by Carol Snow
“I haven’t driven since the nineties,” Dennis countered.
If I’d driven any more slowly, I would have been going backwards, but I made it to the dining hall without incident. “You didn’t scratch it, did you?” Marcy asked. She’d driven with me before.
I glared at her. “Don’t start. I’m still mad at you for blabbing, you know.”
Once we were safely buckled into our seats, Marcy asked, “Where to?”
I looked at her blankly. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
Dennis looked crestfallen. “My first car chase, and we’ve already lost the guy. Who is he, anyway?”
“His name is Troy,” I explained. “Tim thinks he’s the head pimp.”
We cruised the streets. After about ten minutes, I suggested driving by Troy’s house.
Marcy swung around. “If you know where he lives, why didn’t you say something in the first place?” I fixed her with my best I-still-hate-you stare. She cleared her throat. “What I meant to say was, lead the way.”
The house was really crappy looking, in a way that most college kids find cool, with peeling paint and an oversized sagging porch crowded with bug-infested couches. In an effort to curb underage drinking, Mercer had done away with fraternities a few years back. Now groups of pack-minded youths rented crappy houses en masse. Weekends, they hosted notorious parties. Weekdays, they made do with blaring bass-heavy music in the middle of the afternoon.
There he was, on the porch with his parents. “Bingo!” I yelled. There were a few other parents in attendance, but none of them dared to sit on that skanky furniture.
Marcy parked the car. I ducked down. “Don’t stop!” I hissed. “We don’t want him to see us, remember?”
“I’m sorry if I’m not well-versed in stakeouts,” Marcy said. “I’m sorry if I’m just a boring housewife and all I know is how to change diapers and make macaroni and cheese.” Her voice was starting to get that quiver.
“Okay! Okay! Just drive around the block. We’ll figure something out.”
We wound up parking half a block away. Since Jacob was sensitive to heat, the van’s windows were all tinted, making us hard to see from behind. We watched in the rearview mirror as Troy’s parents climbed into an old sedan and drove away. Troy disappeared into the house.
“Now what?” Dennis asked.
“We wait,” I said. I hadn’t seen all those detective shows for nothing. Of course, in detective shows, they’d always thought to bring along hot coffee and binoculars. All we had were some fuzz-covered gummy bears stuck to the rubber floor mat and a few Dr. Seuss books. The van was equipped with a VCR, but it only worked when the engine was going.
Finally, Troy emerged from the house. “He’s entered our field of vision,” Dennis said, very low. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d been watching detective shows.
Troy’s BMW was parked in front of the house. He started the motor and zoomed away from the curb and past Marcy’s van. She turned the key, put on her blinker and slid smoothly behind him. He zipped through a stop sign. She paused briefly and continued, although not so closely as to arouse suspicion. When he reached the main street, he caught the tail end of a yellow light and sped ahead. Marcy glided to a halt at the now-red light. I looked left. I looked right. “Go,” I said.
Marcy stared at me. “It’s red.”
“There’s no one coming.”
“That’s not the point. It’s red. It’s illegal to proceed until the traffic light turns green, even if there are no cars coming. And look.” She gestured out the windshield. “There’s one coming now.”
A car passed us in the intersection, then traffic was clear again. “Okay, it’s clear.” The car remained still. “We’re losing him!” I wailed.
Marcy turned to face me. “I am eight months pregnant. I have two children at home who depend on me. I’m sorry if I’m a failure as a sleuth, but I am not about to break the law!”
“Um, Marcy?” Dennis piped up from behind.
“Yes?”
“It’s green now.”
We lost him, of course. We circled around and came up empty.
We retreated to Jitters for some coffee. Dennis did his best to be chipper. Marcy turned stony. I just kept muttering about how this was my last chance.
And then he walked in. Just like that! It seemed improbable, impossible, really, but it wasn’t all that surprising when you considered just how few places there were to go in this town.
