When The Bough Breaks

22

A gilded cage of an elevator took us to the fifth floor of a domed building on the west side of the campus. It relaxed its jaws and let us out into a silent rotunda, wainscoted in marble and veneered with dust. The ceiling was concave plaster upon which a now faded mural of cherubs blowing bugles had been painted: we were inside the shell of the dome. The walls were stone and gave off an odor of rotting paper. A stationary diamond-paned window separated two oak doors. One was labeled MAP ROOM and looked as if it hadn't been opened in generations. The other was blank.

Margaret knocked on the unadorned door and, when no answer was forthcoming, pushed it open. The room it revealed was highceilinged and spacious, with cathedral windows that afforded a view of the harbor. Every free inch of wall space was taken up by bookshelves crammed haphazardly with ragged volumes. Those books that hadn't found a resting place in the shelves sat in precariously balanced stacks on the floor. In the center of the room was a trestle table piled high with manuscripts and still more books. A globe on a wheeled stand and an ancient claw-footed desk were pushed in a corner. A McDonald's take-out box and a couple of crumpled, greasy napkins sat atop the desk.

"Professor?" said Margaret. To me: "I wonder where he's gone."

"Peek-a-boo!" The sound came from somewhere behind the trestle table.

Margaret jumped and her purse flew out of her hands. The contents spilled on the floor.

A gnarled head peeked around the curled edges of a pile of yellowed paper.

"Sorry to startle you, dear." The head came into view, thrown back in silent laughter.

"Professor," said Margaret, "shame on you." She bent to retrieve the scattered debris.

He came out from behind the table looking sheepish. Until that point I'd thought he was sitting. But when the head didn't rise in my sight I realized he'd been standing all along.

He was four feet and a few inches tall. His body was of conventional size but it was bent at the waist, the spine twisted in an S, the deformed back burdened with a hump the size of a tightly packed knapsack. His head seemed too large for his frame, a wrinkled egg topped by a fringe of wispy white hair. When he moved he resembled a drowsy scorpion.

He wore an expression of mock contrition but the twinkle in the rheumy blue eyes said far more than did the downturned, lipless mouth.

"Can I help you, dear?" His voice was dry and cultured.

Margaret gathered the last personal effects from the floor and put them in her purse.

"No, thank you, Professor. I've got it all." She caught her breath and tried to look composed.

"Will you still come with me on our pizza picnic?"

"Only if you behave yourself."

He put his hands together, as if in prayer.

"I promise, dear," he said.

"All right. Professor, this is Bill Roberts, the journalist I spoke to you about. Bill, Professor Garth Van der Graaf."

"Hello, Professor."

He looked up at me from under sleepy lids.

"You don't look like Clark Kent," he said.

"I beg your pardon."

"Aren't newspaper reporters supposed to look like Clark Kent?"

"I wasn't aware of that specific union regulation."

"I was interviewed by a reporter after the War — the big one. Number two — pardon the scatological entendre. He wanted to know what place the war would have in history. He looked like Clark Kent." He ran one hand over his liver-spotted scalp. "Don't you have a pair of glasses or something young man?"

"I'm sorry, but my eyes are quite healthy."

He turned his back to me and walked to one of the bookshelves. There was queer, reptilian grace to his movements, the stunted body seeming to travel sideways while actually moving forward. He climbed slowly up a footstool, reached up and grabbed a leather bound volume, climbed down and returned.

"Look," he said, opening the book which I now saw was a looseleaf binder containing a collection of comic books. "This is who I mean." A shaky finger pointed to a picture of the Daily Planet's star reporter entering a phone booth. "Clark Kent. That's a reporter."

"I'm sure Mr. Roberts knows who Clark Kent is, Professor."

"Then let him come back when he looks more like him and I'll talk to him," the old man snapped.

Margaret and I exchanged helpless looks. She started to say something and Van der Graaf threw back his head and let out an arid crackle.

"April Fool!" He laughed lustily at his own wit, the merriment dissolving into a phlegmy fit of coughing.

"Oh, Professor!" Margaret scolded.

They went at each other again, verbally jousting. I began to suspect that their relationship was well established. I stood on the sidelines feeling like an unwilling spectator at a freak show.

"Admit it, dear," he was saying, "I had you fooled!" He stamped his foot with glee. "You thought I'd gone totally senile!"

