Crusader (43 page)

It took a moment for her to figure out what I meant. "Oh? Good. That's good. Next month, you'll be ready. It won't be so bad."

"It's going to take me more than a month to be able to handle this."

Mrs. Weiss shrugged. "You have no choice. When you have no choice, you just handle it." She clicked off the TV. "I'd better get to sleep, darling."

"Can I help you get in there?"

Mrs. Weiss stood up straight. "No. What for?"

I said, "All right, then. Good night." And I watched her walk slowly but steadily into the bedroom.

Today after I got off the school bus, I had to pass through a double line of deputy sheriffs just to get to the front door. Then I had to pass through a metal detector.

When I got inside the office, I saw Mrs. Biddulph standing next to the video equipment, looking very harried. As soon as
she saw me, she cried, "Roberta! Are you in charge of this equipment?"

"Yes, ma'am. Along with Mr. Herman."

Mrs. Biddulph didn't say anything else, so I asked her the question that was on my mind. "Is Mr. Archer coming in this morning?"

"He's working at home today. I will be doing the morning announcements." She thought for a moment. "Are there any?"

"Well, that's up to you, ma'am."

"You don't have anything for me to read?"

"Me? No. All I have is a tape from Mr. Herman. He asked me to play it." I pulled the video from its envelope. "Do you want to preview it?"

"What does Mr. Archer do?"

"He has me play the tape on the monitor, and he previews it. Do you want to do that?"

"Yes, please. Quickly, though."

Mrs. Biddulph stared at the dead screen while I set up the TV and VCR. Then we both watched as Mr. Herman's face appeared onscreen. I could tell where he was sitting—at the news desk in the Channel 57 Studios. He looked at the camera and said this: "I had a notion that I wanted to give something back. To teach. That's what I came here for."

Just then Officer Dwyer came in and beckoned to Mrs. Biddulph. She half turned to me and said, "That's fine." Then she went to talk to the officer. I stopped the tape and rewound it. About two minutes later the first bell rang. Mrs. Biddulph came back and said, "I want to say a few words to start the day. Where should I stand?"

I looked around quickly. "How about in front of Mr. Archer's door?"

Mrs. Biddulph walked over there obediently. She said, "Just tell me when to start." I nodded.

The second bell rang; I pressed the button and pointed at her. Mrs. Biddulph said, "Good morning, everyone. Officer Dwyer just informed me that no student had any trouble of any kind entering the building today. I think that's great. Let's keep it that way. Let's all do our part to make this a completely trouble-free day. And if trouble finds you, just remember the Lord's example—that it is better to turn the other cheek and walk away. Have a great day, everybody!"

Mrs. Biddulph turned her eyes toward me, so I shut off the camera. She walked back to the officer while I cued Mr. Herman's tape and pressed the Play button on the VCR.

I was soon sorry I had.

Mr. Herman's speech began as before: "I had a notion that I wanted to give something back. To teach. That's what I came here for." But then he continued, "But you just sat there, staring at me. I told myself that it was not your fault, that you had been raised by parents who don't value education; who actually resent it; who desperately do not want you to be better educated than they were.

"What I did not realize is that it was I who did not get it. In fact you are supposed to be just as dumb, uncurious, and cretinous as you are. You are supposed to get out of here equipped to be no more than a member of the servant class. Pardon me—I believe they call it the 'service class' now.

"You are destined to serve the small percentage of people whose families did value education, and who made their children's futures their priority and their pride. It is you who have it right, and I who had it wrong. So I bid you good-bye. I hope you all get what you want and what you deserve, and I look forward to tipping you well someday, for services rendered."

The video went black. I couldn't bear to look around me, but I finally did. Fortunately, Mrs. Biddulph wasn't there. I guessed she had left with Officer Dwyer. I popped out Mr. Herman's
tape and put in the Pledge and Banner one. After that ended, I turned everything off and hurried to first period.

During second period, a kid arrived with a guidance pass and a slip of paper with my name on it. I figured this was it. I was going to get suspended, or taken to Juvie, for playing Mr. Herman's video. For inciting to riot, maybe.

