Harvard Yard (4 page)

Peter Fallon knew all this because it was his business to know. He was a dealer in rare books and documents. And he visited the Widener Room every few months because for someone in his business, this was a shrine.

The portrait of Harry Elkins Widener, Class of 1907, hung above his treasures, looking as ethereally handsome as an angel . . . a book-loving angel who went down on the
Titanic
because he left his lifeboat to retrieve a rare volume from his stateroom. That was the legend, anyway. Another legend was that every Harvard freshman had to pass a swimming test because Harry hadn’t been able to swim a stroke, and when his mother honored him by giving Harvard a library, it was swimming tests for everyone . . . even though Harry probably froze to death before he had time to drown.

But no tradition in America was older than giving to Harvard. They’d named the place after a Puritan who gave books and money in 1638. And they’d been naming things after big donors ever since. And sometimes, big donors made strange requests.

Peter Fallon was a small donor. He gave five hundred dollars a year to augment Harvard’s $19 billion endowment, which was like pissing in the water to raise the level of Cape Cod Bay. But he’d gone to Harvard on a scholarship, and he believed in giving something back. That was one of the reasons he was at Harvard that evening.

Outside, the October dusk was coming down.

The students hurrying to the dining halls, the workers making for the subway, the chill wind blowing leaves through the air—it was all like a thousand October evenings before. You could come back after decades and still feel as if you were part of the place, because the lay of the light never changed from one year to the next, and the buildings in Harvard Yard seemed as solid and resolute as New England’s old mountains. They always reminded you of your youth, no matter how far your belly had sagged.

But Peter Fallon didn’t have a belly. He weighed just five pounds more than when he had rowed for the Harvard crew, his hair was still black, and he could run five miles without breathing hard. Not bad for a guy in his late forties.

He glanced at the statue of John Harvard in front of University Hall. Two tourists were rubbing the toe for luck, an old tradition, even though nobody had any idea of what John Harvard really looked like. The bronze Puritan staring quizzically at his shiny left shoe was just a figment of the sculptor’s imagination.

But good luck was good luck.

So Fallon went over and gave the toe a rub. He didn’t get nostalgic about Harvard. He wasn’t one of those “best years of your life” types. But he was thankful for all that he’d learned there, for the friends that he’d made there, for the doors that had opened to him . . . so thankful that he wanted his son to go there, too. That was why he rubbed the toe, and that was the real reason he was at Harvard that evening.

A short walk across the Yard and through the Square brought him to the offices of the Harvard College Fund.

As Peter knew from experience, it didn’t matter whether your parents could pay the whole $35,197 annual tuition or whether they lived in a cardboard box under a freeway. If you were smart enough, creative enough, athletic enough, or had whatever other
enough
the admissions department was looking for, you, too, could go to Harvard, because if you got in and couldn’t pay, Harvard would give you the money. It was called “need-blind admission,” and it guaranteed that Harvard always got its pick of the best students. Even the ones from under the freeways.
Especially
them.

Most need-blind money was raised by the Harvard College Fund. Every alumnus heard from the Fund every year, and usually more than once. If you hadn’t given, you were urged to give. If you had, you were urged to give more. And every five years, you were deluged with letters and phone calls urging you to give even more than before, because it was a reunion year and you wouldn’t want to embarrass your class, now, would you?

Harvard fund-raising was polite, efficient, professional, and enormously successful. It could also be relentless and shameless. Since Peter Fallon could be all of the above, he knew he’d fit right in at a Fund phone-a-thon. If he raised a few bucks, he might score a few points for his son’s Harvard application. And a divorced dad liked to score all the points he could for a son he saw only on weekends.

At the Fund office, Peter put on a name tag, picked up a pile of solicitation cards, and was directed to a large room of office cubicles where Fund functionaries labored by day and alumni called classmates by night.

As he slipped into a cubicle, a balding head popped up on the other side of the partition: “I expect you to raise ten thousand tonight, Peter.” It was Tom Benedict, one of Peter’s old classmates, now a professor of English who had ridden the fast train to tenure and straight through to middle age. His stomach looked like a soup bowl under his sport coat, no matter how hard he tried to hold it in. And wise-ass students referred to his course, the Literature of the American West, as “Cowboys with the Combover.”

