told me to get in touch if I heard anything more, a thick, breezy man named Nunzio. I reach his voice mail and leave a message, then call his beeper and his cell phone, both of which he inked onto his card. There is no answer on the cell phone, and I leave my number on the beeper.
Think.
I consider and reject reaching the campus police: what exactly would I ask them to do?
The most sensible remaining option is to call Uncle Mal, but I am reluctant to do it. I have spoken to him twice in the last week, seeking updates on the Bishop investigation, and I have gained the strong impression that he has begun to tolerate me rather than listen to me: he does, after all, have actual paying work to do, and constantly indulging the implausible fears of the son of his dead partner has probably begun to press the limits of his beneficence. The second time I called, he suggested thinly that I might get in touch with Meadows for such “routine matters” as these. His time is tight just now, he said, and he will be handling only issues surrounding my wife’s possible nomination. Perhaps it is just as well. I am tired of asking him for favors: one thing my father drummed into us repeatedly was that we must avoid the mistake of so many members of the darker nation who spend their lives going hat in hand to powerful white folks for help.
Yet I have no alternative.
I have just lifted the receiver to telephone Corcoran amp; Klein when Dorothy Dubcek, my mothering secretary, buzzes me to say that Agent Nunzio is on the phone.
“Just talking to a friend of yours,” he says in his gruff way, not bothering to ask what I called about. “Bonnie Ames.”
I am a moment catching up. I have never been much good with names. Kimmer says I am just unfriendly; Dear Dana says it is genetic, calling it my “social orientation”; and Rob Saltpeter says remembering names is not so important if we honor God in everybody we meet.
Rob’s answer is my favorite, but Kimmer knows me best.
“Bonnie Ames?” I repeat, stupidly.
“Sure, Sergeant Ames. You met her.”
“Oh! Sure.” A pause as each of us waits for the other. I blink first. “So, uh, what were you talking to her about?”
He lapses into cop-speak: “She informed me that they have apprehended a suspect.”
“What?”
“In the murder of Freeman Bishop.”
“Oh! Who was it?”
“Some drug dealer.”
“You’re kidding.” Soothing relief unexpectedly flows through me at the realization that it was not after all McDermott who did the deed; a moment later, a shuddery wave of shame replaces it. Still: it was not McDermott.
“The Bureau does not allow kidding.”
“Very funny.”
“She wants you to call her. Wants to give you the details herself.” He rattles off her number, which I already have. “What did you beep me about?”
The brusque change of subject sets me back for an instant. The urgency of my original call suddenly seems less-but not to Agent Nunzio. Once I tell him that I saw McDermott, he zips through a series of questions, nailing down everything from the color of the fake agent’s shoes to the direction he took when he left. He is unsatisfied by my answers. He asks me if I really think McDermott traveled all the way to Elm Harbor just to ask me if I have a friend named Angela. I tell him it certainly seems that way. He asks me if I can think of any reason McDermott would think I have a friend named Angela, and I admit I am aware of none. He asks me if in fact I have a friend named Angela, and I tell him I cannot think of one. He asks me to call him if I happen to remember one, and I tell him I will.
“It could be important,” Nunzio warns me.
“I figured that out for myself.”
“I don’t want you to worry, Professor Garland,” he adds, unexpectedly expansive. “If McDermott is really some kind of private investigator, I’m sure we’ll track him down, and we’ll track his client down too. Those guys are a nuisance, but I’m sure he’s harmless.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, my earlier nervousness sharpening my tone. I am not reassured by the fact that McDermott said roughly the same thing: You and your family are perfectly safe… from whatever might come. I have the sense that everybody else shares some crucial bit of knowledge that I have been denied. Yet the fact that Freeman Bishop’s murderer is under arrest makes me feel safer… safer for my family. A little bit, anyway. “If you haven’t found him, how do you know he’s harmless?”
“Because we see this type all the time. They lie to get information, they follow people, they weasel this and that. But that’s all they do.” A hesitation. “Unless, of course, you have some kind of evidence to the contrary. About McDermott, I mean.”
“No.”
“You’ve told me everything?”
“Yes.” As I did in my meeting with Sergeant Ames, I have the sense of being under interrogation, but I have no idea for what.
“Well, then, it’s like I said.” Winding up. “You have nothing to worry about. You can go on with… well, whatever you’re doing.”
“Agent Nunzio…”
“Fred is fine.”
“Fred. Fred, look. You’re down in Washington. I’m up here. McDermott is here. I would be lying if I didn’t admit, that, uh…”
“You’re worried.”
“Yes.”
“I understand. But my resources are a little bit limited. And, well, it’s not as if this McDermott character has threatened you… .”
“No, he just dropped by to impersonate an FBI agent.”
I can almost hear him thinking, not only logistics, but politics: who owes what to whom and for what.
“Tell you what. I really don’t think you should be worried. I want to emphasize that. But, if it will make you feel better, I’ll make a couple of calls. We don’t have much of an office up there, but I’ll see what I can do. Maybe have the police take some extra cruises by your house till we track McDermott down.”
I know I am being mollified, and I also know there is little reason to worry, but I am grateful all the same.
“I’d appreciate it.”
“My pleasure, Professor.” A pause. “Oh, and I hope things work out for your wife.”
Only after we have hung up does it occur to me that I did not tell him about the pawn. But, then, perhaps I never meant to.
Which leaves me Bonnie Ames.
Having acquired a first name, the sergeant is less daunting. Still, once I track her down, she is so brusque that I marvel she asked me to call in the first place. Either she is still feeling Uncle Mal’s pressure or she is feeding a need to gloat over just how far wrong our suspicions were. The arrests in the “torture slaying” (as the reporters are calling it) of Father Freeman Bishop were made early this morning, she says: no Klansmen, no skinheads, no neo-Nazis, and no fake FBI agents either, but a Landover, Maryland, crack dealer, a small-timer-a nobody, the sergeant calls him-a twenty-two-year-old named Sharik Deveaux, street name Conan, and a member of his crew. Even as I listen to her account, I am skimming the story on the USA Today Web site. Sergeant Ames takes particular pleasure in informing me that Conan is black, which I already guessed. “So, no possible racial motive”-as though it was I, rather than the media, who proposed one. Mr. Deveaux, the detective continues, admits selling the precious little rocks to Father Bishop on a regular basis. Naturally, he denies the murder. But the other
