The Crazy School (22 page)

No wonder Cartwright’d had Baker cuff me.

I was lucky they hadn’t taken me down with a nice fat Marlin Perkins
Wild Kingdom
elephant dart of Thorazine in my own living room, just to be on the safe side.

“Markham?” I said. “I gotta tell you, I’m scared.”

“Don’t be. This is a fi ne mess, but I don’t believe the two of us will have a lick of trouble getting you out of it,” he said, giving me a reassuringly Churchillian smile.

“Next time you see your godfather, however,” he continued,

“you might want to kiss his ring.”

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31

Markham drove me home to Pittsfi eld.

“I didn’t want to worry you before we got you sprung from the joint,” he said once we’d climbed into his car, “but it seems you gave your husband the fl u.”

“A patient and long-suffering man, my husband.”

“I’m sure he is, but I would all the same appreciate it if you tried not to breathe in my general direction, now that we are not separated by a wall of glass.”

“I hope I’m not still contagious.”

“It’s not so much that I am fastidious about germs,” he said,

“but that I should perhaps have had the forethought to bring you a toothbrush.”

I snapped a hand over my mouth. “Oh,
crap,
Markham,” I mumbled. “I beg your pardon.”

“May I offer you some chewing gum? I believe I have a few sticks of Doublemint, there in the glove box.”

He drove fast and well. Fancy-ass car, too. Big Beamer. It was like traveling aboard a large gazelle, one with excellent 2 1 1

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suspension. Made the previous twenty-four hours seem exceedingly unreal.

“Did all of that just actually happen?” I asked.

“You being in jail? Sadly, I believe it did. Now we must attend to making sure you don’t ever have to return.”

“I’d appreciate that a great deal,” I said.

“Fine and dandy with me. It’s always a pleasure to have the same goal as my clients, tell you what,” he said.

“So what next?” I asked.

“We should go over what you know so far, starting with how you ended up at such a questionable establishment in the fi rst place.”

“The jail?”

“The
school
,” he said. “How did a young lady like you end up in such an appalling excuse for an educational institution, not to mention at the mercy of the horrifi cally vulgar ‘Dr.’

San tangelo? ‘Doctor’ being an honorifi c that man should be ashamed to employ.”

“He’s not a doctor?”

“I believe he took a degree in comparative astrology,” said Markham. “Since I doubt he was bright enough to tackle semiotics.”

“No shit?”

“None whatsoever. More’s the pity.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Indeed.”

“So you’ve done some research already?”

“Enough to know that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts should be run out of town on a proverbial rail for having allowed the Santangelo Academy to remain in business longer than a month, much less to have
ever
granted the place a license.”

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He started to rattle off a litany of horrors, year by year—the girl who’d been made to wait ninety minutes before an ambulance was called, after she’d swallowed razor blades. The overdoses of medication administered by untrained dorm parents at the behest of Santangelo’s fl y-by-night shrinks. The accusa-tions of sexual abuse and harassment “allegedly” perpetrated by faculty and groundskeeping staff and administrators against the students and each other. The citations from fi re and health and building and sanitation inspectors, going back decades.

The suicides.

“Markham,” I said, overwhelmed, “I knew it was bad, but my
God
—”

“Considering where this odious charlatan has dredged up the majority of his senior staff, I’d say there should have been a good dozen people in line for handcuffs before they clapped any on you.”

I slumped down into the passenger seat, closing my eyes.

“Those poor kids. And their families. These are desperate, terrifi ed people. They don’t know where else to turn.”

“It makes my blood boil,” he said, “outright, downright literally boil.”

“Mine too.”

“Now let us get down to some brass tacks about how you ended up there and what’s happened since, starting from the moment you fi rst ventured onto that nefarious campus,” he said.

“I have this friend Ellis,” I began. “She’s the reason we moved to the Berkshires, and she suggested I apply for a job there when I couldn’t get work at the newspaper. She did a stint running their computer lab last year. Said it paid all right and that the kids were decent.”

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“And what became of this Ellis, pray tell?”

“She left the Berkshires for Cincinnati and got married,” I said. “I don’t think we’d been here a week. I miss the hell out of that woman.”

“It isn’t as though she did you any favors, hooking you up with Santangelo.”

“Ellis warned me . . . said it was a fucking snakepit, other than the students, but that the checks cleared all right.”

I explained about Dean’s rail grinders, about the earthquake in California leaving us stranded. “I
needed
checks that cleared, to cover my rent and groceries.”

I looked out the window. We were on the outskirts of Pittsfi eld already.

“So I came for the money, but stayed for the kids,” I said.

“I mean, how could I not? I wanted to pack them all up in my car and hide them in our apartment halfway through the fi rst day.”

“You’re to be commended for sticking it out, but at this juncture, I must say I’m damn glad you’ve got me to take up arms on your behalf.”

We were half a block from the North Street rotary. “Tall building on the left is ours,” I said. “The one with the bank on the ground fl oor.”

“I believe we need to continue this discussion. May I come up?”

“You’re more than welcome to. I just hope Dean doesn’t puke on you.”

“I’ll give the poor man a wide berth, in any case.”

“Wouldn’t want you to muck up that lovely suit.”

“My sentiments exactly,” answered Markham.

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Lulu buzzed me and Markham into the apartment building.

We found her stirring the contents of a ginormous stockpot on our stove. The whole apartment billowed with steam and the heady fragrance of chicken soup.

She dropped the spoon and ran over the minute she saw me, practically lifting me off my feet with a hug. “Jesus Christ, it’s fi ne to see you,” she said.

“Likewise. I cannot begin to express—”

“Shhhh,” she whispered. “Dean’s fi nally asleep, poor thing.

