Settling Old Scores: BWWM Second Chance Romance

by Sposs, Mike

  Attendance was soaring at the Math Club! Some of the young ladies were apparently swooning a little over Kevin, and dragging their friends in with them. Kevin was amused and pleased. "If it gets you to study math, I will play along," he thought. They really were a fun group. One of the girls asked Kevin before the meeting if he had a girlfriend, in front of everyone. Kevin smiled and said no, thinking that was the answer they were hoping for. Then, they wanted to know why not. Kevin answered that question obtusely. Then, they started to openly speculate why not, which really got hilarious. The kids were definitely alive and curious about everything.

  Then, Kevin got busy getting them back on the math track and off the hormone track. The girls naturally attracted some guys to the club, too. The boys were serious students that wanted to show off a little to the girls. On today's speed math session, Kevin talked about finding the decimal equivalent of certain fractions. He started by having them compute the decimal equivalent of 1/7th, 1/13th, and 1/17th. The answers were .142/857, .076/923, .05882352/941176470, and the numbers just kept repeating after that. "Do you notice anything interesting about these sequences?" Kevin asked as he drew lines splitting the numbers into parts. The kids immediately became alert.

  Marcy Greenberg finally piped up with a smile after some concentration and said, "If you split the sequences in half, they all add up to nine."

  "Great work Marcy," Kevin said.

  The other kids were blown away by the discovery and Marcy just beamed that she was the one to catch it. That started a great discussion about converting fractions. Kevin pointed out that most calculators wouldn't even calculate 17 places of precision in the case of 1/17th. "If you knew this characteristic after you have computed half the answer, the other half was merely the nine's complement of what you had computed. What a great shortcut!" Kevin said.

  What Kevin was most pleased about was that the kids were starting to look at numbers differently. The whole deal with the repeating decimals was premised on being able to convert the fraction into something that ended in nine. In math, nine and eleven were special numbers with special properties. They were starting to see some of these characteristics; numbers weren't just scratches on paper anymore. It was gratifying. He showed them how a two digit number that had digits that added up to eleven was easy to multiply by nine. "For example, 92x9= 81 and its reciprocal 18 for a product of 828. Or another example, 74x9=63/36=666. Now, let's leverage it to 902*9 or 605*9 he said as he wrote 8118 & 5445 on the board. One simple multiplication and you have an answer to a three by one digit multiplication," he said.

  “English and Algebra are not so very different,” Kevin told the kids. That got him some stares and eye rolls! They all laughed at how enthusiastic Kevin was. "Kids like it when you have passion for your subject," Kevin thought. He felt good about making an impression on these kids.

  Mr. Sharpe watched the proceedings and was quite pleased. At the end of the presentation, Kevin asked him what he thought about the meeting. He told Kevin he had a gift for explaining things and making it fun. Naturally, he pitched Kevin again about becoming a teacher.

  "You know, after today I think I just might be able to do it. We both know it is easier to demonstrate passion and wit when you get to pick your topic. In a classroom situation where you have a goal of covering prescribed material, it is harder to be as creative," Kevin said with a smile.

  "I still have hopes for you Kevin. You have a talent for this," Mr. Sharpe said.

  28. Found

  As he drove home, Kevin thought about his day. It occurred to him that he should ask Matt about sleeping in the dumpster behind the funeral home. Maybe, he knew or saw something about the McCanns or Sylvia from that summer of the riot. He wondered if Pat's mom knew a lot more about her former husband than she had previously told her daughter. He also made a note to stop and see Mr. Bailey again.

  When Kevin got home, it was close to 4:30 pm. He had just settled in a bit and the phone rang. It was Willie. "Hey Kevin. I finally sat down with Tom Perkins and talked with him about the Greenberg case. He had to go back to the file to refresh himself on it. So, that's what the delay in getting back to you is about. He says the case is a big cluster fuck. They never found a body, never worked that hard to find one either."

