The Escape Diaries (27 page)

“I was looking
for Constanza,” I said quickly. “Constanza Arguello? In twenty-four?”

“Don’t know,
don’t know,” she muttered, avoiding eye contact.

The lock to the
woman’s door finally tumbled. She leveraged open the door with her hip, eyeing
the bags I still clutched in my hands. She might know more than she was saying;
I had to find a way to get her to spill.

“I see you bought
cellophane noodles,” I babbled. “I
love
cellophane noodles.”

The bright black
eyes peered at me quizzically. “Harusame?”

“What? Yes,
harusame noodles. But I always mess up when I make them. They come out tough as
shoelaces.”

“You presoak
them?”

“No.”

“You got to
presoak.”

“Oh. No wonder!”
I slapped my forehead.
Overkill.
“So, okay, from now on I’ll presoak.”

“You presoak. Salt water. Five
minutes. Then they are good.”
“Wow. Terrific! I never knew that! Thank you!” I handed her another of her
bags.

“Connie,” the
woman said, “is at work.”

“Do you know what
time—”

“Three thirty.
She comes home at three thirty. You come then.”

“Right. That’s
what I’ll do, then. Come back. At three thirty,” driveled the amazing
blabbering mouth, no connection to a brain.

The woman stared
at me, probably worried that I was a dangerous escaped lunatic.

“Luis,” I said,
making a last-ditch desperation cast. “Is there a Luis living with Connie?”

“Luis? No. Luis
is dead.” She mimed a gun pointed at her head. “Gangstas.”

I clamped down on
a smile. Even Hmong grannies talked street around here. Handing her the rest of
her bags, I turned to go.

“You presoak,
okay?” she called after me.
  

“I will. Thank
you.”

“No problem.
Maybe you mean Eduardo, not Luis?”

I turned back to
her. “Eduardo?”

“Connie’s son.
Nice boy. Helps me move furniture, takes out my trash.” She closed the door and
her last words came out muffled through the wood. “Goes to the high school.”

I stood staring
at her door. Now what did I do? I’d put all my eggs in the Constanza basket and
now I was left with an empty basket. Maybe this Eduardo kid would know
something. A feeble lead, but all I had right now.

I hurried
downstairs and was about to barge out the front door when a dark green Lincoln
with tinted windows glided to a halt in front of the building, parking in a
handicapped slot. The Lincoln was not dented, fitted out with double mufflers,
or slung out as a low rider, so naturally it drew attention in this
neighborhood. Two men got out of the car.

           
The
word telegraphed up and down the hall.
 

           
Zhe
she yemin!

           
Autorodades
de la Inmigracion!

           
It’s
fuckin’ immigration, man!

           
Doors
slammed; locks clicked; portcullises clanged down. The hallway was suddenly
deserted. The strangers moved at a rapid clip toward the front door. I didn’t
think they were here looking for phony green cards. They wore white shirts and
ties and dark trousers. Mormon missionaries?

           
No.
Muscles rippled beneath the white shirts. They looked like the kind of guys who
swept inconvenient problems under the rug for U.S. congresspersons. Kip had
once told me that most politicians had guys on their staff, referred to as
Janitors, who cleaned up their messes. I was willing to bet that these guys
were Bear’s Janitors. The one in the lead was Asian, a short guy trying to look
tall with a mushroom cloud of permed black hair combed straight up off his
forehead in an early-Elvis conk. He looked like that North Korean dictator who
used to let his people starve while he lived in palaces filled with expensive
cars—Kim Jong the Evil or whatever his name was.

The other
resembled a character you’d see on the History Channel. Wavy blondish hair,
long sideburns, droopy mustache over weak chin. Poke a few arrows in this guy
and you’d have George Armstrong Custer.

