The Tutor (18 page)

Mrs. Stromboli blinked. Then she blushed a little. “Is this part of your detective work?”

Ruby nodded. “My method is founded on the observance of trifles.”

“Then yes,” said Mrs. Stromboli. “We had a quiet night. Fell asleep watching the news, as usual, without seeing hide nor hair of the blue carbuncle.”

“What time was the news, Mrs. Stromboli?”

“We always watch the ten o’clock on channel fifty-six. Do you need to know what was on? There was a fire in Hartford, if I remember, and—”

“That’s all right, Mrs. Stromboli. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Anytime,” said Mrs. Stromboli. “Hope you find it.”

“We’ll do our best.”

“I get it. Your dog’s Dr. Watson.”

A great idea, but Ruby didn’t have time to dwell on the possibilities, getting Zippy one of those deerstalker hats, for example. She had to focus on the problem: if not Mr. Stromboli, who?

T
he real Dr. Watson, on his very dumbest day, would have had no trouble identifying the scene of the party in the woods. All around the far side of the pond lay empty bottles, beer cans, cigarette butts, pizza boxes, candy wrappers, and footprints on footprints, down to the mud under the snow. There was even a beer keg, abandoned, Ruby supposed, when the kids ran away, still dripping slowly from its hose. Zippy found a slice of thick-crust sausage and pepperoni, gobbled it up.

“How the hell,” she said, watching him sniff in the snow for more, “are we going to find what we’re looking for in all this?”

A huge man stepped from behind the big rock. He wore a navy blue jacket with a silver badge on the front and three stripes on the arm. “Depends what you’re looking for, little lady.”

Was that what a heart attack felt like, when your heart sprang up and tried to escape through your mouth? “Zippy lost his toy in here the other day,” she said, backing up, her voice real squeaky, kind of like Amanda’s.

“What kind of toy?” said the man.

“A red rubber bone,” Ruby said, finally standing her ground; he’d actually had a toy like that at one time. “But now it’s all so messy.”

“Sure is,” said the man. He reached down, picked up a wallet, glanced inside, dropped it in a black bag. Brandon had once lost three wallets in a week.

“Are you a policeman?” Ruby said.

“Yup.”

“And the stripes mean you’re a sergeant?”

Pause. “You live around here?” he said.

“Yeah,” said Ruby, waving vaguely, and in the wrong direction.

“What’s your name?”

“Ruby.”

“Ruby what?”

“Ruby the Kid.”

He started to smile; didn’t actually smile, but his eyes looked like he was thinking about it. “Like Billy the Kid?” he said.

“But deadlier.”

Now he smiled. “I’m Sergeant D’Amario.”

“Nice to meet you, Sergeant D’Amario. Are you supposed to clean this up? If you’ve got another bag, I can help.”

“That’s real nice of you,” said Sergeant D’Amario, “but I’m not cleaning up. The DPW takes care of that. This is an evidence bag.”

“Was there a crime here?”

“Yup.”

“Littering?”

“That too. But we rounded up a bunch of kids for underage drinking last night. Not kids like you, Ruby the Kid.”

“You work hard, huh?”

“How’s that?”

“Patrolling the woods on cold nights and everything.”

“Not here,” he said. “We don’t do that.”

“Then how did you know about the drinking?”

“We got a call from someone complaining. An anonymous call, which is usually the way it is.”

“Anonymous?” said Ruby.

“Just a big word that means they don’t leave their name.”

That’s not what I’m getting at, for God’s sake.
“But don’t you have caller ID down at the station?”

“You going to be a detective one day?”

Was that better than a writer? Probably. “Maybe,” said Ruby.

“We identify every incoming call, of course. This one happened to come from a pay phone.”

“Oh.”

“Can you figure out what must have happened?”

“No.”

“Some neighbor, bothered by the noise but not wanting to be identified, drove down to the pay phone by the Shell and—”

“Dropped the dime.”

“Bingo.”

“People don’t want trouble.”

“No, sir. Are the kids in jail?”

“We don’t put kids in jail for that. We just send them home with their parents.”

“That’s nice of you,” said Ruby. “What evidence are you looking for, then?”

He gazed down at her. “Know what crack is, Ruby?”

“A very dangerous kind of cocaine that comes in these little vials and you smoke in a pipe.”

“You pay attention in health class.”

“Just say no.”

“Then I don’t have to tell you that crack’s a serious matter, not at all the same as a little beer drinking in the woods, you see what I mean.”

“The kids were smoking crack?” Brandon: her heart sank.

“We don’t know that. But we’re hearing stories that someone at the high school’s been driving down to Bridgeport and bringing back crack. We’d like to find that someone, meaning find him with the goods.”

