The Devil May Care

by David Housewright

  At the same time she fixed her eyes on my face and jerked with her head toward the door. I stepped outside and waited. A few moments later, she joined me.

  Abril returned my cell phone.

  “Mama thinks Jax is the one who got away,” she said. “The one who escaped when so many in the neighborhood were jailed. She’ll die thinking that. To her he’ll always be a good boy. She refuses to see him the way he really is.”

  “What way is he?” I asked. “Really.”

  “A selfish opportunist. He took off and left us holding the bag.”

  “Why?”

  “The gang life, there’s no future in it, and Jax was always about the future. His future.”

  I told Abril that I’d seen all of her brother’s academic awards. She told me that Jax had been accepted at every college he applied to, all nine of them. The University of Minnesota had always been keen on keeping the state’s best students at home and offered him a half-ride academic scholarship. So did Wisconsin and Notre Dame. Northwestern, Boston University, and the others offered only low-interest loan packages.

  “Minnesota, Wisconsin—tuition is about twenty-five thousand dollars for residents, counting room and board,” Abril said. “All the others are sixty thousand or more. A year. After everything, Jax couldn’t afford to go to college.”

  “Why not apply for financial aid? The government has a program. I have a friend whose daughter is in college. I’m told there’s a lot of scholarship money to be had if you know where to look.”

  “What was Jax going to put on the applications? That he was a poor Hispanic with no father and a mother who’s in the country illegally, who has never even paid taxes?”

  “There are organizations he could talk to. Programs…”

  “Not for Jax. I hated that he became Nine-Thirty-Seven. I understand it, though. He had nowhere else to go.”

  I wasn’t so sure, a kid that smart. Maybe smarter than anyone gave him credit for.

  “Is it possible that he joined the Mexican Mafia with the sole purpose of eventually stealing its money so he could pay for his education?” I asked.

  Abril stared as if she had just seen me saw my assistant in half and wondered how I had managed it.

  “I don’t know if he planned it,” she said. “Maybe he did. I only know when he had the opportunity, he took the money and ran, leaving Mama and me to face the neighborhood alone.”

  “If he did do it to pay for school, which school would he have gone to?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask his Anglo whore?”

  * * *

  Mary Gabler née Walker was not a whore, Anglo or otherwise. She was a very pretty twenty-six-year-old community relations manager for Wells Fargo Bank, who lived in Mendota Heights with her husband of fifteen months, and who agreed to meet me at a coffeehouse not far from the Mendakota County Club—but only if I promised to call her “Muffie.”

  “That’s what they called me all through grade school,” she said. “High school, too. Probably my mother just started calling me that when I was an infant and it stuck. She still calls me that. So does my family, some old friends, too. Only the people I’ve met since I went to Notre Dame call me Mary.”

  “Did Jax Abana call you Muffie?”

  “Yes, he did. Jax—I haven’t spoken to him since, what? A week after graduation?”

  It was when she said “graduation” that I remembered where I had seen her before. In the photograph that Delfina Abana showed me. She was the blonde third from the left.

  “You dated,” I reminded her.

  “He was my bad boy. A girl has to date at least one bad boy in her lifetime. At least that’s what I told myself afterward.”

  “How bad was he?”

  “Up until the end, he wasn’t bad at all. At least, he was good to me. People, my friends, they told me I was crazy for getting involved with him, but I never knew if that was because he couldn’t be trusted or because he was Hispanic.”

  “Could he be trusted?”

  “Turned out no, he couldn’t. It was fun while it lasted, though. Exciting. He took me places where a white Catholic girl from the suburbs is rarely found. Kinda opened my eyes to the world a little bit. Heckuva lot more than Notre Dame did, I can tell you that.”

  “They say he was a member of a street gang called the Nine-Thirty-Seven Mexican Mafia,” I told her.

  “I asked him about that. He said it wasn’t true, although he had friends in the gang. I actually met a few of them.”

  “You believed him, then?”

  “Well, yeah. How many four-point-oh honor students do you know who are in street gangs?”

  Just the one, my inner voice answered.

  I thought that Muffie must be very good at her job because she spoke easily in a way that made the listener feel comfortable. Plus, she never stopped smiling—until I said, “You stopped seeing him after graduation.”

  “It’s an old story, Mr. McKenzie. Boy meets girl. Boy tires of girl. Boy never calls girl again and he refuses to answer when the girl calls him. After a while girl knows that she’s been … discarded. She is upset, the girl. After a while, she gets over it. She vows from that moment forward to share herself only with gentlemen, who, to her great surprise and happiness, are actually quite numerous.”

  “Jax didn’t go to Notre Dame, then?” I asked.

  “No. We talked about it when the acceptance letters started rolling in, but I didn’t think that was going to happen even before we broke up. I just couldn’t picture Jax in South Bend, Indiana. Could you?”

  “Where did he go to school?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask his whore?”

  There’s that word again, my inner voice told me.

  “What whore would that be?” I asked.

