Fiddlers

5.

MORTIMER SHEA WAS wearing a bulky cardigan sweater with a shawl collar. He was smoking a pipe. He was bald except for a halo of hair above and around his ears and the back of his head. A manuscript sat on the desk before him in his corner office at Armitage Books. The place seemed Dickensian to Kling and Brown, but they’d never been inside a publishing house before. Shea’s title here was Publisher.

There were also two framed photographs on his desk. One showed a rather horse-faced young woman, the other showed a similarly horse-faced older woman. It took the detectives a moment to realize they were not mother and daughter, but instead the same unattractive woman at different stages of her life.

‘Christine,’ Shea informed them. ‘The one on the left was taken while she was still in college. The other only last summer. But there’s the same vibrant love of life in each photo.’

‘Got any idea who might’ve wished her harm?’ Brown asked. Standing there big and black and scowling, he sounded and looked as if he might be accusing Shea of the crime; actually, he simply wanted to know if Christine Langston had any enemies that Shea knew of.

‘At any university, there are interdepartmental jealousies, rivalries. But I sincerely doubt any of Christine’s colleagues could have done something like this.’

How about you? Kling wondered.

Shea was a man in his early seventies, still robust, clear-eyed. The super of his building had told them the lady - meaning Christine - had moved in with him around Christmas time. The super said they seemed like a nice couple.

‘How long did you know her?’ Kling asked.

‘I met her four years ago. We published a book of hers. I edited it.’

‘What sort of book?’

‘An appreciation of Byron.’ Shea paused. “Do you know who I mean?’

‘Yes,’ Kling said.

‘You’d be surprised how many people don’t know who Byron was. Or Shakespeare, for that matter. In one of her classes last week, Christine asked her students if they were familiar with the words “To be or not to be.” Christine asked them to identify the source, and extend the quotation if they could. Eight students in the class. What would you guess their answers were?’

The detectives waited.

‘Four of the eight couldn’t identify the source at all. Three of them said the source was Hamlet. The eighth said Romeo and Juliet. Six people couldn’t extend the quotation at all. Two people could add only, “That is the question.” One student told her after class that it would have been a lot easier if Christine had given them a quote from a movie. “To be or not to be,” can you imagine? Only the greatest soliloquy ever written for the English-speaking stage!’ Shea shook his head in despair. ‘Sometimes, she would come home weeping.’

‘When did you start living together?’ Kling asked.

‘Well, almost immediately. That is to say, we kept our own apartments, but de facto we were living together. She didn’t give up her place and move in with me until last Christmas.’

‘When’s the last time you saw her alive, Mr. Shea?’ Brown asked.

‘Yesterday morning. When she left for work. We had breakfast together and then… she was gone.’

‘What were you doing last night around eight o’clock?’ Kling asked.

Shea said nothing for a moment. Then he said, ‘Is this the scene where I ask if I’m a suspect?’

‘This isn’t a scene, sir,’ Kling said.

‘I was here in the office. Working on this very manuscript,’ Shea said, and lightly tapped the pages on his desk. ‘Dreadful, I might add.’

‘Anyone here with you?’

‘Any number of people. We work late in publishing.’

‘What my partner means…”

‘Did anyone see me here? I believe Freddie Anders stopped in at one point. You might ask him to corroborate. His office is just down the hall.’

‘What time was that? When he stopped in?’

‘I believe it was around six thirty, seven.’

‘Anyone see you here at eight, Mr. Shea?’

‘Oh dear. Now we have the scene where I ask if I need a lawyer, isn’t that right?’

‘You don’t need any lawyer,’ Brown said. ‘We have to ask these questions.’

‘I’m sure,’ Shea said. ‘But to set the record straight, I didn’t leave here until ten last night. When I got to the apartment, the police were already there, informing me that Christine had been shot and killed. For your information, I loved her enormously. In fact, we planned to be married in the fall. I had no reason to kill her, and I did not kill her. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to leave.’

‘Thanks for your time,’ Kling said.

Shea turned back to the manuscript on his desk.

