School Days (12 page)

T
HE STOREFRONT
wasn't lit very well, and was kind of gloomy. I took some time for my eyes to adjust while I looked around. Next to the door was an old-fashioned Coke cooler, the red paint faded and along the edges chipped away. There was a deeply tarnished bottle-cap opener screwed to the side. At the far back end of the room was a pool table with a light hanging over it, the felt surface of the table a patch of bright green under the light. Some folding chairs and card tables were set around the room, and on the left side, there was a big, yellow oak desk and an expensive leather swivel chair
with a high back and a padded headrest. There were a few men playing cards at a couple of the tables. A tall, sharp-edged, quick-looking man in a bright white tuxedo shirt sat in the swivel chair with his feet up on the desk. He was black. So was everyone else in the room. They all looked at me silently when I came in. I felt whiter than Mr. Clean.

The lean, hard guy at the desk studied me as I came in. I stood and let him look. Nobody said anything. A radio somewhere was playing rap music, but not so loud that I couldn't stand it.

The guy in the swivel chair said, “Jesus Christ.”

“Almost,” I said.

“Spenser,” the guy said.

“Major,” I said.

“You looking for me?” Major said.

“I am,” I said.

“So?”

I hooked an empty folding chair and walked with it to the desk. I put it down and sat on it.

A short, thick man with prison tattoos and no hair spoke to Major.

“You want fish flop out of here?” he said.

Major shook his head.

“Know him, long time ago,” Major said. “Him and Hawk.”

“Some of my best friends are black,” I said.

The thick man stared at me. I bore up as best I could. After a while, he sat down. But he kept looking.

“I sense racial intolerance,” I said to Major.

“You better fucking believe it,” Major said. “What you want here?”

“Need some help,” I said.

“From motherfucking me?”

“Beautifully put,” I said.

Major almost smiled.

“What you need?” he said.

“You still in the gang business?”

“Not me,” Major said. “I president of the Chamber of Commerce.”

“And you owe it all to me and Hawk,” I said.

“Sho 'nuff. Set me on the path to re-fucking-demption.”

“Makes me proud,” I said.

“So what you want?”

“I'm interested in a Boston gang calls itself Los Diablos,” I said.

Major laughed.

“The fucking Fritos,” he said. “What you want with Los-fucking-Diablos.”

“Need to talk with a guy named Jose Yang.”

“Chink Frito,” Major said. “He runs the thing.”

“Where do they operate?” I said.

“Where we fucking let them,” Major said.

“We?”

Major grinned at me.

“Hobart Chamber of Commerce,” he said. “Major Johnson, head nigger.”

“So where do you let them operate?”

“Part of Dorchester,” Major said. “What you want with them.”

“Yang's got a younger brother, Animal, involved in something I'm working on out in the far western suburbs.”

“Animal?” Major said. “The bodybuilder?”

I nodded.

“Out in the white, white west?” Major said.

“Yes.”

“Animal dumber than my dick?” Major said.

“Big and scary, though,” I said. “Reminds me a little of John Porter.”

“John Porter in the ground, man. Long time.”

“Somebody shoot him?”

“ 'Course they did, man. What you think?”

“Can you set me up with Yang?” I said.

“I want to,” Major said. “I can.”

I nodded.

“What you want to do with him,” Major said. “I can have somebody dart him, you want.”

“No. His brother maybe supplied the guns used in that big school shootout last spring.”

“And you want to know if Chink Frito supply them. Say he do. What you gonna do then?”

“Nothing right away,” I said. “I'm just gathering information.”

“And what you do if Jose don't like you asking, and decide to deuce yo' white ass?”

“I figure you won't let him.”

Major sat back in the big, expensive swivel chair and
looked at me, beginning to smile. I hadn't seen him in more than twelve years. He'd been a kid then. Now he was probably in his early thirties, and he looked like Tommy Hearns. His eyes were bright with intelligence and scorn and anger, as they had been. But there was control in them, too, instead of the craziness. Hawk had said a long time ago that Major Johnson was more like Hawk than most people.

“You got some big bangers,” he said, “for a Bud Light. You see Hawk around?”

“Often,” I said.

“Tell him I say hello,” Major said.

“You want to set up my meeting with Jose Yang?” I said.

“Sure,” Major said.

W
ITH
P
EARL ASLEEP
in the backseat, I pulled into the parking lot at the country store in the late afternoon, and sat with the motor running and the a/c on low. In maybe five minutes, a vast Chevy Suburban pulled up beside me and Janey got out. I rolled down my window.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I didn't know who else to call.”

“Nice vehicle,” I said.

“Oh, the car, that's Daddy's. We have horses.”

“They ride in the backseat?” I said.

She smiled faintly.

“George's in the car,” Janey said. “Animal beat her up.”

“Can she move around?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Okay, put her in my front seat. You get in back with Pearl.”

“She's scrunched down in the front seat,” Janey said. “She's afraid Animal will see her.”

“I'll take care of her,” I said.

Janey nodded.

When George got out of the car, she moved very carefully, as if her ribs hurt. She had one eye swollen shut and a fat lip and a long welt along her jawline. She eased herself into my front seat, and Janey closed the door behind her carefully and got in back. Without raising her head, Pearl opened her eyes and growled. Janey froze.

“I don't think she'll bite you,” I said.

“You don't think?”

I reached back and patted Pearl's head.

“You pat, too,” I said.

Janey did, cautiously. Pearl stopped growling. Her short tail wagged.

“Easy,” I said.

