“Yes. I was too. That’s how I met him. We had classes together.”
“While you two are talking,” Jerry said, “I’ll go and see if Sally can dig up this guy Turner’s record.”
“Good,” I said.
Jerry got up and went out.
“And now you’re working with the impoverished here at Coyle State?” I said.
She smiled.
“The reality of impoverishment is much nastier than the academic hypothesis,” Lois said. “I decided college administration was more my line.”
“Speaking of nasty,” I said.
“Very nasty,” she said. “But here, at least, no one has the fortitude to be really dangerous.”
I nodded.
“How old would you say he was at the time?” I said.
“Late thirties. It was part of what made him fascinating. Remember, I was like nineteen. He would talk about his adventures in the peace movement the way some men tell war stories. Haight-Ashbury. Kent State. SNCC. All that. Names. Songs. He was like a legendary fi gure.”
“So he’d be in his late fi fties now,” I said.
“Yes. Isn’t that amazing.”
“Why’d you break up?” I said.
“My tendencies are monogamous,” she said. “I got tired of sharing him.”
“Did you have to share him with many?” I said.
“Every.”
I nodded.
“When’s the last time you saw him?” I said.
“Oh, God, I don’t know,” she said. “He stuck around one more year after I graduated, working on his master’s. It was slow. He only took a few courses, like one a semester.”
“Did he ever tell you where he was from?”
“California. I think Los Angeles, or around there.”
“What had he been doing between the end of the revolution and the time you knew him?” I said.
“He would have answered that the revolution was ongoing. That the impoverished were the victims of an oppressive government.”
“No doubt,” I said. “But what was he doing?”
“He implied that he was slowly putting together the elements for a new movement,” she said. “But I don’t really know that. He was always mysterious about his past, which I loved. It made him quite exotic.”
Jerry came back into the room looking perplexed. My guess was that Jerry was often perplexed. This time, however, he appeared to have good reason.
“There’s no record,” he said, “of Bradley Turner ever being enrolled here.”
“Hot damn,” I said.
47.
Jerry had a meeting he had to attend. So we went to Lois’s office, which was smaller. We didn’t mind. We had probably used up pretty much all that Jerry had already.
“He must have just come to classes,” Lois said. “Just walked in and sat down and acted like he was a student.”
“Thirst for knowledge?” I said.
She shrugged.
“Good place to meet girls?” she said.
“Sort of a reversal of the norm,” I said.
Lois smiled.
“Yes,” she said. “Most students are enrolled and act like they’re not.”
“Do you know any other people who would remember
Turner/Alderson?” I said.
She smiled slightly.
“Women,” she said. “It would be nearly all women.”
“Names?” I said.
