Crooked Numbers (30 page)

“Yeah,” Edgar agreed. He took another minute and punched a few more keys. “He’s not even named in the initial stories about his kid being killed. Papers just say ‘The victim’s parents were not available for immediate comment.’ Low profile.”

“Seems like it,” I said. “I wonder why he agreed to be interviewed by Allison and without a lawyer.”

“Maybe he got past his initial grief and wanted his kid’s story out there.”

“Maybe. Thanks, Edgar.”

“No problem. Anything else before I shut down?”

I thought about that. “No,” I said. “I think that’s it for the day.” I looked behind me: my four customers had already left.
Great. I never said good-bye.
This case was turning me into a crappy bartender. I turned back to Edgar. “I think it’s time to go home.”

“You’re right.” He shut down his laptop. “I got an early morning.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Actually,” he said, “I’m heading uptown to see our friend Elliot.”

“Going bird-watching?”

“There’s a … I don’t know what he called it … a club fair? All of Academy’s clubs are having an open house. Recruiting members for the second half of the year.”

“How does that involve you?”

“Elliot said he could use an extra hand with his bird-watching club, so I volunteered. I gotta meet with the headmaster first. Get cleared.” Edgar’s face turned serious. “Elliot’s the only member, now that … y’know.”

Dougie.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

“Anyways, since we’re gonna be business partners, I figured I’d head up there and see what the kid’s got.”

“You mean face-to-face?” I teased. “You’re not going to IM him?”

“That’s funny.” His face told me it wasn’t. “Hey, you wanna come along? You know how I am with meeting new people.”

I did know. I was surprised Edgar knew.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I got kind of a busy day tomorrow.” I didn’t.

“Ahh, come on, Ray. I’ll pick you up. We’ll be there in no time.”

It would be something to do,
I thought. I walked with Edgar to the front doors, shut the lights, and we stepped outside so I could lock the place up.

“Maybe,” I said, turning the key. “What time are you leaving?”

“I can pick you up at eight thirty.”

I gave that some thought. “All right, but can you get me back by one? I need to hit Muscles’s tomorrow, and I have a date with Allison tomorrow night.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It starts at nine. All over by noon.”

“Okay. Cool. Eight thirty.”

“I’ll bring the coffee and bagels,” Edgar said.

“I’ll need them both,” I said. “Thanks.”

SATURDAY MORNING TURNED
out to be surprisingly pleasant. The temp was in the low forties, and if there was a cloud in the sky, I didn’t see it. Except for a few small, gray mounds melting along the streets, the snow was pretty much gone. Edgar and I were driving over the Williamsburg Bridge. With little humidity and smog, and the early-morning sun shining on the skyscrapers, Manhattan looked like it was in high-definition. One of those mornings when I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

Then I remembered we were driving right past the same tennis courts where Dougie had been killed. Maybe there were other places to live.

“What did I tell ya, Ray?” Edgar said. “No traffic on the bridge, we cruise up the FDR, exit at Ninety-sixth, cross the park, hang a louie, and we’re at the school in just over twenty minutes.”

I raised my coffee cup in a nonchalant salute. “When you’re right, you’re right.” To get my mind off Dougie, I said, “You think you’ll find parking by the school?”

“You nondrivers are all alike.” He took a bite of his bagel. “Betcha we find a spot along the park less than three blocks from Upper West.”

As it turned out, if I had bet him I would have lost. Fifteen minutes later Edgar pulled into an empty space along Central Park, and we finished our coffees and bagels on the short walk to the school.

We saw a few people on the steps leading up to the school building. Most of them walked indoors, but two small groups had formed off to the side. One boy, about sixteen, held a sign attached to a stick that read,
UPPER WEST ROADRUNNERS
.
He was talking to two boys, a girl, and a couple of grown-ups. The other sign read,
FOR THE BIRDS
, and was held by none other than Elliot Henry Finch. He had a box at his feet and was talking to no one.

“Elliot,” I said, as Edgar and I climbed the steps.

“Ray,” he said. “This is a surprise. I was expecting only Edgar.” He turned to face my friend. “It is nice, as I have heard people say, to finally put a face with the name, Edgar. I am Elliot Henry Finch.”

