Power, The by Frank M. Robinson Page A

The girl in the hotel restaurant had been pretty young when she had seen Hart. Her memory wouldn’t be as good as the old man’s.
    “Early twenties—maybe just twenty. Light brown hair. About as tall as me, medium. Well-knit—he’d have been good behind a team of horses.”
    Tanner sipped his coffee.
    The Adam Hart that the girl had described and the Adam Hart that the old man had known didn’t sound at all like the same person.
     
     
    Brockton High School looked a little larger than the town deserved. Tanner guessed it served half the county; the town of Brockton and the miles of farm land around it. The classrooms were deserted and for a moment he thought he was out of luck.
    But the baseball coach, who was also the football coach and basketball coach and who taught swimming and track and algebra in his spare time, was still there. Coach Freudenthal was a chubby man in his middle forties with an easy, friendly air. He was working out in the gym, showing two twelve-year-olds how to shoot baskets. The backboards were old and the floor was warped but Tanner was willing to bet they still turned out championship teams.
    He told the coach why he was there and the welcome smile slipped away.
    “Sure, I remember Johnny. He was the star of the team when he played here. You would never have figured him for it, though.” He turned to the boys and slapped the nearest on the rump. “Okay, kids, shower up and go on home.” He started for his office. “How’d it happen, Professor?”
    “His heart gave out. Overwork, I guess.”
    “That’s funny, I never would have guessed he was a heart case.” Freudenthal pulled off his sweatshirt and started rubbing down his paunch with a towel. “You know, you’d never have thought he was an athlete. He just didn’t look the type, though let me tell you a lot of them don’t. He just didn’t have the build for it, but when it came to reflexes and a quick eye, I’ve never seen his equal. He won a letter in basketball.” He slipped on a shirt and started buttoning it. “Maybe this sounds odd but I don’t think he ever really enjoyed sports. He kind of drove himself to play them.”
    “Was he a good student?”
    “One of the best. Just as reliable in his studies as he was on the basketball court.” A smile flickered across his face. “Maybe he was more reliable. Johnny made a monkey out of me one night—he was really off. I couldn’t figure it out, he couldn’t even make a simple lay-up shot.”
    “When was that?”
    “Don’t remember exactly, sometime during the winter of his junior year—it was the same night the gypsies threw one of their big parties.”
    An alarm rang in Tanner’s mind. “Did a fellow named Adam Hart ever go to school here?”
    Freudenthal looked surprised. “Hart? Hell, none of the gypsy boys ever went to school. And just between you and me, I don’t think they needed to. The closest Adam Hart ever came to going was when he used to come to watch Johnny play ball.” He went over to the washbasin in the corner and doused his hair. “He was a pretty good friend of Johnny’s, always on the sidelines cheering him on.”
    Except for one night when he couldn’t make it , Tanner thought. The night when Olson played such a miserable game.
    “Did John ever strike you as being the moody sort?”
    “Not to start with. He was sort of a happy-go-lucky kid. You know how the pudgy type are—nothing ever worries them. He started to sober up towards the end of his junior year, got pretty gloomy. I remember I used to talk to him, try to snap him out of it. It didn’t do much good. Something was eating him but I never had any idea of what it was.”
    “His folks say he didn’t turn sour until he went off to college.”
    “You know how parents are, Professor. They’re the last to know when something goes wrong with their kids.”
    Tanner got up to leave. “You wouldn’t know if there are any pictures of Adam Hart around, would you? Any shots of the