Someone with a Fuck You You Fuckin Fuck bumper sticker, all of a sudden not so funny, especially if Brandon was in the passenger seat. She watched Zippy digging for pizza. He found something else instead. Ruby sidled over and stepped on it, very casual. Zippy pawed at her foot.

“What’s he want?” said Sergeant D’Amario.

“Pizza,” said Ruby.

“Here’s some,” he said, moving toward one of the logs by the edge of the pond. Ruby bent down real quick, snatched the crack pipe under her foot, jammed it in her pocket. Sergeant D’Amario came back with a pizza box, almost full. “How much can he have?”

“Just a slice, thanks,” said Ruby. “He’s on a diet.”

Sergeant D’Amario fed Zippy a slice of pizza, the Hawaiian kind with pineapple and ham. Zippy wagged his tail. Sergeant D’Amario patted him. “Where’s his tag?”

“Oops,” said Ruby. “Are you going to throw me in the hoosegow?”

“Next time,” said Sergeant D’Amario.

R
uby walked home, starting in the wrong direction, down the cart path, past Sergeant D’Amario’s squad car, then doubling back. The crack pipe was like a pulsing, living thing in her pocket. She dropped it down a big knot in an old rotten tree trunk.

Almost out of the woods, where the trees started thinning out and the back of the house came into view, she spotted the tracks of a fat-tired bike in the snow. Must have been made by Julian, on his way home after the birthday party. There were no birds at the feeder. She ran the rest of the way. Zippy liked that: he thought they were having fun. She slapped that rabies tag on him the moment they got home. No way Sergeant D’Amario was taking Zippy down.

18

B
ack in the kitchen, Dad was on the phone.

“Sure I’m sure,” he was saying. “It’s only a game, right? So why take it too seriously?” He listened for a moment. If he wasn’t taking whatever it was so seriously, why was his body so rigid? Ruby smelled some horrible perfume, which meant the Sunday magazine was nearby. Then Dad said, “Okay, Tom. See you at four.”

“What’s only a game?” Ruby said.

“Tennis.”

A lousy, stupid game. “Now that you mention it,” Ruby said, “I’m thinking of maybe easing up on tennis.”

“Easing up?”

“Cutting back. Like maybe to a tennis-free situation.”

“Dropping tennis? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it, Dad?”

“I don’t see how. You’ve only got two sports as it is, and that’s counting archery as a sport. When Brandon was your age he was playing something every season, soccer, tennis, baseball . . . he even had basketball in there at one point.”

And now he’s a jailbird.
Ruby tried to use her X-ray vision to plant that connection—sports and legal trouble, which should have been obvious just from watching
SportsCenter
—in Dad’s mind. She was able to create an area of intense pressure in the part of her brain just above the eyes.

“Why are you looking like that?” Dad said. “Are you okay?”

But obviously nothing got through.

“I’ll stick with it a little longer.”

“Good girl.”

R
uby went upstairs to Brandon’s room. She knocked on the door. No answer. She knocked again, harder, still heard nothing from inside. She turned the knob and quietly opened the door.

Brandon’s room was dark and smelled like a men’s locker room. Ruby had never been in a men’s locker room and hoped to stay that way forever, but she knew this was the smell. That whole argument between the evolution people and the creation people? All you had to do was smell that smell to understand that Darwin was right: we come from the animals. At least men did. Hey! Maybe both sides were half right, men evolved, women were created; and she was a little angel.

“Brandon? You awake?”

Silence. Her eyes adjusted to the murk. She saw piles of this and that, Brandon’s trophies gleaming dully on a shelf, the only orderly arrangement in the room, and a new poster over the bed, with Problem peering at her over Unka Death’s shoulder. She realized that Problem had been in
That Thang Thing
, her birthday movie, playing the role of the voodoo king. Brandon was fast asleep, the covers up to his chin, looking surprisingly young, younger, she thought, than her.

“Brandon?” She gave him a little pat on the shoulder.

He said something, all thick and full of mucus. It might have been, “Five more minutes.”

“You can sleep all day if you want, Brandon. It’s Sunday.”

His eyes opened, or one did, the less gummy eye. “Then why are you bothering me?”

“We need to have a little talk.”

“Huh?”

“Are you going to be speaking to Dewey today?”

“What’s it to you?”

“That’s a cool poster.”

“What’s wrong with you? I’m sleeping.”

“Problem was in
That Thang Thing
.”

“Duh. Who do you think produced it, dumbass?”

“Problem?”

“You don’t know anything, do you? Unka Death produced it. He’s got a movie deal with Paramount.”

“I know one thing,” Ruby said. “It’s time for Dewey to go to New York and start that bicycle messenger job.”

“What the fuck?”

