The Snake Tattoo (8 page)

“Where can I find this Geoff?” I asked.

“Drama block. On stage or in his office.” She took a long drag on her cigarette and failed to look sophisticated. “He's dynamite,” she added.

“Great,” I said, deadpan. “Thanks so much for your help.”

She ignored my tone and started to get up. I stopped her with, “Jerry said you'd have a picture of Valerie.”

She pulled a gray leather shoulder bag onto her lap by its strap, took out a wallet, flipped through a bunch of credit cards, yes, credit cards—MasterCard, Visa, Gold American Express—until she found the right plastic sleeve. She pulled out a school photo—formal, airbrushed, perfect.

“You have to give this back,” she said.

Valerie had a solemn smile that didn't get as far as her eyes. Her hair was smooth and fine, close to her skull, cut blunt at the chin. Her face was rounder than a perfect oval, her chin small and pointed. Her eyes were almond-shaped under light brows. Her nose was small, like the nose of a small child that hasn't yet taken on its adult shape. Her eyes were hazel, her blouse collar pale blue, her skin clear. I didn't think I'd seen a kid with acne anywhere on the school grounds. I wondered if they got expelled.

I flipped it over. On the back, in childish looping handwriting, it said:

Elsie

Remember: moles = grams over liters, Renaud's algebra factory, Fridays, EJB, Class notes, Flats and flatties, In your face, GR
.

Love ya
,

Valerie

“Love ya.” Like Paolina closes her letters.

“Does she always call herself Valerie, never Val?” I asked.

“She despises Val.”

Paolina hates nicknames, too. They tried to call her Paula at school last year, told her it was more “American.” She got in a fight over it.

“Who's EJB?” I said.

“That's just junk. He's this guy I used to date. A jerk.”

“Valerie date anybody?”

“Why don't you ask Jerry Toland about that? Ask Jerry why she left, okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just ask him,” she said.

And then she walked away, swaying her hips, and trying so damn hard to look old.

CHAPTER 8

Locating Elsie used up my morning's share of luck. Even with detailed directions to the drama teacher's office, I couldn't find Geoff. He had split for the day, chaperoning a field trip, according to some future-stockbroker-of-America. I wondered where the students could have gone, what they might have wanted that wasn't provided on campus. Maybe they went to the city and watched poor people.

Geoff, whose brass name plate identified him as Mr. Geoffrey L. Reardon, left his office unlocked, probably to let his students know he had a deep and abiding trust in them. I peered casually down the hall, left and right. Nobody. So I stepped inside and shut the door. Then I yanked down the shade on the single window and flicked on the desk lamp.

The office sported a braided rug, two chairs—one a comfortable-looking leather swivel, one a ladderbacked job—and an old oak desk. Nothing fancy, just what the Emerson had ordered back in seventeen-whatever when they'd opened, well-polished and gleaming. The desk faced the window. A wood-framed Degas ballerina print tilted on the wall near the door. Two framed diplomas hung nearby. Oberlin and NYU.

I don't display my diploma. UMass—Boston did well by me, but face it, it's not a classy school.

A low three-tiered bookshelf ran along one wall. The bottom two shelves were full of thin, brightly colored play scripts. The top shelf held mementos. A tarnished trophy with a golfing figure on top and Reardon's name at the base sat next to a squat Paul Revere bowl engraved with initials that didn't mean a thing to me. Two scrapbooks labeled “Drama Club” and filled with pictures of students in productions Reardon must have directed were propped open like kid's picture books, wreaking havoc on their spines. I flipped through them, hoping to find a picture of Valerie, one with some expression in her eyes, some indication of delight or despair or anxiety.

Reardon's productions seemed to involve a lot of teenage girls wearing bodysuits. I didn't see a shot of Valerie, but faces weren't the main focus of the photos.

Reardon's desktop was clear except for a split-leaf philodendron that needed watering, a telephone, and a thick manuscript clipped together with a long complicated metal arrangement along the left-hand margin. The top sheet said: “
Wanderlust
, by Geoffrey L. Reardon.” The “L” had been scratched out, then added again. An arrow indicated that he was considering a change to “L. Geoffrey Reardon.” The manuscript's corners were dog-eared, as if it had been read by more than a few people. Somebody had penciled comments. I read a page. It was a play. “Cecilia” and “David” seemed to be headed for divorce court.

