Deal Breaker

Chapter 33

Dean Gordon’s office was in Compton Hall. The building was only three stories high but wide. Greek columns out front screamed House of Learning. Brick exterior. White double doors. Directly inside was a bulletin board filled with old notices. Meetings of the usual campus groups: the African American Change Committee, the Gay-Lesbian Alliance, the Liberators of Palestine, the Coalition to Stop the Domination of Womyn (never spelled women, for the sexism the name implies), the South African Freedom Fighters-all taking the summer off. College fun days.

There was no one inside the huge lobby. The motif was marble. Marble floors, banisters, columns. The walls were covered with huge portraits of men in graduation robes, most of whom would flip if they could read the bulletin board. All the lights were on. Myron’s footsteps clacked and reverberated in the still room. He wanted to shout “Echo,” but was far too adult.

The dean of students’ office suite was at the end of the left corridor. The door was locked. Myron knocked hard. “Dean Gordon?”

Shuffling behind the dark-paneled doors. Several seconds later, the door opened. Dean Gordon was wearing tortoiseshell glasses. He had wispy hair, conservatively cut, a handsome face with clear brown eyes. His features were gentle, as though the facial bones had been rounded off to soften his appearance. He looked kind, trustworthy. Myron hated that.

“I’m sorry,” the dean said. “The office is closed until tomorrow morning.”

“We need to talk.”

Confusion crossed his face. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re not a student here.”

“Hardly.”

“May I ask who you are?”

Myron looked at him steadily. “You know who I am. And you know what I want to talk about.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea to what you are referring, but I am really quite busy-”

“Read any good magazines lately?”

Dean Gordon’s whole body twitched. “What did you say?”

“I guess I could come back when the office was crowded. Maybe bring some reading material for the school’s trustees, though I understand they only read the articles.”

No response.

Myron smiled-knowingly. At least, he hoped that was how it looked. Myron had no idea what part the dean played in this little mystery. He had to step tentatively here.

The dean coughed into his fist. Not a real cough or throat-clear. Just something to stall, give him a chance to think. Finally he said, “Please come in.”

He disappeared back into his office. No sucking vacuum this time, but Myron still followed. They passed a few chairs in the waiting room, a secretary’s desk. The typewriter was hidden by a khaki-colored dust cover. Camouflaged in the event of war.

Dean Gordon’s office was cookie-cut university executive. Lots of wood. Diplomas. Old sketches of the Reston University chapel. Lucite blocks with clippings or awards on the desk. Bookshelves with all nonfiction titles. The books hadn’t been touched. They were props, creating the mood of tradition, professionalism, competence. The prerequisite picture of the family. Madelaine and a girl who looked about twelve or thirteen years old. Myron picked up the photograph.

“Nice family,” he said. Nice wife.

“Thank you. Please have a seat.”

Myron sat. “Say, where did Kathy work?”

The dean stopped in midseat. “Pardon me?”

“Where was her desk?”

“Whose?”

“Kathy Culver’s.”

Dean Gordon lowered himself the rest of the way, slowly, as into a hot tub of water. “She shared a desk with another student in the room next door.”

Myron said, “Convenient.”

Dean Gordon’s eyebrows frowned. “I’m sorry. I missed your name.”

“Deluise. Dom Deluise.”

The dean allowed himself a small brittle smile. He looked tight enough to pop a wine cork with his butt. No doubt being sent the magazine had put the screws in. No doubt Jake’s visit yesterday had tightened them a little. “What, Mr. Deluise, can I do for you?”

“I think you know.” Again the knowing smile. Combined with the honest blue eyes. If Dean Gordon were female, he’d be naked by now.

“I’m afraid I don’t have the slightest idea,” the dean said.

Myron continued the knowing smile. He felt like an idiot or a morning network weatherman, if there was a difference. This was an old trick he was trying. Pretend you know more than you do. Get him talking. Play it by ear. Impromptu.

The dean folded his hands and put them on his desk. Trying to look as if he were in control. “This whole conversation is very strange. Perhaps you could explain why you’re here.”

“I thought we should chat.”

“About?”

“Your English department, for starters. Do you still make students read Beowulf?”

“Please, whatever your name is, I don’t have time for games.”

“Neither do I.” Myron took out his copy of Nips and tossed it on the desk. The magazine was starting to look creased and worn from all the handling, as if it belonged to a hormonal adolescent.

The dean barely glanced at it. “What is this?”

“Now who’s playing games?”

Dean Gordon leaned back, his fingers fiddling with his chin. “Who are you?” he asked. “Really.”

“It’s not. important. I am merely a messenger.”

“Messenger for who?”

“For whom,” Myron corrected. “Prepositional phrase. And you a college dean.”

“I don’t need any smart talk, young man.”

Myron looked at him. “Get real.”

The dean sucked in air as if he were about to plunge underwater. “What do you want?”

