The Tutor (27 page)

Ruby got off the bus. There were things about Mr. V.’s story that didn’t add up, but she felt a little better anyway.

She went in the house, heard Julian on the phone. “. . . wearing a blue collar,” he was saying. “Answers to the name of Zippy.” He hung up as she entered the kitchen. “No news, I’m afraid,” he said. He sat at the table, surrounded by lists, notes, phone books, balled-up pieces of paper. “I’ve been putting ads in the community newspapers.”

“Good idea,” Ruby said.

“I also bought this staple gun,” he said. “I was going to tack up more flyers, maybe even a few in the woods.”

“I’ll do it,” Ruby said.

“Want me to come with you?”

“You’ve done a lot already.”

Ruby took her binders out of the backpack, stuck the staple gun in there with the remaining flyers.

“Heavy homework night?” Julian said.

Ruby nodded. Spelling, worksheets on the Mayans, the Toltecs and one other bunch she couldn’t remember the name of, plus extra math: she’d had her worst Mad Minute ever, not even beating Winston.

“Can I help?” said Julian.

“I’ll be okay.”

Julian smiled. “No doubt in my mind,” he said.

Ruby went into the garage. Her bike wasn’t hanging from the hook. Right: Jeanette had it. For a moment, Ruby was a little annoyed that she hadn’t brought it back yet; not annoyed, how could she be annoyed at Jeanette? But she needed the bike. And then she spotted it, leaning against the wall beside the lawnmower. A Post-it note was stuck to the seat:
Here’s your ride, Rubester—use with care. J. P.S. That means a helmet.
Ruby found her helmet, dusted it off, hit the door button and rode out of the garage.

Lots of flyers were already up in the neighborhood, on Poplar Drive, Indian Ridge, Larchmont. Ruby went farther, across Larchmont as far as West Mill Wine and Spirits, back all the way to the health food store in the other direction. The health food store had a big bulletin board outside. Ruby was stapling the Zippy flyer right in the center when a woman coming out with a bag of groceries stopped beside her.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

Ruby whipped around, looked up at her. “You’ve seen Zippy?”

“Unfortunately not,” said the woman. “But I know about him. A very nice man was going up and down our street yesterday. He was so concerned. I’m sure your dog will show up—that’s what I told him. I had a dog once who . . .” And she told a long story, a lot like Mr. V.’s except her dog walked all the way back from Waterbury instead of Meriden, and was missing an ear.

Ruby stopped at the pound on the way home. The pound was next to the Little League fields, and Ruby had often wandered over there during Brandon’s games. She saw Zippy flyers on the boarded-up Little League concession stand and on a telephone pole by the pound office. The dogs heard her coming and started to bark.

Ruby walked around the office to the kennels at the back. The dogs were in their individual fenced-in cages, each with an opening at the back for going inside. They stopped barking when she came in sight—two big skinny ones and a little fat one. They watched her closely, tongues hanging out.

A door opened and a man in a green uniform came out.

“Help you?” he said.

“My dog’s lost,” said Ruby, handing him a flyer.

“Right,” said the man, “Zippy. Nothing so far. I’ll call soon as I got news, like I said.” The man smelled strongly of dog, wore a patch on his arm that said Animal Control Officer.

Ruby gazed up at him. “You’re an expert, right?”

“Expert?”

“On this kind of thing.”

“You might say that.”

“So where is he?”

The animal control officer rubbed his chin; she could hear the rasp of his stubble. “Lots of possibilities,” he said. “Specially if you’re a dog.”

Ruby waited for the rambling story of some dog’s strange journey home—really wanted to hear it this time—but it didn’t come.

B
eyond the outfield fence lay the town woods, with a path that led to the pond and just past it the crossing path to her own backyard. Ruby walked her bike through the woods, the snow packed hard and slippery by the feet of others. She stopped from time to time to staple Zippy flyers to the trees, and once called out, “Zippy! Zippy!” A sheet of snow slid off a branch above, thumped down nearby.

Ruby came to the pond, saw that all signs of the high school party—bottles, cans, butts, boxes, keg—were gone. A thin coat of black ice covered the pond, except out in the middle where she could see tiny ripples. She stapled a flyer to a big tree by the water, where anyone circling the pond would see it. All of a sudden, there in the quiet woods where Zippy loved to play, even if he wouldn’t fetch sticks thrown in the pond like he was supposed to, Ruby had a strong feeling that this flyer would be the one. She took a felt pen from her backpack and wrote at the top:
I miss him.
She hadn’t meant to write that, had meant to write
Please help
, or underline the reward part, or do something else a little more useful.

