Gentlemen (12 page)

At this point, we were pretty worried about Tommy. He'd never been gone this long, and the police had never been involved before. I'd told the guys what Throckmorton had been saying—about Tommy not packing this time, not even a pair of socks—and we all figured they knew more than that.

Now we knew that Tommy hadn't skipped out because of Bones and Natalie. My little one-day brainstorm had fallen apart, and we were right back at square one. There were only two people on square one, two people we figured could be responsible for Tommy going missing. Tommy himself was still the odds-on favorite, but Haberman had been coming on as the days went by. And he definitely kept himself in the race in English class.

He was watching me as I walked in and had that same
creepy smirk on his face, and as much as I'd been glad to spend a few hours with a less-crazy idea about what might've happened to Tommy than that Haberman stuffed him in a barrel, I still slipped back into thinking it pretty easily. It was how he acted, what he said, him looking at me, same as before.

I'm just going to give it all to you, full-blast, both barrels, so that you can see the kind of crap we had to wade through in that class. Day in, day out, it was pretty much like this, so much hot air that the room would float away if it wasn't nailed down, but there was more to it than that, like I've been saying. Separating what he meant from what he said was getting tougher and tougher so, you know, here's all of it. Maybe you can figure it out.

He didn't mention where he'd been on Thursday, if he'd been sick or what, and except for that hacking cough, he seemed healthy enough to me. We weren't even all sitting down yet, and he launched in. When Haberman did that, it meant he had more to say than there were hours in the day, and under normal conditions, that sort of cut both ways. On the one hand, it meant we'd have to hear him talk for the full forty-five, but on the other, it meant there wouldn't be many questions, no real reason to stay tuned in. But these weren't normal conditions, because if you thought the guy talking might've killed your friend, then you'd pay real close attention. Maybe you'd even write stuff down.

“I'd like to skip ahead a bit to part three, chapters four and five, the scenes in which Raskolnikov first meets Porfiry Petrovich.”

And I opened my book, because I wanted to see if the stuff he was going to talk about was really in there. I didn't recognize the name from the part I'd read, but I knew all the names were like that, like Andrinokov Andonovyanoffakov or whatever.

“Page 243, for those so inclined,” said Haberman. I'm sure he was looking at me, but I didn't look up, and even though it looked lame, I flipped to page 243.

“Notice the feigned indifference in his phrasing, as Raskolnikov asks his friend Razumihin, ‘You know that…what's his name…Porfiry Petrovich?'

“But of course he does; Porfiry is his friend's relative. Raskolnikov is acting here, but why? Why would he conspire to visit the man in charge of investigating the murder he committed, the crime that has seemingly been driving him to the brink of madness for most of the book?”

Haberman was always saying things like “the brink of madness.” Anyway, he wasn't really asking us a question here. He was going too fast to stop himself from answering.

“He wants to retrieve his pawned trinkets, certainly. That is the literal explanation, but there is a clue. ‘I know I ought to have given notice at the police station, but would it not be better to go straight to Porfiry?'

“Now, recall, the last time he was at the police station, he
fainted and nearly gave himself away. He hardly wants to repeat that, and here is an opportunity. Why go to the police station, surely the last place a murderer wants to be if he can help it? Why go there, when you can go to the relative of your best friend, with your best friend in tow? Certainly seems like a better approach. Wouldn't you say so,” and here he paused, like he was picking the name out of a hat, “Mr. Kaeding?”

And Jerry was like, “Yeah, sure.”

“I am sorry to say that you are wrong, Mr. Kaeding,” said Haberman. “I set a bit of a trap for you there. Raskolnikov is walking into one, as well. He is walking right into the spider's web, as it were, and he begins to understand that before he even arrives, before his feet begin to stick to the filament, because his friend describes the inspector as ‘intelligent,' ‘skeptical,' ‘cynical,' and most alarming of all, ‘very, very anxious' to meet him.”

I turned the pages and found the part he was talking about. So far, it pretty much checked out.

