You Killed Wesley Payne

by Sean Beaudoin

  “I heard about you and Foxxes,” Macy said quietly. “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You’re still in love with the leather queen.”

  “You heard what?”

  “Well, do you have a better explanation? Is it just a coincidence that Cassiopeia Jones is your old girlfriend?”

  “Yes. It is a coincidence. I had no idea she transferred here. And she’s not my old girlfriend.”

  “Oh really? That’s not what Mole said.”

  Dalton was tempted to finally tell Macy about Landon. How he was halfway around the world, right that second, in a place that had nothing to do with flirting and arguing and being dramatic. It was real life. People were dying. And Dalton was running out of time. It wasn’t a game.

  “This isn’t a game.”

  “It isn’t? It sure seems like you’re a player.”

  “I’m not playing anything.”

  “What did you mean, in his room, by the way?”

  “What?”

  “That envelope. You asked me why Wesley would keep it in his room.”

  “Because I found it there.”

  “When?”

  “The other day. I didn’t tell you because—”

  Macy’s whole body began to tremble, her left eye blinking rapidly. She held her palm against it and pointed with the other hand toward the door.

  “Get out. Now.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “GET OUT!”

  She’s right, you should go. You deserve to go. Solve the crime. Find the cash. Get paid and get gone.

  Dalton slipped on his boots and went down the steps, this time quietly and without slamming any doors. There would be enough slamming doors when he got home if Sherry Rev was still awake.

  CHAPTER 17

  CRACKSTAR NOIR

  “As many of you know, yearbooks came out today,” Miss Honey Bucket trilled, over the crackling loudspeaker, in the middle of class, interrupting Miss Splonge. “Just a reminder that they’re only a hundred fifty a pop. Get them in the hallway at the booth manned by yours truly. Cash, check, or money order.” There was a long bleat of feedback. “Ha-ha, actually, it’s cash or nothing. You know what you can do with a check, and it isn’t hygienic. That is all.”

  There were some kids who already had theirs, signing coded notes about bands they liked and pool parties they’d gotten drunk at and embarrassing people they’d made out with. There was the vaguely narcotic smell of a printing press and fresh ink hanging in the room. Crowdarounds crowded around, oohing and squealing at the candids while Miss Splonge plodded ahead with her lecture.

  “So, really, it was the Phoenician ships and their ability to range farther than fifty miles from the Mediterranean coast that led to greater trade between—”

  Dalton leaned over to the Euclidian across from him. “Why are yearbooks out already? The semester just started.”

  The kid looked at Dalton fearfully. Then he held a Robot Lion Fist action figure in front of his mouth, speaking through it in an android voice. “We. Get. Yearbooks. Early. At. Salt. River. Due. To. High. Student. Turnover… preeer preeer.”

  Dalton turned away and tuned out, scribbling in his notebook, trying to formulate the plan he was going to present to Chuff. He had zero clue. It needed to be just right: dangerous, possibly profitable, and marginally plausible. Essentially, what would lure a roach like Tarot into the light, let alone onto the linoleum, within easy stomping distance and at a severe disadvantage, without making Chuff suspicious it was a setup? Dalton found it especially hard to concentrate, since Macy hadn’t come to class. He hadn’t expected that. Miss Splonge said during attendance donation collection that it was the first one she’d missed all year. Dalton tried to decide if he was relieved. Or guilty. Or both. In the hallway, various Pinker Caskets had given him dirty looks, including Mick Freeley and his razor pick, but none of them did anything—the decree from Tarot seemed to be holding. At least until tonight. That meant he had six periods of relative freedom to find Inference’s money, figure out who killed Wes Payne, figure out why they bothered to hang him from the goalposts, if they hung him at all, and maybe most confusingly, why someone hung either Wesley Payne or a convincing Wes Payne effigy right above his mother’s laundry pile. And where the ersatz Payne took off to while he and Mole were out on the front lawn.

  Piece of Lex. Like shooting Cole in a barrel.

