The Snake Tattoo (13 page)

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.

CHAPTER 14

Reardon's office stood open and empty, so I asked a passing student to point out the little theater. She clutched her books and gave hesitant directions studded with “ers,” “ums,” “I guesses,” and “you knows,” finally mentioning a set of stained-glass windows, round like portholes, and patterned in blue doves with scarlet eyes. I saw those and made for them.

It was pitch dark inside double doors that closed behind me with a whoosh. A class was on stage—small, maybe fifteen students. The stage lights blazed, but the auditorium was black, so I crept forward and grabbed a seat, a secret audience.

Once my eyes adjusted, I had no trouble understanding Jerry's jealousy or getting a fix on Haslam's rumors. Geoffrey Reardon was, to put it simply, gorgeous. Sprawled on the stage floor with one knee bent, one leg extended, leaning back on his palms, he'd stationed himself under a baby spot that haloed his hair. Outside fairy tales, not many people have golden hair. It's straw or yellow, sandy or badly bleached. Reardon's hair belonged in an art museum; it was Rembrandt-burnished gold.

He had a sharp profile, a chiseled nose—and believe me, I'm rarely tempted to use the word “chiseled” in that context—a mustache a shade darker than his hair, great teeth. Full front, his face was broad, with high cheekbones, and a genuine Kirk Douglas chin cleft. His circle of surrounding students was mainly female—surprise, surprise—and they stared at him with spaniel eyes.

Much like my own, I thought ruefully, glad of the protective dark.

Why, I wondered, was this breathtaking specimen not on some larger stage? In front of cameras? Earning a fortune churning out TV commercials, modeling Jockey shorts if he couldn't act at all?

I took time out to regulate my breathing and to scold myself for assuming that Reardon's looks, surely not his fault, were his stock in trade. I was not going to cast him as a bimbo. Not before I spoke to him.

He rose in one smooth motion and the kids, in feeble imitation, stood, too. They did stretching exercises in a set pattern everyone seemed to know. I felt like joining in—that is, all of me except my aching knee felt like joining in. At a signal, the kids broke rank and started moving on their own. Some did jerky rap-dance steps, some balletic leaps and whirls. A dark-haired boy vaulted an imaginary horse. A girl with long, dark hair tried a cartwheel. She wore tights and a big shirt that threatened to slide up over her bra.

Occasionally, Reardon, prowling the stage restlessly, would yell, and all movement would cease. Then he'd say something, and they'd start again, dancing and spinning and jumping.

It was fun to watch, this game of frozen tag, but it could have used music. To tell the truth, I couldn't figure the exercise out. The kids seemed to enjoy it. It was a far cry from my high-school memories of rigid desks, forced motionlessness, and silence.

Sometimes Reardon joined the dance, as if he had too much energy to stop himself. His movements were stunning, exciting, abrupt. One moment he was still, then he'd erupt, then the stillness again, making me doubt he'd moved at all. He wore a turquoise cotton knit sweater, khaki pants, and white running shoes. His body was slight, but hard. His hair gleamed.

Had Valerie been part of this class? Had she moved in circles, leaps, or stutters?

He motioned and they circled, touching hands, murmuring, the first and only hint of “cult.” Then the kids turned and vanished into the bordering black curtains. Alone on stage, Reardon executed a lazy dance step to unheard music.

I could have watched him for hours. I licked my lips and cleared my throat.

He turned like a cat. “Somebody out there?”

I made my way past rows of quiet blue velvet chairs.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello.” He looked relieved, glad I wasn't somebody else. His brow furrowed attractively. I wasn't a teacher he knew. Too old for a student. He smiled. It seemed flirtatious, but that could have been me.

If I'd been fifteen, I'd have rolled over and died.

“Uh, can I help you?” he said.

“I left you my card,” I said firmly, thankful I was not fifteen.

He was beautiful. It wasn't the lights or anything. He glowed. He probably caused traffic accidents when he went out to get the mail.

I said, “I left my card on your desk. Carlotta Carlyle. The private investigator.”

He jammed his hands into his pockets and smiled less comfortably. “Oh, yeah. I remember now. I don't see many cards like that. So it's not a joke, huh?”

His voice told me why he hadn't advanced professionally. Speech teachers might have tried, but nobody'd pried all of New Jersey out of that voice. Worse, it was high and reedy. In the days of silent film, he might have rivaled Valentino. Today, he'd have to do spaghetti westerns and get them dubbed.

