School Days

by Robert B. Parker

  In the morning, George was moving better. She emerged late, wearing one of my shirts for a nightgown. It was sufficiently modest. The shirttails reached her knees. I made us breakfast and left her to eat it, and Pearl to watch her, while I went into my bathroom for a shower and then to my bedroom for clean clothes. By the time I came out, freshly scrubbed and clean shaven, she had finished breakfast. I noticed that she hadn’t eaten too much. She took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. I disapproved, but I figured this wasn’t the week for her to quit, so I just opened one window a crack in the living room, and didn’t comment.

  I didn’t want to leave her alone yet, so I sat and read David McCullough’s book on John Adams while she was in the bedroom with the television going. We didn’t have much to say, so we didn’t say it. She slept a lot. I made her some soup. At supper, I asked her a few questions about Jared Clark that she didn’t know the answers to. I was pretty sure that we could make a very long list of questions she wouldn’t know the answer to. After supper, Pearl and I watched the Sox game on the living-room television and spent a second night on the couch in territorial conflict.

  The next morning, when George came out she was wearing another of my shirts, but her hair was combed and she looked like she’d washed. She was moving pretty well, and she didn’t seem either pained or drugged. After breakfast, I showed her how to operate my washer-dryer, and she put her clothes through. While she was doing that, I checked my answering machine at the office. There was a message from Major Johnson. I wrote down the details.

  Late in the afternoon, fully dressed in her laundered clothes, George came into the living room, smoking a cigarette.

  “I’m bored,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  She looked startled, as if it hadn’t occurred to her that I might experience anything.

  “How long I gotta stay here?”

  “Long as you think you need to,” I said.

  “I gotta hide from Animal.”

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t go out and walk around,” I said. “It’s a big city.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Got some business tonight,” I said. “How you feeling?”

  “I feel okay.”

  The bruise along her jawline was now blue and yellow, and the swollen eye had opened a little. Her lip was still fat. I went to the kitchen and got a spare set of keys from what Susan called the “crap drawer,” where I kept such things. The name seemed harsh to me.

  “You want to go out,” I said. “Big key opens the front door downstairs. Other one opens my door. Pearl should stay in until I get back.”

  “I never been in Boston before,” she said.

  “Of course not,” I said. “It must be forty miles.”

  “I never been anywhere,” she said.

  I wrote my address and home phone number on the back of one of my business cards and gave it to her.

  “You get lost, take a cab back here,” I said. “Or you call me.”

  “I don’t have any money,” she said.

  Of course she didn’t.

  I gave her some.

  32

  THE SOUTH BAY SHOPPING MALL was tucked in under Southampton Street, just west of Andrew Square across the expressway. It was dark when I got there and met Major Johnson in front of the Home Depot. There were a number of other youngish black men with Major, and none of them seemed impressed with me.

  “So,” Major said. “Whitefish, wha’s happenin’.”

  “ ‘Wha’s happenin’?’ ” I said. “I keep telling you, Major, you African guys aren’t going to integrate with our culture if you insist on talking funny.”

  “Fuck you,” Major said.

  “There you go,” I said. “White guys say that to me, too.”

  Major grinned at me suddenly.

  “I forgot what you was like,” he said.

  “How could you,” I said. “Jose arrive yet?”

  “He be along,” Major said. “Gonna meet us over there by the fence, where the tracks are.”

  “Why don’t I go over and wait for him?” I said.

  “No. Tole him he could come in first, set up like he wanted. We’d walk in on him.”

  “Make him feel secure,” I said.

  “Sho’,” Major said.

  “He know about me?” I said.

  “Knows there a honkie muthafucka wants to talk with him.”

  “Think he’ll recognize me?”

  Major grinned again.

  “As opposed to all the other honkie muthafuckas that be with us?” he said.

  “Good point,” I said. “You’ll know when he gets here?”

  “We’ll know,” Major said.

  The stores had started to close and a lot of people had left the parking lot when Jose Yang showed up. A smallish coffee-colored kid with tattoos and cornrows came across the lot and spoke to Major.

  “He here,” the kid said.

  Major turned and looked at the rest of his crew. He didn’t say anything, but they moved as if he had, fanning out as they moved across the parking lot toward the railroad fence.

  “Le’s go,” Major said to me.

  There was no concealment in the parking lot. It was brightly lit and sparsely occupied. By the fence at the far side, I could see two cars parked side by side, parallel to the fence, their noses pointed toward Southampton Street. As we walked, people got out of the cars and stood behind them. Major’s crew was now fanned out around them in a semicircle. They stopped about fifty feet from the cars. Major and I kept walking.

  When we were maybe twenty feet away, one of the men behind the cars said, “Stop there.”

  We stopped. We all looked at one another. The man who had spoken was more Asian-looking than Animal, but I could see the familial connection. He was shorter than Animal, with sloping shoulders and longish arms. His black hair was long. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt, and both his thick arms were heavily tattooed.

  “You want to talk with me, Snowflake?” he said.

  “More racial animosity,” I said to Major.

