In Plain Sight

by Barbara Block

  Rabbit swallowed. “Listen, maybe you’d like to keep him.”

  “The rattler?”

  Rabbit nodded.

  “Yeah, I can do that.” Actually I’d been going to suggest it.

  Rabbit pulled on his ponytail. “I gave T.J. seventy bucks for him.”

  “You made a bad deal.”

  “See,” Rabbit explained, anxious for me to understand, “I was gonna milk the rattler for the venom and sell it. T.J. said I could make a lot of money doing that.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Jesus. I don’t know who’s worse: you for believing him or him for telling you something like that.”

  Rabbit started shuffling his feet again. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance ... you’d ... you know ... give me the sev enty bucks for it?”

  “Are you nuts? It’s not as if I can sell it.” Actually I could, but I wasn’t going to. “I’m doing you a favor taking the snake off your hands.” You and everyone you know, I added silently.

  Rabbit sighed. “I guess maybe you’re right. It’s just that I needed that money for my rent.”

  “You live at home.”

  “I still pay my mom something.”

  I laughed. “Nice try. However I will give you twenty if ...”

  “If what?” Rabbit asked eagerly.

  “You can get me some information.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s about a girl named Estrella Torres.” I had Garriques’s version of her. I wanted another view before I met with him again.

  “What about her?”

  “You know her?”

  “Yeah I know her. She’s a burnout.”

  “Burnout?”

  “Yeah,” Rabbit replied. “A burnout. You know. Someone who does too much dope.”

  “What else does she do?”

  Rabbit shrugged. “A little dealing. Nothing big. Just enough to pay for herself.”

  “Do you know where she’s staying?”

  Rabbit shook his head. “I heard she ran away.”

  “She did. Do you know where she went?”

  “Why? Is she in trouble?”

  “No. Her aunt wants to speak to her. She’s really worried.”

  “That’s cool. Will you give me that twenty if I find out?”

  I nodded.

  “Then I can manage it.” Rabbit indicated the bag. “So what you gonna do with my snake?”

  “I’ll see if the zoo wants it. If they don’t, I’ll probably take it out to the woods somewhere and let it go.”

  Rabbit leaned forward. “Can I come?” he asked eagerly, sounding like the eight-year-old boy in the sixteen-year-old body he really was. “I like the woods.”

  I was just about to answer when the front door opened and Garriques walked in. Rabbit took a look and his mouth dropped opened. If he could have disappeared, he would have.

  “Ah, Mr. Randazzo,” Garriques said to Rabbit in his most jovial voice, the kind of voice I remember my principal using when he’d caught me sneaking out of the building. “How’s the leg?”

  “The leg. The leg,” Rabbit stuttered. “It’s getting better.” He turned and limped across the floor.

  Funny, but he hadn’t limped when he’d come in.

  “I thought it was your right leg that got hurt,” Garriques observed as Rabbit passed him.

  “No. No, it was my left,” Rabbit muttered as he hurried toward the door.

  “Ah. I could have sworn your mother said you’d injured the right one in the note she wrote, but I could be wrong. So I’ll see you in school tomorrow,” Garriques said as Rabbit took hold of the door knob and pulled it open.

  “Right,” Rabbit assured him. “Absolutely.” He practically bolted out the door.

  Garriques shook his head as the door slammed shut. “God only knows where that one is going to end up.”

  “Maybe he’ll surprise you.”

  “I don’t think so.” Garriques’s eyes took on the bleak look that people get when they’ve been disappointed too many times.

  I was about to remind him of what he’d said earlier about giving everyone more than one chance when I heard a rustling noise. The sides of the brown bag were moving. The snake was getting restless.

  “What’s in there?” Garriques asked.

  “A rattler. Rabbit brought him in.”

  “Figures,” Garriques said. “Can I see him?”

  “Sure. Why not?” I leaned down brought up a cracked ten-gallon aquarium that Tim had taken in trade for a gerbil and dumped the rattler in it.