Nasty bug . . . hit him hard, and of course he’s been devastated with worry about you on top of all that.”

I thanked her for taking care of him, hugged her again, and introduced her to Markham. The two of them took one another’s measure, obviously pleased with what they saw.

Lulu dished up a bowl of soup and handed it to me.

“Take this in to Dean,” she said. “Let him know you’re all right. And take all the time you need to make sure he gets at least half of this down the hatch. Your attorney and I have a few things to discuss.”

“Like what?”

“Like Gerald, for starters.”

“You know about Gerald already?”

“Let’s just say a little bird told me during a late-night visit to my apartment while you were in the slammer. Well, not little—more like a tall, blond, and somewhat psychotic bird.”

“Wiesner?”

“None other,” she said.

“Kid gets around.”

“Who doesn’t these days?” she said. “Now shoo, Dean’s soup’s getting cold.”

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The shades were all drawn in our bedroom, and Dean was huddled up under just about every blanket and duvet we had, wearing a woolly hat with earfl aps on it, for good measure.

I put the soup down on his bedside table and kissed him.

He stirred awake, blinking up at me. “Bunny?”

“Talk about eyes like two holes burned in a blanket,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Your breath could fi nish the job of combustion.”

“Crap, I totally forgot. Poor Lulu!” I said, and snuck off to the bathroom for a thorough workout with Crest.

“Think you can keep this down?” I asked, sitting down again and spoon-feeding him the soup.

“Broth of the gods.” He was sweating now and started kicking off the blankets between swallows. “How the hell you survived this damn fl u, locked up in a cell—I almost passed out when it hit me yesterday. Thank God I called Alan fi rst. I was totally delirious.”

“You should be better by Monday, when your job starts.”

“I’m not leaving this apartment unless you’re in the clear,”

he said.

“How long has Lulu been here?”

“She called up yesterday afternoon, wanted to talk to you about Wiesner and Gerald. I was lying on the bathroom fl oor—

had to crawl to the phone. She drove up when she realized how sick I was.”

I made him fi nish the soup, then told him to go back to sleep. He was out again before I closed the door behind me.

Back in the living room, Markham was taking furious notes as Lulu spoke.

“What time is it?” I asked.

They both looked at their watches.

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“Just past two,” said Markham. “You should avail yourself of Lulu’s fabulous soup. I’ve just had a bowl and can recommend it highly.”

“I’m so tired, I’m not sure I could eat.”

Lulu wouldn’t hear of that. She hustled me into a chair and set a bowl on the butler’s table in front of me.

“If you don’t start eating it yourself, I’m not above feeding you,” she said.

“Yes’m,” I said, spooning up a swallow and blowing on it to cool it off.

Lulu turned to Markham. “I think we should let them be for the rest of the day. You’re up to speed on the basics, here?”

He looked at me. “What’ve you got on tomorrow morning, Madeline?”

“No idea,” I said. “You think I still have a job, Lulu?”

“Dhumavati says absolutely. She said if you’re well enough to come tomorrow you don’t have to be there early.”

“Why not?”

“They’re having a Sitting Meeting.”

“A what?” asked Markham.

“Someone kicked a hole in the side of the Xerox machine.

Since no one confessed to the crime in the fi rst twenty-four hours, the entire student body is now required to sit silently in a large circle inside the dining hall, with the teachers clumped on the fl oor in the middle,” explained Lulu.

“I take it Santangelo gets a chair?” asked Markham.

“Santangelo is too busy playing outside with his new helicopter,” said Lulu. “He has an instructor working with him in four-hour shifts. Takeoffs and landings.”

“You mean to tell me, two students have just been
murdered
at his school
,
with one of his teachers in jail, and Santangelo’s not 2 1 7

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only forcing the entire school to play some punitive Quaker-meeting game over a broken copier, but he’s hopping around the lawn in a whirlybird?”

“Pretty much,” said Lulu.

“Oh, it’s going to be a pleasure getting him in court,” said Markham, rubbing his hands with glee. “In fact, I may have to do it several times. Pro bono.”

Lulu gave him a conspiratorial smile. “Let’s let these two get some rest in the meantime, shall we?”

“Madeline, I will be back here early tomorrow with bells on,” said Markham, snapping his briefcase closed and holding out his arm to Lulu.

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Part V

“When we remember our former selves, there is always that
little fi gure with its long shadow stopping like an uncertain
belated visitor on a lighted threshold at the far end of some
impeccably narrowing corridor.”

—
Vladimir Nabokov

Ada

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32

I spent that night trying to sneak up on the oasis of sleep, only to have it shimmer away, à la mirage, every time I thought I was about to reach the shade of its beckoning palm trees.

There was just too much moiling around in my skull—the likelihood of being charged with murder, and how the hell I’d ever be able to repay my godfather for having dispatched Markham to the Berkshires in my darkest hour.

I got up around three and drank half a beer by the light of the icebox door, listening to Dean toss and mutter in the next room.

The beer didn’t help, not that I’d believed it would.

Around fi ve I fell asleep. Dean came out of the bedroom at about six-thirty, wrapped in a blanket and shivering.

“You should stay in bed,” I said.

“Markham said he’d be back early. I want to hear the progress report,” he said, lowering himself onto the sofa slowly, legs trembling.

“Can I get you anything?”

Dean pulled the blanket up around his head and closed his eyes.

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“My skin hurts,” he said.

“Do you think you could eat something?”

He didn’t answer, just lay down on his side, one foot splayed across the fl oor.

I brought him dry toast with a cup of weak but heavily sugared tea. He looked at the stuff and emitted a creaky sigh.

“Just the tea,” I said.

Dean drew the blanket closer around his head and pressed his lips together, looking for all the world like an old woman disappointed by the sight of Ellis Island after a month in steerage.