Fallen Idols (23 page)

‘Thank you,” Tom said. “Of course I remember you.” Steven Janowitz was one of the most prominent archaeologists in the country, among the few accorded a position in the same pantheon in the field as his father.

How's your dad?” Janowitz asked anxiously. “He's doing okay, all things considered,” Tom said, thinking, haven't you and dad seen each other if he's been lecturing here, been having discussions about coming here to teach?

“Do you have a few minutes?” he asked Janowitz. He'd like to find out what was going on with this, if he could.

“Sure,” the older man replied with a smile. “I'll buy you a cup of coffee.”

The faculty dining room was almost empty. They carried their coffees to a corner table. Janowitz emptied three packets of sugar into his mug. A true archaeologist, Tom thought with an inner smile. You live in the field long enough, you pick up the natives’ habits. Indians love their coffee sweet.

“What're you up to these days?” Janowitz began.

“I'm finishing up my Ph.D. in mathematics at Michigan.”

“Theoretical?”

Tom nodded.

Janowitz whistled in appreciation. “Are you teaching, doing research?”

“Some, to pay the bills. Mostly I'm finishing my thesis. I'll be done by next spring. After that, I haven't decided. I could join the faculty, they'd like me to stay on, but I'm thinking maybe something in business, where I can apply what I know on a practical basis, like at one of the tech companies. The money's better,” he said candidly. “I'll be paying off my student loans for years. I have several irons in the fire,” he added.

“Sounds great.” Janowitz blew on his coffee, took a tentative sip. “That was a disgrace, the way they treated; your dad, after all he'd done for them.”

Tom assumed he was talking about the situation in Madison. “It definitely was,” he agreed.

“Pure stupidity,” Janowitz said. “Walt raises millions of dollars to develop La Chimenea, the most important excavation they've ever had in that pissant country, it's going to be a huge boost to their economy, not to mention their historical perspective, and they thank him by tossing him out.”

“La Chimenea,” Tom said, concealing his surprise.

Janowitz's head bobbed vigorously. “Look, I'm not naïve. We're old hands, your dad and I. I know there were rumors of stolen artifacts down there. That happens at the beginning of every dig that contains valuable artifacts. You can post guards with machine guns around the clock and you aren't going to stop thievery, it happens everywhere, most of the time by the government themselves. But you don't pull the plug on a man of Walt Gaines's stature.” He was building up a good head of steam. “They think they can do it themselves, without outside help. They're going to have a big comeuppance.” He sighed. “It's terrible for your dad, though. They needed a scapegoat to explain away the problem, and he was the most visible target. He had nothing to do with any of the theft that went on down there, I know he didn't. I've known him too well and too long to ever believe he'd do what they accused him of. He has too much integrity.”

What in the world is this about? Tom thought. This was more than a new paragraph in the ongoing saga of the metamorphosis of Walt Gaines. This was an entirely new chapter.

He couldn't let on to this man that he didn't know anything about this. But he damn sure was going to try to find out.

“I should give him a call,” Janowitz said. “We haven't talked since right after that terrible time.” Wistfully, he added. “I haven't been a very good friend in that regard.”

“He travels a lot,” Tom vamped. “Hard to pin down.”

That's good. A man his age needs to stay active.”

“And he's thinking about teaching again,” Tom said, baiting a line.

Janowitz didn't bite. “He'd be an asset to any department. I'd love to bring him in here.” He frowned. “But between the problems with Madison and the difficulties at La Chimenea, it would be a hard sell. Plus there's his age. Our department's already overstaffed. All the universities are. Now that mandatory retirement has been banned, the pipeline's clogged with brilliant young professors who are stuck because there's no room for them to advance. I'd be very surprised if your father's ever going to be offered a position of the status he had again, certainly not one commensurate with his worth.”

“So there's no chance he could ever join the faculty here.”

Janowitz shook his head. “It would take an act of God. And I doubt God's paying close attention to the details at UCLA these days.” He looked at Tom sadly. “I'll be, frank, Tom. I'm afraid your father's teaching days are over. He should have swallowed his pride and hung on at Wisconsin. They were giving him flak, I know, but he could have forced them to keep him.”

