First to die, p.9
First to Die, page 9
“Not without me,” Johnny said, coming up behind them.
The school was still open but the kitchen was empty. The boiler room at the power plant was larger than they’d thought, now that they had flashlights and could thoroughly examine it. It was three stories high with a vaulted ceiling and wrought-iron walkways circling at the second and third stories. No earthquake damage could be seen, but Mollie guessed some sort of safety precautions must have been built into the original structure.
“Okay,” Mollie said at the door to The Insurance Shoppe. “Who left the lights on?”
“I’ll be right back,” Jaime said. “I’m just going to see where this tunnel goes.”
Mollie was first through the door.
“What a mess,” she said. The others soon joined her to survey the wreckage—papers strewn everywhere, dust and crumbled ceiling plaster, overturned chairs.
“Is it dangerous to be down here?” Sherman asked.
“I don’t think so,” Roberta said. “If it was gonna cave in, it would have already.”
“Am I the only one with a weird sense of invincibility?” Meredith said. “I can’t help thinking sometimes that if that didn’t kill us, nothing can. It’s kind of a good feeling.” Mollie knew what Meredith was talking about.
“That’s dangerous. That’s what soldiers feel like after battles,” Roberta said. She picked up a telephone and put it to her ear. “The phones work. Anybody want to call Outer Mongolia?”
“Wow,” Sherman said, picking up a telephone and listening for the dial tone. “It’s like having our own private telephone network. Think of the possibilities. I’ve got a cousin in New York City.” He started dialing.
“Wait a minute,” Mollie said. “That’s stealing.”
“Who cares?” Sherman said. “It’s from the phone company.”
“She’s right,” Roberta said. “It is stealing. Though if all we make is local calls, it wouldn’t be stealing much. I bet the actual bill wouldn’t be more than twenty dollars a month.”
“They make more than that every month off people who don’t get change back from pay phones,” Johnny said.
“We could do a lot of good,” Meredith said, when she’d taken a seat on one of the couches.
“What are you thinking?” Mollie asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” Meredith went on. “Maybe it’s a dumb idea.” Meredith had a way, Mollie had noticed, of putting herself down whenever she thought she was being too assertive. Usually she just walked away from situations where she was called upon to be assertive, which was probably why people at school thought Meredith was a snob. “It’s just that when we were playing Truth down here, I thought that was really good. We weren’t playing games with each other. It was real. I almost wish we’d been trapped longer, because I’m sorry it ended.”
“We only talked that way because we thought we were going to die,” Roberta said. “We were all making our last confessions or something. Nobody talks that way in real life.”
“No, but they probably should,” Janet said.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Meredith finished. “Maybe there’s a way to use the phones so that we can share that with other people. When I was in England last year, with my parents, I was listening to this radio program where people call in anonymously and confess things they’ve done. It was really popular, and it made people feel better.”
“That sounds like one of those late-night nine hundred numbers,” Mollie said, making her voice low and sultry. “‘Women sharing their most intimate secrets…’”
“We could set up an anonymous Truth Line,” Meredith said. “And just give the number out to kids at school, so that people can call in and say what they want to say.”
“And no adults,” Janet said.
“And if anybody gets obnoxious or foul-mouthed, we cut ’em off,” Roberta said. “If it gets out of hand, we just change the number to a new number and start over.”
“We could take turns being the monitor,” Sherman said. “Sort of like being a DJ on a talk radio program, except it’s on the phones. PJs. Or maybe not. Anyway, we could all have fake names.”
“I was looking at the software on that telecommunications program,” Roberta said. “The phones can’t be traced. Nobody would ever know if we used them.”
“We told everybody this room was destroyed,” Mollie said. “Ruth said the rescuers said there never was a bomb shelter. As far as the outside world is concerned, we don’t exist.”
