The Committee. Sterling Watson
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Название: The Committee
Автор: Sterling Watson
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Триллеры
isbn: 9781617757822
isbn:
“Right.” He leaned his head back on the seat and put his hand on the subpoena in his pocket. He knew who would want to see it.
* * *
At home, the Gainesville Sun was waiting for them on the doorstep. Wearily, Stall picked it up and went into the kitchen to spread it on the table. He looked at the headline with dread: “UF Professor’s Death Thought to Be Suicide.”
Another article was headlined: “Committee Subpoenas UF Professors in Classrooms, Students Look On.” And another: “Political Science Professor Targeted for Alleged Subversive Statements in Classroom. Students Read Communist Manifesto.”
Stall sat at his dining room table and let his head fall into his hands. Christ, the world was ending. What were these people doing to the university he loved? Didn’t they know they were running through a village of thatched houses waving burning torches? Were they too drunk with power and hatred to know it? They could destroy in a few months something that had taken a thousand years to build. Stall’s face burned with anguish and shame when he realized that now he would have to worry about the economic theories and the political affiliations, however whimsical, of the writers he asked students to read. Christ, Wallace Stevens, hadn’t he flirted with communism in his youth? If a political science prof was in trouble for teaching Marx—Marx who was wrong about almost everything but whose work was foundational to modern political philosophy—then what might happen to an English teacher who taught D.H. Lawrence?
Stall felt Maureen’s hands come to rest on his shoulders. “I’d offer you a drink to relax you, but you’ve had enough.”
Stall muttered, “More than enough.” Of a lot of things. He reached up and rested a hand on hers. “But not of you,” he said. “You’re a brick.”
“What, you mean I’m hard and red and good for stacking?”
“No, I mean solid. You know what I mean.” She knew.
“I’m your Lady Brett,” she said, “and you’re my Jake. Wait, that doesn’t quite work. You’ve still got your . . .”
“Last time I looked. Let’s go upstairs and use it.”
“After you, my bullfighter, my man.”
EIGHT
The country club had put its boardroom at President Connor’s disposal, and that was where Margaret Braithwaite had instructed Stall to wait while Connor finished his morning round. “He should be done by eleven o’clock, but don’t worry if he’s a little late.” Stall didn’t mention any plans he might have for the morning.
A white-haired Negro in a starched white jacket showed Stall to the brass-and-mahogany boardroom. The man bowed when Stall sat down at the long table where the club’s leaders met to decide such weighty matters as whether or not a ball that came to rest on the far side of a sidewalk behind the ninth green entitled a player to a free drop. The Negro said, “May I serve you a drink, suh?”
“I’ll wait and see.”
“Yes suh. He’ll be heah in a moment. I just seen him in the locker room.”
Connor strode in looking tired but happy after his round. His tan was golden and his step springy. He looked like he could still go ten rounds with Benny Leonard. Stall stood and they shook hands. “Mr. President, thank you for the new coat, but I don’t think I can—”
“Ah, forget it, Tom. Comes out of petty cash. And it was the right thing for me to do. You wouldn’t dispute a man’s judgment in such a matter, would you?”
What could Stall say to that? He placed the subpoena on the mahogany table. “Mrs. Leaf found this when they sent her husband’s clothes home from the morgue.”
Connor read the document with the sharp eye of a country lawyer. When he finished, he shook his head. “The medical examiner decided not to keep this?”
“That’s what Mrs. Leaf told me.”
“Still a small town, this Gainesville of ours. You could call it shoddy work by a public official or compassion. More likely this was too hot for him to touch. In any case, fortunate for our cause.” Connor rubbed his tanned face and Stall heard the sound of whiskers scraped against the grain. “So now we know what happened. Those two goons went to Leaf’s classroom and served him.”
Stall touched the subpoena on the table. “I meet with Jack’s class tomorrow afternoon. I can ask them what they saw.”
“I wouldn’t do that. If they bring it up, of course you’ll listen. And let me know what they say.”
“According to what I read in the paper yesterday, the Committee doesn’t always show that kind of mercy.”
“No, they don’t,” Connor said. “They served Professor Margolis in his classroom, in front of his students. Big reputation in political science, did you know that?”
Stall was obscurely embarrassed to say that he was not up on the scholarly reputations of the political science faculty. Whatever political scientists did, Stall was pretty sure it was not science. It seemed that more and more academic disciplines these days tried to confer legitimacy upon themselves by embracing numbers. Someday, perhaps, the Department of English Science, but thank God not yet.
Stall put his hand on the subpoena again. “Mr. President, does having this help us?”
“Call me Jim, Tom.” Connor reached out and moved the subpoena from Stall’s side of the table to his. “We’re up to our backsides in the same trouble, so we might as well drop the formalities.”
Stall nodded, but it would be hard to comply. Connor was an imposing figure, a man who would have commanded respect in any walk of life.
Connor said, “They’re developing their network of lackeys and informants. They wouldn’t know who’s teaching what or who’s been in a bus station if they hadn’t already talked to students or their parents. Some kid flunks a quiz and goes home to his tobacco-farming daddy in Sopchoppy, and shows him his copy of Das Kapital, and Daddy gets his humors all out of balance and calls his local representative, who gets in touch with our bootless Mr. Johns, and that’s how this kind of thing grows from maggot to full-blown blue bottle fly. Somebody knew Jack Leaf would be in that bus station.” Connor took a long breath and looked Stall in the eyes. “We can work that side of the street too, if you know what I mean, Tom.”
“Mr. President, I think I do, approximately, but I don’t see how I fit into this.”
“Call me Jim. That’s the second time I’ve asked. You’re an exceptional young man with a promising future at this university. And you know what’s at stake here as well as I do.”
Jim Connor reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a manila envelope, passed it across the table to Stall. God, Stall thought, so many coats and so many envelopes. This is like Restoration drama. With something like dread, he opened the envelope. It contained a photo of two men who looked like father and son. They stood by a lakeside with boats and some sort of pergola in the background. The younger man whose father’s arm was slung across his shoulders looked vaguely familiar to СКАЧАТЬ