"You're no more senile than I," she replied. "You're simply a naughty boy!"

My hopes of getting reliable information from the shrunken hunchback were diminishing by the moment. I cleared my throat.

They stopped and stared at me. A bubble of saliva had collected in the corner of Van der Graaf's puckered mouth. His hands vibrated with a faint palsy. Margaret towered over him, legs akimbo.

"Now I want you to cooperate with Mr. Roberts," she said sternly.

Van der Graaf gave me a dirty look.

"Oh, all right," he whined. "But only if you drive me around the lake in my Doosie."

"I said I would."

"I have a thirty-seven Duesenberg," he explained to me. "Magnificent chariot. Four hundred snorting stallions under a gleaming ruby bonnet. Chromium pipes. Consumes petroleum with ravenous abandon. I can no longer drive it. Maggie, here, is a large wench. Under my tutelage she could handle it. But she refuses."

"Professor Van der Graaf, there was a good reason why I turned you down. It was raining and I didn't want to get behind the wheel of a car worth two hundred thousand dollars in hazardous weather."

"Pshaw. I took that baby from here to Sonoma in forty-four. It thrives on meteorological adversity."

"All right. I'll drive you. Tomorrow, if I get a good report on your behavior from Mr. Roberts."

"I'm the professor. I do the grading."

She ignored him.

"I have to go to the library, Mr. Roberts. Can you find your way back to my office?"

"Certainly."

"I'll see you when you're through, then. Goodbye, Professor."

"Tomorrow at one. Rain or shine," he called after her.

When the door had closed he invited me to sit.

"I'll stand, myself. Can't find a chair that fits me. When I was a boy Father called in carpenters and woodcarvers, trying to come up with some way to seat me comfortably. To no avail. They did produce some fascinating abstract sculpture, however." He laughed, and held on to the trestle table for support. "I've stood most of my life. In the end it probably was beneficial. I've got legs like pig iron. My circulation's as good as that of a man half my age."

I sat in a leather armchair. We were at eye level.

"That Maggie," he said. "Such a sad girl. I flirt with her, try to cheer her up. She seems so lonely most of the time." He rummaged among the papers and pulled out a flask.

"Irish Whiskey. You'll find two glasses in the top right drawer of the desk. Kindly retrieve them and give them to me."

I found the glasses, which looked none too clean.

Van der Graaf filled them each with an inch of whiskey, without spilling a drop.

"Here."

I watched him sip his drink and followed suit.

"Do you think she could be a virgin? Is such a thing possible in this day and age?" He approached the question as if it were an epistemological puzzle.

"I really couldn't say, Professor. I only just met her an hour ago."

"I can't conceive of it, virginity in a woman her age. Yet the notion of those milkmaid's thighs wrapped around a pair of rutting buttocks is equally preposterous." He drank more whiskey, contemplated Margaret Dopplemeier's sex life in silence, and stared off into space.

Finally he said: "You're a patient young man. A rare quality."

I nodded.

"I figure you'll come around when you're ready, Professor."

"Yes, I do confess to a fair amount of childish behavior. It's a perquisite of my age and station. Do you know how long it's been since I taught a class or wrote a scholarly paper?"

"Quite a while, I imagine."

"Over two decades. Since then I've been up here engaged in long solitary stretches of allegedly deep thought — actually I loaf. And yet, I'm an honored Professor Emeritus. Don't you think it's an absurd system that tolerates such nonsense?"

"Perhaps there's a feeling that you've earned the right to retirement with honor."

"Bah!" He waved his hand. "That sounds too much like death. Retirement with honor and maggots gnawing at one's toes. I'll confess to you, young man, that I never earned anything. I wrote sixty-seven papers in learned journals, all but five utter garbage. I coedited three books that no one ever read, and, in general, pursued a life of a spoiled wastrel. It's been wonderful."

He finished his whiskey and put the glass down on the table with a thump.

"They keep me around here because I've got millions of dollars in a tax-free trust fund set up for me by Father and they hope I'll bequeath it all to them." He smiled crookedly. "I may or may not. Perhaps I should will it all to some Negro organization, or something equally outrageous. A group fighting for the rights of lesbians, perhaps. Is there such a cabal?"

