Final Notice (21 page)

"What's happening, man?" he said when he got up to the car. He sat down on the front seat beside me, and Gerald leaned against the open window next to him. This guy had a squeaky voice and it came out in quick, nervous bleats, like the chirping of a baby doll that someone kept stepping on out of spite. "You got the bread, man?"

He held out his hand-an old man's hand, hooked and grimy with a couple of nailless fingers, like a hand in a horror film. I began to understand why Jake Lord had wanted to show me that boyhood room, to show me what his brother had been like before Effie Reaves and the drugs had destroyed him. It was as if Haskell Lord were sitting there beside me. This grim biker was probably no older than Haskell, and like Hack, he was burned out -all of the history that's packed inside of us, that gives us form and character, had been let out through the holes in his arm. What was left was that eggshell head and the hunger that made his fingers twitch expectantly.

I gave him twenty bucks and he folded it up neatly and stuck it in the top of his sock.

"All right," he said. "What do you want to hear?"

"'Do you know Haskell Lord?" I said.

"Yeah, I know Hack. Very weird dude. Very weird."

I wondered for a second what on earth constituted "weird" in the world he lived in.

"Have you seen him around?"

"Not in two weeks," he said. "Oh, man, he was in very bad shape. Very bad. Got kicked out by his old lady, you know? Weird old lady, too, man. Real hard case. She used to dole the shit out to him a little at a time. He'd have to do things for it, you know? Like ream her? Grossed me out."

I felt a little sick. "You know where he is now?"

"Ask his brother, man," the biker said. "Jake?"

"Sure, man. He went everywhere with Hack. Like his shadow, man. Followed him wherever he'd go, you know? Man, that kid loves his brother!"

"How did Hack feel about it?" I said.

The biker shrugged. "How'd you feel, man, if some wimp was always hanging around with you, telling you to shape up and crying about the good old days and warning you to quit your evil ways before God got you? Man, he hated his fucking guts. "

"Are you sure?" I said.

The biker sat back in the car seat and eyed me as if I were inalterably square. "It's like this, man," he said. "Some guy I used to know in high school, man, I see him every now and then in the streets, you know? And he always gets this fucked-up look on his face, man. Like he can't believe it's me and he's so damn sorry and all. You dig what I'm saying? I mean the only reason he's glad to see me is because seeing me gets him off. He spends the rest of the day just shaking his head and telling himself how hard life is. But, man, he ain't seein' me. He's just seein' some part of the past, man, some part of himself that he don't like to think about. I'm just his excuse to feel glad he ain't like me. Now I hate that dude, man. Wouldn't you?"

I didn't answer him. I was too busy thinking over what he'd said about Jake and Hack. Not the love-hate business, which was predictable given their straight-laced upbringing and the fact that Hack had fallen off so completely from what he once had been. Benson Howell had said that the Ripper would have a grotesquely ambivalent relationship with his siblings, so that part was no surprise. It was the other thing, the business about Jake following Hack wherever he went, that had me worried. If it were true -and I didn't know how much credence to give to what the biker had told me, since he was so obviously speaking for himself as well as for Hack- then Jake might not have been telling me the truth when he said that he hadn't seen his brother in over two months. If he was in the habit of following Hack around, it was just possible that Jake knew where Hack was at that moment. He could be covering for him, all right. After watching his brother degenerate into something like what was sitting on the seat beside me, he'd have an awful good reason for lying. That is, if the biker were telling me the truth. What I needed was some more reliable testimony about Hack and his brother. And I knew where to get it.

I looked back at the biker, who was staring at me as if I were Dad's wallet left out on the bedroom dresser, and said, "I guess that's it. Thanks for the help."

He didn't budge. "I think I should get paid more money, man. I deserve it -all the shit I told you."

"You got your money," I said to him. "Now get out of here."

