Silent City: A Claire Codella Mystery

by Carrie Smith

  “I’ve been teaching third grade longer than he’s had facial hair, and I didn’t appreciate him and that Hispanic crony of his coming into my classroom to say I’ve been doing it all wrong for three decades. That’s really all I’ve got to say about Hector Sanchez.”

  Another legacy victim, thought Codella. “Who’s his crony?”

  “Sofia Rrrrreyes.” Donohue mockingly overaccentuated the rolled r in the last name as she rolled her eyes. “Our new literacy coach. Supposedly she’s here to make us better teachers. But we’re not fooled. She’s his cover—well, she was. If anyone complained about his policies, Sofia was there to quote the research about why teachers needed to change. Mind you, she hardly speaks English better than my students. I can only imagine what she’s getting paid to tell me my business.” Her eyes narrowed. “Let me spell things out for you, Detective. Sanchez was on a big ego trip bankrolled, in case you’re interested, by a sleazy actress.”

  “You mean Dana Drew?”

  “It’s obvious they were having an affair. Why don’t you look into that?”

  “Drew’s a lesbian. She and her partner have a child.”

  Donohue raised one overly plucked eyebrow. “Do you honestly think what you see on a bus stop poster is reality? The child is Drew’s. The girlfriend is just her latest diversion. They’ve only been together a year. Obviously, she’s bored and Sanchez was her new distraction.”

  “You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

  “No I haven’t, because it doesn’t take much thought. Don’t you know about actors and their loose boundaries? They’re all borderline and narcissistic. They’ll sleep with anyone. None of their relationships amount to anything. She was using Sanchez, and he was using her.”

  “How so?”

  “She wants everyone to see her as the big public-education advocate. She enrolls her daughter here in September, and the media eat it up just in time for the opening of her new play. How convenient. Everyone’s Oh, isn’t Dana Drew so great? She’s a regular person like us. But I assure you her daughter isn’t having the typical PS 777 experience. She’s dropped off each morning in an Escalade, and Drew has single-handedly funneled enough money in here to hire that coach, put a teacher’s aide in every classroom, and start an after-school program. Who’s really running this school? Meanwhile, I happen to know she’s quietly applied to private schools for next year.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Donohue smirked. “You have your sources. I have mine. And if the daughter goes, you mark my word. The funding will dry up as fast as it started to flow. The great public-education advocate will be on to her next cause, and those ‘We’re a Proud Family’ posters you see all around? They’ll be rotting under some new ad campaign.”

  “Proud Families was Dana Drew’s idea?”

  “I suppose they cooked it up together—probably in bed. They both wanted the spotlight however they could get it, and we were all expected to be the extras in their drama. I for one wanted no part of it. Nowhere in my contract is it written that I have to smile and say cheese for a big-shot photographer. You’re not going to find my mug shot on that wall of pride downstairs, and I wasn’t the only one who refused.”

  “Who else did?”

  Donohue squinted. She seemed to read aloud the names off a mental roster as she counted them on her hands. “Anna Masoutis, Norma Feinstein, Gene Bosco, Kristin DeMarco, Roz Porter, Natalie Rapinoe—even Mr. Jancek. After what his family went through, he didn’t want to go anywhere near that camera.” Then her eyes lighted up. She was clearly a born gossiper. “His niece was raped in a Bosnian camp while a bunch of soldiers took pictures. They made him watch. He has no love of cameras, but that didn’t stop Mr. Sanchez from pressuring him. You see, Sanchez punished anyone who didn’t participate in his projects. He thought he could railroad you into doing whatever he wanted you to do. He never let up.”

  Donohue wasn’t ready to let up either. “This September he decided the male teachers should all wear dress shirts and ties so the boys would have models of how you dress for success. As if working here makes you a success!” Her laugh was a raspy smoker’s rattle that augured future lung cancer or emphysema. “Gene told him if this was Wall Street and he had a Wall Street salary, he’d be happy to dress like the One Percent, but not until. That’s Gene, always saying it like it is. We had a good laugh about it over dinner that night. And the very next day, Sanchez started going after him.”

