Jared began to lean down toward the instrument cases. But Donny stepped in front of him. “I got it, clarinet-boy.”
Donny squatted and snapped the latches on the tuba case, then lugged it to the van and tossed it in. It landed with a bang.
“Take it easy!” Bobby Tone said.
Donny looked pissed. “Aw, it’s fine. It’s only worth seven hundred.” He kicked the left-rear van door, which slammed shut with another bang.
“Now, that’s just rude,” Bobby Tone said. Carlos glared.
Donny ignored them and reached for the sousaphone case.
At which point, the van’s engine turned over. Then it bellowed, and the van spun away from the porch, its rear tires flinging dirt and grass, its right-rear door flapping. It fishtailed onto the dirt apron at the end of the driveway and blasted toward the county road.
As the van roared past me, I caught a glimpse of the driver.
Marisa.
I glanced back at the porch, expecting that Carlos would bring out the Judge again. But Carlos just stood there looking bemused while the other males on the porch hollered. Meanwhile, Kaylee had brushed her hair away from one eye and was watching the van make its getaway.
I watched it, too. Its lights came on as it squealed onto the blacktop road, and it roared away to the east. Its right-rear taillight winked as the open door swung over it and then swung back again. Then both taillights vanished among the live oaks, and the roar dwindled to a distant whine.
Up on the porch, the yelling and cussing dwindled as well. When it fell to silence, Carlos spoke. For the first time, he sounded as if he could be from Texas.
“Damn,” he said. “Whose girlfriend just jacked my tuba?”
4. Not a Pervert
I had no idea why Marisa had done it. Maybe she was mad at Donny for stomping off when she’d refused to put out. But for a smart kid, stealing the van seemed a stupid way of expressing her displeasure. Seeing as how Carlos and the Judge might decide to shoot up more than a fiberglass sousaphone bell.
Fortunately, Carlos didn’t seem to care about the van, and not much about the tuba. He just seemed happy that he still had the brass sousaphone.
Bobby Tone, however, was perturbed. I listened as he instructed Tyler to return the money for the tuba, plus another five hundred for the van.
“I stole that shitbox for the sole purpose of this transaction,” he said. “So it ain’t about the vehicle per se. It’s the principle. You invite a person to a business meeting, that person has a reasonable expectation of leaving in the same vehicle in which he arrived.”
The boys glanced at Kaylee, who gave a slight nod. Her hair fell over her face again.
Tyler, his shoulders hunched in misery, reached into his back pocket and pulled out the wad of bills. He counted off twelve and gave them back to Bobby Tone. Then Bobby counted off eight and extended them toward Carlos.
Carlos held up a hand. “No, you keep the finder’s fee.”
Bobby Tone peeled off a bill and handed over the rest. “That’s why I appreciate our association, Carlos.”
Carlos produced his wallet and tucked the bills inside. “You did your part.” Now he gave Tyler a cold stare. “But you’ll give me that hundred, pendejo.” The Spanish word didn’t sound natural coming from him. He put the emphasis on the first syllable instead of the second. “Then you’ll drive Mr. Anthony, me, and my sousaphone to our cars, which are parked in Kingman. And if I ever do business with you again, you’ll make sure the transaction proceeds in a more professional manner. Comprende?”
This time Tyler didn’t look to Jared or Kaylee. He just nodded, then handed Carlos another hundred.
I suppressed an urge to moan. Now the Kingman High sousaphone-stealing ring was left with a mere fourteen hundred. Plus some shotgunned fiberglass.
And I wasn’t going to go after the cash on Bobby Tone and Carlos. I just wanted to steal candy from babies for a change. Especially after the Christmas mess in Chicago involving the Santa-with-a-Sig-Sauer. That payoff had financed my move back to Texas, but it still hadn’t been worth the near violation of Rule Number One: “Don’t get killed.”
Okay, so fourteen hundred wasn’t much. But it was something. And I had invested too much time to just let it go. So I had to stop pondering Marisa’s theft of the van. It wasn’t relevant to the goal.
Kaylee stood and took the remaining cash from Tyler’s hand. She didn’t speak, and she didn’t look up. She just smoothly … took it as she walked by. Tyler blinked and looked startled, but he didn’t say boo. Then Kaylee and Jared went into the house, closing the door behind them.
