The Right Jack

'Reasons for Preferring an Elderly Mistress?' asked Oscar.

'Only John said that Fred changed it to homely mistress or doggy mistress.'

''Eighth and lastly, they are sog rateful,'' Nauman quoted for Sigrid's enlightenment.

There was a pensive silence. A lump of coal slipped through the grate and fell upon the hearth in a shower of glowing sparks.

'Poor Brooks Ann,' Val sighed. 'She probably was grateful. Fred was a leader. He could stir kids up, make them ready to storm the barricades. And he certainly was sexy.'

She watched Sigrid jot a few words on her pad. 'Most of this is second hand,' she warned. 'I barely knew either of them except for what John told me over the years. I never went to any SDS meetings and I'd only been seeing John a month or two before Fred went underground. Brooks Ann was just one of several girls hanging around him. The others were prettier, more verbal-Brooks Ann sort of faded into the woodwork.'

She spoke with the unconscious condescension of one who had never faded into any background. Anne Harald would probably enjoy photographing the dramatic angles of her catlike face, Sigridt hought, or those eyes, deepened into dark pools by the skillful application of mascara. Val's beauty lay in the way she held her head, in the way she moved, in the innate knowledge of her sexuality. As a child she must have been odd-looking as I was, Sigrid thought despairingly, so how did she end up with so much assurance?

She drew a heavy line across the width of her note pad and carefully printed Fred Hamilton's name beneath.

'I got the impression that Hamilton was a little older?'

'He was,' Val nodded, her heavy dark hair swinging forward. 'Older than most of us anyhow. He was a senior, but more like twenty-four or twenty-five because he'd dropped out years before to join the Peace Corps. I think his father was an executive in chemicals or defense contracts and Fred couldn't get along with him, so he wouldn't ask his parents for money when he came back.'

'He took his girlfriend's money instead,' Sigrid observed.

'Put like that, it does sound hypocritical,' Val admitted, 'but nobodyt wisted Brooks Ann's arm. And remember, it seemed like poetic justice back then to let the Establishment support the protesters, too.'

She stood and moved to the tray on the desk to pour herself another cup of tea. Her slender body was stooped with fatigue.

'It all gets so confused,' she said, adding milk and sugar to the blue porcelain cup. 'Sometimes I think I must be getting old. They say the older you get, the more conservative you become. I remember when the first bombs went off in a Brooklyn draft board. I wasn't particularly radical, but I thought, Hey, right on! Let them get a taste of warfare. But today, when abortion clinics get bombed, I'm outraged.'

'Because you condone abortion and you didn't condone the draft?' Sigrid suggested.

'Or because they're on the Right and we were on the Left?' Val mused, turning to face her. 'I don't think so. We were trying to stop the killing.'

'Pro-lifers say the same,' Oscar observed mildly.

'Oh God, Oscar, you're not going to equate abortion with the draft? Young men were forced to go to Vietnam. Women aren't forced to have abortions. It's not the same.'

'I didn't say it was,' he protested. 'I happen to think women have a right to their bodies.'

'So do I,' Sigrid said slowly. 'Even so, I can't quite reconcile some parts of it. I don't believe abortion's murder; yet if someone assaults a pregnant woman and kills her unborn child, I do think that's manslaughter. I guess I don't have a good definition of when life begins. Not like the right-to-lifers.'

'I hate that term!' Val said passionately. 'When villages full of babies were carpet-bombed in Vietnam, where were the right-to-lifers? When babies starve all over Africa, when babies go hungry right here in our own rat- infested slums, where are these so-called life-lovers? They care nothing about the quality of life once a baby's born, just that it gets born. They're so sure God's on their side!'

'Val-' said Nauman.

'No, Oscar, don't. I have to workt his out, because that's what bothers me. We.were just as positive our views were moral, that we were working for something good even if the way we worked…' She looked at them, her face ravaged. 'Did we set precedents?'

'You're afraid you created an atmosphere that made violence an acceptable part of civil disobedience?' Sigrid asked.

'Yes!' Val said gratefully. 'And not just public protest, but private, too. Has it gone full circle?'

Her dark eyes filled with tears again. 'Is that what killed John?' she asked hoarsely.

'Of course not,' said Oscar. He crossed the Peruvian rug to put his arms around Val and hold her tightly while she wept softly against his chest.

Sigrid picked up the poker and punched at the fire. Carefully she raked the fiery chunks into a neat pile, then leveled them again into a glowing bed. Only the week before, she had flown down to North Carolina for the funeral of a close cousin and Val's grief rekindled her own so abruptly that she could not turn around and watch.

Presently the sobs behind her subsided. Val blew her nose and came back to the chair by the hearth.

'Sorry, guys,' she said shakily. 'I keep thinking I'm cried out and then something sets me off again.'

Nauman shoved his chair closer to hers and held out her forgotten cup of tea.

She took a deep swallow. 'Don't you want more coffee, Sigrid? I'm sure they've probably made a fresh pot by now.'

'No, thank you. Describe Fred Hamilton, please.' Her words were blunt and businesslike.

'Yes, of course. Let's see… about six feet tall, dark hair that he wore shoulder-length, muscular build. The sexiest eyes I've ever seen. I was teasing John about that-was it just last night? God! It seems so long ago.'

Again her eyes pooled and Sigrid felt such a rush of compassion that she was almost paralyzed. 'You and your husband discussed Hamilton last night? Who brought him up? You or he?'

'He did,' Val replied, puzzled by her harsh tone. 'He asked if I remembered Fred and I said yes, he was a smolderings expot. We were kidding about it; you know how it is.'

Only as an outside observer did Sigrid know that teasing intimacy between wife and husband. She nodded stiffly.

'We were on our way out to the Maintenon while we were talking and I asked John if he thought Fred and Brooks Ann would ever turn themselves in-so many have over the years, you know-and John…'

She frowned as she remembered. 'He said that it was odd I should ask or something like that and then a cab stopped for us and we wound up talking about other things.'

'But the way he said it?' Sigrid probed.

Val nodded her sleek brown head. 'The way he said it was as if he'd heard something about Fred recently.'

Sigrid leaned back in the deep leather chair. 'Val, I asked you before but I want you to think again very carefully. Did you converse with Ted Flythe last night?'

'No, why?'

Sigrid made a noncommittal gesture and Val looked to Nauman for enlightenment.

He shrugged. 'I suppose she wants to know if he reminded you of anybody besides that Tris Yorke.'

'Reminded? You think Ted Flythe is Fred Hamilton?' They could almost see her mind sorting and comparing. 'They're both the same height and coloring,' she mused. 'Flythe has a beard and Fred was always clean-shaven with much longer hair.'

'You said Hamilton had sexy eyes,' said Sigrid. 'One of my officers said the same about Flythe's.'

'They're similar,' Val admited, 'but I don't think he's Fred.'

'He'd be the right age,' said Nauman, playing devil's advocate. 'Early forties, I'd put him.'

'No,' Val said, with conviction. 'I know it's been ages, but even if Flythe is Fred, why would he come back and kill John after all this time? They had an ideological split, not a blood feud.'

' Hamilton is still wanted by the FBI,' Sigrid told her. 'The amnesty program covered draft evaders, not murderers. Even if the deaths of those children were unpremeditated, it's still manslaughter.

There's no statute of limitations to run out. Your husband might be one of the few who could definitely identify him.'