"I'm sure there must be."

"Yes. In California, no doubt. Speaking of which, you want to know about Willie Towle from Los Angeles, do you?"

I repeated the story about Medical World News.

"All right," he sighed, "if you insist, I'll try to help you. God knows why anyone would be interested in Willie Towle, for a duller boy never set foot on this campus. When I found out he became a physician, I was amazed. I never thought him intellectually capable of anything quite that advanced. Of course the family is firmly rooted in medicine — one of the Towles was Grant's personal surgeon during the Civil War — there's a morsel for your article — and I imagine getting Willie admitted to medical school was no particular challenge."

"He's turned out to be quite a successful doctor."

"That doesn't surprise me. There are different types of success. One requires a combination of personality traits that Willie did indeed possess: perseverance, lack of imagination, innate conservatism. Of course, a good, straight body and a conventionally attractive face don't hurt, either. I'll wager he hasn't climbed the ranks by virtue of being a profound scientific thinker or innovative researcher. His strengths are of a more mundane nature, are they not?"

"He has a reputation as a fine doctor," I insisted. "His patients have only good things to say about him."

"Tells them exactly what they want to hear, no doubt. Willie was always good at that. Very popular, president of this and that. He was my student in a course on European civilization, and he was a charmer. Yes, Professor, no Professor. Always there to hold out my chair for me — Lord, how I detested that. Not to mention the fact that I rarely sat." He grimaced at the recollection. "Yes, there was a certain banal charm there. People like that in their doctors. I believe it's called bedside manner. Of course his essay exams were most telling, revealing his true substance. Predictable, accurate but not illuminating, grammatical without being literate." He paused. "This isn't the kind of information you were expecting, is it?"

I smiled. "Not exactly."

"You can't print this, can you?" He seemed disappointed.

"No. I'm afraid the article is meant to be laudatory."

"Hale and hearty blah-blah stuff — in the vernacular, bullshit, eh? How boring. Doesn't it bore you to have to write such drivel?"

"At times. It pays the bills."

"Yes. How arrogant of me not to take that into consideration. I've never had to pay bills. My bankers do that for me. I've always had far more money than I know what to do with. It leads one to incredible ignorance. It's a common fault of the indolent rich. We're unbelievably ignorant. And inbred. It brings about psychological as well as physical aberrations."

He smiled, reached around with one arm, and tapped his hunch. "This entire campus is a haven for the offspring of the indolent, ignorant, inbred rich. Including your Doctor Willie Towle. He descends from one of the most rarefied environments you will ever find. Did you know that?"

"Being a doctor's son?"

"No, no." He dismissed me as if I were an especially stupid pupil. "He's one of the Two Hundred — you haven't heard of them?"

"No."

"Go into the bottom drawer of my desk and pull out the old map of Seattle."

I did what I was told. The map was folded under several back issues of Playboy.

"Give it to me," he said impatiently. He opened it and spread it on the table. "Look here."

I stood over him. His finger pointed to a spot at the north end of the South. To a tiny island shaped like a diamond.

"Brindamoor Island. Three square miles of innately unappealing terrain upon which are situated two hundred mansions and estates to rival any found in the United States. Josiah Jedson built his first home there — a Gothic monstrosity, it was — and others of his ilk mimicked him. I have cousins who reside there — most of us are related in one way or the other — though Father built our home on the mainland, in Win demere."

"It's barely noticeable."

The island was a speck in the Pacific.

"And meant to be that way, my boy. In many of the older maps the island isn't even labeled. Of course there's no land access. The ferry makes one roundtrip from the harbor when the weather and tides permit. It's not unusual for a week or two to elapse without the trip being completed. Some of the residents own private airplanes and have landing strips on their properties. Most are content to remain in splendid isolation."

"And Dr. Towle grew up there?"

"He most certainly did. I believe the ancestral digs have been sold. He was an only son and when he moved to California there seemed no reason to hold on to it — most of the homes are far larger than homes have a right to be. Architectural dinosaurs. Frightfully expensive to maintain — even the Two Hundred have to budget nowadays. Not all had ancestors as clever as Father."

He patted his midriff in self-congratulation.

"Do you feel growing up in that kind of isolation had any effect on Dr. Towle?"

"Now you sound like a psychologist, young man."

