by Tracy Clark
“I’m counting,” I said. “When I get to five you’d better be far away from me. One . . . two . . .” Raffi took off running back to the garage. I headed for my car. “Thanks for your help back there,” I said when I’d caught up to Mrs. Luna. “You were right. He wouldn’t have talked to me without you there.”
“I wash my hands. I turn my back on all of it. My son is dead. Whatever happens, he will still be dead.” We got in the car and I headed back to Mrs. Luna’s.
“What do you think really happened to Cesar?” she asked. “What do you know that the police do not?”
I slid her a sideways glance. “I know Father Heaton. I have a bulletin that suggests Cesar knew him, too. I know that people just don’t stop being who they are at the drop of a hat, that pattern of behavior is important, and I know that there’s more to uncover.”
I could sense her watching me as I drove. “That is not much.”
It wasn’t, I thought, my eyes on the road, but it wasn’t nothing, which is what I had yesterday.
“What would you have done if Hector pulled his gun? He had one. He always does.”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
Mrs. Luna shook her head. “He won’t talk to you again.”
“I know. I’m hoping to have an easier time with Marisol.”
She turned to face me, puzzled. “Marisol? Why?”
“I believe she didn’t know Father Heaton, but she’s seen that girl in the photograph.”
Mrs. Luna stared at me, confused. “She said she did not.”
“She looked away and began to fidget when she saw the photo. She recognized her.”
“How can you know this?”
“Experience,” I said.
Mrs. Luna looked as though she’d lost her last friend on earth. “She lied to me?”
I nodded. “And I’d like to know why, wouldn’t you?”
Chapter 15
When the sun came up, I got my first good look at Miguel de Cervantes High. The four-story, sand-colored brick building took up the entire north side of the block. The sign on the brown grass out front announced upcoming local school council meetings and a dance for upperclassmen planned for Saturday. On the south side of the street sat an unassuming row of sagging shotgun houses and three flats, the modest homes of the working poor. There was nothing fancy about the southeast side. It was solid, proud, and as indestructible as cast-iron. It was pot roast and potatoes, spare change collected in old apple cider jars, church on Sundays, and dirty jobs that didn’t pay nearly enough to send kids off to college. It was working class and steadfast. Even the beaters at the curb seemed to match their owners’ unwillingness to give in or out.
Kids started showing up a little after eight, some dropped off by cars driven by parents in a rush, most dawdling up the cracked sidewalk under their own steam. Marisol was not among the early arrivals. There was a lot of pulling and pushing and horsing around, boys pulling on girls, girls pretending they didn’t like it, a lot of texting, and a lot of foul language shouted at the top of pubescent lungs. It looked like it might rain, but not one kid was dressed for even the possibility of bad weather. My gaze continuously shifted from the sidewalk to my rearview mirror to the school’s front door, where I watched a portly guard scan everyone quickly through the metal detectors.
Had Cesar rediscovered his faith? Is that why he chose to break from the Scorpions, or had he just grown tired of disappointing his mother? Had he chosen Mass at St. Brendan’s because it was well outside of his neighborhood? Was he deliberately trying to avoid Hector and the others? Pop worked with at-risk kids, and Cesar certainly qualified, but so far, the fact that Pop worked in a church and Cesar had visited it, were the only things that connected them. Had Pop and Cesar met that night in secrecy? If so, why? What were they hiding?
I perked up when I spotted Marisol a half block up, walking toward the school in a purple sweater, gray hoodie, and tight jeans. She strolled along with another girl, both of them teetering on heels too high for sixteen-year-old feet to handle, books cradled in their arms, knockoff designer purses slung over their shoulders, and chattering a mile a minute. When the pair got closer, I got out and trotted over to intercept them. “Marisol!”
She stopped and turned, then frowned when she recognized me.
“I’d like to talk to you,” I said.
Marisol groaned and shifted her weight to one foot in a show of adolescent pique. “I can’t talk to you. I got homework to finish before first period. It’s freaking history, and Mr. Beatty is a real tool. These questions are hard, too.”
