From the Missouri Grille, Gabriel motored west to his building at the edge of the city limits, facing Forest Park. There he bid good evening to his doorman and palmed a twenty to him. “Merry Christmas, Carl.”
“The same to you, Mr. Gabriel,” he said, unlocking the elevator.
Gabriel rode to the twentieth floor and stepped across the carpeted hall to the door of his studio. He opened it, dropped his keys on the table and walked to the windows overlooking Forest Park across the street. In the distance, the Art Museum stood majestic atop its hill, floodlit like a golden palace, and on the horizon, some eight miles distant, the Gateway Arch glowed silver. Below on Skinker Boulevard cars hummed past.
He liked living above it all. Part of it was practical. Here he felt secure—no assholes coming through the window when he was away, no vengeful ex-cons or humiliated husbands knocking on his door. But most of all he liked the view. From this vantage everything looked clean and orderly and peaceful, especially when it snowed. He doffed his blazer, loosened his tie, and plucked his holster from his belt, where he carried his secondary pistol, his “off-duty weapon,” a small Smith & Wesson seven-shot instead of the larger, standard-issue Berretta nine millimeter that he kept locked away.
Gabriel got a beer from the fridge and sat on the sofa facing the windows that comprised his east wall. He looked at his watch, reached for his cell phone, and dialed.
He heard four rings, then a click and a recording. When it ended he said, “Timmy, this is your father. Merry Christmas to you and Theresa. I know it’s late there but I just got in. I hope the kids are well and that they like their gifts. Call when you can.”
He set the phone down and reached for his beer. The phone began to buzz. Gabriel answered: “Hey, my man, how you doing?”
“My man?” came a feminine voice. “You know I’m all woman.”
Now he glanced at the caller I.D. “Sorry, Justine. I’d just left a message for my son and thought it was him.”
“Disappointed?”
“Not at all. Always glad to hear from you.”
“You home? I thought you might like a Christmas gift. Things are a bit slow tonight and I owe you one.”
Gabriel stood, walked to the window, and looked out at the snow-shrouded park glistening in the streetlights. He pictured her and his lips curled in a smile.
“I am eager to collect on that debt, Justine. But maybe some other time, baby. I’ve been out drinking since five and by the time you got here I’d be....”
“I’m downstairs in the lot.”
A real slow night. Most of her regulars would be with their families.
“What the hell,” he said. “We’ll have a party.”
He called down to Carl and told him to send her straight up.
She soon came to his door in rabbit coat, tall boots, and frosty lipstick, glistening black hair perfumed and curled. Once inside she slipped from her coat, revealing a skintight red dress that barely covered her ass. Gabriel brought her a vodka gimlet and joined her on the couch. He saw that she had positioned a small box with Christmas wrap on the coffee table.
“For me?”
“You did me a good turn, Carlo, when other cops would of taken advantage.”
“Well, you helped me out before.”
“I keep my eyes open. I want to keep them gangstas away from us working girls.”
He began unwrapping the package. “You know I can’t take bribes.”
“This ain’t no bribe. Just a little bling for my wavy-haired boy.” She ran a hand through his hair, which he brushed straight back.
He opened the box to find a thick gold bracelet. “Very nice. Not hot, I presume. Wouldn’t do for a police lieutenant to be in possession of stolen property.”
“No way, man. I bought it with a credit card.”
“Yours?”
“Make any difference?”
“Not really. Thank you, Justine,” he said, leaning to kiss her cheek. “Wish I had something to give you.”
She licked her whitened lips. “You do. But first you got to unwrap your other present,” she said, shifting her hips.
He slid the red dress up to her waist. She wore a white garter belt holding up white stockings that framed her raven thighs—that was all.
Gabriel smiled. “Very festive,” he said, pulling her to him.
It was midnight when Justine left, but Gabriel didn’t feel tired. Dressed now in a blue silk robe, he went to the kitchen and poured himself a bourbon on the rocks. On the kitchen table he spied the manila envelope he had carried home with him and took it to the sofa, where Justine’s perfume lingered.
He retrieved the remote control from the coffee table. On the TV screen he selected “Traditional Christmas – Instrumental” then found streaming video of a log fire. He recognized the first tune: “O, Little Town of Bethlehem.” It made him think of the crèche that his mother arranged beneath their Christmas tree, and of the manger scene in the plaza of her hometown in Jalisco, where he had visited as a teenager. As Christmas day approached, the plaster representations there of the Three Wise Men were moved progressively closer and closer to the Christ child. But sentimental thoughts of his mother pulled him where he didn’t want to go. He again grabbed the remote and found some holiday jazz: George Benson, Nina Simone, Wynton Marsalis.