* * * *

‘Everybody’s always innocent,’ Brown said. ‘Nobody ever did anything. Catch ‘em with the bloody hatchet in their hands, they say, “This ain’t my hatchet, this is my uncle’s hatchet.” Wonder anybody’s in jail at all, so many innocent people around.’

‘You think he was lying?’ Kling asked.

‘Actually, I think he was telling the truth. But he had no reason to get all huffy that way. We do have to ask the goddamn questions.’

The car’s air conditioner wasn’t working, and the windows, front and back, were wide open. The noonday traffic sounds were deafening, discouraging conversation. They rode in silence, in stifling heat.

‘Artie,’ Kling said at last, ‘I got a problem.’

Brown turned from the wheel to look at him. Kling kept staring straight ahead through the windshield.

‘I think Sharyn and I may be breaking up,’ he said.

His last words were almost lost in the baffle of city traffic. Brown always looked as if he were scowling, but this time he really was. He turned to Kling again, briefly, scowling in reprimand, or disbelief, or merely because he wasn’t sure he had heard him correctly.

‘I thought she was cheating on me,’ Kling said. ‘I followed her.’

‘She’d never cheat on you in a million years, man.’

‘I know that.’

‘So what the hell’s wrong with you? You go tailin the woman you love?’

‘I know.’

‘Playin cops and robbers, the woman you love.’

‘I know.’

‘Where’s this at now? Where’d you leave it?’

‘She doesn’t want to talk yet. She says I hurt her too much.’

‘Yeah, well, you did! I ever go followin Caroline, she’d put me in the hospital.’

‘I know.’

Brown was shaking his head now. ‘Big detective, what’s wrong with you, man?’

‘She thinks… Artie, can I say this?’

‘How do I know what you’re gonna say before you say it?’

He sounded suddenly angry. As if, by betraying Sharyn’s trust, Kling had somehow betrayed his trust as well. Something was sounding a warning note. Kling almost backed off. He took a deep breath.

‘She thinks I didn’t trust her because…”

Brown turned from the wheel.

‘Because she’s black,’ Kling said.

‘Well?’ Brown said. ‘Is that the reason?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then why does she think so?’

‘That’s what I’m asking you, Artie.’

‘What, exactly, are you asking me, Bert? Are you asking me would a black woman think her white partner who followed her was unconsciously harboring the thought that all blacks are devious and deceitful and not to be trusted?’

‘Well, no, I…’

‘I’m your partner, too, Bert. Do you think I’m devious, deceitful, and not to be trusted?’ ‘

‘Come on, Artie.’

‘So what are you asking me, Bert?’

‘I guess I’m asking… I don’t know what I’m asking.’

‘I never dated a white woman in my life,’ Brown said.

Kling nodded.

‘Only white men I really know are on the squad. I trust them like they were my own brothers.’

Heat ballooned into the car. The traffic sounds were deafening.

‘You’re asking me will it work, isn’t that it? You’re asking me will black and white ever work? I’m telling you I don’t know. I’m saying there’s centuries here, Bert. Too damn many centuries. I’m telling you I hope so. I hope you find a way, Bert. There’s more than just you and Sharyn here, man, you know what I’m saying? There’s more.’

He nodded, looked at Kling one more time, and then turned back to the road and the traffic ahead, hunkering over the wheel, still nodding.

* * * *

Professor Duncan Knowles was wearing a purple butterfly bow tie patterned with little white daisies. He looked as if he might be ready to take off into the wind. Lavender button-down shirt to complement the tie. Tan linen suit. Sitting behind his corner-window desk, mid-morning sunshine setting the campus outside ablaze in golden green.

‘A terrible thing,’ he told the detectives. ‘Terrible. What happened to Christine, of course, but also terrible for the department and for Baldwin itself.’

Knowles was the head of Baldwin University’s English Department. Kling hoped he wasn’t equating Christine Langston’s murder with the school’s reputation. Brown was wondering where he’d bought the big bow tie. He was wondering how he’d look in a similar tie. Wondering if his wife, Caroline, would go for him in a tie like that one.

‘A big-city campus,’ Knowles said, ‘you might expect unfortunate incidents such as this one

Unfortunate incidents, Kling thought.