“ ‘On what grounds is he anxious?' says Raskolnikov, and you can imagine the alarm in his voice. But his wits have not deserted him entirely, not yet, anyhow. He teases his friend, makes fun of how Razumihin had doted on the sister, Dounia, so that when they arrive at the inspector's apartment, they are laughing, laughing loudly, unconcerned and having, it might seem, a grand old time. Certainly, that is how Raskolnikov means it to be taken.

“And yet it is all very serious. He has entered the chambers of his great nemesis now, his Grand Inquisitor, if you will, and when the door closes behind him, well, how must that feel?”

And now he really was asking: He asked Mixer. “Mr. Malloy, how do you suppose that would feel? You are guilty of something, something quite serious, and there you are, in a closed room with a police officer. You find yourself answering questions, being watched. How would you feel under those circumstances?”

And of course, he knew—everyone knew by now—that Mixer had been “under those circumstances” just the day before. Mixer and the rest of us, in the principal's office, behind that big thick door, getting quizzed and eyeballed by Throckmorton. And if that part was true, then it was like, what about the first part, the part about being guilty of something? And it was back to that spreading stain crap he was saying and disposing of the body. And Mixer could put all this together as fast as I could, and he wasn't answering.

“It wouldn't matter if you hadn't done anything,” I said, just to get him off Mixer's case, before Mixer said something stupid.

“Why, Mr. Benton,” said Haberman, wheeling around, “what a strange thing to say. But of course he's guilty.”

And now I was the one not saying anything, because I was talking about Mixer, and Haberman was back to talking about the book. I just shrugged. His eyes were intense, staring
at me like I was food. It weirded me out and I looked away a little, just over his shoulder.

“And thus, the interrogation begins,” said Haberman, launching back into it. “He sits him on the couch with ‘that careful and over-serious attention which is at once oppressive and embarrassing.' And at first, Raskolnikov does quite well, doesn't he, Mr. Benton?”

“Sure,” I said, not committing to meaning it and still not looking at him.

“But he does: ‘in brief and coherent phrases Raskolnikov explained his business clearly,' but, and here is the key point, he doesn't stop there. He just can't. Raskolnikov simply cannot shut up. He is in a room with not one inquisitor but two, and he keeps on talking.”

And I was thinking, Throckmarten and Throckmorton, and how I'd talked so much more than the others. How I'd been in there longer, talked more, and how the others had all, whatever they said, sort of noticed that.

“And he botches it: ‘I haven't been well' one moment and ‘I am quite well, thank you' the next. He panicks and flatters Porfiry and then tries to explain his flattery. And suddenly, it's not going well, not going well at all. The noose seems to be tightening, but even at this point—the exchange on the second half of page 253—he has said nothing especially damaging. He is just acting strangely, as he had with Zametov the day before, Zametov who is also in the room now, a sort of quiet, lurking presence.”

And here I thought of Throckmarten, how I'd seen him and Haberman talking and laughing a few times, how I once saw the two of them drive off in Haberman's car. The top was down and Throckmarten was in the passenger seat, while I was sitting there fogging up the window of the slow-ass, rust-bucket bus.

“No, what really gets him into trouble are his
ideas,
” said Haberman, and he drew the word out, like eye-deeeeeyas. “The question comes up, ‘Whether there is such a thing as crime.' You remember, we discussed this, the barrel, the words on the board:
crime
and
punishment.
Are they real things or just ideas, matters of opinion?”

I looked at the board, but the last traces of those words had been wiped away.

“Raskolnikov sees nothing strange about this. It is, he says, ‘an everyday social question,' and one about which he has some very strong—and unusual—opinions. Does anyone know what they are?”

He was about to plow ahead, but someone actually spoke up. I turned around, and it was Bridgit, sitting next to the empty desk where Natalie usually sat.

“Excuse me?” said Haberman, because he hadn't quite heard what she'd said, either.

“The article,” she said, slow and careful.

“Yes!” Haberman shouted.