Gabriel sipped at the bourbon then pulled off the packing tape that sealed the thick envelope. From it he slid a stack of documents paper-clipped in four batches. Three of them were from Stone’s freshman composition classes, the fourth from his remedial grammar section. He started with the composition evaluations.
The students first rated Stone on a scale of one to five, five being the highest, in seven areas: setting clear objectives, accessibility, preparation, effectiveness, et cetera.
Below that were ten ruled lines for “COMMENTS.”
As Gabriel perused the forms, he saw that Stone got twos and threes across the board from most students. That perhaps related to a number of comments on grading, including: “Impossible to get an A. UNFAIR!” and “WTF! I worked my ass off and still got a C.”
But there were a few students who apparently appreciated the high academic standards, giving Stone fives in all categories and praising him. They wrote things like: “A really valuable course,” and “Stone is a great, passionate teacher. Wasted on the slackers in class.”
There were also a couple comments—in feminine handwriting—that dealt with the professor as a man rather than a teacher. One read, “Stone is hot! I could eat him up.” Another student wrote, “I’d love to be home-schooled by Mr. Stone,” and included a phone number.
Gabriel stroked his narrow mustache. But the bottom line was that Stone was a demanding, knowledgeable, and helpful instructor for those students keen to learn. For those looking for an easy grade and just going through the motions, he was The Professor from Hell.
Gabriel moved on to the remedial grammar stack. Here the evaluations were also inconsistent but with one striking difference. The remedial grammar students—those who came in unable to compose a grammatically correct sentence—wrote extended comments that often continued on the back of the evaluation form and contained numerous corrections and spelling changes in the writer’s own hand:
“On the first day he gives us an assignment to see how we can write or not. Then next class he says I have good news and bad news. The bad news was we had all been screwed. Our teachers and principles did not do their jobs. The good news is that now we had Mr. Stone for a teacher and he would not advocate his responsibility like the others.…”
From another student:
“Stone was jive at the start. Talking way over our heads. So I told him in class come on man. These folks ain’t getting this shit. Start at the beginning, start at first grade. Maybe I did wrong calling him out in front of everyone but he was cool. Next class he comes in with workbooks from grade school. It wasn’t a class anymore but a grammar factory and we all started hammering away and helping each other.”
Gabriel smiled—the writer reminded him of himself at the police academy three decades earlier. The next few entries read:
“Prof. Stone said we must use all we learned to write this Teaching Effectiveness Evaluation Comment. No mistakes. Use the dictionary. These will show everyone the good teacher that he is….”
“Mr. Stone always had us write about our schools and what we did there. He made me think about why things happened the way they did and the way they were supposed to happen. He made me loose sleep worrying about prepositions and past tense.”
“Profesor he change my life. That is, Professor Jonathan Stone has changed my life. He has given me hope and tools I need to get thru college and be a success in life.… I love to diagram sentences! It makes you see how words all work together—nominative case and objective case, prepositions and their objects. Why did no one ever teach me this? Because of Professor Stone I am going to be a teacher and go back to teach at my school. I love Professor Jonathan Stone! 
”
Gabriel looked up, out to the park, where more snow was again falling. Appropriately, a jazz guitar instrumental of “White Christmas” played in the background. His gaze moved to the video of the burning logs, which made him think of Dadisi’s gas fireplace. Maybe this was what Dadisi had been trying to tell him. That Stone was an exceptional instructor who was dismissed not for incompetence but for some other reason, which Dadisi couldn’t or wouldn’t reveal. In other words someone—Betancourt perhaps—was out to get Stone for whatever reason, and they got him.
Or maybe it was just that things were different from Gabriel’s college days. He’d heard about it: lowered standards, grade inflation, feel-good education. Hardly the sort of asskicking instruction he had gotten from the Jesuits, et al. Apparently the rules had changed. But Stone was still playing by the old ones, and some people didn’t like it.
Christmas morning the snowplows were out again. Gabriel restarted the fireplace video and the Christmas jazz and fetched the newspaper from the hallway. At nine his son called from D.C. Gabriel could hear his two grandkids yelping in the background. Tim told him they loved the toys he sent. Everyone was well.
“You talk to your mother?” Gabriel asked.
Tim cleared his throat. “She’s here now. Visiting for the week.”
“Well, give her my regards.”
“You want to talk to her?”
About what? How they abandoned each other? How they broke their vows? Ground already amply covered. But his son wouldn’t know about that. Janet and he managed to keep it under wraps until Tim was off to college.
“I’ll give her a call later. Let me talk to the kids for a minute.”
