CHAPTER 29

“This babe is one hard case,” Roz declared when I came up the stairs. The way she said it, she didn’t mean it. Roz is tough enough to know.

Valerie had made herself at home in my room to the extent of sprawling across the unmade bed. I never make my bed. She’d taken off her heels and tossed them across the room. Her face was buried in my pillows.

“Drugs?” I asked Roz.

“No tracks,” Roz said. “I think she’s just tired and cold. Maybe she’s hungry but she won’t eat. She’s major-league pissed. Took a swing at me.”

I didn’t have to ask if it had connected. Roz is fast.

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll take over now.”

“Sam still here?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said.

“Too bad.”

“Yeah.” My response was heartfelt.

“If you need me,” Roz said.

“Yeah,” I said again.

“Take care,” Roz said to the girl on the bed. Valerie snorted. Roz left.

“My name’s Carlotta,” I said.

Nothing.

“Roz is gone. I’m here. The dame who runs faster than you.”

“Not if I have my shoes off,” she said. At least I think that’s what she said. It was pillow-muffled.

“When did you take off again?”

She turned her face. Her mascara was all smeary. Cross off one pillow case.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Let’s try this one,” I said. “Where’s your diary?”

“Huh?” she said blankly. “What do you care? My diary?”

“The thing you kept for Reardon’s class.”

“Oh.”

“Where is it?” I asked.

“How the hell should I know.”

“You turned it in to Reardon.”

“So what?” she said, elaborately unconcerned.

“Was there stuff in there about running away?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Is that why you went back to get it?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Am I going to have to repeat everything I say?”

“Go back to the goddamn Emerson? I wouldn’t go back there.”

“Not even the day Reardon died?”

She stared at me. Her mouth did something funny, then it turned up at the corners.

“Come on,” she said.

“What?”

“That’s not funny,” she said. “Christ.”

“Didn’t your father tell you?”

“My father? You don’t make any sense at all.”

“Likewise,” I said.

“Are you going to tell my parents where I am?”

“I’ll probably call,” I said cautiously. “Parents have a way of worrying. Did you just walk out this time, or did you leave a note?”

“Leave a note?” she said incredulously. “Why didn’t you ask them that? You’re working for them.”

“I haven’t talked to them since Reardon died.”

“Stop saying that.”

“What?”

“Look, I’ve been gone more than two weeks, for Christ’s sake. I was doing okay.”

“Back up,” I said. “You didn’t go home?”

“I’m never going home. Except to get my sister. Once I get set up, once I get a place, I’m going to get Sherri.”

“You saw Geoff Reardon in the Combat Zone,” I said, backtracking. I wanted to see if she was lying for the hell of it.

“Yeah,” she said. “He read my stupid notebook and he wanted to talk. He’s okay, you know, for a teacher. He’s special. I mean, aside from being so gorgeous. He was gonna help me. He gave me some money. He said he was gonna come back and give me more, a lot more. A couple thousand, he said, but I don’t know where he was gonna get it. I mean, teachers don’t make much, do they? It would have been enough for bus tickets out west, and a security deposit on an apartment. You need two months’ rent for a security deposit. It’s a lot of dough.”

“Your father didn’t see you this week?” I said.

“That jerk. No.”

“And you didn’t see Reardon?”

“No.”

“And you don’t know he’s dead.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” she asked anxiously.

“It’s true,” I said. “That’s why.”

“Please,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Dead,” she repeated.

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“He killed himself.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “That’s dumb. He wouldn’t.”

“The police say he did.”

“But—”

I shook my head and her face crumbled. She flung herself down on the pillow. Her shoulders shook, but she didn’t make any noise. I went over and patted her on the back. At first she recoiled from my touch, then she lay still. I would have stayed with her except I heard Roz yell for help.