Like Hell: A Mike Dodge Mystery

“In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear. It is scarcely less bitter than death: but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there…”

Saanvi was running exceptionally late, so I decided I’d roam the halls of academe. Academe wasn’t thrilled.

I’d met two of what sufficed as the University’s finest within about five minutes of entering the Sandburg Center for Arts and Literature. I was, here, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Float for the patriarchy, appropriation, cisgender tyranny, and the entire list of boomer side effects, packaged in a Smoky Bear t-shirt and sweatpants.

The shadowed alcove outside the second floor lecture hall (with a view of Saanvi’s dead-end office) seemed an ideal refuge, so I temporarily audited Depressive Lit 101. Not that the prof was doing such great box office, anyway — he was holding court to about a dozen, no, nine young matriculators.

“May we help you?”

Neither of my two University cops had sounded like Gordon Ramsay on a two-pack per diem. The wiry prof leaned expectantly on his dais; the students regarded me with that 1,000-mile stare that suggested nobody was helping anybody today.

“If you are on the adult extension track, I must inform you that this is a closed course for a hand-selected group of young scholars,” the prof inquired solicitously. “If you desire a ‘freebie,’ I believe the Campus Film Series is reviving Scream 3 this weekend. If you are a parent, GPS should help you locate the Outback Steakhouse. If you‘re merely a voyeuristic lookie-loo, the Hooters by the airport is now a pot dispensary.”

“Shoot,” I lamented. “I heard PBS was taping Dante for Dummies Roadshow today, and I wanted to get the free Circles Jerk totebag before they were all gone.” Impromptu high-roading is more art than science. I did get a muffled snort.

Hugh NEA Grant came off the dais, and for one second, I thought I was either going to be awarded the Robert B. Parker Memorial Off-Campus Perpwalk or wind up in a vicious slapfest. Instead, he smiled.

“Well,” he murmured. “Someone was awake during their elective survey class.”

“Just long enough to recall the passage, and, plus, you got nine students. Nine Circles of Hell, right?”

For a second, Prof appeared dumbstruck. Then he nodded. “My. Tell you what. You tell me who’s who, and I’ll personally welcome you into our little company.”

At that point some 45 years ago, I probably would have lapsed into a coma before they got past the first lake of fire. But just as Bugs Bunny had informed my operatic acumen, I now dug deep into my database of clumsily pretentious crime dramas.

“It’s a university campus, so I assume you have a rich vein of Lust and Heresy to tap.” In fact, the guy in the frat hoodie even now “surreptitiously” eye-bleeped his neighbor despite the enthralling academic duel unfolding, and the young woman in the “Compost the Rich” tee and overtly logo-ed Dolce and Gabbana slippers. Guess the Fashion Mall is as great a place as anywhere to Fight the Power. And Lust seemed absorbed in Heresy’s silk-screened anti-capitalist creed.

“Anger and Violence, I’ll just have to see how this iconoclastic professor schtick plays out over the next 20 minutes.” Another suppressed snort.

Then I caught the growing current of indignation in the pit. Apparently, the Prof’s game was designed for his own entertainment alone, as was this mid-semester reveal. He was the only one still smiling, though a lone student in a fatigue jacket had broken out a KIND bar and was watching the proceedings serenely as he ruminated. Most of the prodigies were locked tersely on Teacher, one young woman’s already defensive body posture tightening into something taut and veiny, another shaven-headed student fingering a pendant with three women back-to-back and examining him clinically. Only two staring anxiously at me. A tall redhead a row above the rest, her carefully angled iPad on a Wiki page displaying some wild-guess etching of Hell. And a portly kid, spilling somewhat over his seat, throwing me a Help a Brother Out expression. I felt a fresh flush of empathetic anger, then felt the anger flush away.

“As for Sleepy and Grumpy and Happy, tough call,” I concluded. The smile fell from Prof’s aesthetically bristled face.

