Defenseless

by Celeste Marsella

  My man’s oversized steel watch was rolled around on my wrist, its face turned toward the floor. As I was still smarting over his dirty wink, I now refused to give McCoy the right time of day and left my watch facing the floor. Unfazed, he took my wrist and turned the watch in his direction. His grip was firm but soft, as if he were cupping a broken-winged bird that was weakly struggling to get away.

  “Eleven o’clock,” he announced. “I’m hungry.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Pommes Frites

  MCCOY BOLTED FOR THE conference room exit. I followed. Over his square bulky shoulder he said loudly, “You been to the faculty lounge yet?”

  “No. Is it in this building?”

  “No, but we’ll walk. Fresh air does you good.”

  He cavalierly held a succession of doors open for me as we made our way out of Langley Hall. Gently touching my back, he guided me outside and down the stone stairs. The guard who’d greeted me earlier that morning saluted McCoy with a good-ole-boy grin, and a grounds-keeper cleaning sidewalks tipped his hat cheerfully as we walked by.

  “It’s just up there.” McCoy was pointing toward a four-story Victorian mansion, gunmetal gray with a pale yellow trim.

  “Have you been here long?” I asked. “Everyone and his gardener seem to know you.”

  “People are the best source of information. Some guys read books. I talk.”

  McCoy’s beat-cop walkie-talkie had been bleating during our walk. Its raucous precinct-style soundtrack startled me with homesickness for the AG’s office. I wandered into a daydream. I should have been on my lunch break right now with the AG girls, waiting on a blue-cheese burger whose side of greasy fries I would gaze at with deep longing while smoking one of Shannon’s nutritious cigarettes.

  But instead, I was climbing a spiral flight of sun-dappled stairs, past a modest, glass-encased selection of books authored by prominent faculty. No aromatic cheeseburger, no crispy hot fries, no wise-ass girls. At the stairway’s summit was a dark wood vestibule cocooned in oak and red leather. Small circular reading tables with ceramic inlays were carefully set with complimentary copies of the Providence Journal, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, each paper pinioned on thin wooden spines and fanned with geometric exactness. What would it have been like, I wondered, to grow up in a house like this? Would I have missed all that blue shag carpeting and those Naugahyde La-Z-Boys my parents were so fond of?

  “It’s impressive at first,” mind-reading McCoy said, gliding into the faculty lounge at his breathtaking clip. “But you’ll get immune to the fancy window dressing.” He ushered me into the main dining room. “Good thing Carlyle made us reservations in advance. I can’t get a hamburger in this joint without preordering. I hope you like roast duck and salmon. Christ, they put peas in the spaghetti here.”

  “Something tells me you’re an ex-cop.”

  We were standing at a banquet table. The cavernous room was soundproofed by palace-sized oriental rugs the color of day-old blood. Linen-shrouded tables glittered with silver tureens and ornate platters. A small Vietnamese woman in a starched white uniform was rearranging utensils and scattering fresh linen napkins to cover drips on the tablecloth. Her charcoal-black hair was tied in a tight bun.

  “How’d you guess I was a cop? My cheap suit?”

  “You talk like one.”

  I felt like saying he looked like one, smelled like one, and ate like one, but I didn’t know him well enough yet.

  He lowered his head to speak to the small, yellow-skinned woman. “Mae, you have my burger and fries ready?” She grinned shyly and disappeared into the back. “And what does a cop sound like?”

  “You don’t waste words. No small talk. You know—just the facts, ma’am.”

  He smiled but didn’t laugh. His teeth were white and straight. Just as we reached the register at the end of the long buffet, Mae returned with McCoy’s food and a second uniformed waiter appeared, offering to ferry my tray to a table. I let out a small groan, realizing I’d left my handbag at Langley. “Damn, I forgot my bag.”

  McCoy chuckled, narrowing his eyes at me. “You young broads are always looking for a free meal. I’ll pay this time, but you know, this means you have to sleep with me after lunch.”

  As I handed the waiter my tray I apologized for forgetting my wallet and asked if I could return and pay later.

  “Oh, no, ma’am. We don’t take cash in the faculty dining room. You’ll see a charge next month on your personal account.”

