The Hanging

Chapter 2

“How about a bowl of pho?”

“It’s a little early in the day for soup, Lew,” I said, checking my watch. It was just half past ten.

“There’s a pretty decent Vietnamese place over in the Village. Looks like the rain has stopped for a while; I saw some patches of blue sky up there. Sly has things well in hand here, and he seems to have calmed down. I thought it might be a good time to take a break. Stretch our legs, get something warm to eat.”

“Off campus?” I said.

“Yes.” He dropped his head nearer mine and said, pointedly, “Off campus.”

I glanced across the student gallery to make sure that Sly was busy with the engineering students who were helping him assemble the infrastructure for his award-winning sculpture over an eighteen-foot frame. The completed piece would be wheeled over to the administration building where it would be lifted off the frame and hung in the well of the lobby’s grand stairway.

Lew had calmly reassured Sly that Park Holloway had no authority to remove the work, not in a year, not ever. But once Sly was occupied with his work crew, Lew had called the chair of the Academic Senate, History professor Kate Tejeda, and explained why she needed to schedule a meeting right away with Park Holloway. The unveiling ceremony was only a week away and he wanted to make sure there would be no bumps in Sly’s road.

“Maggie?” I turned toward Sly when he called my name. “What do you think?”

I looked at the piece taking form in the center of the gallery.

“It’s amazing,” I said, though so far it was little more than a network of steel cables. “Lew and I are going to get something to eat in the Village. I know you can’t get away right now. Can we bring you something?”

Of course we could; he was nineteen. If the Italian place was open, he’d accept a pizza. If not, a couple of burgers from the diner across from it would do. Until lunch.

I stopped by my faculty office to grab a coat and an umbrella in case it began to rain again, and we set out to walk the four blocks to the Village. There was a brisk, chilly wind. I buttoned up my coat and tried to keep up with Lew’s long stride as we walked through the upscale neighborhood that circled the college. Trees along the street were already in full bloom, like clouds of white and pale pink. Wind gusts swirled fallen blossom petals around our ankles; it was lovely to be out.

Lew Kaufman was about six and a half feet tall, very thin, still on the shady side of fifty but already stoop-shouldered and nearly bald. The hair he had left was pulled into an untidy brown ponytail and tenuously secured with a strip of rawhide. His clothes-jeans, a well-washed Nirvana T-shirt and green high-top Keds-were stained with various art media: paint, ink, charcoal, clay. Like many people who live a life of the mind, he seemed to be oblivious to his outer wrappings. My dad had taught physics at a big public university, so the academic disregard for physical appearances was fully familiar. I found Lew, in a geeky way, to be quite attractive.

We did not speak until we were off campus. Once we were clear, I turned and looked up at him.

“So? Can Park Holloway do what he said?”

“What, take down Sly’s piece in a year?” Hands thrust in deep pockets, focus somewhere in the distance, he shook his head. “Doubtful. Kate Tejeda agreed with me that Park has no authority to do a damn thing to Sly’s piece. But just to dot all the i’s, Kate and Joan Givens-you met her yet, director of the Foundation?-have asked for a meeting. They’ll explain the tenets of shared governance and the principles of the Magna Carta-not even the king is above the law-and it will all be settled by the end of their meeting.”

“What he told Sly just seemed so…out of left field,” I said. “Any idea what it was about?”

“Muscle flexing.” He looked down at me. “But that’s about normal where Park Holloway is concerned. Maggie, the man is a complete fish out of water trying to run a college campus. None of us can figure out what the hell he’s doing here.”

“Have you heard any ugly scuttlebutt about him?” I asked. “Any rumors about why he left Congress? Or why he came here?”

“You mean like mistresses or naked-photo tweeting, that sort of thing?”

“Any sort of thing.”

“Nope.”

“When he announced that he wouldn’t run for Congress again, he said he wanted to go home and spend more time with his family,” I said.

“Yeah? How often is that excuse a euphemism for ‘I’m in deep shit and I need to get the hell out before it all hits the fan’?”

Lew cocked his head, smiled wickedly. “Besides, his parents are gone, his kids are grown, his wife had already left him, and his home is way up north in the San Joaquin Valley.”

I held up my hands, but offered, “He has a heavy-duty academic degree. Maybe guiding a college is something he’s always wanted to do.”

“Uh-huh.” Lew’s narrow-eyed expression was full of skepticism. “He has a Ph.D. in Chinese Economic Policy from Harvard with a post-doc from the London School of Economics. If that’s what he wanted, wouldn’t you expect him to show up at some elite private college or, even more likely, a big research university? If not there, then a think tank or a major international corporation. So, I ask you, why would a high-power politician-there was talk of him running for governor-bury himself at a two-year community college out in the far fringes of suburbia?”

