Hush Money

Milo had stopped looking at Amir and was looking at me.

“And Prentice caught you,” I said to Amir.

He seemed to be freezing right there in front of me. Compacting as he froze, growing smaller.

“Who, pray tell, is Prentice?” Milo said.

“Kid that got thrown out the window by some of your security twerps,” I said.

“I know nothing about any Prentice.”

“No,” I said, “you don’t. Prentice Lamont ran a newspaper called OUTrageous, which was primarily committed to outing gay men and women who would have preferred otherwise.”

Milo frowned. I knew he could identify.

“First the kid probably was doing it for philosophical reasons. Hiding one’s sexuality contributed to the belief that it was shameful. Something high-sounding like that, but then, and I’m guessing here, Amir started hitting on him, and the kid was flattered because Amir is a big-deal gay guy and a leading black activist, and a professor, and an all-around joy to contemplate.”

Outside the room the rain kept coming down in the dark. The motel window was streaked with it.

“And Amir gives him the blackmail idea. Maybe he wanted a cut of it. Maybe he wanted Prentice to think he was smart. Maybe he gets a kick out of perverting idealism. I’d guess all of the above with the perversion of idealism especially appealing to him, because he did it again with Willie and Walt when he was with you, Milo, and no longer needed the money. There’s people like that, get a kick out of seducing virgins, so to speak.”

Both Milo and Amir were now watching me as if I were Scheherazade. Hawk seemed to have faded back a little into the background. No one made a sound. I was talking mostly to Milo now.

“Anyway the scheme was working good. Good enough for Prentice to have accumulated two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Also, while Amir was with Prentice, he learned that OUTrageous was investigating the possibility that another professor at the university, Robinson Nevins, was gay. Nevins was Amir’s bitterest rival, and Amir filed that away for future use.”

The pupils in Amir’s eyes seemed to have reduced to pinpoints. I spoke to him again.

“But somewhere in there you got bored with Prentice, and you dumped him and moved on and somewhere in there you took up with Milo Quant.”

Neither of them said anything.

“And Prentice was jealous, wasn’t he?”

Amir shrugged, as if he were embarrassed to talk about how magnetic he was.

“And he used his OUTrageous sources and he found out who you’d left him for.”

“The damned queen used to follow me,” Amir said to Milo.

Milo was looking at him as if he had just discovered a Gila monster sharing his pillow.

“And that was too explosive to let out,” I said. “Each of you sexually involved with everything you hate. Hard as it is for me to imagine it, I assume you have devotees, and your devotees would be hysterical. It would ruin both of you.”

Milo’s face was mottled to an almost maroon flush. Amir was rigidly still. It was raining harder outside. The water flooded down the motel window in crystalline sheets.

“So you spoke to one of the bodyguards, the guy with the horn-rimmed glasses, maybe, and they went and threw Prentice out his window, and left a generic suicide note, and went back up to Beecham.”

“I…” Milo Quant’s voice was very hoarse, it sounded as if it was squeezing out of a very narrow opening in his windpipe. “I knew nothing of this.”

“No,” I said. “You probably didn’t. Amir probably said that you wanted it done and didn’t want to know about it. Was it the guy with the horn rims, Amir?”

Amir stood up suddenly from the bed. He was naked. Hawk moved slightly to his right between the door and Amir.

“Chuck,” Milo said. “Did you have Chuck kill this boy?”

Amir stood looking around the room. He seemed unaware that he had no clothes on.

“Up to there, he’d probably have gotten away with everything, and you and he could have waltzed to the music of time for the rest of your lives. But he got greedy. He put out the story that the boy had killed himself because of Robinson Nevins. That way he gets rid of the kid, and he gets rid of a man whom he saw as a threat to his position as boss black man at the university. And that brought Robinson’s father in. And he brought Hawk in. And Hawk brought me in and here we are.”

“Is this true, Amir?” Milo wheezed.

“No. No. No.”

“You can consult with Chuck,” I said. “See what he says.”

Amir broke for the door.

“Let him,” I said to Hawk. “How far can he get?”

Hawk smiled and Amir Abdullah, naked, burst out of the room and disappeared down the corridor.

On the bed, Milo began to blubber. I could pick out the train of his complaint at first.

“I fought it,” I think he said. “I fought it day and night… but it consumed me… it is my sin… my corruption. I gave in to my corruption. And it has brought me to this.”

The ratio of blubber to clarity diminished so quickly as he continued that the rest seemed all blubber and I couldn’t understand it.

“What I think we need here now,” I said to Hawk, “is some cops.”

Hawk gri

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Pearl was visiting for the day. She and I had some donuts while I read the paper, and around 10:30 in the morning I put her leash on and took her for a stroll. As we walked down Boylston Street, realized that I had picked up a tail. By the time we crossed Arlington Street I realized that the tail was KC Roth. I crossed Boylston at the light and went into the Public Gardens. I let Pearl off her leash so she could point pigeons and barrel fruitlessly after squirrels. KC came behind me. I thought about what to do. Pearl spotted a duck and went into her full point, elongating her body, sucking up her stomach, one paw raised, head extended, tail motionless. I stopped beside her and aimed my finger at the duck and said “Bang” loudly. The duck flew up a few feet and resettled near the small bridge. Pearl seemed satisfied and began tracking Devil Dog crumbs among the shrubs.

KC was still behind me. I could confront her. I could lose her. Or I could ignore her. It was Wednesday. Susan didn’t see patients on Wednesday. She taught a seminar Wednesday mornings and took Wednesday afternoon off. It was our day to have lunch together. I smiled – a solution had presented itself. Pearl and I strolled and KC stalked us until we got back to the office at 11:30. Pearl and I went up. Pearl drank some water and then flopped on the rug. I stood and looked out my window. KC had taken up a position across the street outside F.A.O. Schwarz where she could gaze up at my window. I felt like the Pope.

Susan was due at noon. She arrived of course at 12:20.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry I’m late,” she said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re always late. I expected you to be late.”

She came over and gave me a large kiss, which, I thought, boded well for later. When she was through kissing me she went directly to the mirror over my washbasin and began to reapply lip gloss.

“Where shall we lunch?”

“We could go straight to my place,” I said.

“Un uh,” she said. “And eat about four in the afternoon?”

“We could order out,” I said.

“Sure, and while we waited…? I don’t think so.”

“Where would you like to go?” I said.

“Anyplace where you won’t try to undress me.”

“You’re the one that came in here with the big kiss,” I said.

“Because I love you, does that mean I have to lie down immediately on my back?”

“I think so,” I said. “Though I’ve never been a stickler for position.”

“I’ve noticed,” Susan said. “Let’s go to the Ritz Cafe.”