‘… but security here at Baldwin is unusually good. We’ve never had anything like this happen before. Never in our history. No one has ever wandered in from outside, intent on mischief.’

‘But someone did,’ Brown said. ‘Last night.’

‘Exactly my point,’ Knowles said. ‘This is terrible for the school. Well, look at these,’ he said, and slapped the palm of his hand onto the morning newspapers spread over his desktop. ‘Christine was murdered last night, and already the newspapers are in a feeding frenzy. Look at this headline. “Are Our Campuses Safe?” A single incident…”

Incident, Kling thought.

‘… and they’re making it sound like an epidemic’

‘What we’re trying to do,’ Brown said, ‘is find some link between Christine’s murder and two other cases we’re investi…”

‘Oh, yes, and don’t think the papers aren’t making hay of that as well. “The Glock Killer”! Making him sound like Jack the Ripper. Three murders coincidentally…”

‘We don’t think they’re coincidences,’ Brown said.

‘There must be thousands of such weapons in this city…’

‘No, the same gun was used in each of the murders.’

‘Well, that’s beyond me,’ Knowles said, and spread his arms like wings, enforcing the notion that his huge bow tie might indeed be a propeller. Brown still wondered where he’d bought it.

‘We have the other victims’ names,’ Kling said, and reached into his inside jacket pocket for his notebook. ‘It’s unlikely any of them were students of hers at any time…”

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well… their ages, for one thing.’ He had opened the notebook now, and was consulting it. ‘Or did she teach any adult night classes?’

‘No. Well, she taught one class at night, yes. But that was a seminar. And these were young students as well. She taught three day classes a week, you see, two hours for each class. One on Modern Poetry, and two on the Romantic Poets. Those would have been Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Byron. The course was divided into two sections.’

‘So altogether she taught six hours a week.’

‘Well, plus the seminar, of course. That would have been another two hours a week. Eight hours in all.’

‘And she taught this seminar at night?’

‘Yes. Thursday nights, from seven to nine P.M. On “Keats and the Italian Influence.” Either in her classroom or her office. There were only half a dozen students in the class… seven or eight at the most. Certainly no more than that.’

‘But this Would’ve been a Thursday night, you say.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why would she have been on campus on a Wednesday night?’

‘Any number of reasons. She may have been preparing lesson plans, or grading papers… or doing research in the library. The library closes at nine.’

‘What sort of research?’

‘I know she was writing a paper for the PMLA. About the influence Charles Lamb’s sister had on his work.’

PMLA? Kling wondered. Pre-menstrual something or other?

‘She was quite ill, you know, his sister, Mary. In fact, in a fit of temporary insanity, she killed their mother.’

Brown raised his eyebrows.

So did Kling.

‘Oh yes,’ Knowles said. ‘Lamb had to place her in a private mental institution. Well, he was not without his own mental problems, you know. After a disastrous love affair, he himself had a breakdown. Spent a great deal of time in an asylum in Hoxton, yes.’

‘And Professor Langston was writing a paper on this?’

‘Yes, hoping to have it published in one of the Modern Language Association’s journals. On how Lamb’s sister affected his work, yes. She titled it “The Madness of Mary Lamb.” We joked about that a lot.’

‘Joked about it?’ Brown said.

‘Oh yes.’

‘Who did?’

‘Her colleagues in the department. We called it “Mary Had a Little Madness.”

‘So you think she might’ve spent some time in the library the night she was killed,’ Kling said.

‘Possibly, yes. I’m sure you can check that.’

‘But normally, what time would her classes have ended?’

‘Well, except for the seminar…”

‘On Thursdays

‘Yes. Except for that, she taught afternoon classes. Three to five.’

‘All young people.’

‘Yes.’

‘Does the name Alicia Hendricks mean anything to you?’

‘No, I’m sorry.’

‘One of the victims. Fifty-five years old,’ Kling said. ‘How about Max Sobolov, fifty-eight? Blind?’

‘No. Neither of them. And, as you say, they couldn’t have been Christine’s students here at Baldwin. Far too old.’

