The cafeteria doubled as an auditorium. Kids ran around yelling to each other, some wore ear phones connected to IPods, while others hunched over laptops staring at their computer screens rather than doing any human interaction.
"Can I treat you to a Salisbury steak with Maybeline's famous yellow gravy," a voice said to us from behind. It was Jamal.
"Please, just the mention of it gives me the shits. 'Ol Maybeline still in charge of the kitchen?"
"Yep and still fuckin' up everything she can."
"You know, Jamal, I thought old black southern women were supposed to be able to cook."
"Ah shit, Duff, and I can tap with Sammy Fuckin' Davis Jr. You white people kill me."
"Hey, this is my buddy, Karl." Up until now Karl had been standing, turned three quarters away from us, surveying the cafeteria. He turned to shake Jamal's hand.
"What's up, man" Jamal said. "Hey, you played for VHS awhile didn't you?"
"Yeah, halfback," Karl said.
"I remember you. You had some hop."
"For the Suburban League."
"Yeah, I'm glad you said it," Jamal said. Karl went back to looking around the room.
"Yo Duff, I love you like a brother from another mother, but you mind telling me what coming here is all about?"
"Ah, well, we're kind of looking for someone or, more accurately, some thing."
"You wanna explain?"
"Uh, do I have to?"
"Hey, man, you call me to come visit the school, you bring your friend here, who's been doin' some sort of surveillance thing and I'm not supposed to know. I think not, my friend." Jamal raised his eyebrows in the impossible way that gave him one of the most expressive faces I've ever seen.
"Okay, everyone else in town thinks I'm nuts, why shouldn't you. We're looking for kids, maybe kids who are a little fucked up. Depressed, disenfranchised, angry, maybe even violent kids who might, you know, be angry with the world."
"You just about describe all of adolescence, Duff." Jamal starred at me. "What the hell are you really talking about?"
"We're looking for kids who might want to go Columbine." Jamal put his hands on his hips and starred at me. I looked back at him and kept his eyes as long as I could.
"Duff, what the f-"
"Them," Karl said, softer than his usual voice. "Them, what's their story?" He pointed with a nod of the head. In that direction was a group of kids dressed in black, with the requisite black boots, dyed black hair and dark tattoos.
"C'mon, fellas. Those are the resident Goths. They're the wannabe angry teens trying to make a statement by being different-all of them being exactly the same different at the same time," Jamal said.
"Duff, I got a feeling." Karl turned toward Jamal. "You remember Chipper Newstrom. He was the quarterback on my VHS team?"
"Yeah, sure. He could play a little ball. It's weird you bring him up because I-"
"He was here wasn't he?" Karl broke in.
"Yeah. I saw him in the parking lot before class. How did you know?"
Karl looked up at me. So did Jamal.
"Holy shit." It was all I could think of saying.
35
We followed the kids in black after school. Eight of them and they smoked cigarettes behind the bowling alley, five blocks from McDonough. We sat in the El Dorado, two blocks away, watching the area they disappeared into through the woods and broken-down cement half wall that used to be part of a garage years ago. After 45 minutes, three of them came out, and looked like they were headed home. They laughed and walked like any other kids, except they all dressed in black and all had the same tattoos on their forearms. The one in the middle had another tattoo on the back of his neck.
"Karl, how long are we going to sit here?" I said after another 45 minutes of watching kids through the trees and bushes.
"I don't know, but it feels like we've got to do something," he said.
"So far the most nefarious thing we got them doing is smoking cigarettes. You want to call Richie and Potsy and tell their moms?"
"Either Newstrom has intervened already or he's still working on them. This thing could be going down tomorrow."
"Or never," I said, starting to feel pretty stupid. Fifteen more minutes went by without us talking. It was getting darker. I didn't see the use of waiting around much longer.
"Karl, I can't just sit here, it makes me nuts. I'm going to visit our friends in black."
"Duff, I don't think that's a good idea. They could be dangerous."
"Yeah, well, sitting around in a car listening to the two of us breathe is dangerous to my mental health." I opened the door and headed to the brushy area behind the bowling alley. I heard Karl's door open and close a few seconds behind me and his running footsteps as he caught up with me.
"What are we going to do when we get there?"
"They're scrawny kids. What are they going to do? Pop a zit on us or something? We're adults and they'll be scared of us because they'll think they're about to get in trouble." We got to the edge of the bowling alley. I looked at Karl. He raised his eyebrows as if to say 'What the hell?' I nodded as a signal to go.
We walked around the corner, stepped over an overgrown hedge, and looked into a cleared circle with empty beer cans, cigarettes, milk crates, a tire, and an old bike frame. There were no kids there. It looked like every kid's spot for bush drinking I had ever seen.
Karl walked ahead of me looking around.
"They went out this way." Karl pointed to a hole in the fence that went to the back of the bowling alley. He bent over and picked something up.
"Duff, you better see this."
I walked over and looked at Karl's find.
"Those are shell casings to a high powered assault weapon. They're similar to the ones I used. Newstrom would have access to them. He's been training them and he's equipped them."
"How do we know it's not kids screwing around and this is their clubhouse type of thing? Maybe there is nothing more serious than target practice going on."
"BB gun, slingshots, CO2 pistols are one thing, Duff. These are high-powered assault weapons. Where would McDonough kids get them?"
I didn't have a plausible explanation for any of it and I knew it. It felt like something awful was about to happen and I didn't have a clue what to do about it. I decided to call Jamal and tell him what we had found.
"Duff, I'm at practice. Can't this wait?" he said after picking up his cell phone. I told him I didn't believe it could wait and asked him for some of the kid's names. He told me the ringleader, if you could call him a leader, was Andy Katzman, and his two best friends were Michael Corona and Eddie Stain. He didn't know their exact addresses, but said they lived north of Jefferson Hill on the west side of the city.
"Hey, Duff, what makes you so sure they're going to do something?"
"Sometimes you get a feeling, Jamal."
"How have your instincts been serving you lately?" I didn't have a good answer and hung up. Next I called Kelley and begged him to come see what Karl and I had found by the bowling alley. He wasn't pleased, but agreed to meet us there in a half an hour. In the meantime Karl and I went the six blocks over to the public library to look up the kids' addresses. We found three addresses for kids with the names Jamal gave us in the West Jefferson neighborhood.
We got back to the bowling alley and saw Kelley had beaten us there. His cruiser, parked like any other car in the lot, idling like he was taking a break.
"You got something to show me?" Kelley sounded just a tad more impatience than usual.
"Follow us," I said. The three of us walked back to the area behind the bowling alley.
"We found some shell casings to some serious assault weaponry. This isn't kid stuff," Karl said. We got to the back of the bowling alley, each of us swinging our legs over the half wall. In silence, the three of us walked to the center area where Karl and I had been about half an hour ago.