Hush Money

Nevins thought about this for a while, sipping his coffee slowly, looking past the cup at the long corridor of time past.

“No,” he said. “Don’t matter.”

We were quiet.

“Tell me ‘bout the murder and blackmail.”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” I said, “and what I’m guessing.”

Which I did.

Nevins didn’t say a word as I talked. His gaze was steady and somehow both benign and stern. When I was through I looked at Hawk.

“You got something?” I said.

“Un huh.”

“Were you planning to share it?”

“Un huh.”

I cut another small piece of corn bread. I had learned from Susan that cutting off one small piece at a time was better for you even if you ate the whole thing one small piece at a time. Hawk got himself some more coffee. He looked at Nevins.

“Bobby?” he said.

Nevins shook his head. Hawk looked at me. I shook my head. Hawk came back and sat down.

“Been watching Walt and Willie,” Hawk said.

He looked at Nevins.

“They the people inherited OUTrageous I told you about.”

Nevins nodded. He was nearly motionless as he sat. Time made no difference to him.

“Might be they knew about the blackmail. Might be they carrying it on. So I’m watching them, see what develops.”

“Sneak up on them in the dark better, too,” I said.

“Like you could in a snowstorm,” Hawk said. “Which one is the little blond queen?”

“Willie.”

“He stepping out on Walt,” Hawk said.

“Walt know this?”

“Don’t know. Don’t seem mad when he around Willie. Want to know who he stepping out with?”

“Yes I do.”

“Your friend and mine, Amir Abdullah.”

“Oh ho,” I said.

“Oh ho?”

“Yes. That’s what you say if you’re a top-level sleuth and a clue falls out of a tree and hits you on the head.”

Hawk looked at Nevins.

“Honkies are strange people, Bobby.”

“What’s the clue?” Nevins said.

“The connection between the OUTrageous folks and the tenure folks. Amir’s the one who told the tenure committee that Robinson had an affair with Prentice Lamont. OUTrageous had a list of possible people to out with your son’s name on it and the phrase ‘research continues.’”

“So what does that mean?”

“Research continues?”

“No, what is the, ah, significance, of all that?”

“Hell, Mr. Nevins, I don’t know. It’s just more than we knew before. And maybe Abdullah got it from Willie, or maybe Willie got it from Abdullah – which would be my guess.”

“Don’t help my son get tenure.”

“Not yet.”

“Strange system,” Nevins said. “Keep you for life or they fire you.”

“I know.”

“Robinson wants to be a professor at the university,” Nevins said.

“We going to get that for him, Bobby,” Hawk said.