Crusader (45 page)

The rest of the broadcast droned on, through the sports and weather, before they got to what I was waiting for. The anchor said, "And now here is Peter Herman with tonight's Channel Fifty-seven editorial." A graphic came up. It looked like the front page of a newspaper with a headline reading,
CHANNEL
57
EDITORIAL: "THE GOOD OLD BOY NETWORK.
"

Then the camera cut to a desk. I recognized it as the same desk Mr. Herman had used for his Memorial High video. I recognized the desk quicker than I recognized Mr. Herman.

Mr. Herman was wearing a blue blazer and some nice designer glasses. On top of his shiny head, he was wearing a jet black toupee. He looked younger, of course, and not as thin, but he sounded exactly the same.

He looked slightly to the right of the camera and read these words off the TelePrompTer: "The good old boys began their teaching careers when Florida was a simpler place. The schools back then were local, each belonging to one particular community.

"The good old boys were men in a profession dominated by women, so they took on the manlier jobs. They became the coaches; they became the driving instructors. They taught gym; they taught history. When they got together in the teachers' lounge, they were more likely to talk about fishing than about education. The pay wasn't so great, but it was a steady job, and you got your summers off. Summer was prime fishing time, so they stuck with it.

"They were in the perfect position when the latest Florida boom began. About twenty years ago, young people with families started moving to Florida at a lemminglike rate. New school construction became the number-one priority for county governments everywhere.

"These new schools needed principals, and the good old boys were ready and waiting. They traded in their coaches'
whistles for suits, and their driver's ed cars for Cadillac Coupe de Villes.

"They became the leaders of an educational system that for twenty years grew in quantity, but never in quality. How could it, with a leadership educated only to the level necessary to get by in a backwater Southern state?

"Now they find themselves and their appalling inadequacies in the spotlight. They find themselves adjudged by a population of students and parents from all over the United States, a population that is sophisticated, and demanding, and attuned to the philosophy that all races can live together in harmony.

"The principal of Memorial High School, in his comments to the media, may have inadvertently done public education in Florida a great service. By drawing a public spotlight to himself and to his peer group, he may have ensured that the good old boys will get their just reward for their twenty years of service to Florida's schools—an immediate and permanent fishing trip."

The camera cut back to the anchor girl. She thanked "Peter" and the other people on the broadcast, then it was over.

I switched off the set. I thought about Mr. Herman. I thought about his two video performances today. Was this his higher standard of journalism? I didn't think much of him for the way he left Memorial High School. I thought even less of him after this.

We're still on alert at school, although nothing bad seems to be happening. If anything, the kids are actually being nicer to each other.

Archie was our sub in Journalism II. Since Mr. Herman HBO
had left no sub plans, Archie told everybody to look at the
Atlantic News
while he graded his history papers.

I got up and waited in line behind two football players for a chance to speak to him. When my turn came, I said, "Mr. Herman offered to get me into AP classes and into the National Merit Scholarship Test. I've decided that I would like to do that."

Archie answered, "Okay," but I don't think he really understood what I said. I walked to the back and picked up a section of the newspaper. The football guys only read sports, so most of the other sections were available. I chose the letters to the editor.

People had written a lot of letters about Mr. Archer. They were all bad, but some were worse than others. Here are two samples:

The remarks broadcast, and rebroadcast ad nauseam, by the local news stations about race relations at Memorial High School would have been offensive coming from a groundskeeper or from a student. What is mind-boggling is that they came from the school's principal. What do you have to do to get certified to teach in Florida these days? Flunk your real estate exam?

For all those who were saddened or discouraged by the remarks made by the principal of Memorial High School, I want to share my own experience. My son has attended Xavier High School for four years now. He is part of a group of friends who are inseparable, whether they're in school, or at the mall, or at the beach. One of these friends is black, one is Hispanic, and one is white. Maybe that principal should find out what they teach at Xavier and try it at Memorial High School. It might do his students a lot of good.

I looked up at Archie after I read the letters. Had he read them, too? He must have. What did he think? He had to be hurting for his father. He sure wasn't the happy-go-lucky guy he had been before.

