Freaky Deaky

Again, both grinned and Chris glanced at the bookshelves.

"How'd you manage to hang onto all this? You've got Rising Up Angry.

You've got the Rat, Barb, ones I've heard of but don't think I ever read."

"You never know," Miss Abbott said, "they could be collector's items someday. I stored everything at Mother's while I was in New York, working for a publishing house."

Chris said, "How about when you were at Huron Valley, working in the laundry?"

That took care of Miss Abbott's pleasant expression, left over from the grin.

She said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"You don't want to talk about old times?" Chris said.

"Tell us how you got busted, any of that?"

"I don't care to talk to you about anything," Miss Abbott said.

"Okay? So leave. That means don't say another word, just get the fuck out."

Going down the stairs Maureen paused on the landing to look back at Chris.

"I thought she might try to finesse around it, at least act dumb. No, sir. " "She comes right at you," Chris said.

"You notice she didn't say anything about Mark? Didn't want to go near that, get on the subject of bombs. Did you learn anything?"

Maureen said, "You mean outside of what she doesn't want to talk about?

No. She won't be any help to us on the assault-yeah, I did learn that much."

"I wouldn't worry about that one," Chris said. In the front hall by the manager's apartment he said, "Can I make a suggestion?"

"Give it to Wendell."

"Yeah, but call him, from here. Tell him to get a judge to sign a warrant, so he can come right over and search her apartment. You could stick around, make sure she doesn't leave."

"What're we looking for, bombs?"

"Any kind of explosives, copper wire, blasting caps, timers, maybe some kind of remote control switch. Clothespins, the snap kind. Be sure to check the refrigerator."

"Clothespins?"

"Have Wendell put on the warrant you're looking for explosive materials and literature."

"What kind of literature?"

"A notebook with a red cover that's marked "May to August 1970." If you don't find anything else, at least get hold of the notebook.

There's something in it, 'cause she hid it while you were talking to her. Covered it with some papers. Maybe she's got instructions in it, how to make a bomb. But even if it doesn't look like anything," Chris said, "hold on to it and let me see it, okay?"

Maureen didn't answer. She squinted, making a show of studying him.

"I don't get it. You want to work so bad, why don't you straighten out your residence problem, get your shield back?"

"I don't think I like Sex Crimes."

"Okay, but why this? What're you trying to prove?"

"Nothing, I'm just going along."

"That's what I'm asking you. Why?"

He had to think of words to describe something he knew without words, something that came to him as he stood at Robin Abbott's bookshelf and looked at her past and realized her past was her present.

"One thing leads to another," Chris said.

"Greta takes us to Robin. You find out she was a hard-core revolutionary at U of M and I pick up on it because I was there, I saw what was going on. I was even into it, not much but enough that I could feel it again. She did too, when I was talking about it. You see her face? She was dying to tell stories, top anything I said easy, but she held back. She was afraid if she got started she might say too much, give away what she's into now."

"If she's into anything."

"Maureen, come on. Why'd she hold back? What's wrong with talking about old times?"

Maureen said, "It looked like she's living in those times." Chris smiled at Maureen coming around.

"Or she'd like to relive them, huh? But if she can't, then maybe she gets into it in a different way or for a different reason. You know what I mean?"

"Maybe she's mad at somebody," Maureen said.

It raised Chris's eyebrows.

"Maybe somebody, when she was busted," Maureen said, "turned her in."

Chris said, "That's not bad, Maureen." He thought about it and said,

"Yeah, I like it. I might be able to look into that."

Me remembered one night in the Athens Bar, a guy he'd see in there, an artist by the name of Dizsi, telling how they had planned to blow up a submarine, the one that used to be parked in the Detroit River behind the Naval Armory.

It was for sightseeing, Dizsi said, but it was also a symbol of war. He believed someone informed on them, because the submarine disappeared before they could destroy it and later turned up in the Israeli navy.

Chris liked to listen to Dizsi. He was Hungarian and spoke through his gray beard with an accent that was perfect for telling about anarchist plots. Dizsi had escaped the Russians, traded Budapest for Detroit, taught fine art at Wayne State and supported student demonstrations until he was fired. Now he lived in a loft studio in Greektown where he painted wall-size canvases and was waited on by his mistress, Amelia.

"You remember Robin Abbott?"

"Yes, of course, and I'll tell you why."