Defenseless

by Celeste Marsella

  “Yeah, well, what you think of as rough and sick some men consider fun and games. The only thing I’m interested in is that when you said stop, the fun and games didn’t end immediately.”

  I’d heard enough and it all seemed to fit. But why she would initially be interested in a guy like Cory Sherman in the first place was a bit less obvious. Sure, he was handsome (if you were an impressionable college-age female and didn’t know a snake when you saw one), and, yes, he was very rich. But pumped up like a Macy’s parade float by his money and Hollywood hobnobbing, Cory was downright obnoxious. But I could see it so easily, the initial draw of him and then his turning on the girl when he got what he wanted from her; another conquest easily tossed aside. And here was a beauty like Emily Barton. What a prize she must have been. He probably took pride in the acquisition, and then joy in the abuse.

  “Emily. What about drugs?”

  “Drugs. I guess they were all over the place. But I never did any—voluntarily, anyway. They were making ‘sex cocktails’ one night. I left early.”

  Sex cocktails. Vodka on the rocks with a twist of GHB? I was about to ask her what a sex cocktail was when a loud banging on Emily’s door made us both jump.

  Emily looked at me and froze.

  I got up and swung open the door, expecting to see Cory Sherman’s pale face. I was quite taken aback, or I should say taken down, when Byron’s ugly mug greeted me with a surprised look.

  “Why, Byron, what an unpleasant surprise,” I said.

  “Yeah . . . yeah,” she stuttered. “Dean Carlyle sent me over.” She walked around me. “Emily, how are you doing?” she asked.

  Emily looked at me and then back at Byron. “What is this? I haven’t had this much attention from the administration the entire time I’ve been here. You’re all worried about Rod and Cory, aren’t you? You too, Miss Melone. This isn’t about me at all.”

  Byron plodded forward with her nose in the air as if she were trying to make herself a few inches taller. “I don’t know why she’s here,” Byron said. “But I came on Dean Carlyle’s orders. He’s worried about you, Emily.”

  Why was Byron Eckert there and not the school psychologist, Mitsy Becker?

  Shielding poor Emily from Byron’s bull-snorting nostrils, I stepped between them. “Tell me again what it is that you do at Holton, Byron. Fundraising, isn’t it? Something to do with money, right? I’m wondering why Dean Carlyle sent you here and not Dr. Becker?”

  “I can answer that,” Emily said to me. “Because they’re afraid I’ll accuse the boy wonders over at Riverside Park Apartments of some bad deeds and their daddies will stop donating the monthly interest on their stock portfolios.” Then Emily looked at me. “And you sure had me fooled there for a minute. I thought someone actually cared about me in this place.”

  I shook my head at her, but I knew there was no way I’d convince her I wasn’t part of the protect-the-big-money-donors conspiracy.

  I took a step toward her, “Look, Emily—”

  “Just go. Both of you. Get out.”

  Byron left first and then I staggered after. I left Emily sitting forlornly, but at least securely alive, in her room.

  BACK AT MY office, Elliot’s call had been blinking on hold for ten minutes. He had petulantly insisted that Rita not hang up until I got there, so the line had been flashing away like a Morse code signal. Maybe Elliot was emotionally retarded because he was so damn intellectually advanced. Maybe you had to give up a little of one for more of the other. Funny how it worked that way. My father always used to say that about me: Smart kid, that Marianna, but she doesn’t know how to cross a damn street.

  “What do you want, Elliot?”

  “Hey, you told me to protect her. But if you don’t care, I’ll just hang up.”

  “Care about what?”

  “Your sister. She’s at a pizza joint in Federal Hill drinking with the Cory Sherman/Rod Lipton entourage.”

  I bolted up from my chair. “Wait there. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Underage Drinking

  ELLIOT WAS STANDING OUT on Atwells Avenue as I parked my car in a bus stop.

  “How did she get hooked up with them?” I said, walking past Elliot toward Nick and Tony’s. No matter how fast I walked, Elliot and I remained at a constant distance from each other like two perfectly tuned magnets.

