(2012) Cross-Border Murder (7 page)

That did not overly surprise me. Many left-wing intellectuals had been supportive of the movement’s aspirations.

“There’s more.” The smugness in his voice seemed to rise a notch. “The power behind the throne who probably recruited Symansky.”

“Oh? Who?”

“His wife. Stella. Quite an assortment of characters you had up there in those days,” he paused and I could hear him shuffle his notes, “her older brother was FBI. He’s retired now. She was recruited as an FBI informant when she was a student at Columbia. She married Symansky just after graduation. Hence her activities predate her husband’s. In Canada they worked as a pair on small retainers for both the CIA and the FBI. The FBI, of course, were also interested in the Bull project! Apparently, Bull had become an American citizen, but had violated an American embargo against shipping weapons to South Africa.”

“I know. He eventually got slapped on the wrist for it. Spent a few months in an American jail just south of the border. I gather it was some kind of plea bargain arrangement. Doesn’t sound like they were terribly concerned. But, Jesus, I still can’t get over what you’re telling me about the Symanskys!”

Haylocke laughed. “Their family backgrounds probably explain it. Deep roots in countries under Communist rule with European relatives who hoped that America would someday liberate them. For the Symanskys, attitudes towards Vietnam and China back then were probably a kind of litmus test of American loyalty. They must have hated the Monaghans and the group of ideological lefties at Winston. At least anyone who was American.”

“Yeah. Makes sense. Sort of. Did the name Montini come up at all?”

I could see Gina go still.

“No. None of the others either. So where are the Symanskys now?”

“At a college less than a hundred miles from here. Guess I’ll have to pay them a visit.”

“Let me know if you want a follow up from here.”

“Will do. And thanks for everything. I’ll check back with you before I write anything.”

“Right. Be careful what you say to the Symanskys. Don’t want to ruin my sources.”

“Will do.”

I put down the receiver. I filled Gina in on what she had not grasped from hearing my side of the conversation.

I gave Gina a baleful look. “I think this is all out of my league,” I said.

She gave me a thoughtful look. “You’re not going to quit, are you?”

“No,” I muttered. “I’m not a quitter. Just a swimmer who is out of his depths.”

She seem relieved. “Good. Now at least we know what the Symanskys were. Professional snits and liars.” She snorted contemptuously. She shook her head in distaste. “Monaghan we’ve discovered was an arrogant shit. Gooden is unco-operative and full of himself. And Hendricks is an evasive drunk. No wonder they turned out not to be the friends my father thought they were.”

“Fair weather friends,” I muttered, “We’ve all had our share of them.”

“All we have to do now,” she said, “is to keep hounding them. A murderer can’t hide behind arrogance and lies forever.”

It sounded simple enough. I wasn’t so sure. I glanced at my watch. It was time to visit Joe Gibbs. This time I did not object to Gina coming along. Joe had been more efficient than I had expected. We left with a large manila envelope full of documents. Gina and I went to the cafeteria.

“So what did he give you?”

I glanced quickly through the documents. “Where all their offices were located when the murder was committed. The courses they were teaching. Their class lists. What projects they had worked on or were working on. Let me see, what else? What grants they had. Any evaluations of their work or their conduct at the university. Their bios and publications.” I put the papers back “I want to have a quick look at the building where Monaghan was killed.”

We went out through a door that led to a quadrangle. I pointed out the four-story building where Monaghan’s office had been and where his body had been discovered by her father, although the fact that he had fled the scene without calling security had helped to make him a prime suspect with the police.

“Was my father’s office there too?”

I took out the campus map and the location sheet Gibbs had given me.

“No.” I gestured behind me. “It was in the main building. On the fourth floor near where the faculty club is now.”

She turned and stared at the building. “But the rest of the fourth floor is now administrative offices. It’s almost as if his presence here has been erased.”

“Nothing lasts very long anymore,” I said, thinking of the changes which had happened recently to my profession.