  “Right before I left for college my freshman year, my friends and I went shopping up and down Grand Avenue in St. Paul. We ended up at a Dunn Bros coffeehouse. This was early afternoon in late August, maybe the beginning of September. The place was nearly deserted, yet there was Jax Abana at a table with a woman sitting in his lap that was old enough to be his mother, for God’s sake, and they were playing tongue-hockey in front of everyone. I saw Jax and Jax saw me and there was an expression on his face like he was afraid I was going to go over there and start beating on him or something in front of his mom. Seriously, though, life is way too short for that. So I gave him one of these…” Muffie blew me a kiss and smiled. “Afterward, I turned around and walked out.”

  “Did you ever find out who the woman was?”

  “The whore? A friend, one of the friends that were with me, found out a couple of weeks later and posted it on my Facebook page. You’ll never guess who it was.”

  * * *

  Patricia Castlerock was not a whore, either. She was an associate professor of English at Macalester College in St. Paul who taught undergrads all about the Harlem Renaissance, American Modernism, and Anglophone-Caribbean Literature, as well as race and film study. Macalester did not keep faculty hours on Saturdays, so I was lucky to find her grading papers in her office on the second floor of Old Main, the first building built on campus when the college was established in 1885. She was startled when I rapped on her open door. Her head came up and she whipped off her cheaters, and my first thought was that Muffie Gabler was mistaken. Big sister perhaps, yet there was no chance the woman was old enough to be Jax Abana’s mother.

  “I apologize if I startled you,” I said.

  “That’s quite all right,” she said. “I’m afraid we don’t keep office hours on the weekends.”

  “I apologize for that, too. If I could have just a few minutes of your time—it’s important.”

  Castlerock set down her red pen.

  “What does this involve?” she asked.

  “It concerns one of your former students. A man named Jax Abana.”

  She thought it over for a few moments and shook her head. “I don’t believe I know a student by that name.
This would have been when?”

  “Seven or eight years ago.”

  Again she thought about it; again she shook her head.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I could check. However, I am pretty good at remembering the names of my students.”

  Now it was my turn to do some thinking. Finally I said, “He might have called himself Juan Carlos Navarre.”

  “No … no, that doesn’t ring any bells, either. Are you sure he was one of my students? Perhaps you should check with the registrar’s office. It opens at eight Monday morning.”

  “Like I said, it’s important. Would you be so kind…” I fished my cell from my pocket and called up Navarre’s pic. “If you could take a look at this…”

  Castlerock sighed her impatience and took the smartphone from my hand. She stared at the photo for a good ten seconds. When she finished her face was pale and her upper lip trembled just so.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “McKenzie.”

  “Mr. McKenzie, there’s a coffee shop on Grand and Snelling. Do you know it?”

  “Dunn Bros,” I said.

  “Meet me in twenty minutes.”

  * * *

  Yes, it was that Dunn Bros, kitty-corner to the Macalester campus. I found a table more or less in the center of the room, and while I waited, I wondered if I was in the same chair where Muffie Gabler’s ex-boyfriend sat while making out with Professor Patricia Castlerock. I might have asked, except the way the lady blew in through the door and marched on my position, I didn’t think she would have appreciated the question.

  “May I get you something?” I asked.

  “No,” Castlerock said. “I don’t want to be here that long.”

  I motioned toward the chair opposite where I sat. She took it.

  “He was not a student when I knew him,” Castlerock said. She spoke almost breathlessly, as if she had prepared her remarks in advance and was desperate to get them out. “It’s important that you understand that I did nothing unethical. Our relationship was not in violation of any college rule or regulation. If you wish to question my judgment, feel free. My moral principles remain intact.”

  A lot of questions came to mind at that moment. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to ask any of them before a young woman wearing a white bib apron that seemed too big for her approached.

  “What’ll ya have, Prof?” she asked. “The usual?”

  Castlerock’s demeanor changed abruptly. Her voice softened and she smiled demurely.

  “Good afternoon, Casey,” she said. “Yes, perhaps I will stay a bit longer. How about—I think a small café mocha today with plenty of whipped cream.”

  “For you, sir?”

  “Coffee,” I said. “Black.”

  “Ahh, old school.”

  I liked that she said that, although I had a sneaking suspicion she was making fun of me.

  “How’s your paper coming?” Castlerock asked. There was genuine concern in her voice.

  “It’s really hard,” Casey said.

  “It’s meant to be, dear.”

  I don’t know why, but the girl seemed cheered by the remark. Both she and Castlerock were smiling, yet as soon as Casey turned her back to the table, the professor’s expression became troubled again and her voice hardened.

  “Who are you exactly?” she asked. “What do you want?”

  “You’re getting a little ahead of me, Professor,” I said. “I’m not here to put you into the jackpot.” Her expression changed to one of curiosity. “It’s police slang. It means trouble, get you in trouble.”

  “Oh.” She spoke as if she had just learned something and was happy about it. I liked her for that.

  “As I said earlier, my name is McKenzie, and I’m looking for the man in the photograph I showed you.”

  “David Maurell?”

  “Is that what he called himself?”

  “Are you saying that isn’t his real name?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “What is his name?”

  “That, Professor, is a long story. I’ll be happy to tell it, if you tell me yours.”

