Bayview Heights Trilogy (11 page)

Scanning the teams on the court, he
recognized a lot of the people. Some of the older teachers, mostly
the new ones. A couple of administrators. Idly—or so he told
himself—he perused the group for sassy purple pants and an even
sassier... He cut off the thought but continued to look for
her.

She wasn’t there. Methodically, he went back
and checked out each person. Cassie was not among them.

The game ended and a beer break was called.
Mitch waited as Zoe wandered off the court with Ross Martin, one of
the other At-Risk teachers, and the young vice principal, Alex
Ransom. When Zoe spotted Mitch, she smiled warmly. “Hi, did you
bring Cassie?”

His heart beat stumbled. “No. Isn’t she
here?”

Zoe shook her head, her eyes narrowing. “She
was supposed to meet us at seven. She never showed.”

“We thought maybe she was with you,” Ross
added. “We knew you two had a meeting.”

Plunking the glass down on the table to his
right, Mitch fished in his pocket for his keys. “I left her at
school at exactly six o’clock.” He found his keys and looked up at
Cassie’s three colleagues. “Did you call her house?”

“Yes, of course,” Zoe told him.

“School?”

“You can’t call school at night, Mitch,”
Ransom said.

“Does she have a cell phone?”

“No.”

Abruptly, Mitch turned to go, but pivoted
back for a minute and touched Zoe’s arm. “It’s probably all right.
I’ll go by the school and call you here when I find her.”

If I find her.

The thought echoed in his mind and bounced
off the interior of his car for the entire twelve-minute trip back
to Bayview Heights High School. He made it in seven, thanks to his
portable flashing red light and siren. Once at the complex, he
drove right up the bus loop and left the door open and the engine
on as he ran to the front of the school. As he’d feared, the
outside door was locked.

He gunned the engine over to the gym
entrance. His long legs eating up the distance into school, he
reached the east corridor, only to find the double fire doors
locked.

Damn.

“I-am-the-Phantom-of-the-Ope-ra.” The lyrics
were being belted out from somewhere on his left. Spotting the
janitor, Mitch called out, “Hank, over here. Unlock this for
me.”

The old man came down the hall at what seemed
a snail’s pace. “Everything okay, Captain?”

Mitch remembered the tender look on the guy’s
face when he talked to Cassie. “Yeah, I think so. I just need to
see Cassie again. Thanks.” He took off down the dark, deserted
corridor.

Cassie’s door was wide open. Inside, he could
hear the faint rock music coming from her radio. The middle drawer
of her desk was ajar, and a napkin lay wadded up by a cup of
coffee. He touched the mug. It was cold.

“Cassie?” he called.

No answer.

“Cassie?”

Silence.

He raised his voice. “
Cassie?
”

Then he heard it. The pounding from the back
of the room. Coming from behind a door. He strode to it and yanked
on the knob. It didn’t budge. Glancing down, he saw the key and
twisted it viciously. He pulled open the door.

Cassie was standing on the other side, her
face flushed. She’d removed both the sweatshirt and pants, but
still her hair was damp and there were beads of perspiration on her
brow. Roughly he grabbed her arms.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She looked at him quizzically. “What
are you doing here?”

“What happened?”

“I got locked inside the storage closet.”

“How?” When she didn’t answer right away, his
hands tightened on her shoulders.
“How?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Look, I’d like to get
out of here.”

Reluctantly, he stepped back and withdrew his
hands. He didn’t know what he’d expected—certainly not that she’d
throw herself into his arms in a terrified storm of weeping. But
also not this cool, collected response to being locked up for
hours.

He watched as she walked over to the desk,
looked down at it, then turned to face him, her arms crossed over
her chest. “Why did you come back?”

He explained his impulsive trip to Hotshots.
The smile that lit her face was hard to ignore. So he forced
himself to play the cop. “Cassie, sit down and tell me exactly how
this happened.”

She blew her bangs out of her face and
shivered.

Returning to the storeroom, he picked up her
sweat suit and gave it to her. It was a little damp.

“Put this on.”

“Haven’t we already been through this
tonight?” she said lightly as she leaned against the edge of the
desk.

“This is no joking matter. Somebody locked
you in this closet.”

“What makes you think that?”

“What other explanation is there?”