Ruby rounded the big rock, came to the spot where Zippy had found the slice of sausage and pepperoni pizza. No pizza now, the snow smooth, even Sergeant D’Amario’s deep footprints all gone, and of course gone too the tiny depression where Zippy had dug out the crack pipe. Ground zero in The Mystery of the Anonymous Caller. And that case was connected to The Mystery of the Varsity Jacket. Now here she was again, working on a third case, although it felt so different she didn’t like to call it that. The Mystery of Zippy’s Disappearance was so much realer. Not realer—they were all real—but bigger, maybe. That didn’t mean she didn’t care about Brandon, just that he wasn’t missing and Zippy was.

None of that realer or bigger part had anything to do with the point she’d been trying to get at, though. She shoved it from her mind. The point had to be this: here she was again at ground zero for case two, which was tied to case one, only she was working on case three. At that moment, she thought of “The Musgrave Ritual,” one of her favorites, where Holmes discovers the secret chamber under the stone floor of the old manor. But before that discovery, he says something very, very important. Ruby tore off her backpack, took out
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
, leafed through, found it:
“I was already firmly convinced, Watson, that there were not three separate mysteries here, but only one.”

27

E
veryone was at dinner when Ruby got home, and they all seemed to be in a good mood, laughing and talking in the dining room. Did that mean Zippy was back? She hurried in and it got quieter right away. That was her answer, but she asked anyway.

“Is he here?”

“No,” said Mom. “And where have you been?”

“Did anyone call?”

“Not about Zippy,” Dad said.

“And I asked you a question,” Mom said.

“At the pound.” She froze Mom with a look, or tried to. Didn’t Mom care about Zippy? Didn’t any of them?

“Well, come and eat,” said Mom.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Gotta eat,” said Dad.

Julian pushed the platter of steaks in front of her empty plate. He cared more than any of them and Zippy wasn’t even his dog. Yet it had been on his watch, as he himself had said: not a nice thought, holding him to that, but Ruby thought it. She left the room.

The phone rang in the hall. She snatched it up.

“Hello?”

“Brandon there?”

“Dewey?”

“Yeah?”

“This is Ruby.”

“Hey. How’re you doin’?”

“Have you seen Zippy?”

“Zippy the dog, you mean?”

What other Zippys do you know, you fucking crackhead?
“Yes,” Ruby said.

“Nope,” said Dewey. “Is he missing or something?”

“I’ll get Brandon,” Ruby said. She took the phone into the dining room—Dad was saying something about Codexco and Julian was listening with interest—and held it out to Brandon, not quite in his reach.

“Did you pass out the flyers?” she said.

“Flyers?” said Brandon. “Sure.”

“Or did you dump them in your locker? Maybe you didn’t take them in the first place.”

“Huh? Give me the phone.”

“Hey, kids,” said Dad.

“You didn’t bother, did you?”

“Back off.”

“Because you didn’t even tell Dewey. You don’t care at all.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Brandon said. “It’s only a dog.”

Ruby tossed him the phone—threw it at him, actually—and ran from the room.

“H
eard the news?” said Dewey.

“What news?”

“Problem shot Unka Death. He’s in critical condition.”

“That’s a joke, right?”

“Turn on your TV.”

Brandon was already on his feet.

“Brandon?” said Mom. “Is it something about Zippy?”

Brandon hurried down to the entertainment center. The story was on a dozen channels: some dispute in a Manhattan strip club that afternoon, gunfire, vigil outside the hospital, clips from the video, over and over.

Fuck you, good as new, all we do, then it’s through.

And Problem with that deep background voice:
Where the sun don’t shine, where the sun don’t shine.

The video, over and over: the girl in the gold shorts and the white old-lady wig got in the Bentley and put her head in Unka Death’s lap; Unka Death’s diamond tooth sparkled as he turned the key; the trunk opened and Problem got out with the cleaver, the gold AK-47 medallion around his neck. Brandon didn’t know what to think.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Life sucks,” said Dewey.

R
uby was in a fury, all brake lines cut. No one really cared about Zippy. They just wanted her to get back to her normal self, weren’t even trying. Take the flyers, for example, probably still in Brandon’s backpack. She would take them into the high school herself, first thing in the morning.

Ruby went up to Brandon’s room, hunted through the mess on his desk, on his bed, on the floor, found no flyers. She opened his backpack without compunction: no flyers. Where else? She went down to the mudroom. His varsity jacket hung on the peg. She searched the pockets. No flyers balled up in there, nothing else either.

But what was this? Through the pocket, inside between the quilted lining and the leather or leatherette outside material, she felt something hard. Ruby explored the object with her fingertips: a vial, no doubt about it. And another, and another: sewn in between the two layers.

