Glory Days

by Irene Peterson

  A different girl sauntered up the aisle, then did the most outrageous thing . . . she flew through the air, right alongside Carly’s desk . . . and landed with a ferocious splat on the floor.

  She turned, her expression savage, and screamed, “Look what you made me do! Can’t you keep your backpack behind your desk?”

  Mr. Savelli, face paled more than likely with fear of a lawsuit, rushed over to the girl and helped her to stand. Not daring to brush her off, he moved away, the words, “Are you all right, Miss Williams?” barely out of his mouth when there was another scream, this time a few notes shriller and plenty of decibels louder.

  “A knife! She’s got a knife!”

  Carly joined the others in the class, looking for someone with a knife in her hand. Then the screamer pointed to the floor and everyone, including Mr. Savelli, gathered close and saw the blade of a hunting knife sticking out of the zippered pocket of Carly’s black backpack.

  “Stand back!” Mr. Savelli ordered. No one moved. The girl continued to wail. He came toward Carly who, mystified, couldn’t imagine how the knife had gotten where it was.

  Mr. Savelli motioned for her to get up from her seat. “This is a zero tolerance school, Miss Snow. I don’t know about Philadelphia, but we have rules at Mary Immaculate. You others, step away from the backpack. I have to call the office.”

  He bent to retrieve the knife. Her mind racing, panic rising in her throat, Carly shouted, “Don’t touch it! Mr. Savelli, please don’t put your fingers on it.”

  “It’s not your place to tell me what to do, young lady!”

  Carly hung her head then put her hand out to stop the teacher from bending down. “Fingerprints, Mr. Savelli. The knife isn’t mine. I’ve never touched it.” Fear of losing everything gripped her, forcing her to think quickly. “Call in the cops, have them dust for prints. You’ll find I’m telling the truth.”

  Shaking his head, the teacher bent once more. His fingers nearly grasped the blade of the knife when he stopped.

  “We’ll do just that, Miss Snow,” he said as he straightened. Class essentially over for the day, the other students moved away from Carly and her incriminating backpack.

  Her heart pounding in her chest, she looked around, hoping to find sympathetic faces. There were none. After all, she was the new girl. She’d only made one friend. Her accuser, on the other hand, stood encircled by three other girls, including the one who had bumped into her desk minutes ago.

  Carly knew exactly what had happened.

  As much as she might deny it, until the cops came, her butt was grass. This was Catholic School. The students were used to discipline and following rules. Carly had apparently broken a big one. No one would come to her aid. No one cared about her.

  If she hadn’t been before, she had become a pariah.

  Closing her eyes, she prayed for the cops to come.

  One good thing about being slugged in the jaw by a ham-fisted bodyguard, a hospital was nearby. He regained consciousness quickly when the emergency room doctor shone a penlight in his eye and snapped open one of those vials of ammonium carbonate under his nose.

  “Jesus!” he swore as he pushed the doctor’s hand away.

  “Lie back, please.” The doctor, a woman, pushed against John’s chest none too gently.

  He struggled up again. “I’m okay. Just let me out of here.”

  The doctor squared her shoulders, displaying a full bosom beneath the starched white jacket. Her nametag read Dr. Janet Laffin, but from the jaundiced look in her eye, she was not amused.

  John thought of asking her what was up, but stopped himself as he felt along his jaw and into his scalp. A lump the size of a small chicken egg graced the back of his head. He remembered the punch in the jaw only. Where had the egg come from?

  As if she’d read his mind, the doctor told him, “You hit the railing in the elevator after your unfortunate contact with Mrs. Evans’ bodyguard.”

  He moved his jaw. He’d been hit harder in his life, he decided. Funny, that tooth that had been bothering him when he woke up didn’t hurt any more.

  “I’m okay,” he declared, anxious to get out of the emergency room. “Where do I pay?”

  The doctor didn’t move to allow him to get off the gurney. She kept staring at him, probably checking his pupils or something, he figured.

  “Really, doc, I’m fine,” he vowed.