But Peter knew that Benedict still liked a little competition, so he said, “One bottle of ’ninety-six Burgundy, premier cru, to the one who raises the most money tonight.”

“You’re on.”

Then Peter looked at his cards. He had been given the R’s. First call: someone named Raab. The printout next to the name said that he was an attorney in Chicago who gave five hundred dollars every year.

“Bingo!” said Peter as soon as he hung up.

“How much?” asked Benedict.

“Five hundred.”

Second call: John Ripley. Peter remembered him from crew and remembered him as notoriously tight. He remembered right.
Twenty dollars.
Peter thanked him, since any contribution moved the class closer to its participation goal, but no bingo.

Third call: a Boston doctor named Ramsey: Five hundred and bingo!

“Peter”—Benedict looked over the partition—“this is the Harvard College Fund, not some sweaty boiler room selling aluminum siding to old widows. Stop with the ‘bingo.’”

Fallon just laughed and delivered another bingo.

That was when Benedict slipped him a name and address. “They gave me the D’s, Peter, but I think that you might want to call this one yourself.”

Fallon looked at the name: John Dalton. Spouse:
Evangeline Carrington.

“Of course, if you’re not up to it,” said Benedict, “I’ll call. I’ll tell her that her old boyfriend is sitting right here, but he doesn’t want to talk to her.”

“You’re playing dirty, Tom,” said Peter.

“Bingo.”

Of course Peter wanted to call her. There had been weeks since his divorce when he’d wanted to call her every night. And never a week went by that he didn’t wonder what his life would have been like if he’d married her.

They had met in their late twenties, when Peter Fallon, Harvard graduate student, was writing his dissertation on her famous old family. They had fallen in love as they unearthed the family scandals and a Revere tea set, then faced the legal mess they made in the process. She had moved in with him while he finished his dissertation. Then they had gone together to Iowa, where he spent two years teaching history at Southeast Iowa State. It was hard to say if he was unhappier with teaching than she was with Iowa, but she left him one cold January. She said she was going to Columbia to study journalism. Six months later, he left Iowa—and teaching—and started selling rare books.

They had kept in touch sporadically since then. They had followed each other’s careers and marriages. He subscribed to
Travel Life
magazine so that he could read her articles. She put her name on the mailing list of Fallon Antiquaria so that she could see what rare books he had for sale.

But talking to her now, especially when her husband answered the phone, was always more work than it was worth.

So he made a few other calls: two R’s who weren’t home, and a third who said, “Harvard has more money than God. I have less than a day laborer. Why should I give them anything?”
Fair question.

Then Benedict popped up again. “An investment banker just gave me five thousand, Peter. Make that wine a Corton-Charlemagne.”

“It’s not over yet.”

Benedict’s eyes shifted to Evangeline’s phone number. “Dalton’s a New York plastic surgeon. Big money in East Side eyelifts.”

That did it. Fallon dialed her number.

“Hi. This is Evangeline.” It was a recording. Her voice had awakened Peter every day for four years, and it still hurt him to admit that even on a cheap answering machine, she sounded happier now than she had at the end of their time together.

“I’m on an assignment,” she said. “Leave me a message. I’ll get back. If the message is for Dr. Dalton, you can reach him at his office.”

Probably running around the south of France, checking out the
gîtes
for an article in some travel magazine, thought Peter. But he couldn’t just hang up, so he said, “Evangeline, this is Peter . . . Peter Fallon. We haven’t talked in what? Two years? Anyway . . . I’m calling from the Harvard College Fund. Looking for money. If you or that alumni husband of yours have any, I hope you’ll give some to Harvard. . . . And give me a call sometime. Bye.”

He was glad that was over. Worse than calling for a date.

Next on the list:
his old pal Ridley Wedge Royce.

Harvard graduates often said they learned more in the dining halls than they ever did in the classrooms. And Peter had learned plenty whenever he and Ridley had eaten together in Eliot House. He suspected that Ridley would say the same thing.