“I left the key in the door. I could have
relocked it.”

“And who closed it, the Opera Ghost?”

Cassie smiled. “Very quick, Captain.”

“
Cassie?
”

“All right. Earlier, I felt a draft from the
hall, like someone had opened the door. The wind could have blown
the storeroom door closed.”

“The outside door is locked.”

“Now. Maybe not—” She looked at the clock.
“Wow, I’ve been in there two hours?”

“Someone could have come in and trapped you
in there.”

She frowned. “One of the kids?” Her
expression turned into a scowl. “I’ll kill them if they pulled a
prank like this on me.”

“Maybe it isn’t a prank.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Would anyone want to hurt you? Scare
you?”

“No one.”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

She angled her chin. “Why would I lie?”

“To protect someone?”

“Who?”

“You tell me.”

“Look, Captain, I’m not in the mood for
guessing games. If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise,
I’m going home.”

Suddenly, anger, mixed with the anxiety Mitch
had felt since he discovered she’d never made it to Hotshots, was
ignited by a fierce blast of desire. He grabbed her shoulders again
and gave her a not-very-gentle shake. “Damn you, I was
worried.”

Her eyes deepened to charcoal, and her lips
parted slightly. Her breathing speeded up, making his own breath
catch in his throat. “You were?”

He yanked her to him. She was tall, and as he
locked his hand at her neck, he could feel how perfectly each soft
curve of her body fit against the hard planes of his. He pressed
her face into his chest and threaded his hand in her hair, then he
buried his lips in it. “Yes,” he whispered hoarsely. “I was.”

He felt her relax against him, and allowed
himself to enjoy the sensation of holding her close.

“Hey, what are you doin’ down here?” The
voice from the hall was raised and irritated.

Mitch stiffened. He glanced toward the door
and saw someone whiz past it, heading down the corridor to the
front of the school.

In seconds, Mitch set Cassie aside and bolted
for the door. The intruder was six feet away from the outside exit
when Mitch tackled him. He slammed the guy facedown, jammed his
knee in the man’s spine and yanked his arm behind his back.

From behind him, Cassie asked, “What’s going
on?”

Then the janitor said, “I saw this guy—”

“Let me up, you bastard.” The voice was
familiar enough, but when Mitch heard Cassie’s gasp, he knew who
his victim was. Jerking the kid’s head to the side, Mitch could
clearly see Johnny Battaglia’s profile.

JOHNNY KICKED the loose gravel with the toe
of his boot as he made his way up the alley that led to Zorro’s
tenement house. The midnight wind whipped his Blisters jacket open,
sending a chill skittering through him. The nylon coat wasn’t warm
enough for the end of January, but after the scene at school,
Johnny had purposefully gone home and exchanged his heavy parka for
his gang jacket. He tried not to think about what had happened, but
he couldn’t stop remembering....

“Let me up, you bastard,” he’d said to
Lansing after he’d been tackled like some featherweight. He hadn’t
realized the cop was so big.

“Not until I get some answers.”

“Mitch, what are you doing?” It was Cassie,
standing behind them.

Thank God, Johnny had thought. She’d call off
this watchdog.

“Let him up. Right now.”

Reluctantly, Lansing had let go, and Johnny
scrambled to his feet.

“I’ve caught our prankster,” Lansing said
when Johnny faced him. “Get a kick out of locking your teacher in
the storeroom? Out of scaring Ms. Smith?”

Johnny remembered his confusion. Until he
looked at Cassie. She’d stood there with accusation in her eyes,
written all over her disappointed face.

It was only for a second. But it was
enough.

“You believe him.” It wasn’t a question.

She’d shaken off the doubt, almost visibly.
But it had been there. Briefly, Johnny explained that he’d been on
his way to catch the end of the wrestling match after work and seen
her room lights on from the parking lot. He was stopping by to say
hello. In truth, he was going to tell her she shouldn’t have been
at school so late, all alone, but he hadn’t revealed that. He’d
listened while Lansing told him what had happened, but he didn’t
look again at Cassie.

After the explanation, she’d insisted Johnny
didn’t do it, that Lansing let him go. When the cop agreed, she
asked to talk to Johnny alone.

