Crooked Numbers Page 2

  “And they found his bike on the tennis courts?”

  “Yes. They’re making it sound like Douglas snuck out to sell drugs and something went wrong. That’s not what happened. It can’t be.”

  “What about Dougie’s uncle?” I asked. “Can’t he put some pressure on? Make a few calls as the family’s lawyer?”

  “Oh, I’ve asked him to do just that, and he will. But I thought maybe you, as someone a little less … colorful, well, they might be more forthcoming.”

  “You mean you think the police might treat a white ex-cop with more respect than the family’s black lawyer?”

  “Tell me I’m wrong, Mr. Donne,” she said, her eyes locked on mine, daring me.

  “I won’t insult your intelligence, Mrs. Lee. Or your experience. But why don’t you give the cops a few days? See what they come up with.”

  Dougie’s mom reached out and placed her hand on my knee. “All I want is for Douglas’s murder to mean something more than a few paragraphs and a scene-of-the-crime picture in the paper. A few days? They’re going to be on to a bunch of other things in a few days.” Her eyes filled up again. “That is time I do not believe we have.”

  We. Nicely done. Damn it.

  “All right,” I said, reminding myself not to overpromise. “Here’s what I will do. I recognized the name on one of the articles about Dougie.” My mind flashed on Allison Rogers’s business card shoved in some drawer back at my apartment. She was the reporter who had tried to get me to say more than I wanted to a year and a half ago. “She interviewed me after we got—after Frankie Rivas came home. Maybe she’ll be interested in doing a human-interest piece. A teacher’s point of view on the story.”

  With that said, Dougie’s mom gave me a smile. There was no joy in it, but I did detect a little relief.

  “See,” she said. “You are a good man, Mr. Donne. I knew that when you were Douglas’s teacher, and I know it now.” She put the palms of her hands together. “And the good Lord knows it, too. Thank you.”

  “You can thank me when I’ve actually done something, Mrs. Lee.” And the good Lord can keep on minding His own business. “I have to make the call first.”

  “Well, thank you for that, sir.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, uncomfortable with a grown woman calling me “sir.” She reached out and grabbed my hands again.

  “Gloria,” a booming voice announced. “There you are.”

  Mrs. Lee and I turned to see a large man in a dark blue suit making his way toward us. “My brother-in-law,” Mrs. Lee whispered, with a touch of annoyance. “Douglas’s uncle.”

  When he reached us, he put his hand on Mrs. Lee’s shoulder. The gesture did not look affectionate. “The ladies told me you had fainted,” he said. With his eyes on me, he added, “I think it may be time for you to go downstairs and rest.”

  Ignoring that, she said, “This is Mr. Donne, Douglas. Douglas’s teacher from the middle school.”

  Uncle Douglas considered that for a few seconds before offering his hand. “Yes, of course. Hello, Mr. Donne. Douglas Lee.” I waited for him to add, “Attorney at Law,” but he didn’t.

  “I am very sorry for your loss,” I said. “And, please, it’s Raymond,” I said to both of them, pretty sure the request would go ignored. “Dougie enjoyed that he and I had that in common, by the way. Both of us being named after our uncles.”

  “Yes,” Uncle Douglas said, not interested. “Gloria, you need to rest now.”

  “I was just finishing up with Mr. Donne, Douglas. And you can tell the ladies I did not faint. I’ll be down in a minute.”

  It was clear Uncle Douglas wanted to disagree with his sister-in-law. Get her away from the schoolteacher, maybe? But he decided not to push it.

  “Very well, Gloria,” he said. “Remember, there are other people who wish to pay their respects before visitation is over for the evening.”

  “Yes, Douglas. Thank you.”

  “Nice meeting you, Mr. Donne,” he said. “It was kind of you to come.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Is Dougie’s father here? I’d like to offer my condolences.”

  Douglas Lee took my hand again and held it in a tight shake. It wasn’t painful, but it did make me feel as if I were being controlled. “My brother,” he said, “has chosen to mourn the loss of his son in private, I’m afraid.”

