Adam and Evil (20 page)

“They tried to do the right thing,” I said. “That’s all they did.”

Outside, our students made their start-and-stop way across the square. I could see them around the silhouetted figure of my headmaster at the window. “I requested a low profile,” he said, his back still to me, “and this is anything but. Everything but. I do not feel that ours is a harmonious working relationship, and this insubordination and refusal to honor a modest request on my part, a protective desire for our school—all this leads me to believe that you might definitely find a more compatible working relationship and be happier elsewhere. I hope that such is the case, because I feel obliged to terminate your employment.”

“Now? Today?” On a Tuesday in late April? It seemed ridiculous.

“A leave of absence until the end of the year.” He finally turned and faced me. “Please leave your substitute your lesson plans and any finals you’ve prepared, of course. A brief sabbatical. Shall we call it that, then?”

And that was it. The accumulated frustrations of this worst of all weeks—what felt like effort after effort to behave responsibly, to be a good citizen, a good teacher, a good adult— all of it misfiring and winding up here, with nobody trying to do the right thing by me—all of that exploded. Besides, I had absolutely nothing to lose.

“I don’t think I’d call it a sabbatical,” I said. “I don’t think that’s the right word at all. I think we should call it being fired for allowing students to enjoy their constitutional right of freedom of speech. I think in fact what you’re doing is illegal and deserves a news story of its own. You’re not even giving me a chance to say goodbye to my students, are you? I think they deserve to know what’s going on.”

“No need to humiliate yourself. We’ll tell them you’re ill. Medical leave. In all honesty, your appearance … you might well require such leave.”

“I’m not ill.” He thought I was. Mentally.

But Adam wasn’t, because his parents donated money to the school. “And I’m not humiliated to be fired for such a tawdry reason. I’m proud of it.” I stood up. “Is that it, then?”

“Well, but … what is it you’re going to do?”

“I don’t know, Dr. H. I’m going to have to think about it this weekend. I’ll let you know.”

I was fired. For real this time. No, worse. I’d been banished—told not to darken the doors again. To plead sickness. It sounded like the old Soviet Union, where dissidents were put in so-called hospitals forever.

Well, I’d be damned. I would not go gentle, and that was that. I couldn’t have said if this was about me or freedom of the press or simple stubborn stupidity, but as I walked outside, I saw Jill and Nancy, who waved.

“Hey, girl reporters,” I said. “I have news. Bad news. The paper’s been suspended. There’ll be no story for any of us this year.”

Both their mouths opened slightly. Their collective
oh, no
was silent, but I heard it.

“And listen, this is awkward, but—I’ve been fired for having allowed you to think we’d print your story. I’d say I’d see you, but I don’t think I’m going to be permitted back in. Not even to say goodbye to anyone.”

They were the best of all possible audiences, their faces registering the full spectrum of disbelief and horror at what was going on.

“So—I’ll miss you. I hope you get the chance to run with the story—it’s an important one, and you’ve done a great job. Take care.”

I walked around to the back of the building, where my car was parked, trusting that after all these years, I knew the power of two animated tenth-grade girls.

News of my expulsion would be universally known within nanoseconds.

It was the most—and least—I could do.

Even if they didn’t care about me, they had to care about their story.

I
T HAD BEEN A BEAUTIFUL DAY FOR A FIRING, SUFFICIENTLY
crisp, green, and springlike—even in the city—to make the prospect of living on the streets not that unpleasant.

Or at least walking on those streets, which was the method of transport Mackenzie and I chose to visit Beth in the hospital. She’d thought she’d be released immediately, but she had bonked her head when she fell, and that necessitated tests, scans, and observations. So far so good, and now she expected to go home the next day, but we thought we’d divert her attention from the fact that she was stuck there for another night. Boy, did those Pepper sisters know how to get attention—one fired, the other incapacitated.

“Let’s buy her dinner,” I said. “Something suitable for the occasion.”

“Unhealthy food, for when you’re bruised and bummed,” Mackenzie suggested.