  The woman flipped her light brown hair and fiddled with the stethoscope around her neck. All the while her eyes bored into John’s. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked finally, her voice rough and edgy, bordering on impatience and hardcore resentment.

  John looked at her, really looked at her while putting her face through the rolling file in his dulled brain. “Uh, I’ve never been in this hospital before. Do you know me from somewhere?”

  Fire shot through her eyes and her hand struck out with the speed of a cobra. It made contact with his cheek, the one without the burning bruise, and stung like all hell.

  “Get him outta here,” the doctor called behind her as she left the curtained cubicle.

  Oh, man. Another victim of his misogynistic amnesia.

  His wallet sixty some bucks lighter, John eased himself into his Jeep, fished out his keys and started it up. Rubbing at his jaw, he felt warmth under the bruise, and stubble already. He had two stitches in his scalp and butterfly bandages on the broken skin under his bottom lip. Flipping up the visor to get a load of himself in the mirror, he determined that he looked rough enough to shoot over to Atlantic City. Looked like a shiner on the way.

  But, his morning hadn’t been a complete bust.

  He headed the Jeep east, in search of the last name on the kid’s list.

  Chapter 24

  “Mr. DeAngelo will see you, Mr. Preshin, but he has a very busy schedule today, so he cannot possibly give you more than five minutes.”

  John jolted out of the semi-doze at the sound of the secretary’s low, sexy voice. He’d been waiting thirty minutes in DeAngelo’s reception area, cooling his heels and trying to shake off his vicious headache. Thirty minutes sitting on the red plush banquette that reminded him more of something he’d see in a whorehouse than the office of a vice president of an Atlantic City casino.

  DeAngelo’s taste was in his mouth.

  John fought queasiness as he stood and walked into the big man’s office.

  Pasquale “Pat” DeAngelo flipped shut his cell phone as John entered. It had been over six years since they’d seen each other. His suit fit him well, but not well enough. The hair of his brows needed trimming. If he’d been trying to look slick, he’d failed. At one time, they had been cursory friends. He gave no indication of any remembered fond feelings now.

  He didn’t stand, nor did he offer John his hand. In John’s book, they weren’t off to a good start. The cell blipped out the opening strains of “O Sole Mio” but Pat ignored it.

  “What can I do for you, Preshin?” DeAngelo shifted in his black leather ergonomic desk chair.

  “Hello to you, too, Pat. Long time, no see.” John parked himself in the small chair in front of the massive black lacquer desk. He noted there was nothing on it but the tiny telephone.

  Pasquale rounded his shoulders in a shrug. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead, making John suspect the man had something uncomfortable on his mind.

  “You still with the FBI?”

  Ah-hah. He thought John was there to give him federal trouble. Maybe he hadn’t been such a good boy lately.

  “No, I resigned six years ago, after Dutch. . . .” The scar on his shoulder tugged and smoldered underneath his shirt. “I have my own business now.” With that, he flipped his business card across the desktop.

  “Private dick?” Pat’s one eyebrow raised slightly.

  John watched that drop of sweat trickle under the man’s collar.

  “Yeah, I went private. In fact, I’m here regarding a client.” When he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, DeAngelo
pushed away from the desk, his head ducking toward the floor.

  “Shit,” he muttered when John slid the photograph across the expanse of the desk. “What’s this?”

  “Do you remember either of those women?”

  Pat picked up the photograph, perused it quickly and let it drop out of his hand. “Yeah. Those babes were at the beach house that summer. I remember them. Good lays.”

  Inwardly, John cursed. Yet another potential father for Carly.

  “Did you do both of them?” he managed to keep his tone neutral.

  Pat smirked. The jackass smirked a shitty smile that set John’s teeth on edge. The nausea returned.

  “Yeah, oh, yeah. Regularly. They couldn’t get enough of me. Why do you ask?”

  Something snapped in his brain. He had avoided mentioning Carly to the other men. For some reason, he wanted to shock DeAngelo with the knowledge there was a kid. Some insane devil prodded him.