Ruby went into the kitchen. Taking scissors from Mom’s sewing drawer, she heard Julian in the dining room.

“Perhaps a college visit?”

“Perfect,” said Mom. “Let’s make a list.”

Sing Sing, San Quentin, Devil’s Island. Back in the mudroom, Ruby cut through a one-inch length of stitching at the bottom of the lining. No brakes. She could see where Brandon had done the same thing, and restitched with thread that didn’t quite match, the gray slightly too dark. When had he learned to sew? And then she thought: Trish. She liked Trish. Was it completely impossible to know people on the inside?

Ruby squeezed the vials out through the hole. One, two, three—a dozen in all, like he was some kind of dealer. Ruby gathered them in her hat, put on her boots and jacket, went outside.

One of those dark nights with no moon or stars. Ruby understood how people who’d lost an arm or a leg still had those phantom feelings. Being out on this kind of night without Zippy was like that. She could feel his phantom occupying the empty space beside her, but quiet now, and unfrisky. Ruby walked into the woods, all the way to the pond. She threw the first vial, remembering while it was still in the air that the pond was frozen except in the middle. But it must have warmed up, because she heard a splash. She threw in the others, twelve splashes in all, and started for home.

Stepping out of the woods and into the backyard, just by the woodpile, Ruby noticed a tiny red glow. First she thought it came from inside the house, then realized it was outside, by the silhouette of the bird feeder. She got a little closer and saw a second silhouette.

“Julian! You smoke?”

“Oh my God,” he said. “You scared me.” The red glow spiraled away, vanished with a faint sizzle.

“Sorry,” Ruby said.

“I didn’t see you, that’s all.” He came closer. “Out for a walk at this hour?”

“Looking for Zippy.”

“Ah.” She smelled tobacco smoke when he said that. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

She didn’t want to hear that anymore. “I’m not giving up.”

“Of course not,” Julian said. “Me either.”

“Thanks,” Ruby said. At least he was helping, which was more than she could say for the members of her own family. But he smoked. That was stunning.

T
uesday was a half day, another teacher conference about the statewide tests. Brandon liked half days. The classes whipped by twice as fast, and sometimes the teachers showed a movie, or let them talk about whatever they wanted. In the afternoon came parties in adult-free houses. But not this afternoon: Julian was taking him on a college tour.

Trish passed him a note in English:
unka death’s in a coma.

He wrote
duh
and passed it back. Mr. Monson started handing back last week’s grammar and vocabulary test. Trish passed him another note:
this aft—yr place or mine?
He wrote
can’t
, started handing it back.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything, Brandon,” said Mr. Monson.

“No,” said Brandon.

“Would that missive be of general interest, by any chance?” said Mr. Monson.

“No.”

“Sure about that?” said Mr. Monson. “Sure you know what I’m talking about? The meaning of
missive
, for starters?”

“Note,” said Brandon. “Message.”

Mr. Monson’s eyebrows rose. “You’re surprising me lately, Brandon.” He dropped Brandon’s test on his desk. At the top it said:
100.
The first perfect score he’d had in high school. “Been eating your Wheaties?” said Mr. Monson.

Someone groaned.

“What?” said Mr. Monson. “They don’t say that anymore?”

“Can we talk about Unka Death?” said someone else.

“Unka Death?” said Mr. Monson. “Who dat?”

Brandon didn’t even have to look to know that the three black kids in the class didn’t like that at all; he could feel it. Mr. Monson was an asshole.

“A better poet than half the old farts we study in this class, Mr. Monson,” said Trish.

Mr. Monson reddened, right up to his comb-over, whether because of the statement itself or just the word
fart
, Brandon didn’t know. There was a knock at the door just as Mr. Monson had his reply ready. He closed his mouth, opened it again, said: “Come in.”

Ms. Belsey, the principal, entered. “Pardon the interruption, Mr. Monson. Do you have Brandon Gardner here?”

“Yup.”

“May I borrow him for a few minutes?”

“Borrow them all,” said Mr. Monson.

Ms. Belsey smiled a tight little smile that showed no teeth and hardly moved her lips. “Brandon?” she said. He rose. She crooked her finger. He followed her out into the hall, thinking of Trish’s mural with Mr. Kranepool, the parking lot security guy, licking Ms. Belsey’s hairy legs. Glancing down, he saw that Ms. Belsey’s legs, clothed in sheer stockings, were smooth and hairless, actually kind of nice, like she worked out after school. But funnily enough, there was Mr. Kranepool out in the hall. Plus Mr. Brack, the gym teacher.

“What’s up?” said Brandon.