“What about a lecture series?” Tom was fighting a panic attack, but he needed to nail this down.

“If he wanted to come out here, we'd certainly be open to his giving a talk. He'd draw a nice audience, I'm sure He'd have to pay his own way, of course,” he added quickly, in case Tom was acting as Walt's courier. He gulped down the rest of his coffee. “I have to run. It was good seeing you.”

“You, too.”

As they stood and cleared their table, Janowitz asked, “By the way, I forgot to ask. What brings you out here, Tom?”

“I came out to see an old friend.” He paused. “An old close friend.”

“Well, you and your friend enjoy yourself. And give my best to your father.”

Walt was bounding out the front door by the time Tom had pulled up to the curb and gotten out of his car. His face wreathed in a leathery smile, he grabbed his son in bear hug, almost lifting him off the ground.

“Where the hell have you been?” he boomed. “I caught an earlier flight, so I could be with you more.”

“Around,” Tom murmured, after they'd broken free from each other. You're twenty-four hours late, he thought to himself, so don't start guilt-tripping me. “You told me you weren't going to be here, so I went off on my own.”

Where'd you go?” Walt asked, as he flung an arm around Tom's shoulder and guided him to the house.

Westwood.” He didn't want to bring up UCLA. “Then I cruised up into the hills, Mulholland Drive.”

That's a beautiful area,” Walt exclaimed. “One of the locations I looked at before I decided on this place. At my age, being in the flats made more sense. You'd love living up there, though. Next year, when you've completed school and you start job hunting, you might want to consider moving out here.”

“It's a possibility,” Tom said vaguely.
Maybe I can get it UCLA, like you.

Emma was in the kitchen, up to her elbows in cooking, she smiled brightly when she saw the two men come in. “I was afraid you might have gotten lost and couldn't you're your way back,” she said to Tom, sounding genuinely relieved. “L.A.’s so huge, it's like a Chinese puzzle out there if you don't know where you're going.”

“I lost track of time,” Tom explained.

She ladled some liquid out of a large, steaming pot, sampled it, began adding seasonings. “I hope you're hungry.”

“Smells delicious,” he said. “What is it?”

“Cioppino. Like bouillabaisse, but Italian. It's a specialty of mine.”

Walt started laughing, a big belly guffaw. “She serves it whenever a son of mine comes to visit,” he told Tom.

“It's like prime rib for Christmas, reserved for special events or special guests.”

“Clancy had it?” Would he always be condemned to playing second fiddle to his older brother?

“The only two times she's made it since I've known her,” Walt said, giving Emma a frisky rib tickle.

She jumped and swatted his hand away. “Stop that.” She was flush, as much from Walt's insouciant sexual ease in front of his son, who she barely knew, as from the steam coming out of the pot. “I don't cook fancy when it's only the two of us, it's too time-consuming,” she explained. “And I have to watch your dad's cholesterol, because he won't,” she added proprietarily.

“She does take care of me, even though she's busy here, busy there, busy everywhere,” Walt sing-sung, like a demented canary. “Work, school, always on the go.”

This is awfully manic behavior for the old man, Tom thought, as he watched his father cavort about the room. It's as if he's turned back the hands of time. A beautiful young woman can do that for an older man. And she was certainly beautiful. He almost ached, thinking of Emma in the pool last night.

“You're in school?” he asked her. Had Clancy mentioned that? He didn't remember. “What in?”

“I've dropped out temporarily.”

“You'll go back,” Walt said. “You're too smart not to. Don't let her looks fool you,” he said to Tom. “This woman has it…” He tapped his forehead. “Up here.”

“Walt, stop. You're embarrassing me.” She was trying not to smile.

Tom, watching this playful, almost intimate bantering between lovers, was the embarrassed party. His father was showing off for him—see my new lady, isn't she grand, isn't everything so peachy-wonderful? His father and Emma seemed to be much more serious about each other than Clancy had prepared him for. It was a sobering understanding. His father's woman was his mother. Emma seemed, from the brief time he had observed her, to be a good person and devoted to his dad; but it hurt, seeing them like this.

“Why don't you two let me work in peace?” Emma prodded, in mock vexation. “I'll come get you when dinner's ready.”

