He had thought Lucas was committed to the Cause—Jubal always capitalized the word in his mind—but in the four years since the boy graduated, he’d spent much of his time adrift, distracted by carnal pleasures. Oh, now and then, Lucas got up to something worthwhile—a train derailment, other bits of sabotage, an unsuspecting policeman executed with a point-blank round to the back of the head—but considering his sharp mind and potential, he was an underachiever.
Lately, Dr. MaceMaskil had become concerned that Lucas might be less interested in the Cause than in taking enormous risks largely for the thrill of it. After all, he had shot the policeman outside of a Chinese restaurant, on a busy street, where there were potential witnesses, taking advantage of an unanticipated opportunity. With lightning cunning, he calculated the line-of-sight issues, determined that a blind spot existed, shot the cop, thrust the pistol into the coat pocket of a wild-haired, disoriented homeless man, shouting, “I got him, I got the bastard, help me here!” When a few men joined him in the effort to subdue the terrified bum, he used the confusion to fade out of the scene. He thought himself superior, of Nietzsche’s master race, and on a regular basis, he seemed to need to prove his supreme nature by taking an outrageous risk and getting away with it.
When Lucas derailed a train or shot a cop on a public street for the thrill of it and to prove his superior nature, instead of taking the time and care to plan a more significant operation that could be pulled off with much greater confidence that no evidence would lead to the perpetrators … Well, such recklessness also put the professor at risk. He’d taken some years to realize that if Lucas were arrested and convicted of just one murder, he might negotiate an adjustment in his sentence by ratting out others whom those in power would delight in persecuting. Like Dr. Jubal MaceMaskil. The “one” that he owed his former student might prove to be his own destruction for the purpose of shaving a few years off Lucas’s sentence or to buy the boy certain prison privileges that he might not otherwise receive.
Here in the light of a new day, in the cruel grip of sobriety, the professor understood, as he never quite had before, that his very freedom depended on Lucas remaining free, as well. Therefore, he felt that he should without delay phone his former student and tell him about Mrs. Nozawa’s curious visit to the Alumni Affairs Office. Each time that Lucas changed phone numbers, he gave his mentor the new contact information, though he usually didn’t provide an address or a mail drop. Informed of Mrs. Nozawa’s interest in him, Lucas would most likely want to come to Charleston and take the woman to some quiet and private place, to discover what her true intentions were, since they were surely not related to any act of kindness for which he had not been properly thanked.
Twice, the professor picked up the phone and started to enter Lucas’s latest number, but both times he hung up after pressing fewer than half the digits. Drug-free, Dr. MaceMaskil’s mind no longer spun in a tornado of paranoia, but he was shrewd enough to recognize in this situation a real danger to himself if his former student returned to Charleston to squeeze information out of the queen of dry-cleaning. Lucas might learn not only why she had an interest in him, but also about his old professor’s strange visit to her shop. By that performance, Dr. MaceMaskil had made himself a subject of interest when he previously had not been one, and it surely fed the woman’s curiosity and suspicions regarding Lucas, whatever they might be. In a blink, the beloved mentor might become the intolerable burden, and following Lucas’s visit to Charleston, the town’s population might drop by two.
The professor decided to be prudent, to think through all of the possible ramifications, before phoning Lucas. He canceled his Friday classes to give himself time to consider his options, to ferret out the pluses and minuses of each, and to prepare defenses commensurate for the choice he ultimately made.
Although nervous and worried, Dr. MaceMaskil denied himself any pill or powder that might calm his nerves and turn worry to serenity.
He was thirsty, but he avoided the bourbon and the brandy, and he left the wine corked.
He prepared the coffeemaker. While the brew percolated, he placed a lined legal tablet, a blue-ink pen, and a red-ink pen on the kitchen table.
Sitting there, waiting for the coffee to be done, he realized that he hadn’t dressed for the day. He wore only the boxer shorts in which he’d slept. This oversight disturbed him. If his very existence were at stake, it seemed no less irresponsible to plan his strategy for survival in his underwear than it would have been to do so bareass-naked. He went to his bedroom, where he put on a sapphire-blue silk robe and supple-leather slippers, and he returned to the kitchen in a more cunning and militant frame of mind.
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