“Why not? What’s less healthy than getting hit by a car?”

So we kept our eyes out for a sign of steak sandwiches en route, hoping we wouldn’t have to go all the way to South Street for a suitable one. There was lots of time to talk about things we should have talked about a while back, which we now did, in gingerly fashion, as if each sentence were a carefully placed stitch, mending our ripped edges.

“I feel like a complete failure,” I said. “Everything I touch, or even try to touch, gets hurt. I only wanted to help. Didn’t want to be a bystander. An ‘I could have told you that would happen’ kind of person. And look where it’s gotten us all.
Adam’s wandering around, sleeping wherever, in real danger from you guys, from his new best friends, and from himself. And I’m unemployed. Out of work. Mortified.”

“I’m not gonna let you live on the streets, you know,” he said. “You won’t have to be like Adam, looking for shelter.”

“Thanks, but it’s not all about that. I don’t want to be anybody’s dependent, the screw-up, your personal charity. It’s just that if I was mixed up a week ago about what I wanted to do, which direction I wanted to head in—if any—I’m a thousand times worse off today. I need to be in control of my life, or at least have the illusion that I am.”

“Don’t let him fire you that way,” Mackenzie said.

“What way should I let him fire me?”

“Don’t go gentle into that dark night, I meant.”

“I was thinking the same thing. Then I remembered—that poem’s about dying. I’m fired, not dead.”

“Glad you’ve noticed.” His voice was mild, but his message hit me with enormous force. I was alive. Quit-your-bitchin’ time.

“He expects you to disappear like a bad smell might. Don’t.”

I thought about a counterattack as we walked. A legal fight, a taking-it-to-the-press fight. Any sort of fight at all.

There was a general air of merriment on the streets, a new scent and texture, nature promising that winter was absolutely over. As of this evening, spring had arrived in all its infinite power. Mating season was on, and you could sense it on every city block.

This weather could galvanize anybody into action, except, I realized, me. “I’m too tired for a battle,” I finally said. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going, that teaching was really for me. Maybe this was an effective way of answering that.”

He shook his head. “It’s wrong, is all.” Having made his pronouncement, he walked along slowly, cogitating. Once again I noticed how his multitrack mind worked. He barely looked at the stores we passed—except for two, one selling used books and one stocked with kitchenware. He’s into equipment and tools, doesn’t matter for what—even if he’s lost in thought, his radar will nonetheless spot hardware stores and camera shops and electronics emporiums.

I, on the other hand, tend to get caught up in the displays,
imagining them on me or owned by me, and whatever else I’ve been thinking about gets pushed so far aside, I forget all about it.

“How’s this?” he asked a block later. “Say I show up at the school first thing tomorrow, introduce myself as a member of the Philadelphia police force—”

“He knows you are. He knows you’re with me, too,” I said.

“Think so? I’ll bet we all look alike to him. But even so, doesn’t matter. I’m not speakin’ officially, just professionally, complimentin’ Dr. Havermeyer on his exemplary behavior. Which of course, I heard about from a fellow officer.”

“Have I been missing something? Has Havermeyer ever in his lifetime done something outstandingly good?”

Mackenzie nodded. “You mean you missed how he was immediately handlin’ this sad perversion of academic standards? This travesty being perpetrated on the SAT exams? You missed how he was upholdin’ the standards of Philly Prep, settin’ a great example for the rest of the city’s schools by callin’ the police in immediately for a full public investigation.”

“Perfect.” Havermeyer had many more than two faces and would wear whichever suited the atmosphere around him. It was easy for him—there was nothing behind the mask except another mask. If Mackenzie could convince him that not only did the police already know about the cheating scam, but that they were under the delusion that he’d broken the ring, brought the corruption out into the air, the man would run with it. And with Havermeyer taking bows for his moral leadership, there’d be no point suspending the newspaper and firing me, at least for the moment, would there? Perhaps Mackenzie was right and I could walk out on my own terms.

“My hero,” I murmured as he again came to a full halt.

