CHAPTER 13

My car sported a parking ticket under the windshield wiper. I swear they find me everywhere, those meter maids. I hated the idea of one of them making such an easy score, right in front of the damn station.

A Boston ticket used to be a laugh. You bisected it on the spot, end of crisis. Recently, the traffic cops and the registry have sharpened up their act. You can still rip the tickets, but when you try to renew your driver’s license, boy, will you be sorry. Better yet, if you rip five tickets, you can get acquainted with the Denver Boot, a yellow eyesore that instantly converts your car from a means of transportation to a hunk of modern sculpture.

The ticket was a five-buck job. If I’d parked in a lot it would have cost me four easy, so I didn’t feel so bad. I’d slip it on Haslam’s bill under parking fees.

I checked my watch: 2:05. School in session. Just letting out by the time I motored to Lincoln. Maybe a good time to talk to Mr. Geoffrey Reardon. Not that I put a lot of stock in Haslam’s theory. I couldn’t see the staid Emerson putting up with a “cult” drama club. On the other hand, there were those photo albums with the girls in leotards.

I tuned the radio to WUMB, 91.9 FM, and came in on Chris Smither singing that the sun was gonna shine in my back door someday.

I patted my knee cautiously and wondered who I could call who owned a functional bathtub and wouldn’t misunderstand a request to use it. God, I ought to belong to some whoop-de-do health spa instead of the Y. I could waltz into, say, La Pli in Harvard Square, and get my aches pampered and petted and Jacuzzied. Sure thing, girl, I told myself. Membership at La Pli probably cost more than my rent. And in my jeans, with my hair wild, I looked more like a candidate for Madame Floozey’s massage parlor.

Used to be I could call Mooney. Back when we worked together, he’d have loaned me his key, no questions. But now there’s his mom who probably wouldn’t understand, but would think she did.

I let my mind wander to Sam Gianelli. His place at Charles River Park has a great bathtub, a giant bathtub, a queen of bathtubs, a five-by-five blue-tiled sunken square. I tried to imagine my approach: “Sam, it’s me, Carlotta. Yeah. I know I screwed up your life and you never want to see me again—but could I use your tub?”

Maybe I could rent one of those hooker hotel rooms for an hour. “Just yourself, lady?” the sleazebag on the desk would inquire. The thought of the bathtub in a place like that made me itch. Oh, God, let the Twin Brothers put my tub back in.

There was always Gloria’s room at the back of the garage, but, shit, all those pulleys and bars and stuff. I’ve heard about these places where you can rent a hot tub for an hour, but it seems like something you ought to do with somebody else, a social occasion calling for a date and a bottle of wine. It also seems much too “California” for a Bostonian. Bostonians are more aware of social diseases than social occasions.

I parked the Toyota under a cherry tree just beginning to bud. It wasn’t green yet, but it had turned that fuzzy kind of gray that promises green. The wind was bitter, but the Emerson’s campus was calm, sheltered by pines. Kids chattered as they walked to class, yanking on mittens, tightening scarves.

I stuck my hands in the pockets of my coat and started off toward Reardon’s office.

I saw Elsie McLintock first, then Jerry Toland, both standing in the middle of the soccer field, waving their arms at each other. I couldn’t hear them clearly, but Jerry’s voice was raised and angry. I detoured.

The minute Elsie saw me, she practically ran. Jerry flicked a glance over his shoulder, called out to Elsie, then turned back to me. He strolled over, unhurried, feet shuffling through the damp grass, hands in his pockets. His mouth was slightly puffy, healing nicely. He wore khaki slacks and a white knit shirt with yellow stripes that looked expensive and warm. A yellow windbreaker was tied across his shoulders by the sleeves.

“Hi,” he said, leaning down to pick up a soccer ball someone had abandoned in the grass. “That is you, isn’t it?”

This from a kid who’d seen me in my cab driver outfit and my bathrobe. “It’s me,” I reassured him. “What’s with Elsie?”

He shrugged, dismissing her. “Oh, you know. She doesn’t think I should have hired you, and everything.” He started kicking the ball around, standing in place, bouncing it off one knee then the other.

“Me in particular?” I said.

“Anybody.”

“Why?” I asked.

The ball got away. He retrieved it, started the game over. “She’s a pain in the ass, you know. That’s why. Hell, I don’t know.”

“You think she knows where Valerie is?”

“Elsie?” He flashed me a grin. He’d kneed the ball five times in a row. He had good balance. “No way.”

“Why? Elsie’s her best friend, right?”

“Right,” he said.

“Could you just hold on to the ball for a while?” I said.

He took a step toward me. “Elsie blabs, you know. If she had a line on anything, half her friends would know, and everybody’d be yapping about it. Valerie’s not dumb enough to tell Elsie.”

This kid on the soccer field had a lot more confidence than the one who’d hid in my cab and bled in my kitchen. From the way he talked about her, Elsie was not Jerry’s favorite person.

He said, “Elsie says I just hired you because you’re, uh, you’re a woman,” he said. It took me a minute but I finally caught on. This kid on the soccer field was flirting with me.