“It’s him!” I hissed. Dennis was so surprised, he splashed some mocha latté out of his oversized mug. Marcy looked shocked, too. In the interest of speed she shoved the rest of her brownie into her mouth. Once she gave birth, she’d probably be on Weight Watchers for the rest of her life. Until then, she wasn’t going to miss out on a single pastry.
He walked to the counter. Bypassing the counter girl, he spoke to the short, muscular guy manning the espresso machine. They had their heads bent together for maybe thirty seconds before he left.
“He didn’t get any coffee,” Dennis said in wonderment.
“This is big,” Marcy whispered.
Things went downhill from there. We followed Troy to his decrepit house and sat there for a whole twenty minutes before Marcy had to pee. Dennis waited in the bushes while we drove to the convenience store. Then we returned and waited some more. Finally, we made Marcy turn on the van so we could watch Toy Story on the VCR. After that, we watched something that featured a talking mouse. Marcy made two more trips to the convenience store and one to Taco Bell. After downing burritos and super-sized colas, we took turns visiting the convenience store bathroom. “You’ll need these,” Marcy said, shoving a box of travel tissues at me before I made my pilgrimage. “I finished off the T.P.”
Troy’s light was on, so we knew he was there. But he was going nowhere fast. At midnight, Marcy said, “How about we take turns watching? I’ll do the first lookout. You can catch some sleep.”
I sighed. “You should get home. I’ll come back later in my car.”
Marcy was silent. Dennis was silent, too, but that was because he was sprawled out in the last row of seats, fast asleep.
“Dan and I had a fight,” Marcy finally said. “I called him from the Quick Mart and told him I might be out all night on a stakeout. He said I was acting like an adolescent in the midst of a midlife crisis.”
“That’s an oxymoron,” I said.
“I pointed that out. I also said he pulls all-nighters all the time. And that tomorrow’s Saturday and maybe it wouldn’t kill him to spend a little time with his sons. He said that he was thinking about going into the office tomorrow, and since I’m the primary caretaker, it is up to me to be home whatever day of the week it is.”
We were quiet. Dennis started to snore. I took Marcy’s hands. “You pretty much have to stay.”
“I think I do.”
We got lucky. Troy turned out his light at one-thirty. I was all set to give up when I grabbed Marcy’s hand. “Wait!” In the dim light, we saw him walk a half a block past his Beemer and unlock a beat-up blue van. “The chase is on,” I murmured, sounding far less cool than I’d intended.
We didn’t have to drive far. Mercifully, we hit only green lights. Troy turned onto a quiet street not far from Dean Archer’s house and pulled into the driveway of a raised ranch with a few lights burning inside. It didn’t exactly fit the stereotype of a whorehouse, but I suppose any house could work as long as it had enough bedrooms.
I wondered why he didn’t simply go to the front door instead of slipping around to the back. We pulled around the corner and slid to a quiet stop. We checked Dennis and then left him in the car like a sleeping baby we were reasonably sure wouldn’t wake up.
The street was a little short on bushes to hide behind, but the house next door to the raised ranch (which was merely a ranch and, in this light, appeared to be some unnatural shade of green) boasted a Little Tikes log cabin in the backyard. We squeezed inside (Marcy just made it) and
peered out the window.
“Now what?” Marcy asked.
“Now we wait until we see a john or a prostitute show up.”
“And then what?”
I chewed my lip. “I haven’t gotten that far. I’m not even sure this is the whorehouse. It could just be a meeting spot.”
“I’ve never liked the word whore,” she said. “Prostitute sounds less seedy. More like a job description and less a statement of character.” She ran her finger along the log cabin’s textured siding. “Maybe I should get one of these little cabins for the kids.”
I stared at her. “It’s plastic!”
“You’re such a snob.”
“You’re the one who lives in Newton. I don’t think they even allow these things in Newton.”
She grabbed my arm. “Look!”