“Dr. Marsh?” Saanvi’s voice was, as always, calm and drily genial. I turned to the short, slightly matronly commercial arts professor. “Would you mind if I borrow Mr. Dodge for a moment?”

Marsh blinked. “You know this man?”

Prof. Deshpande smiled serenely. “Michael is our new adjunct fellow in Contemporary Narcissistic Studies. I suggested he shadow one of your classes.”

“I’m sorry to be running so late,” Saanvi murmured as we moved toward her pebbled glass door. “We had an installation at the Library, and my TA was uncertain about the gallery arrangement. I think you’ll be pleased with my crew’s work on the Health Links project.

Saanvi oversaw DesignTrak, a student-run graphic production enterprise that worked with non-profits and designed green or socially conscious campaigns for local businesses and city agencies. We served together on the Millington Our Town Together steering committee, and I had braved academe to inspect multicultural flyers alerting area immigrants, refugees, first-generation seniors, and foreign students to federal public health information resources.

“And what drew you to Gervase Marsh’s lecture in the first place? It sounded like a spirited exchange, and that you were holding your own quite admirably.” She made a sound like a cirrus cloud chuckling.

“Yeah, what’s his deal?”

Saanvi located her key, inserted it silently. “Gervase has conducted this little social experiment for several semesters now, unbeknownst to his students. He selects nine candidates to participate in this prestigious colloquium on Dante’s Inferno. You cracked his code, so to speak. Each of these young people represents one of Dante’s nine proscribed Circles of Hell. As you noted, the Heretic, the Lustful, the Angry, and the Violent, along with the ‘Pagan,’ the Greedy, the Gluttonous, the Fraudulent, and the Treacherous.”

“How’s he determine all this?”

“Social media, Facebook, Twitter, possibly even private student files. I’ve entertained filing an ethics complaint, but as a former Oxford don, the administration continues to consider him a prime ‘catch.’ He was granted nearly instant tenure and has been shortlisted to chair the English Department. It must have been maddening for Gervase that a layman penetrated his subterfuge.”

“Not as maddening as you’d think,” I murmured. “I mean, he could have had Campus Security escort me to the the University border, but instead, he revealed himself to his students.”

Saanvi turned the key, hand on the knob. “No doubt, you touched a sensitive chord. His ego demanded he best you, even if it meant giving himself away. And then, you abruptly surrendered. You had the opportunity to take Gervase down a notch, but you wouldn’t at the expense of the students he’d already exploited and humiliated.” 

Prof. Deshpande placed a delicate palm against the door. “Gervase Marsh, now, is simply a dick.”

**

University engineers once devised a parking system making it physically impossible to bridge the time/space continuum between the two-hour-max public meters by the campus tennis courts and any auditorium or conference room surrounding the quad. When I was still on the research/economics beat, my cumulative campus parking fines funded at least a greenhouse or DNA sequencer. The visitor’s parking structure on the campus’ northern frontier was a flat $5 daily –far less infuriating than Carmen Santiago-ing the diabolically concealed University fine payment box.

Crime drama teaches us that nothing good ever transpires in a parking garage, even at 5:40 on a sunlit Wednesday afternoon in a two-level no-frills deck that looks like a set for a post-apocalyptic movie. I’d made it safely to my ground-floor slot and fobbed the Tucson open before detecting the first groan seemingly in front of my SUV.

Or to be accurate, on the other side of the low concrete wall in front of the Hyundai, where a former Oxford don lie in the weeds, one leg twisted at an unfortunate angle and blood seeping from the scalp above his beautiful mind.

Dr. Gervase Marsh squinted up as I scaled the four-foot wall and landed heavily, arse-over-teacups, in the overgrown grass beside him. He struggled onto an elbow and looked into my face.

“Oh, of bloody course,” he moaned, before passing out.

**

“Are you here to finish me off?” Gervase asked groggily after he came back around. “I supposed I shouldn’t have goaded you, though I was a bit disappointed by your becoming such a mawkish melt just as we were having a bit of fun.”