  “Going after him? What do you mean?”

  “He put Gene on his hit list,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he did all the things an administrator does when he’s out to get a teacher. Wrote him up for every little infraction he could think of—turning in his lesson plans late, missing a faculty meeting, that kind of thing. He even accused Gene of holding onto a student’s arm and shaking it—which is nonsense. Gene’s not stupid. He’d never do that. And then—thanks to that fat security guard—Sanchez finally had the ammunition he needed to banish him to temporary reassignment until he can fire him like everyone else he’s fired this year. I bet he’s had a list of all the teachers he wanted to fire since day one of his tenure. I bet you’ll find it if you look at his computer. And I’ll bet my name is at the top of that list. Let me know if I’m right.” She leaned forward and interlocked her fingers like a church steeple. “Now do you have a sense of who he was?”

  Codella certainly had a sense of who Christine Donohue was. “When did you last see him?”

  “Yesterday morning on the front steps shaking hands like Mr. Candidate for mayor. He was always posing for the camera, whether or not it was there. He was always tweeting his little social media messages of wisdom, too. His Twitter username was MrFixit777. That tells you everything about his big head, doesn’t it? You should have seen him stalk around here like a celebrity after that magazine article came out last spring.” She rolled her eyes.

  Codella thanked Donohue for her time and placed her card on the teacher’s desk. “Call me if you think of anything that might help our investigation.” But she had a pretty strong suspicion the card would end up in the circular file next to the desk.

  Chapter 14

  Marva Thomas’s cell phone rang, and she recognized Carla’s number. She braced for her sister to chastise her for not dropping everything this morning to help her mother—Carla was nothing if not judgmental—but this time Carla surprised her. “I heard you on New York One just now, Marva. You were incredible. I never knew you could sound so—” she paused. “Well, so professional. You were so in charge.”

  “Thanks,” Marva answered with no emotion. The compliment only reinforced her feeling of utter inadequacy, since she knew she wasn’t responsible for the professionalism Carla has witnessed. She wasn’t responsible for anything she had said or done today. As soon as Tweed had authorized the statement to reporters on the school steps, Jane Stewart from the Department of Education communications office had told her exactly what she was going to say and made her rehearse it three times before they had walked outside together. And Ellie Friedman from Margery Barton’s office had orchestrated the assemblies with the children and told her exactly what to say about Sanchez’s death and how to introduce the grief counselors who spoke to each grade-level group.

  “Do they know who did it?” asked Carla.

  “Not yet.”

  “Do they think it’s someone at the school?”

  Marva heard only self-serving curiosity in Carla’s voice. Carla’s son Justin attended the Rockwell Academy, an elite private school, and Carla was probably trying to collect whatever tidbits Marva tossed her way so that she could pass them on to the white stay-at-home private-school moms whose acceptance she desperately wanted. Carla’s dark complexion, Marva suspected, meant that her membership in their social circle was provisional at best and had to be constantly renewed. But that was the world Carla had chosen. That was her problem. “Look, I can’t talk right no
w, Carla. There’s a lot going on here. I’ll have to call you later.”

  “Sure, Marva. Call me when you can.”

  Marva hung up and closed her eyes. She could hardly breathe. She felt claustrophobic with the door to her tiny office closed, but she needed a break from all the handlers. Ironically, she’d taken more orders from them today than she’d ever had to take from Hector Sanchez. He had usually just ignored her. Today she was like a piece of furniture they kept rearranging. She wanted to speak to someone who would really understand, but who was she supposed to call? Who did she have in the way of friends? Rita Monroe from church? They’d sat together on the bus on a spiritual retreat last month, and they always had nice chats during coffee hour after the St. Michael’s service, but Rita wasn’t really a friend. She wasn’t someone Marva could spill her guts to. The truth was that she had no one. She was alone in this. Not even Sofia Reyes had bothered to return her call.