  Willie continued on, "It was pretty easy to establish that she was a hooker. The landlord confirmed it. She had been arrested on one occasion for the same thing, too. Nobody saw anything. They did question the usual suspects about it. They brought in Jesse Campbell, Tyrone Jenkins, and Sam McCann after the riots. I think that was more for the sake of formality than anything else. There was nothing that could be pinned on any of them. Nobody came forward to say they saw something. That was a big surprise,” he said sarcastically.

  Kevin asked a few more questions. Without a body, they couldn't even call it a homicide. If they had a body, there was nothing linking the body to anyone. Willie invited Pat and Kevin over for dinner on Saturday night at his house. Kevin accepted and wrote down the address and time. They talked some more and Kevin hung up. He felt like he was wasting his time on Sylvia Greenberg, but he wasn't going to give up quite yet.

  That night when Pat came in, he caught her up on Willie's call and what a dead end the case was at. She was okay with the Saturday dinner date. Kevin didn't want to tell Pat about his work at the library. He didn't want to get her worked up over what was probably nothing. He did tell Pat how Matt slept in some of the dumpsters on the Avenue back in those days. Pat was a little surprised that he knew as much as he did about the neighborhood. "Pretty amazing how invisible those vagrants become; nobody sees them after a while," Pat said.

  "I suspect he had some sort of a system as to when and how he slept in those dumpsters. Most likely, it was done after they had been emptied. I am going to ask Matt about that tomorrow. There was one behind the funeral home he says he slept in on occasion. There was another one behind the TV and appliance store. That generally had just corrugated stuff in it. That's the one he saw me show Willie my gun from," said Kevin.

  Pat said she was still thinking about how to bring the subject of her dad up with her mom without upsetting her. "That's the last thing I want to do," she said. They sat around a little and talked some more. Kevin told her about the girls in Mr. Sharpe's math group sort of drooling over him one minute and speculating if he liked girls the next. Pat laughed aloud and said, "You don't have any idea what it's like being a ninth grade girl. I wouldn't want to be that age again for anything."

  The next morning, Kevin went and got Matt again. They went up to the Greek place as planned and ate the same breakfast. As they ate, Kevin quizzed Matt about his dumpster life. Matt told him more about it. There was a cycle to his wanderings. He generally stayed in the dumpsters by the TV repair place in the summer on Thursday and Friday nights. By Saturday night, it was too full to stay in. Then he would switch to the funeral home dumpster. That was good for Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, he would be in the bad order cabooses by the river.

  "Did you see the same people going to Sylvia's all the time?" Kevin asked.

  "She had some regulars. They looked like middle age Jewish guys to me. One was the guy that owned the pharmacy on the west end. Another was the guy that owned the appliance store," he said.

  Then, Kevin told Matt that Sylvia just up and disappeared the night the grocery store burned. He told Matt that they thought she was dead but really didn't know. Matt seemed almost nonchalant as he replied slowly, "I was in the dumpster behind the funeral home that night. I got my BBQ from the rib place and settled in there to eat it because I was hungry. The west part of the Avenue had been partly burned. It was a Saturday night. I thought I was pretty safe on that end of the things. Sam McCann came out of the funeral home just about the time it got dark. He walked over to the upstairs entrance to Sylvia's apartment. He forced the door open like it was nothing & went up the stairs."

  Matt continued in his monotone voice, "I heard some yelling f
rom up there, then silence. He came back down the stairs, walked over to the dumpster, got a triple corrugated box from right beside the dumpster, and a gas can out of the trunk of his car. He went to the back entrance of the store and set the other can down. Then he took the knocked down box back up the front entrance to Sylvia's. He came back down the stairs with the box set up and set the box in the hearse the funeral home had.

  He went to the back door of the grocery store and forced his way in there. He grabbed the can and went inside. Within minutes, the place was on fire and he came out. He went back to his car and drove off. That's when I got out of there fast. I headed for the river. When I left, I looked up towards English Avenue. His hearse was parked there."

  Kevin was stunned at what Matt just told him. Things jived pretty well. The store was burned on a Saturday night. He didn't have an eyewitness to the burning of the funeral home, but he had one to the burning of the grocery store.