But I was wrong again. Mrs. Biddulph was standing in her old spot behind the guidance desk. She looked at me with no apparent knowledge of the video incident. She told me, "Roberta, there's a police officer in Mr. Archer's time-out room. He has asked to speak to you. I called your father, and I paged him, but he hasn't answered. So I'm going to leave it up to you. Do you want to speak to him?"

I looked into the room and saw Griffin. I said, "Okay."

I walked into the office. He looked up and said immediately, "Someone signed out the surveillance tape. That wasn't supposed to happen."

I replied, "You could say that about a lot of stuff, couldn't you?"

"That tape was forensic evidence, Roberta. It belongs with the victim's clothing and the other stuff that no one but a jury was ever supposed to see."

After a long pause, I admitted, "You're right. I signed it out."

Griffin grabbed his strands of blond hair and pulled them outward. "Oh, god. Did you look at it?"

"Yes, I did. Did you?"

"Yes. That's why it wasn't in your packet." After a very long exhale, he decided, "All right. What's done is done. Do you have any questions for me?"

I asked, "Why didn't they catch the guy? They knew what his tattoo looked like."

"They tried. They worked hard on it. The file is a thick one,
believe me. But this isn't a TV episode, Roberta. Crimes don't get solved in an hour. Many times they don't get solved at all."

I asked him pointedly, "What's in this thick file?"

Griffin shook his head no. "There are regulations about this sort of thing. I can't talk about another detective's case." He glanced at the door. "I can tell you that he canvassed tattoo parlors along the Strip. He got no leads. Those tattoo guys are not a real cooperative bunch."

I tried, "Okay, can you tell me if he ever had a suspect?"

Griffin answered emphatically, "I can't tell you anything else."

I closed my eyes. I tried to remember the murder video—my mom's face, her look of fear, the moment when she took off around the counter. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Then I felt them start to fall.

I waited Griffin out like that, sitting in the time-out office with tears rolling down my face. He gave in first. I heard him get up. Then I heard the sound of the door closing. I opened my watery eyes.

Griffin said, "You never heard a word of this from me." I nodded my agreement, and he sat back down. "There was a loan shark working the Strip back then. A big, bad guy named Sonny Santos. According to the detective, nothing happened on the Strip without Sonny knowing about it. The street punks were a lot more afraid of him than they were of the law. The detective figured that ... Sonny knew about the bag of cash in the arcade, and that he sent someone in to grab it."

Griffin was looking at the floor as he continued. "All the evidence in the case was moving, slow but sure, in Sonny's direction."

I said, "Did he have a tattoo?"

"No. You're not following me, Roberta. He didn't do the
crime himself. It was a street punk who grabbed the cash, who ... committed the murder."

I started to shake, but I struggled to hide it.

"But I'm saying that no punk on the Strip would rob a store without Sonny's permission. Are you with me?"

I nodded. "So did they question this guy?"

Griffin exhaled loudly again. "No, because Sonny disappeared. One day he was cruising the Strip in his big El Dorado. The next day he was gone. Forever."

"What? He ran away?"

"Not likely. The detective's opinion was that Sonny had a disagreement with some business partners from Providence, Rhode Island, and that he and his El D were recycled somewhere in the Atlantic County Landfill."

I dried my cheeks with my hands. "Then ... what? What happened next?"

Griffin admitted, "Not much. Everything was pointing one way, and suddenly everything was pointing nowhere. The case stalled out. It happens."

"There weren't any witnesses?"

"No."

Griffin squirmed a little after he said that, so I prodded him, "What? What aren't you telling me?"

There was a sharp knock on the door. Griffin opened it to Mrs. Biddulph. She asked him, "Why did you close the door, Detective?"

"We were discussing a sensitive matter, ma'am."

"We don't close doors around here. Not without an administrator present."

"Sorry, ma'am."

Mrs. Biddulph turned and walked to the counter. Griffin stood back to let me pass through the door. He told me, "If it's any consolation to you, the punk who did the crime is almost
certainly dead. Long dead. Of AIDS, of a drug overdose. Who knows? Who cares?"

I told him, "I care. And I want to know."

He looked away, thinking. He said, "Roberta, I did a bad thing letting you see that tape."

"No, you didn't."

