Crusader (42 page)

The football players looked at each other suspiciously. But one by one, they reached out and took the passes. The girls and
boys who sat near them did the same. They gathered up their stuff and filed out, grinning disrespectfully.

Mr. Herman held up the passes to the kids in front, too. "Anyone else? This offers expires immediately. Going once; going twice."

Once he was satisfied that everyone remaining really wanted to be there, he returned to the podium. Then he delivered this lecture: "I have talked to you in the past about careers, and about standards. I have tried to show you how high standards developed in the career of journalism, and about how these standards have slowly been eroding. Let me talk to you today about life itself, and about something higher than the highest standards. About ideals.

"The Greek philosopher Plato spoke of ideals twenty-five centuries ago, and his words still apply to us today.

"Plato said that the highest expression of anything—love, truth, friendship—lies in its ideal. But here's the problem: That ideal does not exist here, in reality. It does not exist in our grimy little world. It exists high above it; it can never be reached. It is the standard against which all love, truth, friendship, and so on are to be measured. You must say to yourself, 'Do I really love this person? Let me see. Let me measure my love against the ideal of love. How does it measure up?'

"Now you, as a young person, may have no faith in your country, or in your church, or in your family. But you can still have faith in an ideal. If you have an ideal in front of you, you will never get lost on the journey of life. It is, after all, the journey that matters. So I wish all of you a safe one. Good-bye."

Mr. Herman gathered up his belongings and left the room.

He didn't come back. I waited along with the others for thirty more minutes, until the period ended. Then I went to math. Mr. Herman did not show up for study hall, either. We sat there, unsupervised, and did homework.

After seventh period I headed out to the bus stop. A Channel 57 News truck was parked by the school's front door, along with trucks from the local network stations. I walked over to check it out.

The reporters were packed tightly around Mr. Archer, thrusting microphones in his face. Mr. Archer's face seemed fuller and redder than usual. He looked like his blood pressure was running very high. The reporters were really rude, shouting out things such as, "How do you keep your job? Why is Memorial still open? Don't you have the lowest test scores in the state? Why can't you control your students?"

Mr. Archer listened to the reporters for a long minute, getting redder and redder. He listened until the barrage of shouted questions subsided. Then, to their surprise, he answered one of them. "You really want to know why I can't control my students? I'll tell you. After they leave this school, and for the rest of their lives, the whites stick with the whites, the blacks stick with the blacks, the Spanish stick with the Spanish, and so on. That's what people do. They stick with their own kind.

"You people don't know a thing about education. You have no idea what's going on in public schools. You expect us to mix all these kids together and to have them live in peace and love and harmony. Well, that's a crock! It's never been that way, and it's never going to be that way. These people don't like each other. They don't like each other when they're teenagers, and they don't like each other when they're adults, either. That's just the way it is. There's your answer. Now leave me alone."

Mr. Archer broke out of the circle and lumbered into the building. The reporters started shouting and running to their trucks. They were all really pumped up, like something great had happened. I had the distinct feeling it wasn't going to be so great for Mr. Archer.

***

At the studio today I ran the video dubbing machine for a tour group from the University of South Florida. The students were pretty good. They asked smart questions, and they responded to things the way Mrs. Knight expected them to. When Mrs. Knight took them to the video vault, I was alone in the equipment area. I practiced with Tape A and Tape B for a long time, refining my plan to save the mall, trying to convince myself that it could work.

Mr. Herman opened a door behind me and hissed, "Roberta? May I speak with you?"

I told him, "Sure."

He came in and stood next to the machine. He got right to the point. "What happened after I left today?"

I shrugged. "Nothing."

Mr. Herman nodded. "Yes, I suppose the day drones on, regardless of whether the teachers are there or not. That's some commentary about education, isn't it?"

He had asked me a question, so I asked him one, "Mr. Herman, why did you leave today?"

Mr. Herman set his briefcase down. He thought for a moment, then told me, "I think the question is, Why did I ever enter that place? It was a mistake, a mistake that I have now rectified."

