“Well executed,” I applauded. “you’ve been studying Al Pacino. Now that you’ve finished emoting, could we talk about Anita?”
The back of his neck turned red, and the color spread to his ears, but he stopped. “What about her?”
“I’m sure you know she’s disappeared, Mr. Weinstein. You may also know that her boyfriend, Peter Thayer, is dead. I am trying to find her in the hopes of keeping her from sharing his fate.” I paused to let him absorb it. “My guess is that she’s hiding out someplace and she thinks she won’t be found by whoever killed him. But I’m afraid she’s crossed the path of an ugly type of killer. The kind that has a lot of money and can buy his way past most hideouts.”
He turned so that I could see his profile. “Don’t worry, Philip Marlowe—they won’t bribe me into revealing her whereabouts.”
I wondered hopefully if he could be tortured into talking. Aloud, I said, “Do you know where she is?”
“No comment.”
“Do you know any of her good friends around here?”
“No comment.”
“Gee, you’re helpful, Mr. Weinstein—you’re my favorite prof. I wish you’d taught here when I went to school.” I pulled out my card and gave it to him. “If you ever feel like commenting, call me at this number.”
Back outside in the heat I felt depressed. My navy silk suit was stunning, but too heavy for the weather; I was sweating, probably ruining the fabric under the arms. Besides, I seemed to be alienating everyone whose path I crossed. I wished I’d smashed in Howard’s face.
A circular stone bench faced the college building. I walked over to it and sat down. Maybe I’d give up on this stupid case. Industrial espionage was more my speed, not a corrupt union and a bunch of snotty kids. Maybe I’d use the thousand dollars McGraw had given me to spend the summer on the Michigan peninsula. Maybe that would make him angry enough to send someone after me with cement leggings.
The Divinity School was just behind me. I sighed, pulled myself to my feet, and moved into its stonewalled coolness. A coffee shop used to serve overboiled coffee and tepid lemonade in the basement. I made my way downstairs and found the place still in operation. There was something reassuring in this continuity and in the sameness of the young faces behind the makeshift counter. Kindly and naive, they preached a lot of violent dogma, believed that burglars had a right to the goods they took because of their social oppression, and yet would be rocked to their roots if someone ever required them to hold a machine gun themselves.
I took a Coke and retired to a dark corner with it. The chairs weren’t comfortable, but I pulled my knees up to my chin and leaned against the wall. About a dozen students were seated around the wobbly tables, some of them trying to read in the dim light, most of them talking. Snatches of conversation reached me. “Of course if you’re going to look at it dialectically, the only thing they can do is—” “I told her if she didn’t put her foot down he’d—” “Yeah, but Schopenhauer says—” I dozed off.
I was jerked awake a few seconds later by a loud voice saying, “Did you hear about Peter Thayer?” I looked up. The speaker, a plump young woman with wild red hair, wearing an ill-fitting peasant blouse, had just come into the room. She dumped her book bag on the floor and joined a table of three in the middle of the room. “I was just coming out of class when Ruth Yonkers told me.”
I got up and bought another Coke and sat down at a table behind the redhead.
A thin youth with equally wild but dark hair was saying, “Oh, yeah, the cops were all over the Political Science Office this morning. You know, he was living with Anita McGraw, and she hasn’t been seen since Sunday. Weinstein really told them off,” he added admiringly.
“Do they think she killed him?” the redhead asked.
A dark, somewhat older woman snorted. “Anita McGraw? I’ve known her for two years. She might off a cop, but she wouldn’t shoot her boyfriend.”
“Do you know him, Mary?” the redhead breathed.
“No,” Mary answered shortly. “I never met him. Anita belongs to University Women United—that’s how I know her. So does Geraldine Harata, her other roommate, but Geraldine’s away for the summer. If she wasn’t, the cops would probably suspect her. They always pick on women first.”
“I’m surprised you let her into UWU if she has a boyfriend,” a bearded young man put in. He was heavy and sloppy—his T-shirt gaped, revealing an unlovely expanse of stomach.
Mary looked at him haughtily and shrugged.
“Not everyone in UWU is a lesbian,” the redhead bristled.
“With so many men like Bob around, it’s hard to understand why not,” Mary drawled. The fat youth flushed and muttered something, of which “castrating” was the only word I caught.
“But I never met Anita,” the redhead continued. “I only started going to UWU meetings in May. Has she really disappeared, Mary?”