“I found a much better entrance,” Jaime said from the back of the room. Mollie hadn’t noticed his arrival. “You go into Aladdin Land through the door behind the pinball machines. We could come and go all day long and nobody’d know. Plus there’s another door in the back room that leads to the employee parking lot, so we could come and go in the middle of the night.”
“I’ve still got Nick’s keys,” Mollie said.
“This could be a clubhouse,” Jaime said.
“The Truth Club. We could clean it up and bring a few things in,” Meredith said. “Maybe some lamps instead of the overhead lights, some rugs …”
“A TV,” Sherman said, though by the way everyone looked at him, he knew nobody else wanted a television. “Just a suggestion.”
“I don’t know,” Mollie said. The idea had appeal. There were times after Ellen’s death that Mollie wished she could just pick up the phone and call a total stranger, somebody she’d never meet, just so she could be honest about the way she felt. In a town as small as Onagle, that had never seemed possible. “It still seems tricky.”
“We could give it a try at least,” Janet said.
“I thought you said you wanted to seal this room off and never come back?” Sherman said.
“Somebody’s got to keep an eye on you guys,” Janet said.
“Maybe somebody who feels like committing suicide could call in and talk to other people who feel the same way,” Roberta said.
“There are plenty of suicide hotlines,” Johnny said.
“But not one of our own,” Roberta said. “It’d be worth a try.”
“Could you set up a separate line, so that if we want to call to talk to each other we can?” Mollie said. “One line that’s anonymous for everyone else and one just between the seven of us, where we use our real names?”
“No problem,” Roberta said.
“I’m calling myself after the guy who wrote the book about Lady Godiva,” Sherman said.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Johnny said.
“You know, Schroeder Horsenude.”
“I’ll be the Hawaiian Romeo, Kamanawanalaya,” Jaime said.
“Oooh, that’s good,” Janet said. “I want a flashy or sexy-sounding name.”
“How about Dragon Lady?” Jaime suggested.
“Be serious, you guys,” Meredith said.
“How about something without the cultural stereotypes?” Roberta said.
“I know,” Janet said, giggling. “I’ll call myself the Rhinestone Cowgirl. Even cowgirls get the blues, right?”
“Are you sure Nick isn’t ever going to find out about this?” Roberta said. “I mean, it is his stuff.”
“We’ve got a line on Nick,” Johnny said. “Yesterday we found Benny and followed him until he led us to Nick. He’s hiding out in a flea-bag hotel down by the Fremont Bridge.”
“Hiding out?” Sherman said. “Cool. Why’s he hiding out?”
“I wish I knew,” Mollie said. “There’s a lot we’re in the dark about.”
“Boy I’d love to send him to jail,” Sherman said.
“Sure,” Jaime said. “And then we go to jail with him.”
“Why can’t we just leave him alone?” Janet said. “It’s none of our business. We’ve got the phone line; why press our luck? We’re just asking for trouble.” Mollie was surprised by the force with which Janet spoke.
“We’re already in trouble for selling that bogus insurance,” Meredith said. “Maybe finding out what Nick’s up to is the only way we can get out of trouble.”
“We could be private eyes,” Sherman said.
“Well, then count me out,” Janet said. “I feel lucky enough to be alive. I’m looking forward to staying that way.” Janet headed for the door.
“You can’t leave,” Jaime said. “After what we all went through together it makes us, like, bonded for life. Or it should. Maybe you don’t care.”
“That’s not fair,” Mollie said. The room fell silent. “Maybe Janet’s right.” Janet stopped in her tracks. “But I think we should put it to a vote and let the majority rule. That’s what we’ve been doing, right? How many people think we should try to find out everything we can about Nick Keverian?” Six hands went into the air. What did Janet mean—staying alive? Nick wasn’t the sort of guy you’d want dating your sister, but it wasn’t like anybody’s life was in danger.
“We’d like you to stay as part of the group,” Mollie told Janet. “When you crawled into that duct, I thought you had more courage than the rest of us put together, but if you think it’s better to be cautious, then we’ll respect your decision.”