I swear he damn near creamed himself.

Bridgit was just kind of in the middle on everything, not too popular, not too good-looking, and not too cool, but not un- any of those things, either. You really only noticed her when she did something like this, something unexpected. She'd actually read the damn thing. I looked down at my book. It was open to page 256, and she'd read what came next. I mean, a lot of books aren't even 256 pages total.

Haberman walked toward the back of the class and, for a while, he was talking to Bridgit, just the two of them. There was an article that this dude got printed in a magazine. It was about crime and how it was OK for some people and not others, and this cop had read it. And it's like, Yep, that's a pretty good way to screw yourself over, writing something like that, especially if you're going to follow that up by going out and actually killing someone.

But Bridgit, even though she'd read that far, stopped being interesting to him, and he walked back toward the front of the room. It was like he couldn't stay away from the three of us for long, so he came back. “And his ideas, quite remarkable. That some people are ordinary, the masses, the cattle in the field,” he said, and he drummed his fingers on Bones's desk as he passed. Bones looked at Haberman's back with a world of hate in his eyes. “And that some people are extraordinary, above society's little rules. Destroyers, he calls them, destined to break laws on their way to creating new ones.”

I flipped through the book and there it was: Starting on
page 259, the words
ordinary
and
extraordinary
dotted the pages. You just knew which category Haberman put himself in.

“We will talk about that more on Monday,” he said, and since his back was still turned, Max took the opportunity to let out a groan. “Much more,” said Haberman, as he turned around to face us again.

“But what is crucial here, is that Raskolnikov, against all common sense, allows himself to be drawn into this discussion, to tell two police inspectors that he considers some people to be above the law, licensed by ‘their conscience' to, as he puts it, ‘wade through blood'—to wade through blood! What on earth would make him say such a thing, even if he believed it?

“Is it pride, intellectual vanity, or is it, on some level, a desire to be caught? Certainly, he has come close to confessing at a number of points. And then, too, he is not even sure they suspect him.”

My head was sort of swimming. All this stuff was in the book; it didn't have to be about Tommy, about Throckmorton, and sometimes, like now, it seemed like it wasn't.

“Raskolnikov is thinking: ‘All their phrases are the usual ones, but there is something about them,' and it is a panicked thought. ‘Why do they speak in that tone?' he wonders.”

And it's funny, because I knew just the tone he meant.

“So maybe, before he is drawn into that last discussion, into issuing his little treatise on crime, he is in the clear. If
that is so, what is the book saying here, what are we to take away from it?”

By now, the whole class was watching the clock, waiting for that last tick that would set the bell loose.

“Is it that it is not only Raskolnikov's actions but also his ideas that have gotten him into trouble? Ideas, after all, can be very dangerous things. Say you had done something very bad, but that because of lack of evidence or simple good fortune, you were liable to get away with it. Why, then, would you complicate matters by sharing wild ideas on the topic with anyone, much less the police?”

I was looking down, stacking my books, but I figured he was looking at me when he said these things. If he was, this is what he was saying: Don't talk to the cops, don't share any “wild theories.”

The bell rang and he called out more page numbers, a big chunk because it was the weekend. I looked over at Mixer as I stood up. He was still steaming from that what-if-you-were-questioned-by-the-cops thing, and the look in his eyes was like, Screw this. I was still thinking about the don't-share-wild-theories stuff. We were sick of this crap. We couldn't figure it out. Was he talking about Tommy or wasn't he? Wednesday it was like he definitely was, and today it was just like, Well, he could've been. Asking Mixer about the cops like that was fuel for the fire, but even that was sort of in the book.

We'd just lost one theory about what might've happened to Tommy when Bones squirmed off the hook, and now it seemed like this one might be getting away from us, too. We needed some straight answers, and soon, before Haberman crawled back into his hidey-hole and became just a teacher again. Mixer stopped at my desk and he nodded toward Haberman's back, like, Yeah, we've got to settle this. I looked over at Bones and that crazy bastard was up for anything.