“Did the Last Stand whatchamacallit know about their boss and Amir?”
“No. Just the personal bodyguard. They would smuggle Amir up to a motel near the Maine headquarters, usually, but sometimes to other places, where he would rendezvous with Milo.”
“Classic fascist ambivalence,” the speaker was a small man with longish tan hair and horn-rimmed glasses, “to lust in private after everything they despise in public.”
“You bet,” I said. “So Amir decided that since he had a corpse handy, blame Robinson Nevins for it, and get a twofer.”
“Excuse me?” Bass Maitland said.
“Two for one,” Tillman said brusquely. “Go ahead, Mr. Spenser.”
“Well, why on earth would he do that?” Maitland said.
“Amir is pretty pathological,” I said. “He couldn’t stand any competition, let alone competition from a black scholar as accomplished and as fundamentally decent as Robinson Nevins.”
“Nevins never had an affair with Prentice Lamont?” the wiry woman said.
“No. Robinson isn’t even gay,” I said.
I looked at Lillian Temple. Her face showed nothing.
“Well, for God’s sake, why didn’t he say so?” Maitland said.
“Because he felt that since the charges were specious regardless of his sexuality, proclaiming his heterosexuality was both undignified and perhaps in some way hostile to the interests of his many gay friends.”
“Bass wouldn’t understand that,” Harmon said.
“Tommy, please,” Tillman said.
“I resent that,” Maitland said.
“Bass,” Tillman said.
“To prove his heterosexuality would have required women to testify that they’d been intimate with him,” I said. “Several of them were not free to be. He declined to put them on the spot.”
Again I was looking at Lillian Temple. Her appearance remained rigidly unchanged.
“My God,” said the little guy with the big glasses, “he sounds like one of nature’s noblemen. And we’re denying him tenure?”
“Do you know who any of these women are?” the wiry woman asked.
“Yes.”
“May we know?”
I shook my head. Lillian Temple’s expression remained unchanged. She was so still that she was barely there.
“How do we know that this man is telling the truth?” Maitland said.
“Bass,” I said, “I don’t wish to appear uncouth, so I’ll let it slide that you’re kind of calling me a liar. But if you do it outside of these august proceedings, I will knock you on your Harris tweed tookus.”
Tommy Harmon chuckled. Maitland flushed.
“Mr. Spenser,” Tillman’s voice was like the thin edge of a piece of ice. “Whether or not these proceedings are august, they are serious. Bass, everything Mr. Spenser has said is corroborated in the police reports, generally in Abdullah’s own words.”
“I haven’t had a chance to read the reports,” Maitland said sullenly.
“They were distributed three days ago. We all had the chance,” Tillman said. “I took advantage of it, you didn’t. Do you have anything else to tell us, Mr. Spenser?”
“I have a couple of guesses. One, I think Amir was beginning to tire of Milo. Amir’s taste usually ran younger. Or maybe Milo was tiring of Amir. Whatever, Amir proposed the blackmail scheme to Walt and Willie, the two young men who inherited
“Foresighted,” Tillman said.
The committee asked me maybe a dozen questions. Tommy Harmon spoke about the injustice that they were trying to avert. Bass Maitland made a formal statement about the danger of taking these decisions from the hands of the department. Lillian Temple concurred.
“Are we ready for a vote?” Tillman said.
They were.
“Very well,” Tillman said. “Mr. Spenser, will you step outside, please. Professors Temple, Harmon, Maitland will join him please.”
All the time we stood outside in the corridor nobody said anything. I looked at Lillian Temple. She stood as close as dignity permitted to Bass Maitland and looked at something else. Anything else. I was sort of hoping Bass would call me a liar again. He didn’t. Maybe I could put an eraser on my shoulder and dare him to knock it off. I thought about explaining that to Susan afterward, and decided not to dare him.