  When he released my hand, I said, “Please let him know I asked for him.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  As he walked out of the room, I saw Mrs. Lee relax just a bit. “This has been hard on all of us,” she explained. “I apologize if Douglas was rude.”

  “No need,” I said. “I can’t imagine what your family is going through.”

  “Thank you. Again.”

  I reached out and touched Mrs. Lee on the elbow. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know you will.”

  After she turned to go downstairs, I went over to Dougie’s casket again. The tightness in my throat turned into a lump as I ran my fingers over the smooth brown wood. Unburdened by any desire to pray and not wanting to tear up in a roomful of strangers, I gave Dougie one last look, tapped the casket twice, and walked away.

  *

  The crisp November air felt good as I stepped out onto the street. It was a week after Thanksgiving, and after an unseasonably warm fall, it was finally starting to feel like the holiday season. A bad time to lose a loved one, my mother would say. As if there’s ever a good time.

  I was zipping my jacket when I noticed a couple of men in suits—fellow mourners, I figured—taking a cigarette break on the corner. We exchanged nods and forced smiles and then went back to minding our own business.

  “Yo, Mr. D!”

  I spun around to see two kids—one black, the other Hispanic—walking toward me. I recognized them as graduates from two years ago—not my kids, but friends of Dougie. I couldn’t come up with their names.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, taking them up on their offer to bump fists.

  “Hey,” the black one said. “You still teaching the speddies?”

  I ignored his insult referring to the special education class I used to have. The one his recently murdered friend had been in. “No,” I said. “Mr. Thomas asked me to be the dean for this year.”

  “Whoa,” said the Hispanic kid. “Mr. W quit? He finally get too old to run up and down the stairs chasing kids and breaking up fights?”

  “Something like that.” They probably didn’t want to hear about Mr. W’s wife and her breast cancer coming back hard, and how he wanted to spend their last six months together at home. I gestured with my head toward the funeral home. “Did you guys still keep in touch with Dougie?”

  Their looks turned serious. “Yeah, kinda,” the black one said. “Tha’s fucked up, y’know? We seen him every once in a while at McCarren Park or around the way, but we didn’t hang all that much no more.”

  “He was all into his private school friends.” The Hispanic kid wiped something off his upper lip. “Not ’cause he was stuck up or conceited about it, he was just real busy keepin’ up with all that shit.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He ever say anything to you guys about the Royal Family?”

  “Dougie?” the Hispanic kid said, and then they both laughed. “Dougie didn’t roll with no gangs, Mr. D. Why you think that?”

  “I heard a rumor,” I said, deciding to take a chance and divulge a little inside info. “The cops may have found some beads on Dougie. Royal Family colors.”

  “Shit,” they both said at the same time.

  “Yeah.”

  The black one spoke next. “Tha’s fucked up, Mr. D. You know who’d know, though, is Junior. Remember him?”

  We’d had a lot of Juniors in my years at the school. “Which one?” I asked.

  He gave that some thought. Last names were not as easily recalled as nicknames or tags. “Truck’s half-brother.”

  I immediately knew which Junior he was
talking about.

  “Yeah, right,” the Hispanic kid agreed. “Their cousin. He’s like some bigwig in the Family. They call him Tio, I think.”

  “What’s Tio’s last name?”

  “Shit. I dunno. You should ask Junior. He lives right around the school.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Maybe I’ll do that. You guys go on in. Dougie’s mom’s probably downstairs. Make sure you say hi. She’ll appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, Mr. D,” they said.

  “Be good.”

  They both gave a quick laugh and went inside the funeral home. As the door closed, I couldn’t help but think that, statistically, one of those two was not going to make it out of high school. But today they both stood a better chance than Dougie.

  “Yo, dude. You got a light?”

  I turned to face two kids walking my way. Two white kids. They both had on ski jackets with lift tickets hanging from the zippers. Some people were enjoying this recent cold weather. The taller of the two kids had long blond hair and an unlit cigarette between his lips.