  “One of ’em had a kid. The kid asked me to find her father. Your name was on the list she had with her.”

  Pasquale pushed away from his desk, stood and unbuttoned the lone button on his slick gray suit. Coming around to the side of the desk, he sat on the edge and absently shot his cuffs. Gold glittered at his wrists, meant to impress.

  It meant nothing to John.

  “So.” He paused, bringing his chin up, stretching his neck against his shirt collar. “So, you think I got a kid? Prove it.”

  John sat back in the chair and crossed one leg over his knee. He flicked an imaginary bit of lint from his trouser leg. “There are tests. They take a bit of dead cells from the inside of your. . . .”

  “Hey, wait a minute. I am not going to be tested for anything.” Pat’s face reddened and he hopped off the desk.

  “I should think you’d want to know if you had a daughter. She’s a good kid, but she’s had it hard. Raised in what passed for an orphanage by a bunch of nuns. She deserves a break.”

  The other man leaned forward. “What’s she look like? I mean, does she look anything like me?”

  John considered this a moment, absorbing the thinning black hair, the pampered tight tan flesh and the beady dark eyes then said, “She looks like her mother.”

  A wicked gleam sparkled in Pat’s eyes. “Well, now. That puts a whole different light on things. I’m always looking for talent, if you know what I mean. What say you bring her around and I take a look at the goods?”

  John uncrossed his legs and stood. “What if she’s your kid?”

  Pat shrugged slowly and gestured with his palms up. “Makes no difference to me. A cunt is a cunt.”

  The crudeness sickened his soul. John turned to leave, but something tugged him back to face DeAngelo. His fist connected with DeAngelo’s face, the power behind it sending the other man careening off the desk.

  “What the fuck’d you do that for? Get the fuck outta here! I’m calling security, you stupid shit.”

  John wiped his knuckles. “You’re a pig, DeAngelo. Some things never change. Go ahead and call security. I know most of your guys. I doubt they’d do anything to me. You, on the other hand, you they could take down easily if I told them what a scumbag you are. Then there’s the gaming commission. Don’t press your luck.”

  He strolled out of the office, past the secretary who was more interested in repainting her nails than seeing him to the door.

  Before he left the building, however, he found the men’s room, went inside and puked.

  As he splashed his face with cold water, he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket—ordinarily not an unpleasant feeling.

  He didn’t recognize the caller’s number, but this was his private line. Very few people other than current clients knew how to reach him this way.

  Stepping out of the lavatory, he exited the casino doors before taking the call. He felt like hell, his head throbbed, his jaw ached and his entire upper digestive tract burned. His battered knuckles wanted to bleed.

  “Yeah. Preshin.”

  “Mr. Preshin? This is Sister Rosemary, vice principal at Mary Immaculate.”

  The usual shudder caused by parochial school memories coursed down his spine. In reflex, he stood up straighter.

  Carly. Something to do with Carly. Was she hurt?

  “What can I do for you, Sister?” His voice sounded more self-controlled than he felt at the moment. “Is Carly all right?”

  After a long pause, no doubt as the good sister tried to think of a way to break the bad news gently, she said, “There’s a bit of a situation here involving your ward. We must insist that you come to Mary Immaculate as soon as possible.”

  Just come out and tell me what the hell is wrong. John moved the phone to the other ear as he fished in his pocket for his keys. “I’m about an hour away, Sister, depending on traffic. Can’t you tell me what’s happening?”

  Again a long pause. “I think you’d better hear it from Carly herself.”

  Hellfire. “She’s all right, not bleeding or anything? Nothing broken?” An unfamiliar feeling clawed its way up his throat as he started the Jeep and pulled out of the casino parking lot.

  “I’d rather not discuss it over the telephone, Mr. Preshin.”

  Shaking himself, trying to dispel the feeling of dread and aching knuckles, John sped along the AC Expressway to the Parkway. Troopers lurked everywhere. . . he spied them behind every shrub and cluster of scrub pine. Why hadn’t the nun told him what was up? He searched his memory for all the tricks he’d ever known them to employ and came up with one of the sisters’ favorites—divide and conquer.

