old to have a keyless entry system or an alarm-and then I notice that the door is already unlocked.

I must have left it that way, because nobody goes to the trouble of picking the lock of a car and then leaves the car. And nobody would steal a twelve-year-old car in the first place.

Except that, when I open the door and the dome light comes on, I realize that there are people after all who break into cars and take nothing, just as there are people who break into vacation homes and do the same thing.

Some people pick locks to make deliveries.

Lying squarely in the middle of the driver’s seat is the chess book that was stolen by the two men who beat me up.

CHAPTER 30

THE USUAL SUSPECTS (I)

“I hear you had a fight with Stuart Land,” says Dear Dana Worth, who is the first to hear about most things that happen around Oldie, including some that didn’t. She is perching on the edge of her desk, palms on the top, the soles of her shoes pressed flat against the side, her small body set in a posture that has become so Worthian a trademark that the students have somebody mimic it most years in the satirical show they put on just before graduation. I am sitting on the long, solid sofa she found at a used-furniture store and reupholstered.

“Not a fight exactly. More… a free and frank exchange of views.”

“About what?”

“I accused him of trying to wreck Marc’s candidacy. I told him it was backfiring, that it might hurt Kimmer, too.” I rub my itching cheek, remembering the look on his face, the surprise I would almost swear was genuine. “He said he wasn’t doing any such thing.”

“Maybe he wasn’t.”

“He just got back from Washington, Dana.”

“Don’t be silly, Misha, darling. I’m sure he wasn’t there on behalf of your wife. He was just there cooking up some constitutional mischief with his right-wing buddies. Stuart never goes anywhere on behalf of anybody else but Stuart.”

“And the law school.”

“And the law school,” she agrees, less certainly. She hops off the desk and begins to stride around the room. Her spacious office is on the second floor of Oldie, right next to Theo Mountain’s, and it is said that the two of them share gossip incessantly. Everything about her office is just right, from the obsessively neat desk to the collection of plants along the windowsill to the shelves where her books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. I stand up as well, crossing to the window, where I look down on the front steps of the building and the granite wall of the main campus across the street. I can see the alley where I was beaten up a few days ago. It is Monday, nine days before Christmas. Classes are finally over, and the faculty is starting to scatter, but the students are stuck in town for another few days, taking their final exams. As for me, I have been keeping my head down, and dithering over what to do next. I have the terrible sense of time running out.

“So, Dana, anyway, you called…”

“I know.” A pause. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

I nod my head without turning around. Our friendship has been maturing over the weeks since Freeman Bishop’s murder. I am not sure I will ever be as close to her as Kimmer and I were, jointly, to Dana and Eddie in the old days, but Dana seems determined to patch up what she can. I am moved by her efforts. Unlike other members of the faculty, who seem to view my recent behavior roughly the way Dean Lynda does, Dana has drifted closer. Outcasts, she told me a few days ago, have to stick together. When I pointed out to Dana that she is no outcast, she reminded me that she runs the local branch of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians. Everybody hates us for something or other, she told me, quite pleased.

“I’m okay,” I assure her.

“Nice stitches. Very becoming.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ve been thinking about what happened to you.”

“What happened to me?”

“Your near arrest-”

I finally turn back into the room. “I didn’t get nearly arrested.”

“I don’t know what else to call it.”

“It was a misunderstanding, that’s all.”

The great libertarian grins. “Oh, right, the kind of misunderstanding where they come within an inch of beating you to death.”

“Nobody beat me,” I say sharply, suddenly worried about what rumors my old friend might be spreading, for Dana, as she likes to say, can be trusted absolutely to repeat what you tell her to no more people than you have told.

“The guys who were chasing you did.”

“True.”

“Well, Misha, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Still in constant motion, her arms swinging as though for balance. I wonder if she is ever tranquil. “The guys who were chasing you.”

“What about them?”

“Well, they stole the chess book, right?”

“Uh, right.” I have not told her it rematerialized. Nevertheless, I have told Dana more of the story than I have told anyone else, maybe because Dana, unlike my other acquaintances, keeps asking me to.

“And do you see why?” She is standing next to me at the window now, looking out across the campus as students trudge raggedly through the cold rain. She is smiling. Dear Dana Worth loves this job.

I turn to watch the scene with her. I have guessed the answer; has she? “You tell me.”

“Because, Misha, darling, they thought it was what they were looking for.”

“Huh?”

“My, but we’re slow today, aren’t we? Number one, you said they were following you. Number two, you said they knew your name.” Dana is a great one for making lists, usually on the spur of the moment. “Number three, they asked you what was in the package. And, number four, they beat you up and made off with the book.”

“Right.”

“So, why that particular night? Of all the nights they could have gone after you, why did they pick that one?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because you did something, or said something, that made them think that this was it, this was the real thing.” She weaves her head like a boxer, pleased with her own deduction. “So all you have to do is figure out what you did to set them off.”

But I already know what I did. I went to the chess club. The men who followed me must have worked for somebody who, like the late Colin Scott, knew what was in the Judge’s letter. Somebody who figured out what Excelsior meant, which means somebody who knew my father was a chess problemist. Somebody who might have said, If he ever goes near anyplace having to do with chess, keep a particularly close eye on him. If he brings anything out, get it from him, any way you can. Somebody… somebody…

“What about Jack Ziegler’s promise that nobody would hurt me?”

“Somebody hasn’t heard the news,” she says.

I frown. I have not told her about the phone call at two-fifty-one. I have not, yet, told anybody. Sooner or later, I will have to. As soon as I figure out who around the building could be keeping tabs on me. It occurs to me, for a worrisome moment, that it could be Dear Dana herself.

Вы читаете Emperor of Ocean Park
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату