this?”
“You can’t wait if she’s not here.”
“If not,” I speculated, “then why let me in in the first place?”
“Mr. McGill—”
“Mr. Plimpton, I’m going to sit on this couch and wait until I speak either to Miss Lowry or somebody she reports to. You can go back into your rats’ maze and tell the king rat that I said so.”
A tremor went through the reception manager’s thin frame. He almost said something and then didn’t. He turned away and went through the tan door, leaving the dour receptionist to glare at me.
I put my hands, palms up, on my knees and stared vacantly at the doorknob, counting my breaths and emptying my mind of all malice and love.
20
THE ZAZEN PRACTICE calmed me and the aspirin kept back the flood of fever in my blood. Between these two forms of self-medication I drifted over the details of the past few days; my brooding blood son and wild Twill; Zella, my victim and albatross; and Aura . . . The doorknob turned and out came a solidly built black woman with shoulder-length straightened hair and an ocher suit that was well-tailored, exposing her figure without overaccentuating it.
Even without the heels she would have been an inch taller than I.
“Mr. McGill?”
“Yes?”
“Special Investigator Antoinette Lowry. Will you follow me, please?”
I rose up, feeling the lightness of the meditation, and went through the doorway behind the brisk-moving agent.
We turned here and there into one hall after another, passing many a closed door along the way. Finally we reached the end of the maze at a black door that had my guide’s name on it.
She went through, obviously expecting me to follow.
I did.
The first thing you noticed about Antoinette Lowry’s office was how small it was; eight feet wide and only a dozen paces from the entrance to the window wall. This window would have given the illusion of space if it didn’t look directly into another office building across the way. The street separating Rutgers from its neighbor was small and so it seemed as if the woman sitting at the desk next door could have reached out and touched Antoinette’s shoulder if she wanted to. This intimacy added to the closeness of the investigator’s work space.
Antoinette’s desk was only wide enough to have a top drawer, and there was no other furniture except for a walnut chair that she gestured at while swaying sideways to pass through the narrow space between her desk and the wall.
We both sat and took a moment to regard each other in the coffin-like booth of an office.
Antoinette was in her early thirties. Her face was handsome but hard, the kind of look that had to grow on you. In a certain light, after a good conversation (or a couple of drinks), you might suddenly come to think her fetching. She had skin nearly as dark as mine and intuitive eyes. There was the mild patina of a sneer on her lips. I wondered if this expression was normal or if she brought it out especially for people like me.
“You’re here representing Zella Grisham?” Antoinette asked.
“She called to tell me that you got her fired and tried to make her homeless.”
“She’s a criminal. She should be in prison.”
This brazen claim raised my eyebrows.
“I knew corporate America had its own private police force,” I said, “but I didn’t realize that they now have commoditized the justice system too.”
“You get that kind of talk from your Communist father,” she replied, “Tolstoy McGill.”
If she meant to impress me she succeeded.
“So it’s not only Zella you’re hounding.”
“I’m investigating the robbery of fifty-eight million dollars from my employer,” she said. “Fifty-eight million, that’s a lot of money.”
“ Water under the bridge.”
“Sheikh al-Tariq gave us that money to assure the delivery of a certain portion of one of his father’s oil tankers would reach Houston,” she said. “Rutgers had to eat the loss. So if they
“You can’t wait if she’s not here.”
“If not,” I speculated, “then why let me in in the first place?”
“Mr. McGill—”
“Mr. Plimpton, I’m going to sit on this couch and wait until I speak either to Miss Lowry or somebody she reports to. You can go back into your rats’ maze and tell the king rat that I said so.”
A tremor went through the reception manager’s thin frame. He almost said something and then didn’t. He turned away and went through the tan door, leaving the dour receptionist to glare at me.
I put my hands, palms up, on my knees and stared vacantly at the doorknob, counting my breaths and emptying my mind of all malice and love.
20
THE ZAZEN PRACTICE calmed me and the aspirin kept back the flood of fever in my blood. Between these two forms of self-medication I drifted over the details of the past few days; my brooding blood son and wild Twill; Zella, my victim and albatross; and Aura . . . The doorknob turned and out came a solidly built black woman with shoulder-length straightened hair and an ocher suit that was well-tailored, exposing her figure without overaccentuating it.
Even without the heels she would have been an inch taller than I.
“Mr. McGill?”
“Yes?”
“Special Investigator Antoinette Lowry. Will you follow me, please?”
I rose up, feeling the lightness of the meditation, and went through the doorway behind the brisk-moving agent.
We turned here and there into one hall after another, passing many a closed door along the way. Finally we reached the end of the maze at a black door that had my guide’s name on it.
She went through, obviously expecting me to follow.
I did.
The first thing you noticed about Antoinette Lowry’s office was how small it was; eight feet wide and only a dozen paces from the entrance to the window wall. This window would have given the illusion of space if it didn’t look directly into another office building across the way. The street separating Rutgers from its neighbor was small and so it seemed as if the woman sitting at the desk next door could have reached out and touched Antoinette’s shoulder if she wanted to. This intimacy added to the closeness of the investigator’s work space.
Antoinette’s desk was only wide enough to have a top drawer, and there was no other furniture except for a walnut chair that she gestured at while swaying sideways to pass through the narrow space between her desk and the wall.
We both sat and took a moment to regard each other in the coffin-like booth of an office.
Antoinette was in her early thirties. Her face was handsome but hard, the kind of look that had to grow on you. In a certain light, after a good conversation (or a couple of drinks), you might suddenly come to think her fetching. She had skin nearly as dark as mine and intuitive eyes. There was the mild patina of a sneer on her lips. I wondered if this expression was normal or if she brought it out especially for people like me.
“You’re here representing Zella Grisham?” Antoinette asked.
“She called to tell me that you got her fired and tried to make her homeless.”
“She’s a criminal. She should be in prison.”
This brazen claim raised my eyebrows.
“I knew corporate America had its own private police force,” I said, “but I didn’t realize that they now have commoditized the justice system too.”
“You get that kind of talk from your Communist father,” she replied, “Tolstoy McGill.”
If she meant to impress me she succeeded.
“So it’s not only Zella you’re hounding.”
“I’m investigating the robbery of fifty-eight million dollars from my employer,” she said. “Fifty-eight million, that’s a lot of money.”
“ Water under the bridge.”
“Sheikh al-Tariq gave us that money to assure the delivery of a certain portion of one of his father’s oil tankers would reach Houston,” she said. “Rutgers had to eat the loss. So if they
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