Джон Краули - New Haven Noir

Students were arriving up and down High Street, Elm Street, Church Street. Parents double-parked like crazy and five well-dressed, upper-middle-class white men screamed at each other to Move that fucking Volvo right now! Boxes, bags, baskets, and books came in waves. Parents and siblings and friends in little parades from the street to the door. Twin sisters from Shanghai in Chanel suits and killer heels, each carrying one small box while a member of their father’s staff lugged the large, matching suitcases. Two slim, dark boys in clean, new Yale sweatshirts, each carrying a battered suitcase and a garbage bag, exchanged looks of excitement and apprehension. Some, with experience, did a bucket brigade and let their parents take them out for lunch. A father and son opened their beers and sat on the wall while two burly uniformed men moved the kid’s stuff. The other families observed them with envy and resentment and disgust. The first-year students clung to every object as if only they knew where it should go and how it should be handled.

And here I was, unarmed and unofficial, ready to chat up Allison and see what conclusions we came to. I didn’t think I could stop her if she decided to Krav Maga me, but I thought a gun could. There’s no martial art better than a gun, which is why I don’t study karate. And it’s why I wish I had gotten around to cleaning and licensing Uncle Luis’s Glock.

I walked up Whitney and turned down Allison’s street, my favorite in New Haven: Autumn Street. A few blocks of houses, mostly classic New England with a few crazy reminders of seventies architecture. It was quiet but lively. Haimish , if you speak Yiddish. Gemütlich , if you speak German. You would walk your dog and talk to your neighbor. People had block parties there. If you were sick, a neighbor would watch you while your mother went to the store. Our particular neighbor read me Wind in the Willows and brought cookies with her. For a couple of years, when I was small, we lived at 175. Allison rented 236. Slate walkway, unpolished brass mail slot, charming wrought-iron bench.

She opened the door before I could knock. It wasn’t her usual hunch-and-skulk. Her clothing was a hipster hodgepodge: black-and-white gingham blouse tied above her waist, baggy olive-green corduroys, and her hair was piled on her head in a flattering Brooklyn ballerina updo.

“Come on in,” she said energetically. “Poor Daniel.”

Her face was different. She was shining and her rheumy, half-closed eyes were open and bright. Something was very becoming. Clothes were strewn all over the living room.

“I have to move these papers. I’m sorry, you know, I was in the middle of going to Paris and now I have an offer — associate professor at Iowa. Barbara Hill’s moving to Emory, she got one of those Coca-Cola chairs and she decided, last minute, to take it. I get to go to Paris and take her place in Iowa, if I want. What a lucky break. And poor Daniel. Do you know anything about it?” She almost winked.

“Word travels fast,” I said. “Iowa. Isn’t that where Jim Fiske is going?”

He set up Daniel and the payoff is they get married and move to Iowa? She set up Daniel, just because he was so handsome and annoying, and the payoff is Jim helps her get a tenured position at Iowa when the time comes? They always loved each other since they were kids way back when, and they set up Daniel together because once she’d killed Bullfinch, why not rid the world of another asshole? Okay, that would be more like me.

She glanced down. “Yes, it is, as a matter of fact. It’s very nice that I might end up there. Also, I FedEx-ed my manuscript to the department chair at Iowa. That helped. I was just so blocked until... really, just the last few weeks.” She said all of this with a chuckle in her voice, while Amy Winehouse filled the room.

“Allison, look, you’re out of here. What do you think about this? Do you really think he killed Bullfinch?”

“I guess so.” Her voice was low and sure. “I mean, who ever really knows another person, but... it seems clear that’s what happened. Doesn’t look like the police bungled this one.” She gave a small sigh and smiled in a worldly way. Apparently, murder and Paris were a cure for every single thing that had ailed her.

“Can I ask, where were you on August 26?”

“What? What difference does it make?”

“Were you alone?”

“Not at all. I was with Daniel for a few hours. It wouldn’t have taken him more than ten minutes to kill poor Oliver. Then I went off to be with Jim. Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dell. With Jim and with Marilyn Kozlowitz from history, and Dick Price from astronomy. Jim made dinner for us all and we played bridge until midnight... You know, you’re not actually investigating a murder.” She chuckled as if I were such a goofball. She was so much more attractive now.

“And last night?” I just wondered. She looked so rosy .

“I wasn’t alone.” She smirked. “Life goes on.”

“Well, for you, yeah. Congratulations.”

She grinned a little at my tone, shifted her hips to “You Know I’m No Good,” and asked if there was anything else on my mind.

“I see you’re packing. Exciting, going to Paris. Your first time?”

She smiled again and answered in French, which I don’t speak.

“What’s that?”

“I said, you don’t know a fucking thing about me. All you saw was glamorous Daniel and poor klutzy me. I said, I’ve been to Paris more often than you’ve been to Pepe’s. My mother’s French.” She held up two passports.

“I don’t speak French. But the head of the Omni Foundation speaks — and writes — excellent English. I was in touch with her. Sandrine Boulanger, director of the Omni. I pretended I was a professor, looking to hire you. She wrote back. All excited about the great reference you got from the estimable Oliver Bullfinch. Shall we look at her e-mail together?”

She didn’t flinch. “ Absolument .”

We stood close together, in the position of like-minded friends checking out a restaurant review or looking up an old acquaintance on Facebook together. Her eyes slid over the sentences.

“I don’t think it was right of you to lie to them, professor . Really. But you see what a lovely person she is. I can’t wait to meet her.”

“You don’t have anything to say about an e-mail from Bullfinch within hours of the time he was murdered?”

“No, I don’t.” She sighed. “I wish I’d known. I would have thanked him. We had such a hard time with each other. That was very sweet of him.”

“And odd,” I insisted. “He told everyone that he was going to block you for that big grant.”

“He did, I know. Maybe he changed his mind. Jim lobbied for me. I guess it worked, at the last moment.” Her eyes widened playfully. “Ohhh. You think it wasn’t Bullfinch. I mean, the time of death can’t be that exact, of course. You know that, right — even though you’re an amateur. But maybe you think someone wrote a recommendation from Bullfinch — meaning it wasn’t really from Bullfinch — after he died.”

I pocketed my phone. On television, people crumble when you show them evidence or an e-mail that could, conceivably, constitute evidence. “I do think that,” I said.

“ Oh la la. It could be, but it seems unlikely. It’s much more probable and logical to conclude that having been pressed by me and Jim on this very subject, Oliver Bullfinch decided to do the right thing — at what turned out to be the last minute.” She sighed again, prettily. “That’s what I choose to remember. Or it could have been Daniel, crossing the line, like the police think. We had been very close at one time. And he killed poor Oliver in a rage. They had so many differences. Oliver was so insulting about Daniel’s work, about his intelligence, really. He may have been right. We’ll never know. That’s what’s so difficult about all this, right? We’ll never know.”