  “A light?” he repeated, miming striking a match. Speaking to me like I was slow.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t smoke. And you don’t look old enough to, either.”

  “Yeah,” he said, grinning, and then putting the cigarette in his jacket pocket. “I get that a lot. I’m actually much older than I look.”

  He gave his buddy, who was a good foot shorter than he and sported a militarylike crew cut, a playful slap on the upper arm. They both smiled.

  I motioned with my head toward the funeral home. “You here for the wake?”

  “Yeah,” the smoker said. “Douglas was a buddy of ours from school.”

  “Upper West?”

  “That’s the one.” He looked past me at the funeral home. “Fucking incredible, man, what happened to Douglas.”

  “Yes,” I said and stuck out my hand. “I’m Raymond Donne. I used to be Dougie’s teacher, back in middle school.”

  The smoker took my hand and said, “The cop, right?”

  “Ex.”

  “Yeah, Douglas told us about you. Said you were pretty cool.”

  “I still am.”

  “So how does that work?” the kid asked. “Going from one civil service job to another. You have to take a test or something?”

  I was not in the mood to explain to this Upper West Side kid that neither job was “civil service.” For all he cared, I probably could have been a doorman.

  “No,” I said. “I actually had to go to college.”

  “Oh, sorry,” he said. “I’m Jack. Jack Quinn.” He looked at his buddy. “This is Paulie Sherman.”

  I shook Paulie’s hand. He gave me a weak smile and an even weaker handshake. He was a bit jumpy and obviously uncomfortable in this neighborhood.

  “We were real good buds with Douglas,” Jack Quinn explained as he gave the intersection a complete three-sixty. “Jesus. Is this where Douglas lived?”

  “Close enough,” I said. “About ten blocks away from here.”

  They both looked around. Jack said, “Cool,” as if he were getting a backstage tour of a movie set. “We took the subway here.”

  “That was very brave of you.”

  It took a few seconds for my sarcasm to sink in. When it did, Jack laughed. Paulie did not.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We met the height requirement and all.” Again he gave his friend a slap on the jacket. “Paulie just made it.”

  The three of us stood there for a while, hands in our pockets, trying to think of something else to say. I looked at my watch. “I gotta head out, guys. It’s nice to see some kids from Dougie’s school dropping by. Do me a favor and make sure you see his mom when you get inside.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “We’ve done the wake thing before. We know how it goes.”

  “Good. Then you shouldn’t have any problems with the whole respect thing.” I looked up at the red traffic light just as a truck rumbled by. “Be safe going home.”

  Jack winked at me. “Yeah. You, too, Mr. Donne.”

  When the light turned green, I crossed. Behind me, I heard one of the kids say something and then the sound of one of them laughing. Probably Jack.

  Nice to be young, wealthy, and alive, I thought.

  Chapter 2

  “MR. DONNE ASKED YOU A QUESTION, Angel.”

  Angel Rosario held his father’s glare with increasingly watery eyes. When the first couple of tears hit the floor, Angel’s dad said, “Oh, now you gonna cry? Big man brings a box cutter to school.” He turned to me. “My box cutter.” He looked back to his son. “And now you gonna cry? Shit.”

  The three of us were sitting in my office with me between the two of them, making a kind of stressed-out equilateral triangle. Experience had taught me not to sit an angry father next to the source of his anger. I reached over to my desk and grabbed a tissue off my desk for Angel. I kept a box there for meetings like this.

  “Mr. Rosario,” I said, “I don’t really care much for the where in this situation. We need to concern ourselves with the why.”

  “Yeah,” Mr. Rosario said. “I’d like to know that, too, Angel. What the hell were you thinking? I don’t tell you enough stories ’bout what I see at my job?”

  Mr. Rosario was a school safety officer at one of the more undesirable high schools in Brooklyn. The sort of school where they can never find the money for sports equipment or art supplies, but always seem to have more than enough for the latest in metal detectors and security cameras.

  “Angel,” I said, leaning toward the kid, “tell your dad what you told me.”