  She agreed, so I explained about Jax Abana—but not Juan Carlos Navarre—right up to the point where Muffie Gabler saw her and Abana at Dunn Bros. I even used the term Muffie had employed, tongue-hockey.

  When I finished, Professor Castlerock glanced around the coffeehouse as if it suddenly contained bad memories. By then Casey had delivered our beverages. Castlerock took a sip from the mug and came away with a dollop of whipped cream on her nose. She brushed it away with the back of her hand.

  “David seemed so much older than the boy you describe,” she said. “Certainly he pretended to be older. Twenty-four, twenty-five. I spend a great deal of time with postadolescents, McKenzie. The way David behaved around me, I believed he was that mature. I met him here. It might have been at this very table. He approached me; used the book I was reading as his hook. The book was about the Harlem Renaissance, and David said he had opinions on the subject that he would be happy to share if only I allowed him to buy a dessert to go with my coffee. I was flattered, to be honest. A lot of very pretty coeds spend time here, yet he was interested in me. So, in exchange for a double chocolate brownie, I offered him a seat at my table.”

  “Did he know anything about the Renaissance?” I asked.

  “He knew enough to quote Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, even Duke Ellington.”

  “Hell, I can do that.”

  “Mr. McKenzie, he knew me. He knew the papers I wrote on the subject. He knew my book.”

  The man does his homework, doesn’t he? my inner voice said.

  “What did he want?” I asked aloud.

  “Eventually he told me he wanted to go to college. He said he was employed in the construction industry, yet it was becoming increasingly difficult to find work because of the housing crisis. He claimed he wasn’t bitter about it. He said it only encouraged him to finally pursue his dream to become a writer.”

  “The man you knew as David Maurell said he wanted to attend Macalester College to become a writer?”

  “It’s been done before, McKenzie. Probably I was naive. Or unduly smitten, if you prefer. This is an international school. We draw the best students from all around the world. I said I would help him get in. He said tuition wouldn’t be a problem. His parents left him enough in their wills to pay it. It was his high school transcripts that concerned him. There are ways to get around that, however. In the meantime, I allowed him to audit a couple of my classes. He fit in well. He and one of my students became very close friends. Collin Baird.”

  All of my internal alarm bells and sirens flared at once. It was so loud in my head I could barely hear my own thoughts—CBE were the initials on the bag I found inside Navarre’s closet.

  Collin Baird, Esquire? my inner voice said.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “David stopped coming to class. Stopped coming here. He never called and never returned my calls. I thought it was me, that he had grown weary of our relationship and wished nothing more to do with me. I guess I still do. There was a young woman in the class. I never saw David speak to her, but the way he watched her—I saw the breakup coming, McKenzie. That doesn’t mean it hurt any less.”

  “The young woman—do you remember her name?”

  She looked up as if she expected to see the name written on the ceiling. I didn’t wait.

  “Riley Brodin?” I asked.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  It was all starting to make sense to me.

  “What about Baird?” I asked.

  “Collin dropped out, too. I didn’t think much about it at the time. Students drop classes, don’t they? They quit school. You’d be surprised at how many go home during Christmas and spring breaks and never return. In Collin’s case, he wasn’t much of a student to begin with; certainly he was struggling in my class. I suspected his high school transcripts did not match his true i
ntellectual abilities. We get a lot of that these days—grade inflation.

  “Eventually the police came around,” Castlerock added. “They told me David and Collin had driven to Collin’s home in Illinois, but apparently disappeared on their way back here. It was very worrisome to me even though I was told there were no indications of foul play and the police were treating it as a simple missing persons case. Since then I’ve discovered that twenty-five thousand men go missing every year in this country, and one out of five is Latino, like David. However, only a tiny fraction is the result of kidnapping or murder. The vast majority go missing because they want to go missing.”

  “Do you believe that Maurell and his very good friend Collin Baird went away together?” I asked.

  “It was easier to believe that than the alternative. It turns out I was right, too.” Castlerock gestured more or less at the pocket where I kept my cell. “The photograph that you showed me. It was taken recently, wasn’t it?”

  “Sometime in July.”

  “David is back.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “What about Collin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did David come back after all this time?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Professor.”

  * * *

  Professor Castlerock left the coffeehouse first; I stayed to settle the bill. Before she left, she asked if I should find David, to have him call her. I said I would. I was lying. I liked her. I liked Muffie Gabler, Abril and Delfina Nunez, Anne Rehmann, and Riley Brodin, too. The more I learned about Jax Abana–David Maurell–Juan Carlos Navarre, the less I wanted him around the people I liked.

  I stepped outside and immediately began searching for the red Sentra. I had picked it up outside the Nunez residence in West St. Paul and let it follow me first to the coffeehouse in Mendota Heights and then to Macalester College. It was now parked in the customer lot of the Stoltz Dry Cleaners and Shirt Launderers across Grand Avenue from Dunn Bros. I waited for the traffic to clear and crossed the thoroughfare. I walked up to the driver’s-side window and peered inside. The window had been rolled down. The driver gripped the steering wheel with both hands and stared straight ahead. Arnaldo Nunez was sitting in the passenger seat and looking uncomfortable in his heavy cast. He leaned forward to look at me.