School Days

by Robert B. Parker

  “Yep.”

  “Still don’t excite me,” DiBella said. “We got the shooters. We got their confessions. Los Diablos are Boston’s problem, and I’m not sure Animal is a major threat to civil order in Bethel County.”

  “Animal is small change,” I said. “But I still want to know why.”

  “And you think if you know why, you’ll be able to clear the Clark kid?” DiBella said.

  “I won’t know that until I know why,” I said.

  DiBella nodded thoughtfully.

  “I don’t know how smart you are,” he said. “But I’ll give you stubborn.”

  “May be better than smart,” I said.

  “May be,” DiBella said. “Both is even better.”

  Pearl exhausted the yogurt carton and abandoned the remnants. She came and sat next to me and looked hopeful.

  “So,” DiBella said. “Fine. Go to it. But pick up the chewed carton first.”

  Which I did. A man’s only as good as his word.

  28

  I SAT WITH Lily Ellsworth in a large, domed-glass conservatory with a view of the Bethel River, which moved in big blue meanders across the floor of the Bethel Valley under the high, cloudless sky.

  “What have you to report?” she said.

  “I think he probably did it,” I said.

  “I didn’t hire you to tell me he did it,” Mrs. Ellsworth said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  She sat very straight in her chair, her hands clasped motionless in her lap. She was perfectly groomed and perfectly still. Under her careful makeup, her skin had a healthy, outdoorsy look to it. Her hair was white, not silver, but white, and brushed back softly off her face. She was quite beautiful.

  “Did you ever give money to your grandson?” I said.

  “Often,” she said.

  “Large amounts?” I said.

  “What might seem a large amount to you,” she said, “might seem a very small amount to me.”

  I nodded. I did the math in my head.

  “Two or three thousand dollars?” I said.

  “I have given him that much.”

  “Often?”

  “No, last winter,” she said. “He needed it.”

  “Did he say what for?”

  “No,” she said. “And I did not ask. I love my grandson, Mr. Spenser.”

  I nodded.

  “Can you recall exactly when last winter?” I said.

  “Not really.”

  “Did you write a check?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you look it up?” I said.

  “Why is that necessary?”

  “I believe he bought some guns with the money,” I said. “It might help to know when.”

  “He did not buy guns,” she said.

  “Ma’am,” I said. “They already have him cold. Grant has named him as the other shooter. He’s confessed to it. I don’t have to help convict him. Anything I can find out will be useful only on his behalf.”

  “Or you won’t use it?” she said.

  “Correct,” I said.

  She nodded slowly. We looked out through the glass at the slow lawn that declined toward the valley. Along one side was a stand of hydrangea, their big blossoms moving in the soft wind.

  “It is four-ten in the afternoon,” she said. “Would you care for a cocktail?”

  “That would be nice,” I said.

  She stood effortlessly and walked briskly out of the glass room. I watched the hydrangea blossoms move for a while. She came back with a tray with two glasses on it.

  “Gin and tonic,” she said. “I suppose I should have asked.”

  “That will be fine,” I said.

  She set the tray down on a low table, and I saw that her checkbook was on the tray also. She handed me one of the glasses and took the other for herself. She raised it toward me slightly.

  “You seem an honest man, sir,” she said.

  “ ‘Let be be the end of seem,’ ” I said.

  She smiled faintly.

  “ ‘The only emperor,’ ” she said, “ ‘is the emperor of ice-cream.’ ”

  “Very good,” I said.

  “My generation read, Mr. Spenser; apparently yours did, too.”

  “Or at least I did,” I said. “Still do.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do as well.”

  She took another pull at her drink. Then she put the glass down, picked up the checkbook, and began to leaf through the register. I sat with my drink. The hydrangea continued to nod in the late summer outside the glass.

  “I gave him three thousand dollars on January twenty-first,” she said after a time. “How many guns would that buy?”

  “Four plus ammo,” I said. “And he might have had some left over.”

  “For ski masks,” she said.

  “And extra magazines,” I said. “Perhaps even a controlled substance.”

  “Drugs?”

  I shrugged.

  “I believe none of this,” she said.

  “No need to yet,” I said.

  “Nothing will make me believe it.”

  I didn’t speak.

  “You believe it,” she said.

  “I think it likely,” I said.

  “And you think when he bought the guns in January, he was planning to shoot those people in May.”

  “I don’t know when he was planning to shoot,” I said. “I only know when he got the money and when he did the shooting.”

  “He didn’t do the shooting.”

  “Have you talked to him since the incident?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever ask?”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am, for saying so, but you don’t want to know.”

  She looked at her drink, tilting the glass slightly so the ice rattled faintly.

  “Jared has always been a silent child,” she said. “Perhaps lonely. I don’t know. I always felt that everyone pried at him too much. His parents were always after him to tell them more. Where are you going? Who are you going with? Who are your friends? Do you have a girlfriend? What do you wish to become? I felt my role was to offer him respite, a place he could come and be loved and respected, where he could indulge himself in as much silence as he wished.”

