Crusader

  "What? He ran away?"

  "Not likely. The detective's opinion was that Sonny had a disagreement with some business partners from Providence, Rhode Island, and that he and his El D were recycled somewhere in the Atlantic County Landfill."

  I dried my cheeks with my hands. "Then ... what? What happened next?"

  Griffin admitted, "Not much. Everything was pointing one way, and suddenly everything was pointing nowhere. The case stalled out. It happens."

  "There weren't any witnesses?"

  "No."

  Griffin squirmed a little after he said that, so I prodded him, "What? What aren't you telling me?"

  There was a sharp knock on the door. Griffin opened it to Mrs. Biddulph. She asked him, "Why did you close the door, Detective?"

  "We were discussing a sensitive matter, ma'am."

  "We don't close doors around here. Not without an administrator present."

  "Sorry, ma'am."

  Mrs. Biddulph turned and walked to the counter. Griffin stood back to let me pass through the door. He told me, "If it's any consolation to you, the punk who did the crime is almost certainly dead. Long dead. Of AIDS, of a drug overdose. Who knows? Who cares?"

  I told him, "I care. And I want to know."

  He looked away, thinking. He said, "Roberta, I did a bad thing letting you see that tape."

  "No, you didn't."

  "Yes, I did. If I can make it up to you in any way, let me know."

  Mrs. Biddulph cleared her throat in my direction, so I hurried out of the office and back to class.

  After school, I stayed on the bus all the way back to Sawgrass Estates. I wanted to see if Dad had picked up Mrs. Biddulph's message about Griffin. He hadn't.

  There were two lights blinking on the machine. I played Mrs. Biddulph's message right away and deleted it. Then I played the second message: "Roberta, this is Peter Herman calling from Channel Fifty-seven. I wanted to thank you. I had intended my farewell video only for my own classes, for the back row rabble, but I appreciate your initiative in providing me with a much wider audience."

  My mouth fell open. I felt like a complete idiot. But Mr. Herman didn't seem to mind my blunder at all. He laughed lightly. "Anyway, I'm calling with a bit of news, which is not surprising since I am calling you from a newsroom. I have just heard that I will do my first commentary tonight, two entire minutes on the late news. That may not sound like much, but in a thirty-minute broadcast, two minutes is an eternity. If you are home from the family sweatshop by then, please tune in. Good-bye."

  Work at the arcade droned on slowly today, until Nina's dramatic arrival.

  Kristin, Karl, Will, and I were just hanging out at the counter. Suddenly Nina ran in, looked around to see who was listening, and told us in a tense whisper, "Listen, you guys. I gotta talk to you."

  Kristin said, "There's no one around. Go ahead."

  "The colonel's not around?"

  "No. He's in the back. What's up?"

  "Two things: I was talking to Betty. She told me that Devin is going to another after-hours party here. Tonight."

  Kristin and I answered together, "Tonight?"

  "Tonight. You didn't know?"

  "No!"

  "Then I'm glad I told you. But that's only half of it. I got a call from a guy on the football team. He said there's gonna be crack cocaine at the party."

  Kristin practically shouted, "Here?"

  "Yeah. This is where the party is. Right? About a dozen Xavier guys are putting in, like, a hundred bucks each—fifty bucks for the party and another fifty for the crack."

  Kristin looked at me, bewildered. She started babbling, "What should we do? We have to do something. What should we do?"

  I put my hand on hers. "I know."

  "You do?"

  "Yes. I know what to do. I need to get to a phone."

  Nina whipped out her cell phone. "Here you go."

  I stepped behind them, pulled out Griffin's card, and called his pager. The message started to come on, but suddenly it clicked off and I found myself speaking to him live. "This is Detective Griffin."

  I said, "This is Roberta," and added, "from the West End Mall."

  "You're the only Roberta I know."

  "Remember you said you owed me a favor?"

  He hesitated, then said, very slowly, "Yes."

  "Would you like to make a drug bust tonight?"

  "You have my complete attention."

  "Uncle Frank is having another hardcore party after hours. Some Xavier boys are making it a drug party."

