The Letter Killeth (10 page)

“Can I be of help?” He was studying Phil in a confused way. He obviously only half-remembered their encounter in the departmental office.

“What's your name?”

The question altered his manner. He backed away. “Wack. Oscar Wack. Who are you?”

Jimmy showed Wack his ID, lest the professor have a stroke. He peeked at it from a safe distance.

“Others were here last night.”

“Is that right?”

“A young investigator and his assistant.”

“Where could we talk about this?”

“Talk about it? Haven't they reported?”

“We always double-check, Professor.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Come.”

He hurried down the center of the hallway but at a given point veered to one side, his shoulder brushing the wall, then into the center again.

“Here I am.”

Phil sat and sipped his coffee while Jimmy got Professor Wack to talk on about his night visitors.

“I went over there because I was vexed by the noise. I mean, one works late precisely in order to have peace and quiet. You can imagine what Sturm und Drang characterize the daylight hours. Anyway, I went over there to shut Izquierdo up. God only knew what I might be interrupting.”

“Oh?”

Wack made a little moist sound, then gave himself permission to go on. “Given the things that have been happening, who knows what's relevant?”

“You mean the car burning?”

“Mainly that, of course. If I were his insurance company, I would look into that matter very carefully.”

“The car is being examined downtown.”

“Good. I won't bore you with the story of the burning wastebasket.”

“We want to hear everything, Professor, just the way you told it to our colleagues last night.”

Wack's story was told with malice aforethought—he obviously hated Izquierdo—but the story had a different meaning for Phil, and he was sure for Jimmy Stewart, too. Whatever it was Wack had interrupted in Izquierdo's office, it wasn't a police investigation. Phil had stepped into the hall and called Crenshaw to ask.

“I thought we agreed, that's your problem,” Crenshaw said.

“I just wanted to make sure we weren't likely to interfere with each other.”

Phil went back inside Wack's office. The professor was certain the investigator he had spoken with was in uniform.

“He showed his identification.” He looked significantly at Phil. His memory had kicked in. “Something you failed to do when I encountered you in the departmental office.”

Suddenly Wack put a hand over his opened mouth and looked from Jimmy to Phil through his little round spectacles. He lifted his hand and slapped his forehead. “You don't think he was genuine, do you?”

“You say there were two?”

“Only the one came here to my office. At my invitation! This was to permit his partner to continue investigating Izquierdo's office.”

“Was he wearing a uniform, too?”

“The second one? I never got a real good look at him.”

“But you did see him?”

“I heard them before I beat on the door. There were two, no doubt about it. Besides, I saw the three of them drive away from that very window. After the interview, when he went back to Izquierdo's office, I sat on. Of course, any hope of getting anything done was destroyed. I turned off the lights. This room is quite well lit from outside, you know. Not light to read by, but it isn't dark. Very restful, actually. I was drawn to the window, the snow under the lamplight, the moon above…” He stopped himself. “Dear God, I sound like Immanuel Kant. Anyway, I was at the window when the cart came by to pick them up. Oh, there were two of them, all right.”

“And the driver.”

“She makes three, yes.”

“She?”

Wack seemed to have surprised himself. “How did I know that? Yet I'm sure.”

“Intuition,” Phil said, and Wack looked sharply at him.

“Is Professor Izquierdo in now?” Jimmy asked.

Wack cocked his head, listening. “I don't hear anything.”

“Could you telephone him?”

He pulled the phone toward him and punched out numbers without delay. Phil listened for ringing in the next office but heard nothing. Then Wack straightened and hung up the phone.

“He's there.”

5

He had heard the rumble of voices next door but thought nothing of it. Lucy Goessen called to say that Wack was entertaining two middle-aged gentlemen. She had had a spy hole drilled in her door, at her own expense.

“He's insatiable. But maybe they're from the IRS.”

“You know, they could be.”