After he hung up, Gabriel stood looking out the window, coffee cup in hand. Thinking of his grandchildren—they’d both be entering first grade within a year or two—he now remembered having dreamt last night about being back in primary school. Marching single file. Having to sit quietly in a stuffy room. The smell and taste of erasers, graphite, and chalk. Maybe it was all computers now. Maybe kids didn’t sit quietly or stay in line.
He sat on the sofa scanning the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A story caught his eye about students fleeing St. Louis city schools, which had lost accreditation, for suburban schools. The resulting loss in revenue, said the superintendent, would cripple the struggling school district. Apparently the accreditation crisis had been going on for some time but beneath Gabriel’s radar.
The article noted that Kansas City schools had also lost accreditation and the district there was selling off school buildings as students bolted to surrounding districts. Further, the State of Illinois had taken control of East St. Louis Schools, where student achievement had plummeted while the district misspent millions of dollars, legislators claimed.
His phone buzzed again—a call from the North Patrol Division. A female officer with a youthful voice, apparently low on the totem pole and forced to work Christmas morning, identified herself.
“Sorry to bother you, lieutenant, but I was told to call if anything relating to a Jonathan Stone came in.”
Gabriel sat up straight. “What is it?”
“They just found his car.”
“Where?’
“At the Arch.”
That news brought visions of the ice-choked Mississippi to mind and a lump to his throat. Gabriel got the number of the lead detective on duty—Rebecca Sellers—and called, telling her he could be there in a half hour. He had nothing going on till later, but he tried not to think about that.
Gabriel waited outside his building for the valet to bring his car up from the garage. Soon his Dodge moved into the turnaround. A new kid emerged from it and held the door for him. Gabriel gave him a ten and wished him “Merry Christmas.” He aimed the sedan up the boulevard and then onto the interstate toward downtown.
This was what had bothered Janet most, that they never had a “normal” family life. He often worked holidays and odd hours. Family meals were rare. When they went out, Gabriel carried his off-duty weapon. But now it was good that he could zip out on Christmas morning on a case that interested him without having to explain. Without having to deal with the guilt.
Once downtown, he drove past the Arch and down the inclined redbrick street toward the wharf. That too brought childhood memories: bricks everywhere. Redbrick tenements, schoolhouses, stores, and taverns; cobbled streets and alleys where he played; herringboned redbrick sidewalks; even his backyard: all bricks. He remembered being shocked when he first went to Chicago and saw its wood-frame homes, like a farm town.
Before he got to Wharf Street he turned into the parking garage and spied the white Mobile Crime Lab van in the far corner, which overlooked the Mississippi. As he drove nearer he saw the officers gathered round a black, five-year-old Jeep Grand Cherokee 4x4. He killed his engine, folded up his coat collar, and joined them.
The Crime Lab officer was lifting prints and Sellers, uniformed and rubber-gloved, was searching under the beige leather seats.
“What do you think, Becky?”
She turned, saw it was Gabriel, and straightened.
“Nice car. Four-wheel drive. Wish I’d had it this morning so I wouldn’t have spent half an hour digging out my Escort.”
“And from a professional police detective’s perspective?”
She gestured toward its dashboard. “Given that the car was unlocked with keys in the ignition and no signs of forced entry, theft, or violence, I think that this parking spot is convenient to the river.” She bent back to look under the front seat.
Gabriel pursed his lips and studied the Mississippi. It flowed milk chocolate here, after the muddy Missouri River joined it at the northernmost city limits. Dotted with chunks of ice, it looked like brown pudding with dirty marshmallows.
His gaze lifted to the Eads Bridge, only yards away, where a commuter train shushed into the station there. Built in 1874, the first bridge to span the river at St. Louis, it still carried motor vehicle traffic, MetroLink trains, and pedestrians, some of whom found it an apt place to bid the world adieu.
“Also convenient to the casino and the train,” he said. “I don’t think my man was that desperate to take the plunge.”
Sellers commented without turning: “Okay. Then I can see where a bad casino-experience might lead a person to seek some fast cash by leaving the keys in the car.”
“But my man wasn’t a gambler.”
She stood, shrugged, and tugged at the cuffs of her blue down jacket. “I see a lot of odd behavior. And this is odd. Anyway, it’s not even his car, so he wouldn’t directly benefit from its theft.”
“It’s not?” Gabriel spread his black-gloved palms. “Then what am I doing here?”
She lifted a hand. “No, it’s the right car. Just not in his name. Ellen Cantrell’s the owner.”
“The wife.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “The mayor’s mouthpiece?”
Gabriel raised a finger to his lips. “Nothing official yet on this. Very hush-hush.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“Let’s compare any prints to those on the laptop I gave The Gecko yesterday.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. You’ll find them in the case file.” Gabriel turned away and waved as he moved back to his sedan. “‘Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night,’” he quoted as he retreated. But night was still a long way off.