  She heard a knock on her door. She sat up and reached for her keyboard to look busy. “Come in,” she said with a blend of authority and annoyance meant to deflect the criticism of whichever handler had come for her now. The door opened, but it was just Milosz holding out a Dunkin’ Donuts cup. He set the coffee on her desk in front of her. “I put in sugar and milk, the way you like it.”

  The aroma expanded her nasal passages, and her eyes started to burn. She had to stop herself from crying over this small act of kindness. If she cried, he would think she was unstable. Maybe she was unstable. In truth, there was no question—she was. But she couldn’t let on. She took a deep breath. “Two cups in one day? Thank you, Milosz. You shouldn’t have.”

  He smiled. “It’s been a hard day for you. And yesterday was even harder.”

  Marva grasped the warm cardboard cup. Was he referring to her run-in with Sanchez? How much of that conversation had he heard, and if he had heard it, who else had heard it? Janisa? Other teachers? She was mortified to think about that. She still remembered Hector’s exact words because they had stung her so painfully. “Goddammit, Marva.” He had not even waited for his office door to be closed. “You’re not here to post sign-up sheets. You’re not here to make decisions. You’re here to keep the heads out of toilets. That’s it. And you can’t even do that. How the fuck did this happen?”

  Marva had never in her life been spoken to so vehemently or vulgarly. Even her supercilious mother and sister never spoke to her like that. “You’re the least effective administrator I’ve ever worked with.” He had continued his verbal assault on her self-esteem. And then he had gone for her jugular, disdainfully flicking his index finger against her favorite quote from Ephesians, ripping the tape that held the Post-it note to the side of her computer monitor. “What are you, anyway? One of those simple-minded church ladies? This is a public school, for God’s sake. You don’t belong here. You’re out of my school at the end of this year.”

  Now she forced herself to look up at Milosz despite her deep humiliation. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re very kind.”

  He nodded and smiled. He wasn’t attractive with that angular face, she thought, but he was nicer to her than anyone else in this place. She watched him close the door on his way out, and then she let herself cry. It was a harder day than anybody realized. But no one ever thought of Marva’s feelings—no one except a custodian. She sipped the hot coffee. It was sweetened to perfection.

  Chapter 15

  At 4:15 PM on a weekday, there were few public places on the Upper West Side—or anywhere in Manhattan, for that matter—where you could hold a private conversation on the spur of the moment without the world listening in. Codella had no intention of dragging Vickie Berrard, the teacher of Dana Drew’s daughter, to one of the sterile interview rooms at Manhattan North or the 171st Precinct. Those were hardly the sort of places in which the young kindergarten teacher was likely to relax and let down her guard.

  There were plenty of Starbucks up and down Broadway, of course, but those were crowded venues with wobbly, crumb-covered pedestal tables that discouraged you from settling in. Codella could think of only one suitable place for a meeting near PS 777, and that was Edgar’s Café on Amsterdam between Ninety-First and Ninety-Second Streets. Codella had been frequenting Edgar’s since she’d moved to the West Side more than a decade ago. Back then the restaurant had been located on the block of Eighty-Fourth Street west of Broadway called Edgar Allen Poe Street. It was adjacent to the Ohav Shalom Synagogue, and late on a Friday night, young orthodox couples would file in for key lime pie after a Kiddush ceremony. Benny, the smiling old Italian owner, had made his restaurant look like a café in Sorrento, and his friendly Ecuadorian barista made the best lattés.

  Benny always made sure Codella had a good table, and if she came at night, he always offered her a piece of key lime pie on the house. When he’d been priced out of his lease on Eighty-Fourth Street, she had followed him to Amsterdam Avenue. Her ancestors were southern Italian, and Benny was from Sicily. They both valued constancy.

  Codella and Muñoz silently sipped their drinks and waited for Berrard. When she came through the door, she looked pale and tired. Muñoz pulled out her chair. Codella got the waitress’s attention. “How about a coffee or tea?” she asked the teacher. “Maybe a slice of chocolate cake? They have amazing chocolate cake here, and I think most people would agree that this is a day for chocolate.” She smiled warmly. Most women, she knew, resorted to desserts in times of stress, even if she didn’t. “This must have been a hard day for you.”