“Jesus, you idiot. I didn’t attack you.”

He shifted tone, warily. “Who says anyone attacked me?”

“Wild guess with a high probability I assume at any given moment of the day. What happened?”

“They’re redoing the lot near my office, so I was forced to park here. I’m on the second level – don’t want some bumpkin nicking the Jaguar, you know?” He pronounced it in three syllables -- I glanced about for a chunk of concrete. “I was about to climb in when some thug barreled me overboard. Then you happened about.”  

“Think you were robbed?”

Marsh winced as he inventoried his pockets. “Seemingly not. Is the Jag-u-war still up there? You people ARE quite exuberant about your carjacking.”

I glanced up to spy the grill of a jade green convertible with the familiar grinning kitty nameplate. “Seems intact. Look, whoever did this blindsided you and propelled you over the wall. Though we haven’t known each other that long, I’d say that sounds like someone you know. Do you think it was a man?”

“I was caught unawares in a vulnerable position, and my attacker propelled me using my own momentum. I suppose it might have been anyone.”

“Think we could narrow it down to nine anyones?”

Dr. Marsh arched a brow through the pain. “Now, WHY would one of my students wish to do me bodily harm?”

“Look, you told these kids they were exceptional, when in reality you selected them because they literally had a special place in Hell. What could go wrong?

“So what’s your game here? According to Saanvi, this is, what, your fifth group? You’re compiling data, aren’t you? For a book? Seven habits for effective people, five stages of death, four types of human behavior, nine circles of Hell. Pigeonholing — the hallmark of great motivational literature. You’re doing a self-help book based on Dante’s Inferno?

“Life management,” the professor corrected. “We all live in a purgatory of our own making. Dante Alighieri’s journey offers a roadmap to self-awareness.”

“‘A hell of a ride,’ Oprah proclaims.”

And with that, the MPD arrived with the whoop-whoop of a Bolingbrook housewife discovering a free Divine Comedy taped to the bottom of Seat A-15.

**

Gervase very chivalrously assured the cops that despite all appearances, I had not hurled him off the parking deck. I was probably in the clear — the paramedics seemed to conclude I lacked the strength or stamina for the feat — but I was now ensconced in Marsh’s private room off St. Mark’s third-floor nurse’s station.

“You,” Gervase stated. He considered his suspended leg, then spied the distressed leather satchel at my feet. I set aside my phone.

“Hi, Sunshine. I found it snagged on a lower branch, and hope against hope, I located your class syllabus, student roster, and a list of what appears to be list of working titles. I kinda prefer Divine Comity, though Navigating The Dark Wood sounds better tripping off Drew Barrymore’s tongue.”

 “I shall forgive this gross violation of privacy only because I can appreciate the validation of kicking me while I’m down. How long was I out?”

“Hour or so. I used the time productively on social media.”

“I doubt THAT’S possible.”

 “Says the guy creeping coeds on Instagram. It’s actually a brilliant strategy — millennials put it all out there. Take Paul Fansler, hoodie guy, distinguished Lambda Pi Gamma fellow and misogynistic horndog. And from the tenor of his Facebook wall, Most Likely to Get His Own Dateline segment. Lust, right?

“Or Shandy Peters, of the Chicago jewelry Peterses. I pegged her for Heresy, based on the anti-1 percenter shirt she was wearing, ’til I realized I didn’t quite understand what heresy was. I searched up her shirt on Amazon: It cost $59.99. Way to compost the shit out of the oppressor class! And, OMG, her Instagram series defending blood diamonds! Greed Girl would make Gordon Gecko start a soup kitchen.

“On the other hand, Tamar Feeny, she of the monkey fist posture, is the real deal. Her social media presence is a cauldron of fury – at institutional racism, the patriarchy, the Right and the Moderate Left, the athletic program, tenured faculty, religious abuse, and for that matter the entire Judeo-Christian military-industrial refined sugar complex. She was clearly angered by your revelation back there. I think you see where I’m going.