           
 
I was out the back door in a flash.
Shadowy forms peeked furtively from behind dumpsters, bushes, and
fences—all of us illegal fugitives in one way or another. Keeping to
alleys and back streets, I cautiously circled back to the Volks. Muffin growled
to remind me that he was still pissed off at being abandoned, but he got over
it sooner than most males do, kissed and made up. Digging around under the
seats while I was gone, he had unearthed one of Labeck’s old sweat socks and
had occupied himself with chewing it to shreds. The car smelled like Labeck—hint
of old socks, trace of Old Spice. It brought Labeck to mind so vividly he could
have been sitting in the driver’s seat, eyeing me as though to say:
now
what kind of scatterbrained stunt are you trying to pull off?

A mere
twenty-four hours ago, Labeck and I, working as a team, had pulled off our
Vanessa caper. I felt a twinge of nostalgia. Labeck had my back. And he cared
enough about me to warn me not to do something stupid. I wondered how mad he’d
been when he’d found both me and his car gone.

           
 
I turned my mind to my immediate
situation. Last night, drugged with enough rohypnol to date rape an entire
sorority, I’d barely been able to string two thoughts together. Now, jazzed up
on George Webb java, my brain was in overdrive, my neurons furiously cranking
out theories. Bear had to have sent the creeps. He would have wakened this
morning to the news that I was still alive. Checking the
Previous Call
display on his kitchen phone and backtracking the Schiller Street address the
same way I had, Bear would have sicced those Janitors on me. No more dicking
around with shovels and graves. The Janitors would do a fast, professional job
of making me disappear forever.

           
What
I still didn’t understand was why it was so important to Bear to get rid of me.
What did I know that made me a threat ? Why had he been willing to take such a
blatant risk last night? It all had something to do with the snapshot and it
all linked back to Kip’s murder, I was certain of it.

           
Right
now General Custer and Kim Jong would be going door-to-door at the apartment
building, probably flashing my photo, intimidating, bribing. Eventually they’d
reach the Hmong lady. And I didn’t think they’d be discussing cellophane
noodles.

           
That
didn’t give me much lead time. I started the car and drove the eight blocks

over to the nearest high school.

Escape tip #22:

Master the art of time travel
.

           
Clarence
Zablocki High School was brown brick, square, and ugly. It looked as though the
city fathers had said, “Make this sucker as close to a Victorian prison as
possible. Spare no expense.” When it was first built, Zablocki had been the
neighborhood school for the children of the south side’s huge Polish
population. In recent decades, Mexican immigrants had flocked to the area, and
now there were more Garcias than Grabowskis in the halls. The tiny Hmong lady
had told me Eduardo Arguello went to high school and Zablocki was the school
closest to his home, logically the place to look first.

           
Wearing
the trendy little lozenge-shaped reading glasses I’d found in Luella
Parkhurst’s jacket pocket, with Muffin stuffed inside the tote bag, I hurried
into the school, trying to look as though I belonged there. Before I’d stepped
three feet into the building, I ran into a security checkpoint. A burly guy with
a brushy mustache and a Zablocki Zebras baseball cap sat on a stool next to a
metal detector playing Angry Birds on his cellphone.

           
Attempting
casual, I strolled through the metal detector gizmo. The guard snapped his
fingers at me. “Hold on a sec. Where’s your pass?”

           
“I’m
a teacher,” I said.

           
“Employee
ID.”

           
“I’m
a sub.”

I’d taught at
three different schools; I knew the drill. There was an ongoing war between the
schools and Central Administration, and just like in a real war, the lines of communications
were often cut off.

“They said come
over right away.” Looking him straight in the eye, I gave him my sincerest con
look. “A teacher got hurt or something.”

           
The
guard frowned. “The one who got stabbed with the ice pick?”

           
“I
think it was one who got staple-gunned.”

           
The
guard nodded. Staplings and stabbings didn’t rate a raised eyebrow in the
public school system, where probation officers had offices cheek by jowl with
the guidance counselors’ and electronic monitoring ankle bracelets were the
bling of choice. Teaching can be a high-risk occupation. A kid kited out on
speed had once zinged a needle-tipped dart at my face when I’d refused to give
him a hall pass. The kid was a lousy shot; the dart sailed above my right ear
and chimed out a B-flat on the xylophone behind me, leaving all my facial parts
unpunctured.