One descended from an old Massachusetts family, the other was a South Boston boy whose father had been a bricklayer. But over three years of meals, Ridley had taught Peter about sailing, Peter had taught Ridley about rowing; Ridley had taught wine, and Peter, beer; Ridley had taught theater, and Peter, movies. And even if they hadn’t spoken in years, whenever they talked, it was as if they had just seen each other at lunch.

“Peter?” said Ridley. “How’s the rare-book business?”

“Just fine, Ridley. How’s the life of a Broadway producer?”

“Would you be calling me in Massachusetts if I’d had a hit in the past five years?”

“I don’t suppose. . . . Listen, Ridley, I’m calling from the Harvard College Fund—”

“Peter, I’m broke.”

“Broke? I’m . . . I’m sorry, Ridley.”

“Don’t let it bother you, because this phone call is kismet.”

“What’s kismet?”

“Well . . . a wonderful show starring Alfred Drake. Songs like ‘Stranger in Paradise,’ ‘Baubles, Bangles, and Beads.’”

“C’mon, Ridley . . .”

“It also means good fortune, Peter, happy coincidence. And that’s what your call is because
I
was planning to call
you
.”

“What about?”

“I’ve come across something that might interest the only rare-book dealer in the Class Report, something from the antiquity of the famous old Wedge family.”

“The Wedges? What is it?”

“Can’t say, Peter. Not over the phone. But worth a mountain of money.”

Peter understood. Discretion was part of his business. But if it was discretion Ridley was after, why did he want to meet on Saturday afternoon, in the sea of tailgaters collecting for the Harvard-Dartmouth football game?

Ridley sure hadn’t changed. In college, someone had coined a term for his little fits of obtuseness and obfuscation: Ridley Riddles. Here was another one.

“Look for a Class of ’Seventy-two banner,” said Ridley, “and the ancient Ford beach wagon. You remember . . . the one they call the Wedge Woody.”

“I remember. I’ll be there.”

Peter made another ten calls—eight hang-ups, no-thanks, and not-homes balanced against a thousand dollars in pledges. But when the night was over, he owed Tom Benedict one bottle of very expensive wine.

“It’ll be worth it,” said Benedict as they walked through the Square, “if you get to have lunch with Evangeline. God . . . she was gorgeous.”

“It’ll be worth it,” said Peter, “if this ‘something from the antiquity of the famous old Wedge family’ has any value.”

“What do you think it could be?” asked Tom.

“Who knows? There’ve been Wedges at Harvard since the beginning. Maybe it’s the Freeman’s Oath, the first document printed in America, printed in Cambridge in 1636. . . . American Antiquarian Society bid a million bucks for one about fifteen years ago. Turned out to be a forgery.”

“A million?” said Benedict. “You can’t put a price on something priceless.”

“Spoken like a professor. You put a price on something because it’s how the world works.”

“Spoken like a man who makes his living plundering the past,” said Benedict.

Peter had heard that “plunderer” business before, from people who
weren’t
joking. But he knew that he served the past by bringing it into the present. And when he sold a piece of it for big bucks, he brought it to life, because in America, big bucks didn’t just talk, they breathed . . . and snorted . . . and walked upright on their hind legs. Big bucks meant visits from CNN, interviews on
Nightline
, articles in newsmagazines. Big bucks made the past more valuable, which made it more respectable. And if people respected it, they might learn from it, or at least try to understand it. That’s what he told himself, anyway.

Besides, was there another Harvard history major who’d had as much fun? Another Ph.D. who had handled the sale of an original Declaration of Independence? Or ridden the night train from Rome to Florence with a million-dollar incunable on his lap and a book thief prowling the cars? Or blown a hole in a subway wall, stuck his arm into the mud beyond, and pulled out a priceless Revere tea set?

Sure, he had a nice office in the Back Bay, his clients seldom bounced checks, and most of his research was as dull as scraping old paint from a fluted column. But when Peter Fallon went after something—at the Harvard-Dartmouth football game or on the other side of the world—he became, as his ex-wife once said, “Indiana Jones in a monogrammed shirt,” a bonus-miles adventurer traveling through time, chasing down books and manuscripts, buying them when he could, brokering them when he couldn’t, investigating, negotiating, mediating, and once in a while, running for his life.