“Isn’t the pleasure of your company enough?”

“This is not a joking matter.”

“No, it’s not.”

“So kindly stop playing games. What do you want with me?”

Myron tried the knowing smile again. Dean Gordon looked puzzled for a brief moment but then returned the smile. It too was knowing.

“Or should I say,” the dean added, “how much?”

He seemed more in control now. He had dealt with the blow and was carrying on. A problem had arisen. But there was a solution. There always was in his world.

Money.

He took out a checkbook from his top drawer. “Well?”

“Not that simple,” Myron said.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you think someone should pay?”

He shrugged. “Let’s talk figures.”

“Don’t you think this is worth something more than just money?”

He looked bewildered, as though Myron had just denied the existence of gravity. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“What about justice?” Myron asked. “Kathy is owed. Big-time.”

“I agree. And I am willing to pay. But what good is revenge going to do her now? You are the messenger, are you not?”

“I am.”

“Then go back and tell Kathy to take the money.”

Myron’s heart collapsed. This man, a man who was clearly involved in what had happened that night, believed Myron was a messenger for a living, breathing Kathy Culver. Tread gently, fair Myron. Ever gently.

But how to play this.

“Kathy is not happy with you,” he tried.

“I meant her no harm.”

Myron put his hand on his chest and lifted his head dramatically. “Be thy intents wicked or charitable, thou com’st in such a questionable shape.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Myron shrugged. “I like to work Shakespeare into conversations. Makes me sound smart, don’t you think?”

The dean made a face. “Can we return to the matter at hand?”

“Sure.”

“You say Kathy does not want money.”

“Yup.”

“What then does she want?”

Good question. “She wants the truth to come out.” Noncommittal, vague, open-ended.

“What truth?”

“Stop playing dumb,” Myron snapped, feigning annoyance. “You weren’t about to write a check to her favorite charity, were you?”

“But I didn’t do anything,” he half-whined. “Kathy took off that night. I haven’t seen her since. How was I supposed to know what to think or do?”

Myron gave him a skeptical look. He did that because he had no idea what else to do. He was now playing Jake’s game, the keep-silent-and-hope-he-ties-his-own-noose game. This worked especially well with political types. They’re born with a defective chromosome that will not allow for prolonged silence.

“She has to understand,” he continued. “I did my best. She disappeared. What was I supposed to do? Go to the police? Was that what she wanted? I didn’t know anymore. I was thinking of her. She might have changed her mind. I didn’t know. I was trying to consider her interests.”

The skeptical look came easier after that last sentence. Myron only wished he knew what the hell the dean was talking about. They sat there staring at one another. Then something happened to Dean Gordon’s face. Myron wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but his whole demeanor seemed to slump. His eyes grew twisted, pained. He shook his head.

“Enough,” he said in a quiet voice.

“What’s enough?”

He closed the checkbook. “I won’t pay,” he said. “Tell Kathy I’ll do whatever she wants. I’ll stand by her no matter what the cost. This has gone on long enough. I can’t live like this. I am not an evil man. She’s a sick girl. She needs help. I want to help.”

Myron had not expected this. “Do you mean that?”

“Yes. Very much.”

“You want to help your former lover?”

His head shot up. “What did you say?”

Myron had been skating blindly on thin ice. His last comment, it seemed, had been something of a blowtorch.

“Did you say ‘lover’?”

Uh-oh.

“Kathy didn’t send you,” he continued. “She has nothing to do with you, does she?”

Myron said nothing.

“Who are you? What is your real name?”

“Myron Bolitar.”

“Who?”

“Myron Bolitar.”

“Are you a police officer?”

“No.”

“Then what exactly are you?”

“A sports agent.”

“A what?”

“I represent athletes.”

“You- So what do you have to do with this?”

“I’m a friend,” Myron said. “I’m trying to find Kathy.”

“Is she alive?”

“I don’t know. But you seem to think so.”

Dean Gordon opened his bottom drawer, took out a cigarette, lit it.

“Bad for you,” Myron said.

“I quit smoking five years ago. Or so everyone thinks.”

“Another little secret?”

He smiled without humor. “So you were the one who sent me the magazine.”

Myron shook his head. “Nope.”

“Then who?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure that out. But I know about it. And now I also know you’re hiding something about Kathy’s disappearance.”

He inhaled deeply and let loose a long stream of smoke. “I could deny it. I could deny everything we said here today.”

“You could,” Myron countered. “But of course I have the magazine. I have no reason to lie. And I also have a friend in Sheriff Jake Courter. But you’re right. In the end it would be my word against yours.”

Dean Gordon took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “No,” he said slowly, “it won’t come down to that. I meant what I said before. I want to help her. I need to help her.”