‘Any other way she might have been connected to them?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘Well,’ Brown said, ‘is it possible they were relatives of one of her students? Or friends? Or in any other way linked to Professor Langston?’

‘How would I know that?’

‘Can we check your records?’ Kling asked. ‘Get the names of her students for the past several years? See if we come up with a match for either of them? Hendricks? Sobolov?’

‘She taught here for the past twelve years,’ Knowles said. ‘She was a tenured professor. Surely you don’t expect to go through all the…”

‘Grudges sometimes go back a long time,’ Brown said.

‘Grudges?’

‘A student she failed? A student she embarrassed? The kid might’ve told a parent or a friend, might’ve initiated a grudge that

‘I see,’ Knowles said.

He was thinking.

They both saw him thinking.

‘Yes?’ Kling said.

‘I can recall only one such incident,’ Knowles said. ‘But the student’s name isn’t anything like those you mentioned.’

‘That only eliminates a relative,’ Brown said.

‘What was the incident?’

‘Christine threatened to fail this girl. The girl went over her head, came to me. I protected Christine in every way possible, but… you know… we don’t fail students here. We simply don’t.’

‘Would you remember who the girl was?’ Kling asked.

* * * *

Brown was still annoyed with himself for not having asked Knowles where he’d bought his fancy bow tie.

‘You can get them anywhere,’ Kling said.

‘Yeah? Where? I never saw a tie like that one before.’

‘Besides, you’d look lousy in a tie like that,’ Kling said.

‘I think I’d look real cool in a tie like that.’

‘Too big for a big man like you.’

They were walking across campus toward a building where a girl named Marcia Finch was attending a third-period class in Survey of Early American Literature. Marcia was the girl Professor Langston had threatened to flunk last semester.

‘Are you suggesting I’m overweight?’ Brown asked.

‘No. Just large.’

‘Like Ollie Weeks?’

‘No, he’s obese.’

‘Besides, it’s only large men who can entertain wearing big ties like that one.’

‘Entertain, huh?’

‘I think Caroline might like me in a tie like that one.’

‘So go to the Internet, click on bow ties. You’ll find all sorts of silly ties like that one.’

‘Nice big tie like that one,’ Brown said, nodding, visualizing himself in one.

‘What room did Knowles say?’ Kling asked.

* * * *

They were waiting in the corridor outside room 307 when Marcia Finch came striding out, books clutched to her chest. Professor Knowles had told them they couldn’t miss her…

‘She’s an assertive little girl, blonde, quite confident of her own good looks. She exudes… shall we say… a certain aura of self-assurance?’

… and they spotted her at once now. Twenty-one, twenty-two years old, a senior here at Baldwin, wearing a short blue pleated skirt, a blue sweatshirt lettered with the words BALDWIN U in white, and flat leather sandals to match the blue of the skirt and shirt. She laughed at something a girl companion said, waggled the fingers of her left hand in farewell, and turned to see a big blond guy and a big black guy standing in her path.

‘Excuse me?’ she said, making it sound like, ‘Get the fuck out of my way, okay?’ and was starting to step around them, when Brown said, ‘Miss Finch?’

‘Yes?’

He flashed the tin.

‘Detective Brown,’ he said. ‘My partner, Detective Kling. Few questions we’d like to ask you.’

‘My father’s a lawyer,’ she said at once.

‘You won’t need a lawyer, miss,’ Brown said. ‘Let’s find a place we can sit and chat, shall we?’

‘What about?’

‘Little fracas you had with Professor Langston last semester.’

‘I think I’ll call my father,’ Marcia said.

‘Miss,’ Kling said, ‘let’s make this easy, okay?’

She turned to look at him. Maybe it was the hazel eyes. Maybe it was the calm in his voice. Maybe she was a racist who preferred dealing with Mr. Blond WASP here. Whatever it was, she nodded briefly and led them outside.

* * * *

They sat in golden sunshine on a bench outside Coswell Hall. Marcia on the right, Kling in the middle, Brown on the far left, both detectives turned to face her. Marcia sat with her legs crossed, books sitting on the path beside the bench, addressing herself entirely to Kling, telling her story to Kling alone. Sitting there, Brown could have been made of stone the color of his name.