  “Nobody like you people,” Major said. “You got to unnerstand that.”

  “It’s so unfair,” I said.

  “You want to talk or not,” the guy with the tattoos said.

  “You Jose Yang?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “My name’s Spenser.”

  I was hoping the name would strike fear into Los Diablos.

  “So what?” Yang said.

  Beside me, Major Johnson snickered.

  “I know your brother,” I said. “Animal.”

  “So?”

  “I need to know if you got him some handguns,” I said.

  “Why you need to know that?” Yang said.

  “I’m a private detective,” I said. “I’m working on a case. It won’t involve Animal.”

  “How I know that?” Yang said.

  “He say something,” Major said, “it be true.”

  “You say so,” Yang said to Major.

  “I do. He say something, you can take it right down the First National Bank of Cha-Cha and deposit it.”

  Yang nodded.

  “I don’t know nothing about no guns,” he said to me.

  “Would have been last January,” I said. “Four clean pieces and ammo.”

  “Why I tell you shit?” Yang said.

  “I tole him you would,” Major said.

  Yang looked hard at him across the hood of the Chevy Impala he was behind. Major waited. Yang was silent. Behind him, the two carloads of backup stood silently. I spotted at least a shotgun among them. I didn’t know for sure what else. They stayed behind the cars. I had no idea what kind of ordnance Major’s people had broken out. They were behind us, and I didn’t want to violate the moment by turning to look. Far behind me was the sound of traffic on the expressway. In the parking lot, I could hear car doors open and slam, and car engines start up, as late shoppers and store employees headed home.

 
; “You trust him?” Yang said to Major.

  “Man do what he say he do,” Major said. “Like me.”

  Yang nodded. More staring. More traffic sounds. One of Yang’s men coughed and tried to stifle it. We waited.

  “My brother got big muscles and no brain,” Yang said.

  “Some question about the size of his cojones, too,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Yang said. “I know. Why I sent him out there to East Cow Fuck.”

  “Last January,” I said.

  “A Browning, a Colt, two Glocks,” Yang said. “No history, extra magazines, lotta bullets.”

  “How much?” I said.

  “Fifteen hundred,” Yang said. “The works.”

  “Cheap,” I said.

  “He’s my brother,” Yang said. “I didn’t make no profit.”

  “He did,” I said. “He had three grand to spend.”

  Yang was silent for a moment, then he said, “That would be Luis.”

  “He say what the guns were for?”

  “No.”

  “They were used in a bunch of murders out in Dowling.”

  “You ain’t involving my brother,” Yang said.

  “Not if I don’t have to.”

  “You rat him,” Yang said, “I kill you.”

  “I don’t want him,” I said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “You better do it,” Yang said.

  “Don’t be threatening my man,” Major said.

  “Major, you and me already lived longer than we was supposed to.” Yang’s voice was flat. “I said what I said.”

  “You fuck with my man,” Major said, “and we see ’bout that.”

  “I ain’t heavy,” I said. “I’m his brother.”

  Major choked off a laugh beside me. Yang gave me a hard look, and then it was over. Our side backed down toward the Home Depot. Yang’s side got in their cars and drove out the Southampton Street exit.

  33

  “HEALY SAYS I CAN bend things a little for you,” DiBella told me as he parked his car behind a couple of state highway maintenance buildings off the Mass Pike near Worcester. One was an open-front garage where they stored salt and sand for the winter. We went in and found Animal Yang behind the salt pile with two mean-looking state troopers.

  “Here he is,” DiBella said.

  Animal had on a black Nike Dri Fit muscle shirt and looked impressive.

  “We took a piece off him,” one of the troopers said. He held up a short Beretta .380.

  “Hang on to it,” DiBella said.

  He looked at Animal. “Got a permit?”

  Animal shook his head. DiBella looked at me.

  “Want us to run the piece for you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Unload it and give it back to him,” I said.

  The trooper who held Animal’s gun looked at DiBella. He was a big black guy with no hair visible under his campaign hat.

  “I told you,” DiBella said to him, “when I called you. This is all off the record. If anyone asks you about it, it never happened.”

  The black trooper shrugged, took the magazine out of the handle, and put it in his pocket, ejected the round from the chamber, let it lie on the floor where it landed, and handed the gun back to Animal. Animal took it and held it as if he didn’t know what to do with it.

  “Okay,” DiBella said to the troopers, “you boys beat it. I owe you one.”

  “Maybe two or three,” the black trooper said.

  They went.

  “I’ll be in the car,” DiBella said.

  He went after them. I was alone with Animal.

  “You suckered me out by the lake,” Animal said. “Don’t mean you can do it again.”

  I hit him with a left hook that staggered him back against the salt pile.

  “Does too,” I said.

  I took my gun off my hip and pressed the barrel of it hard into the recess under his cheekbone below the left eye.

  “Ow,” Animal said. “That hurts.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Whaddya fucking want with me,” he said.

  “I’m thinking about killing you,” I said.

  “I never done nothing to you,” he said.