We had not come upon a steak shop. What we had come upon was the rare-book dealer I’d visited just days ago. The beautiful shop where the perfect Mackenzie gift was found and then lost by the imperfect Pepper price tag. It was closed, but it still had its calm and inviting air. “Nice place,” I said.

“Bauman’s?” He nodded.

“You know it?”

“I go in when I’m in the neighborhood. Ever been inside?”

My turn to nod. I told him about the Daniel Boone poem that he wasn’t getting, and he said the thought was what
counted, and he loved the idea and was quite as contented with his life without the book as he’d been before he’d heard of it.

“I never cared about anything except what was written in a book,” I said. “Never went into that sort of bookstore. But this last month—probably ever since my first trip up to the Rare Book Department, I … I really wish I could have those books. They’re beautiful. The man in there showed me lots of titles, and I don’t care about Americana—this was for you— but really, I wanted them. All of them.”

“Careful. Book collectors are an entirely separate world. Very intense. An’ I don’t know if there’s even a twelve-step program for them,” Mackenzie said. “I do know that we don’t have the disposable income for them. I know, ’cause I’ve spent lots of time drooling and despairing, too, here an’ on the computer. This guy’s on the Net.” He disengaged from the window. “Think of all the books we aren’t going to buy,” he said. “Think of those price tags. A thousand dollars here, a thousand there.”

“They had books at the library worth a hundred thousand,” I said. “More. They have books like the Gutenberg Bible, whose every page is worth fortunes.”

“Let’s not buy those, either. Think about how much more we’re savin’!”

Savin’.
The word echoed, touching off vibrations. Savin. Wasn’t that the name I kept … no. Sabin. The polio guy, only he wasn’t. The man at Bauman’s. And the stickum at Emily’s … “Have you ever heard of somebody named Sabin, but not the polio guy? Something to do with rare or antique books?”

“A reference, I believe,” he said. “Documents a book. Gives the provenance. The condition of specific editions and printings. Why?”

“Just a thought, but all this talk about their worth made me wonder. Do you think Emily Fisher … she said she thought she had a way out of her financial mess. Do you think she could have been … would people buy books that were stolen?” I knew it was a stupid question as soon as I’d formed it. People would do anything.

Which is precisely what Mackenzie said.

“How? Through a bookstore?”

“Not one like Bauman’s, no. But it’s like art—you don’t
find paintings stolen from museums for sale at the reputable galleries where the provenance of the works is known, but there are always less reputable dealers and unethical collectors, and those paintings disappear into the hands of private collectors who never show them to anyone else. They just have to have them. Collectors are a breed apart from thee and me. Go on the Net and look at the lists of stolen books people are on the lookout for.”

I mulled this over, still without any conviction that this made sense. Some logical glue was missing.

“To answer your question,” Mackenzie said, “sure, books get stolen, but it can’t be easy stealin’ them from a library— or one of these stores—without being caught. Emily was barely there long enough to get the drill down.”

He spotted another of the aluminum portable kitchens on the corner across from us. This one had a line of people waiting for one of its unhealthy offerings.

I pushed Emily to the back of my mind—still wishing, however, that I knew her way out. Since she wasn’t using it, maybe I could.

“Popular spot,” he said. “To think we’ve never dined there before.”

Mackenzie bought generously. You never knew who might stop by, he said. Best to have too much rather than not enough. He sounded like my mother.

“Here you go,” the man in the instant restaurant said. The voice, I thought. That stonewashed voice.

A bearded man handed Mackenzie the order. “Want drinks?” he asked, sounding as if pebbles lined his throat. He put sodas and bottled water on the sliver of counter, and slowly, like a Polaroid photo coming into life, I recognized the steak-sandwich maven. The Thwart Man. The library— the quarrel with the woman who turned out to be H. Emily Fisher Buttonwood. Who turned out to be dead. “Hi,” I said. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“Wow,” Mackenzie muttered. “Your lines are real original. What next? ‘What’s your sign?’ Or ‘What’s a nice guy like you doin’ in a place like this?’”