  With a helping hand from the waiter, we set our trays down at a table with a view. The outlook from the dining room’s bank of six-foot-tall windows was stupendous: Providence in panorama, the large white dome of the statehouse rising on a solitary hill in the majestic distance.

  “So,” McCoy said, cutting short my scenic reverie, “Carlyle wooed you over to our side?” He layered spirals of catsup on his cheeseburger and French fries. “AG’s office for five years, right?”

  “Five years, yes. Had we met while I was there?”

  “No. I’d remember. You don’t exactly melt into the woodwork.”

  “I assume that’s a compliment?”

  “Only if you like my taste in women.”

  “So,” I said, cutting him short, “you were a cop. You’re too young to be retired, no?”

  “Hmm, gorgeous, funny, and smart too?”

  I didn’t respond because frankly I was tiring of his flirtatious repartee. I just stared at him, one corner of my mouth turning down sourly.

  McCoy sat up straighter. “Smart like a shark, I guess. I retired early with a disability pension. I took a shot in the shoulder. Okay?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “Now let’s talk Holton business. If you and I are doing our jobs right, nothing here gets to the local cops, let alone the AG’s office. And if things ever spiral out of control, I still have a buddy or two on the force.”

  “I’d say Melinda Hastings is about as out of control as you can get.”

  “That’s different. I’m talking about campus horseplay, not sicko axe murderers.”

  “And what makes you so sure the murderer wasn’t a student?”

  McCoy guffawed out loud. “You are so damn cute.”

  “McCoy, let me advise you. Calling me cute is right up there on my gag meter with winking.”

  He sat up even stiffer. His pupils looked a little enlarged. “Christ, you’re a volatile girl. We’re trying to have lunch, aren’t we? Now where were we?”

  “We were talking about your naiveté.”

  He dropped the French fry he was holding and sat back in his chair. “Meals with you are going to be a real blast, I can see.” Retrieving his fry, he continued, “Carlyle wants the school to maintain a low profile. He’s a fly-low-under-the-radar type. The Hastings thing threw him for a real loop. Before that, most of the stuff we saw here was petty—peeing on the sidewalks, a few loud parties, public drinking, a little weed. Now Carlyle wants to play it super safe. You know, no news is good news? He’s bucking for president of the college when Hatchett—the current president—retires this spring.”

  McCoy resumed eating, shoving half his burger into his mouth and trying to talk and chew at the same time. Somehow he got the words out without opening his mouth too wide, though he still managed to gross me out. “All we gotta do till then is keep things status quo, which isn’t going to be as easy after Hastings.”

  I made a mental note to tell Shannon about McCoy’s ongoing friendships with the guys in blue. I doubted the AG’s office knew the cops were pulling Ken Carlyle’s chestnuts out of the fire with assists from Mike McCoy.

  “So I take the report and do the investigating and then you go head-to-head with the students and families and massage the plea bargain and penalty phase. But don’t get too puffed up with power, sweetheart. Carlyle’s strings get pulled by the mega-money interests and the old blue bloods, and your strings get pulled by Carlyle. Someone has to be the middleman, t
he fixer.”

  “The fixer? So I’m here to clean up messes? Carlyle actually told you that?”

  “More like Teflon. With you here, the cops and AG’s office might not scrape too deep into our muck. But stick with me and you should be safe.”

  “Let’s talk muck.”

  “I told you. Small stuff. Beer, weed, and a wayward panty every now and then. But after Hastings, even the little crap is gonna get blown out of proportion.”

  “And why exactly should I trust you?”

  “Do you have a stupid house designation and date after your name?”

  “No.”

  “Well, neither do I.” He stuffed a handful of over-catsupped French fries into his mouth. “And neither does

  the rest of the help. But everyone else in this room does.”

  I smashed boiled egg into my lettuce with my fork. “Keep going.”

  “ First-year students get assigned to a dormitory. Except here at Holton it’s called a house. They can live off campus after the first year, but they keep their house designations forever. It’s like a military rank. They introduce themselves for the rest of their natural-born lives with names, house designations, and the year they graduated. It’s a variation on a general Ivy League theme. This is an exclusive club. Once you graduate you’re a lifer. That’s why you should trust me. ’Cause neither of us is part of the club.”