  Garriques looked at him longingly as I secured the screen cover. “I’d love to have something like that, but Enid would never let me.”

  “I’d say she has a point.”

  “I’m not so sure. There’s something to be said for living with death. It makes you appreciate life more.”

  “How philosophical.” As I’ve gotten older my tolerance for platitudes has plummeted.

  Garriques ignored my sarcasm and walked over to Monty’s cage. “I think mywife’s coming around on this one, though,” he said, gazing down at the retic.

  “Good.” As far as I knew Enid was still buying him the salt water aquarium, but I didn’t say that. It wasn’t my place to.

  He ran a finger along the top of the aquarium, then turned away. “I guess it’s time we talked,” he said.

  “I think so.” We went into my office and sat down.

  Garriques began neatening the pile of circulars sitting on the edge of my desk. “The thing with Estrella—it’s complicated,” he said. Then he went back to playing with my mail.

  Zsa Zsa ran in, jumped on my lap, stole a dog biscuit off the desk and ran away. A minute passed. And another.

  “Look,” I finally told him, “I have lots of things to do and I’m sure you do as well. If you want to talk to me fine, if you don’t fine. But let’s not waste each other’s time.”

  “You’re right.” Garriques straightened up. “You’re absolutely right.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Garriques studied my ceiling. “The truth is,” he said to a crack in the plaster, “I made up that story about Estrella. Everything I told you was a lie.”

  Chapter 10

  I put my elbows on my desk, interlaced my fingers, and leaned my chin on the platform I’d created. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said slowly. “First you were lying to me, but now you’re going to tell me the truth?”

  “That’s right,” Garriques muttered, a slight flush rising on his cheeks.

  “Why should I believe you this time?”

  Garriques reluctantly pulled his gaze away from the ceiling fan and fixed it on me. “No reason, really. You’re going to have to take my word, and I know that’s not very good at this moment.” He stopped talking and looked at me as though he expected me to disagree with him, to tell him that I would believe anything he told me, but I didn’t and I wasn’t going to. “It’s just,” he finally went on when I didn’t say anything, “that this mess with Estrella is ... stupid. And I don’t usually make stupid mistakes.”

  I unhooked my fingers and sat back. “I just bet you don’t.” Garriques had had a fast rise from high school teacher to high school principal and was looking—and this I knew because he’d told me—to become a major player in the education game. To him, Syracuse was just a pit stop on his way to New York, Chicago, or maybe even D.C.

  Garriques twisted his watch band around. “Of course, you know about Enid’s illness?” he asked me.

  “Yes. She has diabetes.”

  Again the twisting. At this rate he was going to wear a groove in his wrist. “Did you also know she has to give herself shots twice a day?”

  “That’s too bad.” I extracted a cigarette from the pack on the desk and lit it with my lighter. “Forgive me. I don’t mean to be nasty or anything, but what does Enid’s illness have to do with what we’re discussing?” I inquired after I’d taken a puff.

  “It makes her depressed, really moo
dy. Things that you and I might not take that seriously, she does.”

  I tapped my fingernails on my desk. “So what is this thing that you did that your wife is going to take seriously?”

  Garriques ran his finger around the inside of his shirt collar. “God, do I feel like a jerk.”

  I asked the obvious question. “Did you go to bed with Estrella, is that what this is all about?”

  Garriques’s eyes widened in shock. “No, absolutely not. It’s nothing like that at all. You have to believe that.”

  Looking at his face I did. The expressions of surprise and horror were genuine. Either that or he was turning in a stellar performance. “Then what is this all about?”

  “It’s simple, really. Estrella stole something from my house and I need to get it back.”

  “If it’s so simple, why don’t you go to the police?”

  “Because then my wife would know.”

  “So then, Estrella’s not really an illegal immigrant? That part about coming to me so the police wouldn’t find out was all bullshit?”

  “It wasn’t,” Garriques protested. “She doesn’t have papers. That part’s true.”

