Invasion of Privacy

cat.”
    “You see lots of us cats around, Chief.”
    Braverman drew heavily on the cigar again. “Just the live ones. Could be like icebergs, you know? Ten percent you can see, the other ninety percent under the surface.” I got out of the car. As I closed the door, Chief Pete Braverman said, “Deep under,” before motoring slowly away.

13

    F rom the lot of the Administration Building , I drove back through the gates, searching for a pay phone. I found one near the Towne Restaurant and started dialing.
    I tried my office answering service first. No message from Nancy, but a Mr. Zuppone had called three times. Next my home telephone tape, tapping in the remote code and getting three additional messages from Primo, each a little more desperate, telling me to meet him at “the condo,” which I took to be my place. Still nothing from Nancy .
    I thought Primo was better dealt with face-to-face in Boston , after I knew a little more about “Andrew Dees,” but I tried the DA’s office, a secretary saying Ms. Meagher was back on trial. I left what I hoped sounded like a calm message: “Call me at home tonight.” Given the way the secretary asked if there was anything else, I’m not so sure I pulled off the “calm” part.
    Then I stopped back in the restaurant to find out where the local newspaper was located.
    * * *

    “Hi. Interested in a subscription?”
    “Afraid not. I’d like to take a look at some of your old editions.”
    “How old?”
    “Nineteen-seventy-three.”
    “ Seventy -three?”
    The young man on the other side of the veneered counter said the year as though it belonged to ancient history, which for him it probably did. Maybe eighteen or nineteen, he had hair cropped short as a shorn lamb’s, so that it looked like acrylic fuzz. With two steel rings through his left ear and one through his right eyebrow, I almost asked if he’d like an introduction to Kira Elmendorf back at Plymouth Willows.
    “Seventy-three,” I repeated. “The issues from around graduation time.”
    “For the university, you mean?”
    “Yes.”
    “We’re just a weekly, you know, but I think I can find them. So you want all of May, right?”
    “And June.”
    He frowned. “June?”
    “Yeah.”
    “The university graduates in May, man.”
    “Back then it might have been later.”
    “You mean going to school all the way into June?”
    “Times were tough.”
    “Tough? Try terrifying, man.”
    “Terrifying.”
    “Totally. I mean, like, strapped to a desk until...? Beyond my ability to comprehend, you know?”
    I was afraid I did.

    The front-page story from the June 19th edition was consistent with Gail Tasker’s summary. Andrew Dees, born in Chicago twenty-two years before, went off the highway and rolled his car three times in a “one-vehicle accident,” breaking his neck. Two of his fraternity brothers said he’d had a “a little too much suds at this party that’s been ‘happening’ since graduation.” The article concluded with, “According to university records, Mr. Dees has no immediate family surviving him.”
    “Tragic, man.”
    I looked up to the boy helping me. “At any age.”
    “Huh?”
    “This guy getting killed, driving drunk.”
    “Oh, that’s not what I meant.” He pointed to the paper’s masthead. “I mean, like, the date.”
    “The date?”
    “Yeah, man. It’s just the way you told me. They had to stick with school all the way into June. Tragic, right?”
    “Totally,” I said.

    “Harborside Bank. Ms. Evorova’s line.”
    The very formal secretary. “Can I speak to her, please?”
    “And who may I say is calling?”
    “John Cuddy. She’s expecting to hear from me.”
    A couple of clicks, then, “John, you have some news for me, yes?”
    “I do. Are you alone?”
    A pause, then a lower tone. “Your news, it is... bad?”
    “I’m calling from Vermont , near the university. I tried to check Andrew Dees’ college records here.”
    Some weakness crept into her voice. “And?”
    “The campus police came for me because it turns out that the student whose authorization letter I supposedly had was dead.”
    “What?”
    “Andrew Dees died in a car accident over twenty years ago.”
    “No. There must be a mistake, yes?”
    “I don’t think so. I went to the local newspaper, and I have a copy of the article on the accident. It’s consistent with what the campus police told me, and anyway I don’t see why they would have lied about it.”
    Another