jumbled desk. He leaned back, hands clasped behind his head, and regarded me gravely.
'What's your real name?' he asked.
I decided to stop playing games.
'Joshua Bigg,' I said. 'I'm not a lawyer, but I really do work for that legal firm on the card. I'm the Chief Investigator.'
'Chief Investigator,' he repeated, nodding. 'Must be important to send you all the way out from New York.
What's the problem with Godfrey Knurr?'
'Uh, it involves women.'
'It would,' he said. 'And money?'
'Yes,' I said, 'and money. Mr Karp, if you insist, I will tell you in detail what the Reverend Godfrey Knurr is implicated in, and what he is suspected of having done.
But, because of the laws of slander, I'd rather not. He has not been charged with any crimes. As yet.'
'Crimes?' he echoed. 'It's come to that, has it? No, Mr Bigg, I really don't want to know. You wouldn't be here if it wasn't serious. W e l l. . what can I tell you?'
'Anything about the man that will help me understand him.'
'Understand Godfrey Knurr?' he said, with a hard grin that had no mirth to it. 'No way! Besides, I can't tell you about the man. We lost touch when he went away to the seminary.'
'And you haven't seen him since?'
'Once,' he said. 'When he came back to visit his sister years and years ago. He looked me up and we had a few drinks together. It was not what you'd call a joyous reunion.'
'Well, can you tell me about the boy? Maybe it would help me understand what he's become.'
'Maybe,' he said doubtfully. 'Mr Bigg, when my family came up here from Mississippi, we were one of the first coloured families in the neighbourhood. It wasn't easy, I do assure you. But my daddy and older brothers got jobs in the mills, so we were eating. That was something. They put me in grade school here. Mostly Irish, Polish, and Ukrainian kids. I was the only black in my class. It would have been worse if it hadn't been for Godfrey Knurr.'
I must have looked surprised.
'Oh yes,' he said. 'He saved my ass more than once, I do assure you. This was in the eighth grade, and he was the biggest, strongest, smartest, best-looking boy in school.
The teachers loved him. Girls followed him down the street, passed him notes, gave him the cookies they baked in home economics class. I guess you could say he was the school hero.'
'Is that how you saw him?'
'Oh yes,' he said seriously, 'I do assure you. He was my hero, too. Protected me. Showed me around. Took me under his wing, you might say. I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world to have a friend like Godfrey Knurr. I worshipped him.'
'And then. .?' I asked.
'Then we went to high school together — right here in dear old McKinley — and Godfrey began to call in my markers. Do you know what that means?'
'I know.'
'It started gradually. Like we'd have to turn in a theme, and he'd ask me to write one for him because he had put it off to the last minute and he wanted to take a girl to the T.C.-P movies. He was something with the girls. Or maybe we'd be taking a math test, and he'd make sure to sit next to me so that I could slip him the answers if he got stuck.'
'I thought you said he was smart?'
'He was. The smartest. If he had applied himself, and studied, he could have sailed through high school, just sailed, and ended up first in his class. But he had no discipline. There were always a dozen things he'd rather be doing than homework — mooning around with girls, playing a game of stickball in a vacant lot, going into Chicago to see a parade — whatever. So he began to lean on me more and more until I was practically carrying him.'
'You didn't object to this?'
Jesse Karp swung his creaking swivel chair around until he was looking out a window. I saw him in profile. A great brown bald dome. A hard, brooding expression.
'I didn't object,' he said in a rumbling, ponderous voice.
'At first. But then I began to grow up. Physically, I mean.
I really sprouted. In the tenth grade alone I put on four inches and almost thirty pounds. After a while I was as tall as Godfrey, as strong, and I was faster. Also, I was getting wiser. I realized how he was using me. I still went along with him, but it bothered me. I didn't want to get caught helping him cheat. I didn't want to lie for him anymore. I didn't want to do his homework or lend him my notes or write his themes. I began to resent his demands.'
'Do you think … ' I said hesitantly, 'do you think that when you first came up here from the south, and he took you under his wing, as you said, do you think that right from the start, the both of you just kids, that he saw someone he could use? Maybe not right then, but in the future?'
Jesse Karp swung around to face me, to stare at me sombrely.
'You weren't raised to be an idiot, were you?' he said. 'I gave that question a lot of thought, and yes, I think he did 386
exactly that, He had a gift — if you can call it that — of selecting friends he could use. If not immediately, then in the future. He banked people. Just like a savings account that he could draw on when he was in need. It hurt me when I realized it. Now, after all these years, it still hurts. I thought he liked me. For myself, I mean.'
'He probably did,' I assured him. 'Probably in his own mind he doesn't know the difference. He only likes people he can use. The two are inseparable.'
'What you're saying is that he's not doing it deliberately? That he's not consciously plotting?'
'I think it's more like an instinct.'
'Maybe,' he said. 'Anyway, after I realized what he was doing, I decided against a sudden break. I didn't want to confront him or fight him or anything like that. But I gradually cooled it, gradually got out from under.'
'How did he take that?'
'Just fine. We stayed friends, I do assure you. But he got the message. Stopped asking me to do his themes and slip him the answers on exams. It didn't make any difference.
By that time he had a dozen other close friends, some boys but mostly girls, who were delighted to help him. He had so much charm. Even as a boy, he had so damned much charm, you wouldn't believe.'
'I'd believe,' I said. 'He's still got it.'
'Yes? Well, in our senior year, a couple of things happened that made me realize he was really bad news. He had a job for an hour after school every day working in a local drugstore. Jerking sodas and making deliveries — like that. He worked for maybe a month and then he was canned. There were rumours that he had been caught dipping into the till. That may or may not have been true.
Knowing Godfrey, I'd say it was probably true. Then, we were both on the high school football team. Competitors, you might say, because we both wanted to play quarterback, although sometimes the coach played us both at the 387
same time with one of us at halfback. But still, we both wanted to call the plays. Anyway, in our last season, three days before the big game with Edison High, someone pushed me down the cement steps to the locker room. I never saw who did it, so I can't swear to it, but I'll go to my grave believing it was Godfrey Knurr. All I got out of it, thank God, was a broken ankle.'
'But he played quarterback in the big game?'
'That's right.'
'Did McKinley High win?'
'No,' Jesse Karp said with grim satisfaction, 'we lost.'
'And who ended up first in the class? Scholastically?'
'I did,' he said. 'But I do assure you, if Godfrey Knurr had applied himself, had shown some discipline, there is no way I could have topped him. He was brilliant. No other word for it; he was just brilliant.'
'What does he want? ' I cried desperately. 'Why does he do these things? What's his motive?'
The Principal fiddled with an ebony letter opener on his desk, looking down at it, turning it this way and