  It was reassuring to know that something Garriques had said was. I sat back. “Okay. What did she take?”

  “My wife’s diamond brooch and earrings.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “They’re not that valuable in the monetary sense,” Garriques said, quickly answering my unspoken question, “but the jewelry has enormous sentimental value to my wife. The pieces have been in the family for years. My wife is very attached to them. Now that her mother is selling the old family house they’re all she has left of the past.”

  “And?” I prodded when Garriques didn’t say anything else.

  “Yes. Well.” He cleared his throat. “Recently Enid and I have been having some ... some problems ... about different things.” I could tell from the way one of his hands was kneading the other that he was upset, but I couldn’t figure out whether he was upset about his marital difficulties or about having to talk about them. “I’m sure you know how that goes,” he added.

  “Yes, I do.” I started thinking about how amazing it was Murphy and I had stayed married as long as we had. Looking back I realize that sex and drugs were the glue that bound us. We didn’t have the same tastes. We didn’t like each other’s friends or families, and they, for the most part, returned the favor. We couldn’t even agree on where we wanted to live. When we’d decided to leave New York I’d wanted to move to Boston, but Murphy had wanted to come to Syracuse. As per usual I’d let him sweet talk me into mov ing upstate, even though I knew I’d hate it. And I was right. I did. And that was my problem. I never said no. Then when something went wrong I’d blamed it on Murphy. He’d get pissed and we were off. The only time we were happy with each other was when we were in bed together. At least we’d done that well. I was thinking about how well when Garriques took a deep breath. I turned my attention back to him reluctantly.

  “Anyway,” he was saying, “one of the areas we’ve disagreed about is my students.”

  “Your students? I don’t understand.”

  Garriques’s face became more animated. “You see,” he said, putting his hands on the edge of my desk and leaning forward, “I used to make it a policy to have some of the students, the ones I thought I could help, over to my house once in a while. We’d hang out, watch a movie, that kind of stuff, but my wife didn’t like having them around. They bothered her. She kept on saying they were too loud, that they scared her, that she was afraid they were going to steal something. So finally I promised I wouldn’t do it anymore. And I haven’t.”

  “Except for Estrella,” I guessed.

  “Yes, except for Estrella.” Garriques looked glum.

  “Why her?” I’d asked before and hadn’t gotten a very good answer. Maybe this time I would.

  “I don’t know.” He started on his watch band again. “Maybe it was because she has so much potential. She’s so bright that I just couldn’t stand the thought of letting her fall away like everyone else.” Garriques continued, “I thought if I got involved from the beginning before she dropped out of school and got pregnant, maybe I could stop the process. I went out of my way to take an interest in Estrella, to make sure that she came to class, to talk to her, to try and help her solve her problems. And it was working. She started coming around.”

  I interrupted. “Are you aware that she uses a lot of grass?”

  Garriques made an exasperated noise. “Of course I’m aware. My job is to know things like that. But she’d cut back. She seemed more cheerful, less sullen. Recently she’d begun dropping in my office to talk. Have you seen the map I have mounted on my wall?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never been in your office.”

  “That’s right.” Garriques gave a deprecating laugh. “You haven’t. I don’t know where my mind is lately.”

  “The map,” I reminded him.

  “Yes, the map. It’s a map of Transylvania done in the 1500s. Estrella found it fascinating. In fact, all the kids do. And when she learned that I have other old maps like that in my house she wanted to see them.”

  “So you took her home,” I said, stating the inevitable.

  Garriques corrected me. “Her and two other boys I’ve been trying to keep out of trouble.” He leaned forward and began fiddling with the circulars on my desk again. “My wife was at work—she doesn’t get home till after five—and I thought what the hell, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I mean what was the harm? The kids just wanted to see the maps. I thought it would be a good thing to do ...”

  “Except ...”

  “Except that Estrella stole my wife’s jewelry.”