‘The issue seemed to be attendance,’ she said.

‘Seemed to be?’ Brown said.

She ignored him.

‘Professor Langston said I’d cut too many classes. She said I couldn’t possibly have a grasp of the subject matter if I never attended any lectures. Have you ever been to one of her lectures?’ she asked Kling. ‘Bore-ing,’ she said, and patted her mouth in a simulated yawn. ‘The subject matter in question - actually, I’d only missed one or two classes - happened to be Wordsworth. Section II was all Wordsworth. I argued that Wordsworth was perhaps the most tedious poet in the entire nineteenth century. Have you ever read Tintern Abbey? Or My Heart Leaps Up? Or even Intimations of Immortality, which is supposed to be a masterpiece?’

Brown hadn’t read any of them.

Besides, she was addressing Kling.

‘Are you familiar with any of these?’ she asked him.

‘I’m sorry, no.’

‘Well, take my word for it,’ she said. ‘In any case, I read all the assigned poems at home and felt well-acquainted with all of them. I saw no need to attend all of the scheduled lectures

‘How many lectures were there altogether?’ Brown asked.

‘A semester is fourteen weeks long,’ she told Kling. ‘She spent two weeks on introduction and orientation, two weeks each on Shelley, Byron, and Keats, that was Section I. Section II was a full six weeks of Wordsworth, because she felt he was so damn important, don’t you know?’

‘How many of those six weeks did you miss?’ Brown asked.

She looked past Kling.

Fastened an eye lock on Brown.

‘I told you. One or two classes.’

‘Which was it? One or two?’

‘Maybe three altogether. And maybe I was late for one class.’

‘So you missed at least half of them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cut half of your classes.’

‘Well… yes.’

‘And this was why Professor Langston threatened to fail you?’

‘I knew the work. I told you, I did it at home.’ She cut off the conversation with Brown, looked directly into Kling’s eyes. ‘Am I going to need my father here?’ she asked.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Kling said gently. ‘So what happened? After she said she was going to flunk you.’

‘I went to see Professor Knowles.’

‘And?’

‘He said he’d talk to her.’

‘And did he?’

‘Yes. I’m a straight-A student here. I’ve never had a grade below B in all my life!’ She turned slightly, so that her knees were just touching Kling’s. ‘Can you imagine what an F would have done to my average?’ she asked, blue eyes wide.

Kling moved his own knees away.

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. They did not know whether he’d heard about this from the newspapers or television. They merely wanted to know about the complaint she’d filed ten years ago. And why it had been dismissed.

‘Because it was fabricated,’ Kumar said.

His speech was clipped, more precise than singsong, undeniably Indian in origin. His native tongue might have been Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Gujarati, Telugu, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Oriya, or Malayalam. Here, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, he merely sounded like a foreigner.

‘In what way, fabricated?’ Brown asked.

‘Invented,’ Kumar said. ‘A lie. All of it a lie.’

‘Tell us what happened,’ Kling said.

What happened was…

She was coming out of the school, just approaching the sidewalk, where the large globes are at the entrance there on South Jackson, do you know the location?

There. A well-dressed woman in her late fifties, I would say. Carrying a briefcase. She gave me an address downtown, near the Financial District.

We began talking on the way downtown. She’d been to India only once, she told me, long ago, when she was a young girl. On an exchange program. For the summer. In the Rajahstan. I myself am from the south. I told her I was unfamiliar with that part of the country, it is a big country, my country. Well, a continent. She told me she’d had an exciting time there. She told me India was an exciting country. She used that word several times. Exciting.

Before she got out of the cab, she asked if I would like to come up for a drink. She said she would leave the lobby door unlocked. She said she would be waiting for me. Apartment 401, she said. She would leave the door unlocked. She would be in bed, she said. Waiting for me. Please hurry, she said. I’ll be waiting.

The streets down there are empty at that time of night. There are hardly any apartment buildings. Everything is closed that time of night. The offices, the shops, the restaurants. Everything closed. It was very cold in the streets. Empty and cold. I parked the taxi, and locked it, and went to her building. The lobby door was unlocked, as she’d promised. I took the elevator up to the fourth floor. The door to apartment 401 was unlocked. As she’d promised.

