Hush Money

Just after the fifth inning started, Hawk came into my office with a smallish man in a short haircut, wearing a dark three-piece suit and a red and white polka dot bow tie. His skin was blue black and seemed tight on him. I turned the radio down, but not off.

“Client,” Hawk said.

“Ever hopeful,” I said.

I recognized the small man. His name was Robinson Nevins. He was a professor at the university, the author of at least a dozen books, a frequent guest on television shows, and a nationally known figure in what the press calls The Black Community.
Time
magazine had once referred to him as “the Lion of Academe.”

“I’m Robinson Nevins,” he said and put his hand out. I leaned forward and shook it without getting up. “Hawk may be premature in calling me a client. We need to talk a bit first, among other things we ought to find out if we can get along.”

“Whose tab?” I said to Hawk.

“Guarantee half everything I get,” Hawk said.

“That much,” I said.

“I can’t afford very much,” Nevins said.

“Maybe we won’t get along,” I said.

“I am dependent largely on a university salary and, as I’m sure you know, that is not a handsome sum.”

“Depends what sums you’re used to,” I said. “How about the books?”

“The books are well received, and have influence I hope beyond their sales. Their sales are modest. I make some money on the lecture circuit, but far too often I speak because I feel the cause is just rather than the price is right.”

“Don’t you hate when that happens,” I said.

Nevins smiled, but not as if he thought I was funny.

“What would you like to pay me a modest amount to do?” I said.

“I have been denied tenure,” Nevins said.

I stared at him.

“Tenure?” I said.

“Yes. Unjustly.”

“And you want me to look into that?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Tenure,” I said.

“Yes.”

I was silent. Nevins didn’t say anything else. I looked at Hawk.

“You want me to do this?” I said to Hawk.

“Yes.”

I was silent again.

“I understand your reaction,” Nevins said. “I sound churlish to you. And you think that there are causes of greater urgency than whether I get tenure at the university.”

I pointed a finger at Nevins. “Bingo,” I said.

“I know, were I you that would be my reaction. But it is not simply that I am denied tenure and therefore will have to leave. I can find another job. What is at issue here is that I shouldn’t have been denied tenure. I am more qualified than most members of the tenure committee. More qualified than many who have received tenure.”

“You think it’s racial?” I said.

“It would be an easy supposition and one most of us have made correctly in our lives,” Nevins said. “But I am, in fact, not sure that it is.”

“What else?” I said.

“I don’t know. I am something of an anomaly for a black man at the university. I am relatively conservative.”

“What do you teach?”

“American literature.”

“Black perspective?”

“Well, my perspective. I include black writers, but I also include a number of dead white men.”

“Daring,” I said.

“Do you know that we are turning out English Ph.Ds who have never read Milton?”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. “You think you were shot down for being insufficiently correct?”

“Possibly,” Nevins said. “I don’t know. What I know is there was a smear campaign orchestrated by someone, which I believe cost me tenure.”

“You want me to find out who did the smearing?”

“Yes.”

I looked at Hawk again. He nodded.

“Wouldn’t an attorney be more likely to get you your tenure?”

“I am not fighting this because I didn’t get tenure. I’m fighting this because it’s wrong.”

“If you got the tenure decision reversed, would you accept it?”

Nevins smiled at the question.

“You press a person, don’t you,” he said.

“I like to know things,” I said.

“Like how sincere I am about fighting this because it’s wrong.”

“That would be good to know,” I said.

“If I were offered tenure I would have to assess my options. But even if I accepted it, the process was still wrong.”

“What was the thrust of the smear campaign?”

Hawk appeared to be listening to the faintly audible ball game. And he was. If asked, he could give you the score and recap the last inning. He would also be able to tell you everything I said or Nevins said and how we looked when we said it.

“A young man, a graduate student, committed suicide this past semester. It was alleged to be the result of a sexual relationship with me.”

“What was his name?” I said.

“Prentice Lamont.”

“Any truth to it?”

“None.”

I nodded.

“I imagine you’d like that laid to rest as well.”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay meaning you’ll do it?”

“Yep.”

Nevins seemed mildly puzzled.

“Like that?”

“Yep.”

“Aren’t you going to ask if I’m gay?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t care.”

“But,” Nevins frowned, “it might be germane.”

“If it is, I’ll ask,” I said.

Nevins opened his mouth and closed it and sat back in his chair. Then he took a green-covered checkbook out of his inside coat pocket.

“What will you need for a retainer?”

“No need for a retainer,” I said.

“Oh, but I insist. I don’t want favors.”

Hawk was looking out the window at the slush accumulating around the stylishly booted ankles of the young women leaving the insurance companies on their way to lunch.

Without turning around he said, “He doing me the favor, Robinson.”

Nevins was not slow. He looked once at Hawk, and back at me, and nodded to himself. He put the green checkbook back inside his coat and stood.

“Do you need anything else right now?” he said.

“No. I’ll poke around at it, see what develops.”

“And I’ll hear from you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Will you be involved, Hawk?”

Hawk turned from the window and grinned at Nevins.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll help him with the hard stuff.”