C
ECILIA:
You liar. You never called last night.

D
AVID:
You weren't home.

I read some more. It sounded like the stuff my ex and I used to sling back and forth. Expletives deleted.

I opened the top desk drawer and rifled Reardon's possessions, hoping for, say, a letter from Valerie with a return address. I didn't find one. I found her name in his rankbook, except I suppose you can't call it a rankbook when none of the students are ranked. There were check marks by each of the twelve names in Valerie's class, rows of check marks. At first I thought it was just an attendance book, but there were numbered assignments, all checked off. Whether one student was better than the next was something “L. Geoffrey” kept to himself. I wondered if the kids knew who did good work without the
A
s and
F
s to set them straight.

A studio portrait of a beautiful young man was facedown in the lower left drawer. Signed from Stuart, with love. Maybe one of Geoff's students had become a Hollywood hunk. Maybe not. A famous student deserved a spot on the memento shelf. Maybe this was personal.

There was a pile of notebooks in the drawer, student work by the scrawls. I picked one up and glanced through the dated entries. The handwriting was enough to give you a headache.

The lower right-hand drawer was locked.

Locks are one of those small motor-skill things I do well, like guitar picking. Back when I was a cop, this felon taught me all about locks, even treated me to a set of picklocks before I busted him.

Reardon's desk lock wasn't much of a challenge, but it got the old adrenaline racing just because I knew I wasn't supposed to crack it. I felt a shiver up my spine when the lock clicked, and I breathed faster while I shoved my picks back in my shoulder bag and eased the drawer open.

A half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey and two smeared glasses glared at me. Some find.

I left my card on the desk with a message to call. Then I used the phone to try Valerie's parents again.

A soft-voiced woman answered and agreed when I addressed her as Mrs. Haslam. I started to explain who I was. She interrupted.

“Oh, yes, I know. I mean, Jerry told me about you. Miss—what's your name now? I know I had it here someplace. I wrote it on a scrap of paper. Never mind. He's such a good boy, Jerry that is. Did you know he was Valerie's best friend? Her best boyfriend, I should say; she has girlfriends, too. Not really a boyfriend, more a boy and a friend, you know. She's still so young.…”

“Mrs. Haslam, Jerry got in touch with me because of your daughter's disappearance—”

“Yes, that's what he said. Such a dear boy. Did you see what happened to his mouth? I hope there won't be a scar or anything permanent or disfiguring or—”

It was my turn to interrupt. At first she went right on, blathering away about the cut on Jerry's lip, but I overrode her through sheer volume and determination. “Is your daughter at home, Mrs. Haslam? Do you know where she is?”

“Well, I have two daughters, but of course you mean Valerie, don't you? Uh. Excuse me. Can you hang on just a minute? Thank you. I just want to turn the TV down. And I think I left something on the stove.”

Turning the TV down and checking the stove took so long I thought we'd been disconnected. Just when I'd decided to hang up and call back, I heard her breathing into the phone.

“Oprah Winfrey's doing such an interesting show on teenagers,” she said. “Teenage rebellion, you know. It seems like they all do it, but I don't know about Jerry—”

“Mrs. Haslam,” I said loudly, “I want to talk to you about your daughter, Valerie. If you have time, I could come over now. I'm in Lincoln already, so I could be there in ten minutes.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I don't think you'd better. I've been sick. A fever. I think it's catching. Fevers are usually catching, you know, and I wouldn't want you to—”

“Can you just confirm that Valerie is missing, Mrs. Haslam?”

“Well, it's not so easy,” she said petulantly. “Valerie sometimes spends the night with a girlfriend. They're so independent at that age. Rebellion, like Oprah says. I don't want to make a fuss if all the girls do it, you know. Valerie would hate for me to make a fuss. And Preston, that's my husband, he's always saying I make scenes.”

I felt like I was dropping down the rabbit hole in Alice-in-Wonderland. Unless Jerry Toland was fond of tall tales, I was speaking to the mother of a missing fourteen-year-old girl who'd been gone a week. I had a strong suspicion the TV was still blaring, commandeering what little concentration Mathilde Haslam possessed.