“Sergeant D’Amario—did you meet him last night?—knows that Dewey’s selling crack.”

The other eye opened. “Bullshit,” Brandon said, sounding wide awake at last.

“What’s bullshit?”

“Dewey’s not selling crack.”

“Sergeant D’Amario thinks otherwise.”

“How do you know what Sergeant fucking D’Amario thinks?”

“He told me. I was walking Zippy in the woods and he was examining the scene of the crime. We got to talking.”

Brandon gave her one of those mean looks. “You’re weird, you know that?”

“At least I’m not a crackhead.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You’re not smoking crack, are you, Bran?”

“Keep your voice down,” he said, glancing at the door. Ruby went and closed it. Brandon sat up, groaned, like his head hurt all of a sudden. “Do Mom and Dad know about this?”

“No,” Ruby said, and just to get him to stop talking so mean to her, added, “Not yet.”

“Not yet? What the fuck—” She gave him a warning look. “What do you mean, not yet?”

“Some older brothers are nice to their little sisters.”

“Who? Name one.”

“Peter.”

“Peter? We don’t know anybody named Peter.”

“In
The Chronicles of Narnia
,” Ruby said.

He gazed at her, not mean this time, just looking. “Do you have any friends?” he said.

“You know I have friends.” But all of a sudden, she wondered. She silently named all the kids who’d been to her party, added a few more, but the wondering didn’t stop.

“You won’t if you keep on like this,” Brandon said.

“Keep on like what?”

He didn’t say anything, just shook his head.

That pissed her off. A whole flood of being pissed off surged through her; she didn’t remember ever feeling quite like this, angry. “I’m just trying to help you,” she said, real loud, aware that he was trying to shush her but refusing to be shushed. “If you are smoking crack you’re a jerk because first it’s bad for you and second Sergeant D’Amario doesn’t want it in West Mill and he’s ten times smarter than you and Dewey put together.”

He went to grab her or take a swing at her, but she jumped back. Then he did something that made up for a lot. He glanced at his hand, still raised, and tucked it down under the covers, like something to be ashamed of. “All right, all right,” he said. “I’m not smoking crack. Just keep your voice down.”

“And another thing,” she said, lowering it a little. “I bet you lost your wallet last night.”

“Huh?”

“Sergeant D’Amario found one that looks just like yours. Your temporary license is in there, isn’t it?”

“Shit,” said Brandon. “Do me a favor. Go down and check my jacket pocket, see if it’s there.”

Ruby left Brandon’s room. Mom, her face and neck plastered with that green rejuvenator stuff, saw her from the top of the stairs. She smiled. “You and Bran having a little time together?” she said.

“Yup,” said Ruby, the way Sergeant D’Amario did, giving away nothing.

“That’s nice.”

Ruby went down to the mudroom. Brandon’s jacket hung on its peg. She realized she now had two mysteries to solve: The Mystery of the Varsity Jacket and The Mystery of the Anonymous Caller. Her caseload was getting out of hand.

She reached in the nearest pocket, took out Brandon’s wallet. False alarm. Then she reached in the other pocket, just because. Her hand closed around a little vial. She left it there, didn’t even pull it out to look.

S
o many characters to keep track of: Julian had never understood the responsibility that weighed on the shoulders of the auteur. He had to encompass all his people, their strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, habits, desires, casts of mind, all within his head. As he ate a working Sunday brunch at his desk—coffee, plain yogurt, toast with strawberry jam, an excellent deep red jam with whole berries, imported from France—he felt sincere admiration for masters like Tolstoy and Dickens, so adept at riding herd on vast swarms of characters. On the other hand, had either of them created a new form? He felt a little thrill, the auteur of
At Home
, a complex tale with a deceptively domestic setting; a work-in-progress.

Through his window upstairs in the carriage house, Julian saw cars coming up the long lane. They parked in front of the big house and women got out. Ah. The J. P. Morganettes. He watched them going inside, some actually moving with what they must have considered a certain style; but
herd
could not have been more apt.

Julian gazed at the blank page marked
Ruby
, tried to get back to work. His concentration, the sine qua non of the artist, had been broken. Not his fault: these bourgeois sightings could be so disturbing. Suddenly he couldn’t sit still, felt the need for action, understood how even a lesser artist like Hemingway had swung back and forth between his work and outdoor pursuits.

But what action? He could think of only one possibility, earlier rejected as clumsy and therefore risky as well. Now, a way to give clumsiness grace suddenly presented itself, as needed, and he phoned the tennis club.

“Checking the court time for Gardner, please?” he said.

Rustle, rustle.
“Four o’clock.”

A good match time. Scott’s hangover, if any, would have cleared by then.

Julian called the house at 37 Robin Road.

“Hello,” said Brandon.

