He had needed to climb two flights of concrete steps through unkempt crabgrass and bits of glass, aluminum, cardboard to get to the front door.
The second time he rang the doorbell a young girl screamed.
The front door opened. The storm door was pushed out.
A man wearing earphones sideways on his head said, “Inspector Flynn?”
“Yes.” Flynn entered. “Dr. Carver?”
The man caught the wire dangling from his head. “I wouldn’t have heard the doorbell, if Charley hadn’t broken the window from the sunroom.”
“How fortunate,” Flynn drawled.
Carver led the way into what had been originally designed as a parlor.
Central to the room, a television blared. On the back wall glowed a computer screen. Next to it was a stereo turned on, but soundless.
Apparently Carver had been sitting at the computer screen while listening to the stereo through earphones.
Shaking his wire in his fist, Carver hummed loudly the theme of “Ode to Joy.”
Broken glass from a sunporch window was on a section of the living-room floor.
Otherwise, the room, including the single worn couch and the glass-topped coffee table, was strewn with plastic toys, most of them broken, children’s socks, underpants, other articles of clothing, plus some of the vast quantities of paper and cardboard advertisements sold by the fast-food chains. There were also eleven empty cans of soft drinks, and two empty wine bottles visible in the room; a half-empty bottle of beer was next to the computer keyboard.
“I see you were expecting me,” Flynn said.
“Yes . . . The office of the President called . . . I have to work here today. Charley and Bess were sent home from school. My wife works, of course.”
Carver was shoving stuff from one cushion of the couch to another. “Beer?”
Two men, one light, one dark, dressed only in what appeared to be metal loincloths, each armed with a broad sword, poised to try to kill each other, were frozen on the computer screen.
“Sorry to disturb your work,” Flynn said.
A young girl’s voice sounded from somewhere in the house. “Charley! Bastard!”
Carver turned his computer chair around to face the couch. Indicating the couch with the beer bottle he invited Flynn to sit.
Carver followed Flynn’s eyes. He, too, looked at the computer screen. “Popular culture.”
“Is it?” Flynn asked.
And on the television screen, all in a row, sat six huge humans in big wigs and tight dresses. A line running at the bottom of the screen identified them as U.S. AND CANADIAN TRANSVESTITE WRESTLING TEAMS.
A mustached man in a slim gray suit approached one after another with a phallic-shaped traveling microphone. He kept shouting, “But you don’t really mean that!”
“I do!” one of the wrestlers insisted through cherry-colored lipstick. “I’ll twist his head off right here, right now, for all to see!” The person tugged at his bra. “I’ll throw his head into the audience! They can use it for a football!”
The audience gasped.
“But you don’t really mean that!”
Bringing the mascara around his eyes closer together, the person said, “I do!”
“I called Wincomb,” Carver said. “He said you’re hot on the trail of whoever is upsetting old Loveson’s feathers.”
The television said: “Bastard!”
“I’m a bastard? You’re a shmuck!”
“Bastard!”
Somewhere in the house, the young girl’s voice screamed, “Charley bastard bastard bastard!”
Flynn stood up from the couch. “If you don’t mind . . .” He turned off the television.
“About time someone put Loveson down.” Carver sucked at his beer bottle. “I use that expression in the veterinarian sense.”
Flynn sat again on his square of couch cushion. “You mean, kill him.”
Carver shrugged.
Flynn’s ears told him some heavy, square, wooden object fell down the stairs from the second floor.
“Has an actual crime been committed against Loveson yet?” Carver asked.
“I’m not sure,” Flynn said. “I don’t think much about crime, per se.”
“But you’re a policeman!” Carver giggled.
“What is your criticism of Professor Loveson?” Flynn asked. “In one hundred words or less?”
“He’s a liar.”
“A liar?”
“Dishonest. A hypocrite, anyway.”
A boy of about seven presented himself in the living room. He was barefooted. He wore baggy green shorts that reached below his knees. His T-shirt read: LIFE SUCKS. His skin was sallow, his eyes sullen. He had more hair on one side of his head than the other.
“Charley, my friend.” His father held out a hand to him. “I want you to do me a favor.”
To Flynn, the boy looked as if he were about to explode with unhappiness.
“Would you please get the broom and the dustpan and clean up this glass for me? I’ll appreciate it.”
The boy looked at the broken glass in the corner of the room.
“If you do a good job, I’ll give you a candy bar later.”
“There is no later.” The boy turned on the television set.
A girl about nine came into the room. She was dressed in a red nylon bra and bikini. Her toenails were painted red.
Flynn dug his fingers into his stomach. When he mixed orange juice with cheddar cheese for lunch he did not know he would see such sights this afternoon.
“Charley’s a bastard,” she notified her father.
Carver laughed. “Now, Bess. Technically, you do not know that.”
“In what way,” Flynn asked over the roar of applause from the television, “do you consider Professor Loveson a hypocrite?”
“He lies to protect himself. To protect a dead world. He insists there’s a logic—what, God given?—some sort of a line of reasoning throughout history that leads to our present state of perfection. His perfection. Our imperfection.”
“Does he indeed?”
Bess had darted out of the room.
“Embedded in everything Loveson has ever written, ever taught is racism, anti-Semitism, sexism.”
“Is that so?”
“Sure. The superiority of the white male. He’s still trying to justify all the evils of history as some sort of intellectual, spiritual progress. He ignores the destitution of all the oppressed peoples this so-called progress has caused.”
On his bare feet, Charley walked on the broken glass.