“You know,” Jerry said, looking me over from top to tail, “they don’t allow blue jeans.”

“Huh? Who? The Kremlin?”

“On campus. The Emerson doesn’t allow blue jeans.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t work for them.”

“You look great,” he said. He fired the soccer ball at me, hard. I caught it and fired it back. Reflex. I should have held it. The puppy wanted to play.

“Good toss,” he said. “How old are you, anyway?” He took another step forward. He was my height. I should have worn heels. My hair in a bun. A raging-hormone repellent spray.

“I could be your mom,” I said sternly, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, “if I’d started early.”

“Oedipus, right?” he said.

Ah, the benefits of a classical education, I thought.

“Can it,” I said elegantly. “Look, I work for you. Or I did. Now I work for Preston Haslam.”

“Mr. Haslam?” That took him back a step.

“We met for lunch. He’s my client now.”

“I thought I was your client. I thought you said—”

I said, “He didn’t talk to you about it?”

“He asked me about you, but geez—” The little kid was back. Even his posture was different. He was the younger brother of the guy who’d been coming on to me a minute ago. “I mean, I suppose it would be okay. My folks are giving me kind of a hard time, you know. They say save my bucks for college. I’m not sure I want to go to college in the first place, you know. It seems kind of dumb. But I’ve got plenty of money if I want to go. I don’t see what their problem is.”

“I thought you and Haslam had settled it,” I said. “I took his check, but I can rip it up.”

“Hey,” Jerry said, “that reminds me. I owe you some bucks. Cab fare, right, and the five for the sandwich. Man, that saved my life.” He was digging in his pockets while he spoke. He pulled out a gold money clip in the shape of a dollar sign, peeled off one of a wad of twenties. “Keep the change,” he said. “For the iodine and stuff.”

I didn’t raise a hand to take it. “If you’re my client, it’ll be on your bill,” I said. “Are you my client?”

He crumpled the twenty in his hand. “Let me get it straight, okay? Either way, whoever pays, you’re gonna find her, right?”

“I’m going to try.”

“Can I think about it? Like, don’t rip up Haslam’s check, but don’t rip up that contract I signed either.”

“I can leave it like that for a day or two.”

“Good,” he said. “I need a little time.”

“I need a few answers.”

“That’s all you’ve been doing, asking questions. I’m gonna be late for math.”

“That’s what you hired me for, to ask questions.”

“Right.” He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he started bouncing the soccer ball again.

“Stop it,” I said. He tossed me the ball and I held it.

“Want to play tackle?” he said.

“Want to grow up?” I snapped. He fiddled with the sleeves of his windbreaker, and I was sorry I’d raised my voice. God, I don’t know what people expect from teenagers. One day sex is secret, the next day it’s dirty, the next it’s forbidden, and then you get a marriage license and it’s a joyful, meaningful experience. Right.

“What can you tell me about the drama coach?” I said.

“Reardon? He’s a slug.”

“Really?”

“I mean, I don’t know. I don’t take his class.”

“Valerie does.”

“Oh, yeah, she thinks he’s great, you know. She’s always over there with him.”

I thought I heard jealousy in the last remark.

“You think she’s interested in him as more than a teacher?” I said.

“No way. The guy must be thirty.” He said “thirty” like you’d say “embalmed.”

“Was she interested in anybody?” I asked.

“Nah.”

“In you?”

“Nah.” He scuffed the grass with his right sneaker.

“I heard you liked her, as more than a friend.”

“Elsie, right? The stupid bitch.” He mumbled the last part under his breath.

“You saying Elsie made it up?” I said.

He sat abruptly on the grass, collapsing like somebody had opened a valve and let the air out. He was the kid in the back of the cab again, scared and lonely. He bit his lower lip, winced at the pain.

I glanced around. Two girls in identical red sweaters stood near the flagpole, out of earshot. The wind whipped their skirts and their hair, but they didn’t seem to feel it, deep in the exchange of confidences. I felt it. My knee throbbed. I lowered myself onto the thick, damp grass that smelled of pine needles.

“I shoulda told you before,” Jerry said. “Oh shit. I was—I am—so goddamned stupid. I’m sorry. Valerie and me, we were, you know, just fooling around last week, back behind the math building, telling jokes and stuff, and then we were, well, fooling around, you know, and we started hugging and then I kinda kissed her and it was fine, and then we went a little further and she just totally freaked.”

“That’s the last time you saw her?”

“That’s the last time I saw her,” he repeated, hanging his head. He looked like he’d confessed to a capital crime.

“What do you mean by a little further?” I asked.

“You know,” he said, looking at anything but me.

“Intercourse?”

“Shit. Behind the math building? No way. I just unbuttoned her blouse and stuff. That’s all. I mean, she freaked. I didn’t even see anything.”

I sighed. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“No more true confessions?”

“Honestly, that’s it.”

“Okay.”

“Ms. Carlyle?”

“Yeah.”

He pulled a clump of grass out by the roots. “When you find her, tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I’m just goddamned sorry.”

I left him sitting cross-legged in the middle of the soccer field, getting grass stains on his nice khaki pants.