He snorted and turned a bit on the car seat. I turned, too, so that I was facing him. There wasn't enough room for either of us to throw a good punch, if it came to that. But squared around I could use both arms to tie him up if he pulled a knife or a razor.

"Tough guy!" the biker sneered and reached into his coat pocket.

I lunged forward. But before I could grab his hand, Gerald Arnold had reached through the side window and thrown his right arm around the biker's neck.

"Cut it out, Lester," he said, right into the guy's ear. "You got your twenty bucks, now beat it.

"Leggo!" Lester gasped.

Gerald looked at me and said, "O.K., Harry? Can I let him go?"

I grinned at him and shrugged. "You think he's going to be a good boy, Gerald?"

"Well, are you Lester?" Gerald said, giving the biker's neck a hard jerk.

Lester nodded spasmodically. "Leggo!"

Gerald let him go and, in one motion, jerked open the side door and pulled the biker out onto the sidewalk. Lester sat on the pavement for a second and rubbed his sore neck.

"That wasn't a Christian thing to do, Gerald," he said with high dudgeon.

Gerald gave him a hard kick in the butt, and Lester scampered back across Edwards to the Tic-Toc parking lot.

"That really wasn't very Christian, Gerald," I said to him as he sat down beside me on the front seat.

"Maybe not," he said with a grin. "But it shore felt good to mix it up again." He looked at me hopefully. "Did I do all right?"

"You did just fine," I told him.
 
 

I dropped Gerald Arnold back off at his apartment on Ogden and told him if he ever got tired of the night shift at Ford I might be able to find: a use for him.

"No shit?" he said proudly.

"You'd have to cut your hair a bit, though."

That dampened his enthusiasm. "Well, I'll think it over, Harry," he said. "And I'll see what Brother Stearns has to say."

He wasn't very bright, Gerald. But he was strong and quick, and he had the kind of inborn loyalty that no amount of money can buy. In spite of his hair and his teeth and his jittery manner, Gerald had a man's heart. And there are times in my work when nothing else will do.

He walked off to Clancy & Sons apartment house and I backed onto Ogden, drove up to Madison, and then headed north to Withrow and to Assistant Principal Rogers, who just might be able to tell me what I wanted to know about Hack  and his loyal brother.

It was about noon when I pulled into the Withrow lot and the place was crowded with kids going to or coming back from lunch. From what I could see through the car window, times hadn't changed very much at Withrow High. I recognized the same faces I'd known when I was a high school kid. Greasers in leather jackets, sneaking a smoke on the hood of a Chevy. Girls with their hair tied back in ribbons, hugging their note-books to their breasts and swaying slightly at the hips as if they were dancing in a dream. Pretty girls dressed in Sasson jeans and Vanderbilt tops, long-legging it past the others as if they were just visiting for the day. Jocks who were all neck and shoulders. The studious ones with calculators on their belts and pencils growing from their shirt pockets like untrimmed hedges. I passed through the crowd and up the front steps into that long, U-shaped, red brick building, down concrete corridors lined with gray metal lockers, past wooden doors that opened on rooms full of desks and blackboards and the sunlight that, spilled through the tall schoolhouse windows, to the assistant principal's office -a small, glassed-in complex furnished with wo secretary's desks and a switchboard set behind a long formica counter. The sign on the door at the south side of the room said "Assistant Principal."

"I'm looking for Mr. Rogers," I said to the girl sitting behind the counter -a schoolgirl in a white blouse and a tartan-plaid skirt. "My name is Stoner. Tell him I want to speak to him about Haskell Lord."

"I'll see if he's in," she said and pressed a buzzer on the intercom.

Rogers answered in a deep businessman's voice. When he heard the name Haskell Lord, he said he'd be right out and, a moment later, he came through the door. He was a tall, dourlooking man with sparse brown hair and the kind of rubberyfeatured face that looks as if someone has hooked their thumbs in the corners of the mouth then pulled downward, stretching it into a melancholy mask. It was a Walter Matthau face. And it, too, was familiar from my own distant youth. He was wearing a business suit, flecked with dandruff on the shoulders, and his arms were cocked awkwardly in front of him, as if he were holding a box of dynamite in his hands.