I chuckled, mulling over what he said. “It’s a mystery.”

“It is that.”

He slipped a hand into the crook of my elbow, a companionable gesture. “That’s not the only mystery around campus.”

“No?”

He shook his head, grinning at me. “Inquiring minds also wonder why a high-power filmmaker like one Maggie MacGowen is teaching lower-division film production at that same community college.”

I put the toe of my boot under a clump of blossoms and watched them scatter to the wind.

“No mystery there,” I said. “Kate Tejeda is an old friend-she was my college roommate. When I told Kate my network series was cancelled, she talked me into signing a one-semester contract to teach here.” I looked up at him. “Something different to do for a little while.”

He looked down at me through narrowed eyes. “Kate told me she was your high-school roommate.”

“That, too,” I said. “Our parents parked us at the same convent school. And then we both went off to Berkeley.”

He smiled wryly. “I can’t imagine either you or Kate in a convent school.”

“Neither could we,” I said. “But we weren’t consulted. Anyway, teaching here gives me an excuse to check in on Sly from time to time and to hang out with Kate more often. The commute’s good.” I pointed up toward the Santa Monica Mountains that rose like a wall on the western edge of the Conejo Valley. “I live right up there in the canyons.”

“It’s just that…” He hesitated, watched a flight of birds migrating overhead rather than looking at me. “You’ve done some really big public exposés. Some folks speculate that you’re here undercover, spying on Park for a film. Or doing undercover work for Kate’s husband-he is chief of police in Anacapa.”

I laughed; Lew was off the mark. So far, anyway. The germ of a film idea was beginning to take form. Why was Park Holloway at Anacapa? “Lew, don’t you think that if Roger needed some undercover work done, he would ask Kate?”

He laughed at that, catching the unintentional double entendre before I did.

“Sorry,” I said, “no mystery. I’m just taking a break.”

He was quiet for a moment, seemed to be thinking over something. After a couple of shallow breaths he started to speak, hesitated, finally managed to get his words out.

“I suppose maybe you need a break.” Another uncomfortable pause. “Kate tells me you recently lost your husband.”

Kate is not a gossip, so I wondered how the topic came up, unless he asked.

I said. “It’s been almost a year.”

“Must be tough,” he said. “You doing okay?”

Watching the street ahead, I nodded. “I am, thanks.”

“Almost a year, then?”

I waited for whatever was coming next, though I had some notion where this was headed.

“You, uh, managing to get out some?”

“Taking it slow,” I said. “I’ve been seeing someone recently. Nothing serious, but it is nice to be out there again.”

He still had his hand looped in the crook of my elbow. “Good to hear that,” he said. “Good for you.”

“Lew?” I put my free hand over his. “Why did you ask?”

He laughed, a sudden nervous burst that scared a cat crossing the sidewalk in front of us.

“I’m a normal guy, Maggie. Just a warm-blooded, normal guy. Can’t blame me for being interested.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Means a lot to me to hear that.”

We walked the last block into the Village in a companionable silence.

Funny, I thought, that Lew brought up Mike, my husband, because I had been thinking about him a lot lately, maybe because the anniversary of his death was approaching. Several people had told me that I shouldn’t make any major decisions until a full year had passed, one full cycle of holidays and seasons, birthdays and anniversaries without him. But life has a way of spinning along on its own course. My last year had been full of changes and challenges and decisions that had to be made, ready or not. Every time one arose, I wished for Mike’s counsel, but he simply was no longer there.

I was grateful for Lew’s quiet company that morning.

Rows of potted flowers in full bloom lined both sides of Main Street, bright color against the gray day. Anacapa Village, a two-block strip of restaurants and small stores, never looked prettier.

The incorporated town of Anacapa sits on the far northwestern edge of Los Angeles County, the last stop before the Ventura County line. The site of old downtown had been, in succession, a Chumash Indian encampment, the center of a vast Spanish colonial rancho, then a Mexican farm. After the Yankees showed up halfway through the nineteenth century, a road was built through a pass in the Santa Monicas to connect inland farms with a seaport-which was never more than a boat landing-in what is now Malibu, and intensive commercial agriculture got under way. Anacapa, the town, grew up at the crossroads of the coast access road and El Camino Real, the original Spanish road that still runs, with interruptions, from Baja to San Francisco.

I doubt that downtown Anacapa ever amounted to much more than a dry goods store, a feed mill, and a saloon or two until the suburban population boom hit the area after World War II. The route of El Camino Real became the 101 Freeway. As the freeway stretched north, like a flooding river pushing detritus downstream, layer after layer of new tract homes accompanied its flow. The new residents commuted to good jobs at the nearby Jet Propulsion Lab or the Howard Hughes Research Lab in Malibu Canyon, or into the entertainment production centers down the freeway in the San Fernando Valley.