  "Matt, you are the key to this whole thing. Would you be willing to tell a detective the same thing you just told me? That box may have contained her body," said Kevin.

  "Sure, why not. I got nothing to lose. I ain't afraid if that's what you are asking me," Matt said.

  "No Matt. There is nobody on the planet that could possibly question your courage. That's not what I am asking. You are going to end up around lawyers and suits questioning you. Some will even question if you made this up or if you have a real working memory of much of anything," Kevin said.

  "She used to give me money sometimes. She was kind. That counts for a hell of a lot with me. I was there. I know what I saw," Matt said.

  Kevin told Matt he was going to call the detective that had the case and set up a meeting. Matt had no problem with that. Kevin had another flash of insight as he slid out of the booth and went to a pay phone. He was thinking that the torn up basement floor in one of the houses on English Avenue might contain a body, and that the raised vegetable garden was made from the soil that was removed to make room for the body.

  Kevin placed a call to Tom Perkins. He told him who he was and told him what Matt had told him. Without hesitation, Tom agreed to meet them downtown in his office in thirty minutes. Kevin and Matt left what remained of their meals and headed downtown. Detective Perkins was a tall thin guy in his forties. He chain smoked Lucky Strikes and wore a blank chronically tired look. Something about the guy reminded Kevin of the theory of the Irish. Perkins had a terrier look to him, Kevin thought. He brought a stenographer in to get Matt's statement down and excused Kevin from the process. An hour later, he was finished with Matt and had Kevin come in. Kevin gave a brief statement that told of his last meeting with Sylvia in the grocery store the night she disappeared. Then he told the detective his little theory about where the body probably was and pointed out that the McCanns owned the buildings. That got Perkins’ attention. Detectives like to find bodies, who knew? Perkins warned Matt and Kevin not to talk to anyone about what they had discussed and sent them on their way. He told them he would get back to them.

  Kevin dropped Matt off at his hotel. Then, he went back up to the old neighborhood to see William Bailey. He found him back on his porch reading and drinking his coffee. Mr. Bailey looked at Kevin over the tops of his reading glasses and gave him a faint smile. "I wondered to myself if I would see you again," he said.

  "Oh yeah, I am back," Kevin grinned back.

  "Well, pull up a chair and sit down boy. Want some coffee?" Mr. Bailey said. "Go inside and get a cup from the cupboard in the kitchen."

  Kevin came out with a cup, poured a short one and sat down. "I got nothing in particular to ask you about. You're plain good company. That's why I stopped by," he said. Then they started to talk. Kevin asked about his work for the railroad and his union activities. It turned out that there were about thirty men that worked on the Empire Builder as porters in its heyday that lived in town. They talked about the AFDC, too.

  It was a fascinating discussion for Kevin in that he knew nothing about the subject other than the same tired things everybody repeated back to each other until they became gospel. Mr. Bailey told him about how it started out as an add-on to the Social Security Act, way back in 1936 and was called ADC at first. "Roosevelt decided back then that a great nation wouldn't let kids starve or go hungry," Mr. Bailey said.

  Then, in 1962, as a political response to criticism, they changed the name to AFDC. The "Families with" making it sound like they were helping families as opposed to splitting them up which was the big criticism of the program. Then in 1968, the Supreme Court got rid of the "no man in the house" requirement.

  Kevin was hooked. He thought about how you could sit in a classroom, listen to a professor, and read out of a book. Alternatively, you could sit down with an old black guy, have a cup of coffee and get authentic truth. Mr. Bailey was a bit of a grump, but he was the real deal and knew his stuff. They talked for several hours. As he was getting up to go, Mr. Bailey directed him back in the house to get something off a refrigerator magnet in the kitchen. It was the address and phone number of Clarence Washington in Lumberton.

  Kevin came back out and thanked Mr. Bailey for the address. Mr. Bailey smiled back and waved him off. "I don't even know if you wanted it. I kind of thought maybe he was your dad. He was real high yellow. You got the dark eyes and curly dark hair. You are tall and thin like he was."