  Miss Splonge concluded her lecture and then announced a surprise quiz. The class moaned in unison. A Scam Wow began circulating up the aisles, offering to take the test for fifty bucks. A pair of Couldabeens handed over their papers and the cash. Dalton found his pencil and skimmed the ten questions:

  1. Compare and contrast the utterances of the Delphic Oracle with the words of Ovid as they relate to the Greeks’ concept of animism.

  2. Write a short essay discussing the tactics of Alexander the Great in the battle of Tyre. Concentrate specifically on troop movements, logistical support, cavalry handling, and flanking maneuvers.

  3. Interpret and elaborate on the meaning of the phrase “He who listens with ears, let him.” Feel free to use the back of the page for extra space.

  4. What is the frequency, Kenneth?

  5. Who is John Galt?

  6. Which South American country produces the most raw bauxite, to which countries is the majority exported, and what do the importing countries primarily manufacture from it?

  7. Who reprised the Richard Widmark role in the 1989 remake of Road House, and what was his character’s name?

  8. What two generals met at the battle of Shiloh, who won, who crouched behind a rock wall during an artillery barrage and wept like a little girl, and why?

  9. What is kwashiorkor and why is it my favorite word?

  10. EXTRA CREDIT: Samuel Taylor Coleridge more or less founded the English Romantic movement and was a major influence on early American Transcendentalists, principally Ralph Waldo Emerson. Write a short essay about how all our lives would be different if Coleridge had never been born, or at least had been born untalented.

  When the bell finally rang, Dalton waited for the line of grumbling students to drop off their quizzes. He pretended to be finishing some notes until everyone was gone, and then approached Miss Splonge’s desk. She gave him a big fake smile, framed by wilty brown hair and profoundly thick glasses.

  “You failed your quiz.”

  Dalton frowned. “But—”

  “Principal Inference has you on academic notice, Rev. That means you’ve fallen below a C average for my class. Which means you’re out the door on the next garbage barge.”

  “You couldn’t have corrected it already.”

  Miss Splonge pulled Dalton’s quiz from the pile, along with a red marker, and put a big red X next to each answer without reading it. She totaled them up, which came to a zero. “Like I said. You failed.” She wrote a big red F at the top, the marker seeming to squeak with pleasure.

  “What does Inference want?”

  “Principal Inference thinks you’re moving too slowly with your… investigation. She wants her money found. And returned.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “I want a big ol’ safe full of money to lose on my own.”

  Dalton sighed. He fished five twenties from his pocket and dropped them over the F. Miss Splonge tore up his quiz and then stuck the money into a rubber band around her wrist, pulling her heavy sweater back over it. “You had a question, I believe? Or, should I say you were about to try to stick your nose somewhere beige?”

  Dalton laughed, looking down at the tiny woman.

  “Listen, Splonge—”

  “Splahn-jay. It’s French.”

  “I understand Wesley Payne was in your class.”

  “Who?”

  “The Body.”

  “Who?”

  Dalton fished out three more twenties. Splahn-jay reached, but Dalton dangled them at carrot distance.

  “Payne didn’t say much,” she admitted, not taki
ng her eyes off the folding green. “Kept to himself. Straight As, but never raised his hand. Things clearly came too easily for that young man. It’s a sign of weakness. He stared out the window mostly.”

  “But he was a Crop Crème.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “A what?”

  “Nothing. You know what he was staring out the window at? Maybe a guy in a pin-striped suit?”

  Splonge gave Dalton an odd look, waving halfheartedly toward the football field. “How should I know? He faced that way.”

  “Toward the goalposts?”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “No. It’s—”

  Splonge’s arm darted out faster than Dalton thought possible. She snatched the money from his fingers and tucked it in her sleeve before he could blink.

  THE PRIVATE DICK HANDBOOK, RULE #32

  The Fack Cult is as the Fack Cult does.

  You can’t trust one as far as you could kick a lemon pie.

  The bell rang for the second time.

  “You’re late for your next class,” Splonge said, dabbing her permanently red nose with a tissue that appeared from her other sleeve.

  Dalton walked to the door.

  “And he smelled.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Splonge started writing with her squeaky chalk on the board, spelling THE TUNGUSKA EVENT in big block letters. “That poor boy always smelled like a bad tube of cologne.”