“All right, youngsters,” Bobby Tone said, slapping his hands together. “Time for me and Carlos to vacate Romper Room. Who’s drivin’?”
Donny mumbled and gestured toward the Ford pickup.
I eased away from the Civic’s rear bumper and moved up to the front end. Once there, I paused and listened long enough to hear the plastic-on-concrete scrape of the sousaphone case being picked up. Then, taking a quick breath, I scuttled past the Ford’s front end to the back corner of the crooked house. I squatted there, out of sight of the parked cars, with my back against the peeling wooden siding.
A glance around the corner revealed Tyler coming off the porch with the sousaphone case, followed by Donny, Bobby Tone, and Carlos.
“Hey, where’s Marisa?” Tyler asked as he hefted the sousaphone into the pickup bed. He wasn’t too bright.
“Gone,” Donny said.
Tyler climbed into the pickup bed with the instrument, and the other three got in front. When Donny started the engine, I ducked back around the corner before the headlights came on. Then I looked again while the Ford backed past the blasted fiberglass bell, shifted gears, and headed out to the road.
When it was gone, I remained still for a few minutes and listened. I heard Jared and Kaylee’s muffled voices inside the house, and no one else’s. I was pretty sure they were alone. I had watched the place for hours, and I had seen all of the vehicles arrive. The Ford was Donny’s, and Tyler had ridden shotgun. The Honda was Jared’s. And Kaylee had driven the PT Cruiser with Marisa as a passenger. I wondered how their friendship would evolve now that Marisa had screwed up what appeared to be Kaylee’s deal. And then I quashed that thought because, again, it wasn’t relevant to my goal.
I crept around to the south side of the house, following Jared’s and Kaylee’s voices. As I passed the concrete stoop on the east, I saw that the back door was standing open. There was a wooden screen door over it, but there was no latch or hook. I wouldn’t need my Swiss Army knife.
Once I was on the south side, I paused in the weeds under the second window. Like the back door, it was open but covered with a screen. A soft glow inside was accompanied by rustling noises, but the voices had fallen silent. It sounded as if Jared and Kaylee were going further than Donny and Marisa had gone.
As the sounds became rhythmic, I risked standing up far enough to look inside. I ignored the teenagers on the bed and scanned their clothes on the floor. The light from the lamp on the battered chest of drawers wasn’t great, but it was good enough for me to spot Kaylee’s white shorts in the doorway. The folded cash was visible in one of the pockets.
In the movies, a lone thief is often portrayed as an elegant schemer. But in the actual process of stealing, especially when stealing from other crooks, cleverness matters less than luck. Down and dirty gets the money.
I went back the way I had come, gingerly pulled open the screen door, and slipped inside.
The rest was easy. In a crouch, I passed through a small utility room and kitchen, entered the hallway, and followed the lamplight to the open bedroom door. Jared and Kaylee were busy, and it would have taken a hand grenade to distract them. So I snagged the shorts and crept back the other way until I was on the stoop. Thirty seconds, in and out.
Once I had eased the screen door closed, I removed the cash from the left rear pocket of Kaylee’s shorts and transferred it t
o my jeans. Then I found her smartphone in the right rear pocket. And now that I had the cash, I decided to allow myself some curiosity. I tapped the screen, and it came to life, displaying the last text message Kaylee had seen before taking off her clothes.
GLAD U R OK, it read. ALL OK W ME 2. NO HAY PROBLEMA.
The sender was identified as MRSA.
Maybe Marisa hadn’t screwed up Kaylee’s deal after all. Maybe they had been working on something together.
I didn’t know what kind of deal took twenty-two hundred bucks and turned it into fourteen hundred. But whatever it had been, these kids now had nothing other than the bitter lesson that crime doesn’t pay.
Not enough, anyhow.
No longer worried about making a little noise, I jogged between the Honda and the PT Cruiser, across the driveway, and back into the trees. From there, with the aid of my trusty penlight, I would make my way along a few deer trails back to the side road where I’d parked my Toyota Corolla.
I left Kaylee’s phone and shorts on the stoop. I was glad there hadn’t been any underwear inside the shorts. That would have made me feel creepy.