Nevins put out his hand. “I appreciate your taking this,” he said, “for whomever you’re doing the favor.”

I shook it.

“You need a ride anyplace?” he said to Hawk.

Hawk shook his head. Nevins nodded as if to confirm something in his head, and turned and left. Hawk continued to look out the window. The ball game had moved quietly into the eighth inning. Outside my window it was mostly rain now. Hawk turned away from the window and looked at me without expression.

“Tenure?” I said.

Hawk smiled.

“‘Fraid so,” he said.

“Surprised Susan don’t have you color-coordinating your ammunition,” Hawk said.

“Well, she does sort of like the.357,” I said, “because she likes how the lead nose of the bullets contrasts with the stainless steel cylinder.”

“Tasteful in small things,” Hawk said, “tasteful in all things.”

He poured a pot full of water into the coffeemaker and turned the machine on.

“Tell me about Robinson Nevins,” I said.

“Father is Bobby Nevins,” Hawk said.

“The trainer?”

“Un huh.”

Hawk and I both watched the small trickle of coffee that Mr. Coffee was generating very slowly into the pot.

“A watched pot never brews,” I said.

“Yeah it will,” Hawk said.

“You know Bobby Nevins?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“He ever train you?”

“Some,” he said.

“That how you know the kid?”

“Un huh.”

The pot had filled slowly.

“Tole you it would brew,” Hawk said.

“Jeez,” I said. “I was sure I was right.”

Hawk took it from the machine and poured us two cups of coffee.

“You are a domestic fool,” I said when Hawk handed me a cup.

“Ancestors were house slaves,” Hawk said. “It’s in the genes.”

“So how well you know Robinson Nevins?” I said.

“Bobby come closer to bringing me up,” Hawk said, “than anyone else.”

“So you’ve known Robinson all your life.”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“No, not so much. He was around some.”

“But he came to you when he got in trouble,” I said.

Hawk shook his head.

“Bobby did,” Hawk said.

“He’s still alive?”

“Yeah. Eighty-two now, still healthy, still hangs out at the gym looking for young fighters.”

“So Robinson was born to him late.”

“Yes, only kid. Got divorced when Robinson was pretty small. Wasn’t a good divorce. Don’t know where Robinson’s mother is now.”

“Kid close to his father?”

“Bobby loves that kid,” Hawk said. “Kid grew up mostly with his mother. But Bobby paid the bills and saw the kid when he could and when the kid got to be a professor Bobby was walking around talking like the kid had just become heavyweight champ. You know, I don’t know if Bobby ever even went to school. I’m not sure how much Bobby can read.”

“How about Robinson. He close to Bobby?”

“I think he’s a little embarrassed by his father,” Hawk said. “He’s close to his mamma and his mamma never had much good to say about Bobby.”

I nodded.

“What do you know about his problems?” I said.

“Just what he told you.”

“What do you think?”

“‘Bout the tenure or the suicide or what?”

“Any of the above,” I said.

“Don’t know shit about tenure,” Hawk said. “Kid who died, Prentice Lamont, was a very gay guy. I pretty sure Robinson knew him. Don’t know if Robinson is gay or not.”

“How gay?” I said.

“Activist. Ran a little flier service that outed people.”

“How nice,” I said. “What’s the rumor about him and Robinson?”

“That they had a big affair and Robinson broke it off and the kid killed himself.”

“Love unrequited?”

“That’s the rumor,” Hawk said.

“Bobby Nevins know this rumor?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s he say?”

“He says fix it,” Hawk said. “He wants the kid to get his tenure.”

“Bobby got any money?”

Hawk shook his head. He was holding the coffee mug in both hands, his hips resting against the color-coordinated countertop, the steam from the coffee rising faintly in front of his face.

“So we’re in this for the donut,” I said.

Hawk nodded and smiled. When he smiled he looked like a large black Mona Lisa, if Mona had shaved her head… and had a nineteen-inch bicep… and a 29-inch waist… and very little conscience.

“How’s that work, exactly,” I said. “You take on somebody for no money, and I get to share in the profits?”

“You the detective,” Hawk said.

“True.”

“Whereas,” Hawk said, “I just a simple thug.”

“Also true.”

“And you my friend.”

“Embarrassing, but true.”

“So.” Hawk spread his hands, holding the coffee cup with his right, in a gesture of voilа. “I try to bring you as much business as I can.”

“Like this thing.”

“Exactly,” Hawk said. “And I going to help you with it.”

“Swell,” I said.

“So what we going to do first?” Hawk said.

“Drink some more coffee,” I said.

Hawk nodded. “Tha’s a good start,” he said. “Then what we going to do, bawse?”

“Get you diction lessons,” I said. “I always know when you are really jerking my chain, because you start sounding like Mantan Moreland.”

“Mantan Moreland?”

“I’m kind of proud of coming up with that one myself,” I said. “Where did the Lamont kid do the deed?”

“Had a condo in the South End,” Hawk said. “Did it there.”

“Okay, that’s Boston Homicide. Which means Quirk and Bel-son.”

“So we talk with them first,” Hawk said.

“I’ll talk with them first,” I said. “They’d arrest you.”

“Bigots,” Hawk said.