I smiled.

"In answer to your question: most certainly. The children of the Two Hundred were an insufferably snobbish lot — and to merit that designation at Jedson College requires extraordinary chauvinism. They were clannish, self-centered, spoiled, and not overly bright. Many had deformed siblings with chronic physical or mental problems — my remark about inbreeding was meant in all seriousness — and seemed to have been left callous and indifferent by the experience, rather than the opposite."

"You're using the past tense. Don't they exist today?"

"There are amazingly few young ones left. They get a taste of the outside world and are reluctant to return to Brindamoor — it really is quite bleak, despite the indoor tennis courts and one pathetic excuse for a country club."

To stay in character I had to defend Towle.

"Professor, I don't know Doctor Towle well, but he's very well spoken of. I've met him and he seems to be a forceful man, of strong character. Isn't it possible that growing up in the type of environment you describe Brindamoor to be could increase one's individuality?"

The old man looked at me with contempt.

"Rubbish! I understand you have to pretty up his image, but you'll get nothing but the truth from me. There wasn't an individual in the bunch from Brindamoor. Young man, solitude is the nectar of individuality. Our Willie Towle had no taste for it."

"Why do you say that?"

"I cannot recall ever seeing him alone. He palled around with two other dullards from the island. The three of them pranced around like little dictators. The Three Heads of State they were called behind their backs — pretentious, puffed-up boys. Willie, Stu and Eddy."

"Stu and Eddy?"

"Yes, yes, that's what I said. Stuart Hickle and Edwin Hayden."

At the mention of those names I gave an involuntary start. I struggled to neutralize my expression, hoping the old man hadn't noticed the reaction. Happily, he appeared oblivious, as he lectured in that parched voice:

"…and Hickle was a sickly, pimple-faced rotter with a spooky disposition, not a word out of him that wasn't censored by the other two. Hayden was a mean-spirited little sneak. I caught him cheating on an exam and he attempted to bribe me out of failing him by offering to procure for me an Indian prostitute of supposedly exotic talents — can you imagine such gall, as if I were unable to fend for myself in affairs of lust! Of course I failed him and wrote a sharp letter to his parents. Got no reply — no doubt they never read it, off on some European jaunt. Do you know what became of him?" he ended rhetorically.

"No," I lied.

"He's now a judge — in Los Angeles. In fact I believe all three of them, the glorious Heads, moved to Los Angeles. Hickle's some kind of chemist — wanted to be a doctor, just like Willie, and I believe he actually did begin medical school. But he was too stupid to pull through.

"A judge," he repeated. "What does that say about our judicial system?"

The information was pouring in fast and, like a pauper suddenly discovering a sizeable inheritance, I wasn't sure how to deal with it. I wanted to shed my cover and wring every last bit of information out of the old man, but there was the case — and my promises to Margaret — to think about.

"I'm a nasty old bugger, am I not?" crackled Van der Graaf.

"You seem very perceptive, Professor."

"Oh, do I?" He smiled craftily. "Any other tidbits I can toss your way?"

"I know Dr. Towle lost his wife and child several years back. What can you tell me about that?"

He stared at me, then refilled his glass and sipped. "All part of your story?"

"All part of fleshing out the portrait," I said. It sounded feeble.

"Ah, yes, fleshing it out. Of course. Well, it was a tragedy, no two ways about it, and your doctor was rather young to be dealing with it. He was married during his sophomore year to a lovely girl from a good Portland family. Lovely, but outside his circle — the Two Hundred tended to marry each other. The engagement came as a bit of surprise. Six months later the girl gave birth to a son and that mystery was cleared up.

"For a while the trio seemed to be breaking up — Hickle and Hayden slinked off by themselves as Willie attended to the duties of a married man. Then the wife and child were killed and the Heads were reunited. I suppose it's natural that a man will seek the comfort of friends in the wake of such a loss."

"How did it happen?"

He peered into his glass and downed the last few drops.

"The girl — the mother — was taking the child to the hospital. He'd woken up with the croup or some such ailment. The nearest emergency facility was at the Children's Orthopedic Hospital, at the University. It was in the early morning hours, still dark. Her car went over the Evergreen Bridge and plunged into the lake. It was daybreak before it was found."

"Where was Dr. Towle?"