“I’ll think about it,” Janet said. “I just … I’m not a scaredy-cat, you know. I just think there’re people who you should leave alone. Why poke a stick in a hornet’s nest if you don’t have to?”
“Because it’s a mystery,” Jaime said. “That should be reason enough.”
“I always wanted to be a private eye,” Sherman said. “A shamus, a flatfoot, a bird dog, a slew foot, a skip tracer …”
“We get the idea, Sherman,” Roberta said.
“Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” Mollie said, “just to watch Nick to see what he does. For all we know, he might come after us, now that he knows we survived. Maybe we know something he doesn’t want other people knowing.”
“I don’t,” Sherman said.
“No kidding,” Roberta said.
Meredith had a car phone, and Roberta’s and Mollie’s fathers each had one in his car for police business. Between the three car phones and the Truth Line, everyone could coordinate their activities. They slipped out through the video arcade, a perfect way in and out, Mollie had to agree, without being detected.
Mollie stood alone beside her car in the Bayside High School parking lot, when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned, expecting to see one of the group. Looming over her was the man with the bushy mustache. The man who’d been following her the day before. She screamed and took a step back, stumbling against her car.
“What do you want? Who are you?” she said.
“No, what do you want?” he said, putting his hands on the car to either side of her and leaning in. He was large, six foot four, maybe two-fifty, with garlic breath.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Mollie said.
“You know what I mean. What are you doing here?”
“I work here,” Mollie said. “I mean, I used to.”
“Where?”
“At the pet store,” Mollie said. “You can ask Ruth.”
“Then why was your picture in the paper this morning, Mollie Fox?” the man said. “You worked at The Insurance Shoppe.”
“No, I …”
“Don’t lie to me,” the man said. “You don’t want to lie to me.”
“Who are you?” she asked. “I’ll scream. My father is a cop.” He reached into his sport coat, where Mollie caught the briefest glimpse of a gun holster.
“Okay, calm down,” the man said. He withdrew his hand from inside his sport coat. In his hand was a wallet, which he flipped open to reveal a police badge. Mollie noted that the badge was different from the one her father carried. His name, according to his ID card, was Detective Robert Dylan. He was from San Francisco proper.
“Bob Dylan?” Mollie said.
“Rhymes with island,” the man said. “I want to have a word wit’ you for a minute.” He had an East Coast accent, like Benny’s.
“Sure,” Mollie said, trying to recover her composure. The man’s body language, the way he squared off and leaned toward her and thrust his not inconsiderable belly at her, was very intimidating. She’d seen her father use the same sort of body language once when he’d had to quiet down a drunk. “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for a man named Nicholas Keverian,” Detective Dylan said politely. “I believe he was your boss; is that correct?”
“That’s correct,” Mollie said. “I mean, I don’t know what he did or anything.” She knew that must have made her sound guilty, denying something she hadn’t been accused of yet. “I just worked for him.”
“And what was your relationship to Benny Musante?” the detective asked.
“Benny?” Mollie said. “He was my manager. I wouldn’t say I had a relationship with him.”
“Were you eating lunch yesterday at Dino’s Diner, downtown? You and a gentleman whose name I don’t …”
“We were there,” Mollie said. She wished she knew how much Detective Dylan knew. She had to be careful not to contradict herself, but she didn’t want to give him Johnny’s name unless she had to. “Is there a law against that?”
“No, ma’am,” the man said. “I just thought it was curious that you and Mr. Musante were there at the same time. Together. Each of you.”
“We went there to bug him,” Mollie said. He’d obviously been watching them that day, so there was no point denying it. “I had my brother’s Mickey Microphone. We were talking to him through his radio.”
“You were talking to Benny.”
“Yes.”
“Through his radio.”
“That’s right.”
“You couldn’t just go up and talk to him?”
“No,” Mollie said. “I mean, then it wouldn’t have been any fun.”
