“What does it mean, ‘interim’ academic vice president?” Jean-Paul asked, passing the platter of tamales to Mom, who sat at his right. He had met Hiram Chin the day before, at the Malibu party.
“It means he’s a temp on campus, like me,” I told him. “It also means that he was hired without having to go through any rigorous vetting process, and he can be fired as easily as he was hired.”
Max and Roger exchanged significant looks.
I caught Roger’s eye. “What?”
“Max needs more wine,” he said. “Is there any left in the bottle in front of you?”
I tried again. “Uncle Max?”
But instead of answering me, Max turned to Kate. “Where’s your daughter tonight?”
“Baby-sitting for Teresa,” she told him, referring to Roger’s daughter from his first marriage. “She should be here pretty soon. Now, quit screwing around, both of you, and answer Maggie’s question.”
Max cocked his head to the side, narrowed his eyes as if challenging me.
“His name doesn’t ring a bell?” he asked.
“No. Should it?”
“Kate?” Roger said, “Who hired Chin?”
“Park Holloway,” she said. “He ran the appointment by the Board of Trustees and got his usual rubber-stamp approval. The Academic Senate had Human Resources launch a call for applications to fill the position permanently, but twice now, after we’ve appointed campus-wide selection committees and gone through the whole interview rigmarole, Park has set aside the candidate list and hung onto Hiram.”
“That can’t be legal,” Mom said, the veteran faculty wife. “It flies in the face of all that shared governance requires.”
“Absolutely,” Kate said. “But if the trustees approve, apparently he can get away with it. The Academic Senate filed a complaint with the chancellor, but we’ve gotten nowhere, so far.”
“Ricardo.” Linda waggled some fingers to catch her husband’s attention. “Where have we heard that name?”
“From Kate,” Ricardo said. “But listening to her I thought Chin’s first name was Goddamn.”
Mom turned toward Linda. “Wasn’t there a Hiram Chin, some college up my way, falsified his C.V. or padded his C.V.?”
Jean-Paul turned to me for translation.
“Curriculum vitae,” I told him. “An academic résumé.”
I caught my uncle’s eye. “Is that it, Max? He lied?”
“When I met him Friday his name seemed familiar, so I made some calls,” Max said. “As I told Roger, until maybe six or seven years ago, Hiram Chin was a professor of art history.” He named a university in the Bay Area. “He was-still is, I suppose-an expert on the Renaissance. When his name was sent forward for the provost position at his university he had to submit an updated C.V. He had an impressive list of academic accomplishments that were well documented, but his claims to have been the curator for the private collection of a deposed Asian dictator and an acquisitions advisor for a Middle Eastern museum were challenged because he couldn’t verify them. The dictator was dead, and the museum had been looted and closed during a regime change.”
“He lied?” Linda asked.
“Moot issue.” Max held up his hands. “Chin withdrew his name from nomination, retired from the university, and rode off into the sunset. Probably in the interest of saving face, the university did not inquire further.”
“In cases like those,” Jean-Paul said, “I might not question Mr. Chin’s claim to have been an advisor, but I would certainly wonder about the provenance of the acquisitions. Potentates are a primary market for stolen and counterfeit works of art.”
I remembered that at the Friday meeting Holloway mentioned that he had been on a Smithsonian committee and that there had been a question about a Rembrandt’s authenticity; I wondered how far back the relationship between Holloway and Chin went.
Casey leaned forward a bit to see Kate better. “What is all this mess going to do to Sly’s installation ceremony? He was all set for this Friday, but…” She screwed up her face. “I mean, it’s really gross, if you think about it. A man died where his sculpture is supposed to-excuse me-hang.”
“Maggie suggested that we hold the celebration somewhere else and have people go over to see the sculpture afterward,” Kate said. “Quietly.”
Roger shook his head. “You won’t be hanging anything from that apparatus until Scientific Services is finished with it. Who knows when that will be?”
“Poor Sly,” Mom said. “He was so excited. He came by to show me his new suit the other day. I hate to think of the disappointment; he has been working so hard.”
“Exactly,” Casey said. “That’s why I know for sure that Sly didn’t kill that man, no matter what the gossip is. He is so proud of that sculpture and his award that he would never pollute the place where it’s going to hang.”
“Pollute?” I asked her. “Casey, where did you hear the gossip?”
“From Sly,” she said. “I called him to see how things were going and he told me what people are saying.”
“Dear God,” Linda said, appalled. “Was he terribly upset?”
“Hard to tell with Sly,” Casey said. “I thought he was posturing when he said he was lucky someone got to Holloway before he did. You know, just covering his feelings with bravado the way he does.”
Max tapped the side of his wineglass with the edge of his knife to get everyone’s attention.
“I have a request,” he said when all eyes were on him. “As legal counsel for Sly, I ask that you, Sly’s friends, repeat nothing that was said at this table tonight. Things are tough enough for Sly right now. Let’s not have gross rumor put ideas into some idiot’s head.”
Chapter 13
On Mondays, I didn’t have classes. Jean-Paul left early to drive to his office and I pulled out right behind him. I caught the first commuter flight out of Burbank Airport headed for Sacramento. As soon as the plane crossed the coastal mountain range, we left the clouds behind. I landed in bright spring sunshine, rented a car, and drove east through lush San Joaquin Valley farmland to Gilstrap, Park Holloway’s home town. It was time to get a closer look at the man.
Gilstrap was a typical little farm town, not unlike Anacapa had been before its gentrification. A few shops, a city hall, and a library, all built around a small, leafy town square with a bandstand in the middle. The town was surrounded by dairies, raisin grape vineyards, and almond and peach orchards, some of them in full spring bloom. I looked for a diner, information central in any small town, and found one next to City Hall.
It was late for breakfast so the place was nearly empty when I went in. I took a seat at the counter, ordered coffee and eggs, and struck up a conversation with the waitress, a motherly woman named Viv.
“Awful about Park Holloway,” I said, folding my copy of the local newspaper on the counter beside me as she filled a thick ceramic mug for me from her pot. “Did you know him at all?”
“Oh sure, everyone around here knows the Holloways,” Viv said. “My brother Bob was in the same graduating class at Central High as Park. His wife and me were in Sunday School together over at the Lutheran church.”
She leaned in closer to share a confidence, something that needed to be whispered. “The Holloways are Methodist.”
“I knew Park,” I said, keeping the perhaps unsavory fact that I grew up Catholic to myself. “But I never met her.”
She studied me for a moment before she asked, “You from D.C., then?”
“Los Angeles,” I said. “I understand his wife moved back here after the divorce.”
“Karen? Pretty much, she never left. She didn’t like living in Washington. She was okay with Boston when Park was in school over there, and she really liked when they lived in China for a while, but Washington didn’t agree with her. She didn’t want to raise her boys there.”