Prologue (10 page)

Paul kicked over Lewis’ beer.

“Hey, what the hell, man?” Lewis asked as beer trickled under his coaster.

“You…Amanda Hutch?”

“Hutch, that’s it, yeah. What’s wrong?”

“Oh nothing,” Paul exhaled. “She and I went out in grad school is
all.
At Cornell.
She’s at MIT now?”

Lewis rolled out and sat up, grinning. “And Nigel’s asking her out? She’s probably desperate for a real man, Paul.”

“I have got to start reading those faculty circulars.”

“How well do you know her? Not in the Biblical sense, I mean.”

Paul shook his head. “She’s anti-Sov, that’s for sure. Or at least she was. And she was the top student in her department, she knows her stuff.”

Lewis reached over and turned the tape player up. “If she’s at MIT she knows her stuff. Could you work with her?”

“I don’t…I could ask her.”

“Over drinks?”

Paul shook his head. “I’m a happily married man, Lewis.”

Lewis looked at Paul.
“Correction.
You’re a married man.” He lay back down and rolled under the car again. “You ought to get out a bit more often, Paul. Rattle Valerie’s cage some. Be up to something with a hot history prof. Maybe she’ll notice and realize it’s worth her time to treat you a little better.”

“It would hurt Grace too much,” Paul said quietly. “She’d pick up on it. But you could ask her out. Take one for the team.”

Amanda Hutch.

Lewis sighed. “I don’t believe in mixing work and pleasure like that. Besides, she’s Ivy League, right?”

“We were at Cornell together, yeah. So?”

“So let’s just say the only blacks she probably interacted with growing up were wearing coveralls. Call me paranoid, but that’s my experience. Ain’t nobody alive more afraid of and more patronizing to successful blacks than liberal Ivy League white girls.”

“Maybe she’d like to find out if what they say about black men is true,” Paul said mischievously.

“Phillips.” Lewis took the proffered Phillips screwdriver. “It is.”

“I could tell her Grace is doing a history project and ask her to identify a tipping point. There must be an event which could flip the balance of power the other way.”

“Yeah, you could. Or you could take her out for drinks, confide in her that underneath your mild-mannered scientist exterior you’re really James Bond bent on destroying the Evil Empire and would she like to discuss a few items of great interest in bed.”

Paul laughed. “Do I hear the voice of experience, Lew?”

“Not me. Wire cutters. Hey, I already got Sox tickets for next year, did I tell you? You gotta’ buy ‘em a year in advance now.”

Paul let his mind wander. Amanda Hutch. Why hadn’t they gotten married? They’d dated all through grad school and spent almost all their free time together, which was to say one evening a week they’d get Chinese and rent a silly old movie. They rarely saw the end of the movies. They’d either be in bed or Amanda would have remembered something she had to do.

“…
so
I said all right, I’ll take the lower deck. Paul, I have always–always–had season tickets along the third base line.” Lewis paused. “Earth to deVere, Earth to deVere,
come
in Space Cadet deVere.”

Paul snapped back in. Lewis was staring at him from under the chassis. Paul replayed the tape in his mind that had been collecting since he’d decided to turn his brain to other things. It was a skill of his, honed from many years of marriage. She’d been charmed by his intense preoccupation with his fascinating work when they were dating, but irritated that his head was always in the clouds rather than listening to her after they were married.

“The third-base seats were gone. So whatja’ do?”

Lewis rolled out halfway and grinned. “Well, I notice the ticket clerk was a rather attractive lady so I turned on the groove. In about three minutes she was agreeing to discuss this little ticket matter over drinks.”

“And?”

“And I’d hate to have to go through a whole season in the upper deck, y’know?”

“I take it you don’t have to, after your evening over drinks.”

“Better seats, even.”

Paul shook his head.
“What’s with hustling ticket clerks?
Weren’t you seeing some lady from
Springfield
last I knew?”

“Rachel,” Ginter said, rolling back under the car.

“Yeah, Rachel.
What happened to her?” Paul asked.

Ginter laughed. “Remember in April when you and I had that four day conference in
Worcester
?”

“Yeah,” Paul said cautiously.

