Hush Money

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Tommy Harmon had an office with a big bay window that gave him a sweeping vista of the MBTA station. There was a boom box on top of his bookcase and he had a CD playing.

“Carol Sloane,” I said.

“With Clark Terry,” he said. “Very good.”

He was a blocky man with a thick neck and a kind of healthy-looking redness to his face that suggested he spent time out of doors.

“I represent Robinson Nevins,” I said.

Harmon nodded.

“He thinks he was jobbed on his tenure promotion.”

“I do too,” Harmon said.

“And he asked me to look into how that happened.”

“And?”

“In the process I came to the conclusion that Prentice Lamont didn’t commit suicide,” I said.

“You think he was killed?”

“Yes.”

“Christ!”

“Which lends a larger urgency to the inquiry,” I said.

“I should say so.”

“It’s my impression that Nevins was denied tenure because of allegations that his relationship with Lamont resulted in Lamont’s suicide.”

“Nobody ever said that, exactly,” Harmon said. “And, of course, no one is required to explain or even admit their vote. What makes you think he was killed?”

“He couldn’t have opened the window he went through,” I said.

“Perhaps it was open.”

“Perhaps.”

“And perhaps I ought to stick to my area of expertise,” Harmon said. “Have you shared your theory with the police?”

“Not yet, one of my goals is to refurbish Nevins’ reputation, which I thought I might attempt, before I called the cops.”

Harmon nodded again.

“What do you need from me?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d like you to tell me whatever you can about the deliberations of the tenure committee. Maybe I’ll recognize something I need.”

Harmon reached over and turned off his boom box, then he shifted back in his chair and put one foot up on a partly open drawer in his desk. He was wearing an open-collared white shirt, khaki pants, and white sneakers. On his desk next to a couple of books by R. W. B. Lewis was a book titled Death in the Landscape: The American Pastoral Vision by David T. Harmon.

Harmon took in a long slow breath and let it out slowly.

“University politics is very odd. You get a lot of people gathered together who, if they couldn’t do this, really couldn’t do anything. They are given to think that they are both intelligent and important because they have Ph.D.s and most people don’t. Often, though not always, the Ph.D. does indicate mastery over a subject. But that’s all it indicates, and, unfortunately, many people with Ph.D.s think it covers a wider area than it does. They think it empowers their superior insight into government and foreign policy and race relations and such. In addition these people are put into an environment where daily, they judge themselves against a standard set by eighteen- or twenty-year-old kids who know little if anything about the subject matter in which their professors are expert.”

“Makes it hard not to take yourself very seriously,” I said.

“Hard, not impossible,” Harmon said. “More of them ought to be able to do it.”

“But they can’t?”

“But they don’t. Exemplar of the species is Lillian Temple. There is no liberal agenda, however goofy, that will not attract her attention. There is no hypocrisy, however bald, that she will not endure if she can convince herself that it is in the service of right thinking.”

“How about Bass Maitland?” I said.

“Officially he is as committed to right thinking as Lillian,” Harmon said. “In fact he is his agenda.”

“He a friend of Lillian Temple?”

“I believe they are more than friends.”

“Lovers?”

“I’d say so.”

“Are they the source of the Robinson Nevins – Prentice Lamont rumor?”

“Yes.”

“Where was Amir Abdullah in this?”

“Amir declines to attend tenure meetings which he views, with some justice, as a bunch of white straight people who will only vote for people like themselves.”

“A situation his attendance might help to modify,” I said.

“Amir is never that lucid,” Harmon said.

“Is he friends with Temple or Maitland?”

“Since he is gay and black, Lillian feels obligated to like and admire him. Bass tries to, but I believe that Amir makes him uncomfortable.”

“How do you feel about Amir?”

“I think he’s a jerk,” Harmon said.

“Since Robinson Nevins is black and alleged to be gay, why doesn’t Lillian Temple feel obligated to like and admire him?”

“Because he is a relatively conservative black. Which completely confuses Lillian.”

“Harder to feel the white person’s burden,” I said, “if he’s not asking for help.”

“Exactly,” Harmon said. “Basically, Robinson is interested in his students and his scholarship, but if asked he will tell you that he is opposed to affirmative action. I have heard him argue that a course, say, in Black Rage, is not an adequate substitute for a course in, say, Shakespeare, or American transcendentalists.”

“Do you share his view?”

“Pretty much. But whether I did or didn’t I could still pay attention to Robinson because he tries to base his views on what he has seen and experienced, rather than on a set of reactions preordained by race or social class. Lillian and maybe Bass, and maybe Amir, though I frankly don’t know what makes Amir tick, seem to feel that this is behavior unbecoming a black man.”

“Kind of rattles their stereotypes,” I said.

“Yes, I’m afraid it does.”

“Would they lie about Robinson to deny him tenure?”

Harmon thought about that. While he thought about it, I looked past him out through his window at an MBTA train grinding out of the station, full of people, mostly students, the train running on elevated tracks for a while to clear the parking lot below it before it dipped with angular sinuosity and disappeared into its tunnel.

“Bass would lie, I think, about anything at all if it served his best interest. Lillian probably would not knowingly lie. She would have to be able to convince herself that it wasn’t a lie. Which she could do quite easily, since her grip on truth and falsehood is pretty shaky anyway.”

“Who actually told the thing about Robinson?”

“Lillian.”

“Did she say where she got it?”

“No.”

“How many people believed her?”

“That I can’t tell you,” Harmon said. “I can tell you that on an eighteen-member committee, Robinson got only three votes for tenure. Mine was one of them.”

“Will your colleagues be angry with you for talking so freely?” I said.

“I imagine.”

“I can avoid mentioning your name.”

“Feel free to mention it. If I said it, I’m responsible for it.”

“Okay,” I said. “You ever play halfback at Michigan?”

“Tommy’s a pretty standard nickname for kids named Harmon,” he said. “I went to Williams College. I was a wrestler.”

“Ah,” I said. “That explains the neck.”

“And you used to box,” he said.

“Which explains the nose,” I said.

“And the scar tissue,” Harmon said. “You going to talk with Lillian again?”

“Have to,” I said. “I need to know where she got her information.”

“I’d like to know where she gets most of it,” Harmon said.

We shook hands and I left.