'What you going to do when you find him?' Hawk said.
'Don't screw this up,' I said. 'It's almost a plan.'
Hawk nodded.
'Okay,' I said, 'you stick with Dwayne during the day. I'll try to get the campus police to cover him at night.'
'Thought they didn't like you over there.'
'Why should they be different,' I said. 'I'll call Haller, and have him talk to the college.'
'Be a good idea if you did that with everybody.'
'Let Haller speak for me?' I said.
'In every instance,' Hawk said.
I called Haller.
'Vince,' I said, 'there's some chance, I don't know how great, that someone might try to kill Dwayne.'
'He is caught up in something, isn't he?' Haller said.
'Hawk will cover him during the day, but he can't do it twenty-four hours. Can you get the campus cops to cover Dwayne when he's home?'
'Yes.'
'Are they any good?' I said. 'Like they have guns and stuff, don't they?'
'They're all right,' Haller said. 'It's a professional force.'
'Get them to cover his house,' I said, 'from six at night to seven. . .' Hawk frowned at me, '. . . ah, make it eight, in the morning. Hawk will take him the rest of the time.'
We hung up.
'Seven A.M.?' Hawk said. 'Surely you jest.'
'Hell, I was worried you'd be insulted when I said you couldn't do twenty-four hours.'
'Can,' Hawk said, 'is different than want to.'
'Sure,' I said. 'See if you can keep him alive till the campus cops get there.'
When Hawk was gone I called Frank Belson. 'I need the make and plate number of a car registered to Madelaine Roth,' I said.
'And you think I'm a registry inspector,' Belson said.
'I figure you wanted to be, but flunked the test,' I said.
'Only way to flunk that one is to die near the beginning of it,' Belson said. 'How do you spell Madelaine?'
I told him.
'Call you back,' he said, 'unless there's a crime or something, and I get distracted.'
He hung up. I sat and waited. In fifteen minutes Belson called back.
'1988 Saab 900, silver gray, Mass. vanity plate says MAD,' Belson said.
'Anything else I can do for you before I go back to crime busting?'
'No,' I said, 'that's fine. I'll remember you at Christmas.'
Belson hung up. I went down to get my car and drive to Taft.
28
I got back to Taft around three in the afternoon and began cruising the faculty and staff parking lot near the administration building. It didn't take long. I found the silver Saab with the MAD license plate in the second row three cars in, right behind the administrative building. There was a green triangular parking sticker on the right window near the door edge. I parked my car in sight of the parking area in an area marked Visitors and waited. It was not a complicated intellectual process and I was able to handle it. The campus police did not open fire on me. A cruiser moved by me once and the cop looked at me with neither interest nor recognition. At 4:37 Madelaine came out of the administrative building wearing a full pleated skirt in sort of a pale violet plaid, high lavender boots, and a gray trench coat with the collar up and the belt knotted rather than buckled. She carried a big straw bag and a smaller purse of gray leather and she walked very briskly.
When she pulled out of the parking lot I cruised along behind her. We drove east, picked up Route 16 into Newton, turned left on Commonwealth and ended up at a series of condominium townhouses just up the road from the big Marriott where the Totem Pole used to be. I kept going past and watched her park and walk to her door. She went in. I U-turned 100 yards down and drove back and parked across the street in the parking lot of a complex of garden apartments where I could watch her door. Which I did until eleven forty-five and went home. She didn't come out, no one went in.
I did this for three nights, picking her up at work and following her home. One night she stopped at the Star Market in Newtonville, another night she stopped at a liquor store on the way home. That's all. She didn't see anyone or do anything. I figured that if she and Deegan were a matched pair sooner or later he'd come to her house or she'd go to his. I figured he wouldn't show up at the University, so that left my days free to sit around and think about becoming an abbot.
The fourth night was Friday, and I scored. I had been sitting in the apartment parking lot for maybe forty-five