“I only need a few minutes.”
“Hector said not to talk to you, anyways. He says you’re trouble.”
“You do everything Hector tells you to do?”
She thrust her chest out. “Hector’s not my boss. I do what I want. But if he found out I was talking to you after yesterday, he’d lose his shit. He’s got some serious anger issues. He threw a wrench through the window after you left.”
“Better the window than my head,” I said. “Five minutes. That’s all.”
She angled her head. “What’s in it for me?”
I glanced at her friend, who stared at me with dark, lifeless eyes. She was shorter and thinner than Marisol, but it was her hair that got my attention. Her dark bangs were severely cut on the diagonal; the rest of her hair had been violently assaulted by long streaks of bright magenta. It was quite a statement, of what, I couldn’t quite make out.
Did no one do anything nowadays just because it was the right thing to do? When did that stop? Why had it? I was tired of deals and going tit for tat. Marisol stared at me blankly, probably wondering what my malfunction was.
“Fine. You give me five minutes, and I’ll give you the answers to your history homework. Even trade.”
Marisol brightened. “For real?”
I nodded. “That’s what I said. Tit for tat.”
Marisol frowned. “What’s tits got to do with anything?”
I screamed inside. “Let’s do this, Marisol.”
She leaned over and whispered something to the girl. “So I’m gonna be a minute,” she said, pulling away from her friend’s ear.
“Whatever,” the girl snapped. She walked off reluctantly, turning back every couple of steps to watch us.
Marisol rummaged around in her purse, pulling out a nubble of chewing gum, which she popped into her mouth. “I like the deal, but like I said, I don’t know nothing about Cesar. He was Hector’s friend, not mine.”
The girl hesitated at the door, still watching. I was curious as to what she found so fascinating.
“What’d you tell her?” I asked.
“I told her you were my papi’s new girlfriend come to spread the drama.”
Marisol waved her manicured fingers at the girl in an effort to shoo her inside. Besides the wild red fingernail polish, Marisol sported a shiny ring on each finger, and each wrist was tricked out with rows of gold and silver bangles. Whenever her arms moved it sounded like we were surrounded by fairies in flight.
“So now she’s waiting for the show. But there ain’t gonna be no show, Josephina!” Josephina, denied satisfaction, pulled a face, flipped us the bird, and then disappeared inside. “Sometimes I don’t know why I’m friends with her,” Marisol said, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from the front of her sweater. She took a moment, then her eyes narrowed and her mouth turned up into a slow smile. “So, you know history, huh? You probably graduated college and everything. I mean, you got to at least be halfway smart to be a detective.”
I nodded slowly. I didn’t like the deal, though I’d proposed it. The whole thing felt predatory, but I needed her cooperation, and altruism wasn’t going to get it for me. I had a pretty solid grasp of history. My mother had been a teacher, and I’d gotten my degree before the Peace Corps and joining the police department. I felt pretty confident Marisol couldn’t stump me, but I didn’t have time to waste.
“Sure. You at
least have to know how to read and write and count to ten,” I offered facetiously.
“That’s what I figured,” Marisol said, the snarkiness of my response sailing right over her head. She opened one of her books and pulled out a sheet of paper. “So this’ll be one hand washing all the other hands, like they say.”
“Or you could decide to come up with the answers on your own. For the sake of your education,” I said, though the minute my words hit the air, I realized how futile they were. This little exchange didn’t actually rise to the level of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, but it still wasn’t sitting well. She stood blank faced, the paper in her hand, waiting for me to wrestle with the moral complexities. “Fine,” I said. “You first.”
Marisol shot me a victorious smirk. “Okay, question one. Who’s that old, black dude who invented peanut butter?” My brows furrowed; she’d stumped me right off the bat. Black dude? Peanut butter? She waited patiently, chewing, while I searched my internal database for peanut butter-related factoids. “You mean George Washington Carver?”
