The Letter Killeth (6 page)

Phil had made the rounds of the recipients of the threatening letters.

“Are they all from the same source?” Roger asked him.

“See for yourself.”

There was little doubt that the message on each sheet of paper had been formed from letters clipped from
Via Media.
The notion that the threats were an exercise in creative news would not go away.

Phil's account of his meeting with Oscar Wack seemed proof of the wild goose chase he was on.

“Is he nuts or what?”

“He teaches English.”

“He seems to know you.”

“I represent all that he dislikes. The amateur. I discuss books because they have given pleasure and the discussion promises greater pleasure in rereading.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“Anybody can do it. Not equally well, of course, but there is no secret handshake or mystic doctrine separating the good from the best. My idea of a critic is Chesterton in his books on Dickens and Browning.”

“What's the other way like?”

“You'll have to ask Professor Wack.”

“I don't ever want to talk to him again.”

“Don't underestimate him, Phil. He's famous in his own circles. His
Foucault, Flatulence, and Fatuity
won a prize.”

“Have you read it?”

“You don't read a book like that. You decode it.”

10

Two days later the special edition of
Via Media
appeared, featuring a story on the conflagration in the faculty office building. The tone was arch, the story could have been a spoof, but there were pictures of the charred wastebasket, a long quotation from Lucille Goessen, and a suggestion from Izquierdo that students read Ray Bradbury's
Fahrenheit 451.
Oscar Wack preferred to make a written statement.

The intellectual is ever under attack and nowhere more vigorously than in the university, the alleged redoubt for his ilk. A university is not a seminary or convent. Students may be unmarried but they are not celibates. The crushing suppressions of the past must be lifted. How can the mind be free when the body is not? All of us stand in solidarity with our colleague Izquierdo. We will not be intimidated.

Wack, O.

That is not the way the professor had signed his statement, and he was furious when the issue came into his hand. He telephoned Bill Fenster.

“Is this the office of the
Via Media
?”

“Who's calling?”

“You answer first.”

“Yes.”

“Professor Wack. Why are you mocking me? For whom are you working? Who pays for this miserable rag of a paper?” His voice mounted as he spoke, and the last question ended in registers audible only to dogs.

“All that is made clear in the paper.”

“That you are paid to harass the faculty?”

“Professor, we didn't light the fire in Professor Izquierdo's wastebasket.”

“Someone should light a fire to you!”

He hung up.

“Maybe he'll send us a threatening message,” Bill said to Mary Alice.

“It sounds as if he already has.”

*   *   *

It was becoming ever clearer to Bill Fenster that even a twelve- or sixteen-page paper that appears irregularly is a stern taskmaster, demanding much of one's time. That would have been harder to take if Mary Alice weren't every bit as conscientious as he was. The others, well, it was a volunteer job and people came and went, but there were always enough around at crucial times. Newcomers had to be warned that they weren't interested in news.

“I thought it was a newspaper.”

“No, it's a student publication. Let the others go scampering after news. We want to publish positive accounts of permanent aspects of the university. What do we know of the people who run the place, for instance?”

He was echoing his father here, of course. He could remember when his dad told him how liberating it had been when he just stopped reading papers and magazines and watching television news. The constant reader or viewer had his curiosity or indignation or anyway much of his attention engaged by some event, for the moment the most important event in the world, only to find that item replaced by another, and that by another, on and on.

“And none of them has any importance for me. More likely than not it's a distortion for sensational effect, or something I couldn't do anything about if I wanted to. How many remote weather disasters and crimes does one have to know about?”

“But how can you vote?”

“Only one or two issues are truly important, and it is easy to discover where a candidate stands on those.”

His father had taken a look at
Via Media.
“It reminds me of the
Scholastic.
”

“The
Scholastic
!”

“Of long ago, when it was the sole campus publication. I like these long accounts of lectures given.”

In their rivals, lectures, when they were reported at all, were reduced in the search for some controversial remark, with little sense at all being given of what had actually been said.

“You'll find no misspellings either. Thanks to Mary Alice.”

Writing up the wastebasket fire in Decio had been meant as a spoof, so that was a lesson of sorts. Don't count on a sense of humor being widespread.

11

When Crenshaw of campus security showed up at the English department, he was not a welcome visitor. Hector, the secretary, eyed him warily when he asked about the fire in the building.

“It was in a wastebasket,” he said.

“Your people know they can't smoke in this building, don't they?”

“No one in this department smokes!” His tone was shocked.

“I want to see the office where it happened.”

“For heaven's sake. It was over before it began.”

“Then why is it such a big story in this paper?” He produced the issue of
Via Media
as magicians produce rabbits.

“That rag!”

Crenshaw was getting nowhere, and he wasn't sure he regretted it. Members of the faculty sometimes treated campus security as if it represented the threat of fascism. Of course the main bone of contention was parking. With the expansion of the campus, faculty parking spots were ever more distant from their offices. No wonder that some sought to leave their cars in front of residence halls as if they were visitors. The bicycle patrol handed out tickets randomly, as traffic and parking tickets are always distributed, but Crenshaw wanted them to lean on the repeat offenders. Young Larry Douglas was a conscientious member of the bike patrol. It was too bad the fines didn't go to campus security.

A man entered, saw Crenshaw, turned, and went out.

“Who was that?”

“Professor Izquierdo.”

Crenshaw went after him. “Professor, Professor, could I talk to you?”

The man turned, frowning, and looked up and down the uniformed Crenshaw. “Parking tickets are not a criminal offense.”

“I'm here about the fire.”

“I thought you were campus police.”

“I am. Where can we talk?”

