“You introduced us,” I said, looking through the letters.
“Joan, Holloway asked Kate and Bobbie for money last fall, but some of these checks are more recent.” I held up a check with a February date. “Everyone wasn’t asked to donate for the sculpture. Here’s one earmarked for a special speakers’ fund, three others to buy new adaptive fitness equipment for disabled students. And so on. Did he actually pay for any of that?”
“He bought the bronze bowling pin,” she said, wrinkling her nose as if an unpleasant odor had wafted in.
“I know what the asking price was for that,” I said. “But do you know what he actually paid?”
“No, and the gallery owner won’t say. But she’s ready to deliver it.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Bobbie suggested drilling it for a water spout and making a fountain out of it. I thought we could stick a plaque on it and let his family use it for a headstone.”
“Both appropriate,” I said. “But what about the other stuff?”
“No one on campus has seen anything. No speakers, no equipment.”
“Some of these letters sound angry.”
She was nodding. “Making those phone calls was one of the most difficult ordeals I have ever gone through. When I told people that Park could not legally solicit or deposit funds outside the Foundation, every one of them was upset to some degree. A few of the people who sent checks were a whole lot more than just upset. I know that Park got a lot of calls, and I know that no one got any satisfaction from his response.”
“What did he say to them?”
“Basically, that I was full of it. He actually had the gall to ask David Dahliwahl for more money.”
“Dahliwahl turned him down?”
“Yes. And told him that he expected the first donation to be redirected to the scholarship fund.”
“What did Park say?”
“That he’d think about it.”
She glanced at her wall clock. “I’m sorry, Maggie, but I have a meeting.”
“Thanks. This has been very interesting.” I tapped the letters in front of me. “May I have copies?”
“Not of the checks, of course, but the letters? For background purposes only, not for publication, why not?”
“I may call some of these people,” I said.
“As a favor, will you let me call them first, warn them what to expect?”
“Sure.”
She led me to the outer office to make copies.
“Joan, you called your list of donors. But there could be other people he went to.”
“I think there probably are.”
“I strongly urge you not to wait for the Board to act.” I fished the card Thornbury had given me Friday night out of my bag and handed it to her. “You need to call the police yourself right away. For your own protection.”
Chapter 16
My classroom was frigid. Twenty-five students and their computers would eventually heat up the room, but in the meantime I hoped that my futzing with the thermostat would do enough to take the edge off the chill.
I booted the classroom computer, dropped the big screen from the ceiling, and started warming up the ceiling-mounted projector. Students began filing in, shedding wet jackets and hanging them on the lighting rack I had set up in a corner for that purpose.
At eight o’clock sharp, we began the workshop.
Films are made to be seen, but getting them in front of an audience is tough. The filmmaker also has to be a salesman. So, before we put up each student project, I had its creator pitch it as he or she would have to do for the rest of their careers.
We had heard the first pitch, a student named Chelsea, and offered comments, and had seen her film-in-progress. The lively discussion that followed, the critique, was interrupted when one of the most talented among my little flock, an eighteen-year-old named Preston Nguyen arrived; late for the first time that semester.
Slammed in would better describe his entrance than merely arrived. Muttering under his breath a stream of words that generally began with F, he flung his backpack to the floor, and with a toss of his long hair, dropped into a chair.
“Good morning, Mr. Nguyen,” I said as the room’s vibrations settled. “Nice of you to join us.”
“I am so pissed,” he said, slouching low, arms dangling to the sides as if they were dead weights. “I worked my ass off for those assholes. Fuckers wouldn’t even give me an interview.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The assholes are attached to the TV station where you’re interning?”
“I mean, what do they want?” He raised open palms toward the ceiling, or toward heaven, which perhaps had also let him down. “They saw what I can do. I’m better on the digital editor than anyone they have working there. Jeez, I bleed competence for six months and they say…” He let out a puff of air, dejected. “Nothing. They say nothing. I ask you, what do I have to do to get hired on?”
“You’ve only bled for six months?” I said. “How badly do you want a TV gig?”
Preston was a true television geek. In response, he balled a fist and tapped his heart, but he was smiling, if sadly.
“Yeah, well, it was easy for you,” he said. “You went to some fancy film school, not,” he looked around the room with disdain, “here.”
“I didn’t go to film school at all,” I said.
Zeke, from his usual front row seat, looked up, challenge in his expression. “Then your dad must have been a-”
“Dad taught physics,” I said. “I got into television the old-fashioned way.”
“Knee pads?” some wit in the back offered.
“I stayed open to possibilities,” I said. “I started at the bottom and made the best of an act of God.”
“I believe it takes an act of God,” Preston said.
“What I said was, I made the best of an act of God. I advise you to keep your eyes and your options open. Be ready to grab your moment when it comes.”
Gesturing toward the student whose session was interrupted, I said, “Now, as a courtesy to Chelsea, let’s get back to your comments about her work.”
Chelsea shook her head. “No, that’s okay, Miss M. I’ve got the gist of what everyone had to say and I know what I need to do next. You tell us all the time how to pitch our films, but you’ve never told us how you got started. We all assumed you fell out of film school into a great job. How’d you do it?”
There was a chorus of similar questions. I remembered how nice it had been on rainy days when I was a kid in school to have the teacher read us a story or tell us one. I looked at my collection of sopping charges, and started telling my tale.
“The summer after I graduated from college-”
“What was your major?”
“Philosophy,” I said. “I had no clue what I wanted to do with myself. My parents expected me to go to graduate school, but I wasn’t ready to commit to that. So I took a road trip. I got as far as central Kansas before my money ran out and my car died. The only job I could find was in a local dive, tending bar and waiting on tables; I’d worked as a waitress in college.
“It didn’t take long to get to know all the town regulars. One of them, a guy named Steve, asked me one day if I could write a simple declarative sentence.”
“Kinky.”
“Fortuitous,” I said. “Turns out he managed the local TV station and he had just fired his writer, another regular at the bar-very regular-for showing up drunk three days in a row. Steve offered me a job writing commercials and news copy if I could start in the morning. The pay stunk-I had to keep my restaurant job to cover my rent-but it was interesting. Now and then I operated the cameras, and from time to time I combed my hair, stood in front of the camera and read the weather report. And that was how I began.”
“Where does the act of God come in?”
“Kansas is in the middle of Tornado Alley. Think Dorothy-and-Toto land. One morning when I was at the station, the tornado sirens went off. Steve ran in and told me we had to get to a shelter. On the way out, I grabbed a Steadicam and a recorder.”