As it was, I could tell myself that even though I was a lowlife, I wasn’t a pervert. I would cling to that.
That, and fourteen hundred dollars swiped from a gang of teenage sousaphone thieves.
5. No Puns Allowed
When I arrived at Kingman Rural High School on Monday morning, feeling like a fraud in khakis and a blue sport shirt, I encountered a sixtyish sheriff’s deputy just inside the front doors. He was blocky and big-nosed, and he occupied the center of the brick-and-tile foyer like a monument to local law enforcement. He was wearing aviator sunglasses with his deerskin-colored uniform and Stetson, and he was chewing gum with slow menace. The holster for the .357 revolver on his hip was unsnapped, and there was nothing else on the gunbelt except a handcuff holster. I hadn’t seen a cop carry a weapon other than a semiauto since I was a kid, and most were also adorned with radios, tasers, collapsible clubs, mace canisters, and all sorts of other toys. But this guy was old-school.
I didn’t recognize him, even though I’d grown up in Kingman County, which meant that despite his age, he was new around here. So I decided to have a chat. Whenever possible, I like to be on friendly terms with potential problems.
“Some kinda trouble, chief?” I asked as kids poured into the building around us. I had to raise my voice to be heard over the yammering teenagers.
The deputy didn’t look at me as he answered. “Break-in and theft last Friday night. School property stolen.”
I cocked my head like a confused spaniel. “How’s standing here on Monday morning gonna help that?”
The deputy’s eyebrows pinched closer by a few millimeters. “Just doing what I can.” He looked at me over the top of the sunglasses. “I told the sheriff I suspect students. So her idea is the culprits will see me and get nervous. And nervous kids tell tales. In theory.”
I glanced around at the rushing influx of tall and short, fat and skinny, white, black, and brown teenagers. Half of them were staring down at their phones as they flowed past, and the other half were either engrossed in conversation or rolling their eyes at us.
“Well, good luck with that,” I said.
The deputy pushed up his sunglasses. “I’m well aware that these little bastards aren’t intimidated by a fat old man. But as I say, I’m doing what I can. And I get to have my second cup of coffee when the bell rings.” He glanced at the clock on the wall behind him. “Thirteen minutes.”
I nodded toward the unsnapped holster. “Just be careful you don’t shoot any of the little bastards in the meantime, hoss.”
One of his eyebrows rose. “So far, you’ve called me ‘chief’ and ‘hoss.’ I suspect sarcasm. So if I shoot anybody, it’s gonna be you.”
I checked my wristwatch. “I’ll take a rain check on that, colonel. The principal wants to see me, and as you’ve pointed out, I only have thirteen minutes to the bell.”
“That’s a shame,” the deputy said. “I’ve been so enjoying your company.”
“Name’s Matthew Marx, by the way.” I stuck out my hand. “Substitute teacher par excellence. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Deputy—”
I looked at the name on the rectangular tag over his badge.
“ ‘Beeswax?’ ” I asked.
He didn’t extend his hand. “As in none of yours.”
“But we have something in common, jefe. Our names both end in ‘x.’ ”
His face was like a big-nosed rock. “Ain’t no such thing as alphabet brothers.”
So I turned my attempted handshake into a salute and then moved into the main hallway, weaving through the throng until the brick wall to my left turned into glass panels. I cut across the hall, stopping twice to avoid kids who wouldn’t look up from their phones, and then opened the door to the school office.
Lester, the office manager—he didn’t like being called the secretary—was leaning on the long counter that split the room between his workspace and the waiting area. Lester was a retired history teacher and coach who had taken this job, he claimed, because his wife had threatened to stab him with her garden shears if he stayed home. At the moment, Lester had his bald head in his hands, propping his ruddy lump of a face in the steam from a jumbo travel mug. His necktie was slung over the shoulder of his plaid shirt so it didn’t hang down into the mug.
“She’s with a student,” Lester said without looking up. His voice was like gravel in a blender. “So just stand there and don’t say nothin’. I’m hungover like a mother.”
I leaned on the counter too, facing him. “Did your mother get hung over a lot, Lester?”
“If you’d met my daddy, you wouldn’t ask. Now shuddup.”