  Berrard peeled out of her quilted Land’s End coat. “It’s just so sad,” she said. “The children and I have been painting pictures for Mr. Sanchez all afternoon. The grief counselor suggested we do something so the children could express their feelings for him.”

  Codella smiled. “That’s a wonderful way to honor him,” she said.

  “The children loved him so much. He came into our classroom twice a week and read them stories aloud. He always brought the most interesting books to read them. Last week, he read them Diary of a Worm, and we used that to start our journaling unit.”

  Codella nodded politely. “I’m trying to understand who he was, and frankly, everyone I speak to has quite a different perspective.”

  “I’m not surprised by that.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Well . . .” She glanced around the restaurant as if she might be under surveillance. “777 is a pretty polarized place. You’ve got the teachers Hector recruited—like me. And then you have the ones who were here before he came, and a lot of them are—” She paused. “Well, in my opinion, really unprofessional. Lots of them are just clock punchers. They’re riding out the years to full retirement benefits. They don’t really care about improving students’ educational experience.”

  “What can you tell me about Sofia Reyes?”

  “Oh, I love Sofia. She’s our literacy coach.”

  “Tell me what that means. She comes to the school and trains you?”

  “Twice a week.” Berrard nodded. “She runs workshops and leads demonstration lessons to show us new techniques. You can ask her to come in your classroom and watch you teach, and then she’ll mentor you privately.”

  “But I take it some of the teachers feel threatened by her. Why do you think that is?”

  “They don’t want to admit they could be doing a better job,” Berrard answered matter-of-factly. “They’re mad because Mr. Sanchez is—I mean was—forcing them to work harder.”

  “I get the impression he was a pretty harsh evaluator.”

  “He had to be,” she said. “If it were up to most of these teachers, they’d keep doing the same one-size-fits-all teacher-directed lessons they’ve been doing for two or three decades. They think it’s okay to stand up there and read out of the textbook. They don’t create opportunities for the children to discover things on their own. They never group the kids for discussions. They don’t want to do small-group reading. They don’t use their interactive whiteboards. They’re the
kind of teachers who give our profession a bad name. There’s a lot of new research about how kids learn, and they’re not paying attention. Sometimes in faculty meetings, Hector passes out a Reading Research Quarterly article or copies of a new professional development book he’s purchased for everyone, and they just roll their eyes. It’s obvious they have no intention to read what he gives them. They checked out long ago. This school has been a dumping ground for lazy, incompetent teachers, and the test scores prove it. So you see, he had to be tough.”

  “Did he fire anyone?”

  Berrard did another visual sweep of the restaurant. Her coffee and chocolate cake arrived. “Well, Christine Donohue would have you believe he was on a witch hunt. In my opinion, she’s the legacy teachers’ ringleader. She’s convinced he trumped up charges against tenured teachers so he could fire them and staff up with cheaper untenured ones like me. She claims he fired two of her buddies.”

  “Who? Can you give me their names?”

  “Imogene Burke and Ron Davis. They both left in mid-September. But I don’t think he fired them. I think she’s just spreading rumors.”

  Codella touch-typed the names into her notes app. She noticed that Muñoz had removed a small notepad from his jacket pocket and was also jotting the names. “Which teachers on the staff felt the most threatened by Sanchez?”

  Berrard stuck a fork into the dense, dark wedge of cake on her plate. The fork traveled to her mouth and she closed her eyes in obvious pleasure. “I’m sorry. What was your question?”

  “Which teachers felt the most threatened by Sanchez?”

  “Well, for sure Christine Donohue and her little clique, of course. Anna Masoutis, Roz Porter, Eugene Bosco—they’ve been here the longest.”

  “And yet their names were all on the iAchieve sneak preview sign-up sheet down in the office. Why would they sign up to learn about a technology program if they weren’t interested in changing their teaching methods?”