DR. JONATHAN SPETZ-MOGG LIVED IN A PRICEY Westwood neighborhood, in a fine Nantucket-style house with cedar-shingle siding so silvered by time that not even the rain could darken it, which suggested that the silvering might be an applied patina.
Spetz-Mogg’s British accent was eccentric enough to be captivating, inconsistent enough to have been acquired during a long visit to those shores rather than by birth and upbringing.
The professor welcomed Ethan and Hazard into his home, but less graciously than obsequiously. He answered their questions not in a spirit of thoughtful cooperation, but in a nervous, wordy gush.
He wore a roomy FUBU shirt and baggy low-rider pants with snap pockets on the legs, looking as ridiculous as any white man trying to dress like a homey from the hood, twice as ridiculous because he was forty-eight. Every time he crossed his legs, which he did frequently, the baggy pants rustled loudly enough to interrupt conversation.
Perhaps he affected sunglasses indoors more often than not. He wore them on this occasion.
Spetz-Mogg removed the shades and put them on again nearly as often as he recrossed his legs, though these two nervous tells were [432] not synchronized. He seemed unable to decide whether he had a better chance of surviving interrogation by presenting an open and guileless image or by hiding behind tinted lenses.
Although the professor clearly believed that every cop was a brutal fascist, he’d never be one to climb a barricade to shout the accusation. He wasn’t incensed that two agents of the repressive police state were in his home; he was simply, quietly terrified.
In answer to every question, he vomited up a mess of information with the hope that garrulous responses would wash Ethan and Hazard out of his door before they produced brass knuckles and truncheons.
This was not the professor for whom they were searching. Spetz-Mogg might encourage others to commit crimes in the name of one ideal or another, but he was too gutless to do so himself.
Besides, he didn’t have time for crime. He had written ten works of nonfiction and eight novels. In addition to teaching his classes, he organized conferences, workshops, and seminars. He wrote plays.
In Ethan’s experience, industrious people, regardless of the quality of what their labor produced, rarely committed violent crimes. Only in movies did successful businessmen routinely indulge in murder and mayhem in addition to corporate responsibilities.
Criminals were likely to be failures in the workplace or just lazy. Or their material possessions had come through inheritance or by other easy means. Idleness gave them time to scheme.
Dr. Spetz-Mogg had no memory of Rolf Reynerd. On average, three hundred struggling actors attended one of his weekend conferences. Not many of them left a lasting impression.
When Ethan and Hazard rose to leave without suggesting that they torture the professor with electric wires to his genitals, Spetz-Mogg accompanied them to the door with visible relief. When he closed the door behind them, he no doubt bolted for the bathroom, his pretense of British equanimity belied by shuddering bowels.
In the Exped............