Harvard Yard (44 page)

“I think I was right. History is alive and kicking. The people in that painting are as alive as the people in the photos that Scavullo put in front of me the day before yesterday, or the people who were looking at the painting the night before that.”

“So you’re saying what? Total immersion?”

“I’m saying we have a few more bread crumbs here. I guess I have to follow the trail.”

After a pause she said, “I’ll be back Monday. Call me here if you want to talk.”

“I was hoping you’d say that. I’ll call you tonight, after I have dinner with Will Wedge.”

Before dinner, a little row.

Inhale on the stroke. Exhale on the backstroke.

The days were getting longer, but the cold could still pierce the best Gore-Tex, especially when the ass was in direct contact with the seat of a little scull, and the sun was going down, and the temperature was, too.

Still, Peter needed to row every few days, winter or summer. Otherwise, he tended to feel sluggish and dull. And when things were heating up in the rest of his life, he needed the river even more.

So he put on the Gore-Tex, the fingerless gloves, and a Red Sox baseball cap, because spring training was under way and this was the year they were going to win the pennant. And he rowed.

Inhale on the stroke. Exhale on the backstroke.

He would start upstream from the MIT boathouse. He would pull slow and steady, pull himself into that tunnel of sensation where there was only the rhythm of movement and the air rushing by. And before long, the buildings would fade, and the four-wheeled world of headlights and taillights would fade, and his arms and shoulders would warm and loosen and seem to lengthen, and his mind would empty of all but the most elemental ideas.

Tonight, the idea came from Emerson: a man should stand on his own two feet and let the great world come round. Peter liked that.

Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.

Or maybe it was Lydia Wedge, channeling Emerson in her last published poem: “We must live like the sage of old Concord, who saw the one soul in us all, / who urged us to find the firm ground for our spirit, / And there, we were sure to stand tall.”

Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.

Or maybe that was too many ideas. He put Lydia and Emerson out of his mind and concentrated on the stroke, because he was coming to the place where the river made the big fishhook turn around Soldier’s Field, where the banks were dark and overgrown with brush that shielded them from view.

That’s where he’d break rhythm and head back downstream.

He was making the turn in the last light when he heard the roar of an outboard.

Outboard? A noisy stinkpot in March?

Only two kinds of people ran outboards on the river in March: coaches for the college crews and mechanics test-driving tune-ups from the Watertown Yacht Club.

But there was another kind of stinkpotter out that night. The dangerous kind, in a seventeen-foot Boston Whaler that was shooting downstream, right at him.

Before he could react, it smashed into his scull broadside, just forward of the seat.

The fragile little vessel seemed to explode, and Peter Fallon was flung into the freezing black water. He popped to the surface just as the boat cut a sharp turn and came at him again.

So Peter dove again into the blackness. As he did, the propeller cut through the brim of the Red Sox cap, and the boat cut so quickly through the water that the driver couldn’t turn it before slamming into the bank, bouncing off, and kicking up a splatter of mud. Then it roared into reverse, right at Peter again.

And Peter dove again. And the boat blew past again.

Chest deep in water, ankle deep in mud, Peter tried to make it to the bank, some fifteen feet away.

He made it to waist-deep then tripped on a submerged log and fell into the water.

This was it. Whoever that guy was in his black turtleneck and black ski mask, he had Peter Fallon pinned. Right . . . where . . . he . . . wanted . . .

The roar of the engine turned to a scream, and the boat stopped suddenly, stuck in the mud.

The driver slammed the engine into reverse and it roared again, backing up, back over the shattered remnants of Peter’s scull. Back into the middle of the river.

That gave Peter just enough time to scramble through the brush and up onto the bike path that ran along the bank.

Then he heard an alarm on the boat. An intermittent whistle: overheating. The engine had sucked a glob of mud into the cooling intake, and now it was crying for water.

And the boat was shooting down the river with the alarm still whistling.

Peter decided to go after him. Because of the turn that the river took there, he might be able to intercept the boat at one of the bridges, and if he was lucky, the boat might overheat.