  I kept pressing the gun. He was sweating and his face was pale. I knew it hurt, and I knew he was scared. Which was the way it was supposed to be.

  “That cop’ll hear you if you shoot,” Animal said.

  “Like he’ll care,” I said.

  “Ow, man, that really hurts, man,” Animal said.

  “Like I care,” I said.

  “Don’t do it, man,” Animal said. “I didn’t do nothing to you. Gimme a break. Don’t do it.”

  He was stiff against the discomfort of the gun barrel.

  “You beat up George,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “George, one of your girlfriends.”

  “I just gave her a couple whacks, man. You . . . ow, man, that hurts man . . . ease it up man, please. I didn’t do nothing!”

  “You got one miserable chance to live,” I said.

  “Man, I’ll do whatever you say. Ow, man. Stop it.”

  “If you ever touch her again,” I said, “I’ll kill you on sight. I’ll find you and I’ll kill you.”

  I twisted the gun barrel a little. He groaned.

  “You understand?” I said.

  “Yeah, man, I’ll never touch her. I promise you, I’ll never go near her.”

  “If anything happens, if somebody you don’t know bumps into her on his bicycle and knocks her down, anything. I will find you and shoot you into little fucking pieces.”

  “Man, I’ll never hurt her, I promise. I promise. I won’t let no one else hurt her. Honest to God, I won’t.”

  I took the gun away from his face and held it at my side. He put both hands up to his face to rub the sore spot, and realized he was still holding the empty Beretta, and dropped it on the floor and pressed his hands against his face. He started to cry.

  “You got the guns from your brother,” I said.

  “Wha?”

  “I talked with him, your brother Jose. He sold you the four guns for fifteen hundred dollars. You sold them to the two kids for three thousand dollars.”

  “What kids?”

  I slapped him hard with my left hand.

  “Grant and Clark,” I said. “One or both.”

  “Grant asked me. Clark kid had the dough.”

  “And you taught them to shoot,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  I brought my gun up suddenly and fired into the salt a foot to the left of his head. He screamed. I fired into the salt a foot to the right of him. He doubled up, screaming, “No, no, no, no, no.”

  “Don’t you even look at that girl again,” I said. “Ever.”

  I put my gun away and walked out of the garage.

  “You shoot him?” DiBella said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Probably should have,” DiBella said.

  I nodded.

  “Probably,” I said.

  34

  I DROPPED GEORGE in Dowling Center. “I’ll drive you home,” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “Might be a good place to sort of crash a little while,” I said.

  She shook her head again.

  “And you’re sure Animal won’t get me?”

  “He won’t,” I said.

  She got out of the car and lingered for a moment on the sidewalk with the car door open. Her bruises had started to yellow. Her lip was down. She was looking better.

  “Thanks for, like, helping me,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  She took my card out of the pocket of her jeans and looked at it for a moment.

  “Call me if you need me,” I said.

  She nodded and looked again at my card.

  “Bye,” she said.

  “Bye.”

  She closed the car door and turned and walked away, still holding my card
in her hand. I watched her until she turned the corner past the town green and disappeared behind the Town Hall. Then I pulled away and found a parking spot near the Coffee Nut and parked and went in to see if the gang was around.

  They were.

  “Hey,” Janey said as I came in.

  She was sitting with her friend of the white top, whose name turned out to be Erika, and Carly Simon, looking crisp in a green polo shirt and tan shorts.

  “Coffee?” he said, and nodded at the empty seat in the booth.

  I sat. Other kids in other booths looked at me covertly. Animal had made my rep, bless his heart.

  “Is George, like, okay?” Janey said.

  “She’s fine,” I said. “Animal has promised me that he won’t bother her again.”

  “You shake him up again?” Carly said.

  There was in his voice an implication of shared knowledge, as though he had shaken up a few people in his time, too. I smiled. I had known Major Johnson when he was only a little older than Carly. Different planets.

  “We reasoned together,” I said. “Talk to me a little more about Jared Clark.”

  “What’s to tell,” Carly said. “He didn’t bother us; we, you know, didn’t bother him.”

  “Did he get bullied much?” I said.

  The girls both deferred to Carly. It’s good to be a football hero.

  “No,” Carly said. “Like, he didn’t play ball or nothing, and he didn’t joke around, and most of the time, he wasn’t, like, even around. But nobody bothered him much.”

  Carly looked at Erika and Janey.

  “You think?” he said.

  “No,” Erika said. “He was just, like, around, and nobody really noticed him much.”

  “Girlfriend?” I said.

  Janey shook her head as she thought about it.

  “I mean, he never asked anybody out,” she said. “That I know about. Erika, you know anybody?”

  “Nope.”

  Erika had longish nails with the tips painted white, and she admired them unconsciously while she spoke.

  “I suppose he might have hooked up with one of the loser girls, you know?” Erika said. “But we wouldn’t know that anyway. None of them hang with us.”

  “Was Jared a loser?” I said.

  Janey thought about the question carefully. Evidently, loser was a precisely defined category.