CHAPTER SIX


Hawk and I sat on a bench by the swan boat lagoon in the Public Garden on the first good day of spring. The temperature was 77. The sun was out. And the swan boats were cranking. We were looking at the notes I made from Belson’s confidential files.

“So,” Hawk said when we were through. “Nobody actually claims to have seen Robinson and the Lamont kid together in any romantic fashion except these two professors.”

I looked at my photocopy of Belson’s report.

“Lillian Temple,” I said, “and Amir Abdullah.”

“Amir,” Hawk said.

He was looking at a squirrel who kept skittering closer to us, and rearing up and not getting anything to eat and looking as outraged as squirrels get to look.

“You know Amir?” I said.

“Yeah, I do,” Hawk said.

“Tell me about him,” I said. A man in an oversized double-breasted suit walked by eating peanuts from a bag.

“Gimme one of your peanuts, please,” Hawk said.

The man in the big suit looked flustered and said, “Sure,” and held the bag out to Hawk. Hawk took a peanut out and said, “Thank you.” Big Suit smiled uncomfortably and walked on. Hawk gave the peanut to the squirrel and then said again, “Amir.”

I waited.

“Amir embarrassed as hell he didn’t grow up poor. And he embarrassed as hell he lived where there was white folks and he been working for the Yankee dollar all his life.”

“Most of us do,” I said.

“But Amir, he never had no ghetto to drag himself out of, and been treated decent by all the white folks he met along the way, and he got a scholarship and then he got another one and he got a nice middle-class income and now he got a Ph.D. and he can’t stand it.”

“Poor devil,” I said.

“So to make up,” Hawk said, “Amir so down even I don’t understand him when he talk.”

“So he’ll be really pleased to help me with this investigation,” I said.

“Can’t hide the fact that you a blue-eyed devil, but I maybe talk to him with you,” Hawk said. “Give you some, ah, authenticity.”

The aggressive squirrel returned and looked at Hawk, sitting up on its hind legs, balancing on its disproportionate tail.

“Give a squirrel a peanut and you feed him for a moment,” I said. “But teach him to grow peanuts…”

“You and Amir going to get along so good,” Hawk said. “Can’t wait to watch.”

“How about Ms. Temple,” I said, “I don’t suppose you know her.”

“How I going to know her?” Hawk said.

“Well, for a while you were running a sub-specialization in female professors,” I said. “She coulda been one of them.”

“Good-looking female professors,” Hawk said.

“How do you know Prof. Temple isn’t good-looking?”

“Don’t,” Hawk said. “But the odds are with me.”

“Just because she’s an academic?” I said.

“Where she live?” Hawk said.

I checked my notes. “Cambridge,” I said.

Hawk smiled.

“Well, it doesn’t actually prove she’s not a looker,” I said.

Hawk continued to smile.

“This is bigotry,” I said. “You’re generalizing based on profession and residence.”

“Yowzah,” Hawk said.

“She might be a beauty,” I said.

“What you figure the chances of that are?” Hawk said.

I shrugged.

“Slim and none,” I said.

Hawk smiled more widely.

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