Marisol grinned. “Yeah, that sounds about right. I think it was three names like that.” She plucked a pencil from her hair and wrote the answer down.
“But he didn’t actually invent peanut butter,” I said. “He—”
“Bub-bub-bub!” she said, waving her hand to ward off further explanation. “Whatever, all right? All I need is the name. I don’t need to get all into it.”
I looked around to see who might be listening. No one was.
She blew a bubble, then quickly sucked it back into her mouth in one seamless move. “And when did that slave war stop? It like happened two hundred years ago.”
I searched her face for a sign that she was putting me on. Sadly, she was not. I pressed my lips together to keep from saying something indelicate and paused before answering. “The Civil War.”
Marisol stared at me flatly.
“It was a pretty important conflict,” I offered gently. Marisol blinked, waited. I should have stopped, but didn’t. Something in me just couldn’t. “It determined the direction of the entire country.” She cleared her throat, drummed her pencil against the book. I stared at her; she stared back. “1865.”
She wrote it down. “Okay, now I guess you can ask me something, but then I get to go again. That’s how the deal works.”
“Tell me about Cesar’s girl,” I said.
Her eyes slid away from mine. “I told you I don’t know her.”
“You recognized her picture. Tell me.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Everything you didn’t say yesterday.”
She squinted. “Huh?”
I slid my hands into my back pockets fighting the impulse to shake her. “You liked Cesar, didn’t you?”
“He was okay, I guess. With him and Hector it was like having two brothers instead of one, and one’s enough, feel me? They were always in my business. Still, I’m sorry he’s dead, especially for his mom.” Her eyes narrowed. “Hey, maybe the girl had something to do with it, you think?”
My hands itched to get out of the pockets. “I won’t know till I find her,” I said calmly. Marisol thought it over. While I waited, it began to drizzle. Marisol pulled her hood up over her head. I just got wet.
“My turn again,” she said. “Some guy who was supposed to be hot like Johnny Depp, shot the president and then hightailed it like The Flash. The president was Lincoln, like the car, but what’s the name of the Depp dude?” All I could think of was how much of my tax money was going toward public education and how little I, apparently, was getting in return for it. I wondered if I could sue to get any of it back. Could I sue Marisol specifically, or would it make more sense to sue the system? The girl was a junior in high school, for mercy’s sake. What were they doing inside that massive building? Weaving baskets?
“John Wilkes Booth,” I said, my patience slipping. “Now you. You saw her. Where? Go.”
She pulled in a deep breath. “All right! I was downtown looking for some cute earrings because I didn’t see nothing good over on Commercial where I usually go, and I was trying to bump up my look. See?” She jiggled her earrings playfully. “Cesar and her was at the McDonald’s on State where I stopped to get me a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a medium Coke before I got back on the bus. I was ditching, so I had to get back by the time school let out so it’d look like I was in it.” Marisol stuck her lower lip out in a childish pout. “Only the bus was late, and I got detention.”
“Did Cesar see you?”
“Oh, he saw me. He almost lost his shit.” She winked. “I gave him one of those when I passed the table so he’d know he was busted. When I passed again on my way out, I was gonna do it again, but they were gone. I was kind of looking forward to it, too, busting him twice, I mean. Now you. Who was the army general on the loser side of the Civil War?”
“Robert E. Lee,” I shot back. “Do you remember when this was?”
She shrugged. “Around New Year’s. School had just started back after the holidays. It was a Friday, I know that. Oh, and it was cold. I was wearing the ugly green coat with the black buttons I got for Christmas, even though I asked for the kickass purple bomber with the real rabbit collar that I saw in the window at—”
I interrupted the flow. “Did you ask Cesar later about seeing him and the girl?”
Marisol shrugged. “Didn’t have to. He knew I saw.”
The school bell rang. “Damn! I gotta bounce,” she said, getting panicky. “One more late mark and I get detention again, and I don’t get to go to the dance, and that cannot happen, you feel me? Anyway, it’s my turn. The Civil War ended in some apple field somewhere. Name it.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, then slowly opened them again to find Marisol watching. “Appomattox Court House, not an apple field. It’s in Virginia.”