"Studying. Burning the midnight oil. Of course this caused him to be guilt-stricken, absolutely wretched. No doubt he blamed himself for not having been there and been drowned himself. You know the type of self-flagellation embraced by the bereaved."

"A tragic affair."

"Oh yes. She was a lovely girl."

"Dr. Towle keeps her picture in his office."

"A sentimentalist, is he?"

"I suppose." I drank some whiskey. "After the tragedy he began seeing more of his friends?"

"Yes. Though as I hear you use the term I realize something. In my concept of friendship there is implied a bond of affection, some degree of mutual admiration. Those three always looked so grim when they were together — they didn't seem to enjoy each other's company. I never knew what the link between them was, but it did exist. Willie went away to medical school and Stuart tagged along. Edwin Hayden attended law school at the same university. They settled in the same city. No doubt you'll be contacting the other two in order to obtain laudatory quotes for your article. If there is an article."

I struggled to remain calm.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I think you know what I mean, my boy. I'm not going to ask you to present identification confirming you're who you say you are — it wouldn't prove a thing anyway — because you seem like a pleasant, intelligent young man and how many visitors to whom I can blab do you think I receive? Enough said."

"I appreciate that, Professor."

"And well you should. I trust you have your reasons for wanting to ask me about Willie. Undoubtedly they're boring and I've no wish to know them. Have I been helpful?"

"You've been more than helpful." I filled our glasses and we shared another drink, no conversation passing between us.

"Would you be willing to be a bit more helpful?" I asked.

"That depends."

"Dr. Towle has a nephew. Timothy Kruger. I wonder if there's anything you could tell me about him."

Van der Graaf raised his drink to his lips with trembling hands. His face clouded.

"Kruger." He said the name as if it were an epithet.

"Yes."

"Cousin. Distant cousin, not nephew."

"Cousin, then."

"Kruger. An old family. Prussians, every one of them. Power brokers. A powerful family." His mellifluousness was gone and he spat out the words with mechanical intonation. "Prussians."

He took a few steps. The arachnid stagger ceased abruptly and he let his hands drop to his sides.

"This must be a police matter," he said.

"Why do you say that?"

His face blackened with anger and he raised one fist in the air, a prophet of doom.

"Don't trifle with me, young man! If it has something to do with Timothy Kruger there's little else it could be!"

"It is part of a criminal investigation. I can't go into details."

"Oh, can't you? I've wagged my tongue at you without demanding to know your true intentions. A moment ago I judged them to be boring. Now I've changed my mind."

"What is it about the Kruger name that scares you so much, Professor?"

"Evil," he said. "Evil frightens me. You say your questions are part of a criminal investigation. How do I know what side you're on?"

"I'm working with the police. But I'm not a policeman."

"I won't tolerate riddles! Either be truthful or be gone!"

I considered the choice.

"Margaret Dopplemeier," I said. "I don't want her to lose her job because of anything I tell you."

"Maggie?" he snorted. "Don't worry about her, I've no intention of letting on the fact that she led you to me. She's a sad girl, needs intrigue to spice up her life. I've spoken enough to her to know that she clings longingly to the Conspiracy Theory of Life. Dangle one before her — she'll go for it like a trout for a lure. Kennedy assassinations, Unidentified Flying Objects, cancer tooth decay — all the result of a grand collusion of anonymous demons. No doubt you recognized that and exploited it."

He made it sound Machiavellian. I didn't dispute it.

"No," he said. "I've no interest in crushing Maggie. She's been a friend. Apart from that, my loyalties to this institution are far from blind. I detest certain aspects of this place — my true home, if you will."

"Such as the Krugers?"

"Such as the environment that allows Krugers and their ilk to flourish."

He tottered, the too-large head lolling on its misshapen base.

"The choice is yours, young man. Put up or shut up."

I put up.

"Nothing in your story surprises me," he said. "I didn't know of Stuart Hickle's death nor of his sexual proclivities, but neither are shocking. He was a bad poet, Dr. Delaware, very bad — and nothing is beyond a bad poet."

I recalled the verse at the bottom of Lilah Towle's yearbook obituary. It was clear who "S" was.

"When you mentioned Timothy I became alarmed, because I didn't know if you were in the employ of the Krugers. The badge you showed me is well and fine, but such trinkets are easily counterfeited."

