The Snake Tattoo (14 page)

“Do you have any idea where Valerie might be?” I asked.

“No.”

“Why she went?”

“No.”

There was a faint hesitation this time. He smiled at me, as if we were playing a game and he knew the rules and I didn't.

“I heard you were her favorite teacher,” I said.

“Really?” He pushed his hair back off his forehead. “I'm flattered. I thought she was starting to get into the movement games, the exercises. She has a very soft voice, not a good stage voice, but she has a presence. Her mime is exciting, even when it's technically flawed.”

“Was she in any of your after-school productions?”

“Nothing with a speaking role. But we did some improvisational pieces in the fall, experimental stuff, and, yes, I think she was involved in one or two of those. She moves well. But I didn't know I was her favorite teacher. She doesn't even hand her work in on time.”

“So if she told her family that she was staying after school for drama club—”

“Recently? Then she would have been lying.” He smiled, a wonderfully warm, flirtatious smile that looked as if it had been practiced in a dozen mirrors. “Acting, maybe.”

“I imagine a lot of the girls have crushes,” I said.

“What can you do?” he said smugly.

I thought of a few things—like not batting your eyelashes so shamelessly, wearing your clothes a little looser, not posing in the sunlight …

“They express their admiration in giggles,” he continued. “I have taught enough giggling teenagers to last me a lifetime. I won't miss it.”

“You're leaving.” I said. Not a question, but a statement.

“I hope and pray this will be my last year.”

“Another teaching job?” I asked.

“God forbid. I have had teaching up to here and then some.” He smiled again. This one was a variation on the friendly flirtatious one. More sidelong. Smile number two.

“I may take some time off,” he continued. “Maybe dance instead of act. I need to get back to performing. Make the New York scene before I get hopelessly old and stale. I hope this will be my last year of giggling misfits.”

Given his voice, dance would be a good field. God, he could just stand still. Movement would be extra.

“Then I have this play,” he said eagerly. “This thing I wrote. It's been going no place forever, but I'm going to open it up, turn it into a screenplay. I may have some financial backing. I'm a good director. I'd like to do my own script, but you need clout for that. Hollywood is so uncertain.” He nodded a few times, staring at the ceiling, seeing something up there that I couldn't.

Hooray for Hollywood, I thought. Why should it be different?

“You said Valerie handed in her assignments late,” I said.

“Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yes, she did.”

“All of them?”

“I don't give much written work. That's why the counselors sic the losers on me. But they all have to keep a diary, a kind of interior monologue, throughout the class, and I give specific assignments from time to time. The kids never know when the diary's going to be collected. Otherwise, they'd wait until the day before it's due and write a whole semester's worth of bilge in one night. I hate it when it takes longer for me to read the tripe than it took them to write it.” Charming smile number three.

“An interior monologue?” I said.

“Their thoughts about the school experience, about themselves, about each other, about me. I try to make them bring their own experiences to acting, so they have to be aware of their emotions. And by the time I get them, by the time they're teenagers, they're already so caught up in
not
showing their feelings. For the boys in particular, even acknowledging emotion is hard.”

His hands flew as he spoke, very expressive hands, fingers fully extended. His eyes, open very wide, never left my own. I felt like I was watching a performance given especially for me.

“Do you have the diaries for Valerie's class?” I asked.

He thought it over. “I collected them a few weeks ago.”

“Valerie's?”

“Hers was late.”

“Could I have a look at it?”

Smile number four, apologetic, but sincere. “I'm sorry, but one of the few things I make a point of is absolute privacy. Otherwise I'd never get them to explore their minds, would I? They know the diary's a safe place to bring their thoughts.”

“It might give me an idea of where she's gone.”

“Sorry. I just can't do it.” His eyes went to a drawer in his desk. I remembered the notebook with the rotten handwriting. Dammit, Valerie's might have been the next one in the pile. “Look,” he said, “If there's anything in Valerie's diary about running away, about a special place, anything like that, I'll call you. I have your number.”

