Robert B Parker
Hush Money
CHAPTER ONE
Outside my window a mixture of rain and snow was settling into slush on Berkeley Street. I was listening to a spring training game from Florida between the Sox and the Blue Jays. Joe Castiglione and Jerry Trupiano were calling the game and struggling bravely to read all the drop-ins the station had sold. They did as well as anyone could, but Red Barber and Mel Allen would have had trouble with the number of commercials these guys had to slip in. The leisurely pace of baseball had once been made for radio. It allowed the announcers to talk about baseball in perfect consonance with the rhythm of the game. We listened not only to hear what happened but because we liked the music of it. The sound of a late game from the coast, between two teams out of contention on a Sunday afternoon in August, driving home from the beach. The crowd noise was faint in the background, the voices of the play-by-play guys embroidering on a dull game. Now there was little time for baseball talk. There was barely time for play-by-play. And much of the music was gone. Still, it was the sound of spring, and it took some of the chill out of the slush storm.
Just after the fifth inning started, Hawk came into my office with a smallish man in a short haircut, wearing a dark three-piece suit and a red and white polka dot bow tie. His skin was blue black and seemed tight on him. I turned the radio down, but not off.
“Client,” Hawk said.
“Ever hopeful,” I said.
I recognized the small man. His name was Robinson Nevins. He was a professor at the university, the author of at least a dozen books, a frequent guest on television shows, and a nationally known figure in what the press calls The Black Community.
“I’m Robinson Nevins,” he said and put his hand out. I leaned forward and shook it without getting up. “Hawk may be premature in calling me a client. We need to talk a bit first, among other things we ought to find out if we can get along.”
“Whose tab?” I said to Hawk.
“Guarantee half everything I get,” Hawk said.
“That much,” I said.
“I can’t afford very much,” Nevins said.
“Maybe we won’t get along,” I said.
“I am dependent largely on a university salary and, as I’m sure you know, that is not a handsome sum.”
“Depends what sums you’re used to,” I said. “How about the books?”
“The books are well received, and have influence I hope beyond their sales. Their sales are modest. I make some money on the lecture circuit, but far too often I speak because I feel the cause is just rather than the price is right.”
“Don’t you hate when that happens,” I said.
Nevins smiled, but not as if he thought I was funny.
“What would you like to pay me a modest amount to do?” I said.
“I have been denied tenure,” Nevins said.
I stared at him.
“Tenure?” I said.
“Yes. Unjustly.”
“And you want me to look into that?” I said.
“Yes.”