  "What kind of drugs?"

  "Crack cocaine."

  "You're kidding. Those young gentlemen?"

  "That's what we hear."

  Griffin thought for a moment. "Do you want me to bust your uncle Frank?"

  I hadn't thought about that. I answered, "No."

  "But that's the likely scenario."

  "Can you just bust the Xavier boys? And Devin? Is that possible?"

  "Depends. If it goes down in the parking lot, yeah. We can do that."

  "So ... Will you come?"

  Griffin paused, then replied, "Believe it or not, it's a slow night. We're looking for something to do. What time?"

  "Nine o'clock. It will cost you fifty dollars to get in."

  "Okay. How many partyers are we talking about?"

  "I heard a dozen."

  He whistled. "Whew. Six hundred bucks for Uncle Frank. That'll buy some vodka."

  "Griffin!"

  "Sorry. Cop humor. See you at nine."

  I clicked the phone off and returned it to Nina. She said, "I gotta get back to my dad." Nina bounded down from the counter. "You guys are so lucky. You get to stay here."

  Kristin and I just stared at her.

  As soon as Nina left, I asked Kristin, Karl, and Will, "Did you hear all that with Griffin? Do you know what's going to happen?"

  They nodded grimly.

  At eight-thirty, Uncle Frank came out and told Karl, so that everyone could hear, "We're having another after-hours party tonight. It should be exactly the same as the last one. You know what to do." He handed over the hardcore CDs and legends and walked stiffly to the back.

  We closed the doors at eight-forty-five and quickly changed out the discs and legends. Then we heard the back door open and the party guests come in.

  Like last time, Uncle Frank collected their money in the back room. But tonight he stayed back there. Kristin, Karl, Will, and I were left out front to run the party.

  Devin entered the arcade first. He was followed by Griffin, and then by a line of Xavier guys. Will stiffened when he saw two of them. He whispered to me, "Those are the guys who swirled me."

  "Yeah? Do you want to leave?"

  "No. I don't think they even see me. Anyway, I look different now."

  I told him, "That's true. But let Kristin and me start the experiences for them. Why don't you go out back and see if they do any drugs?"

  He agreed, "Okay."

  Will slipped through the back door just as Greg Vandervelt and his two friends came in. I looked around to warn Kristin, but she had already spotted him. Greg headed for Kristin right away. He had a weird expression on his face, like Uncle Frank at the end of the night.

  He stopped barely six inches from Kristin and said, "I heard you dropped out."

  Kristin answered simply, "Do you want help with one of the experiences?"

  "So what are you going to do now?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know what I mean. Now that you can't look down on everybody." Greg turned to include his two friends. "Not with a face like that." The friends laughed. Kristin braced herself, straightening her back. I was afraid she was going to lose it and cry.

  But then the blond kid came in from the back, the one Kristin had kicked in the teeth. He was unsteady on his feet. Was he drugged? He pushed between Greg and Kristin, staring hard at Kristin's name tag.

  The kid asked her, in too loud a voice, "What's that say?" He moved a han
d toward her chest. "Can I see what this says?" He pulled Kristin's name tag up and out, stretching her shirt along with it. I couldn't tell if he touched her at the same time, but he came very close.

  Anyway, it didn't matter to Kristin. Her eyes turned to flame. The heel of her right palm fired out like a rocket. It caught him under the chin so hard that he flew backward, re-leasing his grip on her name tag. His feet went up and his head went back, cracking on the platform of Serpent's Lair.

  I looked over at Griffin. I watched him as he tried to decide what to do. Should he intervene? Should he blow his cover? Since the blond kid appeared to be conscious, and Greg was slowly backing away, he decided to do nothing.

  The party never really got going. We were prepared to start the hardcore experiences, like we had last time, but no one ever asked us to. Maybe they were saving the virtual reality stuff for later.

  But as it turned out, later never came.

  One by one the Xavier boys went out through the back door. They went out, but they never came back.

  Will hurried in and beckoned to Kristin and me. We huddled with him by the register. Will looked right at me. "I followed those two guys. They got into a car."