Next door, a short, solid guy with his head down, hands in pockets, slipped through the back door of the lit house.
“The coffee guy?” Marcy asked. I nodded. “Now what?” she whispered.
“I wish you’d stop asking me that.”
“Maybe we should wait until a girl comes out. And then we tail her.”
“We’re good at that,” I said.
We feared our stakeout in the plastic log cabin, which lacked so much as a plastic chair, would stretch until morning, but only a few minutes passed before Troy came scurrying out the back door.
“No girl,” Marcy said.
“No, but he’s got . . . a TV!”
The short guy appeared a few minutes later, carting some rectangular electronic contraptions. “VCR,” I guessed. “And maybe a DVD.”
“We have one of those,” Marcy whispered. “But I’ve never figured out how to use it. Besides, most of the kids’ movies are on video, and I don’t want to march out and buy a whole new set on DVD.”
“Do you think they’re shooting porn in there?” I ventured. “And Troy’s going back to his place to check out the movies?”
Marcy squinted at me. “Porn movies? Would you get your mind out of the gutter? They are not making porn movies. Duh! They’re robbing the place.”
I stared at her. The duh was unnecessary, I thought, but she was right. We’d just uncovered the culprits behind the recent spate of burglaries.
When the thieves slipped into the house again, we scurried out of the cabin and back onto the street. Well, I scurried; Marcy lumbered. She really was huge. I was half expecting a movie moment where she clutched her belly and moaned, “The baby is coming!” But she just farted a couple of times and murmured something like, “Wait till I tell Dan about this!”
Dennis was a little hurt that we didn’t include him in the chase (that’s what we called it, although I suppose it was more of a stalk), but he found some consolation in being able to accompany us to the police station. “I know it’s a total cliché, but I just love a man in uniform,” he confided.
We’d called the police from Marcy’s cell phone and then, on their instructions, drove to the Mercer Police Station. “We don’t get to see the takedown?” Marcy asked.
“Do you really want these guys to know who turned them in?” I asked her. “They might even take down your license plate.” Her eyes grew big. The police station would be just fine.
We filed a witness report, although it was merely a formality. Responding to our tip, the police were able to catch Troy and his partner with their hands in the cookie jar. I mean that literally: that’s where the homeowners, who were out of town, kept their spare cash.
Burglary wasn’t Troy’s only vice. In the van’s glove compartment, the cops found enough cocaine “to light up a herd of elephants.” Apparently, Troy had used his pawn-shop profits to invest in drugs, which he sold on campus for an enormous profit.
I tried to be vague about my reasons for staking out Troy in the first place, but I finally came clean: I was an undercover reporter, following an unrelated story at Mercer College. I tried to leave it at that, but then I noticed that they weren’t smiling at me as much anymore or thanking me for finding the elusive burglars. I finally freed myself by dropping Dean Archer’s name and recommending they call him in the morning.
As we left the station, I was flooded with elation. I had my crime story, and it wasn’t tawdry or dirty. I had helped the police and the community. I could pretend that I had come to Mercer to report on the lives of college students and had merely stumbled upon a bigger story.
I was free.
thirty-five
When I crept into our darkened room, I was afraid I would interrupt Tiffany with yet another anonymous man, but she was sprawled out on top of her pink bedspread, alone and fully clothed. Had she added binge drinking to her list of newfound vices? At least it wouldn’t give her any diseases, I reasoned—in the short term, anyway.
I retrieved my laptop from my desk and unhooked the modem. The cord fell with a crash against my metal wastebasket. I swore softly and checked Tiffany. To my relief, she didn’t stir.
The library was empty. For Parents Weekend, the students were all tucked into bed early, their bellies full of chicken cordon bleu or salmon if they were lucky enough to have parents who took them to a real restaurant, or with chewy roast beef if they were like the rest of us.
I found a carrel and plugged in my computer. I was physically exhausted but mentally buzzing. I braced myself for the usual panic that hits whenever I start something new, but it didn’t come. I’d been preparing myself for this moment for months now and couldn’t wait to get to the end.