“When?” I asked.

“You really think this might help?”

“Yes,” I said.

“As soon as I can. I've got a lot of stuff on right now, but maybe I can find time tonight. No guarantee.”

“The girl's been missing a week,” I said.

“And you're looking for her,” he said. “How on earth did you get to be a private investigator?”

“I was a cop,” I said in a tone that usually kills conversation about what I want to be when I grow up.

“Oh.”

“You mentioned the guidance department. Who was Valerie's guidance counselor?”

“She didn't have one.” Reardon leaned back complacently. “She never went. Very intelligent decision on her part.”

“You don't think she needed guidance?”

“Not the kind they give. They're not therapists, they're high school guidance counselors. They've got slots and they stick kids in them. All they care about is where you go to college. They guide you to a college, period. They don't want to talk. They don't listen.”

“But you do.”

“Valerie never confided in me, not in words.”

“Without words, then,” I said. “What did you see in Valerie?”

He paused, seemed to give the question some thought. “I don't know. A kind of desperation, maybe. Who knows if I saw what was there? Or what she meant me to see.”

I wondered if this guy ever saw anything beyond himself reflected in other people's eyes.

“About tonight,” he said, smiling, flirting. “Those diaries. I'll really try to get back to you. Is the number on your card home or office?”

“Both,” I said.

There was a knock on the door and a soft voice said, “Geoff, you in there?”

Reardon checked his wristwatch. “I'm late,” he said, standing and waiting for me to precede him out of the office. He made quite a production out of locking his door, patting the key in his pants pocket.

The girl in the hallway was more than pretty, with silky blonde hair and a glossy pink leotard. She took his arm to lead him to the stage. Very touchy-feely, this drama coach. Damn friendly, these kids and their teachers.

I watched them disappear down the hall and wondered if the initials “GR” on the back of Valerie's photo stood for Geoffrey Reardon.

I took a few steps and my knee almost buckled. I wondered if the extravagance of the Emerson ran to hot tubs for the gym.

CHAPTER 15

I made it home by four-thirty. The plumbers had not installed a tub. Undeterred by the gaping hole that yawned in its place, they had already knocked off for the day—and Roz was nowhere to be found. The red light on my answering machine flashed, so I sank into a chair, pressed the button, and listened to Mooney's deep voice rattle off a phone number and ask me to return his call. The number wasn't his home phone.

I got a can of Pepsi out of the refrigerator, gulped enough to make my nose tickle, and dialed.

“Mooney? Yeah, hang on a minute,” the male voice said. There had been background noises on the tape; these were more distinct: the clink of glasses, the enthusiastic patter of a TV sports commentator.

“Carlotta?” Mooney said after a long wait.

“Yeah. What's up?”

“Meet me for a drink,” he said.

“Come on.” A bar. Of course. The guy answering the phone hadn't given the joint's name but a lot of bars didn't. That way customers could give out the phone number to suspicious wives and business partners.

“Come on,” Mooney insisted, and I agreed. I thought if he'd taken to spending his afternoons in bars, I ought to see how he was doing.

Al's, an Irish pub in Brighton, wasn't far away. I gave my hair a quick brush, rubbed my aching knee, and left.

Inside, Al's was dark wood and cool, but that was about all you could say on the positive side. The red leather bar stools were cracked, the long wooden bar warped, the linoleum patchy and yellowed with age. Al's solution to his wear-and-tear problems seemed to begin and end with dimming the lights. You could barely see, what with the haze of cigarette smoke.

Mooney was on the far left of the bar with three empty seats between himself and the next customer. The place wasn't crowded. The few patrons stared up at the big-screen TV, mesmerized by college basketball. Mooney's shoulders were hunched. He wore jeans and a navy sweater.

I didn't think there was another woman in the place. It was so dark, I couldn't really tell.

I tapped Mooney on the shoulder and we adjourned to a table. He already had a Molson's, and I ordered one of the same.