“Hi, Bran. Julian here.”

“Oh, hi, Julian.”

“How’re you doing?”

“Not bad.”

Julian laughed. “Sounds like you had a rough night.”

“Sort of.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll never tell.”

Brandon laughed.

“Your dad there by any chance? I just wanted to check the schedule.”

“He’s gone to play tennis. And I think Mom’s in the bath.”

“Another time, then. And Bran?”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing beats a Bloody Mary for what you’ve got, but you didn’t hear it from me.”

Brandon laughed again. Julian heard a tiny interruption in the line. “Got another call here,” Brandon said.

“R
uby?” Brandon called. “Gram’s on the phone.”

Ruby took it. “Hi, Gram.”

She heard Gram coughing on the other end, one of those smoking coughs. “Well, this is a special day, isn’t it dear?”

“It is?” said Ruby.

“Why, your birthday!” said Gram. “What could be more special than that? Ten years old, my, my.”

“Eleven,” Ruby said. She didn’t bother about the wrong day—it was hopeless—but she wasn’t going to be treated like some baby.

“Eleven, is it?” said Gram, and started coughing again.

You said
bless you
when someone sneezed, but what about for coughing?
Had a chest X-ray lately?
Something like that?

Gram stopped coughing. There was a little silence. She could say,
How’s Arizona
? and Gram would say,
Hot
. Then she could say,
How’re you hittin’ them
? and Gram would say,
No more tennis for me, dear. Just golf now, and only nine holes, at the end of the day when it’s not quite so unbearable
.

Ruby said: “How’s Arizona?” This was her grandmother. They should talk about something.

“Hot.”

“How’re you hittin’ them?”

Pause. “I don’t play tennis anymore. On account of this horrible arthritis. I thought I mentioned that when we spoke at Christmas.”

“At least there’s golf,” Ruby said.

“That’s gone too,” said Gram. “Money okay for your present? There’s nothing in the stores.”

“Money’s great,” Ruby said. “Thanks, Gram.”

“Bye, dear.”

Nothing in the stores? What did that mean? “What’s Arizona like?” Ruby said. Brandon had been there one summer for tennis camp.

“Hot,” Brandon said. Some genetic connection. He left the room, a tall glass of tomato juice in his hand, ice cubes clinking softly.

F
rom a table by the glass window in the upstairs bar, Julian had a good view of the match. It went as he had expected. The brothers shook hands. Scott was trying to restrain his smile, not successfully. He was babbling something, patting his brother’s shoulder, shaking his head with false modesty, beaming. Tom was being good about it. Perhaps the years of domination had been a burden for him too; in which case, the older brother didn’t have it either.

Julian had a sudden craving for strawberry jam. He went to the bar, ordered a Bloody Mary, took it back to his table along with a dish of honey-roasted peanuts. The honey part took the edge off his craving, but only a little. He was recalling the way Gail Bender’s bat had gazed up at him with its dark eyes when the brothers walked into the bar. His thoughts went to the to-do list, Scott subsection:
friendly discussion of investment strategy
,
esp
,
options trading
;
find out more about family insurance firm
;
does Tom have children
? There weren’t many people in the bar and Scott spotted him right away, surprised, then delighted, then conspiratorial, or at least showing awareness that there might be a sudden need for conspiracy: exactly the type of reaction that was going to make the creation of the living epic novel so gratifying. Julian gave him a wave, friendly-like.

“H
ey, Julian,” said Scott. He felt like jumping up and down with happiness and relief, so light on his feet, light all over, as if he might rise and float around for a while. “What’re you doing here?”

“Just happened by.”

“Julian, my brother, Tom. Tom, Julian.”

They shook hands.

“You a tennis player, Julian?” Tom said. Tom had an expression on his face Scott had never seen there before, kind of stunned. He gave Tom a little pat on the back. The muscles in there were like stone.

“Thinking of getting back into it,” Julian said. “I’m checking out some of the local clubs. You gentlemen care to join me?”

“Good idea,” Scott said. “Something to drink, Tom?”

“Water,” said Tom.

Scott went to the bar, ordered a bottle of water and a draft.

“Half pint or full?” said the bartender.

“Full.”

He carried the drinks back to the table. Tom was saying, “. . . just one, a sophomore at Andover.”

“Talking about Sam?” Scott said. “You should see him play, Julian,” he added, swept forward on a sudden tide of magnanimity.

“I’d like to,” said Julian. “My father was captain of the team.”

“At Andover?” said Tom. “When was this?”

“In the wood racquet era,” said Julian.

“Hey,” Scott said. “How come you never mentioned that before?”

“It’s not the kind of thing that comes up often,” said Julian. He turned to Tom. “Does your son plan to play in college?”