“Or a Tom,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Are you and he politically opposed?”

“I am not political,” Robinson said. “But I disagree with almost anything Amir espouses.”

“Have you been critical of him?”

“Yes.”

“Would your denial of tenure benefit him?”

Robinson looked thoughtfully at the old fat black woman shuffling among the now nearly empty tables.

“Someone once remarked,” he said, “I don’t recall who, that the reason academic conflicts are so vicious is that the stakes are so small. There is no genuine benefit to Amir if I am denied • tenure. But it would please him.”

“And it would reduce by one the number of people who could confront him without the risk of being called a racist.”

“Given the number of black faculty members, that would be a significant reduction,” Robinson said.

“How about Lillian?”

“What about her?”

“She and Amir are the two members of the tenure committee who told the cops they had direct knowledge of your relationship with Prentice Lamont.”

“Lillian?”

I nodded.

“I haven’t done anything to Lillian.”

“And since we agree that the allegation is untrue, why would she make it?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I could hypothesize.”

“Do,” I said.

Robinson took in a long breath and let it out slowly. “Most straight black men know someone like Lillian,” he said. “She has very little connection to what people outside of English departments sometimes refer to as the real world. She doesn’t do things because they would be fun, or they would be profitable, or they would be wise. She does things because they conform to some inner ideal she has structured out of her reading.”

“I’ve met Lillian,” I said.

“Okay,” Robinson said, and smiled, “a pop quiz: why would you guess she is in this long-term relationship with Bass Maitland?”

“Because he reminds her of Lionel Trilling,” I said.

“Or Walter Pater,” Robinson said. “You’ve got the idea. Now, for extra credit, why was she sleeping with me?”

“White woman’s burden,” I said.

“Yes.” Robinson’s face was suddenly animated. “And why did she stop?”

“You weren’t black enough.”

“Wow,” Robinson said. “You’re good.”

“I’ve met several Lillians,” I said. “If she transferred her passions to Amir she could be supporting the aspirations of her black brothers and sisters and still stay faithful to Bass.”

“Yes, and I’m sure that’s what happened because that was what she thought she was doing. But she’ll be unfaithful to Bass again.”

“Because what she really liked was the sex?” I said.

“As long as she could disguise it under a mound of high-mindedness.”

“My guess is that Bass is not Lionel Trilling.”

“No,” Robinson said. “He’s just your standard academic opportunist blessed with a good voice and nice carriage.”

“We might have saved a lot of time and aggravation,” I said, “if you’d told me all this at the beginning.”

“Or if you’d asked,” Robinson said.

I nodded. “Both had the same reasons, I guess. Can you prove you had a relationship with her?”

“Obviously I can’t prove I, ah, penetrated her. I’ve got some pictures of us together.”

“I’d like the best one of you both,” I said. “You meet anyplace where there’d be a witness?”

“Witness?”

“Did you check into a motel, have drinks together in Club Cafe? Spend the night at a friend’s house on the Cape?”

“We spent several nights together at a little place in Rockport that is hospitable to black people.”

“What’s the name?”

“Sea Mist Inn,” Robinson said.

“When’s the last time?”

“We went up there last Labor Day weekend. Last time we went out.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t want to cause her trouble,” Robinson said.

“Me either.”

We were quiet then. The old fat black woman had shuffled out and we were alone in the empty dining room.

“You know,” Robinson said after a while. “My father named me after Jackie Robinson.”

“No one better,” I said.

“I know. I guess I’ve always felt I never lived up to it.”

“Nobody’s Jackie Robinson,” I said. “You’re doing pretty well.”

“I wish you were right,” he said.

“I’m always right,” I said. “I have a smart girlfriend.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

I was asleep when my car blew up. The sound of it woke me, and I got to the window in time to see some of the fragments land on Marlborough Street. Aside from the post-explosion fire, there was no activity on the street. I looked at my watch, 3:35 in the morning. I couldn’t think of anything to do about my car. I didn’t see a felon fleeing the scene. But I was too wide awake to go back to bed, so I stood and watched. In about ten minutes a police cruiser pulled up Marlborough and halted near the now declining embers where once my car had been. I got dressed and went down, and announced myself as the owner. While I was talking with the cops, the fire department arrived and then a couple of arson investigators, and my night was shot.

When I got to my office about ten in the morning, less rested than I was used to, there was a message on my machine to call Captain Healy at State Police Headquarters.

“Plane you were asking about,” Healy said when I got him. “Private plane owned by an outfit called Last Stand Systems, Inc. Flew from Logan to Bangor, Maine.”

“Do you know anything about Last Stand Systems?”

“No.”

“Got an address for Last Stand Systems, Inc.?” I said.

“Beecham, Maine.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Healy said. “You ever heard of Beecham?”

“No.”

“Me either.”

“It’s a wonder you got promoted to captain,” I said.

“No wonder at all,” Healy said and hung up.

I got out my atlas and looked up Beecham. It was on the coast, southeast of Bangor. I called the office of the Maine Secretary of State in Augusta and, after a while, learned that Last Stand Systems, Inc. was a not-for-profit corporation. After another while, I got the names of the principal officers, and the members of the board. According to their incorporation papers Last Stand Systems was committed to social and political preservation. After I hung up I looked at the list of names. None of them meant anything to me. The CEO was somebody named Milo Quant.

I called information and asked for Last Stand Systems, Inc. and got it. I called them and asked for literature. They asked my name and address. I told them I was Henry Cimoli and gave them the address of the Harbor Health Club.

Then I called Henry and told him to look for the literature and asked him to have Hawk stop by. Which Hawk did in about an hour. There was always something lustrous about Hawk. His shaved head gleamed. He moved as if he were spring loaded. And there was about him a kind of genial absence of affect that made him seem almost otherworldly.

“I think we might have buzzed somebody’s button,” I said. “My car blew up last night.”

“Trying for you?” Hawk said.

“I don’t think so. It went off at three thirty-five in the morning, a guy who could have rigged that device wouldn’t have gotten the timer so far off.”

“Want to kill you he ties it to the starter anyway,” Hawk said.

“Yes. But there’s no way to know what I’m being warned about, yet.”

“So they going to have to follow up,” Hawk said.

“Un huh. Call me, write me, come and visit me.”

“They’ll come calling,” Hawk said. “Show you they can reach you whenever they want.”

“Yes,” I said, “and see how I take the warning.”

“You talk to anyone since we sat with Amir?”

“No.”

“So maybe talking with Amir was the buzzer.”

“Maybe. Or maybe busting Louis Vincent was the buzzer, and they just got around to following up.”

“Nope,” Hawk said, “this a warning. Too late to warn us off Vincent.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”