“You getting anywhere? You find the broad?” He asked as soon as the bartender was out of earshot.

“I'm not sure,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said. “Broad. I'm not supposed to say that, right?”

I gave him an update on my progress, bare bones, definitely not the way he'd taught me to report. I'm not sure why I didn't fill him in on all the details, but maybe it was that I didn't want him out chasing Janine. He'd missed a patch shaving, and I wasn't sure how many beers he'd downed. So I gave him the short form.

If he hadn't been drinking, he'd probably have noticed its sketchiness.

“Carlotta,” he said, tracing a wet circle on the wooden table. “Look, maybe you should just forget about it.”

“If it's the money—” I began.

“It's the damn review board. Who says they'll take her word? A hooker's testimony isn't worth shit. Maybe they'll think I threatened her, bribed her? I mean, even with a witness, unless the damn knife turns up—”

“We'll take it one step at a time, Mooney, right?”

“Sure,” he said after a long pull at his beer bottle. He had a glass, but he seemed to have forgotten about it.

“I mean, maybe the woman knows where the knife is,” I said.

“Maybe you ought to forget about it.”

“Nah,” I said. “I'm feeling lucky.”

He said, “I'm thinking of resigning.”

I'm thinking of swimming the English Channel. I'm thinking of entering a Tibetan monastery. I'm thinking of running for President
. Any of them seemed more likely statements than the first. Maybe I hadn't heard him right.

“Mooney,” I said. “For Christ's sake—”

“No,” he said. “Listen to me. I've been doing a hell of a lot of thinking, and I keep seeing that guy, that Vietnamese guy. He's still in intensive care. I mean, why the hell did I hit him so damn hard, you know?”

“He could have killed you, Mooney.”

“There was a time I'd have talked to the guy. I'd have found a way to stop him without sending him to the hospital. I'd have—Hell, maybe I've been a cop too long, you know. You get—different. You start thinking differently. About people.”

I'd spent six years teasing Mooney about leaving the force, egging him on even, because it seemed so impossible. Now—

“Mooney,” I said quickly, “you used to tell me if all the good cops left—”

“Shit, Carlotta, somebody'll do the job. Maybe it shouldn't be me anymore. Maybe I'm not one of the good guys anymore. Maybe I'm what the papers say, a racist, a Southie Irish bigot. Maybe it's part of me, the way I grew up. I remember there wasn't a kid different from me in my whole school. All Irish Catholic. And I keep thinking about that guy—I mean, I don't have a whole helluva lotta pleasant memories of Vietnam. And I can't remember what I was thinking about when he came at me. I mean, maybe I had some kind of flashback. Maybe I thought, you know, he was the goddamn enemy or something. I don't know.”

The bartender came within hailing range and Mooney waved a finger.

“Want another?” Mooney asked.

“No.”

“I hate to drink alone,” he said. “But I manage.”

I didn't respond and he ordered two beers. Maybe he intended to drink them both.

“I mean,” Mooney said. “I keep thinking if the guy hadn't been Vietnamese—”

“You said you forgot the language.”

“That's what I said.”

“Not true?” I asked.

“I don't know. I saw him coming at me and—I don't think about the time I was over there much, Carlotta, but sometimes I wake up sweating and I—”

“What?”

“Shit, I can't talk about this,” he said. “I'm sorry. How's Paolina doing? How's—”

“Mooney,” I said slowly, “you remember when I shot that guy in the Zone, before I left the force?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I remember.”

“And you sent me to Dr. Warner?”

“Yeah,” he repeated.

“That was a good thing to do. I don't think I ever thanked you for it.”

He set his half-empty beer down with a heavy thud. “You think I need a shrink,” he said.

“I think you need to talk to somebody who knows how to help. The department's got people like that. I'd like to help you, Mooney, but all I can say is I don't want you to stop being a cop, and even if you fire me, I'm going to keep on looking for this hooker because I've known you a long time, Mooney, and—shit …” I took a gulp of the second beer, the one I hadn't intended to drink.