Old downtown died a natural death, largely out of lack of interest, as new malls opened. But recently, some enterprising souls had rechristened the retail strip along Main Street “The Village,” spruced up the sidewalks and façades, and attracted an interesting collection of pretty good restaurants and a couple of boutiques. For the college population, the restaurants along the quaint-ified two-block strip were a godsend, respite from grim cafeteria fare.

As Lew and I walked past the family-run Italian trattoria that had been Mike’s favorite-they had catered Mike’s wake-I saw one of the owners, Roberta, setting up for the day. The restaurant wasn’t open yet, but when I rapped on the window and waved, Roberta came to the door.

“Ciao, bella,” she greeted me, kissing me on both cheeks. “We’re not open yet. Half hour.”

After some negotiations and a consultation with her brother Carlo, who was the chef, I ordered three large “everything” pizzas for Sly’s crew. Lew and I would pick them up after we had eaten our soup at the Vietnamese place next door. By the time we headed back to campus with three large pizza boxes neatly tied together, it was drizzling again.

The phone in my pocket buzzed. I took it out to see who was calling. With my aging mother recovering from a knee replacement and my daughter, Casey, away at college, I always looked.

“It’s Kate,” I told Lew, and answered the call when he nodded.

“Is Lew Kaufman with you?” she asked.

“We’re out here getting wet,” I told her.

“If I hear thunder, should I come looking for you?”

“Please.” I told her the street we were on. Hers wasn’t an idle offer, nor was my acceptance; I am pathologically afraid of thunder and lightning.

“Pass this to Lew,” she said. “We have a meeting scheduled with Holloway, his conference room, at one. You, Lew, me, and Joan Givens from Foundation.”

“Fast work,” I said.

“Holloway balked a bit at first. But when I dropped your Uncle Max’s name, mentioned something about the mother of all lawsuits, he suddenly saw the light.”

“I wonder if simply dropping Max’s name qualifies as a billable hour.”

“He’ll earn several today,” she said. “I was about to say, Max will be at the meeting, too.”

“How did you manage that?” I asked her.

“I promised him dinner at my house, tomorrow. My mother-in-law is taking the last of the Christmas tamales out of the freezer. Linda wants you to come, too. She said we had so much fun making the tamales together that you should be there to help finish them off. And please bring your mother.”

“Sounds like fun,” I said. “But Jean-Paul invited Mom and me to a reception tomorrow for a touring French pianist. One event a day is about all she’s up for.”

“Uh-oh, the beau finally meets Mom,” she said, sounding like the teenage roommate she had once been. I know I blushed.

“Too soon to call him that,” I said sternly.

“Have fun.” And then, in parting, added, “Tell your mom I’ll call her first thing Sunday morning to get all the details.”

I had no doubt she would.

By the time we got the pizzas delivered to Sly’s work crew, they were cold. But no one seemed to care, the appetites of youth being boundless.

Sly was quiet when we took him aside and told him that Holloway was meeting with us and that he shouldn’t worry about his sculpture being taken down in a year. Accustomed to disappointment, he never dared to hope for anything good.

“Should I go talk to him?” he asked. “Just to make sure?”

“That’s up to you,” I said. “But it isn’t necessary. What Holloway tried to do was personal to you, Sly, but the issues involved were larger than how long your piece hangs in the lobby. The college president tried to bypass the legal decision-making processes of the college, so the Academic Senate stepped in. I think that, after some chest-beating, Holloway will understand why he cannot do what he said he would.”

Looking at the floor, he shrugged. “If you say so.”

I punched his shoulder gently, and he looked up.

“How was your pizza?”

Finally, he smiled his crooked, wiseass smile. “Thanks for not ordering broccoli on it like you used to. Casey and I hated the broccoli. Even your mangy dog Bowser wouldn’t eat it.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “Don’t you have work to do?”

He nodded as he looked around, seeing his crew slowly going back to their work.

“Lew will let you know what happens at the meeting,” I told him.

As Sly walked across the gallery to resume whatever we had interrupted, Lew turned to me.

“You’re welcome to hang around here until it’s time for the meeting,” he said. “There’s a rally scheduled on the quad for about twelve-thirty before folks head off to the big budget-cuts demonstration. It might be tough getting through them for our meeting.”

“Thanks, but I have film projects to grade,” I said. “I’ll be in my office.”

As I opened the door to leave, Sly called my name. I looked over at him.

“Wouldn’t it be easier if I just put a twelve-bore to Holloway’s head?”

“Be careful what you say,” I cautioned him. “Words like that could come back and haunt you.”