As soon as I walked into the mall office, Suzie practically shouted at me, "I had to call your dad. I had to track him down on the beeper. Your uncle Frank never opened the store today."

"What?"

"He wasn't here at ten, like he should have been. Then he wasn't here at eleven. That's when I got worried."

"So what happened?"

"Your dad finally got here and opened up at noon."

I said, "I better help him," and hurried up to the arcade.

Dad looked up at me from behind the register and said, "Well, you've missed a wild day."

"What happened?"

"Your uncle is AWOL. Your cousins didn't show up, either."

I reached around and got my name tag. "You just ran the place by yourself? All day?"

"Sure. No biggie. It was just like the old days. I'm glad you're here, though. Now I can go get some food."

I covered the front while Dad took a long break. Shortly after he came back I had two visitors—Sam and Griffin.

Griffin no longer looked like a mall rat. He was dressed in black pants and an Atlantic County Sheriff's Department T-shirt.

I asked him, "Aren't you undercover anymore?"

"No. Not anymore. I've had too much exposure here."

Sam surveyed the arcade. He asked me, "Can your dad cover? I want to show you something."

I said, "Sure. What is it?"

Sam checked around him. "Griffin hasn't seen it yet, either. It's the latest turn in our case."

The three of us walked through the rotunda toward Crescent. Griffin asked Sam, "So what's the mystery? Did you catch somebody new?"

"No. There is nobody new."

We hurried through the Crescent showroom and into the back. Sam had a TV setup ready to go. He announced, "This was recorded at approximately eleven
P.M.
Colonel Frank Ritter has come back, and he has something to say."

Sam turned on the TV. "You have to listen close. He's on the other side of the glass."

I saw that the VCR was already on and cued. Uncle Frank was frozen on Pause. He was flickering and quivering like a bug on the sticky mallway flooring. Sam pressed Pause and the image of Uncle Frank was released. He walked straight up to the window of Crescent Electronics. He stood erect, nearly at attention, and talked into the camera in a slurred yet dignified voice. "Sam, I just want to say that I am sorry about all of this. All of it. I never wanted anything like this to happen.

"This was never about your race. Hell, I don't even know what your race is, and I certainly have nothing against it, or any other race. This was about money. About the recap. You wanted the recap to succeed to save the businesses in the mall; I wanted the recap to fail to save myself."

Here Uncle Frank started moving his arms in an effort to explain. "I can't get out of my franchise deal unless some force majeure thing happens—like the whole mall goes bankrupt. If the mall goes bankrupt, see, I can transfer the franchise, or sell it. I don't lose my savings. But if you save the mall, if you get the recap, I'm stuck with my deal. And I'm dead. Dead in the water."

He started to lose his composure. "I risked my life for twenty-five years to save that money. I was separated from my family more than I was with them. I fought in Desert Storm. I did it for this country. And that means I did it for you, too."

Now he was in tears. "I'm not waiting on tables in some restaurant at fifty years of age just to pay my mortgage. I'm not going to do that. I deserve better than to wind up like that. To wind up with nothing!"

Uncle Frank stared into the lens one last time. Then he turned and lurched off across the mallway.

Sam turned off the machines. He looked at me, and he saw that I was in tears. He looked at Griffin, but Griffin wasn't reacting at all. Sam finally asked him, "Well?"

"Well? Do you want the truth?"

"That's all I want."

"Okay. Here it is: That tape would never be admissible as evidence. He's obviously drunk. He's distraught. It's an amateur surveillance tape—no date and time on it, et cetera. Any lawyer with a functioning brain would get that thrown out."

Sam came back at him angrily. "He's confessing to the crime! What do you have to do to get arrested around here?"

"I'm not talking about getting arrested. I'm talking about getting convicted. It's great TV, Sam. It's just bad evidence. My advice would be to sell it to Angela del Fuego."

Sam looked with contempt at Griffin. He snapped at him, "Spare me any more of your advice. Okay? I'm pressing charges against this guy."