"Do you mean you're not coming back?"

"Yes. How long do you think it will take for them to figure it out?"

"You're not even going to tell Mr. Archer?"

"No. Why should I? The man is a moron."

Those words made me angry. I thought,
What did Mr. Archer ever do to you except give you a job?
But I didn't say it.

Mr. Herman must have known how I was thinking, because he launched into an explanation. "I was called down to Mr. Archer's office at lunchtime. He told me I had given out too many Fs."

"How many?"

"How many deserved them?"

"You gave out
that
many?"

"Yes. I thought I could." He shrugged. "It turns out that I couldn't. Therefore, I would like you to do something for me. Can you do me one favor?"

"Sure. I guess so."

Mr. Herman reached into his briefcase. He handed me a padded envelope. I thought,
Oh no, another videotape,
but I took it from his outstretched hand. "I would like you to play this for me tomorrow. Will you do that?"

I said, "With Mr. Archer's permission."

"Yes, of course. With Mr. Archer's permission."

When my break time came at Arcane, I walked up to Slots #2 and #3, Florida Dermatology. I opened the door to the reception area, walked in, and asked a lady behind the counter, "Is Nina Navarro here today?"

The lady yelled behind her in a Cuban accent, "Nina! You have a friend here."

About two seconds later, Nina popped out of the back. She looked at me and her face fell. I said, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just thought you were some guy. So what's up?"

"I have a favor to ask of you."

"Me?"

"Yeah. I was wondering if you could check your records for something."

Nina looked worried. "Oh, I don't know. Medical records are a private thing."

"I just wanted to know about a particular tattoo. An evil tattoo."

I could see Nina's curiosity starting to rise. She glanced over at the receptionist, then she said, "Come on back."

I followed her into a small office with a desk, a chair, and a PC. Nina closed the door and sat behind the desk.

She said, "Now, what's this about?"

"I wanted to know if you kept records of tattoos that you removed."

"Yeah. But like I said, that would be part of that private medical stuff."

"Can I just ask you some general questions, then? Questions that aren't about people?"

Nina thought about it. "Yeah. I don't see why not."

"Okay. In general, then, if somebody came in to you to get a tattoo removed, what information would you take down?"

"The usual personal stuff."

"What about a description of the tattoo?"

"For sure, and I'll tell you why. They might come back and try to sue us. They might say, 'Hey, I told you to take this chick's name off my arm, but not the American flag. You messed up my arm.' And we say, 'No, you wrote it right here on this paper,
Take off the chick's name and the American flag.
'"

I had never trusted Nina for a moment, but I had to trust her now. I decided to tell her the truth. "Listen, Nina. I just saw something evil."

"I'm listening."

"It was a surveillance tape, and it was taken the night my mother was murdered."

"
Madre de Dios!
"

"On the tape I saw the murderer's arm. It had a tattoo. A tattoo of a serpent wound around a wooden pole."

Nina's eyes were fiery. "You didn't see his face?"

"No. It was Halloween night. He had on a mask."

She leaned forward. "This is incredible. I feel like I'm in a movie and we're actors and you're telling me this."

"But like I said, I did see his arm, and his tattoo."

Nina punched excitedly at the computer keyboard. She said, "I am all over this."

"You can help me?"

"I am helping you right now. The records weren't so good back then, but I've keyed in a lot of them since. I'll do a search with the word
snake.
That might turn up something. If not, I'll try
serpent.
It could take a while."

Nina stopped typing and looked up at me. "Hey, I gotta see that tape, though."

I told her simply, "No, you don't."

"I gotta see that arm. It could help me."

I repeated, emphatically, "You don't need to see it. This is not
Angela Live.
" Nina looked hurt. I added, "Anyway, the tape is gone."

Now she looked crushed. "Gone?"

"Nina, it nearly killed me to watch it. It's gone." She nodded like she understood. I added, "That thing was evil."

"Yeah. Yeah, I hear that."

I hurried back to work, but there was no need. Everybody was just hanging around.

