After a short series of turns through the drab labyrinth of the school, Coach brought me to an office with the word Administration scrawled in two-foot-tall letters above the windows. I thought him holding the door open was his way of saying goodbye, but when I turned to offer my sarcastic thanks, his oversized belly pushed me into the room.
I caught myself on the reception desk and gave a coy smile to the long-lashed otter sitting behind it. She didn’t look up from the papers she was shuffling, but another woman eyed me from across the room.
Marcella had crammed into a seat more suitable for a child. Her knees were up to her ribs, and her tail stuck out through the loop of the armrest. To her left was a closed door with a nameplate reading, “Tabitha Garnett, Principal.”
I scowled down at her. She smiled back without a hint of sheepishness. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of greeting her, so I crossed my arms and looked at the door.
The awkward silence stretched like warm toffee. When it started to sag in the middle and couldn’t steep in it any longer, I took a step toward the door. I heard Coach shift, glad for the justification to put his hands on me. Before it came to that, the door cracked open and a sniffling, long-faced mule came out, ushered by a slender gazelle.
The older woman wore a prim, professional suit. Unlike Adora, her shoulder pads served a purpose. Without them there to square her frame, someone would see the slouch that accompanied her drooping eyelids and the frazzled tufts of hair springing up between her long, black horns.
Tabitha patted the kid on the back as he slumped out of the room, then looked up at her secretary. Her eyes landed instead on Coach, whose body took up damn near a third of the waiting room.
“Coach Myers?” Tabitha said. Her voice was heavy as she switched back from the energetic voice she used with children. Now it was doubly weighted by confusion as she looked from visitor to visitor.
“This guy just showed up. Caught him trying to talk to kids through the fence.”
“Trying?” I said. “I was doing a damn good job of it before you showed up.”
“Are you with Miss Furone?” Tabitha asked, pinching herself between the eyes and palpating as if to banish a painful headache.
Marcella started to say something while she struggled out of the chair, but I talked over her. “Nope. But if you want to ream me out for sneaking up on your kids, I’ll go first. You can get the unpleasant part over with so you and Marcella can enjoy your girl talk.”
“I don’t know what the word is going on here, but I do not have time for this.” Her faux curse came with the sharp fluidity the porcupine neophyte’s attempt at swearing had lacked. All the emotion was there, with none of the parental backlash. “Either both of you come in right now, or somebody get out. I don’t care which.”
I pushed ahead of Marcella and started closing the door behind myself. Marcella caught it and wrenched it out of my hand. It was worth a shot.
The principal’s desk was all clean and proper, with neatly filed folders tucked away in cabinets and cubbies. Her desk was clear, with a squared-off inbox and outbox and a few tidy caddies for writing implements. She had pens and pencils and staplers like you’d find in any well-stocked businessman’s desk, but she also had sheets of stickers with moody faces and stars and accolades. For her, they were crucial communication tools.
She rounded her desk and sat in the wheeled chair behind it. The window at her back took up most of the wall and provided an unrestricted view of the children enjoying their recess in the playground.
Marcella and I each took one of the slightly too-small seats in front of the desk. The door closed, but when the latch clicked, Coach was on the wrong side. He barred the exit with his monstrous gray arms crossed over his overstuffed belly, daring us to try something funny.
“So, you’re here about Ethan,” Tabitha said. “I don’t know what you expect from me; I already told the police everything.”
“They’re not in a sharing mood,” I said. “Don’t seem too interested in finding him, either.”
Marcella put her hand on my arm. It was a familiar gesture, but I didn’t mind the intimacy coming from her as much as I did from Cal.
“Please, Howl,” she said, then turned to Tabitha. “Forgive my…associate. The police are doing their job, but mine’s a little different. I’m interested in the personal element. I want to know who Ethan is, let the people know what kind of kid we’re trying to save.”
“I don’t know how much help I can be. With hundreds of kids at Sam Marlowe, it’s hard to get to know all of them. It’s especially challenging because I haven’t seen him in months.”
“From what I heard, Ethan was a bit of troublemaker. He must have visited your office from time to time. I’m sure you know him better than—”
“Hold on a minute,” I cut in. “You said months. Ethan’s only been missing a couple days.”
“I know,” Tabitha said. Her eyes darted to the door, looking for an out. “I heard about it on the news, same as you.”
Marcella cocked her head. I pressed harder. I had to know we were on the same page. “He doesn’t go here, does he?”