  Angel sniffled and then wiped his nose. His eyes were back on the floor. He took a deep breath. He was having trouble speaking, but finally mumbled something that ended with the words, “bus stop.”

  Now his dad leaned forward. “What’s that? Speak up.”

  Angel looked up and stared at his father. “Those kids at the bus stop,” he hissed. “The ones I told you ’bout two weeks ago.”

  “What about them? You told me they stopped botherin’ you.”

  “They started up again,” Angel said. Then, in a much lower voice, “And they took my iPod.”

  “They took your— Jesus, boy. When were you gonna tell me?”

  “I wasn’t,” Angel said. “I was gonna get it back.”

  “With that?” his dad yelled, pointing at the box cutter on my desk. “You were gonna get your iPod back with a box cutter? Goddamn, Angel. If your mother’s lookin’ down right now, she’s shaking her head at the both of us. I taught you better. Why you think I tell you those stories about work?”

  “To scare me. Make sure I don’t become one of those kids.”

  “And here you are,” Mr. Rosario said. “About to get suspended—or worse—for bringing a box cutter to school. Damn.”

  He was right about the “or worse” part. If the school wanted, we could push it and have Angel transferred to another school in the district. This was the Year of Zero Tolerance for weapons of any sort, and that was the system’s imaginative way of dealing with this type of problem: move the kid to another building. That’ll teach him.

  “Your dad’s right, Angel,” I said. “I’m supposed to suspend you. Bringing a weapon to school—for any reason—is a serious offense.”

  “I know,” Angel said to the floor.

  It took Mr. Rosario a few seconds to pick up on what I had said. When he did, he leaned forward. “What do you mean, ‘supposed to’?”

  “Well,” I said. “The only three people who know for sure that Angel brought a box cutter to school are sitting in this room. I know Angel, and I don’t believe any of our students were in any danger from him.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  I stood up and went around to the other side of my desk. I took the box cutter and stuck it in my bottom drawer. “I’m saying you and Angel have enough to worry about without having to deal with a suspension.” I shut the drawer with my foot and held my
hands out like a magician who had just made something disappear.

  “You’re not supposed to do that,” Angel’s dad—the school safety officer—said.

  “Do what?”

  Father and son looked at me, then at each other, and then back at me. After a few more seconds of awkward of silence, I said, “Angel. You have math this period, right?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then why don’t you head off to class?”

  Angel stood up and slipped his backpack over his shoulder. “So,” he said, “that’s it? I can just … go?”

  “I think you and your dad are going to discuss this at home tonight, but, yeah. For right now, get to class.”

  He turned to leave, and his dad grabbed his elbow. “You got something you wanna say to Mr. Donne, Angel?”

  “Yeah,” Angel said, offering his hand and looking me straight in the eyes like I’m sure his dad taught him to. “Thanks, Mr. D.”

  “Get to math, Angel.”

  After Angel left, Mr. Rosario glanced over at my desk and gave me a concerned look. “You’re takin’ a chance with that, Mr. Donne.”

  “Why?” I said. “You planning on telling my boss?”

  He shook his head. “I appreciate it. I don’t know what I’d do with him if he got suspended. Daycare for the week? And a transfer? He likes this school.”

  “He’ll be fine here, Mr. Rosario. I’m concerned about those knuckleheads at the bus stop.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I gotta figure something out about that.”

  “Call the cops,” I suggested. “Or tell your supervisor. Maybe he can contact the school nearest the bus stop, and they can put someone over there in the afternoons. I’m sure your son’s not the only one being hassled.”

  “Right. I’ll talk to my sergeant when I get back to school.” He removed his jacket from the back of the chair. “Don’t got enough things to worry about.”

  “Have a good one, Mr. Rosario.”

  “Yeah. You, too,” he said. “And thanks again.”

  After he left, I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out Allison Rogers’s business card. She was the reporter I had promised Dougie’s mother I’d call. I had tried earlier and left a message. I took out my cell phone and tried again.