Or from my insurance company, Izquierdo did not say. Pauline had brought him to campus in the Hummer that morning, truly a vehicle for this season. Pauline looked like a woman on an old Soviet poster behind the wheel of the massive vehicle. Woman liberated to do manual labor. They had spent hours the night before discussing the burning of his Corvette, the topic going to bed with them and keeping Raul awake after Pauline had slipped into sated slumber.

Suspecting Wack was to flatter the idiot. Oh, no doubt he had lit the wastebasket, but that on any scale of nuttiness was a three or four. Setting a Corvette aflame was something entirely else. Also, there was the undeniable fact that Wack had been in Decio when the explosion occurred and gone to the scene with Raul and Lucy.

The phone rang, and when he answered it went dead.

Izquierdo eased the instrument back into its cradle and stared at it. Who could blame him for being jumpy? Maybe Wack hadn't lit his wastebasket; maybe it was someone else, the someone who had torched his Corvette. There was a knock on his door.

“Come in!”

The knob rattled but that was all. He had locked his door. He never locked his door. He went around his desk and opened to two large men, the first of whom flashed his wallet and then returned it to his pocket.

“I didn't see it.”

“Detective James Stewart.” He let Raul study the ID.

“South Bend police.”

“We are investigating your car.”

These two must have been in the car that pulled into the driveway last night. Pauline had doused the lights.

“What's the point of that?” he had asked her.

She snuggled against him. At the moment, he felt as amorous as an anchorite.

Now he said, “What do you do with a burnt-out car?”

“You had insurance, of course.”

“Of course.” Pauline had checked that last night. But he would never find another Corvette of that vintage for any price he could afford.

“Your neighbor says someone visited this office last night.”

“Wack? He's nuts, you know. Completely bonkers.”

“He's quite a fan of yours, too.”

“What did he say?”

“You wouldn't want us to tell him what you tell us.”

Phil said, “Did you notice anything when you arrived today? Anything missing?”

Izquierdo pushed back from his desk and studied it from afar. He reached forward and opened the drawer. “Someone was in this drawer, that's for sure.”

“Something missing?”

“It's the mess he made of it.”

“He?”

“Whoever.”

“Your colleague says there was a girl as well as the two men.”

Izquierdo made a face. Phil was certain that if Wack said that every whole is greater than its part, Izquierdo would deny it. He was looking around his office now. Then he remembered something Lucy had said and had an inspiration.

“My pogo stick!”

“Your what?”

“What I exercise with. I can do it right here. But it's gone.”

That seemed to be the only thing missing. Jimmy wanted a full description of it, even a crude drawing. Phil didn't need that. There had been such a pogo stick propped in a corner of Wack's office.

“Those pretty popular here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do your colleagues get their exercise this way?”

“Hey, this is my little secret. Can you imagine what they'd say if they saw me jumping up and down on that thing? But why would anyone take that?”

When they left Izquierdo's office, the door of Wack's office was cracked slightly. Phil gestured him out, and on the second invitation Wack emerged.

“I just want to confirm something, Professor.” Phil took Izquierdo to the door of Wack's office and pointed to the corner. “Is that the sort of thing you're missing?”

With a cry, Izquierdo sprang into the office. When he came out he was flourishing a pogo stick.

“You thief!”

“What is that? I never saw it before!”

“So you steal unconsciously?”

Wack took hold of Jimmy Stewart's sleeve. “He must have left it there last night. The investigator.”

“Want to show us how that works, Professor?” Phil asked.

This flustered Izquierdo. A door across the hall opened and a lovely young woman appeared. “What on earth is going on?” She smiled when she said it.

Introductions all around. But it was the pogo stick that fascinated her.

“I haven't used one of those in years. Can I try it?”

“Watch the ceiling.”

When Phil and Jimmy left, Professor Goessen was hopping up and down, with others who had emerged from their offices applauding the performance.

In the elevator, Jimmy asked, “Is everybody nuts?”

“Compared to what?”