“We parted ways,” Tabitha said.
“This isn’t a summer job at the Bagel Hut in the mall. Kids don’t just…part ways. Something happened.”
Coach let out a rough laugh. “We expelled that asshole.”
Marcella and I both snapped back to Tabitha. She answered our quizzical stares with a long sigh. “Yes. We had to send him away.”
“For what?” I asked.
“Conduct unbecoming of a student at Sam Marlowe Academy.”
“Punishment seems a bit harsh for acting up in class,” Marcella said.
Coach laughed again. “He did a hell of a lot of that, but as long as his tuition was paid, we couldn’t kick him out for goofing around. Luckily, he gave us the chance to give him the boot when I caught him selling drugs.”
Tabitha cringed and looked at the papers on her desk. She shifted in her seat so it swiveled, then pulled herself back to center.
“Ha. He said he was just holding the dope for a friend,” Coach said, falling into the rabbit-hole of his memory. “I might’ve been born in the morning, but not that morning. Took him by the collar and dragged him right here. Can’t have that shit swirling around this school.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?” I asked Tabitha, who was back to kneading the bridge of her nose.
“They know.”
“Funny. They didn’t mention anything.” I pulled out my notepad and looked back up once I found a blank page. “What about his mom? Virginia had seemed forthright with me. She should have said something.”
“I don’t know. Maybe his father didn’t tell Ethan’s mother. As I understand it, they weren’t on the best of terms during that time, but I’d be surprised if she never found out. I’ve never seen a wallaby that stirred up.”
“A walla—”
I grabbed Marcella’s arm and steered the conversation. “How stirred up are we talking? You think he might have taken it out on Ethan when he got home? Given him a reason to get out of town?”
“If you’re asking if I think his father beat him, the answer is no. None of the signs were there, and Peter didn’t seem the type. He spent more time trembling than fuming. He probably gave Ethan an earful, though.”
“Damn shame,” Coach said, shaking his head. “I don’t think anyone would blame him for smacking the brat around a bit.”
I was glad I wasn’t the only one who turned around and glared at him. “You got something to add, Coach?”
He put his hands up, but there was no apology in his voice. “Alls I’m saying is that sometimes it’s the only way to get a kid to listen. I’d never touch a student, of course, but it’s the dad’s job to make sure his little shit’s under control. My dad whipped me around whenever I acted up, and I turned out all right.”
“You sure about that?” I said, unable to help myself.
“What the hell did you say to me?”
I was tempted to jump out of my seat and square up myself, but at least I had some self-control. I could have laid into him about pursuing a career for which the uniform was a pair of too-tight shorts and a whistle to make sure he felt like a big man, but I didn’t want to beat around the bush. “You’re a grown man who thinks it’s okay to beat up kids. Wouldn’t say that’s the making of a model citizen, would you?”
Coach stepped away from the door. I saw a cartoonish “why I oughtta” bubbling out of the primordial soup of his anger. I stayed in my seat, unshaken. It gave him pause long enough for Tabitha to get her bearings.
“Hey!” she shouted, standing up. “Coach! We solve our problems with words, remember? Maybe it’s time for you to go back to the dugout.”
Coach grunted, but retreated under his boss’s super-heated glare. If this was the intensity with which she handled adults who were acting out, I could understand how she got the gig at such a prestigious school. She knew how to keep things running smoothly.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said as he opened the door. “I’d better get back to the yard and make sure no other creeps try to get in.”
“Thank you,” Tabitha said. She sat down and stared at the door until it was fully closed.
“Great. Now that knuckle-dragger’s out, why don’t you fill us in on the details?” I flipped the pencil out from my notebook’s coil and put the tip to the page. “When did it happen? Who else was involved? I’m going to need a list of all Ethan’s friends and enemies. If you’re quick about it, we might be able to save him.”
I didn’t have a lot of hope myself, but a bit of urgency might compel Tabitha to open up. She didn’t spring out of her seat to help like I’d hoped.
“That’s right. We’re going to need everything,” Marcella said, finding her footing now that the heady cloud of testosterone had settled. “How about we take a look at his record?”
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
“So you can plaster it all over the front page of your tabloid? I don’t think so. I won’t let my school—much less my students—get dragged through the mud.”
“Ma’am, I work for the Daily Glyph, not some second-rate, check-out aisle rag. I just want to tell his story.”
