Hush Money

“Threaten?”

I knew that Milo’s brain was fuddled by whatever controlled substance he’d been ingesting with Amir. But even so he looked genuinely puzzled.

“Didn’t he do that, Amir?” I said.

“I… how would I know?”

“Well, you and Milo seem sort of friendly,” I said. “I just thought you might. So, tell him what we’re doing here.”

“Doing here? God, how would I know?”

“You know,” I said. “Explain to Milo what we’re after.”

“Speak up, Amir,” Hawk said.

Amir looked as if someone had taken a shot at him.

“They’re after me,” Amir said. “They are after me because they think I made a person lose tenure.”

“Tenure?” Milo said.

“And because a kid you know got pitched out a window,” I said. “Tell him about that.”

“Window?” Milo said.

“It’s all craziness, Milo,” Amir said.

Milo looked at me and Hawk. Rallying is hard when you’re half stoned, and you got no pants on, but Milo was trying.

“There are armed men in rooms on either side of us,” Milo said. “If you were to fire that revolver, they would rush in here and kill you.”

Hawk smiled.

“You think?” he said.

Milo turned his head and stared at Amir.

“What is this about tenure and a person getting thrown from a window?”

“It’s not anything, Milo.”

“What are you doing to me, you degenerate cannibal?”

“Who are you calling degenerate?” Amir said. “I’m everything you hate and you can’t stop fucking me.”

Milo slapped him across the face. Amir laughed at him.

“Talk about degenerate,” he said.

It came all at once. Gestalt. The whole thing. For the first time since Hawk had come in with Robinson Nevins in the spring, I knew what was going on. It was a feeling I wasn’t used to.

“Prentice knew about you and Milo,” I said to Amir.

Amir’s face seemed to freeze.

“You got a lot of perks out of being a militant black man, just like you got a lot of perks out of being a militant gay activist.”

Milo had stopped looking at Amir and was looking at me.

“And Prentice caught you,” I said to Amir.

He seemed to be freezing right there in front of me. Compacting as he froze, growing smaller.

“Who, pray tell, is Prentice?” Milo said.

“Kid that got thrown out the window by some of your security twerps,” I said.

“I know nothing about any Prentice.”

“No,” I said, “you don’t. Prentice Lamont ran a newspaper called OUTrageous, which was primarily committed to outing gay men and women who would have preferred otherwise.”

Milo frowned. I knew he could identify.

“First the kid probably was doing it for philosophical reasons. Hiding one’s sexuality contributed to the belief that it was shameful. Something high-sounding like that, but then, and I’m guessing here, Amir started hitting on him, and the kid was flattered because Amir is a big-deal gay guy and a leading black activist, and a professor, and an all-around joy to contemplate.”

Outside the room the rain kept coming down in the dark. The motel window was streaked with it.

“And Amir gives him the blackmail idea. Maybe he wanted a cut of it. Maybe he wanted Prentice to think he was smart. Maybe he gets a kick out of perverting idealism. I’d guess all of the above with the perversion of idealism especially appealing to him, because he did it again with Willie and Walt when he was with you, Milo, and no longer needed the money. There’s people like that, get a kick out of seducing virgins, so to speak.”

Both Milo and Amir were now watching me as if I were Scheherazade. Hawk seemed to have faded back a little into the background. No one made a sound. I was talking mostly to Milo now.

“Anyway the scheme was working good. Good enough for Prentice to have accumulated two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Also, while Amir was with Prentice, he learned that OUTrageous was investigating the possibility that another professor at the university, Robinson Nevins, was gay. Nevins was Amir’s