strewn across a field by Nelson Rockefeller in the 1960s but by now looked only a little more alluring than a hot- sheet motel in Fort Lee-was sparsely populated during its summer semihiatus, and those few students and others out and about were in no big hurry. I parked and soon located Quad Four, the classroom tower from which Greg Stiver had plunged to his death. I thought I figured out the spot where he had landed. There were no aftereffects, no memorial plaque. I paused for a minute, then moved on.
Paul Podolski had a third-floor office in a nearby building, another cement and glass upended shoe box, the public architecture of a society wary of overspending in an area it was ambivalent about, such as learning.
I was told by the department secretary to knock on the door of room 318, but when I found 318 the door was open and a man looked up from a computer terminal.
'Yep? What's up?'
He looked like one of the Smith Brothers on the cough drop box, skinny, shiny on top and black beard from upper lip 74
Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson to midsection I introduced myself and said I understood he had been Gregory Stiver's thesis adviser, and I asked if I might talk to him about Greg for a few minutes.
'Maybe. Who are you working for, may I ask?'
'I can't really say who my client is at this point. But I can tell you it's somebody entirely sympathetic to Greg, someone who is very sorry about Greg's death and the circumstances leading up to it.'
He sat there sizing me up. Who was I, and what was I up to? 'What circumstances are you referring to? What circumstances leading up to Greg's suicide? That is, if it was suicide.'
I helped myself to a seat in the chair across Podolski's desk from him. 'I'm talking about Greg's unhappiness in the weeks before he died. The police and press reports both refer to Greg's supposed despondency. What do you mean, if it was suicide? You have doubts?'
'All I'm saying is, I didn't expect Greg to do such a thing.
It was shocking to me.'
'He hadn't been depressed that you were aware of? Two friends say he was. Janie Insinger and Virgil Jackman were neighbors of Greg's and rode with him from his place on Allen Street out here to the campus a couple of times a week.'
'It's true,' Podolski said, 'that I didn't see as much of Greg after his thesis was accepted as I did in the previous months.
Which I was actually sorry about. I always enjoyed talking with Greg. He was quite bright, and I always thought somebody that smart could be led away from his rather simplistic ideas about the vaunted glories of laissez faire capitalism. And he loved to explain to me how my supposedly socialist ideas-I'm actually a kind of Jack Kennedy accomodationist Democrat-were a form of the very tyranny the founders of the republic had rebelled against.
'Greg and I spent a lot of time poking and jabbing at each other on these matters, without either of us ever giving an inch. But we respected each other, and Greg's thesis on the half-century erosion of the work ethic in the German Democratic Republic was a well-written and nicely argued piece of work. I had encouraged Greg to turn the thesis into an article for, say, the National Review — I know an editor there-and he seemed quite eager to do that. I know he had just about finished a draft when he died, and he was planning on showing it to me. So, really, I was just stunned when he fell off Quad Four and was killed, and pretty soon out came an official verdict of suicide, of all things.'
Was this the Greg Stiver Insinger and Jackman had described to me? Could there somehow be two Greg Stivers?
I said, 'Wasn't he anxious about getting a teaching job? His friends said he was, and he'd been turned down by two colleges.'
'I think there were a couple of things that didn't pan out, yes, but one of those institutions-someplace out near Rochester-Hall Creek Community College, I think I recall had a spot that opened up unexpectedly. Greg knew somebody out there who tipped him off to the opening and was lobbying for him. So the job situation wasn't all that bleak, in my estimation. And then suddenly Greg died. It was 76
Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson appalling, really. One of those deaths that, when it happens, is just incomprehensible.'
'Did you attend the funeral?'
'I did. It was depressing too. No acknowledgement of the absurdity of Greg's death at all. But then I do understand that that isn't what funerals are for. For absurdity we go to Beckett or Sartre, not Calvin.'
'Who attended the funeral? Did you know the people there?'
Podolski fidgeted. 'You know, I'm really curious about who is asking questions about Greg's death five years after it happened. So does this mean that someone besides me is suspicious of the suicide verdict?'
'Yes, someone is,' I said, and I wasn't lying because I knew as soon as I said it that I meant myself. 'There's no evidence of foul play. At this point it just has to do with someone Greg was involved with. May I ask what you knew about his personal life?'
'Not much. I knew Greg was gay. He was active with the Log Cabin Republicans. Or had been. I know during his second year in the graduate program he cut back on most of the extracurricular stuff so he could concentrate on course work and on his thesis. And of course on playing rugby supposedly.'
'Greg played rugby? This is the first I've heard that.'
'That's what he told me. Though I sometimes wondered.
He'd come to see me all banged up-bruised, a split lip, a shiner one time. It happened every so often, and he'd shrug it off and say rugby was just something he needed to do to burn off tension. But I have to say, I knew a few other rugby players, and none of them ever looked like they'd been run over by a truck the way Greg did. And this seemed to happen regularly. It occurred to me he might be-let me just put it bluntly-in an abusive relationship.'
'You never asked him?'
'Once I did, actually. I thought I had to. I said something about his black eye, and had somebody socked him one? This was a chance for him to open up if he wanted to. But he didn't pick up on this. He said oh, no, it was just a wicked weekend game with some of the rougher players in his league. I let it go after that, thinking that either he had to work this out on his own at his own pace, or that maybe I was just imagining the whole thing as to any abuse.
Educators used to be inattentive about this sort of thing, and now maybe we've overcompensated and we've gotten hypersensitive. It's hard these days to know when to butt in and when to butt out.'
'Any signs of a rugby team at Greg's funeral?'
'Not that I noticed. It seemed to be mainly family and friends of the Stiver family, plus a few other faculty and students from the econ department. There was somebody from the Federalist Society I recognized.'
'Both of Greg's parents were there?'
'I believe so. Why wouldn't they be?'
'I've been told Greg's father, Anson, is a nasty piece of work, and they didn't get along.'
'I didn't know that, but then Greg never talked about his family at all with me. He preferred to talk economic theory 78
Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson and history, and it was the nature of our relationship that he could do that with me and just lose himself in it, the way some people lose themselves in drugs or sports memorabilia or line dancing. I'm a little bit that way myself with economic theory, although I do manage to have a life otherwise. My wife sees to it that I come out of my academic cave from time to time, and I am grateful to her for that.'
'What about political figures? Were there any at the funeral?'
Podolski tugged at his beard as if to stimulate memory.
'None that I'm aware of. Why do you ask? Is your investigation politically related somehow?'
'Possibly. It's too soon to tell what my investigation is really about or where it might lead.'
'Does somebody think Greg might have been pushed off Quad Four? I have to say, I've been haunted by that possibility ever since he died. I assumed at the time that the police would have considered foul play, and then they rejected it based on the evidence they had. Of course, if they had asked my opinion about Greg committing suicide, I'd have told them that to me it was unlikely. But they never asked. Apparently they based their conclusion on the