  “The lower classes should stick together and rise up against the infidels?” I popped a cherry tomato into my mouth and considered squirting it over him between my two front teeth.

  “Come on. Tell me you don’t want to get old with yellow crooked teeth and a head of wild gray hair around a prune-wrinkled face, wave martinis in your hand and treat everyone liked hired help, and get away with it because your ancestors were criminals let out of prison in England and herded like sheep onto a boat called the Mayflower and then deported to America?”

  I laughed.

  “You see what I mean? The jealousy’s inescapable, and it’s just the luck of the draw.”

  “Your point. I surrender.”

  “So, you ready for your first case?”

  “I think you’re my first case.”

  “Quit horsing around.”

  “Okay, okay. Is this the volatile-but-must-be-handled-discreetly matter Carlyle was talking about?”

  “Lisa Cummings. She’s stealing food from the student cafeteria. She’s been at it for weeks. The staff has seen her.”

  “Maybe the girl’s hungry and doesn’t have the bread for the bread.”

  “Unlikely. Unless she’s eating low-cal cash. Skinny as a beanpole. Maybe the family trust fund dried up and she isn’t getting her allowance. Or she’s snorting it all up her nose. In any event I got another complaint yesterday. The report’s already on your desk.”

  “We just climbed the vice ladder from beer and weed to cocaine.”

  He wiped his mouth on his still-unfolded linen napkin. “You just read the report and then we’ll talk again.” He pushed the remaining half of his cheeseburger to the middle of the table. “I’d rather have half a cheeseburger than a whole veggie burger.”

  “I’m still trying to convince myself I like salads.”

  “Yeah, I like salads too—with Stilton blue dressing and a porterhouse steak on the side. And a bottle of Taupenot-Merme Gevrey-Chambertin. You want coffee? I’m getting a refill.”

  I nodded. “Nice accent. You’re kind of a mysterious man, Mike.”

  Sauntering away, he clapped his walkie-talkie to his ear and managed a conversation while herding two cups of coffee back our way from the buffet table. He yanked four creams and a few packets of sugar out of his pocket and tossed them on the table. “I forgot to ask how you like it.”

  “You got a call?”

  Still standing, he leaned over me. “My wife. Her private investigator wants to know who the cute young thing is I’m having lunch with.”

  “Yeah. So I guess this is as good as it gets. Let’s go back to those cheap burgundies.”

  “How old are you? Twenty-five?” He sat.

  “ Thirty-two. I’ll be thirty-three in the spring.”

  “You look younger.”

  “It’s my baby fat.”

  “You see fat. I see curves.” He gently smiled out of one side of his mouth.

  “Come on. Was that call about a student?”

  “Wasn’t about a student. The red carpet’s getting rolled out for some VIPs. Alumni and donors. A dinner at the president’s house tonight. Money. Big money. Do you mind if I shirk my gentlemanly duties and leave you here?” He took a last gulp of his coffee, rattling the cup in its saucer. “You can find your way back?”

  I nodded.

  McCoy craned his head backward until he was looking up at the ceiling like someone searching for birds in the chandeliers. At last he cracked his neck—it sounded like a hardwood log being split by lightning—and then he groaned in pleasure, or in pain, or a combo, scrunching his eyes up like Spanky of the Little Rascals.

  “You need a chiropractor, McCoy, or a better sex life.”

  His eyes twinkled. “Tell me about it.” He patted me on the hand, looked at his trusty Timex, and rose from the table. “Late. I’ve got to go. See you soon.”

  “What time is it, anyway?” I asked.

  “Twelve thirty-three.” He winked again and I let it go.

  He was a third of the way across the vast hall when he turned back to me and yelled out cheerily, “And that man’s suit you’re wearing? Doesn’t fool me for a second!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Guardian Angels

  I RETURNED TO MY office to find the envelope McCoy had promised me, a manila nine-by-twelve neatly marked “Confidential” and placed squarely on my desk. When had he dropped it off? The few minutes he’d been late for the staff meeting when his takes-a-licking-and-keepson-ticking Timex had been on the averred blink? I had to wonder whether McCoy wasn’t far more efficient than he pretended to be, his nonchalant and poky demeanor a charming act designed to throw people off guard.