  "Yeah? And are they doing drugs?"

  "I think so."

  "What did you see?"

  "It looks like they have a soda can, like a Pepsi can, and they're using a lighter, and they're sniffing something up their noses."

  Kristin broke in, "That's it! That's good enough for me. Come on." She led us over to Griffin. He was still pretending to be a partyer, but she told him outright, "Okay. Will just saw them. They're doing drugs in a car out back."

  Griffin stopped pretending right away. He looked at Will. "You saw them smoking crack?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "In what kind of car?"

  Kristin sputtered, "What does that matter?"

  Griffin smiled at her. "It's just for identification purposes. What does it look like?"

  Will reported, "I think it was a Mustang."

  "Did you see a van parked out there?"

  "Yeah. A gray van."

  "Well, that van is full of cops."

  Kristin's eyes grew wide with delight. "Really?"

  "Really. Those party boys are being videotaped right now."

  "That is great. That is so great."

  Griffin laughed at her enthusiasm. Then he winked at us and strolled easily over to Greg's group. They were reading the legend for Crusader. He smiled and said in his best redneck voice, "Hey, boys, looks like we're the only ones left in this here shindig."

  They didn't even look at him. Then Griffin whipped out a handset and spoke into it in his cop voice, "Vector One, this is Vector Two. The party's over. Let's move in."

  Greg and his friends turned at the sound. This time they looked at him. A loud voice answered over the handset, "Vector Two is moving."

  Griffin reached behind him and pulled out his deputy's badge. He showed it and said, "Detective John Griffin, Atlantic County Sheriff's Department. I want you to turn around and place both your hands on this thing." He pointed to the black ring that encircled the Crusader experience.

  Greg looked at the others. He let out a short laugh.

  He regretted that immediately.

  Griffin grabbed him by the neck and pulled his head slowly downward and forward until it was an inch from his own. "Is there some part of that directive that you do not understand?"

  Greg's face turned bright red. He squeaked a reply, "No."

  Griffin let him go, and Greg put his hands on the ring. Griffin patted him down, but he found nothing. He looked at us, disappointed. Then he turned to the other two and snapped at them, "Get over here." They moved quickly.

  "Empty out your pockets, and I mean empty them." They all thrust their hands into their pockets and pulled out an assortment of items—wallets, keys, Tic Tacs. Griffin didn't see what he was looking for.

  He snapped again, "Single file, the three of you, out the back door to the parking lot. Move!"

  Kristin, Karl, Will, and I fell in behind them. We all trooped through Uncle Frank's office, but Uncle Frank wasn't at his desk. The bathroom door was closed, so I figured he was in there.

  Outside, in the muggy darkness, four cops in flak jackets had the Xavier boys lying on the asphalt with their hands cuffed behind them. One of the cops told Griffin, "These eight, from here to here, they all had at least one rock on them. And they were all in the car at least once."

  The cop pointed to two at the end of the line. "Those two didn't have anything. They didn't go into the car, either."

  Griffin nodded. "Okay." He pointed at Greg's group. "Check these fine young men out."

  The cop took Greg by the elbow and forced him down onto the asphalt. His friends followed on their own.

  Griffin bent over and picked up a clear little packet. He held it up to me so that I could see what was inside. It looked like little glass beads. He said, "Rock cocaine, a.k.a. crack. Cheaper than the powdered stuff, but just as bad."

  The cops took eight of the Xavier boys to the police station. And they had the Mustang impounded. They had to let five boys, including Greg and his friends, go free because they had no drugs on them.

  To everyone's surprise, neither did Devin. As Griffin removed his handcuffs, Devin told him, "I stopped taking drugs five years ago, man."

  Griffin said, "Really? You'd never know it."

  Devin rubbed his arms. "Can I go back to my store?"

  "I suppose so."

  Devin shambled away around the back of the trash trailer.

  Griffin turned back to Greg and his friends. "Have any of you underage gentlemen had so much as one alcoholic beverage? Think before you answer that." The three of them nodded immediately, admitting that they had. Griffin handed Greg his cell phone and said, "Call Mommy and Daddy for a ride." Greg did what he was told.