“Well, she called on that Thursday and said that she was going to visit her girlfriend, Margarita, in
Boston
that weekend so I asked her to stop by on her way in the next afternoon. She gave me some vague thing about her car needing new tires and she didn’t know when she could pick it up from the dealership on Friday but she’d call me. I got the impression she was trying to avoid seeing me. Then, Friday afternoon she called and said that the dealership had to put her old, bald, unsafe tires back on because they didn’t have the right ones in stock and wouldn’t be able to get them until Monday and they had told her not to drive it so she was going to take a bus into town and Margarita would pick her up so we couldn’t get together. She was sorry, that type of thing.”

“Yeah, so?”
Paul asked, perplexed.

“Paul, have you ever seen them work in a dealership repair bay? The most important thing in their billing is lift time. No dealership is going to get a car up on a lift, take off the wheels, and then strip the tires off the rims unless they have the new tires right there next to the lift before they begin. Her story about the dealership remounting her old tires was total bullshit.”

“You broke up with a girl because you didn’t believe her story about tires?” Paul asked incredulously. He could hear Lewis tugging on bolts.

“No, not just that,” Ginter said. “On that Sunday she sent me a G-mail describing her weekend in
Boston
while I was in
Worcester
getting bored out of my mind. She told me how she had gotten into South Station at around six and she and Margarita had gone out to eat in the North End, had walked around Newbury Street shopping on Saturday afternoon, and then she had caught the 1:00 bus back to Springfield on Sunday.”

“I still don’t get it,” Paul said, slightly confused.

“I figure she must have taken the bus rather than drive for some other reason. I told her that her tire story was crap, and then she changed it and admitted that the dealership had put on new tires but that they were the wrong size and they hadn’t balanced them, which made even less sense. When I told her I didn’t believe
that
story she changed it again to say that she took the bus because it was too cold to drive to
Boston
.”

“Huh?
Too cold?”
Paul asked, now clearly intrigued.
“To drive a car?
So, what was she up to?”

“That’s what I couldn’t figure out at first,” Ginter said. “Then I remembered that her ex-boyfriend was this older guy who was into aroma therapy or some other alternative mental health hokum and that he had moved to
New York
a few years ago when he couldn’t make it around here. I checked the connections from South Station to
New York
and the return times on Sunday and guess what?”

“Did she admit it?” Paul asked.

“Never did. But I never mentioned
New York
to her either. She stuck with her too-cold story and then a couple of weeks later she told me that she and Margarita were going up to Prince Edward Island in Canada for a week so that Margarita could do some amateur photography up there. To put me at ease she said I could call her on her cell all week.”

“When was this?”

“End of April.”

“And?”
Paul asked.

“I called her a couple of times on her cell and she’d answer during the day but never at night, and she called me a few times and would say that she and Margarita were in the car driving here or there to take photos. But the connection never sounded like it does when someone is on a cell in a car, you know what I mean?”

Paul nodded.

“It also wasn’t the conversation you have when someone is sitting right next to you either,” Ginter continued. “Once when I called she said that they were at the motel and that Margarita was in the bathroom.”

Paul was laughing now. “You’re a suspicious bastard,” he said. “Did you confront her?”

“
Nah,
never had to. I called her on my cell and then called the cell company-we have the same one-and asked if they had towers on
Prince Edward Island
and they don’t. Then I asked for the location of the receiving tower for the cell call I had placed.”

“And?”

“
Manhattan
,” Ginter answered, giving an especially tough bolt a final tug.

“That’s great!” Paul said, laughing. “But how could she call you from the old guy’s apartment? Wouldn’t he have minded?”

“I figure he was at work hawking aroma bottles during the day and at night she just turned her cell off.”

Paul shook his head.
“Where’d you learn to be so damn clever, the army?”

“Hey, I was in the army, I wasn’t a cop,” Ginter said. “I just figure it pays to be always thinking, if you know what I mean. Never trust anyone. There are too many pathological liars out there.”

Paul continued to chuckle. “So anyway, when
do
the Newark Yankees come to town next year?” he asked.

“Middle of May.
You cool to go?”

“I’ll have to check. You’re talking next year for crying out loud.”

“’Cause I got a favor to pay off, y’know?”

“The ticket agent wants to see the Yankees?” Paul guessed.

“Ever since they moved to
Newark
they’ve been her team.”

“Pencil me in. Promise her for later in the season, she’ll forget all about you by then. That’s a whole year away.”