  I was about ready to tear the seal when I noticed a young man in his early twenties standing in my open doorway. Head tilted, he was staring at me with half-lowered lids. His fashionably short auburn hair and his clean-shaven face argued against his cracked leather flight jacket that looked like an antique from World War II. The cuffs of his baggy chinos puddled over laceless white sneakers. Slung over his shoulder was the kind of black nylon bag postmen use.

  His eyes aimed so intensely at me that I was too curious to look away.

  Was he the twenty-first-century Messiah incarnate? Was I receiving a dispatch from Melinda Hastings’s murderer? Had Vince sent a hit man?

  He finally spoke. “Hi there, I’m Elliot Orenstein, editor of the Veritas, the school newspaper.”

  “Oh.” I took a lungful of air and then blew it out. “You make a good reporter,” I said. “You have a clever way of making yourself urgent.”

  He looked at the empty chair in front of me. “Right. Can we talk for a minute?”

  “I’m a little overwhelmed right now.”

  “I’ll only take a minute or two. I’m not a big talker.”

  I tucked McCoy’s manila folder into my top drawer. “Sit.”

  After removing a small pad from under the mysterious black flap, he dropped his laden bag on the floor. Pen poised, he looked up at me, his head rising before his eyes met mine.

  “Herr Carlyle sent me. I’m on a special mission to make you look like the new Holton savior.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’ll follow you around. We’ll talk. I’ll watch you. You tell me about yourself. You get the idea?”

  “Yeah, but the stuff I do is confidential. It won’t work here.”

  “I don’t read your files and I don’t attend meetings. What you did as a prosecutor, how you apply a prosecutor’s experience here—Carlyle wants all that granola. But actually we’re all curious as to why you were hired in the first
place.”

  “We?” My insecurities were rearing their egotistical heads. Did these kids think I wasn’t qualified for a stint at this brain freeze? But I’d be damned if I’d let him put me on the defensive. It was a position I didn’t want to get comfortable in my first day on the job.

  “The students,” he explained. “I mean does Carlyle even want to find out who killed Melinda Hastings? Or does he just want it smoke-screened until it fades into ancient history?”

  I sat forward in my chair. He may have just placed the first paver in my road back to the AG’s office. “You think it was a fellow student?”

  He shook his head. “This is a small school. Everyone knows everyone else. I can’t imagine how a Holton student could kill someone and think he could get away with it.”

  I sat back and retrieved the manila folder from my drawer, signaling my dismissal of Elliot. “Well, I squirm at questions. It’s a learned behavior but necessary for an AAG. So I won’t be a good subject for an in-depth interview.”

  “So give me some pabulum to keep Carlyle happy—and my job secure. Come on. You’ve got to have balls . . . oh, sorry, the intestinal fortitude for a place like this or you’ll get eaten alive. Believe me, I know firsthand.”

  “Do I detect a dollop of bitterness?”

  “Emotions are a waste of time. Hey, maybe I can even ease your transition. Assimilation isn’t easy in this fortress.” He whipped his backpack over his shoulder and stood. “Anyway, think about it. You’ll get me some brownie points with Carlyle, and my colleagues at the paper are clamoring for your interview. Do you mind if I come by again tomorrow at about this time?”

  He aimed those eyes at me again, waiting for an answer. Simple and straightforward, he didn’t sugarcoat his motives. I respected the kid’s honesty.

  “I don’t know what my schedule is yet. This is my first hour on the job.”

  “I’ll stop by. If you’re here, you’re here.”

  Without further ado, he walked out of my office. I sighed and flipped open McCoy’s top-secret package. The enclosure was comprised of three brief documents: an incident report signed by McCoy himself, including a note on his interview with the suspect; a statement from the cafeteria manager, Robert M. Miller; and an invoice on the letterhead of Holton’s food services, itemizing the values of the allegedly pickpocketed edibles.