Now and then - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,21

introduced Alderson.

“My, my,” Susan said when Alderson came onto the stage.

“Handsome.”

“If you like that look,” I said.

“What look do you like?” Susan said.

“Thuggish,” I said.

Susan smiled.

“Yes,” she said. “I like that too.”

After the lecture, some of the audience gathered around Alderson at the lectern. They were almost all women. Alderson was animated and charming with them.

“Recruiting a replacement?” I said to Susan.

“Women like him,” Susan said.

We left, and, with the rain still coming pleasantly, we drove out to Arlington and had a late supper at a restaurant called Flora.

“Whaddya think?” I said.

“He’s a graceful performer,” she said. “Speaks well. Doesn’t say much that’s new and informative.”

“The federal government is fascist, his organization is the place of last refuge for freedom-loving Americans,” I said.

“That’s not new?”

“I don’t admire this current government either,” Susan said.

“Who does?” I said.

“Possibly eleven people somewhere back in the hills,” Susan said. “But I remain unconvinced that Last Hope is the answer.”

“What’d you think of him?” I said. “As him.”

“We didn’t see him,” Susan said. “We saw his public persona. All we know is that he’s capable of assuming that persona.”

“On the tapes he was in his seduction persona,” I said. Susan sipped her martini.

“Did it resemble his public one?” she said.

“Less oratorical,” I said.

“What does the FBI fi le say?”

I drank some scotch.

“Last Hope advertises itself as helping people in trouble with the government,” I said. “According to the Feds, they claim to counsel the victims of government oppression on how to fi ght back and to provide access to lawyers, investigators, and CPAs.”

“And do they do that?”

“Feds don’t seem to think they do much of it.”

“How many people in the organization.”

“Feds don’t know.”

“Who fi nances them,” Susan said.

“Feds don’t know.”

“Shouldn’t they know more than they seem to?”

“They don’t think Last Hope amounts to much,” I said. “Or at least they didn’t, until one of their agents got killed.”

“And you?” Susan said. “You think they amount to much?”

“I don’t know if they’re in a position to bring our government to its knees,” I said. “But I think Alderson killed two people.”

“And you want him to answer for it,” Susan said.

“I do,” I said.

“You barely knew these people,” Susan said.

“I knew them enough,” I said.

The waiter brought salmon for Susan, and gnocchi for me. I had another scotch.

“And you withheld information,” Susan said, “that might prove useful to the police and the FBI.”

“For the moment,” I said.

“Because you want to catch him yourself,” Susan said.

“Yes.”

She nodded.

“That’s not unlike you,” Susan said. “In any case.”

I nodded.

“But you seem unusually intense about this one,” she said.

“I’m an intense guy,” I said.

“That’s just it,” she said. “You’re not, at least not so it shows.”

We were quiet for a moment. Susan waited.

“You think I identify with Doherty?” I said.

“Maybe,” Susan said.

“Because you were with another man once?”

“There are parallels,” Susan said.

“It was a long time ago,” I said.

“That’s right,” Susan said.

25.

I am capable of patience, but I don’t enjoy it. And I had been standing by, open-shuttered and passive, for about as long as I could stand. I figured that Epstein probably had Alderson’s office bugged by now, and maybe his home. Being a professional detective, I had already detected that Alderson’s duties at Concord, aside from the two public lectures, appeared to be a three-hour graduate seminar called “An Alternative to Tyranny,” on Wednesday afternoons.

I hung around outside the seminar room until class ended. The ten or twelve students, mostly female, gathered around Alderson, talking excitedly with him. I waited. Alderson looked at his watch and shook his head, and the students came out and dispersed except for one woman, who looked to be in her forties. She continued to talk animatedly with Alderson for a couple of minutes before he patted her hand and nodded and indicated his watch.

She took the hand he had patted her with and held it in both of hers for a moment. Then she let go and he stood and they came out together. She was maybe forty-five, with blond highlights. She dressed well for a student, even an old one. She wore a wedding ring. And she was as shapely as Jordan had been. I wondered if her husband was privy to government secrets.

“Tonight?” she said.

“Won’t be like any night,” Alderson said and smiled. The woman’s face flushed. She giggled. She made a gesture as if she was going to take his hand, thought better of it, and touched his cheek briefly before she turned and headed down the hall.

Alderson headed down the