Griffin defended himself with, "Hey, you can press charges. I'm just saying, don't count on this confession holding up. It has, uh, legal problems." He paused and enunciated every syllable: "Prosecutorial problems."

Sam was turning red. "I have your records and your evidence, though. Right? You didn't lose those, did you?"

"No. I have it all. It's good to go."

Sam turned his attention to me. "And I have your eyewitness account." He dropped his voice down. "Or do I?"

I assured him, "Yes."

"You did see him that night. Didn't you?"

"Yes, of course. We both saw him." But I remembered Griffin's words about Sam and me in that empty store. I thought about the dirty version a lawyer might make out of that.

Sam left us, obviously upset. I followed Griffin out through the store and into the mallway.

Once we were clear of Sam, I said, "Can I ask you something about my mom's case?"

Griffin eyed me sideways. "Okay."

"Have they stopped looking for the killer?"

"Actively, yes. If some new witness or other new evidence arises, we will reopen it. Why?"

"What if I found the killer?"

This time he smiled. A sideways smile. He said, "Roberta, I wouldn't be at all surprised."

I walked home after work. I passed the guard at the gate, took the elevator upstairs, and started down the walkway toward #303. That's where I stopped.

I thought I had seen some horrible sights lately—Mom on that videotape, Hawg spread out on that highway, Ironman blue and frozen against that trailer wall. But none of those hit me as hard as what I saw on that walkway, and it was a simple sight: a door.

The door to Mrs. Weiss's condo was open. Wide open. The sight of it made me almost physically sick. Her door was open, with the light and the air-conditioning pouring out into the night. That would never, never happen. Never. Not if she could possibly prevent it.

I ran down the hall and turned inside. The kitchen and the living room were empty and quiet.

I hurried into the bedroom. There was Mrs. Roman, folding up the dark blue quilt from Mrs. Weiss's bed. She turned to me with tears in her eyes and said, "Oh, Roberta, sweetie, she's gone."

I said the stupidest thing. "Gone where?"

"She has passed away. Oh, Roberta, I blame myself. I should have been here."

Mrs. Roman started to talk, but her words sounded far away to me, as if I were underwater. "I drove her to the doctor this morning. He said it was pneumonia. He wrote out a prescription for her. We got back here, I got her settled in, and then I went out to Eckerds to get it filled. I should never have left. I came back, and I found her dead, in her bed. Dead of a heart attack."

I clutched at my heart, like it was going to stop, too.

But Mrs. Roman just kept on talking. "Her daughter is taking care of the funeral arrangements. You know, she didn't really have anybody down here."

I felt a surge of pain and cried out, "She had me!"

Mrs. Roman took in my words with such force that she dropped the quilt. She held out her arms for me to come to her, so I did. I ran and buried my face into her chest while she talked on and on. "I know she did, sweetie. Yes, she had you. You were the one. You were the one, Roberta. You were the apple of her eye."

I didn't know what to do with myself today. At breakfast time I sat in Mrs. Weiss's kitchen, dwelling on all my problems,
asking my mother over and over,
What should I do? What should I do?

I didn't receive an answer, but that was okay. I didn't really expect to. It still felt comforting to talk to her.

I walked out of the apartment into the blinding heat and headed south. I rounded the anchor store, crossing the parking lot diagonally. I could have kept going down Everglades Boulevard to the school bus stop, but I didn't.

Instead I stopped at the spot where Will had placed his cross. It was long gone, but in my mind it still stood there, and it probably always would. I bowed my head at the spot, picturing Will's memorial cross as it was that first day. I listened to the traffic rushing by, thinking about life and death. Then, suddenly, I knew what to do about my mother's death. This was it: I had to make somebody else watch that videotape.

I crossed the northbound lanes and walked rapidly all the way to Sawgrass Estates. I entered the kitchen, headed straight into the bedroom, and dug the tape out of the back of my closet. I peeled off the
ATLANTIC COUNTY EVIDENCE
label and replaced it with a piece of white paper, taped down on four sides. Then I took a pen and wrote on the paper,
Stephen Cross as a teenager.
I stuck the tape into my backpack and hurried back outside, to the bus stop.