“We got nothin’ to say to each other,” he’d
said callously, and stalked out of the building…

And ended up here, for more than one reason.
Hunching against the cold, he headed to the front door, carefully
picking his way around broken glass and scattered two-by-fours. He
entered through a thin, creaky door, turned right and strode down
the first-floor hallway. A naked bulb burned above, illuminating
the colorless walls. Water stains ran down in tiny rivulets, and
there was a new hole in the plaster about the size of a man’s
fist.

Johnny rapped hard on the door to apartment
112, stinging his knuckles.

“Enter.”

Inside, he found Zorro staring at a
black-and-white TV, its volume so muted Johnny could barely hear
it. When Zorro glanced up, his ebony eyes lit from within. “Tonto,
my man.”

For a moment, Johnny glimpsed the boy he
loved behind the facade of a man he no longer respected. Walking to
the rumpled bed, Johnny leaned over and grabbed Zorro by the collar
of his faded flannel shirt. He yanked hard.

Zorro’s head snapped back and his chin
bobbed. “What the fuck—”

“Saw your car at school an hour ago.”

Zorro stared at him. “No, man. I been here
all night.”

“I saw it. I was on my way to the wrestling
match.”

“What you doin’ at a wrestlin’ match?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I ain’t.”

Johnny studied Zorro’s face. His eyes were
smudged underneath with faint purple rings. The two-inch scar on
his cheek—earned in a knife fight at fourteen—had faded over the
years, but still marred his olive skin. A trademark of the
Blisters, his hair was shaved on each side and shaggy on top. It
was the exact texture and color of Johnny’s own hair, which was now
cropped short. They’d pretended for years they were brothers.
Hell—they
were
brothers in all the important ways.

For a moment, Johnny was transported back to
the old neighborhood. He’d been seven when his father first hit
him. Johnny had staggered out of the apartment right into his best
buddy....

“What happen to your face?” Zorro had
asked.

“Nothin’.”

Zorro, a year older and quite a bit bigger,
had grabbed Johnny’s shoulder and inspected his cheek. “You got
hit.”

Mortified, Johnny shook his head. But he
couldn’t quell the tears filling his eyes.

Zorro had dragged him down the hallway into
his own seedy three-room place. “My old man hits me,” Zorro said,
snagging some ice, popping it into a bag and scrunching it into
Johnny’s face. “Lemme tell ya what I do....”

The memory increased Johnny’s need to believe
his friend. He let go of Zorro’s shirt and dropped down on the
chair next to the bed. “Aw, hell, I thought it was your car. Maybe
not.”

“Why you think I was at your stupid
school?”

“Somebody locked Cassie in the storeroom. I
thought you’d paid her another visit.”

Zorro’s eyes turned February frigid. He swore
vilely.

Johnny glared at him. “Don’t say nothin’
about her.”

Like quicksilver, Zorro came off the bed. He
kicked a wastebasket, sending the contents flying. “What’s with you
and that broad, man? You sure you ain’t gettin’ it on with
her?”

Johnny closed his eyes. God, he was tired of
this. Zorro just couldn’t understand how he felt about Cassie. It
wasn’t sexual. It was sisterly and maternal and friendship all
mixed together. “Let’s drop it.”

Zorro’s eyes flamed at him for a few seconds,
reminding Johnny why his friend had been sought out to head the
Sixth Street gang. As one of the toughest fighters in lower
Manhattan, Zorro held grudges that would shame the Mafia. He was
also the best with a blade—hence his name—and dangerously reckless
when he used it.

“Fine, I’ll forget it if you come with me
tonight,” Zorro said.

“Where?”

Zorro’s smile was silky. “An initiation.”

Johnny sighed and checked his watch, stalling
for time. He remembered his own jumping in. He could almost feel
again the punches jabbing him in the gut, at the temples. He could
hear the crack of bone that led him to wonder if his jaw was
broken. He’d been sick to his stomach for an hour after. Zorro had
held his head until he was finished. Johnny had been thirteen.

“Tonto?”

Johnny stared at his buddy. Why the hell not?
he thought as he stood and zipped up his jacket. He wasn’t going
near school tomorrow. Not after the bastard accused
him
of
locking her up. Not after the look in Cassie’s eyes said she’d
believed the cop—if only for a few seconds.
Any doubt
about something like that was enough.