He placed the call to the number that he’d most recently been given, wondering if perhaps Lucas might be unavailable—wondering, not hoping—but the familiar voice answered: “Who’s this?”
“It’s Robert Donat,” the professor said, referring to the actor who had played the heartwarming title role in the 1939 film Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Set in an English boys’ school, the movie had been about a Latin teacher who starts out a bumbler but over the decades becomes a beloved school institution.
“Say hello to Greer Garson for me,” Lucas said dutifully, for she had played the female lead.
If their phones were tapped, nothing was gained by using names other than their own, and they never spoke in code, but Dr. MaceMaskil liked making contact this way. It made him feel safer than he might otherwise have felt.
He launched straight into his story about how he’d been in the Alumni Affairs Office when Setsuko Nozawa barged through the door, obviously with some kind of buzz on, drugs or liquor, hard to tell which, and demanded to know the address of one Lucas Drackman. She might have been upset about something, but she might also have been nothing more than nervous; her behavior was so peculiar that it was difficult to tell which. The secretary behind the counter, a busty redhead named Teresa Marie Hallahan, who for some time had been hot for the professor, of course informed the distressed visitor that the university guarded the privacy of alumni, whereupon this Nozawa person became belligerent. When Dr. MaceMaskil spoke up for Miss Hallahan and university policy, the Nozawa creature turned her fury on him, became incoherent, and left in a huff.
“Who the hell is Setsuko Nozawa?” Lucas asked.
“I gather she owns a dry-cleaning shop. I thought you must know her somehow.”
“I never heard of the crazy bitch.”
Dr. MaceMaskil believed him, and that was a relief. If Lucas had neither done Nozawa a great kindness nor killed someone for her, then he was far more likely to believe his mentor than a weird woman who’d thrown a fit in the Alumni Affairs Office.
“When did this happen?” Lucas asked.
“Fifteen minutes ago. I came straight from there to my office phone here at the school.”
“Why does the bitch want my address?”
“She wouldn’t say. But it was so strange, so very strange, I thought you should know.”
“Yeah, all right. I’ll think about it, look into it. My plate’s kind of full right now, but I’ll get to it. It’s good to know you’ve got my back.”
After they disconnected, the professor went into the bathroom, got on his knees in front of the toilet, and threw up.
74
According to the eventual testimony of Aurora Delvane, after she returned from her run in the park that day, she showered, washed and dried her hair, and painted her toenails before she came downstairs and found Lucas with Reggie “Gorilla” Smaller, Tilton, and Fiona in the kitchen, where for one last time they’d been reviewing details of the impending operation. Aurora hadn’t needed to be there, for she wasn’t an active participant in the scheme; she was an observer, their chronicler, who would one day write about their exploits and the deep philosophy that motivated them.
As Aurora entered the kitchen, Lucas racked the wall phone, turned to the group, and said, “What the hell was that about?” He recounted his conversation with the professor, whom he referred to as “a total butthead I should have offed years ago.”
No one knew what if anything to make of the story about the erratic dry-cleaning entrepreneur, and Aurora Delvane asked, “What is this, Jap Day or something?”
Lucas frowned. “What’d you say?”
Fiona came around the table, eyes narrowing with each step. “Yeah, what’d you say?”
Aurora told them about the gay guy from New Year’s Eve, who was at that moment ensconced on the bench in the park, directly across the street. “But he’s a big old nobody swish. He’s reading that Capote book, the one everybody’s reading, been a bestseller forever, so you know it’s for dunces.”
Intrigued, Lucas retrieved a pair of binoculars from the study, and they all went to the front room. After Lucas watched the bench-sitter for a minute, Fiona took the binoculars and studied the man.
She hissed, “Yoshioka.”
“You mean the tailor?” Aurora asked. “The nice little guy across the hall, you never see him in anything but a suit?”