“And I just want to make sure we don’t find his body in a ditch,” I said. “I’d be more than happy to show Marcella the door, but you need to tell me what happened so I can help.”
Marcella huffed and crossed her arms, telling me with her posture that if I wanted to move her, I’d have to take the chair she sat in.
“I don’t need to do anything of the sort,” Tabitha said. “I gave the police everything they asked for. They’re the ones running the investigation. What they choose to disclose is between you and them.”
I watched her, hoping she’d crack, but I knew she wouldn’t. I’d seen her type before and respected the hell out of it, but damned if it wasn’t frustrating to butt heads with.
Marcella must have felt her reputation as the most hard-headed person in the room under attack and opened her mouth to defend herself. I got up noisily to interrupt her and save us all the embarrassment.
“I can tell you’re a busy woman,” I said. I put myself between Marcella and Tabitha by going in for a handshake. “Thank you for taking the time to meet with us. I’m sure we can find the door on our own.”
“You’d better,” she said, standing herself. “If I find either of you snooping around my school or pestering my kids, I won’t hesitate to call the police.”
Marcella stammered, but she got up as Tabitha and I moved toward the door. Tabitha had given me far more information than she knew. I didn’t want to risk anything by pushing too hard.
I put my hand on Marcella’s arm again to keep her marching down the hall. When we were around the corner, away from Tabitha’s searing glare, she jerked it back.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked.
My words echoed through the hallway, empty except for one juvenile penguin with tufted gray feathers. He waddled as fast as his spindly legs could carry him toward the bathroom, clutching his hall pass.
“Hey, watch your mouth. Wouldn’t want any of these young, impressionable kids to hear.”
“I’m sure they’ve heard worse,” I said. “Now answer the question.”
“Guess you’d call it a hunch.”
“Hunches are my thing. You stick to scoops. I’m sure you’d happily spill whatever I find.”
“Sure.” Marcella turned a corner and reached back to drag me toward the exit I had missed. “But it’s not like you’re going to share. Besides, you work too slow.”
“Faster than the police, at least.”
“You sure about that? They already knew Ethan had been expelled.”
“True,” I said, “but they didn’t care to do anything with that information.”
“Maybe they have and just haven’t deigned to tell you. You ever consider that?”
A whistle blew outside as we approached the glass and steel airlock of the school’s main entrance. A sea of kids charged the doors, and we had to wade through them to get outside. Coach Myers took a break from gruffly encouraging the stragglers to scowl at us from across the playground.
“What are you going to do now?” Marcella asked as we started down the steps toward the front gate.
“Why? So you can wait for me there too?”
“Or we could work together. Share information. That’d make sure we didn’t get in each other’s way or waste time retreading the same leads.”
“Weren’t you trying to tell Tabitha you were a respectable journalist? Shouldn’t you be out covering the election?”
“Right. I am a respectable journalist; that’s why I leave the entertainment news to someone else.”
The schoolyard gate wasn’t locked. I held it open for Marcella, then made sure it latched behind me. It wasn’t much of a deterrent, but I didn’t want any fingers pointing at me if another kid went missing.
“Besides, after the response my initial story got, my boss gave me free range on the follow-up.”
Dolores was parked across the street like a crusty booger wiped on the underside of a desk. I didn’t look at her but walked beside Marcella as she led me toward her car around the corner. “You didn’t happen to exploit my involvement to boost your story, did you?”
“Hmm… Let me think. Did I mention the moody detective with a troubled past? A man who was once more famous than the ex-starlet he meant to help? More widely recognized than the fresh-faced boy with dreams of becoming an actor could ever hope to be? Yeah, you might have come up.”
I growled. Couldn’t help myself. If she was as serious a journalist as she claimed, her story wouldn’t treat me kindly. Her readers wouldn’t either.
The relentless jaws of public discourse had only recently finished grinding my bones to dust for my previous failures. Now Marcella was out there, poking the faceless legion with a stick and reminding them I still existed. When I failed to turn up anything on the kid, my name would attract even more disdain.
Marcella stopped next to an off-beige Buick, with just the first mold-like spackle of rust creeping up the side panel.
“Where’s your ride?” she asked, looking down the empty street.
I hitched my thumb over my back to indicate the way we had come.
“Aw, you walked me to my car. How sweet? Never expected you to be much of a gentleman.”
“I’m not. Just wanted to make sure you didn’t sneak back inside.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Maybe try giving it a shot. I wasn’t kidding about us working the case together. Imagine what we could accomplish.”
