The Hanging

Chapter 14

I had just bailed my car out of the Burbank airport parking lot when my phone rang again. The ID showed the central switchboard number for college, so it could have been anyone at Anacapa. I punched the speakerphone button and said hello.

“Maggie, you gotta help me,” Sly whispered hoarsely, obviously stressed. “The cops have come to get me.”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Lew’s office.”

“Where are the cops?”

“In the gallery talking to Lew. I heard them say they want to talk to me. What do I do?”

“Cooperate with them,” I said. “Go with them if they ask you to, but tell them you can’t talk until your lawyer gets there. Did you call Max?”

“I don’t know his number.”

“Sure you do,” I said. Max had taken care of Sly’s legal issues since the kid was nine years old.

“The number’s in my phone. But I don’t, like, know it. Yours is the only number I could remember right now.”

“Where’s your phone?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere around here,” he said, sounding frazzled. “Maggie, there’s been some trash talk about me killing the president. I have a real bad feeling.”

“Listen to me. You’ll be fine. Go into the gallery and say hello to the police. You can tell them your name, but after that, no matter what they say to you, tell them you’re waiting for your lawyer. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll call Max right now.”

“Okay, but are you coming?”

“Yes, Sly, I’m on my way.”

I told him where I was and about how long it would take me. Then I called Max.

“Damn, and I was all set for a great steak dinner,” was his first comment. He was already in the car and would be there as soon as the gods of traffic allowed.

Sly was at the Anacapa police station, a block off Main Street, when I located him. He was in the main bullpen, arms crossed over his skinny chest, looking like an abandoned puppy.

Detective Thornbury, focused on a computer monitor, dropped his head in dismay when I walked in.

“They’ll let just about anybody walk in here, won’t they?” he said.

I shrugged and turned to Sly. “How are you doing?”

Sly raised a hand toward his mouth and gestured that he’d put a lock on it.

“You’re not the lawyer the kid says he’s waiting for,” Thornbury said.

“No. His lawyer is Max Duchamps and he’s five or ten minutes out.”

“Max Duchamps?” Thornbury sneered. “Yeah, sure. And his nanny is Mother Teresa.”

“Sly never had a nanny.”

We heard a bit of a stir out at the front desk, manned by a community volunteer whose only compensation was the right to wear a uniform shirt and a badge when he was on duty. Then Max bustled in as if blown by the coming storm. There were raindrops on his shoulders.

“It’s raining?” I asked.

“Just started,” he said, kissing my cheek on his way over to Sly. “How’s it going, kid?”

The relief Sly felt when Max walked in was written all over him. He rose from his chair and wrapped his arms around my uncle.

“Hey, Max. Thanks for coming, man.”

Thornbury, eyes wide when he saw Max in the flesh, managed to say, “I was beginning to think the boy was a mute.”

Max winked at Sly, showing approval for his silence. Then, with a protective arm still wrapped around Sly’s shoulders, he addressed Thornbury.

“What’s up, Detective?”

“We only wanted to ask Mr. Miller here a few questions. But he doesn’t want to talk to us for some reason, so we brought him here to wait for you. Coulda taken care of this in five minutes back at the college, but if this is the way you want it to go…”

“It is,” Max said. “Now that I’m here, let’s have your questions.”

He sent Sly back to his chair and pulled one up close beside him. I hovered behind them, the fly on the wall.

Thornbury asked Sly about the meeting with Holloway on Friday morning.

“He sent someone to ask me to go up to his office,” Sly said. “He told me that my sculpture, the one you saw me working on in the gallery, was only going to hang for a year. I told him it was supposed to be there permanently, and he said he wanted to put something else in that space-on the floor-and too bad for me.”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing. I left.”

“Was there a fight?”

Sly dropped his head, as if chagrined. “No. I just left.”

“But you were angry?”

Sly nodded.

“You must have said something.”

Still looking down, Sly shook his head.

“You didn’t say something like, I’m going to get a twelve-bore and come back?”

“Not to him.” Sly’s face when he leveled his gaze on Thornbury was flushed with embarrassment and maybe remembered rage. “I was too mad to say anything. I was afraid I’d start crying, okay? So I just left.”