           
“I’ll
check with the office,” said Mr. Better-Safe-Than-Sorry, pressing an intercom
switch.

           
A
bell rang. Kids exploded out of classrooms, yelling, cussing, and banging
lockers. Two girls got into a scuffle over whose turn it was at the water
bubbler and began flailing at each other with their purses, yanking each
other’s hair, and calling each other bitch.

           
“You
two—knock it off!” I yelled in my best Teacher Voice. I whipped a notepad
out of my tote. “I’m taking down names!” Ignoring the guard, I strode toward
the girls, who wisely took off in opposite directions.

           
Relieved
that he was not going to have to be the one to deal with the fight, the

security guard turned his back and
resumed his game. Losing myself in the teeming masses, I hurried down a
hallway, scanning the attendance lists posted outside classroom doors.
Arguello,
Maria, Arguello, Juan, Arguello, Tammi.
This was going to take forever.
Zablocki was the size of a small city—three stories plus a basement.

           
As
I was checking the list on Mr. Klunk’s World History class, someone shoved
past, her purse jabbing me in the ribs. “Outta the way, skank,” snarled a girl
whose earrings dangled to her clavicles.

           
That’s
a week’s detention for you, young lady,
I nearly snapped, but stopped
myself in time. She’d taken me for another student! In these dimly lit, crowded
corridors, I could pass as a kid! I’d always looked younger than my actual age.
I’d been the last girl in my middle school class to grow boobs and get my
period. My first year of teaching, I’d had to wear frumpy suits and high heels
to get the kids to think of me as a teacher.

           
Where
do you hide a marble?
Inside a bag of marbles. But first I needed to look
more like all the other marbles.

           
I
time-traveled back to teenagerhood at the school store, where I bought a
Zablocki Zebras sweatshirt—black and white and hideous all over—and
a headband that swept my bangs off my forehead. Wearing Luella’s eyeglasses, I
looked like Brainella, the Human Computer. Luckily the store was nearly
deserted and I was able to pull off Charlene’s sweater and pull on the Zablocki
sweatshirt behind a rack of paperbacks without being seen. I bought a roomy
black backpack and transferred the contents of Luella’s tote bag into it.
Muffin, overstimulated by all the teenage sweat fumes wafting about, wanted to
run around snuffling. I pacified him with a granola bar and then stuffed him in
the backpack.

           
When
the bell rang, I moved out into the flow of traffic, just another
trash-talking, hormonally overcharged teen traversing the perilous terrain of
the high school hallway. Amazingly, all the insecurities of my teenaged years
flooded back. Were those boys over there staring at me because they thought I was
ugly or cute? Was that clique of Mean Girls snickering at my outfit? And why
was I wearing these dorky, L.L. Frumpo shoes when all the other girls were
wearing platform sandals?

The aroma of lima
beans and Brussels sprouts drifted from somewhere close by, and I realized it
was already lunchtime. Following my nose, I found the school cafeteria, jammed
with early lunchers.

           
“Yo,
Arguello, wait up!” I heard one boy call.
 

           
My
head snapped around. I zeroed in on a boy of about sixteen who was pushing his
tray along the à la carte cafeteria line. The first boy caught up with him.
They paid for their food and went out into the courtyard adjoining the
cafeteria, where picnic tables were scattered beneath a patch of ragged locust
trees. It was a popular place; twenty or thirty kids were hanging out there,
flinging their nutritionally balanced school lunches to the pigeons.

           
I
followed the pair. I went up to the first boy, who was lounging atop one of the
tables, eating French fries. “Excuse me,” I said. “You wouldn’t be Eduardo
Arguello?”

           
“Jackpot,”
he said. “It’s Eddie, okay?” He had a pleasant, husky voice and killer
eyes—brown liquid with rims so black he could have been wearing eyeliner.
He had bronze skin, a nose that was a hand-me-down from some Aztec ancestor,
and short, dark hair zigzagged with bleached blond like a strip of
over-fertilized lawn. He wore standard teenage guy getup: oversized T-shirt,
shorts with the crotch starting at the knees, and clunky faux gold chains.