Hush Money

The kid turned and Hawk opened the door enough and the kid went out. Hawk closed the door and put the chain back on.

“Sit down,” I said to Amir. “We need to talk.”

“Don’t hurt me,” he said.

Amir’s voice was shrill and thin-sounding, as if it was being squeezed out through a small opening.

“No need for hurting,” I said. “Just sit down and talk with us.”

“The boy saw you here, he’ll tell the police,” Amir said.

Hawk stepped up behind Amir, put his hands on Amir’s shoulders, and steered him to the couch and sat him down.

“Stay,” he said.

Amir stayed. Hawk sat on the couch beside him. I sat on a hassock across from them, and rested my elbows on my knees and clasped my hands.

“Now, here’s what we know about you. We know it was you who informed the English department tenure committee that Robinson Nevins was sort of responsible for the death of graduate student Prentice Lamont.”

Hawk said, “Be quiet, Amir.”

“We know that you yourself were having a sexual relationship with Prentice Lamont before his death.”

Amir opened his mouth, looked at Hawk, closed his mouth.

“We know that Prentice was blackmailing gay people who didn’t want to be outed, and we know that you knew about that.”

Amir sat with his mouth clamped shut, trying to look intrepid, determined to make a virtue of necessity.

“What else do we know?” I said to Hawk.

“We know you a chicken fucker, Amir,” Hawk said.

Amir tried to look haughty. He was, after all, a professor.

“I don’t even know what that means,” he said.

“Sure you do,” Hawk said. “Means you’d fuck a young snake if it was male and you could get it to hold still.”

Hawk’s expression was, as always, somewhere between pleasant and noncommittal. Amir’s expression failed at haughty. It was more a kind of compacting silence, as if he was becoming less, dwindling as he listened, freezing in upon himself.

“We know you advised the current staff of OUTrageous, namely Walt and Willie, that they should continue the blackmail,” I said. “We know you declined to be a financial part of it because you said you didn’t need the money. We know you are currently having an affair with Willie, which is causing Walt to refer to you as a son of a bitch.”

“And,” Hawk said, “we know you went away this weekend in a private plane.”

“And here’s what we don’t know,” I said. “We don’t know if you made up the story about Nevins, or if it’s true. We don’t know why you told the committee about it in either case. We don’t know why you condoned the blackmail. We don’t know why you didn’t then take any money from it. We don’t know why you claim not to need money. We don’t know where you went this weekend. We don’t know if you are responsible for Prentice Lamont being dead.”

The silence in the thick sweet stench of the living room was palpable.

Hawk said very softly, “We’d like to know.”

“I didn’t do a thing to Prentice,” Amir said.

“Know who did?”

“Prentice killed himself.”

“No,” I said. “He didn’t. Do you know who did?”

“Prentice killed himself,” Amir said again.

“Who’d you go to see this weekend?”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” Amir said.

“You took a private jet out of Baxter Airways at two thirty-five last Friday.”

“I didn’t.”

“We can run that down,” I said. “You think people who are gay and don’t want the world to know should be announced?”

“There’s nothing shameful about being gay.”

“I agree. But my question stands.”

“Every gay person who announces himself proudly to the world is another step toward full recognition of our sexual validity.”

We were beginning to discuss abstractions, and Amir was on firmer ground. His voice was less squeaky.

“Unless they pay off,” I said.