“Been here a while now,” the steak-sandwich man said.

I shook my head. “No … a meeting, maybe? I heard you speak. You’re Louie. The advocate for the homeless.”

His smile changed his face so much, I wouldn’t have recognized him at all had he been serving his sandwiches with that smile. “Louie Louie,” he said. “Louis Lewis,” he spelled out, “if you must know. You know me, huh?” he asked. “You’re in the group, too? I thought I knew all the—”

“No, no. Not yet. Thinking about it,” I said. “So you’ve been here a long time?” Hadn’t Terry and I decided he must be a trust-fund baby? How jealous we’d been. How wildly wrong.

“Pays the rent,” he said. “Six hours a day so’s I don’t wind up homeless, too. My uncle owns a bunch of these. Gave me the easiest shift—twelve to six. Don’t have to get up too early, don’t have to be around after dark.”

“You’re here every day?”

He held up a finger, as if in warning. “Weekdays only.” He looked at me, his head at an angle that was reminiscent of when I’d seen him with Emily Fisher. His stance had subtly become more aggressive. “You’re thinking this isn’t such a hot job, aren’t you?”

“No. Why would you—”

“Don’t bother. I know how people feel. But lemme tell you, being outside, like I am—it’s healthier. I haven’t been sick a single day since I started. Ask my uncle—I never missed one day of work. Tell me that’s true of inside jobs.”

“No,” I agreed. “Always getting head colds or worse. You’re right, that’s amazing—a perfect attendance record. Congratulations.”

“You are one cordial customer, Miz Pepper,” Mackenzie said as we walked away. “Unless he was an old friend. Or beau.”

“I saw him quarreling with Emily Fisher the day she was killed.”

“I remember now. You were pushin’ him as somebody to watch. The homeless advocate. Right. Because you decided that, against all logic, it was a part-time cheesesteak salesman who did her in, not a schizophrenic student who felt she dissed him.”

I kept my eyes on the pavement. Frankly, I was disappointed to lose Louis Lewis as a suspect. He’d been my favorite, and not just because of his ridiculous name. Until five minutes before, I’d known nothing about him aside from that
name, and he had no humanity, no identity except his anger, which I’d witnessed. It would have been so easy and remote if he’d have been the murderer, but with his unbroken attendance record at the steak kiosk, he was out, and the field narrowed ever more tightly around Adam, yet I was increasingly sure he hadn’t done it. Money was too involved with Helena and with Ray Buttonwood to be irrelevant. Money was a strong motive for what seemed a premeditated act. Adam had no motive, was not a violent person, and couldn’t have planned something that no one would see or hear, the way this murderer had.

“Hope not,” Mackenzie said as we entered Jefferson Hospital.

“Not what?” My thoughts were still tangled around Louie.

“Sleuthing. You. I really hope not. You’re in enough trouble without interfering with a—”

“Thanks. I know the drill.” I didn’t want to be annoyed with him. Not now. “Only thing I’m interfering with—
we’re
interfering with—is hospital routine.” I smiled. So did he. The moment was defused.

I hated how Beth looked. All sorts of bruises had found their way to the surface overnight. “You’re doing your face in autumn colors in spring?” I said. “How daring.”

She grimaced. I thought it was supposed to be a funny expression, although along with her multihued face, it made her look still more horrifying.

Her leg was straight out and encased at the knee. She looked understandably unhappy and uncomfortable, and it all felt my fault—my city, my streets, my fault. But maybe she hadn’t noticed that, so I chose not to mention it.

“Look at it this way,” I told my older sister. “Life in the big city is full of adventures. Like this one. Frankly, when’s the last time you slept with a stranger?” To her credit, Beth pretended to do the calculations. The woman she was rooming with, a grim creature who’d had foot surgery, did not adjudge my remark to be funny. Nor did she want us to think we’d get away with smuggling in cheesesteaks.

“Against the rules,” she said. “Not permitted. I’m calling the nurse.”