6

At his son Bill's insistence, Fred Fenster had given Roger Knight a call and invited him to lunch at the Morris Inn. The description his son had given him did not prepare him for the apparition that needed both doors opened in order to come into the lobby. A fur cap was pulled down over his ears; he seemed to have several layers of clothing beneath the massive blue parka with
NOTRE DAME
emblazoned in yellow across the back. His trousers were stuffed into unbuckled galoshes, which made his passage that of a tinkling Santa. His glasses fogged up immediately, and he removed them and looked myopically around. Fred went to his guest and introduced himself.

“Fred? But isn't it Manfred?”

“I'm afraid it is. My mother had no sense of humor. Or maybe she did.”

“Of course you wouldn't remember Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog.”

“Tom Terrific! Of course I do.”

“So we must have similar misspent youths.”

Fred helped remove several layers of clothing of his guest's and pass them over the Dutch door to the attendant. Roger's entry into the dining room commanded everyone's attention as he maneuvered carefully between the tables, attended by the hostess, several waitresses, and the amused gaze of the assembly. Roger's smile seemed meant indifferently for them all. At table Fred mentioned that his mother had mistaken Manfred for Buonconte in the
Purgatorio
when she named him.

“Saved by a single tear.”

“It is my hope.”

“That is the CSC motto, you know.
Spes Unica.
An anchor and cross. I think the motto has Marian overtones as well. That's clear enough in the university's motto.
Vita, Dulcedo, Spes.
”

“You'd be surprised how little I know about my university.” He had known what Roger said, but it seemed humble to pretend he didn't.

“No I wouldn't. Lack of curiosity about the past of the place seems widespread. Maybe we look ahead too exclusively. What do you do, Fred?”

This was always the difficult question. He could say what he was doing at the time, as if it were a profession or a job, but he found he did not want to mislead Roger Knight. He was beginning to understand Bill's devotion to this improbable personage.

“I'm afraid I am one of the idle rich.”

“Retired?”

“Well, you see, I never had to work, to earn my living. Long ago, the guilt that induces drove me into politics. I mean as a supporter. But that's long over.”

“And now?”

“I am guided by my putative namesake, trying to save my soul.”

Neither of them wanted a drink. When Fred ordered the Sorin Salad, Roger put down his menu. “Me, too.”

“I wanted to tell you what a good influence you have been on my son.”

“He is a good lad. And the newspaper he and his friends are putting out is a good thing.”

Fred smiled. “The heresy of good works.”

“Dom Chautard.”

“You know him?”

Roger shrugged. In the lobby there were stacks of the current issue of the
Observer,
but none of the paper Bill and his friends put out. Circulation was a problem, since they relied on volunteers to distribute copies to various places around campus. At first, piles of the paper had mysteriously disappeared. In default of his son's paper, Fred had paged through the
Observer.

“That's an amazing story about the professor whose car was firebombed.”

“Izquierdo? I haven't seen it.”

“I don't know when I last looked at a campus publication, but I was astounded at how matter-of-fact they were about the man's atheism. An atheist teaching at Notre Dame? He seems to be something of a missionary as well.”

“Professors aren't above posturing, you know.”

In reading the piece, Fred had been truly shocked. It seemed preposterous that parents would send a son or daughter to Notre Dame in order to have someone seek to undermine their faith. He could imagine what Bastable would think of this piece on Izquierdo. Of course it could be argued that one will meet with assaults on his faith throughout life and that there was little point in putting it off. An untested faith is impossible. It was quite another thing to subsidize the attack on one's beliefs.

But he had not asked Roger Knight to lunch in order to discuss campus politics. Everything Fred had heard of the portly Huneker Professor had made him wonder if he might not, as his father had, give some financial support to Notre Dame. Quirk's campaign was having its effect. He dreaded the thought of calling on the Notre Dame Foundation, where professionals in the art of separating people from their money would have to be dealt with. What he wondered was whether he could not more or less directly underwrite the wonderful work that Roger was doing.