Myron was not sure what to think. The man looked in genuine pain, but Myron had seen performances that would put Olivier to shame. Was his guilt real? Was his sudden catharsis the result of having a conscience, or was it self-preservation? Myron didn’t know. He didn’t much care either, as long as he got to the truth.

“When was the last time you saw Kathy?” Myron asked.

“The night she vanished,” he said.

“She came to your house?”

He nodded. “It was late. I guess around eleven, eleven-thirty. I was in my study. My wife was upstairs in bed. The doorbell rang. Not once. Repeatedly, urgently. Interspersed with heavy door-pounding. It was Kathy.”

His voice was on autopilot, as if he were reading a fairy tale to a child. “She was crying. Or rather she was sobbing uncontrollably. So much so that she couldn’t speak. I brought her into my study. I poured her some brandy and wrapped an afghan around her shoulders. She looked”-he stopped, considered-“very small. Helpless. I sat down across from her and took her hand. She jerked it back. That was when the tears stopped. Not slowly, but all at once, as though a switch had been thrown. She became very still. Her face was completely blank, no emotion whatsoever. Then she started talking.”

He reached into the drawer for another cigarette. He put it in his mouth. The match lit on the fourth try.

“She started from the beginning,” he continued. “Her voice was remarkably steady. It never cracked or wavered-uncanny, when you consider the fact that she was hysterical just moments earlier. But her words belied her placid tone. She told me stories-” He stopped again, shook his head. “They were surprising, to say the least. I had known Kathy for almost a year. I considered her a thoughtful, sweet, proper young woman. I am not making moral judgments here. But she had always been what I considered old-fashioned. And here she was telling me stories that would make a sailor blush.

“She started by telling me that she used to be everything I always thought she was. The girl next door. Everyone’s favorite. But then she changed. She became, in her own words, ‘a free-wheeling slut.’ She started with some boys in her high school class. But she quickly moved onto bigger things. Adults, teachers, friends of her parents. Biracial, homosexual, two-on-ones, even orgies. She took pictures of her encounters. For posterity, she said with a sneer.”

“Did she mention any names?” Myron asked. “Of the teachers or adults or anyone?”

“No. No names.”

They fell into silence. Dean Gordon looked exhausted.

“What happened next?” Myron prompted.

He lifted his head slowly, as though it took great effort. “Her story began to change direction,” he said. “For the better. She said she realized that what she was doing was wrong and stupid. She began, she said, to work through her problems. That was when she met Christian and fell in love. She wanted to put it all behind her, but it wasn’t easy. The past wouldn’t just go away. She tried and tried, and then…” His voice trailed off.

“And then?” Myron prompted.

“Then Kathy just looked at me-I’ll never forget this-and she said, ‘I was raped tonight.’ Just like that. Out of nowhere. I was stunned, of course. There were six of them, she said. Or seven, she wasn’t sure. A gang-rape in the locker room. I asked her when. She told me it had started less than an hour ago. She had gone to the locker room to meet someone. A blackmailer, she said. A former, uh, suitor, who had threatened to reveal her past. She was going to pay for his silence.”

The big cash withdrawal from her trust account, Myron thought.

“But when she got to the locker room, the blackmailer wasn’t alone. Several of his teammates were with him, including another past suitor. They didn’t hit her, she said. They didn’t beat her. And she didn’t fight. There were too many of them, and they were too strong.” He closed his eyes, his voice a whisper. “They took turns with her.”

Silence.

“As I said before, Kathy told me all this in the most dispassionate tone I had ever heard her use. Her eyes were clear, determined. She told me there was only one way to bury her past. Once and for all. She would have to confront it head-on. She’d have to push it out into the bright sunshine where it would wither and die like a medieval vampire. She said she knew what she had to do.”

More silence.

“What?” Myron asked.

“Prosecute the boys who raped her. Face up to her past and then put it behind her. Otherwise it would follow her around for the rest of her life.”

“What did you say?”

Dean Gordon winced at the question. He stamped out the cigarette. He glanced down at the bottom drawer but didn’t reach for another. “I told her to calm down.” He laughed at the memory. “Calm down. By now, the girl was so unemotional, so detached, that she could have been reading a telephone directory. And I told her to calm down. Jesus.”

“What else?”

“I told her that I thought she was still in shock. I meant that too. I told her that she should consider everything, weigh all her options, not rush into a decision that would undoubtably affect the rest of her life. I told her to think about what it would mean to have her past dragged out-to her family, to her friends, to her fiancé, to herself.”

“In other words,” Myron said, “you tried to talk her out of pressing charges.”

“Perhaps. But I never said what I was really thinking: A self-described free-wheeling slut who had gotten involved in pornography and wild sex was going to claim she was raped by a group of college boys, two of whom she admitted having past liaisons with. I wanted her to think about all that before she did something rash.”