We headed for the engineering building. In the foyer a security guard sitting at a desk behind a glass window glanced up at us. Then he returned to a book he was reading. We found a stairwell which led to the upper floors. We went up two flights. The structural design of the building was simple. Against the outside walls were offices. Outside the office doors was a corridor which circled the building with stairwells at each corner. The inner rectangle contained a maze of classrooms and laboratories. There was one service elevator at the back of the building. Monaghan’s office had been almost at the center of the western corridor. It was now occupied by a Professor Gaudieri. I knocked at the door, waited, knocked again, but there was no answer. I looked at Gina and shrugged. At that moment a door two offices down the corridor opened and Professor Hendricks stepped out into the corridor.

“Well, well,” he said, “what brings the two of you over here?”

“Visiting the scene of the crime. We wanted to take a look at Monaghan’s old office.”

“What in heavens for?”

“Nothing in particular.”

He laughed. “A waste of time I’m afraid. Monaghan’s office has had at least four occupants since then, and at least as many redecorations.”

“Was your office always where it is now? I thought you said you had the office next to his.”

“Used to, but down the other way.” He pointed down the corridor. “But the whole floor has been redesigned, in part to give the dean a much larger space.” I glanced down the corridor and recognized Gooden’s corner office.

“Symansky had his office in this building as well, didn’t he?”

He frowned. “Can’t remember for certain. But now that you mention it, yes, it was in this building somewhere.”

I nodded.

“Well, I’m on my way to the faculty club. Care to join me?” But there was no enthusiasm in his offer and he seemed relieved when we turned it down.

“No. We’d better be on our way.”

Hendricks headed towards the stairwell. We followed. As we went down the stairs to the main floor, he said, “I telephoned Naomi.”

“Oh, yes?” I said. I tried to stare him into silence. He didn’t get the message. “She told me that you had dropped by for a visit.” I could feel Gina tense behind me.

“Did you know she was a lesbian?” I asked him.

“Lesbian?”

“Yes.” I could sense that Gina was hanging on to every word.

The information had startled him. “You’re kidding!”

“I don’t think so.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“She has a flat in the gay village. Shares it with a tough young woman who is very protective of her.”

“Well, well,” he said. His shoulders seemed to sag. He gave Gina a sad smile. “Who would have thought it.”

We parted at the main door. He picked up his pace as he headed towards the faculty club. Back in the quadrangle, Gina stared at me tight lipped.

“Men!” She said with both anger and distrust. I remained silent. I don’t know whether she was chastising me for singling out Naomi Bronson as a lesbian, or for not letting her know I had gone to see her.

“So what did she have to say.”

I spoke in a flat voice. “She doesn’t dispute your father’s innocence. Said she would be willing to talk to you. But not to me. You’re to call her next Monday.”

“Why not before?”

“She’s going out of town. She despised her husband. Called him cold and arrogant. Said he had known about your father’s affair. He had not been the least bit jealous. He had found it amusing.” I ran out of things to say.

“So why didn’t you take me with you?”

“I don’t know.” I began to walk across the quadrangle. “Anyway she wouldn’t have told you anything more, at least not in my presence.”

“How do you know.”

“She said so.”

“So why didn’t you call me? I could have tried to see her last night.”

“Because she said she was going out of town, that she would speak to you next week. And not before. Besides by then you had gone out to see a movie.”

“Only because you didn’t return my damn call!”

“I know. Look, I’m sorry. But I told you I prefer to work alone.”

“I know that! But you can at least let me know when you’re going to talk to someone. I’m not always going to insist on tagging along. I mean, I don’t intend to play Dr. Watson to your Sherlock Holmes!”

I grinned. “I’ve apologized. From now on I’ll keep you informed.”

She sighed. She knew there was no point in continuing the argument. “Is she really a lesbian now?”

“I’m pretty sure of it.”

I thought of her father. And the pointlessness of his affair. I wondered if she was thinking of him as well. We sat on a bench in the center of the quadrangle. I lit a cigarette and stared out into space.

“What are you thinking about?” She said finally.

“Everyone in that group seemed to be living lives that were a lie. Except Monaghan maybe.”