  “We were in the Holton cafeteria—Cassie and I—having our first tutoring session. They came over and convinced her to leave campus with them. I told them to lay off her but she got pissed at me for butting in.”

  “Why didn’t you call me immediately?”

  “I did, Miss Melone. You weren’t in and I don’t have your cell number. I made your secretary keep me on hold.”

  “You should have told Rita what it was about. She would have found me.”

  “I’m a student. She won’t take orders from me. And I didn’t think you’d want the administration to know.”

  I stopped walking.

  Elliot sauntered up to me but kept his eyes straight ahead. “Did you want me to tell your secretary that your underage sister was drinking in a bar with Holton students?”

  “Oh, yeah . . . right,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Elliot began walking ahead as he spoke. “Anyway,” he said, “your sister’s a thickhead. Kids these days aspire to be pop singers or pro basketball players. They only tolerate academics as a fallback on their way to the instant millions of overnight superstars. And she’s lazy academically. Just like the students here, spoiled by overindulgent parents, allowed to drink beer when they’re teenagers, then the next logical step is college, drugs, and—”

  “Stop!”

  Although Elliot had just done a sterling job of analyzing Cassie, I still didn’t like his presumption of familiarity, either with me or my sister. Of course it was my fault for inviting him so intimately into my personal affairs. But Elliot was so bright and so much my equal, it was difficult to realize that he was still only an impressionable student.

  It was time to back away, to withdraw, for Elliot’s sake, if not mine. “Cassie’s parents—my parents—are not overindulgent. If they knew she was drinking right now, she’d be grounded until her wedding night.”

  He didn’t answer me because by then we were entering Nick and Tony’s.

  Elliot remained at the door as I surged through a crowd of lunch-eating kids and headed for Cassie.

  “Let me through,” I said to a young man who was blocking me. “Let me through. Now!”

  “Really, Miss Meloni? What if I don’t? Will you put a contract out on my life? Or make me an offer I can’t refuse?”

  Cory Sherman’s blond hair was slicked back with the help of some antigravity styling gel. His chiseled face smirked from behind a large glass beer stein as he took a gulp. Even indoors his skin still had the sheen of translucent porcelain. He ended his Godfather references with a good laugh, and I felt like the downstairs maid who’d been slapped in the face by the master of the house. I clutched thin air for one of my usual snappy comebacks but came up empty-handed. Sadly, at the sound of my Italian name from his lips, I had been reduced to minced calamari. That old familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach flashed me a reminder of Jeff Kendall and his patrician attitude toward me, and even toward his boss, Vince Piganno, for whom, it seemed, Jeff only deigned to work until his corner office, next to Dad’s, was ready.

  “Let me through,” I said softly.

  He blocked me with his ear-to-ear grin for a second longer and then stepped aside.

  Cassie was at a table with Rod Lipton and a couple of their other whitewashed preppy friends. Elliot had reached the group and was hovering off to the side.

  “Hey, Orenstein. You come back to reclaim your goods?”

  Elliot stuck his face into Sherman’s. “You’re a fucking jerk, Sherman,” Elliot whispered. “I told you to leave her alone.”

  It was an odd sight, a clip snatched out of context f
rom a longer sequence. Anyone walking in now would see Elliot as the aggressor, while handsome and debonair Rod Lipton, the closest to Cassie, gently and protectively stood by her.

  I walked briskly to the table.

  “Mari,” Cassie twittered. “Hi there.”

  When she stood, Rod faced me. And then, as if he hadn’t recognized me at first, he bowed a hello and feigned surprise with a slight furrow of his eyebrows. “Cassie is your sister? Well, yes, of course,” he said, looking from her to me and then back again. “She’s a beauty in progress.”

  “Beauty in progress,” Cassie repeated as she smiled glowingly at him.

  Elliot looked at me and walked away, knowing I would handle it from there. Or perhaps simply not interested in a public confrontation.