As he had with Clancy, Walt took Tom on a tour of the grounds. Showing off, Tom thought, a taste of sour anger rising in his mouth at the petty materialism his father had embraced so enthusiastically. The lord of the manor. Walt Gaines had replaced the glories and excitement of a new, important excavation in the Central American jungle for a rich man's house in the middle of make-believe land. This was a stellar house, no question, but he didn't feel his father had gotten his money's worth in the exchange.

He had come here to see for himself, firsthand, what was going on with his dad. Now that he had, he halfway wished he hadn't. He nodded mechanically as Walt explained the solar system that heated the pool, how he had replaced the old, sagging wooden back deck with stone, the pleasures of a gas-ignition Genesis barbeque over a dirty, time-consuming charcoal-burning Weber, like the ones they'd used summers back in Wisconsin, whenever he was home from one of his exotic locales.

“It's very nice, dad,” Tom rotely commented, as they stood at the edge of the pool, watching the automatic cleaner glide along the edges, its rubber tentacles, like those of a giant jellyfish, sweeping the bottom clean. “Hell of a house.”

“Thanks.” Walt's eyes were gleaming with pride of ownership.

“Pretty highfalutin,” Tom added, unable to hold his tongue.

His father looked at him with a sideways squint. He brought his hand up to shield his eyes against the twilight sun that was shining in his face. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. It's just different from what … from how you and mom lived.”

“That's what this is about, isn't it?”

Tom played innocent. “What what's about?”

“Don't shit me, Tommy. It wasn't that long ago I was wiping your ass.”

Tom flinched. He hated it when his father used the diminutive of his name. It made him feel like he was six I years old.

“I know you, son, I know all my boys like I know my own heartbeat. Your coming out here to pay a visit to poor old dad who you miss so much, that's what. Your brother got on his high horse about the changes in my life and wham, you've got to see it for yourself, too.” He shook his head, a gesture encompassing in equal measures hurt, sadness, anger. “I don't mean the heartache changes. The material ones. My new place …” He turned and cocked his head behind him, toward the house. “Emma.”

“I came out to see you, dad, that's all.” He wasn't going to let his father bait him into a fight he couldn't win. “It's been a long time. Is that a bad thing, me wanting to see you?”

Walt faced him squarely. “If it's from love, no.”

“That's all it is, dad.”

His father scrutinized him carefully. Tom felt like he was being X-rayed. Then a smile broke through Walt's dark facial clouds.

“Okay. If that's what it is, then great. ‘Cause I've missed you, too. All of you. More than you can imagine.” He looked away for a moment. “Your mother is dead, Tom. No one has grieved for her more than me. But we can't live in our grief forever, or it'll pull us under. I'm making a new life for myself, the best I can. I would hope you'd be pulling for me. Like I always have for you, and Will, and Clancy, in your own lives.”

Shit. What do you say to that?

“Of course I am, dad. If you're happy, that's all that matters.”

“I'm trying,” his father said, his eyes suddenly glistening. “That's all any of us can do.”

Besides whipping up a gourmet meal Emma had found the time to shower, freshen her makeup, and put on a party dress, a silk Chinese-style sheath with the skirt slit partway up her thigh. She really is lovely, Tom thought, watching he sat down at the beautifully laid dining table. If he had half his father's magnetism for women, he'd be in clover.

Flowers had been arranged in a cut-glass vase on the table, and two tall candles in silver candlesticks sent up small twisting flames. The dishes, the cutlery, the wine-glasses, all spoke of elegance, and money. Emma had already brought the salad and bread to the table; now she emerged from the kitchen bearing a large, steaming tureen containing the cioppino, which she carefully placed in the center of the table.

“My compliments to the chef,” Tom told her. “You should try it before you give away your compliments,” she said with a pleased smile. She began ladling the soup into large bowls, passed them to Tom and Walt, dished out a third for herself and sat down.

“I don't have to taste it. I can smell it's perfect.”

Walt poured the wine, a California Rhone he'd brought up from his cellar, and raised his glass in toast. “’Get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate,’” he proclaimed. “We're having scallops and halibut instead of a side of beef but you get the idea.”

“The prodigal son was a wastrel,” Tom reminded him. “Is that how you see me, dad?”