  Kevin laughed, "I been mistaken for just about everything you can imagine. Greek, part Indian, Jewish, but never mixed. Not that I care too much. Everybody has to be something." Mr. Bailey seemed a little disappointed that he hadn't helped Kevin find his dad, so Kevin told him that it was his girlfriend's dad he was trying to locate. That brightened him back up again. They said their goodbyes and Kevin assured him he would be back.

  When Kevin pulled off the curb at Mr. Bailey's house, he looked at his watch and decided to cruise down English Avenue. To his surprise, there was a squad car out front and crime scene tape was being put up. "Holy shit!" said Kevin to himself, "They didn't waste any time."

  Kevin headed back down to his apartment. When he got there, he pulled out the address Mr. Bailey had given him and compared it to the address he had of Clarence Washington in Lumberton. Sure as shit, the address and phone number were exactly the same. He had discovered the brothers’ location.

  Kevin sat down for a second and thought real long and hard. Then he made a call.

  After that, Kevin had even more to think about. As he sat there pondering, the phone rang. It was Willie calling. He said that something big was going down. There was a rumor that they found a body buried in the basement of one of the McCann houses on English Avenue. They were calling for crime lab workers to work overtime. That only happened for a limited number of reasons. The district attorney's office was buzzing and reporters were starting to hang out at city hall.

  Kevin didn't say anything, as he was instructed. "If everything plays out the way it usually does, the Mayor and Chief will be having a press conference at the end of the day. Turn on your TV, this could be big," Willie said.

  About that time, Pat came home. Kevin motioned for her to turn the TV on. Then he hung up the call from Willie. "Pat, the police have found at least one body over on English Avenue. There is going to be a press conference shortly," said Kevin.

  He caught Pat up partially, as fast as he could. The press conference started. The Mayor started by announcing that two bodies had been found beneath the basement of a house on English Avenue. They were working to identify the bodies. Then the reporters got to ask questions. Some were good, some were just plain stupid. Many of them were the type that searched for nuances in parsing, trying to get more information.

  Finally, they cut away to another reporter who mentioned one of the bodies was thought to be that of then nineteen year old Sylvia Greenberg, a freelance prostitute that lived in the area. They flashed a picture of the gorgeous girl on the screen and said that she had disappeared without a trace during the riots on the Avenue a decade ago.
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br />   Pat put her hand to her mouth in shock and sucked in her breath. "You had something to do with this, didn't you?" she said. Kevin told her all that had transpired between him and Matt that day.

  29. Matt turns Comic

  The next morning, they got up early to listen to the daybreak news. There were no new details. The investigation was continuing. As they sat with their coffee in hand, Kevin put his down, turned to Pat and said very seriously, "I have one more thing I want to tell you while you are sitting down. I have an address and phone number for your dad in Wilmington, North Carolina."

  Pat put her coffee down and covered her eyes. Finally, after a long pause, she took them away from her face. "I knew you were not going to let up on this. Did you talk to him?" she asked.

  "I would never do that. It is not my choice to make. It is yours. You have the option to do what you want with the info. I am just making it available to you," Kevin said gently as he rubbed her back.

  "So, how did this come about?" Pat asked.

  "I found your uncle Clarence through the guy that took over the paper he had. I called him and got the number of your dad using a little well intentioned, harmless deception. He has no idea what I was up to. Your dad is still working everyday and apparently healthy," said Kevin.

  "So you don't know if he remarried and has kids? Do I have half siblings and a stepmother?" asked Pat.

  "I don't know that. You don't have to decide anything Pat. You got by the last 27 years without talking to him or seeing him. You could easily continue in that vein if you want," replied Kevin.

  "This is too much all at once. I need to think real hard. I am scared for you, and for Matt. Now, I have this to consider," said Pat.

  "Pat, settle down. Nothing is going to happen. Matt has no phone number or address. His parents haven't seen him in years. As a precaution, I just need to get him to stop panhandling on the street. Nobody will be able to find him then. I was not even going to tell you for a while that I found your dad, but I won't operate that way with you. You said the other day that I was your biggest cheerleader. I am your partner, too. Together, we will get through this," said Kevin.