Free The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker

them speculatively, occasionally approached one, and were brushed off. The businessmen didn't like to look at them and hurried off in embarrassment when approached, visions of the day's first Bloody Mary dancing in their heads.
    I closed the window, threw most of the mail away, locked the office, and headed for my car. The drive to the university was easy from my office, and I was there in ten minutes. I parked in a slot that said RESERVED FOR UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT and found my way to Tower's office. The secretary was wearing a pink jumpsuit this day. I revised my opinion about her thighs. They weren't too heavy; they were exactly the right size for the jumpsuit.
    I said, "My name's Spenser. To see Mr. Tower."
    She said, "Yes, Mr. Spenser, he'll be through in a minute," and went back to her typing.
    Twice I caught her looking at me while she pretended to check the clock. You haven't lost a thing, kid, I thought. Two campus cops, in uniform, looking unhappy, came out of Tower's office. Tower came to the door with them.
    "This is not Dodge City," he said, "you are not goddamn towntamers-" and shut the outer office door behind them as they left.
    "Dumb bastards," he said. "Come on in, Spenser."
    "I'll see you again on the way out," I said to the secretary.
    She didn't smile.
    "What have you got, Spenser?" Tower asked when we were in and sitting.
    "A bad murder, some funny feelings, damn little information, some questions, and no manuscript. I think your secretary is hot for me."
    Tower's face squeezed down.
    "Murder?"
    "Yeah, the Powell killing. You know about it as well as I do."
    "Yeah, bad. I know, sorry you had to get dragged into it. But we're after a manuscript. We're not worried about the murder. That's Lieutenant Quirk's department. He's good at it."
    "Wrong. It's my department too. I think the manuscript and the murder are connected."
    "Why."
    "Terry Orchard told me."
    "What?"
    Tower wasn't liking the way the talk was going.
    "Terry remembers a conversation on the phone between Dennis Powell and a professor in which Dennis reassured the professor that he'd hidden `it' well."
    "Oh, for crissake, Spenser. The kid's a goddam junkie. She remembers anything she feels like remembering. You don't buy that barrel of crap she fed you about mysterious strangers and being forced to shoot Dennis, and being drugged and being innocent. Of course she thinks the university's involved. She thinks the university causes famine."
    "She didn't say the university. She said a professor."
    "She'll say anything. They all will. She knows you're investigating the manuscript, and she wants you to get her out of what she's gotten herself into. So she plays little-girl-lost with you, and you go panting after her like a Saint Bernard dog. Spenser to the rescue. Balls."
    "Tell me about Lowell Hayden," I said.
    Tower liked the conversation even less. "Why? Who the hell is employing who? I want to know your results, and you start asking me questions about professors."
    "Whom," I said.
    "What?"
    "It's whom, who is employing whom? Or is it? Maybe it's a predicate nominative, in which case…"
    "Will you come off it, Spenser. I got things to do."
    "Me, too," I said. "One of them is to find out about Lowell Hayden. His name has come up a couple of times. He's a known radical. I have it on some authority that he's the most radical on campus. I have it on authority that Powell was pushing heavy drugs and had heavy drug connections. I know Hayden had an early Chaucer class on the morning that Powell was talking to a professor about cutting his early morning class."
    "That adds up to zero. Do you know how many professors in this university have eight o'clock classes every day? Who the hell is your authority? I know what's going on on my campus and no one's pushing heroin. I don't say no one's using it, but it's isolated. There's no big supplier. If there were, I'd know."
    "Sure you would," I said. "Sure, what I've got about professors and Lowell Hayden adds up to