“You don’t have a case,” I said. “Hell, you barely have a headline. Just spit out some sappy bullshit like you hacks always do and call it a day. I’ve got work to do.”
Marcella looked more offended than I expected. I almost felt bad. Almost.
I turned around and listened for her door to open, then close. I didn’t want to give her any thoughts by looking back, so I kept walking and let the slow burble of traffic passing down the street drown out the sounds of her car starting.
Marcella would be all right on her own. I just hoped she stayed out of my way from here on out. If the suspicions I’d picked up from Tabitha were correct, she might turn over every leaf, rock, and manhole cover in the city and never go down the same path I went down.
I crossed the road at an intersection before I needed to. I wasn’t opposed to jaywalking, but the crosswalk light had happened to change as I approached. When a clear path presented itself, I took it. Swimming upstream was great for the poets and divas of the world, but I’d learned to stick to the path of least resistance.
Things were finally going my way. I dared to hope the streak would roll into getting Dolores started, but the next bit of luck came even sooner. The new route I took to Dolores passed by a row of payphones under the awning in front of a bank. Maybe I should have waited to call Virginia until I got back to my office, or even hunted her down in person, but I couldn’t help myself when I saw the phones.
I felt a new sense of urgency now that I’d caught the first whiff of a lead since finding the footprints at the scene of Al’s murder. I could allow myself to believe Ethan was still alive, but I could also imagine that changing in a hurry. Cal’s planted thoughts about cartoons struck again, and I pictured Ethan bound to a chair, under which was a novelty alarm clock plugged into a bundle of dynamite, the second hand inching toward the red twelve with earth-quakingly weighty ticks.
I stopped at the middle of the three cubbies. The one on the right was missing the handset, and the one on the left had an unsettling wet spot underneath it, fed by an occasional drip from inside the pay phone’s housing. The one I chose had been defaced as well—the expected outcome for any public utility, but a goddamn guarantee for one located across the street from a school full of adolescent boys.
Mostly, the preteen angst was expressed in formless scratches, dents, and wads of chewed gum, but I also saw a cluster of weathered stars that looked like they had come from Tabitha’s sticker sheets. The most articulate bit of graffiti was a short poem, saved from the vandalism of other ne’er-do-wells by dint of its cogency:
“Coach Myers’s class lasts an hour
The whistle he wears gives him power
He dreams of Garnett and wants to plow her
Until then, he’ll watch you shower.”
The meter could use some work and the A-A-A-A rhyme scheme was juvenile, but I couldn’t be too harsh since a literal child had written it.
I pinned the receiver to my ear with my shoulder, listened for a dial tone to make sure it worked, then wormed a finger into the change return slot just in case. My luck wasn’t quite that good, and I had to dig into my pocket for a quarter.
The coin clunked, bounced, and rattled through the mechanism until it passed the switch to turn on the juice. I flipped through my notepad to find Virginia’s number and jabbed it into the keypad with quick pecks like a hen eating dried corn.
There was a brief pause when the number was through, then the speaker trilled to let me know some distant phone was ringing. I flipped to my notebook’s next blank page and knocked the pencil out of the coils, but the phone kept ringing.
Traffic was light and free, so the slowly rolling tires crunching behind me got my attention. I expected to see Marcella pulling up to the curb, but instead I saw a long black car giving me its broadside. All luxury cars looked just about the same to me, but this one was especially familiar. It dragged ass further down the street and I saw the same Cadillac emblem on its back as I had seen on the car I squeezed behind when I crossed to the school. Its windows had the same irresponsible and almost definitely illegal tint.
I leaned away from the booth to get a better look at the car. Before I got a bead on the shaded license plate in its recessed housing, the ringing in my ear ended with a click, changing to a breathless croak.
“Hello.”
“Mrs. Calhoun, it’s Howl.”
“Howl?” she said. She sounded slow, as if she’d just been asleep or crying.
“Listen, Virginia, I’ve got good news for you.”
That woke her up in a hurry. “You found Ethan?”
“Not quite, but I’ve got a lead. The good news is that when I find him, you might not need to worry about money much, regardless of if his PSA gig works out.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her exhaustion returning with a sniff.
“Your kid’s an enterprising young man. Seems he’s got himself enough scratch kicking around to hire an actor, at least.”
“Mr. O’Howell, you’re not making nay sense.”