  It went like this: Something happened. Two people or more were involved. The nuns would not let the miscreants get their stories straight by letting them all stay together. Divide and conquer. If you didn’t know what your friend had said, you might possibly be the one to trip up on the facts and blam! Both of you were nailed.

  He fought a smile thinking how large the crucifix loomed on the wall one had to face while waiting to be interrogated by the vice principal or, worse yet, Sister Jean Baptiste, the principal. It served as a promise of how you’d end up if you’d done something wrong. Just like Jesus, you’d be nailed.

  He’d only seen that particular crucifix once or twice in his eight years before high school.

  The image of the poor, suffering Jesus hanging on that cross would probably never, ever leave his mind.

  Did nuns still employ such gruesome psychological methods of finding the truth?

  He’d soon find out.

  An hour and a half later, thanks to being stopped by a statie for speeding, John pulled the Jeep into the school parking lot. Girding his loins for battle, having gone two rounds already today, he entered the main office.

  A secretary started, actually jumping back at the sight of him. Bandages on his head, the black and blue blossoming on his jaw and eye, he must look like a demon from hell to deserve that kind of reaction. Perhaps, he thought, the rough, unkempt look was a bit too much for Catholic school.

  “Sister Rosemary, please?” He felt the weight of all his sins descend upon his shoulders then, with relief, he remembered he wasn’t the one in trouble. Yet.

  Jesus agonized on the cross directly above where John had been directed to sit. He didn’t have to wait long before a short, lean, dowdy woman wearing half a veil over her graying hair motioned him into her office.

  “I’m Sister Rosemary, Mr. Preshin. Glad you could get here so quickly. I hope you didn’t exceed the speed limit.”

  He stood, hands dangling at his side, in front of her desk until she gestured to the chair. Sitting, he still took up more space in the small office than the nun, but she looked him in the eye and silently dared him to get out of line. Yeah, like he would.

  “What seems to be the problem, Sister?”

  “I’ll get right to the point. Your ward, Carly Snow, seems to have brought a knife to school with her.”

  John’s backbone went rigid. “I’d like to see her, please.”

>   The nun glowered at him and his defiance. “You must realize that this is a serious offense. It is cause for expulsion. Now, I know that Carly is new to the school, that she came here from Philadelphia and things can be pretty rough in the city, but we cannot tolerate the carrying of any kind of weapon in Mary Immaculate.”

  “Let me see Carly now, please.”

  Sister Rosemary was not used to having her own methods used against her and showed it in the firm set of her lips. If he’d learned anything in his years of parochial schooling, it was how nuns acted and reacted. All he had to do was maintain his composure. As long as he didn’t crack, he could best her. He was an adult now. And the crucifix on her wall wasn’t nearly as big as the one in the main office.

  Carly entered the room. He expected her to be staring at her shoes. Instead, she looked at him and pleaded with those luminous blue eyes to believe her. He asked what had happened, Carly told him—all of it, including how she had asked for the knife to be fingerprinted.

  John had to hand it to the kid as an odd sense of pride washed through him. She thought on her feet.

  “Did you bother with the fingerprinting, Sister?” he asked when the tale was done.

  The little nun drummed her fingers on the desktop. “We don’t usually like to call in the police.”

  John stood, his full six foot two filling the room. His beard shadowing the lower part of his face, the worn leather jacket open enough to show his chest hair above the vee of his sweater, that lock of hair a comma on his forehead, he knew he looked like a dusty, battered Indiana Jones. Sister Rosemary didn’t back down, but she did stand.

  Turning to Carly, he asked, “Kid, is it your knife?”

  Carly shook her head. “No.”

  To Sister Rosemary he said, “It isn’t her knife. But let’s get something straight. I don’t want this incident shadowing her in your or anybody else’s mind. I want it clear that the knife wasn’t hers, and I want you to find out who put it in her backpack. If that requires her to be fingerprinted then so be it. But I want Carly’s name cleared completely.”