I looked at George. She had cowered down into the corner of the front seat.

“How are you?” I said.

“I don't know,” she said.

“In pain?”

“I'm real sore,” she said.

“I'm going to take you to the emergency room,” I said. “They'll give you something to feel better.”

“I can't go to no hospital,” George said. “Animal said I went to a hospital or anything, he'd kill me.”

“He won't,” I said.

I put the car in drive and pulled out onto the street.

“He beat her up for talking to you,” Janey said from the backseat. “Somebody saw us at the mall.”

“He said he was going to kill me if he ever saw us together again.”

“You tell him what we talked about?” I said.

“I said you was asking about Jared Clark, but I didn't tell you nothing,” she said.

She mumbled some because her lip was so fat.

“He's gonna kill me,” she said.

“No,” I said. “He's not.”

“He'll find out,” she said.

“He's not going to hurt you,” I said.

“How you gonna stop him?” she said. “You can't stay with me all the time.”

“Parents?” I said.

She made a noise.

“Shit,” she said.

So much for parents. At the hospital, Janey stayed in the car with Pearl. I went in with George and waited while they cleaned her up. When he was through with her, the young emergency-room doctor came out to talk with me.

“You her father?” he said.

“No. Friend of a friend.”

“Well,” he said. “She'll be okay. No broken bones. I don't think anything wrong internally. She's scared to death and in some discomfort.”

“You give her something?”

“Yes. Three days' worth.”

“She tell you she uses drugs?” I said.

“No, but I assumed. I didn't give her a prescription.”

“Any limits on what she should do?”

“She should stay away from whoever hit her,” the doctor said. “Otherwise, just rest.”

“I'll see to both,” I said.

“You know who did it?” the doctor said.

“Yes.”

“We'll have to report this to the police,” the doctor said. “It's an obvious beating.”

“I know.”

“We'll need your name for the police,” the doctor said. He smiled a little. “And she has no medical insurance.”

I took out one of my cards and gave it to him.

“Send me the bill,” I said.

W
E DROPPED
J
ANEY OFF
near the Coffee Nut, and George and I and Pearl went back to Boston to my place.

“You want to call your parents?” I said.

“Naw.”

“They won't be wondering where you are?” I said.

“Naw.”

“You have parents,” I said.

“Sort of.”

“You live at home?”

“Sometimes.”

It wasn't going anywhere, so I decided to drop it.

“Okay, you'll stay here until I have squared things to Animal,” I said.

“How you gonna do that?”

“Vigorously,” I said. “Take the bedroom.”

“You gonna have sex with me?” she said.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Too young,” I said.

“I know how,” she said.

“Good to have a skill,” I said.

“I done it a lot.”

“Practice makes perfect,” I said.

“You don't wanna?”

“I'm flattered to be asked,” I said. “But my heart belongs to another.”

“You gonna let me stay here for nothing?”

“That's what I'm going to do,” I said.

I took the couch. It was a big, comfortable couch, but it was less convenient than it sounded, because Pearl also took the couch, and my first night there was not very restful. Nor was Pearl's.

In the morning, George was moving better. She emerged late, wearing one of my shirts for a nightgown. It was sufficiently modest. The shirttails reached her knees. I made us breakfast and left her to eat it, and Pearl to watch her, while I went into my bathroom for a shower and then to my bedroom for clean clothes. By the time I came out, freshly scrubbed and clean shaven, she had finished breakfast. I noticed that she hadn't eaten too much. She took out a pack of cigarettes
and lit one. I disapproved, but I figured this wasn't the week for her to quit, so I just opened one window a crack in the living room, and didn't comment.

I didn't want to leave her alone yet, so I sat and read David McCullough's book on John Adams while she was in the bedroom with the television going. We didn't have much to say, so we didn't say it. She slept a lot. I made her some soup. At supper, I asked her a few questions about Jared Clark that she didn't know the answers to. I was pretty sure that we could make a very long list of questions she wouldn't know the answer to. After supper, Pearl and I watched the Sox game on the living-room television and spent a second night on the couch in territorial conflict.

The next morning, when George came out she was wearing another of my shirts, but her hair was combed and she looked like she'd washed. She was moving pretty well, and she didn't seem either pained or drugged. After breakfast, I showed her how to operate my washer-dryer, and she put her clothes through. While she was doing that, I checked my answering machine at the office. There was a message from Major Johnson. I wrote down the details.

Late in the afternoon, fully dressed in her laundered clothes, George came into the living room, smoking a cigarette.

“I'm bored,” she said.

“Me, too.”

She looked startled, as if it hadn't occurred to her that I might experience anything.

“How long I gotta stay here?”

“Long as you think you need to,” I said.

“I gotta hide from Animal.”

“Doesn't mean you can't go out and walk around,” I said. “It's a big city.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Got some business tonight,” I said. “How you feeling?”

“I feel okay.”

The bruise along her jawline was now blue and yellow, and the swollen eye had opened a little. Her lip was still fat. I went to the kitchen and got a spare set of keys from what Susan called the “crap drawer,” where I kept such things. The name seemed harsh to me.

“You want to go out,” I said. “Big key opens the front door downstairs. Other one opens my door. Pearl should stay in until I get back.”

“I never been in Boston before,” she said.

“Of course not,” I said. “It must be forty miles.”

“I never been anywhere,” she said.

I wrote my address and home phone number on the back of one of my business cards and gave it to her.

“You get lost, take a cab back here,” I said. “Or you call me.”

“I don't have any money,” she said.

Of course she didn't.

I gave her some.