In some ways his voice was a relief. He didn't distract me as much. I find ugly men with great voices more attractive than great-looking men with icky voices.

“You don't fit my image,” he said.

“You don't fit mine,” I said.

We looked at each other. He was at stage level and I was two and a half feet below.

“Stairs?” I asked.

He leaned down. “I'll give you a hand up,” he said.

I didn't have a chance to say no. When somebody extends his hand like that you think he's going to shake. It's practically reflex, you stick your own out. Next thing I knew I was on stage next to the man and he was grinning. I wondered if he practiced that move on his girl students.

He was maybe two inches shorter than me. He had muscles.

“So what can I do for you?” he said. I got the feeling he'd preferred me on lower ground.

“Is there someplace we can talk?” I said. The view from the stage was weird. I couldn't even see the seat I'd occupied so recently. Other eyes could be out there in the dark.

He checked his watch. “Here or my office?”

“Your office,” I said.

“I don't have a lot of time.”

“Me either,” I said, which was a lie.

He led the way behind black curtains to a metal door and shoved it open with one shoulder, ushering me through. The noise of laughing, chattering kids was deafening. The theater must have been soundproofed. I recognized the hallway outside Reardon's office.

He closed the door behind me, indicated the chair in front of his desk, and sat in the one behind it. The manuscript on his blotter was gone. The split-leaf philodendron had gotten a much-needed drink.

“I can give you fifteen minutes,” he said.

I remembered the stash of Wild Turkey in his bottom drawer.

He spread his elbows on the desk and formed his joined fingers into a pyramid. “I don't mean to be rude,” he said looking me straight in the eye. “I have another class. And then rehearsal.”

His eyes were Paul Newman blue. “They keep you busy,” I said.

“Incredibly. They seem to think I need no preparation time, that I just crank the stuff out. It's exhausting.”

Playing frozen tag with fifteen-year-olds didn't look like ditch-digging to me. “I saw part of your class,” I said.

“That's a good group. Very fluid. Open.”

Fluid? Open?

“Is Valerie in that class?” I asked.

“Valerie?” he said.

“Valerie Haslam.”

“Is that what this is about?” he asked. “This investigator stuff? Valerie? I heard she'd run off.”

“Who from?”

“Gossip and rumor. It's how I get most of my news.”

I nodded, and he gave me a smile that generated heat. He sat up straighter, and his whole manner seemed to change. He started talking eagerly, as if he were glad to see me.

“Valerie's not in the advanced group,” he said. “No way. She's part of my nightmare class.” He had a trick of speaking very softly, confidingly, drawing the listener nearer. This listener didn't mind. His voice sounded better soft.

He probably knew that.

“The counseling department,” he said, “such as it is, has decided that kids needing a few easy credits, especially kids who act out in other classes, need drama in their lives. They ought to send them to woodworking, math, science, teach them a little discipline. I don't want them.”

I had the feeling I was not the first to hear this little outburst. “Troublemakers?” I inquired sympathetically, while thinking to myself that this man wouldn't know a troublemaker if he tripped over one. Let him go to Paolina's school for a few days. Let him meet nine-year-olds with knives.

He sighed. His mustache had not a waxed hair out of place. “I was going to put a picture of the Statue of Liberty on my office door with the caption: ‘Send me your drugged, your weird, your outcasts, yearning to leave school.'”

He waited for me to smile my appreciation of his cleverness, then went on: “Oh, they're not all bad. They're harmless kids, really, most of them. Valerie's very sweet. Open, no. Getting her to move was like pulling teeth at first. They're so self-conscious, these kids. I used to see her in the hallways, walking next to the lockers, maybe an inch away from them, staring straight ahead. Scary. She was very closed when the class started, but there was something there, something strange, even wild, secretive. I thought she had depth—and now …”

“Now?” I prompted.

“Well, I guess her running away proves it.”

“Proves what?”

“That she's not as ordinary as she seems, not like every-humdrum-body-else. Maybe that she's synthesizing her experience, creating her own art—”

“By running away?”

“Look,” he said, “I've been here four years. We've had two suicides, God knows how many pregnancies, more runaways than I can count. This place may look like heaven, but it's not.”

The way he said it, it seemed like a direct warning: Things are not as they seem. I couldn't get a fix on him. His self-conscious artiness, his set phrases and catchwords were like a foreign language. And he was such a performer, using his entire body for the emphasis his voice couldn't quite provide.