“Ma’am, have you ever heard of a man named Sidewalk Wally?”
I heard a lighter click on Virginia’s end, a moment of silence, then a low whistle as Virginia blew smoke out her beak. When she spoke again, she sounded less like a puddle of melted wax. “Oh, I don’t know, Mr. O’Howell. Is that some cartoon character?”
“You aren’t around much for Ethan, are you?” I asked, hoping the abrasive question would wake her up more than the cigarette. “Don’t know much about what he gets up to?”
“Hey! He’s an independent kid and I work a lot, so…” The dig at her neglect got her fired up, but was it really indignation? Or was it vanity? I had noticed the same reflexive defense when I questioned her unwarranted trust of Adora’s driver. That questioning had been vindicated by bloodshed. “Hold on a minute, didn’t I tell you to drop the case? I’m not paying for you to go poking around behind the police.”
“Call it pro bono, then.”
“Mr. O’Howell…” Virginia’s voice trailed off, running back down as the exhaustion slipped back in.
I sensed eyes on me and looked in the rust marred reflection on the coin return lever. The rounded design gave me a wide field of view and I saw another black car coming my way. Before I could figure out if it was the same one from earlier, I saw a more conspicuous figure standing by the curb. For a second, I wished my snubnose wasn’t locked behind the flimsy door of Dolores’s glove compartment. Then I saw a long, bushy tail swish behind the trench coat. If the image wasn’t so distorted, I would have seen Marcella’s face under the stranger’s fedora. She wasn’t dangerous, just eminently annoying.
“Sorry, ma’am, I’ve got to go. But I will find your son.”
“Mr. O’Howell. Don’t—” the handset continued to vent a tinny simulacrum of Virginia’s voice until I chopped it back down on the receiver.
I turned my back to Marcella and walked toward Dolores without engaging. Marcella sensed I knew she was there just as I had sensed her behind me.
“Who’s Sidewalk Wally?” she asked, falling into step with me.
“No one to you.”
“Guess I’ll have to ask around,” she said with an indifferent shrug. If she asked anyone who’d spent an appreciable amount of time below The Fold, it wouldn’t take her long to find him.
I stopped behind Dolores’s rear bumper, causing Marcella to stumble. I jabbed a finger at her and put on my most commanding voice. “You leave him out of this. I know you wouldn’t hesitate to exploit him and his…situation for the glory of a few hundred readers’ eyeballs crawling over your name in the byline. I won’t have it.”
Marcella refused to bend. Her back stayed straight, and she met my eye. “I would never. Not unless he was relevant to the case. If you think he’s a victim too, I promise I will handle him with the same respect I handled Ethan and Al.”
“Right. You raked them through the coals, sensationalized their story to get your readers hooked. Not ten minutes ago you were inside hoping to dig up more dirt on the kid so you could smear it across another half page column.”
“Howl! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I met a hundred reporters like you when I was on the force. You’re all the same. Bottom feeders. Lowest of the low. You’d be first in line to take a photograph of your dead mother if you thought it would look good on the front page.”
Marcella shook her head, defiant. “You don’t know me and clearly you don’t know my reporting.”
“I’m dead serious, Miss Furone. I’m going to talk to Sidewalk Wally, and I had better not see you sniffing around while I’m there. You got that?”
She tried to speak up, but I bullied her down, pushing past to get around to Dolores’s driver’s side. It took a bit of awkward wiggling to open the door, but after a weak-sounding creak when it first got moving, it made a satisfying whoosh and crunch to punctuate the end of the conversation.
I watched Marcella in the rear-view and flipped open my notepad. Nothing banging around in my head was so important I had to write it down that second, but I had enough trouble getting Dolores to start when I didn’t have an audience. Performance anxiety is a bitch.
I filled in a couple details from my snooping—a description of the kids I talked to in the playground, Coach Myers and the allegations of misconduct I’d picked up from the venerable source of pay phone graffiti, speculations about sidewalk Wally’s involvement.
I knew I was missing something, but Marcella was gone next time I looked at the mirror. I pushed through the geriatric inertia of Dolores’s coma and shoved off into the ambling traffic. Ahead, I saw the sharp right angle of a black Cadillac’s rear quarter panel turning the corner. If I still had my notepad in hand, I might have written it down, but I made myself let it go.
There were a lot of wealthy neighborhoods nearby, made sense there were a few nice cars bumbling about. My mind was just primed for making connections. I needed to stay focused on Wally.