"Yes, I did. If I can make it up to you in any way, let me know."

Mrs. Biddulph cleared her throat in my direction, so I hurried out of the office and back to class.

After school, I stayed on the bus all the way back to Sawgrass Estates. I wanted to see if Dad had picked up Mrs. Biddulph's message about Griffin. He hadn't.

There were two lights blinking on the machine. I played Mrs. Biddulph's message right away and deleted it. Then I played the second message: "Roberta, this is Peter Herman calling from Channel Fifty-seven. I wanted to thank you. I had intended my farewell video only for my own classes, for the back row rabble, but I appreciate your initiative in providing me with a much wider audience."

My mouth fell open. I felt like a complete idiot. But Mr. Herman didn't seem to mind my blunder at all. He laughed lightly. "Anyway, I'm calling with a bit of news, which is not surprising since I am calling you from a newsroom. I have just heard that I will do my first commentary tonight, two entire minutes on the late news. That may not sound like much, but in a thirty-minute broadcast, two minutes is an eternity. If you are home from the family sweatshop by then, please tune in. Good-bye."

Work at the arcade droned on slowly today, until Nina's dramatic arrival.

Kristin, Karl, Will, and I were just hanging out at the
counter. Suddenly Nina ran in, looked around to see who was listening, and told us in a tense whisper, "Listen, you guys. I gotta talk to you."

Kristin said, "There's no one around. Go ahead."

"The colonel's not around?"

"No. He's in the back. What's up?"

"Two things: I was talking to Betty. She told me that Devin is going to another after-hours party here. Tonight."

Kristin and I answered together, "Tonight?"

"Tonight. You didn't know?"

"No!"

"Then I'm glad I told you. But that's only half of it. I got a call from a guy on the football team. He said there's gonna be crack cocaine at the party."

Kristin practically shouted, "Here?"

"Yeah. This is where the party is. Right? About a dozen Xavier guys are putting in, like, a hundred bucks each—fifty bucks for the party and another fifty for the crack."

Kristin looked at me, bewildered. She started babbling, "What should we do? We have to do something. What should we do?"

I put my hand on hers. "I know."

"You do?"

"Yes. I know what to do. I need to get to a phone."

Nina whipped out her cell phone. "Here you go."

I stepped behind them, pulled out Griffin's card, and called his pager. The message started to come on, but suddenly it clicked off and I found myself speaking to him live. "This is Detective Griffin."

I said, "This is Roberta," and added, "from the West End Mall."

"You're the only Roberta I know."

"Remember you said you owed me a favor?"

He hesitated, then said, very slowly, "Yes."

"Would you like to make a drug bust tonight?"

"You have my complete attention."

"Uncle Frank is having another hardcore party after hours. Some Xavier boys are making it a drug party."

"What kind of drugs?"

"Crack cocaine."

"You're kidding. Those young gentlemen?"

"That's what we hear."

Griffin thought for a moment. "Do you want me to bust your uncle Frank?"

I hadn't thought about that. I answered, "No."

"But that's the likely scenario."

"Can you just bust the Xavier boys? And Devin? Is that possible?"

"Depends. If it goes down in the parking lot, yeah. We can do that."

"So ... Will you come?"

Griffin paused, then replied, "Believe it or not, it's a slow night. We're looking for something to do. What time?"

"Nine o'clock. It will cost you fifty dollars to get in."

"Okay. How many partyers are we talking about?"

"I heard a dozen."

He whistled. "Whew. Six hundred bucks for Uncle Frank. That'll buy some vodka."

"Griffin!"

"Sorry. Cop humor. See you at nine."

I clicked the phone off and returned it to Nina. She said, "I gotta get back to my dad." Nina bounded down from the counter. "You guys are so lucky. You get to stay here."

Kristin and I just stared at her.

As soon as Nina left, I asked Kristin, Karl, and Will, "Did you hear all that with Griffin? Do you know what's going to happen?"

They nodded grimly.

At eight-thirty, Uncle Frank came out and told Karl, so that everyone could hear, "We're having another after-hours party tonight. It should be exactly the same as the last one. You know what to do." He handed over the hardcore CDs and legends and walked stiffly to the back.