“A citizen.”
“A citizen, yes, Mr. Bolitar.”
“How did you get all that information?”
“At first, I considered seducing him so that he’d take me back to his place. You know. Pillow talk. But I knew you’d be against my defiling myself like that.”
“I would never let you use your body for evil, Big Cyndi.”
“Only sin?”
Myron smiled. “Exactly.”
“So I followed him from the club. He took public transportation, the last train out at two seventeen A.M. He walked home to Seventy-four Beechmore Drive. I called the address in to Esperanza.”
From there, it would only take a few keystrokes to learn all. Welcome to the computer age, boys and girls. “Anything else?” he asked.
“Joel Fishman goes by the name Crush at the club.”
Myron shook his head.
“And the ponytail is a clip-on. Like a hair extension.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, Mr. Bolitar, I’m not. I guess he wears it as a disguise.”
“So now what?”
“There’s no school today, only teacher conferences. Normally the security here is pretty tight, but I bet you could go in pretending you’re a parent.” She put her hand up, stifling a grin. “As Esperanza might note, in those jeans and blue blazer, you’d fit right in.”
Myron pointed to his feet. “In Ferragamo loafers?”
He headed across the street and waited until he saw a few parents heading for the door. Then he caught up to them and said hello like he knew them. They said hello back, pretending the same. Myron held the door, the wife walked through, the husband insisted Myron follow, Myron did with a hearty parental laugh.
And Big Cyndi thought she knew how to blend.
There was a signup sheet and a security guard behind the desk. Myron walked over, signed in as David Pepe, making the last name somewhat unreadable. He took a sticker name tag, wrote “David” on it, “Madison’s Dad” in smaller print beneath. Myron Bolitar, Man of a Thousand Faces, Master of Disguise.
The old saw is that public schools never change except that they seem smaller. The old saw held serve in here-linoleum floor, metal lockers, wooden classroom doors with metal-mesh glass windows. He arrived at room 207. There was a sign on the window so you couldn’t see in. The sign read, RÉUNION EN COURS. NE PAS DÉRANGER. Myron didn’t speak much French, but he knew that the second part was asking him to please wait.
He looked for a schedule sheet, something listing times and parents and whatever. Nothing. He wondered what to do here. There were two laminated class chairs in front of most of the doors. The chairs looked sturdy and practical and about as comfortable as a tweed thong. Myron debated waiting in one of them, but suppose the parents for the next meeting showed up?
He chose instead to wander the corridor and keep a close eye on the door. It was 10:20 A.M. Myron assumed that most meetings ended on the half hour or maybe quarter hour. This was a guess, but probably a good one. Fifteen minutes per meeting, maybe thirty minutes. At a minimum, it would be every ten minutes. Either way, the next meeting would be at ten thirty. If no one showed by, say, 10:28, Myron would meander back to the door and try to get in at ten thirty A.M.
Myron Bolitar, Master Planner.
But parents did show up by 10:25 A.M. and pretty much in a steady stream until noon. So that no one would notice him hanging around, Myron wandered downstairs when meetings would start, hid in the bathrooms, stayed in the stairwell. Serious boredom set in. Myron noticed that most of the fathers wore blue blazers and jeans. He had to update his wardrobe.
Finally at noon, there appeared to be an opening. Myron waited by the door and smiled as the parents exited. So far, Joel Fishman had not made an appearance. He waited in the room while one set of parents replaced another. The parents would knock on the door, and Fishman would call out, “Entrez.”
Now Myron knocked, but this time there was no reply. He knocked again. Still nothing. Myron turned the knob and opened the door. Fishman sat at his desk, eating a sandwich. There was a can of Coke and package of Fritos on the desk. Ponytail looked so different without the, well, ponytail. His faded yellow dress shirt was short sleeved with material thin enough to see the wife-beater tee below. He wore one of those UNICEF kid ties that were all the rage in 1991. His hair was short, close-cropped, parted on the side. He looked exactly like a middle school French teacher and nothing like a nightclub drug dealer.
“May I help you?” Fishman said, clearly annoyed. “Parent meetings start up again at one.”
Another one fooled by the clever disguise. Myron pointed at the Fritos. “Got the munchies?”
“Excuse me?”
“Like when you’re high. You got the munchies?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a clever reference to… never mind. My name is Myron Bolitar. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Who?”
“Myron Bolitar.”
Silence. Myron again almost added, “Ta-da,” but refrained. Maturity.
“Do I know you?” Fishman asked.
“You don’t.”
“I don’t have your child in any of my classes. Mrs. Parsons also teaches French. Perhaps you’re supposed to be there. Room two-eleven.”
Myron closed the door behind him. “I’m not looking for Mrs. Parsons. I’m looking for Crush.”
Fishman froze mid-chew. Myron moved across the room, grabbed the parent chair, twirled it around, straddled it macholike. Mr. Intimidation. “On most men, a ponytail reeks of midlife crisis. But I kind of liked it on you, Joel.”
Fishman swallowed whatever was in his mouth. Tuna fish from the smell. On whole wheat, Myron saw. Lettuce, tomato. Myron wondered who’d made it for him or whether he’d made it himself and then he wondered why he wondered stuff like that.
Fishman slowly reached for the Coke, looking to stall, and took a sip. Then he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Can you do me a favor?” Myron asked. “It’s a small one, really. Can we skip the silly denials? It will really save time and I don’t want to hold up the parents coming in at one.”
Myron tossed him one of the stills from the nightclub.
Fishman glanced at the photograph. “That’s not me.”
“Yes, Crush, it is.”
“That man has a ponytail.”
Myron sighed. “I just asked for one small favor.”
“Are you a police officer?”
“No.”
“When I ask like that, you have to tell the truth,” he said. Not true, but Myron didn’t bother to correct him. “And I’m sorry, but you have me mistaken for someone else.”
Myron wanted to reach across the desk and bop the guy on the forehead. “Last night at Three Downing, did you notice a large woman in a Batgirl costume?”
Fishman said nothing, but the guy would not have made a great poker player.
“She followed you home. We know all about your club visits, your drug dealings, your-”
That was when Fishman pulled a gun out of his desk drawer.
The suddenness caught Myron off guard. A cemetery goes with a school about as much as a teacher pulling a gun on you inside of his classroom. Myron had made a mistake, gotten overconfident in this setting, let down his guard. A big mistake.
Fishman quickly leaned across the desk, the gun inches from Myron’s face. “Don’t move or I’ll blow your goddamn head off.”
When someone points a gun at you, the whole world has a tendency to shrink down to the approximate size of the opening at the end of the barrel. For a moment, especially if it is your first time having a firearm thrust in your face at eye level, that opening is all you see. It is your world. It paralyzes you. Space, time, dimensions, senses are no longer factors in your life. Only that dark opening matters.