She's one of the curators at the Feldheimer and a pretty fair Sunday painter herself. I've lent them my place up at Connecticut several times and John and I've served on some committees together. The Mickey Mouse ones. They don't think we take the so-called important ones seriously enough. Administration usually does what it wants anyhow and why the hell they have to waste our time-'

'John Sutton,' Sigrid interrupted, having heard tirades against Vanderlyn's administration before. 'Who were his enemies?'

'I never heard that he had any. John was bright and opinionated, but not mean. Like last Wednesday when the CGC met and-'

'The what?'

'The Condensed CUNY Committee. That's what John called us. I've told you how the university tries to promote the idea that the different branches around the city are one big happy family?'

Sigrid supposed so. She couldn't work up much interest in the politics of the City University of New York. Keeping up with politics within the NYD was tedium enough.

'So CUNY subsidizes faculty dinners at one of the big hotels and we have to shell out some of our own money to break bread together and pretend we know each other. Except that the combined faculty's so large that it gets boiled down to senior members and one year it's for liberal arts and the next for the sciences, that sort of thing. This year it's the arts and John and I were sent to meet with delegates from the other schools at the Maintenon on Wednesday to set things up and there was this jackass from Brooklyn College who-'

'Wait, wait!' Sigrid thumped the table gently. 'The Maintenon? John Sutton was at that hotel two days before he died?'

'Right, but it's not what you're thinking. The guy from Brooklyn was mad, but I can't see a linguistics professor going back to Brooklyn, whipping up a bomb, and sneaking back to plant it.'

'Forget about the linguistic professor. Just tell me everything about Wednesday, from the moment you and Sutton stepped into the place until you left.'

Sigrid procured a note pad while Oscar obediently cast his mind back to Wednesday morning.

'We met in the lobby of the hotel shortly before ten. There were about fifteen of us. We met with a Ms. Baldwin, who looks about twelve but had all the facts and figures. Told us how much it would be with cocktails before and wine during, and the difference in price if we had vichyssoise instead of fruit compote with creme fraiche

– you sure you want to hear all this?'

Sigrid nodded.

'After the menu was settled, we all trooped up to have a look at the rooms available that weekend. The first would have been too crowded, the second was okay. Typical Cool Whip on the walls.'

'Cool Whip?'

'Well, Sutton called it whipped cream. I thought it was more like the imitation stuff: you know, huge pictures of wistful dandies in lace pushing swings full of eighteenth-century airheads in an atmosphere of giddy abandon. Gods and goddesses. Lots of frothy pastel colors. The sort of things decorators drag in to go with the gilt and red velvet.' His voice became mincing as he spoke into a imaginary telephone. 'I need two and a half dozen Fetes galantes and six billet doux. Cool Whip,' he repeated firmly.

'So what happened next?'

'There were guys bustling around, setting up long tables, and Ms. Baldwin asked if anybody played cribbage because this was where some games company was holding its tournament Friday night. Sutton said yes, he was a contestant; and about that time the man who was running the tournament came in with Lucienne Ronay, so Ms. Baldwin introduced him to Sutton-Flit or Flyte or something like that-and presented the famed Madame Ronay to the rest of us. She informed us how honored she was that we'd selected the Maintenon and that was when the jerk from Brooklyn unctuously piped up and said, 'It seems we've also selected a very charming corner of the eighteenth century as well, Madame Ronay. We've been admiring your pictures. Are they the originals they appear to be?'

'And John said, 'Appearances can be deceiving. This one's still wet.'

'And everybody laughed.'

Nauman drained his glass. 'Then Madame Ronay and what's his name went on about their business and we took another vote on whether all the arrangements were approved and the committee adjourned. That was it.'

Sigrid leaned back in her chair with her elbows on the armrests and started to tent her fingertips before her as she usually did when concentrating, but the position was uncomfortable with her taped arm and she had to rest it on the table instead.

'Did you hear any of Sutton's conversation with the man from the games company?' she asked. 'Did they seem to know each other?'

'Wasn't much of a conversation. What I heard of it seemed to be the usual-'How are you? Looking forward to Friday night. How many players do you expect?' That sort of thing. But you know,' he mused, 'it was odd.'

'Yes?'

'After he and Lucienne Ronay moved off and all the time Ms. Baldwin was babbling on about how the hotel would arrange the tables for the CUNY dinner, John kept glancing over toward him, like there was something about the guy that puzzled him.'

'Did he say what?'

'No. He finally shrugged as if it wasn't important and started trying to be nice to the linguistics jerk from Brooklyn College.'

7

AN explosives expert was summing up as Sigrid entered the conference room at headquarters and Captain McKinnon waved her to an empty chair near his while the expert continued.

Judging from the crumpled napkins, soda cans and coffee cups, and the deli smells of pastrami and onions and mustard still redolent in the air, this session had begun with lunch.

Elaine Albee and Jim Lowry were among the dozen officers seated around the long table. Sigrid had worked with the two younger detectives before and had watched with a slightly jaundiced eye the more-than-professional