  Dalton stepped into the hallway and was almost immediately mowed down by three Plaths running in circles.

  “NO WAY NO WAY NO WAY!”

  “OH MY BOB, OH MY BOB, OH MY BOB!”

  One dropped her yearbook, and the other began showing hers to passing students. It set off a chain reaction. New Skids began pairing off, talking in low voices. Girlz with Two First Names cried and hugged one another. Miss Honey Bucket stood at her booth, counting money, while random cliques ran up and grabbed the yearbooks, cracking them open without paying for them. “Hey!” she kept saying. “Hey!”

  Dalton asked a Sis Boom Bah if he could look at hers. She let go of it and ran down the hallway with her hands over her mouth. The book fell open to the centerfold, a big glossy color picture.

  “No farcking way.”

  It was a smiling school portrait of Wesley Payne with a caption saying he’d been voted “Most Likely Not to Succeed.” There was a crude drawing superimposed over his face. Cartoon holes were bored into his head with straws sticking out like a fruity tourist drink. A fanged Kurt Tarot was drawn sucking greedily on one of the straws, with a dialogue box that said “MMMM, Euclidian Blood. Tastes just like cherry cola!”

  Lu Lu Footer pushed against a flow of crying students like a salmon in tight couture, not quite running. “Give me that!” she yelled, a blur of orange skirt, snatching the yearbook from Dalton’s hands.

  “That’s impossible!” she kept saying, licking her thumb and flipping pages. “That wasn’t there. I sent the proofs in myself last week. The centerfold was our class picture. It was of everyone out in the parking lot. It wasn’t this! I sent it in myself!”

  No one was listening. Girls in tears huddled while guys nervously made dumb jokes, kicking locker doors, hands stuffed deep in their pockets. An angry mob began to surround Miss Honey Bucket, demanding answers. She smiled sweetly, zipped her terry-cloth sweat suit up to her neck, and then grabbed her money box. As the Crowdarounds closed in, she slipped back into her office and slammed the door, leaving the remaining yearbooks as a sacrifice. It was suddenly clear just how much Wesley Payne’s death actually had affected the cliques. And how much they’d been hiding it. His defaced picture seemed to have torn open whatever unspoken denial they’d shared. Dalton wasn’t sure if it was out of fear of reprisal, greed, or a thick coat of cynicism, but once it was broken it festered up from the tiles like Chernobyl coolant eating through reinforced concrete. And, as always, that grief expressed itself as unexamined anger. There were accusations and shoving matches. Airplane Gluze and Couldabeens grappled against lockers. A mini riot began breaking out.

  “Who had access to the proofs?” Dalton asked, grabbing Lu Lu Footer’s arm. She didn’t answer, looking down from her dongtower. It didn’t seem to be so much imperiousness as shock. Dalton lowered his voice and asked again.

  “I don’t know. All of them. Any of them. I don’t care. About this place. Anymore.”

  Lu Lu dropped the yearbook, gliding back down the raucous hallway in a flash of leopard print. Almost immediately, the shoving graduated into a melee. Dalton pushed through it, heading to his locker, shaking off two Scam Wows already selling “collector’s item” yearbooks for twice the price. A group of Steel-toe Dystopias mobbed a Coal Train and smashed his clarinet. Kokrocks grabbed a New Skid and pantsed him hard, then pushed him into a lungbox, holding the door closed as he coughed and begged to be let go. Dalton was about to free the kid, when three shots went off in succession—bang pang bang. Long streaks of red marked the floor tiles.

  “LEE HARVIES!” a half-shirted Sis Boom Bah screamed, bouncing pneumatically, as cliques tore away in every direction. The New Skid staggered out of the lungbox, coughing as he ran.

  Dalton didn’t move. As chaos reigned around him, he walked to the center of the hall.

  THE PRIVATE DICK HANDBOOK, RULE #33

  If you have a theory, test it. If you have balls, use them.

  Dalton stood like a buoy around which a current eddied, searching for where the bullets could possibly have come from. He couldn’t see any perch or firing line. No open windows or missing ceiling tiles. As students crouched, he stepped forward and spread his arms. No sound. He closed his eyes and waited. No movement. He threw open his mouth and yelled, “GO AHEAD!”