“Is your husband at home?” I asked in desperation.

“Oh, no, dear,” she said. “Preston wouldn't be home in the afternoon. He works, you know.”

“Do you have a number where I can reach him?'

“You can't reach him today. He won't be in till late tonight. But I can have him call you as soon as he gets in.”

“That would be fine,” I said, speaking slowly. “Can you tell me the names of girls Valerie might be staying with? Her friends besides Elsie McLintock?”

“Oh, I'll call them,” she said eagerly. “I should have done that before, shouldn't I? I'll call them and see if Valerie's there. Elsie's a sweet girl, isn't she? Like I told Jerry, I'm sure this is just some misunderstanding. I'm certain there's no need for everybody to get alarmed. Really, if you'll excuse me, I think I ought to lie down. My head is pounding so badly. The fever, you know—”

“Let me give you my phone number,” I said quickly. “If you hear from Valerie I'd like to know. And have your husband call me.”

Maybe he could hang on to a coherent thought.

I had to repeat my phone number three times. When I asked her if she'd written it down, she admitted she didn't have paper or pencil, and then took about ten minutes to locate them. I waited, shaking my head and tapping my fingers on Reardon's desk. She came back chattering about whatever was on the stove, her voice sounding even softer, with a blurry quality in spite of overly careful pronunciation. I wondered if her trip to the kitchen had included a stop for a drink.

This time I got her to repeat my number back to me. I spelled out my name twice. I think she got it.

“Don't worry,” she told me before hanging up. “I'm sure everything's just fine.”

I wasn't.

I switched off Geoff's desk lamp. As an afterthought I shifted the manuscript, ran my hand under the blotter, and found the key to his desk drawer, which made me feel dumb. I used it to lock up.

I was tempted to drop by the Emerson's office to check out the tuition rates. I wondered what it would cost to send Paolina. But on the way I looked around at the little ladies and gents marching to class with their designer labels and ninety-buck sneakers and carefully coiffed hair. There wasn't a Hispanic visible. I thought maybe Paolina would do better in Cambridge. Her school is tough, but so is she.

I headed back to Boston in a cold, gray drizzle that slicked the pavement. Despite the weather, the city looked great from far away. There's a place on Route 2 where you can see all the downtown skyscrapers. You crest a hill in Arlington and there it sits: a toy model of Boston. Usually it's in color, but today it looked like a black-and-white photograph, gun-metal building blocks stacked against a pale gray sky.

Closer up, the streets looked dirty. Dead leaves and brown snow clogged the gutters.

I went home, fed the bird, and fixed myself a toasted ham-and-cheese on rye. I turned on the radio and sat at the kitchen table to eat and deal with the mail. On WERS, Rory Block sang:

“Can't tell my future, Lord, I can't tell my past.”

T.C. gets most of my mail since he's the one listed in the phone book. Today he got two begging letters from Presidential candidates, one Republican, one Democrat. I don't know how the Republicans got his name. He also received an urgent personal message from Ed McMahon.

I got an envelope with Mooney's address on the back flap, scrawled in his handwriting, thank God, so it wasn't from his mother. Inside was a check for two hundred bucks, marked “retainer” in that little space they leave for memos. I was going to rip it up, but then I decided it would be much more satisfactory to hand it back to him—once I'd found his hooker.

CHAPTER 9

I fumbled in the depths of my shoulder bag, locating seven lipsticks and a fistful of ballpoint pens before grabbing the right cylinder. I don't carry a full-sized flashlight—my purse weighs a ton already—but it's not some dinky toy that can barely light up a keyhole either.

I focused it on Valerie Haslam's photo, propped on the dashboard of the cab, and memorized her flawless skin, tiny nose, deep-set eyes. If I concentrated hard enough, I could almost forget about impending frostbite.

Squirming lower in the front seat, I bent my left leg and stuck my sneakered foot high on the dash. It wasn't comfy, but it was different. I checked to make sure my flannel shirt was buttoned to the chin and my down vest zipped all the way up. I wiggled my toes. I wasn't sure the baby one on the right foot was moving.