“Edgar Martinez O’Brien,” Edgar said, shaking Elliot’s hand. Edgar looked around the steps and the front of the building and said, “Where’s the group?”

“It appears we are the group. I would like to wait a few more minutes before we head off into the park.” He reached into the box and pulled out two pairs of binoculars. He handed one to Edgar and one to me. “I am hoping for a few more people.”

I couldn’t tell if he believed that or not. It was hard to read this kid’s face.

“Great day for it,” I said, going for optimistic.

“Actually,” Elliot began, “I would have preferred to introduce newcomers to the group’s activities in October or April. Those are the peak bird-watching months along the Ramble, but I am not in charge of scheduling the open house.” He looked up at the sky. “Although today is a good day weather-wise, I am not sure how successful we will be when it comes to spotting the more interesting birds.”

We stood there on the steps in awkward silence for almost a minute. It was broken by Edgar.

“In the meantime,” Edgar said, “I’ve had a few ideas for the bird-watching site. Potential advertisers. Logo design.”

“Excellent,” Elliot said. “As have I.” He reached once again into his box, pulled out a walkie-talkie, and handed it to me. “Ray, I have to introduce Edgar to the headmaster, and then I would like to speak with Edgar privately. Is that rude?”

I shook my head. “No, Elliot. I understand completely.” I turned on my walkie-talkie and put the strap of the binoculars around my neck.
Look at me, I’m a bird-watcher.
“I’ll take a walk over to the park. Radio me when you two get there.”

Without a word, they walked off in the other direction. I headed toward Central Park. I got about a half block, when I recognized the man walking my way. It was Mr. Rivera, the computer teacher. He looked at the walkie-talkie in my hand and the binoculars hanging from my neck and smiled.

“You joining Elliot’s bird club, Mr. Donne?”

“Not quite,” I said. “I’m here with a friend.”

I explained the relationship between Edgar and Elliot and how Edgar didn’t want to come alone for his first meeting with his future partner.

“Birds of a feather, so to speak,” Rivera said.

My turn to smile. “That’s good.”

“Yeah, every once in a while the computer guy makes a joke.”

“I’ve heard of that happening. You going to the open house?”

“Yeah. I run the after-school computer club. I’ve got one of my seniors up in the lab giving the introduction.”

“I won’t keep you, then,” I said.

“No, it’s cool. Truth is, Sheila practically runs the group anyway. I’m just the mandatory faculty advisor.”

“Nice work if you can get it.”

“Yeah. Hey, anything new on Douglas?”

“Not that I know of,” I said. “You heard about Jack Quinn?”

“Of course. It’s a small school.” He shook his head. “Lot of shit going on lately.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Seems like it.”

We both thought about that. When we were done thinking, I spoke.

“I met Jack’s sister last week.”

“Alexis,” he said. “How’d that come about?”

I told him about my trip to the hospital and running into the sister, the father, and Dougie’s uncle.

“What did she have to say?”

“She denied being Dougie’s girlfriend. Made it seem like they barely knew each other. ‘My brother’s best friend’ is the way she put it.”

Rivera shrugged. “Maybe I got it wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Or she was just too out of it to give me a straight answer.”

“She was high?”

“Took one of her mom’s anxiety pills. To help her through the crisis.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Sometimes it seems like everyone’s on something. How was Mr. Quinn?”

“Appreciative, at first. His daughter could have run into a lot worse than me in that situation. Then when he found out who I was and why I was there, he threatened me with his lawyer. Who just happens to be Dougie’s uncle.”

“Sounds like it was a fun visit.”

“That’s one way to describe it.”

He laughed. “I can imagine. Was Dad there when Alexis denied her relationship with Dougie?”

“No. Why?”

He nervously looked over my shoulder, up toward the school. When his eyes returned to me, he lowered his voice.

“Quinn senior? Never struck me as the most ardent defender of racial diversity.”

“Really? I got the feeling he was the reason Dougie attended Upper West.”

“Like I told you the other day, we
unofficially
have to have a certain amount of minority students. That number falls below … let’s say ten percent—and the school looks bad. As a board member, Quinn knows that. Doesn’t mean he likes it. I would imagine he probably viewed Dougie as the ‘right kind’ of black kid.”