  Nothing happened.

  “SHOOT! I’M NOT SCARED!”

  There was no response.

  The final bell rang.

  Doors up and down the hallway slammed just as frantic students managed to slip through. Fack Cult peered from the side windows of their classes, rubbing their fingers together to indicate what it would cost any stragglers to get in. Dalton knelt down, examining the red streaks. Again, they smelled like vinegar. They could have been blood, but there were no bullet holes or broken tiles. He stood up and ran out the emergency exit, circling around the side of the building, scanning the rooftop. A guy in a Jason mask with silver anarchy symbols painted over the eyes? How hard can that be to find? In the alley behind a Dumpster was a rusted metal fire ladder above a steel toolshed bolted into the brick wall. Dalton pulled himself to the top, leaped, caught the bottom rung, and wrenched the ladder down. He heard the crunching of gravel above. Gotcha. Dalton clambered up the ladder, with each step feeling a greater sway. A rumble sounded along the side supports. There was a loud jerk as the bolts began to pull away from the mortar they’d been sunk into.

  Farck farck farck farck.

  He scrambled to the top, rolling over the lip of the roof and scanning the area in a tactical way he’d seen in about fourteen movies involving the use of SWAT personnel.

  No movement.

  The parking lot below was quiet. In the center of the gravel and sheet-metal rectangle was a grouping of air vents. It was the only place to hide. Dalton stood and heel-toed over as fast as he could while trying not to make any noise. If he was caught out in the open, he was dead. There was nowhere to hide and nowhere to run. The crunching of his feet got louder. He closed the last ten yards in a sprint, pressing his back against the closest vent. If the Lee Harvies was there, he was right around the corner. Three feet away. With his back pressed against the vent too. Except he had a gun. A really, really big gun.

  THE PRIVATE DICK HANDBOOK, RULE #34

  Just stick your head out and see.

  It’ll be like a cartoon and you’ll get your hat shot off.

  Except, oh wait, you’re not wearing a hat.

  Dalton slowly peered around. There was nothing there. No Jason mask, no shooter. Nothing but a small pile of garbage. The sort of p
ile a guy who spent a lot of time on a roof waiting to squeeze off some shots would make. There were a couple of empty plastic bottles of Rush cola mashed flat, some food wrappers, an old rifle tripod, and a single playing card. It was the jack of spades. Except the jack’s face had been replaced by the picture of a beady-eyed man staring maniacally at the camera. Dalton pocketed the card. Then he wedged the tripod between two steel pipes and yanked it sideways, shearing off one leg and bending the column. He tossed the thing on the ground and climbed gingerly back down the ladder, hoping if it did pull entirely out of the side of the building, it would at least wait until he was far enough down to jump and only break one leg.

  The ladder held.

  The bell rang.

  Just in time for his next class.

  CHAPTER 18

  MAMA, DON’T TAKE MY KODACHROME AWAY

  Mole was waiting at Dalton’s locker, rubbing his neck, a Diego Rivera mural of blue-purple hickeys.

  “I’ve been looking for you, guy. Thought you made like an old-time mobster, turned state’s evidence, and went into witness protection. I’m all like, okay, maybe Dalton’s hunkered down with a new name in some Phoenix split-level watching the tube and waiting for a knock on the door that isn’t the mailman, you know?”

  “And yet, here I am,” Dalton said as a bunch of Balls tromped cleat-heavy down the hallway. They gave him dirty looks but kept going.

  Mole held up a copy of the yearbook. “Crazy, huh? Real Hong Kong Phooey. Wesley didn’t deserve that. Lots of people don’t think so. Whole thing has stirred up some serious ill will.”

  “People are not happy,” Dalton agreed. He was running out of time. Three periods left to come up with a plan. Or a suspect. He had to get off his ham and down to the Arts Wing.

  “Heard about you standing up to Lee Harvies. Legendary maneuver. Go ahead and shoot? That’s, like, Cobra Cobretti action. That’s, like, half the guys at school crying into their Frooty Bobbers, Why can’t I be that cool?”