“And what sort of things were you saying to him?” Dylan asked. “Through his radio. These fun things.”
“Just the usual stuff,” Mollie said. “You know, ‘You’re ugly,’ or ‘Hey, Benny, you’re a tub of lard.’” She wished she could take that one back.
“And then you followed Mr. Musante?”
“Yeah,” Mollie said. “We wanted to see if we could talk to him through his car radio, too.”
“And where did he go?”
“I don’t know,” Mollie said. “He drove around for a while, and then he went into a building, so we took off. If he’s made some sort of complaint, I’ll be happy to apologize to him, but I didn’t think that what we were doing was against the law. We were just having fun.” A defense her father called the “don’t-arrest-me-I’m-a-kid”excuse.
“Musante hasn’t made any complaints,” Detective Dylan said.
“What is it you want with these guys anyway?” Mollie asked.
“We’re investigating an insurance fraud,” the man said. “I’m on special assignment wit’ the Treasury Department. Right now we just want to track down Mr. Keverian to ask him a few questions.”
“If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him,” Mollie said. “Hey, wait a minute. What am I saying? I won’t tell him you’re looking for him. That would ruin everything, wouldn’t it?” She smiled her most charming smile, though she didn’t expect to have much luck with it.
Dylan fumbled in his pocket for a scrap of paper. He took a pen from his pocket and wrote a telephone number on the back of a ticket stub.
“Call me at this number if you see him,” he said, handing the scrap to Mollie. He looked at her and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions,” he told her. After the aggressive body language, Mollie was surprised at his apparent compassion. “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” her old grandmother liked to say, though Mollie could never figure out why anyone would want to catch flies. “Just between you and me, my lieutenant would kill me if he knew I was telling you this, but if I were you, I’d stay away from this guy. I was hoping maybe you’d lead me to him, but I like you, so now I’m hoping you stay away from him.”
“Thanks,” Mollie said.
“You got that? You understand?”
“Yeah,” Mollie said. “I’ll stay away. I don’t even know where he is. Can I go now?”
“Yeah, sure,” Detective Bob Dylan said.
Driving home, though, Mollie couldn’t help but think there was something about the man that puzzled her, something that didn’t quite add up.
CHAPTER 11
The next day was sunny and bright, with a mild breeze blowing in from the ocean. It brought with it a smell Mollie had grown quite fond of. To make matters even better, school was closed for teachers’ meetings. The Mall Rats met at breakfast to discuss strategy. Later, Mollie and Meredith, in Meredith’s car, staked out the Sir Francis Hotel, where Nick’s Porsche was still in the lot. Meredith’s red Miata convertible wasn’t the most inconspicuous car you could use to follow somebody around, but it was all Meredith had—a gift from her father on her sixteenth birthday. At 10:24 Keverian left the hotel and drove to a barbershop on Water Street.
Jaime, Sherman, and Roberta, in Roberta’s father’s car, kept an eye on Dino’s Diner. Johnny had to work. At 11:50, Benny showed up and took a seat in a booth instead of at the counter. Jaime suggested everyone take meticulous notes so that they wouldn’t miss any details, the importance of which they might not know until later. At 12:11, Nick joined Benny at the diner. Sherman had brought a pair of binoculars; it looked as if Nick were angry at Benny—probably, Mollie thought, for believing he’d heard voices the day before.
Lunch lasted until one-thirty, after which Nick sat on a bench in Santiago Park and read the newspaper. Benny got on the interstate and drove eight miles south to Evangeline Park to watch the ponies. At two-thirty, Nick got back in his car and headed north on Division Street, stopping at a Jiffy Lube. After having his oil changed, he continued north until he reached a car wash, where he got the full-service wash, wax, and polish special.
“What is it with males and their cars?” Meredith asked. Six guys with buffing rags whirled around Nick’s black Porsche like an Indianapolis pit crew. “My father’s got a Jaguar, and I swear he spends more time and money on that car than he does on my mother.”