“Not from the projects,” I added.

“Right. A nice smile, no tattoos. Hardworking boy and his single mom make a great photo for the brochure, but not necessarily someone he’d want his daughter to bring home to dinner, if you know what I mean.”

Cynical guy, Rivera. I liked that.

He looked at his watch. “I really should head up to the computer lab,” he said. “Sheila’s good, but the parents are going to have a few questions for me about exactly where their after-school fees are going.” He stuck out his hand. “You won’t repeat any of what I told you, right? About Jack and his dad?”

“I wouldn’t even know whom to tell,” I said. “Take it easy.”

“You, too.”

As we walked off in different directions, I realized the little interest I had in bird-watching had suddenly disappeared. When I got to the stone wall separating Central Park from the sidewalk, I cleared off a spot big enough to sit on and did just that. With little else to do except watch traffic make its way north up Central Park West, I put the binoculars up to my eyes and checked out the apartment buildings on the other side of the street.
Damn
. This was a Peeping Tom’s dream come true. Hundreds of windows, many of them with the shades pulled down and not too many on street level. But, still, if looking into other people’s homes was something you were into, book a room and head on over to the Big Apple.

“You can get into trouble doing that, you know,” a voice said.

I lowered the binoculars and looked into a couple of familiar faces. I couldn’t quite place them, but some time in the past week …

“Mr. Donne,” the boy said. “Jack Quinn.”

Right.

“We met outside the funeral home. This is my sister, Alexis.”

I slid off the wall and walked over to him. If Alexis recognized me, she didn’t show it. I wondered if she remembered anything from the afternoon we’d met.

“Hey, Alexis. Raymond Donne.”

“Hello,” she said.
Nope, not a flicker.

I turned to Jack. “How are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Last I heard,” I said, “you were in the hospital.”

He looked at me blankly, no idea what I was talking about. I couldn’t think of what else to say when he said, “I’m just messing with you, Mr. Donne.”
Funny kid, this Jack.
“Bad case of food poisoning. They released me this morning,” he explained. “I started feeling a lot better yesterday, but they wanted to keep me overnight for observation. And bill my dad’s insurance company for one more day.”

“Wow,” I said. “And you’re up and about.”

“I guess.” He shrugged. “I wanted to get over to the school. They’re having their club thing today, and my dad says I need to have more on my transcript than just good grades if I wanna get into a good college. My folks insisted Alexis come along in case I get all woozy or something.” An idea suddenly came to him. “Why are
you
here?”

I raised the walkie-talkie and binoculars. “Helping out a friend,” I said, and told them about Edgar and Elliot.

“That’s funny,” he said. “Elliot’s bird club was one of the ones I wanted to join. Supposed to hit the Ramble today.”

“You’re into bird-watching?”

“I’m
into
being out of the building. You know how us kids with ADHD are.” He wiggled his fingers and waved his arms. “Gotta keep moving. Can’t be in one place for too long.”

“Doesn’t bird-watching require a decent amount of attention?”

“They’ve done studies of kids with ADHD, what happens when you put us in the woods, surrounded by nature. Most of our symptoms just disappear. Guy wrote a whole book about it:
Last Child in the Woods
. Said a lot of us are just suffering from
nature
-deficit disorder.” He snapped his fingers. “You’re a special ed guy, right? You should know this stuff.”

I did, but kept my mouth shut. Alexis looked at her watch as if she were late for a dinner date.

“I’m sorry about your friends, Jack.”

“Huh?” he said. “Oh, yeah. Dougie and Paulie. That was some bad shit. I loved those guys. Y’know, Paulie was killed the night of Dougie’s wake.”

I watched for a reaction from Alexis. She just looked bored.

“I heard that.”

“That’s fucked up, y’know. We took the subway back to the city together that night. I was one of the last people to see him alive.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That is— You talking to anyone about it?”

“Whattaya mean? Like a counselor?”

“That’s what I mean, yeah.”

“Nah. Therapy’s for those who can’t handle reality. Like my sister.” He playfully slapped Alexis’s arm. Her face showed no sign of humor. “What happened to Dougie and Paulie sucked big-time, but that’s life, y’know.”