So he started to run, heading for the Larz Anderson Bridge. He was in shape to do it. He was in better shape than men ten years younger. But he was running in his stocking feet, because the footwear always stayed with the scull.

The boat was leaving a white wake, but now that it was approaching the Harvard boathouses, the driver smartened up enough to put his running lights on. Otherwise, he’d attract the attention of people who might chase him just because he was driving unsafely on their river. Whoever he was . . .

Fallon tried to stay on the grass and soft ground and ignore the rocks and bottle caps. He whacked his toe on the bike path curb, and he almost knocked over a pair of joggers. And by the time he reached the bridge, the soles of his feet were like two shredded blisters. But the boat stopped briefly so that the driver could raise the engine and clear the plug of mud.

From the bridge, Peter could jump on the boat. Just take aim and . . .

Wait a minute.
Someone had died jumping off this bridge, even if he was a fictional character: Quentin Compson in Faulkner’s
The Sound and the Fury.
They had actually put up a plaque to mark the spot. Only at Harvard.

By the time Peter processed that, the outboard shot through the corner arch and sped downstream. But there was still one more bridge, if Peter could get to it first.

A cyclist had stopped to watch the last light of dusk reflecting off the buildings of downtown Boston. So Peter grabbed his bike, shouting, “I’ll be right back.”

And he pounded the bike down off the bridge, along Memorial Drive, in front of Eliot House, and Winthrop, and—yes—he was sure to get this guy at the Weeks footbridge, because he was well ahead of the boat again. He left the bike at the base of the bridge, then ran up and planted himself above the middle arch.

Was he crazy?
This boat was moving. If he hit it wrong, he’d kill himself, or the guy would kill him.

No. With the boat still coming, he jumped the ten or fifteen feet straight into the water.

Then he started waving. “Hey! Hey! Over here!”

Perfect,
the driver seemed to be saying. He aimed the boat at Fallon again and leaned on the throttle. But Fallon was trying to draw him off course, away from the center of the arch. Right . . . toward . . . the footing of one of the three arches.

But at the last instant, the driver saw that if he hit Fallon, he’d hit the bridge. He threw over the helm, scraped the side, missed Peter, and went shooting off downriver.

Gone.

Now what? Peter swam out of the river to face the guy who owned the bike, shouting and waving his arms.

Peter picked up the bike and ran it right at the guy. Then he ran toward the crosswalk on Memorial Drive and jumped into a cab that was stopped at the light.

About two hours later, Peter Fallon limped into the first-floor lounge of the Harvard Club.

He had showered and dressed in a gray suit complemented by a pair of black cross-trainers, which might be more comfortable on his blistered feet than just about anything else.

“Ah, Peter.” Will Wedge stood and introduced the gentleman with whom he was sitting. “This is Bertram—”

Peter put out his hand. “Hello, Bert.”

“My noted colleague.” Lee extended his hand, though Peter wondered, was Lee surprised to see him?

Was Will Wedge? No. It was plain that Wedge had been expecting to see him.

“My noted competitor,” said Peter to Lee.

Lee looked down at Peter’s footwear. “The latest in fashion?”

Peter let Lee’s comment pass, because Lee always commented about dress, maybe because Lee was better at dressing than he was at doing business. He favored the English country look—heavy tweed, contrasting vest, white shirt with blue crosshatching, blue regimental stripe tie, interesting brown suede shoes. He could have been on his way to an afternoon shooting party. Except that there was an unhealthy puffiness about Bertram Lee that suggested he hadn’t taken a long walk in ten years.

But more important than all that, what was he doing here?

Peter ordered a glass of merlot to warm him up. He crossed his legs, which made the throbbing in his feet less intense, and he waited for one of the others to say something.

Will Wedge went first. “Bertram came by because he has something that he thought I should see.”

Will picked up a gold locket and showed it to Fallon.

It was a beautiful piece of work. Finely engraved around the edges. On the back were the words “From D. to A., With All My Love, May God Keep You.” Inside was a hand-painted miniature of a woman almost ethereal in her beauty.

Peter remembered one of the photographs of Lee and Keegan. In it, Lee was showing Keegan a locket just like this one.