She wrote it down. “That does it,” she said, shoving the pencil back into her hair and slipping the paper back into the book. “Josie’s so gonna want to get her hands on these. They’re worth twenty points each, can you believe it? It’s sorta cool you knew this lame shit right off the top like that. But just so you know, I could’ve come up with ’em myself, if it wasn’t for the fact that I had to do my nails last night.”
“I have a couple more minutes,” I said, racing the clock. “Did you tell Hector or anybody else about seeing Cesar with this girl?”
She hesitated. “Nah, ’cuz it was my chip, you see? And it evened us up.” I looked a question. She rolled her eyes. “Cesar had something on me I didn’t want everybody knowing about, okay? That’s why I didn’t say nothing yesterday about seeing her. Hector would have been all over that. So, Cesar keeps my crap, I keep his crap, and all’s cool with us two. Remember the wink? You get it, right?”
“What was the girl wearing? Do you remember?”
“I guess. Hey, you’re getting more answers than I got questions.”
“You have any more homework?”
“No, that was it.”
“Then don’t worry about it.”
“You could even it up with money?” Marisol suggested happily.
“No. I can’t,” I snapped. “Maybe she was wearing a school jacket? Something distinctive you remember?”
Marisol gave me the full-on teenager sad face—tucked-in chin, baby pout. “Just doesn’t seem fair, is all.”
My hands left my pockets. “Marisol!”
“All right! Here’s what I know. I know she wasn’t from the neighborhood. I know she looked way too goody-goody for Cesar. And I know if I told anybody about him being with her, he would have gotten all kinds of shit for it, especially from Hector.”
“Because she was black?”
“Hell yeah, not that there’s nothing wrong with being it, but Cesar never used to hang around with black girls.” The bell rang a second time. The final warning. Marisol shot an anxious look toward the school building.
“So anything stand out about her?” I said
hurriedly.
Marisol frowned. “Besides her being black?”
“Yes. Yes.” I nodded violently, a headache blooming behind my eyelids.
“Kinda skinny. You can’t tell that from the photo. She was kind of medium dark, a lot darker than you, okay looking, I guess. Nice jeans and a bitching leather jacket. She was eating a salad, so probably real healthy.” Marisol’s eyes shifted upward, while she recalled the particulars. “She had on a gold necklace with the letter D on it; I guess her name starts with it. I’ve been trying to get one for myself, only with my whole name, but they cost big bucks, you know?” She exhaled. “Oh, and she was wearing a green baseball hat with a rat or a dog on it, and it was pulled way down like she was hiding from the cops. And she acted kind of nervous. That’s it. That’s all I got.”
The hat rang a bell. “Marisol, do me a favor. Wait right here. Don’t move from that spot. I’ll be right back.” I bolted across the street, popped my trunk. I kept all kinds of things in there, a change of clothes, a pair of binoculars, tools, warm blankets, work gloves, emergency flares, even an old pipe about the length of a baseball bat that I’d picked up from somewhere. I’d never had occasion to use it, but if I ever needed something to defend myself with on the fly, it was there. I burrowed in deep and grabbed up an old St. Brendan’s baseball hat, green with an image of a badger on it, and ran back across the street clutching it as though it were a precious bird that might fly away. “Is this the hat she was wearing?” I held it up for her to get a good look at, my mouth dry, my hands beginning to sweat.
Slowly, she began to grin and nod. “Yeah, that’s it. See? A rat!”
“It’s a badger. It’s the St. Brendan’s badger.”
Marisol’s mouth hung open Maybe she didn’t know what a badger was? “Looks like a rat, though, right? Doesn’t matter. I’m done with this. I bought new shoes and a dress for that dance. I’m not missing it!” She sprinted off on her hooker heels.
“Thanks!” I yelled after her. I clutched the hat in my hot little hands, nearly giddy with excitement. “Yes!”
Chapter 16