Hush Money

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Hawk came into my office at about 9:30 carrying a brown paper bag. With him was a barrel-bodied black man with short, slightly bowed legs and long arms. The black man had gray hair and the kind of amused eyes that Robert Benchley used to have. Hawk put the bag on my desk and pulled one of my office chairs around, and the gray-haired black man sat in it.

“Spenser,” Hawk said. “Bobby Nevins.”

I stood and came around and shook hands with Nevins. Hawk went to the Mister Coffee machine on top of my file cabinet and began to make some coffee. I looked in the paper bag. There was a large square loaf-shaped something wrapped in aluminum foil.

“Corn bread,” Bobby Nevins said. “Hawk always like corn bread.”

Bobby Nevins was a legend. He’d trained fighters for more than fifty years. All of his fighters could fight. All of them were in shape. None left the ring broke. None were strolling queer street. In a business riddled with charlatans his word was good. Hawk had the coffee brewing and came back and sat down in the other client chair.

“Bobby in town to see about how we doing with his kid,” Hawk said.

I nodded, thinking about the corn bread.

“And I got some things you don’t know ‘bout yet.”

“Would everybody like me to open the corn bread up while the coffee’s brewing?” I said.

“Sure,” Hawk said. “Okay with you, Bobby?”

‘“Course,” Nevins said.

His voice came from deep in his chest and seemed to resonate in his barrel body before it emerged. I unwrapped the corn bread and set it on the unfolded foil in the middle of my desk. It smelled good. From my desk drawer I got a large switchblade knife, which I had once taken away from an aggressive but clumsy drug dealer, and now used as a letter opener. With it I cut three squares of corn bread. Hawk brought over the coffee. I took some corn bread. And chewed it carefully and swallowed it and drank some coffee.

“My compliments to the chef,” I said.

“Always liked to cook a little,” Nevins said. “Now I gotten older got more time. Hawk says this thing about my boy is turning into a hair ball.”

“Hawk’s right,” I said. “Thing is I still don’t know quite why he was jobbed on the tenure thing. It seems like the only thing I can’t find out. Meanwhile I’ve got a murder and some blackmailing – which, as far as I know, has nothing to do with your kid.”

“Anybody paying you for this?”

“Corn bread will do,” I said.

“Ain’t right, you not getting paid.”

“I owe Hawk a favor.”

Hawk snorted.

“A favor?”

“A favor or two,” I said.

Nevins nodded. He ate some more corn bread and drank some more coffee. Hawk got up and took Nevins’ cup and refilled it, pouring in a little milk from the mini-refrigerator, stirring in two spoonfuls of sugar. He brought the cup back and set it in front of Nevins on the corner of my desk. Nevins picked it up and took a sip and held the cup.

“Thank you, Hawk,” he said.

Hawk nodded. Nevins looked at me.

“You think Robinson is queer?”

“Don’t know,” I said.

“I don’t either. Hard thing for a boy to tell his father, I imagine.”

I nodded.

“He’s forty years old,” Nevins said, “ain’t never been married.”

“Hawk and I have never been married either,” I said.

“How you know about me?” Hawk said.

“Who would marry you?”

“Okay,” Hawk said. “You got a point.”

Nevins paid no attention.

“Thing is it don’t matter much,” he said. “Still my son.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I was forty-two when he was born,” Nevins said. “Coulda been his grandfather. His mother was only twenty-three, schoolteacher, fresh out of college. I coulda been her daddy.”

Hawk and I were silent, drinking coffee, listening to Nevins. There was no age in Nevins’ voice, no weakness in him.

“She left when she was thirty.”

“Another man?” I said.

“Another one and another one,” Nevins said. “Probably still going on.”

There was no resentment in Nevins’ voice either, nor remorse, nor anger, nor self-pity, only the sound of retrospection.

“Always sent her money for Robinson, and, I say this for her, she never kept me from seeing him on the weekend. But I know she didn’t like boxing, and I pretty sure she didn’t like me, and I don’t believe she kept quiet ‘bout it to Robinson. So be hard for Robinson to feel real close to me. He was a real smart little kid. He loved to read. He was kind of scared of the fighters. I used to take him to the museum and the public library and places, never read much myself, but I knew that was where his life was going to go. Too bad I didn’t know more about things like that. We could never talk much. Spent a lot of money getting him through Harvard College and all those other schools he went to so he could be a professor, and I think he knows that. Probably could tell his mother he was queer, but I don’t think he could tell me.”

“You want us to find that out?” Hawk said.

Nevins thought about this for a while, sipping his coffee slowly, looking past the cup at the long corridor of time past.

“No,” he said. “Don’t matter.”

We were quiet.

“Tell me ‘bout the murder and blackmail.”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” I said, “and what I’m guessing.”

Which I did.

Nevins didn’t say a word as I talked. His gaze was steady and somehow both benign and stern. When I was through I looked at Hawk.

“You got something?” I said.

“Un huh.”

“Were you planning to share it?”

“Un huh.”

I cut another small piece of corn bread. I had learned from Susan that cutting off one small piece at a time was better for you even if you ate the whole thing one small piece at a time. Hawk got himself some more coffee. He looked at Nevins.

“Bobby?” he said.

Nevins shook his head. Hawk looked at me. I shook my head. Hawk came back and sat down.

“Been watching Walt and Willie,” Hawk said.

He looked at Nevins.

“They the people inherited OUTrageous I told you about.”

Nevins nodded. He was nearly motionless as he sat. Time made no difference to him.

“Might be they knew about the blackmail. Might be they carrying it on. So I’m watching them, see what develops.”

“Sneak up on them in the dark better, too,” I said.

“Like you could in a snowstorm,” Hawk said. “Which one is the little blond queen?”

“Willie.”

“He stepping out on Walt,” Hawk said.

“Walt know this?”

“Don’t know. Don’t seem mad when he around Willie. Want to know who he stepping out with?”

“Yes I do.”

“Your friend and mine, Amir Abdullah.”

“Oh ho,” I said.

“Oh ho?”

“Yes. That’s what you say if you’re a top-level sleuth and a clue falls out of a tree and hits you on the head.”

Hawk looked at Nevins.

“Honkies are strange people, Bobby.”

“What’s the clue?” Nevins said.

“The connection between the OUTrageous folks and the tenure folks. Amir’s the one who told the tenure committee that Robinson had an affair with Prentice Lamont. OUTrageous had a list of possible people to out with your son’s name on it and the phrase ‘research continues.’”

“So what does that mean?”

“Research continues?”

“No, what is the, ah, significance, of all that?”

“Hell, Mr. Nevins, I don’t know. It’s just more than we knew before. And maybe Abdullah got it from Willie, or maybe Willie got it from Abdullah – which would be my guess.”

“Don’t help my son get tenure.”

“Not yet.”

“Strange system,” Nevins said. “Keep you for life or they fire you.”

“I know.”

“Robinson wants to be a professor at the university,” Nevins said.

“We going to get that for him, Bobby,” Hawk said.

I would have been happier if he hedged it a little, but Hawk wasn’t much for hedging.

“I hope so,” Nevins said.

Me too.