  By now, Cory was standing at the bar a few feet away. He shook his head, smiled, and ordered another beer from Nick, who was scowling at me from the beer taps. “That your baby sister? How old’s she now? Eh?”

  “Did you card her, Nick, before you served her beer?”

  “You keep watch over her, not me. She looks like the rest of these spoiled brats.”

  “Yeah,” I shot back. “Probably half of them underage.”

  I took Cassie by the shoulder. “Let’s go have some lunch, Cassie dear.” While keeping a smile pasted on my lips, I led Cassie away and whispered angry warnings into her “progressively beautiful” ear.

  “Are you out of your insipid little mind? I’m a prosecutor and you’re in here breaking the friggin’ law. . . .”

  We approached my car, where I found Elliot had suddenly materialized.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  Cassie ducked into the car without a word.

  He lowered his head into the open car door. “Cassie, I’ll see you next week?”

  Cassie gave Elliot a sour look and rolled up her window.

  “She’s mad as hell I turned her in. But she doesn’t get it. These girls always fall for the flash . . . they just don’t understand how guys like Sherman and Lipton operate.”

  “Maybe we should hold off on the tutoring for now, Elliot. Until all of this stuff at Holton settles down anyway.”

  Elliot’s mouth fell open. I had never seen him so animated. “Are you blaming me for them?” He nodded toward Nick and Tony’s Pizza, from which Rod and Sherman had not yet emerged. “I did try to stop her, but she’s—”

  “Yes. Okay. You’re right, Cassie . . . can be a bit stubborn. . . . Anyway,” I said, changing the subject, “do you need a ride back to school?” I hoped he would refuse.

  “I’ll walk,” he said, turning away without looking at me.

  During the drive home I had a motherly chat with Cassie. Our own mother was too naive to deal with Cassie on any meaningful level, so sometimes I took the reins, not that my jockeying was any more successful.

  “I just hope you and your little friends aren’t drinking and driving with your fake IDs again. Is that how you got the beer at Nick’s?”

  “They didn’t even ask for ID with Cory Sherman there. They treated him like a king when he started flashing hundred-dollar bills.”

  “Cassie, honey, you can’t be doing these things. One of these days you’re going to get in trouble and I’m not going to be able to get you out of it.”

  “I’m sorry, Mari. Not about me, about you. I mean, you won’t get fired again over this, will you?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll survive. You, on the other hand, have your whole life ahead of you. And your choice of friends scares me. You’re a lousy judge of character. Can’t you see through people like Cory and Rod? They’re bad guys.”

  “I know that, Mari. I know more than you think I know. I may not be as smart as you are but I’m not that stupid either. But just because people aren’t nice doesn’t mean they’re not fun.”

  I shook my head. Some kids have to skin their knees before they learn where the potholes are. “Do you know what GHB is? It’s a date-rape drug. I shouldn’t be telling you this, and it’s not to be repeated, but Sherman and Lipton, just possibly, might be using it on girls and then raping them. You do not want to be drinking anything with them, even a harmless can of Coke. Do you understand?”

  I interpreted her silence as a yes, and then foolishly decided to throw one more log in the fire. “Some people you can trust, and some you can’t. Those two you cannot trus—”

  “I get it, Mari! I get it. Cool it.”

  “All right. All right. So how’s your tutoring going with Elliot? He’s a good kid, Cassie.”

  “I don’t like him. Why can’t a hot student help me?”

  “Like Rod and Cory? Sure, they’ll teach you a lot but it won’t be on the SATs.”

  “Yeah, well, Elliot is like a nerdy scientist. His hair sticks up and he smells like the periodic table of elements.”

  “That’s disgusting, but I like your metaphors. They’re maturing. And just for your information, Albert Einstein needed a beauty salon too.”