"Call Detective Delano Hardy at West Lost Angeles Police Division. He'll tell you what side I'm on." I hoped he wouldn't take me up on it — who knew how Hardy would react?

He looked at me thoughtfully. "No, that won't be necessary. You're a dreadful liar. I believe I can intuitively tell when you're telling the truth."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. A compliment was intended."

"Tell me about Timothy Kruger," I said.

He stood blinking, gnome like a concoction of a Hollywood special-effects lab.

"The first thing I'd like to emphasize is that the evil of the Krugers has nothing to do with wealth. They would be evil paupers — I imagine they were, at one time. If that sounds defensive, it is."

"I understand."

"The very wealthy are not evil, Bolshevist propaganda to the contrary. They are a harmless lot-overly-sheltered, reticent, destined for extinction." He took a step backward as if retreating from his own prediction.

I waited.

"Timothy Kruger," he finally said, "is a murderer, plain and simple. The fact that he was never arrested, tried or convicted does nothing to diminish his guilt in my eyes. The story goes back seven — no, eight years. There was a student here, a farm boy from Idaho. Sharp as a tack, built like Adonis. His name was Saxon. Jeffrey Saxon. He came here to study, the first of his family to finish high school, dreaming of becoming a writer.

"He was accepted on an athletic scholarship — crew, baseball, football, wrestling — and managed to excel in all of those while maintaining an A average. He majored in history and I was his faculty advisor, though by that time I wasn't teaching any more. We had many chats, up here in this room. The boy was a pleasure to converse with. He had an enthusiasm for life, a thirst for knowledge."

A tear collected in the corner of one drooping, blue eye.

"Excuse me." The old man pulled out a linen handkerchief and dabbed his cheek. "Dusty in here, must get the custodial staff to clean." He sipped his whiskey and when he spoke his voice was enfeebled by memories.

"Jeffrey Saxon had the curious, searching nature of a true scholar, Dr. Delaware. I recall the first time he came up here and saw all the books. Like a child let loose in a toy store. I lent him my finest antiquarian volumes — everything from the London edition of Josephus' Chronicles to anthropologic treatises. He devoured them. 'For God's sake, Professor,' he'd say, 'it would take several lifetimes to learn even a fraction of what there is to know' — that's the mark of an intellectual, in my view, becoming cognizant of one's own insignificance in relation to the accumulated mass of human knowledge.

"The others, of course, thought him a rube, a hick. They made fun of his clothes, his manner, his lack of sophistication. He spoke to me about it — I'd become a kind of surrogate grandfather I suppose — and I reassured him that he was meant for more noble company than what Jedson had to offer. In fact I'd encouraged him to put in for a transfer to an Eastern school — Yale, Princeton — where he could achieve significant intellectual growth. With his grades and a letter from me, he might have made it. But he never got a chance.

"He became attached to a young lady, one of the Two Hundred, pretty enough, but vapid. This in itself, was no error, as the heart and the gonads must be satisfied. The mistake was in choosing a female already coveted by another."

"By Tim Kruger?"

Van der Graaf nodded painfully.

"This is difficult for me, Doctor. It brings back so much."

"If it's too difficult for you, Professor, I can leave now and come back some other time."

"No, no. That would serve no purpose." He took a deep breath. "It comes down to a smarmy soap opera of a tale. Jeffrey and Kruger were interested in the same girl, they had words in public. Tempers flared, but it seemed to pass. Jeffrey visited me and vented his spleen. I played amateur psychologist — professors so often are required to provide emotional support to their students and I confess I did a fine job of it. I urged him to forget the girl, knowing her type, understanding full well that Jeffrey would be the loser in any battle of wills. The young of Jedson are homing pigeons, as predictable as their ancestors, reverting to type. The girl was meant to mate with one of her own. There were better things, finer things, awaiting Jeffrey, an entire lifetime of opportunity and adventure.

"He wouldn't listen. He was like a knight of old, imbued with the nobility of his mission. Conquer the Black Jouster, rescue the fair maiden. Total rubbish — but he was an innocent. An innocent."

Van der Graaf paused, out of breath. His face had turned a sickly greenish shade of pale and I feared for his health.

"Perhaps we should stop for the moment," I suggested. "I can return tomorrow."