“Did you go back later?”

Max put a hand on Sly’s arm as a caution to be careful.

“I never saw him again.”

“How did you feel when you heard Dr. Holloway was dead?”

“How did he feel? Sounds like a question from Barbara Walters,” Max said, taking Sly’s arm and rising. “Sly has told you what you wanted to know, and now you’re fishing. Come on son, we’re finished here.”

We walked out.

“We could do that?” Sly asked ten minutes later as we were shown to a table in the Italian restaurant in the Village. “Just walk out?”

“Absolutely,” Max told him. “Unless they tell you you’re under arrest, they can’t make you stay. Remember that. And remember to keep your mouth shut.”

“And memorize my lawyer’s phone number,” Sly said, grinning, finally.

“Where is your phone?” I asked him, thinking about the hang-up call I’d had that afternoon.

He shrugged. “Probably in the gallery somewhere.”

I excused myself and called Lew, asked him if anyone had seen Sly’s phone. He was still on campus, waiting for word from Sly, so he said he’d go take a look around. Like a lot of kids his age, Sly had no land line, anywhere. Without his mobile phone there was no way to contact him, and with all that was going on in his life, that would be a problem. I told Lew where we were, and he said he’d call back if he found the phone.

Max pulled out the network contracts for me to sign before there was any food on the table to soil them. Then he called a courier service to come and pick them up.

We were still looking at menus when Roger walked in, looking for us. Without preliminaries, he pulled out the fourth chair at our table and sat down.

Roberta, the owner, brought him a menu. She asked, “Your usual wine, Roger?”

“Please. A bottle and three glasses.” He looked at Sly. “What are you drinking, kid?”

Once Roberta was on her way to fill the drinks order, I said, “So, Roger, why don’t you join us for dinner.”

“You really pissed off Thornbury,” he said, eyeing Max.

“He knows the drill,” Max said. “If he’s pissed off it’s just for show.”

“I’m not sure. He’s pretty frustrated,” Roger said. “To hear him tell it, he spun his wheels all weekend trying to contact people; no one seemed to be home. Or, home to him. He couldn’t even get hold of Hiram Chin until this morning. He thinks he’s being stonewalled.”

“Do you think he is?” I asked.

Roger held up his hands. “A campus can be like a big family. Tough for an outsider to get inside, if you know what I mean. Protective.”

“Not that the insiders don’t eat each alive from time to time,” I said.

“Like a family,” Roger said.

We ordered. Just as soup was being served, the courier arrived. Max gave him detailed delivery instructions and sent him away with the packet of contracts. While Max was busy, I caught Roger’s eye.

“That license plate number I gave you?”

“Where were you when you called?” he asked.

“Up north, in Gilstrap.”

He stole a quick glance at Max and said, “I’ll get back to you.”

“Maggie?”

I looked across the table at Sly. “Yes?”

“Did you go see her?”

“Eunice?” When he nodded, I said, “I did. First thing Saturday morning.”

“And?”

“Sly, honey, Eunice has been on drugs for so long her brain is fried. We didn’t have much of a conversation.”

“She say anything about my father?”

“No. But she did say she had other children. If that’s something you want to pursue…”

“Maybe.” He looked down into his soup. “Sometime.”

Lew came by to drop off Sly’s phone.

“You left it out in the courtyard,” Lew told him, referring to the small patio outside the student gallery. “I hit your number on my phone and followed the ringtone, and there it was, sitting on the edge of a planter.”

“Thanks, man.” Sly, seeming lost in thought, looked at the face of the phone for a moment before dropping it into his pocket. I knew that this young man who had never had much that he could call his own did not lose track of his possessions. Certainly never one as important to him as his telephone.

Sly gave Lew a quick summary of what had happened at the police station and reassured him that everything was all right. He also apologized for worrying him.

“Stay for dinner?” I asked him.

“Thanks, but I have stuff to do. Another time.”

“I should charge you rent for office space,” Roberta joked as she refilled wineglasses. “Who else you got coming by?”

“You just never know,” I said, chuckling. You just never do.