  “Well, then I’m not letting him tutor me either.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I DROPPED MY sweet but ignorant sister at my parents’ house, had dinner with my parents, and then headed home around eight o’clock via the Riverside Park apartment complex, looking for the ne’er-do-wells, Sherman and Lipton. I was itching to give them a few pieces of advice about drinking with my sister. Or maybe I went there because something about the two libertines was compelling me toward them. And then again, maybe I wanted an up-close-and-personal visit with them because everything else about the Holton murders was turning up dead ends.

  Screaming and laughter on the third-floor balcony caught my attention and I looked up in time to see a man pummel a woman in the shoulder until she fell out of sight. I got out of my car and walked down the grassy slope toward the river. The apartment was lit up like a storefront window at Christmas. Maybe the guy up there had shoved her, or maybe he was giving her a love tap, but remembering my sister with a beer in her hand gave me the incentive to want to blow some guy’s head off with Shannon’s .44 Magnum. I marched to the front door and rang all ten third-floor bells. I was buzzed in immediately and elevated up to three, where I found kids lighting in and out of an open door like bees at a hive.

  Rod Lipton was inside the living room adjusting buttons on the stereo with a beer bottle in his hand. The eye-popping beat of Jimi Hendrix pulsated through the apartment.

  . . . and the wind cries Mary . . .

  I hollered over the music, “Hey, Rod, how about some Motown as long as you’re playing oldies?”

  At my entrance, the empty space around me in the room widened as students moved away until it caught Rod’s attention and he recognized me too. He lowered the volume a notch and with a cautious smile he said, “Miss Melone. What a pleasant surprise. Welcome to our humble abode.”

  I shook his outstretched hand.

  “We really didn’t know your sister was underage.”

  “She looks mature for her age,” I offered.

  “Can I get you something? Coke?”

  “Liquid or powder?” I smiled sweetly.

  He looked at his peers for approval of my humor. No one laughed. And some abandoned their bottles and glasses on the nearest flat surface and smartly slithered out the door.

  Rod watched me walk to the couch where I saw Elliot sitting in front of a 56-inch flat-screen TV that was mounted on the wall.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I said.

  Without looking at me he answered, “Watching a James Bond movie. Did you get your sister home all right?”

  I ignored his question and glanced up at the screen, trying to identify which Bond film had so engrossed him. Nothing and no one looked familiar and I thought I’d seen them all. “When did this one come out?”

  “Next month,” Elliot said dryly. “Sherman’s uncle sends them hot off the editing table.”

  Elliot finally looked up at me. His eyes were blood-shot and swollen.r />
  I sat next to him. “You’re stoned.”

  “Am I? Hmm, that must be why this movie seems so complex.” He looked at me and laughed. “I’m not stoned, just tired from lack of sleep. Cory’s outside on the balcony,” he said without skipping a beat. “You’ll want to check out the table.”

  “What are you doing here? You don’t even like these characters.”

  “I’m keeping tabs on the profanity and wantonness at Holton College—and seeing if I can pick up some spillover.”

  “Don’t start turning into a jerk on me, Elliot.”

  “Well, won’t you be chastened when I find out where all that GHB is coming from and give you the scoop?”

  I cleared my throat and stood, surveying the room for Rod, who was nowhere in sight. He’d undoubtedly abandoned his interest in me once he was satisfied that I was safely entrenched on the couch with James Bond and Elliot Orenstein.

  Straight ahead was a hallway off which, I assumed, was the bathroom, a handy excuse in case I was caught snooping. I advanced down the hall. The first door was securely closed, so I walked past it to a second, also shut but not as tightly. With my foot I teased the door open a crack and peered through to a rumpled bed on which a girl lay sleeping. Her hair, a cascade of reddish blonde curls, fanned out on a pillow. Her face was turned away.

  I drew my head back as the door was abruptly slammed shut from the inside.

  Back in the living room Elliot was still on the couch mesmerized by the big screen. I walked to the balcony, where Cory Sherman was sniffing a line of cocaine from a glass-top table.

  He looked up at me. “What the fuck?”

  “Hey, calm down, Cory, no problem,” I said.

  An ugly grimace. “What are you talking about?”

  “You invited me here. Remember? It’s cool.”