"Absolutely not! I'll not be left here in solitary confinement with a poisonous lump lodged in my craw!" He cleared his throat. "I'll be on with it — you sit there and pay close attention."

"All right, Professor."

"Now then, where was I — ah, Jeffrey as a White Knight. Foolish boy. The enmity between him and Timothy Kruger continued and festered. Jeffrey was ostracized by all the others — Kruger was a campus luminary, socially established. I became Jeffrey's sole source of support. Our conversations changed. No longer were they cerebral exchanges. Now I was conducting psychotherapy on a full-time basis — an activity with which I was most uncomfortable, but I felt I couldn't abandon the boy. I was all he had.

"It culminated in a wrestling match. Both the boys were Greco-Roman wrestlers. They agreed to meet, late at night, in the empty gymnasium, just the two of them for a grudge match. I'm no wrestler myself, for obvious reasons, but I do know that the sport is highly structured, replete with regulations, the criteria for victory clearly drawn. Jeffrey liked it for that reason — he was highly self-disciplined for one so young. He walked into that gym alive and left on a stretcher, neck and spine snapped, alive in only the most vegetative sense of the word. Three days later he died."

"And his death was ruled an accident," I said softly.

"That was the official story. Kruger said the two of them had gotten involved in a complicated series of holds and in the ensuing tangle of torsos, arms and legs, Jeffrey had been injured. And who could dispute it — accidents do occur in wrestling matches. At worst it seemed a case of two immature men behaving in an irresponsible manner. But to those of us who knew Timothy, who understood the depth of the rivalry between them, that was far from a satisfactory explanation. The college was eager to hush it up, the police all too happy to oblige — why go up against the Kruger millions when there are hundreds of poor people committing crimes?

"I attended Jeffrey's funeral — flew to Idaho. Before I left I ran into Timothy on campus. Looking back I see he must have sought me out." Van der Graaf's mouth tightened, the wrinkles deepening as if controlled by some internal drawstring. "He approached me near the Founder's statue. 'I hear you're traveling, Professor,' he said. 'Yes,' I replied, 'I'm flying to Boise tonight.' 'To attend the last rites for your young charge?' he asked. There was a look of utter innocence on his face, feigned innocence — he was an actor, for God's sake, he could manipulate his features at will.

"'What's it to you?' I replied. He bent to the ground, picked up a dry oak twig and sporting an arrogant smirk — the same smirk one can see in photographs of Nazi concentration camp guards tormenting their victims — snapped the twig between his fingers, and let it drop to the ground. Then he laughed.

"I've never in my life been so close to commiting murder, Doctor Delaware. Had I been younger, stronger, properly armed, I would have done it. As it was, I simply stood there, for once in my life at a loss for words. 'Have a nice trip,' he said, and, still smirking, backed away. My heart pounded so, I was assaulted with a spell of dizziness, but fought to maintain my equilibrium. When he was out of eyesight I broke down and sobbed."

A long moment passed between us.

When he appeared sufficiently composed I asked him:

"Does Margaret know about this? About Kruger?"

He nodded.

"I've spoken of it to her. She's my friend."

So the awkward publicist was more spider than fly after all. The insight cheered me for some reason.

"One more thing — the girl. The one they were fighting over. What became of her?"

"What do you expect?" He sneered, some of the old vitriol returning to his voice. "She shunned Kruger — most of the others did. They were afraid of him. She attended Jedson for three more undistinguished years, married an investment banker and moved to Spokane. No doubt she's a proper hausfrau, shuttling the kiddies to school, branching at the club, boffing the delivery boy."

"The spoils of battle," I said.

He shook his head. "Such a waste."

I looked at my watch. I'd been up in the dome for a little over an hour, but it seemed longer. Van der Graaf had unloaded a truckful of sewage during that time, but he was a historian, and that's what they're trained to do. I felt tired and tense, and I longed for fresh air.

"Professor," I said, "I don't know how to thank you."

"Putting the information to good use would be a step in the right direction." The blue eyes shone like twin gaslights. "Snap some twigs of your own."

"I'll do my best." I got up.

"I trust you can see yourself out."

I did.

When I was halfway across the rotunda I heard him cry out: "Remind Maggie of our pizza picnic!"

His words echoed against the smooth, cold stone.