I saw doubt and fear working into her face like a shadow. Her throat swallowed. I picked up her hand in mine again.
"Don't be scared, little guy," I said.
"It's the same thing I've told you before. We just have to be cautious sometimes. Miss Regan tells all the children that, doesn't she? It's no big deal."
But it wasn't working. Her eyes were locked on images in her memory that I could not touch or eradicate.
"Look, when I tell you not to stick your hand in the window fan, that doesn't mean you should be afraid of the fan, does it?" I said.
"No."
"If I tell you not to put your finger in Tripod's mouth, that doesn't mean you should be afraid of Tripod, does it?"
"No." Her eyes crinkled slightly at the corners.
"If Clarise won't let Tex eat at the breakfast table, that doesn't mean she's afraid of horses, does it?"
She grinned up at me, her face squinting in the sunlight. I swung her on my arm under the maple trees, but there was a feeling in my chest like a chunk of angle iron.
At the house she poured a glass of milk and cut a piece of pie at the kitchen table for her afternoon snack, then washed out her lunch box and thermos and began straightening her room. I took the telephone into the bathroom so she could not hear me talking to Tess Regan.
"What's the deal with this guy at the school ground?" I said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You sent a note home. Then Alafair told me about the guy with binoculars."
"I was referring to your tone. Are you always this cross with people over the telephone?"
"It's been an unusual day. Look, Miss Regan Tess what's the deal?"
"At recess we use some of the eighth-graders as monitors for the lower grades. Jason, one of the monitors, said a man was parked in his car under the trees across the street. He said the man walked over to the fence and asked where Alafair Robicheaux was. He said he was a friend of her father's, and he had a message for her. We teach all the children not to talk to people off the street, to direct all visitors to the principal's office. Jason told him he should see Sister Louise inside the building. Then the man pointed to where the little ones were playing dodge ball and said, "Oh, there she is." Jason said, "Yeah, but you have to see Sister Louise." The man said he didn't have time but he'd be back later. When he got back in the car, the children said, he looked at the school ground through a pair of binoculars."
"What time was he there?"
"It must have been about eleven o'clock."
Then it wasn't Charlie Dodds, I thought. He was already inside my house by then.
"What kind of car?"
"The kids said it was yellow."
"What did the guy look like? Did he have an accent?"
"Jason just said he was tall. I didn't ask about an accent."
"That's all right. Was there anything unusual about him? A scar on his lip?"
"Children usually don't remember those kinds of details about adults. In their world adults are simply 'big people' whom they either trust or dislike."
"I'd like to talk to Jason."
"Then you'll need to make an appointment with Sister Louise, and maybe she'll ask the parents to bring Jason in. But I doubt it. Not unless you want to tell us what this is about and also call the police. Because that's what we're going to do."
"That's good. But you need to listen to me now and not be afraid of what I'm going to tell you. This guy is not a child molester. He wants to get at me through Alafair. He may work for the mob out of Vegas or Reno. I had one like that in my house this morning. That's why it's been an unusual day. Or he may be somebody connected with an oil company, a guy named Mapes or somebody who works for him. Either way, the local cops don't have much experience with this kind of guy."
"The mob?" she said.
"That's right."
"You mean like in The Godfather? The honest-to-God Mafia?"
"The real article."
"And you didn't tell me this before?"
"It wouldn't have changed anything. Except maybe to alarm you."
"I think I'm very angry right now."
"Look, I don't want to be the guy to mess up your day. You asked for the truth, I gave it to you. There's no big revelation in what I told you, either. There's some Reno transplants right up there at Flat-head Lake. The mob's anyplace there's money to be made in gambling or dope or any kind of vice."
She didn't answer.
"Listen," I said, "if that guy comes back, you try to get his license number, then you call the heat, then you call me. Okay?"
"What do you plan to do?" she said. Her voice was dry, the way heat is when it lifts off a metal surface.
"I'm going to seriously impair his interest in children on school yards."
"I'll give your words some thought. In the meantime you might reflect a bit on the need for a little more candor in your relationships with other people. Maybe they don't like to feel that they're not to be trusted with this great body of private information that you have."
The line went dead in my hand.
I couldn't blame her. How would any ordinary person deal with the knowledge that an emissary of the mob could stroll into a world as innocent and predictable as a children's playground? But was the man indeed one of Dio's people, a partner of or a backup for Charlie Dodds? Why would Dodds need a backup? It was a simple hit, probably a five-thou whack that a guy like Dodds considered a cakewalk. Unless Dio's outraged pride was so great that he wanted a child's death as well as my own.
It didn't compute, though. If Dodds had been paid to hurt Alafair also, he would have waited until after three o'clock, when we were both home, or he would have come on the weekend.
So that left Harry Mapes. He had been driving a black Jeepster when I had seen him just south of the Blackfeet Reservation, but maybe the man in the yellow car with the binoculars worked with Mapes or had been hired by him. Why would he want to turn the screws on me now? Did he think I was close to finding something or turning it around on him? If he did, he had a lot more confidence in me than I did in myself.
I called Sister Louise, the principal, at the school and caught her just before she left the office. She had already talked with Tess Regan, and she was no more happy with me than Tess Regan had been. She sounded like some of the nuns I had known as a child, the ones who wore black habits that were probably like portable stoves and who whacked your knuckles with tri corner rulers and who could hit you on the run with their fifteen-decade rosaries. She told me that she had just made a police report, that I should do the same, and that a patrol car would be parked by the school tomorrow morning.
"I'd still like to talk with the little boy, what's his name, Jason," I said.
"He's told me everything he knows. He's a shy boy. He's not one to study detail in adults."
"Does he remember if the man had an accent?"
"He's fourteen years old. He's not a linguist."
"Sister, it's good that you'll have a patrol car out there tomorrow. But our man won't be back while the cops are around."
"That's the point, isn't it?"
"But he may well be when they're gone. That's when we can nail him."
"There's no 'we' involved in this, Mr. Robicheaux."
"I see."
"I'm glad you do. Good-bye."
For the second time in ten minutes someone had hung up on me.
I took Alafair to the park to play, then we went back home and fixed supper. Clete had told me I could call him at the Eastgate Lounge at six o'clock. I wasn't sure that I should. Whatever he had done with Charlie Dodds, it wasn't good. But at that point my legal problems as well as the threat to Alafair's and my safety were so involved and seemingly without solution that I wondered why I should be troubled over some marginal involvement with the fate of a depraved and psychotic character like Dodds, whom nobody cared about except perhaps Sally Dio because he had probably paid him half the hit money up front. It was five-thirty, and we were five minutes into our meal when I heard a car park in front and somebody walk up on the porch.