The apartment was dark.

I could hear her breathing in the dark.

I found her in bed. I took off my clothes and got into bed beside her.

When I climbed on top of her, she began screaming.

I ran.

I grabbed my clothes and ran.

I dressed in the elevator.

The policemen came to get me two hours later.

* * * *

‘It was consensual,’ Kumar said now, scooping foam out of his coffee cup, licking the foam off his finger. ‘The detectives realized that. She invited me. I don’t know why she changed her mind. This was an old woman! Who would want to rape an old woman?’

You’d be surprised, Kling thought.

And wondered if that was why the case had been filed away as ‘unsubstantiated.’ Because who would want to rape an old woman, right? A woman in her fifties? Easier to believe she’d invited the cabbie upstairs, and then changed her mind, and phoned the cops to boot.

But had she?

Or had Kumar, in fact, tried to rape her?

Had this been a matter of an elderly lady kicking up her skirts for one last fling, or a lonely young man tasting alien wine, however aged in the cask?

Had Christine Langston been reaching back to her lost youth and the exciting days she’d known as an exchange student in India? Or had Balamani Kumar been clutching at any kind offer in an inhospitable land? Fifty years old? Sixty? Who cared? A warm bed on a cold January night. In his own apartment, he slept with five other refugees like himself, three of them on the floor.

Who knew?

Who would ever know whether the lady had invited him into her bed - or been violated there?

And, really, who cared anymore?

The lady was dead, and the skinny young Indian was still driving a taxi.

One thing they felt certain of.

There was no resentment here.

No hidden grudge.

No old scores to settle.

Balamani Kumar was not the man who’d pumped two nine-millimeter slugs into Christine Langston’s head last night.

Or anyone else’s head, for that matter.

* * * *

The two priests sitting and drinking wine in the rectory of St. Ignatius Church could both remember celebrating Mass in Latin.

Father Joseph was seventy-six years old and already retired. Father Michael would be seventy-five in July. He had already advised his bishop that he planned retirement, but now he was having second thoughts. The Code of Canon Law set the age of retirement at seventy-five, but Father Michael still felt young and energetic, still felt he could lead his parishioners in celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, baptizing, ministering the sacrament, performing any and all things necessary to the advancement of the Church.

‘How is it where you are, anyway?’ he asked Father Joseph.

‘Actually, the center’s very nice,’ the other priest said.

‘I mean, what do you do all day long?’

‘Well, it’s not like having an active ministry, that’s for sure.”

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ Father Michael said.

‘But it affords opportunity for contemplation and prayer…’

‘I contemplate and pray now.’

‘… without the rigors and demands of a priestly ministry. And I’m quite comfortable, Michael, truly. The Priests’ Pension Plan sees to my basic needs, Social Security gives me Medicare and additional income…”

‘I’m not worried about any of that.’

‘It’s you’re worried about not being active.’

‘Yes. It’s retiring, damn it!’

‘You know, you could always consider merely lessening your administrative responsibilities. Take an assignment as a senior associate for a period of time…”

‘Sounds delightful.’

‘Or just accept the path the good Lord has chosen for you,’ Father Joseph said, and made the sign of the cross, and finished his wine, and rose. ‘Michael,’ he said, ‘it was wonderful spending some time with you, but I must get back before they lock the doors on me and call the police.’

The two men shook hands.

‘Remember when we were at Our Lady of Grace together?’ Father Michael asked, and led the other priest out into the walled garden. The roses were in full bloom, and the Oriental lilies spread their intoxicating scent on the balmy June night. They shook hands again at the gate, and Father Joseph walked off to the next corner, where he would catch a bus back to the retirement center.

Father Michael took a deep breath of the night air, and then closed and locked the gate behind him. As he was walking back to the rectory, he thought he heard a sound behind him.

Turning, he said, ‘Yes?’

‘It’s me, Father,’ a voice from the shadows said. ‘Carlie. Remember?’