“He’s defending the indefensible establishment.” Carver noted what his son was doing, but continued what he was saying. “He still believes in an elite, the idea of a group of people taught to make and exercise value judgments for all of us, for society. Needless to say, these navigators, these decision makers, this elite is comprised of only people taught by Louie Loveson, Ph.D., squatter in the Samson Chair at Harvard University, Queen’s Knight, and et cetera ad nauseam!”
On the television ran a commercial for pills to take an hour before eating, to avoid excess stomach acid.
Flynn asked, “Dr. Loveson was your professor while you were an undergraduate at Harvard?”
“Yes. So I know what I’m talking about.” Carver waved his beer bottle. “God! How we swallowed that stuff . . . at first.”
“You are a white male, aren’t you?”
“My great-grandmother was an Indian princess.”
“Oh, God,” Flynn groaned. “A Cherokee, I’m sure.”
“How did you know?”
Bess came into the room. She hit her brother on the back of his head with a saucepan.
Dripping blood from his feet, yowling, Charley fled to the back of the house.
Carver laughed. “Bonk!”
“My God, man!” Flynn stood up and snapped off the television set. “Will you curb your children?”
“‘Curb’? Like you curb a dog?” His face reddened. “You mean, admonish my children?”
“For starters,” Flynn said.
“I have no more right to admonish my children than they have to admonish me,” Carver stated.
“Then what in God’s name are you doing here?”
“I’m not here in God’s name, copper. Neither are you. There is no authority in this world, or above it. And that includes you!”
Standing, hands behind his back, Flynn said, “You studied at Harvard, one of the world’s most prestigious universities?”
“Yes.”
“You studied under Professor Loveson?”
“Yes.”
“That gives you the authority to teach?”
“I don’t teach! Not as you use the word, anyway.”
“What do you do with your students?”
“We discuss. Sometimes we arrive at a consensus.”
“Then why do they need you?”
“They don’t, really.” Carver placed his empty beer bottle on his computer table. “Maybe they need a room to gather in, on cold days. A reading list. Maybe someone to knock the certainty out of them.”
Bess ran shrieking through the room.
Charley chased her with a raised kitchen carving knife.
Flynn said, “Stop it, you two!”
Carver caught Charley’s free arm. “Whoa, whoa, old chum. Time out!”
Carver held firmly on to the wriggling boy’s arm.
The boy shouted, “I’m going to kill her!” He tried to tug his arm free.
“Time-out,” Carver said. “Now I want you to really think about killing your sister.”
“Good God,” said Flynn. “Vandalism. Aggravated assault. Attempted murder. And you call a time-out!”
“Maybe you’re just a little bit tired?” Carver suggested to his son. “Would you like some more Chinese food? Chicken Hoi Toi? You like Chicken Hoi Toi.”
There was a crash from the back of the house. Flynn’s ears suggested the clatter was from a drawer full of knives, forks, and spoons.
Carver looked up at Flynn. “And I do not appreciate your trying to correct my children!”
“Beggar the thought!”
“Are we done?” Carver asked Flynn.
“What color is your car?” Flynn asked.
“Brown.”
“Your wife’s car?”
“Blue.”
“Where were you early afternoon yesterday?”
“Playing hoops.”
“You mean, basketball without the rules.” Flynn had difficulty seeing Louis Loveson engaged in such an activity. “This recreational use of your computer . . .”
Carver held Charley lightly by his wrist. “Do me a favor, Charley? Drop the knife?”
“Is it because recently you have spent hours feeding script and cartoons regarding Louis Loveson onto the Net?”
“I have no idea what you mean.” Carver smiled.
Charley dropped the knife onto the floor.
With his hand thus freed, he slapped his father hard across the face.
“Oh, Charley!” Carver dropped both his arms to his sides. His eyes watered. “I’m so sorry!” He looked at the boy. “I’m so sorry to have corrected you!”
Charley darted toward the back of the house.
“My God, man. Don’t you see what you’re doing?” Flynn looked around the room. He particularly looked at the small bloodied footprints. “Chaos!”
Carver smiled. “We think they’re both creative.”
“You said your wife works. What does she do for a living?”
“She’s a child psychologist.” Yawning, Carver stood up. “The school’s a bit upset with us, because we don’t want to put Bess and Charley on Ritalin just yet.”
Flynn opened the front door himself. Suddenly wild electronic music was blaring from the back of the house.
At the door, Carver said, “If there were a God, I’d pray to her you don’t have children, Copper Flynn. They’d probably grow up just like you.”
THIRTEEN
Elsbeth was right, of course. The sign over the butcher shop in Winthrop said, in big letters, CAPRIANOS’ MEATS.
Still, Flynn had seen the name somewhere else, recently, in an odder context.
He wished he could remember where.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Flynn!” The big-chested man behind the counter wiped his hands on his white apron. A finger was missing from his left hand.
“Good afternoon, William. How’s the family?”
“Still cookin’ along,” William said. “Cookin’ along.”
“Who could ask for anything more?”
Flynn had spotted Billy Capriano, also in an apron, stacking cans from a box in one of the aisles.
Billy had glanced at Flynn when he came in.
And looked away.
“Do you have a leg of lamb?” Flynn asked.
“Why? Did you lose one?” William guffawed at his own pleasantry. “We have a nice leg of lamb for you. Would you like me to dress it for you?”
“Dress a leg of lamb?”
“In sheer nylon,” William suggested. “Or maybe a black net stocking would be more to your taste? We’ll throw in the brass anklet inscribed ‘Feeling Sheepish,’ for free.”
“You’re beginning to make me lose my taste for a leg of lamb, William.”