Mercer, Massachusetts is the quintessential college town: small and picturesque, with white clapboard houses and centuries-old trees. The college that bears its name does the town aesthetic justice. With a central green flanked by looming brick and marble buildings, it has the feel of a miniature Harvard and the aspirations of becoming another Williams or Amherst. Appearances can be deceiving, however.
I went on to make less-than-flattering remarks about the student body, which I described as being “generally white and affluent, frequently spoiled.” I referenced the flashy autos, the gold cards, the flat-screen computers.
But for some students, the goodies are never enough. Perhaps they look with envy at students even wealthier than themselves. Or maybe they are so bored with privilege that they find themselves irresistibly drawn to society’s underbelly.
The story of Troy’s accomplice was especially tantalizing—and frightening:
As for Robert Sanchez, he turned his job of reliable coffee maker into village spy. He knew his regulars: who they were, what they drank, where they lived. When faithful customers failed to show up for a daily cappuccino, he would stake out their houses to see if they were merely sick or, as he’d hoped, out of town.
From there, I described the spate of household robberies plaguing Mercer and ended with my own heroic role in ousting the culprit—who just happened to be Mercer’s premier drug dealer. I left out the Little Tikes log cabin.
As I finished proofreading the article for the second time, the sky outside the library turned a murky gray, signaling the approach of a nasty New England autumn morning. I typed a quick message to Tim, attached the file, and sent my story out over the Internet.
Trudging back to the dorm, I realized just how exhausted I was. Perhaps now I could finally collapse.
Tiffany looked just as she had when I’d left her: fully clothed and sprawled out on top of her pink bedspread. There was just enough gray light leaking through the warped metal Venetian blinds to allow me to grope my way around the room. I should have been tired, but I’d passed the exhaustion mark long ago and continued to feed off my adrenaline buzz. I looked at my hard little bed. I hated it. Never, ever did I want to sleep there again. My first impulse was to simply run for it: pack up my computer and a few other essentials and hit the road. In two hours, I could crawl between my cold Egyptian cotton sheets, stroke the dense, natural weave of my comforter, and fall into a long, deep sleep, uninterrupted by shouts, music or carnal encounters. Later I could
sneak back for the rest of my things, perhaps when Tiffany was out (for all her unseemly behavior of late, she never missed a class).
My laptop and I got halfway down the hall before I recognized the stupidity of this plan: better to sleep now, pack later and make a clean, final break. Later, I would wonder what would have happened if I had followed my impulse to flee.
I took my plastic bucket down to the bathroom, where I scrubbed my teeth and washed my face. Free of makeup, my face looked suddenly older, and I wondered if any of my dorm-mates had ever noticed the fine lines around my eyes. They were tiny but hardly invisible and fully inexplicable on the face of an eighteen-year-old.
Back in the room, I shrugged into my barely-there nightgown, the only thing I could stand to wear in this chronically overheated building. Suddenly the exhaustion that had been crouching in the corners of my body leapt out. My eyes and limbs ached with fatigue. I wondered how long I’d have before Tiffany, an incorrigible morning person, popped out of bed and opened every drawer and door until she was sure she had awakened me. It was with that black thought that I took one last look at her before slumping onto my bed. I wanted to see if her sleep was showing any signs of lightening, how long I had until she’d wake up.
The room was brighter now, the light for once more yellow than gray. I’d sometimes thought that Tiffany was prettier asleep than awake, her complexion all pink and white and smooth, her rosebud mouth free of tension, her too-small eyes peacefully closed. But something was wrong. I should have noticed it earlier. Tiffany was not the sort to pass out on her bed. Tiffany was the sort to arrange her pillows just so, to place a glass of cold, clear water on the bookshelf behind her bed, to smooth her sheets around her until there was barely a wrinkle. The light was no longer gray, but her face still was.
