Free Walking the Perfect Square by Reed Farrel Coleman Page B

boy now. My mom didn’t have to cut my steak for me anymore. I think maybe I was a little embarrassed.
    “I lost the piece of paper with that stuff on it.”
    “At least you’re honest.” She was unwittingly ironic, slowly dictating the information.
    Now I hesitated, wanting to ask Rico’s wife if she might know who the woman in the peacoat was. Not sure how to phrase the question and not wanting to push my luck, I didn’t ask. She promised to have Rico get back to me if he called in from Florida. I thanked her.
    I sat staring at the envelope on which I’d written the Maloneys’ address and phone number. I thought about driving up there. I knew in my bones I would have to go sooner or later. Later, I decided. It was late and cold and my knee ached. But the more deeply involved in the case of Patrick Maloney’s disappearance I got, the more convinced I became that where he had come from had something to do with where he had gone to.

February 3rd, 1978
    IF IT WASN’T for the fact that the New York Jets football team trained there, most non-alums wouldn’t know of Hofstra University’s existence. And with the way the Jets had played since their ’69 Super Bowl victory over the Colts, most non-alums, like myself, were seriously invested in trying to forget. I think the school was founded by a Dutch immigrant family who’d made their fortune in the logging industry in Michigan’s northern peninsula. As to why they picked Uniondale, Long Island, NY, for the campus, your guess is as good as mine. None of the students I asked seemed to know or care. They were having enough trouble giving me directions to the dorm suite Patrick Michael Maloney had once occupied. Marijuana Studies must have been a popular major.
    The south part of the campus was actually quite attractive, very Ivy League. But like most schools that had expanded to meet the Baby Boomer explosion, Hofstra had suffered the indignities of late ’60s and ’70s architecture: nearly windowless concrete boxes that looked better suited to protecting German machine-gun nests along the Normandy coast. Patrick Maloney’s suite was located on the side of the campus where the Jets maintained their facilities, in one of four white dormitory buildings that dwarfed every other structure as far as the eye could see. Very tasteful. I think maybe at night they put a crossbar between the towers so the Jets’ kicker could practice field goals in the dark.
    I thought I could have talked my way past the security guard at the lobby desk, but showed him my badge instead. Unlike most square-badgers, this guard was highly unimpressed. He shook his head no at my advance towards the elevator.
    “NYPD issuing canes these days?” he wondered. “Must be new since I got off the job.”

    “Special issue for the gimp squad. We chase the ambulance chasers,” I said. “How long you off?”
    “Five years in April. Haven’t looked back a day since I put in my papers.”
    Yeah, right. He hated the uniform so much he was willing to go back in the bag to guard coeds and potheads for four bucks an hour. I didn’t feel like arguing the point, so I turned the discussion to Patrick Maloney. Maybe I could use his cop’s instincts to my advantage. Apparently, this wasn’t a very original idea.
    “You’re the first guy to show up in weeks. First month, we had every off-duty cop on the planet running in and outta here. I was givin’ out numbers like the deli counter at Waldbaums. I was gettin’ interviewed every ten minutes.”
    “How about one more time?”
    Surprisingly, he said he remembered Maloney. The old cop said Maloney stuck out from the other students because he was always really polite and impeccably dressed.
    “Always had a good morning or good evening for me. Called me sir. My own kids don’t call me sir,” the security guard lamented. “And the creases in his pants were so sharp you could cut paper with ’em. The rest of the kids around here dress like bums and