“Do you include my father in that category?”

“There must have been a brief period when he lied about the affair.”

She shook her head. “He may have tried to keep it a secret. But I don’t think he lied about it when my mother confronted him. My parents had their faults, but I never saw them as liars. And what about Gooden?”

“When I spoke to him yesterday, he lied to me about how well he knew Monaghan. That is, of course, if we believe Hendricks. But then Hendricks may have been lying to me too. He obviously doesn’t like Gooden.” I gave a disgusted laugh. “What a strange maze we’ve walked into. Odd, too, isn’t it, how Hendricks seemed to enjoy yesterday talking about a period which must have been very unpleasant for him at the time. Hanging out with a group that barely tolerated him. Probably even despised him. Maybe it was the booze. I don’t know. It just struck me as a bit unusual.”

“I can understand that.”

“Can you? Well I can’t.”

“I bet you’ve never belonged to a self-help group.”

“No. Can’t say that I have.”

She tossed her head in mock wonderment. “Man, you do live in a patriarchal world!”

“Stop being simplistic.” I said. “It doesn’t help.”

“Okay, okay.” She said. “But you should understand that it’s almost a policy for women to meet in small groups to share past experiences. And this may come as a surprise to you, but we do get relief, and even some pleasure from it. You and I were probably the first people Hendricks had a chance to talk to about an essentially negative period in his life. It was probably cathartic! And yes, even pleasurable.”

I shrugged. “Bully for him, then.” But I didn’t quite buy her explanation. “He seemed to hold a lot back for someone who wanted catharsis,” I muttered. The uneasiness he exhibited still bothered me.

“So what do we do next?” Gina asked, changing the subject.

“Go back to my place. Examine the stuff we got from Joe Gibbs. Organize a visit to the Symanskys.”

“For when?”

“This weekend.”

“Why not strike while we’re hot?” She said with just a hint of sarcasm. Understandable, perhaps. She was probably still riled about my solo meeting with the former Mrs. Monaghan. I know I would have been. “Because I need time to prepare myself properly. And because we have a ball game to go to on Friday.”

“And it takes precedence! A lousy ball game?” She seemed genuinely puzzled as well as annoyed. “You do really want me to meet with this cop who believed my father was guilty?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to sow the seeds of doubt in his mind. He still believes your father was guilty. I’ve asked him to get out the old file. He finally agreed to try. I want to see how much ground they covered back then. I want to find out whom the police questioned and who said what. Compare it with what they’re telling us now. Any discrepancies may give us a lead.

CHAPTER SIX
 

On Friday, I went to pick up Gina to go to the ball game with Phil Ryan. I was worried about Gina. We had talked on the phone a number of times. She had not offered to pitch in with any of the petty aspects of this kind of work that thoroughness required. And she was spending more time with her new found friend, Linda Kahane. Her friend moved in a sleazy crowd. De riguer, given her profession. I hoped Gina had enough sense to stay away from them. But I am not my sister’s keeper, I tried to remind myself.

On the drive to Olympic Stadium, she asked me about Ryan.

“He was a pretty good detective,” I said for openers.

“Ha!”

“And he’s not happy at having been put out to pasture prematurely. I didn’t say he was perfect. But he’s not your enemy.” We listened to the hiss of the tires as we sped along the Ville Marie Expressway.

“If he still thinks my father was guilty, he will be.”

I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of this encounter. She was clearly not looking forward to meeting him, and I knew he was anything but enthusiastic about meeting her. But maybe they were just putting up a defensive screen in case the meeting turned sour.

We met at the entrance to the Section D seats near third base. When I introduced them to each other, he extended his hand. She shook it. Not exactly a peace offering, but some of the tension went out of the air. The Expos pitching fell apart in the second inning, and their hitters would probably have missed the kind of puff balls I could have thrown. By the fifth inning the seats around us had emptied and conversation about other matters had become possible.

“So you believed my father was guilty,” Gina muttered.

Ryan sighed. “The evidence was strong enough to put him on trial.”