“Don’t be so easy on yourself,” Myron said. “You didn’t give a damn about her. She came to you for help, and you thought about everything but her. You thought about your precious institution. You thought about the scandal. You thought about the football team on the eve of a national championship. You thought about your own career, how it would come out that she worked for you, how she felt comfortable visiting your house late at night. You’d be tied in. People would investigate you closer, maybe unearth your unusual marital arrangement.”

That prodded him upright. “What about my marital arrangement?”

“Does the phrase ‘once every two months’ mean anything to you?”

His mouth dropped open. “How…?” He stopped, almost smiled. “You are a very well-informed young man.”

“All-knowing,” Myron corrected. “Godlike.”

“I won’t comment on my marriage, but I would be less than honest if I did not admit that those selfish considerations crossed my mind. But I was also concerned for Kathy. A mistake like this-”

“A rape, Dean. Not a mistake. Kathy was raped. She didn’t make a ‘mistake.’ She wasn’t the victim of an indiscretion. A bunch of football players pinned her down in a locker room and took turns with her against her will.”

“You’re simplifying the situation.”

“You’re the one who simplified the situation. You just put Kathy last.”

“That’s not true.”

Myron shook his head. No time for this now. “So what happened after you bestowed your stellar counsel upon Kathy?”

He tried to shrug but couldn’t pull it off. “She looked at me funny, as though I had betrayed her when all I was trying to do was help. Or maybe she saw in my words the same thing you did. I don’t know. She stood up then and said that she would be back tomorrow morning to press charges. Then she left. I never heard from her again until that magazine came in the mail. And the phone call a few nights ago.”

“What phone call?”

“A few nights ago, very late, I got a phone call. A female voice-maybe Kathy’s, maybe not-said, ‘Enjoy the magazine. Come and get me. I survived.’”

“‘Come and get me. I survived’?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“What did she mean?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“What did you think when you first heard about Kathy’s disappearance?”

“That she ran away. Decided it was all too much. I thought she’d come back when she was ready. The police thought that too, until they found her undergarments. Then they suspected violence. But I knew the undergarments were probably from the rape, not the disappearance. So in my mind I still considered her a runaway.”

“Didn’t the possibility that the rapists wanted to silence her cross your mind?”

“It crossed my mind, yes. But these boys weren’t capable of-”

“Rapists,” Myron corrected. “‘Boys’ who gang-raped a young girl who never did them any harm. You didn’t think they had the capability to commit murder?”

“If they wanted her dead, they would never have let her go,” the dean countered steadily. “That’s what I thought.”

“So you kept your mouth shut.”

He nodded. “That was a mistake. I know that now. I was hoping she had just run away for a few days to straighten herself out. When a week passed, I realized it was too late to say anything.”

“You chose to live with the lie.”

“Yes.”

“She was just a student, after all. She came to you for help during the hardest time of her life. And you turned her away.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he shouted. “Don’t you think this has been tearing me apart for the past year and a half?”

“Yeah, you’re a real humanitarian.”

“What the hell do you want from me, Bolitar?”

Myron stood. “Resign. Immediately.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I’ll drag you down, and it’ll be uglier than you ever imagined. First thing tomorrow morning. Turn in your letter of resignation.”

He looked up, his fingers supporting his chin. Time passed. His face began to soften as though from a masseur’s touch. His eyes closed, and his shoulders slumped. Then he nodded slowly. “All right,” he said. “Thank you.”

“This isn’t penitence. You don’t get off that easy.”

“I understand.”

“One last thing: Did Kathy mention any names at all?”

“Names?”

“Of the rapists?”

He hesitated. “No.”

“But you have a guess?”

“It’s not based on anything concrete.”

“Go on.”

“A few days after she disappeared, I noticed a certain student was tossing around a lot of money. A troublemaker. He bought a new BMW convertible that came to my attention because he drove it across the commons. Ripped up a lot of grass.”

“Who?”

“An ex-football player. He was kicked off the team for selling drugs. His name was Junior Horton. They call him-”

“Horty.”

Myron left without another word, hurrying to get out of the building. It was a beautiful day. Warm but not humid, the sun weakening in the late afternoon but not quite ready to set. The air smelled of freshly cut grass and blooming cherry blossom trees. Myron wanted to spread out a blanket. He wanted to lie down and think about Kathy Culver.

No time.

The phone in his Ford Taurus was ringing when he unlocked the door. It was Esperanza.

“Dead end with Lucy,” she said. “Adam Culver wasn’t the guy who bought the pictures.”

Another theory blown to hell. He was about to start his car when he heard Jake Courter’s voice.

“Thought I might find you here.”

Myron looked out the open window. “What’s up, Jake?”

“We’re about to release Nancy Serat’s name to the press.”

Myron nodded. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

Myron did not like his tone.

“We also have a suspect,” Jake continued. “We’ve brought him in for questioning.”

“Who?”

“Your client,” Jake said. “Christian Steele.”