"Mr. Stoner?" he said.

I told him I was Stoner. He shook my hand and ushered me into his office.

"You know a Ms. Davis was here yesterday asking me about Haskell," he said as he sat down behind his schoolhouse desk. He placed the box of dynamite on the desktop in front of him, stared at it for a minute, and then very slowly dropped his hands to either side. He took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. Poor Rogers was literally carrying his charge around with him, and given the volatile nature of our high schools, it must have been a pretty dangerous charge. It certainly looked dangerous to Rogers, who kept eyeing it as we talked, as if he were half afraid it would go off if his back were turned. "As I told her yesterday, I've seen Haskell on several occasions since he graduated. Most recently a few months ago up on the track. He looked awful. Haggard, physically debilitated. I could hardly believe he was the same boy who graduated eight years ago." He rubbed his eyes wearily and said, "I doubt if I would have recognized him at all if I hadn't seen his brother with him."

Well, Harry, I said to myself, there's a bit of confirmation. "Did Jake always accompany his brother?" I asked him.

"I couldn't say. I don't remember seeing the two of them apart. But then that's not uncommon with teenage brothers. You'd be better off talking to Miss Gibson, our counselor, if you're interested in how the two of them related to each other and to their teachers and classmates. She has an office above mine on the second floor."

"Did you know that Hack was selling speed outside the school?"

Rogers didn't even raise an eyebrow. "No, I did not. But it doesn't surprise me. You know those people who complain about the quality of the city school system ought to take the time to come here and look around. It's not what the kids take away from here that's so disheartening. It's what they bring with them in the way of attitudes and values. That's what's really shocking, Mr. Stoner. No, it doesn't surprise me that some of my students should be buying speed outside the school. Or smoking pot. Or shooting heroin. I've given up being surprised. And then Haskell was always a hard case. Always moody and borderline violent. Quite talented and intelligent, nevertheless."

"You don't know of any particular students who might have done business with him, do you? Or who might know where he is now?"

Rogers reached into his desk and pulled out a roster sheet. He tossed it over to me. "Pick a name, Mr. Stoner."

I glanced at the sheet. There must have been a hundred students listed on it.

"You see that's what an assistant principal does," Rogers said with a sigh. "I am responsible for what is laughingly called discipline. That list that you're holding contains the names of the boys and girls who've been in detention this week alone."

"Surely there are some students who have serious problems I with drugs?" I said.

"Whole classrooms full. We have children -and I mean twelve and thirteen years old- nodding off their chairs every day. I could give you a list of particular troublemakers. But it would be a long list. And the chances of any of them talking honestly with you would be very small. You see," Rogers said., with a tight-lipped grin, "they don't trust us."

Rogers gripped his box of dynamite again and got up from his chair. "I'll take you up to Miss Gibson's office, if you wish. Sometimes she can be a little hard to talk to."

I gave him a quizzical look and he shrugged.

"She doesn't have an easy job," he said.
 

ANDREA GIBSON had a sign on her desk that read "Have a good day!" She had a "have a good day" clock on the wall and a "have a good day" button on her blouse. The room was filled with so many smiling, insipid faces that her own face came as something of a shock. If you squeezed that jolly "good day" face hard enough to make the eyes pop wide open and the small mouth pucker into a fishy "O" if you capped it with a curly wig the color of scrap metal and then perched it on a plain white blouse with lapels the size of lobster bibs, you might have come up with an Andrea Gibson, Or with a Marion Lorne. The two were one, as far as I could see. Right down to the dotty befuddled look on their faces and the husky hesitant voice. Rogers spent a moment introducing us, although I wasn't quite sure whether Miss Gibson was convinced. In fact the first thing she asked me when Rogers left the room was: "Are you really a detective?"