“Perhaps more frightening is Corey Hand, the guy in the Army surplus showing how unaffected he was by the whole affair and snacking in class in what likely was an open act of defiance.”

“The first day of class, he brought what I believe you call a Quarter Pounder to my MetaphysLit class and rather raucously devoured it as I reviewed the course syllabus. I suppose like the convict who bests the biggest lout his first day on the Cell Block to establish alpha dominance.”

“Yeah, him. He’s obsessed with all things MMA, associates esoteric martial arts with self-discipline and serenity while espousing the dismemberment of the politically correct, the civil rights movement, and selected lawmakers. Tamar Feeny might have staged a cancellation party for you in the Sandburg Center atrium, but Mr. Violent would have met you in a dark corner and personally seen to your permanent disability. I don’t think Heresy would really care. That would be Olivia Gideon, correct? The one who kept chortling during our exchange. Her Facebook and Twitter posts show no love for organized religion, and I doubt she pees herself over academic authority.”

“I might prefer to think of her as an autonomous thinker,” Gervase observed drily.

“The Fraud, of course, was easy – Annalise Skinner, the redhead sitting in the third row so nobody could see her surfing for online cheat notes. Probably so far out of her depth she has to wear Depends to class. Then we come to the toughest one – the Unbaptized, the Pagan. There’s a social media meltdown waiting to happen. How did you plan to incorporate that into your little treatise? A Circle of Hell for two-thirds of the planet? The only safe way I could see you going there was a pagan proud of being a pagan. There’s a whole Pagan Pride movement in the U.S. that takes in everything from wiccans and New Agers and Neo-Druids and animists and the Goddess movement. They have picnics and festivals and support animal rescue and domestic abuse shelters. Now, according to their website, Col Keating manages a community garden off-campus and identifies with Goddess Spirituality.

“Which brings us to our final two contestants. And that’s where what you referred to as my ‘melty mawkishness’ almost proved my undoing. Then I found Ryan Kotter’s TikTok page – foodie tips and Extreme Eating. He’s competed twice in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest as well as some regional ghost pepper competitions. Google up the Joey Chestnuts and Takeru Kobyashis and other competitive consumers, and you see none of them are particularly stocky. Fat limits how much your stomach can withstand.

“I’d unfairly assumed I knew who the Glutton was. And by process of elimination, that leaves only Treachery. And how in the world did you identify a traitor?”

**

He was with Saanvi in the waiting room down the corridor, along with Det. Curtis Mead, who nodded to me in combined greeting and confirmation. Darin Garrison was there, I assume, to provide himself a psychological alibi, to comfort his mentor while determining just how much Gervase knew or surmised.

Which actually had been very little. The Dante scholar was too self-absorbed to understand how his classroom reveal had impacted Darin. He’d in fact “taken” Gervase’ course three times after impressing the professor with his research skills and Darin’s willingness – nay, eagerness – to serially betray his classmates. Garrison as Marsh’s accomplice would be the only one in the group to know where Gervase’s Jag-u-war was billeted during University resurfacing, and he needed only opportunity and his own considerable momentum to send the prof ideally to his death.  

That look of abject panic he’d thrown me wasn’t about his terror of public body-shaming, really, not even about me. It was the realization that Marsh had for his own narcissistic gratification threatened to destroy five years of work and a potentially lucrative collaboration.

“The asshole may know Dante, but he doesn’t know shit about data,” Darin said. “We had a sampling of 45 students – nobody in the academic community’s going to take that seriously. We needed at least twice that to validate definitive patterns. But he had to bait you, and for all I know, the jag was going to go ahead and publish without me. Well, I decided if Gervase was out of the picture, I could continue the work and eventually put out something of real societal value with a couple titles after my name.”

He was silent for a moment, then smiled at me. “C’mon. Gervase didn’t give me away like you said, did he? You figured it all out, right?” Darin’s chair creaked as he relaxed. “That pleases me. The dick.”