  “Did you spend much time with him?”

  “A great deal of time.”

  “Did he have a girlfriend?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Nor do I know about friends or ambitions or fears or hopes and dreams.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Books, movies, ideas.”

  “Ideas?” I said.

  She smiled.

  “We talked about love,” she said. “We talked about friendship. We talked about what humans should be. About what one human owed another. About what made a person good.”

  “But in the abstract,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Without concrete examples,” I said.

  “None tied to him,” she said.

  “Better than not talking about them at all,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have any sense that some of these issues might have a personal connection?” I said.

  “I never pried.”

  “Could you give a guess,” I said.

  She was quiet, looking at her glass. Then she raised it and took a long swallow.

  “I would guess,” she said, “that they did.”

  29

  THE STOREFRONT wasn’t lit very well, and was kind of gloomy. I took some time for my eyes to adjust while I looked around. Next to the door was an old-fashioned Coke cooler, the red paint faded and along the edges chipped away. There was a deeply tarnished bottle-cap opener screwed to the side. At the far back end of the room was a pool table with a light hanging over it, the felt surface of the table a patch of bright green under the light. Some folding chairs and card tables were set around the room, and on the left side, there was a big, y
ellow oak desk and an expensive leather swivel chair with a high back and a padded headrest. There were a few men playing cards at a couple of the tables. A tall, sharp-edged, quick-looking man in a bright white tuxedo shirt sat in the swivel chair with his feet up on the desk. He was black. So was everyone else in the room. They all looked at me silently when I came in. I felt whiter than Mr. Clean.

  The lean, hard guy at the desk studied me as I came in. I stood and let him look. Nobody said anything. A radio somewhere was playing rap music, but not so loud that I couldn’t stand it.

  The guy in the swivel chair said, “Jesus Christ.”

  “Almost,” I said.

  “Spenser,” the guy said.

  “Major,” I said.

  “You looking for me?” Major said.

  “I am,” I said.

  “So?”

  I hooked an empty folding chair and walked with it to the desk. I put it down and sat on it.

  A short, thick man with prison tattoos and no hair spoke to Major.

  “You want fish flop out of here?” he said.

  Major shook his head.

  “Know him, long time ago,” Major said. “Him and Hawk.”

  “Some of my best friends are black,” I said.

  The thick man stared at me. I bore up as best I could. After a while, he sat down. But he kept looking.

  “I sense racial intolerance,” I said to Major.

  “You better fucking believe it,” Major said. “What you want here?”

  “Need some help,” I said.

  “From motherfucking me?”

  “Beautifully put,” I said.

  Major almost smiled.

  “What you need?” he said.

  “You still in the gang business?”

  “Not me,” Major said. “I president of the Chamber of Commerce.”

  “And you owe it all to me and Hawk,” I said.

  “Sho ’nuff. Set me on the path to re-fucking-demption.”

  “Makes me proud,” I said.

  “So what you want?”

  “I’m interested in a Boston gang calls itself Los Diablos,” I said.

  Major laughed.

  “The fucking Fritos,” he said. “What you want with Los-fucking-Diablos.”

  “Need to talk with a guy named Jose Yang.”

  “Chink Frito,” Major said. “He runs the thing.”

  “Where do they operate?” I said.

  “Where we fucking let them,” Major said.

  “We?”

  Major grinned at me.

  “Hobart Chamber of Commerce,” he said. “Major Johnson, head nigger.”

  “So where do you let them operate?”

  “Part of Dorchester,” Major said. “What you want with them.”

  “Yang’s got a younger brother, Animal, involved in something I’m working on out in the far western suburbs.”

  “Animal?” Major said. “The bodybuilder?”

  I nodded.

  “Out in the white, white west?” Major said.

  “Yes.”

  “Animal dumber than my dick?” Major said.

  “Big and scary, though,” I said. “Reminds me a little of John Porter.”

  “John Porter in the ground, man. Long time.”

  “Somebody shoot him?”

  “ ’Course they did, man. What you think?”

  “Can you set me up with Yang?” I said.

  “I want to,” Major said. “I can.”

  I nodded.

  “What you want to do with him,” Major said. “I can have somebody dart him, you want.”

  “No. His brother maybe supplied the guns used in that big school shootout last spring.”

  “And you want to know if Chink Frito supply them. Say he do. What you gonna do then?”

  “Nothing right away,” I said. “I’m just gathering information.”

  “And what you do if Jose don’t like you asking, and decide to deuce yo’ white ass?”

  “I figure you won’t let him.”