“We think it’s Dorothy Wedge Warren,” said Will. “One of the Radcliffe Eight.”

“One of the women who helped to start female education at Harvard,” said Bertram Lee. “And one of Will’s ancestors.”

Peter examined the locket. “What makes you think so?”

Lee said, “I compared this with the portrait of Dorothy done in the 1830s, on display in the Portrait Collection show. This miniature could have been a study of it, or a knockoff. But the resemblance is amazing. Then I did a little research and, sure enough, Dorothy Wedge marries Amos Warren. ‘D. to A.’”

“Good work, Bert,” said Peter. “But so what?”

Will said, “Peter, this is something that should be in our family, or in the Harvard Portrait Collection.”

Lee said, “I’m hoping that we can arrive at a sale before I put it into a catalog or offer it at auction.”

Wedge looked at Fallon. “What do you think?”

“I’m no art expert,” said Peter.

“Come on, Peter,” said Lee sarcastically. “You’re an expert in everything. Remember when they brought you in to do an appraisal on a complete set of President Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf?”

“Those were books,” said Peter. “Not paintings.”

In 1909, the president of Harvard, Charles William Eliot, had lent his name to a series of books, called the Harvard Classics, which would constitute no more than five feet of shelf space and would impart, to those who read them, an education as good as any that could be had anywhere, even at Harvard. This, of course, was not true, but Dr. Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf had become a fixture in American homes.

About 1985, Peter Fallon got a call from one of his clients, who asked if a set would be worth $20,000. Peter had said that they had published so many sets that they were virtually worthless, unless Shakespeare, Homer, Dickens, and all the other authors had signed them.

Bertram Lee had been the bookseller. And he had never forgiven Fallon.

“Are you saying you don’t know anything about this miniature?” asked Lee.

“Not enough to comment.”

Lee turned back to Will. “I’m prepared to do business at fifty thousand dollars.”

“Well,” said Wedge, “if Peter doesn’t have a figure, and you don’t want me to have it appraised, I’m not sure we can do business at all.”

Lee looked at Peter. “Tell him you think this is worth fifty grand.”

Peter just smiled. “Where did you get this?”

“From a motivated buyer, who came to me because he knew of my relationship with the Wedges.”

“Assistant Professor Bob O’Hill?” asked Peter.

The name caused Lee to sit back a moment, furrowing his brow.

Wedge said, “What would he have to do with this?”

That gave Lee the chance to regain himself. “Yeah. He’s not part of this.”

“Just a wild guess,” said Peter.

As if he were taking his toys and going home, Lee bundled up the locket with the marvelous miniature of Dorothy Wedge Warren and stood. “Mr. Wedge, this is solid gold, a superb likeness, an important artist. If you can’t buy it, I’ll find someone who will.” Then he stalked off.

Will Wedge looked at Fallon and said, “Lee is bringing me material all the time. Sometimes I buy, sometimes I don’t.”

“A wise attitude.”

On the way into the dining room, Will said, “You were quoted in the
Globe.
A lot of people saw it. Maybe it will bring a few out of the woodwork.”

“Either
Love’s Labours Won
is out there,” said Peter, limping along, “or Lydia and Reverend Abraham were just enjoying
Love’s Labours Lost.
”

“What’s wrong with your feet?”

“I was chasing someone who tried to kill me tonight.”

Wedge turned white. “Kill you? Over what?”

“Who knows?” Peter shrugged. “My quote in the
Globe.
My suspicions about Professor O’Hill and his friend Bertram Lee.”

“Are they friends?”

“I’ve seen them together. Maybe Lee wanted to have me killed before I told you not to buy that locket.”

“I’m wondering where he got it.”

“Did Dorothy have any descendants that you know of?”

“She had a son named Douglass. There’s a picture of him in a scrapbook somewhere. He’s wearing a uniform.”

His feet were killing him, so Peter took a cab back to his office. It was late, and no one was there. He was thinking that he would have been happy to see Bernice sitting at her desk, with her purse at her feet and her Beretta in her purse. Things were getting a little too dangerous.