I clucked my tongue. “Boy, everyone’s in a mood this morning. Deputy Beeswax out there nearly bit my head off, too.”
“That’s Ernest,” Lester said. “ ‘Beeswax’ is what they called him in the Houston P.D. Dunno why. Now he’s a Kingman deputy, which is his idea of semiretirement. The sheriff must agree, because Ernest showed up here this morning driving his own car. Now, it’s a nice new Chrysler, but it ain’t got a police radio or a prisoner cage or even a shotgun rack. So I think Ernest’s plan is to stand at the entrance in the morning and afternoon, looking vicious, and read Louis L’Amour paperbacks in the parking lot in between. Maybe catch a few winks. I reckon his driver’s seat reclines.”
“Maybe I’ll stick a firecracker in his tailpipe,” I said. “Like I used to.”
Lester’s eyes widened, and he let out a low whistle. “No, you don’t want to do that. I played football with him at Southwest Texas back in the Cretaceous period, and I saw him break a linebacker’s neck with a fair hit. Guy wound up driving a ButterKrust delivery truck he had to turn by blowin’ into a straw.”
The inner-office door at the far end of the counter opened, and a small, dark-haired girl in jeans and a bright red KINGMAN COUGAR BAND T-shirt stepped out. She juggled a blue backpack from one hand to the other and closed the door behind her, then looked at me. It was Marisa.
Her eyebrows rose. “Oh, hi, Mr. Marx.” Her Tejano accent was downright musical. “Are you teaching our comp-and-lit class again today?”
“I, uh, dunno,” I said. I was discombobulated. The last time I had seen this girl, she had been stealing a van with a tuba in the back. “I assume Eliz—uh, Ms. Owens will tell me where to go.”
At the counter, Lester made a choking noise.
Marisa smiled. She probably knew “Ms. Owens” and I had been married in the distant past. In fact, it had only been six years since Elizabeth had divorced me and I’d bugged out to Chicago. But to a seventeen-year-old, that would seem like ancient history. I wished it seemed that way to me, too.
“Well, I hope we have you again,” Marisa said. “I liked that D. H. Lawrence story. Mr. Morris would have made us write about ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ for the tenth time.”
“Poe you,” I
said.
Marisa frowned. “Huh?”
The inner-office door opened again, and my ex-wife stood there in all of her tall, smooth-skinned, blue-pantsuited glory. Her hair was tied back, emphasizing her high forehead, dark eyes, and perfect cheekbones. It would have been nice if she’d let herself fall apart after we’d split, but no such luck.
“As I’ve told you before, Mr. Marx,” Elizabeth said, “no one likes puns. And I won’t tolerate them at Kingman Rural High.” She glanced at Marisa. “Don’t be late, now. They’ll need you to unlock the cabinets.”
Marisa said, “Yes, ma’am,” and started for the exit. She nodded to me. “See you later, Mr. Marx.”
I watched her as she went into the hall, and I saw what was silk-screened on the back of her band T-shirt.
In bold block letters, it said BAD ASS. But in a stylized scrawl, the letters “BR” were inserted before “ASS.”
BAD BRASS.
6. Sparks and Wildfires
I turned to Elizabeth. “If I’d worn a shirt like that back when I was a student here, I would’ve been suspended. After Lester here had smacked me upside the head.”
Lester snorted. “Well, it woulda been you.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “We’ve had one parent complain. Then that parent found out the shirts were gifts from our anonymous San Antonio band benefactor. When donations are the only way a school can maintain its music program, people find they can put up with a little vulgarity.”
“Even the Baptists?” I asked.
“Especially the Baptists. They embrace the fact that we’re all sinners. Come on in, Mr. Marx.”
I followed Elizabeth into her office and closed the door behind me as I heard Lester mutter, “Mister Marx?”
“You know,” I said as Elizabeth sat down behind her desk, “you might as well use my first name. Everyone knows we used to bump uglies.”
Elizabeth gave me a thin smile and gestured at the two black-vinyl chairs on my side of the desk. “Speak for yourself, Matt.”
I sat down sideways in one of the chairs and propped my feet on the other. “I love it when we banter, Lizbeth. That’s how I know the spark is still there.”
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