Mrs. Roman walked across the mallway at seven o'clock. I asked her, "Is Leo minding the store?"

"Yes, the dear man. He'll do anything for anybody. And he's very handy, too."

"Have you heard from Mrs. Weiss?"

"Yes. She says everything is fine. Of course, she would say that. I felt like saying, 'Everything is so fine that you're still not able to get out of bed?' But I didn't. I didn't want to upset her. Will you be with her tonight?"

"Yes. I live there now."

"Good. That's real good. I better get back over to Leo."

I turned toward the counter and was surprised to see Nina standing there. She was chatting with Kristin like nothing was
different. Like I hadn't just asked her to do something that was extremely important to me. To make it worse, much worse, she called right out, "Hey, Roberta, I couldn't find that thing for you."

I joined them at the counter. Kristin was looking daggers at me. I asked Nina, "You couldn't find anything about a serpent or a snake?"

"That's right. I searched the files for both words.
Nada.
"

Kristin locked eyes with me. "What is this?"

Nina answered, "It's a secret."

Kristin remarked coldly, "Another secret, Roberta? You're telling things to Nina now that you don't tell me?"

That made me feel terrible. "It's not a secret, Kristin. I had an idea, but I didn't know if it would work. It didn't work. So it was a bad idea, not a secret."

"Okay. So what was it?"

"I was hoping Nina would have information about my mother's murderer." Kristin's eyes opened wide. "There. Now you know."

Nina said, "The killer had a snake tattoo."

Kristin nodded. "And that's why you searched your files?"

"You got it."

"But, Roberta, how do you know that?"

Nina answered, "Because she saw the video, girl. She saw the murderer—at least she saw his arm. It was on the video."

Kristin got very upset. "Roberta, is this true? Have you told the police?"

"I got the tape from the police. I got it from Griffin."

Nina added, "Yeah. And it was so evil that she destroyed it."

I told Kristin sincerely, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it before. You should have known about it before Nina."

Now Nina looked offended.

Kristin put her arm around my shoulder. I don't think she
had ever done that before. I don't think she had ever touched me before.

After closing, Mrs. Roman and I walked back to Century Towers together. She was very tired, but she wanted to say good night to Mrs. Weiss, so we both stopped into #303.

Mrs. Weiss was up, sitting in the living room, watching TV. She had a green plaid blanket over her legs. Mrs. Roman called to her from the kitchen door, "Hi, Isabel. We had a great day at the card store."

Mrs. Weiss turned and smiled at her weakly.

"I'm not going to stay tonight, if it's okay."

"It is okay, Millie. You go get your rest. Thank you for everything."

Mrs. Roman left, and I joined Mrs. Weiss in front of the TV. She pointed at it and told me, "It's the History Channel. It's about Egypt tonight."

"How are you feeling?"

"Not bad at all. I had a very restful day. A peaceful day."

"That's good. Can I get you anything?"

Mrs. Weiss waved the offer away. We watched a camera pan down a wall of hieroglyphics. A commercial came on, and I said to her, "I've been thinking about that memorial you left to your mother." Mrs. Weiss cocked her head at me. "I've been thinking ... maybe I'll do the same."

Mrs. Weiss thought about that. "Sure. Why not? It's no dumber than anything else, right?"

"It's not dumb at all."

"No. But it is ... temporary. It's all temporary, Roberta. We're all going to be dead someday."

I didn't like the sound of that. I wanted her to stop talking that way, but I answered, "I guess so."

"So what does it matter if you have a big memorial? Or a little one? Or none? You're just as dead."

"I guess."

"Look at these pharaohs of Egypt. They spent all their lives, and all their money, building monuments to themselves. Bunch of fools. Before they were even cold, robbers were in there looting them. Now, three thousand years later, we're parading their bones around the world in a freak show. So what was it all for?"

"I don't know."

"Better someone should look back on one kind deed you did, than look at a big pile of stones."

I nodded in agreement. I wanted to say something—anything—positive to her. I finally thought of this: "I think the bleeding has mostly stopped."