  I interrupted before he could say anything else. “How do you know it was her? Why couldn’t it have been the boys?”

  “Because Estrella was the only one alone in the den. The two boys were with me the whole time. They’d gotten bored with the maps, so I took them into my office and showed them a computer game I’d just gotten; but Estrella wasn’t interested. She wanted to stay and look at my books. So of course I said yes. I thought I could trust her. I guess I was wrong.” Garriques smiled ruefully, picked up a price list, tapped his chin with it and threw it back down. “What can I say? I was an idiot. If Estrella had taken anything else, I don’t think it would have mattered so much. Enid is never going to understand. Never. There’s no way I can explain this to her.” Garriques compressed his lips and gave my price lists his full attention.

  I was surprised as I looked at him at how much Garriques seemed to care about what Enid thought—he hadn’t struck me as the type of man who would. I stubbed out my cigarette and lit another one. “Exactly what happened?”

  “I already told you. It’s embarrassing to talk about it.”

  “Tell me again anyway,” I commanded.

  “It’s simple. The four of us came into the house. We went into the den and looked at the maps. Then I took the two boys into the office and showed them Myst. They loved it. So do I. It’s a great game.” Garriques thought for a moment. “We must have been in there about twenty minutes. When we came back to the den Estrella was gone and so were the brooch and the earrings. Enid usually kept them in the vault, but that day I had them in my desk. I was about to take the pieces to the jeweler to get them cleaned and to get the clasp on the brooch fixed and a couple of the stones reset because they were coming loose.” He hit my desk with the flat of his hand. “It’s just bad luck they were there, but these days that seems to be the leitmotif of my life.”

  “So there’s no way this could have been planned?” I asked.

  “None at all.”

  “Now, I’m assuming your wife thinks the earrings and the brooch are at the jeweler.”

  He nodded. “I told her the jeweler said they’d be ready by the end of the week.”

  “That leaves four days to get them back.”

  “Believe me, I know.”


  “Has it occurred to you that Estrella might have sold them?”

  Garriques blanched. “God, I hope not. Otherwise I’ll be a divorced man.” Garriques rubbed the bump on his nose with the tips of his fingers. “What a mess.”

  I pushed my chair away from my desk. “Now, this is it?” I asked him. “This is the whole story?”

  Garriques nodded.

  “No more surprises? No more things you forgot to tell me?”

  Garriques put up his hand, palm facing outward as if he were in court. “I swear.”

  I spun the lighter around with the tip of my finger.

  “So will you help?”

  “All right,” I finally said. “I’ll see what I can do.” I could sympathize with Garriques. He’d tried to do something good and things had just gotten worse and worse. It was a scenario I was not unfamiliar with.

  “Great.” Garriques’s smile lit up the room.

  “I’m not promising anything,” I cautioned.

  “I know.” Garriques got up and we shook hands. I walked him to the door, and then I went into the back to look in on Rabbit’s rattlesnake. He was coiled up under a sheet of newspaper. I was checking the latches on the top of the cage to make sure they were secure when the front door buzzer went off. Zsa Zsa woke up and started barking. I gave the latches one last shake to make sure they’d hold and went out to see who’d come in. It was Tim.

  “Hi,” he said. “Sorry I took so long, but Mrs. Breen insisted on feeding me.”

  Everyone insisted on feeding Tim. Despite the shaved head and the earrings and the cowboy boots, he looked like a boy who needed a mother. “And you just couldn’t say no.” Tim looked abashed. “How long did it take you to catch the bat?”

  “About ten minutes,” Tim mumbled.

  “And you were eating the rest of the time?”

  A hint of color crept across Tim’s cheeks. “We talked, too.”

  “I see.” It looked as if Mrs. Breen had definitely had a good afternoon. I only wish I could have said the same.

  The grin Tim had been fighting burst across his face. “I figured you would.” He then changed the subject. “You want me to go out to the airport and pick up the delivery now or do you want to do it?”