  I turned and saw Uncle Frank by the open door. I didn't know how long he had been standing there, but I'm sure it was long enough. He said, to no one in particular, "I had no idea they were taking drugs here."

  Griffin looked at me. Then he answered him, "Technically, Colonel, they took no drugs on your property. They did them out here in the parking lot."

  Uncle Frank muttered, "Thank you," quietly, and went back inside.

  Kristin and Karl exchanged an embarrassed look, but then Kristin shook it off. She walked up to Griffin purposefully. She told him, "I think I'd like to do this."

  "What?"

  "What you're doing."

  "Undercover work?"

  "Yeah. Or regular work. Or whatever you call it. I'd like to be a police officer."

  "Is that right?"

  "What would I need to do?"

  Griffin said, "Well, all those guys in the gray van, and the women on our squad, too, are veterans. That helps."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah. I could put you in touch with a buddy of mine. He's an army recruiter."

  Kristin looked at me and laughed. "The army?"

  "Not everybody goes that route. I'm just saying it helps. Maybe you and I could go see him. We could talk about a plan."

  Kristin was smiling wider than I had seen in a long time. "I don't know..."

  Griffin assured her, "You could do it. You'd be great."

  "Yeah? You really think so? Why?"

  "You're super-straight. You're tough. Yeah, you could be the law." Griffin turned to include Karl, Will, and me. "Thanks for your help. You're all junior g-men now. We gotta go."

  Kristin, Karl, Will, and I went back inside. Uncle Frank was now standing near the glass doors, right next to Crusader. I watched as he pulled on the black helmet and started it running. Then he just stood there, with his arms hanging at his sides, staring at the bloodthirsty infidels.

  I was really exhausted when I finally left work, but my night wasn't over yet. As I made my left turn to go to Century Towers, I heard, "Hey! Roberta!"

  I looked toward the wall and saw Nina and Dr.
Navarro standing next to Nina's Corvette.

  "My dad had to work late, so I stuck around. I wanted to see who got busted. Did they get Greg the Super-Anglo?"

  "No. He didn't have anything on him."

  "That's too bad."

  Dr. Navarro shook his head sadly. He added a comment, "That's terrible. To think that boys from Xavier would do such a thing. To think that they would disgrace their school like that."

  I thought, That's a really odd way to describe what happened, Doctor, but I didn't say anything.

  Nina explained, "Papi, Roberta is the one who wrote the article about me being a supermodel."

  Dr. Navarro smiled at me with those white teeth. "Ah yes. We have it on the coffee table at home. I make everybody read it. I'm so proud of my princesa."

  Nina added sincerely, "You're a really great writer, Roberta. I mean that. Nobody ever wrote about me before. Maybe nobody's ever gonna do it again. So I'm glad I have that, you know, to remind me of what I was like. You know, when I was young."

  I thought, You're still young, Nina, but all I said was, "Thanks."

  The three of us stood there for a few uncomfortable seconds. I was wondering why she had called me over when Nina finally said, "My father's like a computer, Roberta. In fact, he's better than a computer. He has a better memory, like a million gig or something."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  I waited; then I asked her, as politely as I could, "So ... what?"

  "So, maybe the word serpent wasn't in the IBM, but it was in my father's brain. Go on, Papi. Tell her."

  Dr. Navarro spoke to me matter-of-factly, but it made my heart race. "I remember a serpent guy. He was a real bad one."

  Nina interjected, "Seven years ago."

  Her father continued, "He used to hang out on the Strip—every day, every night. I remember that he gave me a weird phony name and a pair of hundred-dollar bills."

  I shook my head up and down, letting him know that I was following his every word. I asked, "What was he like?"

  Dr. Navarro stopped smiling. "Evil. He was evil. 'Libera nos a malo.' That's from the Lord's Prayer in Latin. It means 'Deliver us from evil.'"

  Nina asked him proudly, "How do you know things like that?"