  Major sat back in the big, expensive swivel chair and looked at me, beginning to smile. I hadn’t seen him in more than twelve years. He’d been a kid then. Now he was probably in his early thirties, and he looked like Tommy Hearns. His eyes were bright with intelligence and scorn and anger, as they had been. But there was control in them, too, instead of the craziness. Hawk had said a long time ago that Major Johnson was more like Hawk than most people.

  “You got some big bangers,” he said, “for a Bud Light. You see Hawk around?”

  “Often,” I said.

  “Tell him I say hello,” Major said.

  “You want to set up my meeting with Jose Yang?” I said.

  “Sure,” Major said.

  30

  WITH PEARL ASLEEP in the backseat, I pulled into the parking lot at the country store in the late afternoon, and sat with the motor running and the a/c on low. In maybe five minutes, a vast Chevy Suburban pulled up beside me and Janey got out. I rolled down my window.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “Nice vehicle,” I said.

  “Oh, the car, that’s Daddy’s. We have horses.”

  “They ride in the backseat?” I said.

  She smiled faintly.

  “George’s in the car,” Janey said. “Animal beat her up.”

  “Can she move around?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, put her in my front seat. You get in back with Pearl.”

  “She’s scrunched down in the front seat,” Janey said. “She’s afraid Animal will see her.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” I said.

  Janey nodded.

  When George got out of the car, she moved very carefully, as if her ribs hurt. She had one eye swollen shut and a fat lip and a long welt along her jawline. She eased herself into my front seat, and Janey closed the door behind her carefully and got in back. Without raising her head, Pearl opened her eyes and growled. Janey froze.

  “I don’t think she’ll bite you,” I said.

  “You don’t think?”

  I reached back and patted Pearl’s head.

  “You pat, too,” I said.

  Janey did, cautiously. Pearl stopped growling. Her short tail wagged.

  “Easy,” I said.

  I looked at George. She had cowered down into the corner of the front seat.

  “How are you?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “In pain?”

  “I’m real sore,” she said.

  “I’m going to take you to the emergency room,” I said. “They’ll give you something to feel better.”

  “I can’t go to no hospital,” George said. “Animal said I went to a hospital or anything, he’d kill me.”

  “He won’t,” I said.

  I put the car in drive and pulled out onto the street.

  “He beat her up for talking to you,” Janey said from the backseat. “Somebody saw us at the mall.”

  “He said he was going to kill me if he ever saw us together again.”

  “You tell him what we talked about?” I said.

  “I said you was asking about Jared Clark, but I didn’t tell you nothing,” she said.

  She mumbled some because her lip was so fat.

  “He’s gonna kill me,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “He’s not.”

  “He’ll find out,” she said.

  “He’s not going to hurt you,” I said.

  “How you gonna stop him?” she said. “You can’t stay with me all the time.”

  “Parents?” I said.

  She made a noise.

  “Shit,” she said.

  So much for parents. At the hospital, Janey stayed in the car with Pearl. I went in with George and waited while they cleaned her up. When he was through with her, the young emergency-room doctor came out to talk with me.

  “You her father?” he said.

 
“No. Friend of a friend.”

  “Well,” he said. “She’ll be okay. No broken bones. I don’t think anything wrong internally. She’s scared to death and in some discomfort.”

  “You give her something?”

  “Yes. Three days’ worth.”

  “She tell you she uses drugs?” I said.

  “No, but I assumed. I didn’t give her a prescription.”

  “Any limits on what she should do?”

  “She should stay away from whoever hit her,” the doctor said. “Otherwise, just rest.”

  “I’ll see to both,” I said.

  “You know who did it?” the doctor said.

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll have to report this to the police,” the doctor said. “It’s an obvious beating.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll need your name for the police,” the doctor said. He smiled a little. “And she has no medical insurance.”

  I took out one of my cards and gave it to him.

  “Send me the bill,” I said.

  31

  WE DROPPED JANEY OFF near the Coffee Nut, and George and I and Pearl went back to Boston to my place.

  “You want to call your parents?” I said.

  “Naw.”

  “They won’t be wondering where you are?” I said.

  “Naw.”

  “You have parents,” I said.

  “Sort of.”

  “You live at home?”

  “Sometimes.”

  It wasn’t going anywhere, so I decided to drop it.

  “Okay, you’ll stay here until I have squared things to Animal,” I said.

  “How you gonna do that?”

  “Vigorously,” I said. “Take the bedroom.”

  “You gonna have sex with me?” she said.

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too young,” I said.

  “I know how,” she said.

  “Good to have a skill,” I said.

  “I done it a lot.”

  “Practice makes perfect,” I said.

  “You don’t wanna?”

  “I’m flattered to be asked,” I said. “But my heart belongs to another.”

  “You gonna let me stay here for nothing?”

  “That’s what I’m going to do,” I said.

  I took the couch. It was a big, comfortable couch, but it was less convenient than it sounded, because Pearl also took the couch, and my first night there was not very restful. Nor was Pearl’s.