“Mind showing us your locker?” said Ms. Belsey.

“My locker?” said Brandon. “How come?”

“We’ll get to that,” said Ms. Belsey. Mr. Kranepool, and Mr. Brack stepped up on either side of him.

Brandon shrugged. “Whatever,” he said.

His locker was 817, down the stairs and around the corner by the guidance office. Frankie J was coming the other way.

“Dude,” he said. “Whassup?”

“If you don’t hear from me by sundown, call the cops,” said Brandon. Maybe the coolest thing he’d ever said, and to just the right person for spreading it around. But why not? There was nothing bad in his locker.

Frankie J laughed and kept going.

The cops were already there, two of them, standing in front of locker number 817. One held a German shepherd on a leash; the other wore sergeant stripes on his sleeve.

“Open your locker please, Brandon,” said Ms. Belsey.

“Why?”

“Because the courts have ruled that under certain circumstances we have the right to open it, and therefore it would look better if you did the opening yourself.”

That sounded like bullshit to Brandon. “What circumstances?” he said. Being in the clear was a nice feeling.

“If we have reason to believe, which we do, that there are illegal substances inside,” said Ms. Belsey. “Especially if confirmed by the K-9 unit, a confirmation that I believe has been made, Sergeant D’Amario?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the sergeant. He looked at Brandon. “Hello, Brandon. Didn’t know we’d be getting together again so soon. How’s your dad?”

Sergeant D’Amario: who knew Dewey was selling crack, who was ten times smarter than him and Dewey put together. Confirmed by the K-9 unit—how could that be? Brandon had a crazy thought: he wished that his sister was there beside him.

“He’s good,” Brandon said.

“Your dad was a big man on campus at West Mill High,” said Sergeant D’Amario. “Captain of the tennis team, if I remember right. I’m sure he’d want you to do the right thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Open the locker.”

At that moment, Brandon thought of Unka Death, in a coma at some hospital in New York.
Fuck you, good as new, all we do, then it’s through.
He started to say Nope, changed it to a plain “No.” And felt his spine stiffen.

“Mr. Kranepool?” said Ms. Belsey.

Mr. Kranepool flipped some pages on his clipboard, mouthing, “Eight one seven,” like the retard he was, checked the corresponding numbers—each locker had its own permanent combination—and dialed it on the four brass counters. He opened the locker.

“Show us where it is,” said Ms. Belsey. “You can still make things easier for yourself.”

Brandon said nothing.

They all stared into the locker. On the top shelf lay a comb, hair gel, and some scratched CDs; on the hooks hung his backpack and his varsity jacket; on the floor was all kinds of shit—old tennis shoes, a single hiking boot, books, papers, someone’s belt.

“Do we have your consent for this legal search?” said Sergeant D’Amario.

“No,” said Brandon. He was shaking a little now, but his voice sounded steady. There was nothing in there, whatever the dog thought.

Sergeant D’Amario nodded to the other cop. The other cop pulled on surgical gloves and emptied the locker while Sergeant D’Amario held the leash. The cop dumped out the backpack, searched every compartment, shook out the tennis shoes and the boot, took the hair gel apart. He went through all the papers and the books.

That left the jacket. The cop removed it, dug his hands in the pockets, patted the lining inside. Then he gave it a shake and patted the lining again. After that he turned it inside out and tried once more. The adults exchanged blank looks. Sergeant D’Amario handed the other cop a little folding knife.

“What the hell?” said Brandon. He should have said
What the fuck?
but he wasn’t brave enough.

“Language, please,” said Ms. Belsey.

The cop cut through the stitches at the bottom of the lining, extending a little hole already there, and thrust his hand up inside. He turned to Sergeant D’Amario and shook his head.

Sergeant D’Amario knelt, went through the books and papers again. “What’s this?” he said.

“We’ve lost our dog,” said Brandon. “Like it says.”

D’Amario rose in a hurry. “What was that?”

Brandon said nothing.

“Pat him down,” D’Amario said.

“Face the wall,” said the other cop.

Brandon faced the wall. Something savage woke inside him. He made himself be still.

“Hands up, legs apart.”

Brandon raised his hands, spread his legs. The cop patted him down.

“Nothin’,” he said.

Brandon turned. He could have looked them in the eye forever.

“I guess there’s been some mistake,” said Ms. Belsey, picking the jacket off the floor. “We’ll have this resewn for you by dismissal time, Brandon.”

“You think I’d wear it now?” said Brandon, and his goddamn voice betrayed him, cracking a little. “It’s shit.” He walked away before anyone could do anything, leaving the whole mess for them to deal with, kept walking down the hall and right out of West Mill High.