“Come in, come in.” But Izquierdo entered his office first. Crenshaw looked at the wastebasket. It bore the marks of fire.

“Tell me about the fire.”

“It's been written up.”

“That's why I'm here.”

Not quite true. Larry Douglas had come into Crenshaw's office two days before, so excited he had forgotten to remove the ridiculous helmet he wore while cycling around looking for cars parked in the wrong place so he could ticket them. Larry said he had overheard an old priest talking about bomb threats on the campus. Crenshaw had shagged the kid out of his office. The trouble with Douglas, he was so glad to have the campus job that he was overzealous. But then Crenshaw's secretary reported that there was murmuring among the staff in the Main Building about strange messages received, threatening bombs and fire. It was the story in the alternative campus paper that decided Crenshaw to look into it.

Izquierdo tipped back in his chair. “How long have you been in your job?”

“Since I retired from the police department.”

“South Bend?”

“Elkhart.”

“I suppose they pay you peanuts.”

“Well, I have my pension, too.”

“Ah, pension. It's what drives us all on. We work in order to retire. And, in your case, to work again.”

Izquierdo was a funny duck. If he had seen him on campus, Crenshaw would have thought he was in maintenance. He wore faded jeans, lumberjack shoes, and a T-shirt bearing a legend that said sexual perversity was okay with him. An old corduroy jacket hung limply from a coat stand, along with a baggy winter coat and a very long and gaudy scarf. A deerstalker hat crowned the coat stand. It might have been a scarecrow.

“About the fire in my wastebasket. It was set by my colleague Wack while I was in the john.”

“Why would he do that?”

“What do you know about
The Vagina Monologues
?”

“What's that?”

Izquierdo seemed surprised. “You really don't know?”

“What's it got to do with the fire in your wastebasket?”

“Intimidation.”

“You said a colleague started it.”

“Oscar Wack. An unbalanced fellow. He is insanely jealous of me. With reason, of course. I kept him off the committee sponsoring the
Monologues.
”

“So he set fire to your wastebasket?”

“You probably find this ridiculous. It is. Life is ridiculous, when you come to think of it.”

“Why didn't you call the fire department?”

“Because Wack staged the whole thing so he could look like a hero putting it out.”

“Maybe I should talk with him.”

“It would be wiser just to keep an eye on him.”

“That isn't my job.”

“I thought you wanted to know why I had a fire here.”

The conversation went on like that. Crenshaw was glad to get out of there. The departmental secretary glared at him when he went by his door.

Outside, he sat behind the wheel of his car and thought of Sarasota. During his long years on the Elkhart police force he had dreamed of heading for Florida as soon as he hit retirement age. But then he heard of the opening at Notre Dame security. Crenshaw's father had served as an usher in the stadium during home football games—a visored hat, free entrance to all the games, minimal responsibilities. Notre Dame had long represented auxiliary income in the surrounding communities. The opening in security had seemed somehow a continuation of his father's connection with Notre Dame. Not for the first time, Crenshaw thought he had made a mistake in not heading for Sarasota three years ago. He knew that security was regarded as a version of the Keystone Kops. They had the equipment, a fleet of cars, the bicycle patrol, an expanding staff, the latest in technical wizardry, but they were still figures of fun. Never had he been more aware of the lack of dignity in his job than in talking with Professor Izquierdo. The man had to be stringing him along. What a great joke it would have been if Crenshaw had taken the bait and gone to quesion the colleague, Wack.

Bah. He started the engine and drove slowly away. A cop should always observe the speed limits he enforced. Except in an emergency, of course.

12

Father Tim Conway, new to the provost's office, had been assigned the task of keeping tabs on Quirk. The alumnus seemed to represent a recurring problem, as Tim gathered from talking with others in the numerous offices that housed associate, assistant, and other adjuncts to the provost. He himself was temporarily housed in an office with Roscoe Pound, a holdover from the previous regime. They had gone off on the afternoon of the day on which Tim had met Father Carmody to Legends, where they sat over beer while Pound gave Tim the benefit of his long experience.

“Quirk is a type. Check his record here as a student and you will probably find nothing. People like him drift through four years here. For most, football is their umbilical cord to campus after they graduate, but many get religion. They are the troublemakers.”

“He wants us to buy a villa in Sorrento.”

Pound chuckled. “I know, I know. But the idea behind it is remedial, corrective. It is a criticism of the university as it is now. He wants to bring it back to some fancied golden time. I'll bet he mentioned the
Monologues.
”

“That is a pretty raunchy thing to have put on here.”

“Of course it is. No decent place would allow it.”

“So?”

“We're no longer a decent place. Quirk is right, but it's important not to let him know that. Look, there are three Notre Dames, the one whose history you can trace, the one such alumni as Quirk imagine, and the one we are slowly becoming.”

“And what is that?”

“Read Burtchaell, read Marsden.”

Tim didn't ask him to explain. “I'd rather hear what you think.”

“You are.”

They had another beer. The place was noisy and crowded, just the setting to receive Pound's mordant view of things.

“You were in Rome?” Pound asked.

“For four years.”

“And now you've come home.”

“There's a chance I'll be sent on for a doctorate.”

“Take it. One of our problems is that there are few priests of the Congregation on the faculty. The CSCs have become dorm mothers, campus ministers, supernumeraries.”

“Who is Father Carmody?”

“Ah, Carmody. He is part of the history of the place. A second violinist. He goes back to Hesburgh.”

“I had never heard of him.”

“That is his genius. He was always in the background, whispering memento mori in the ears of administrators.”

It seemed odd to Tim that he should be receiving such information about the congregation he had joined immediately after graduation from a layman like Pound. It emerged that Pound was not Catholic.