Fiddlers

Marcia tugged at her skirt, as if she’d been molested.

‘So what happened after Knowles spoke to her?’ he asked.

‘Well, she just remained adamant. She told him the syllabus called for grading to be based on attendance, participation, and final exam. She told him it was outrageous to ask that she pass a student who’d cut half of her precious lectures. Even though I’d mastered the material at home, mind you…”

‘I think it was outrageous,’ Brown said.

‘Yes, well no one asked your opinion, did we?’ Marcia snapped.

‘Maybe you ought to call your father,’ Brown suggested.

Kling recognized him falling into a Good Cop/Bad Cop routine. He didn’t think that was necessary here. Not yet, anyway. He snapped him an Eye Warn. Brown caught it, seemed to cool it.

‘So what happened?’ Kling asked.

‘My father went to see her.’

‘Good old dad,’ Brown said, and Kling snapped him another look.

‘Reminded her that I was a straight-A student, further reminded her that he was paying close to thirty thousand dollars a year for the privilege of my attendance at this institute of higher learning, and lastly reminded her that his law firm had contributed a hundred thousand dollars toward the founding of an English Department chair here at Baldwin U. I think she got the message.’

‘She passed you,’ Kling said.

‘She gave me an A.’

‘And was that the end of it?’ Brown asked.

She looked at Kling when she answered.

‘That was the end of it,’ she said. ‘Look, I got my A, why would I even care about her any longer?’

They tended to agree with her.

* * * *

‘You’re not a drug dealer by any chance, are you?’ Reggie asked.

‘What makes you think so?’ Charles said.

‘Well… all this,’ she said, and waved her arm to include the seventy-five-foot sailing yacht, and the champagne in coolers, and the iced caviar, and the uniformed crew, and the filet mignon the chef was preparing for lunch, and… well… generally… all this luxury. Because out there in Denver, Colorado, where Regina Marshall was born and raised, you didn’t have this kind of money to throw around unless you owned an oil well or two, or were dealing drugs for the Crips or the Bloods.

‘No,’ Charles said, smiling. ‘I am not a drug dealer.’ Though he could imagine her thinking so.

‘In fact, the only time I ever went near drugs was in the Army,’ he said. ‘And that was marijuana. We all did marijuana in Nam.’

The boat was under full sail, rounding the point of one of the small islands that comprised the Sands Spit chain. Sunlight danced on the water. Reggie and Charles were sitting under the blue bimini, sipping champagne. It was a little past noon. They’d been out on the water since ten thirty.

‘Me, too,’ she said. ‘Just a little bammy now and then.’

He wondered if she was asking him for marijuana now.

‘Gee,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think to get any.’

‘I prefer this,’ she said, and smiled, and held up the long-stemmed champagne glass. She was wearing white jeans, a striped cotton tank top, and white sneakers. She looked like she’d been born on a yacht, though she’d told him earlier she’d never been on one in her life. This was his first time, too. Lots of firsts with Reggie. Lots of lasts, too, he realized.

‘Sir, excuse me, sir.’

The steward, or whatever he was called. Blond guy wearing a white uniform. Charles looked up at him.

‘Sir, what time did you wish us to serve lunch?’

‘I was thinking about one. Reggie?’

‘One would be lovely,’ she said.

‘Then would you care to see the wine list now?’

‘Please,’ he said.

Reggie glanced at him approvingly.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I really do enjoy being with you, Charles. Are we going to do this always?’

‘Sail around the city this way, you mean?’

‘No, I mean live this way.’ She held up the champagne glass again, gave it a little appreciative nod. ‘Just live the hell out of life this way.’

‘As long as we can,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you afraid the money might run out?’

‘Nope.’

‘Got that much of it, huh?’

‘Enough to last.’

‘Just take me along, okay, Charles?’ she said, and reached over to kiss him. ‘Just take me along.’

* * * *

You dig, you find.

In any murder investigation, the vic is treated somewhat like a perp himself. Any criminal record here? Any outstanding warrants? Anything in the distant or recent past that might have predicted violence in the present? You do your routine checks, and sometimes you get lucky.

That Thursday afternoon, Christine Langston’s name popped up on a complaint filed in the Two-Six Precinct where she’d apparently been living at the time; this would have been some ten years ago, before she’d met Mortimer Shea. Professor Langston herself, then fifty-eight years old, had filed the complaint. This is what she told a detective named Joshua Sloate:

One January night at a little past nine, she was leaving the building at Harleigh Junior College, where she was teaching English at the time. She hailed a yellow cab just outside the front door, and gave the driver her address downtown near the Financial District. At ten o’clock sharp, she dialed 911 to report an attempted rape. This was five minutes after she’d awakened to find the driver of the cab in bed with her, on top of her. She’d screamed, and he’d fled. She was now reporting the attempted rape to the police.

A video surveillance camera in the lobby of her building had captured an image of the assailant following her into the building at 9:45 P.M. He was described in the report as an Indian man in his late twenties, five-foot-eight to five-foot-nine, and weighing approximately 160 pounds. There were no signs of forced entry into either the building or Christine Langston’s apartment. The complaint was subsequently dismissed as ‘unsubstantiated.’

Kling and Brown wanted to know how come.

* * * *

They found Balamani Kumar as he was walking out of the Townline Taxi dispatcher’s office on Westlake Street. He was just coming off the afternoon shift. A thin, shambling man in his late thirties, he did not at all resemble what his given name meant in India; there was nothing of the ‘young jewel’ about him. He seemed only a tired and defeated stranger in a strange land, battered and beaten by the big city.

‘Mr. Kumar?’ Brown said.

He stopped, seemed distracted for a moment.

‘Yes?’ he asked. Expecting trouble. Knowing that in this city, for a foreigner, for a foreigner of his color and background, there would always be trouble. Kling showed him his shield, not at all sure this would have a soothing effect.

‘Yes?’ Kumar said again.

‘Few questions, no problem,’ Kling said.

He could tell Kumar didn’t believe him.

‘Let’s sit down and talk, okay?’ Brown said.

* * * *

They walked to a coffee shop a few blocks away. They bought him a cappuccino. They sat outside at round metal tables in the fading evening light. They did not tell him that Christine Langston had been murdered last night.