The website informed her that the school ran some summer camps, which meant there’d be staff there for Tess to talk to. It also had a list of faculty members, but there were no Deans on it. Tess hadn’t been able to get anything more out of Alex about who he was talking about. In fact, most of the faculty were women. So she’d taken a cab out to the school and asked to see the principal.
Cohen, a tall, elegant, gray-haired woman who reminded Tess of a figure from a Modigliani painting, took a moment to collect herself before inquiring about Alex, how he was doing, what would happen to him. She told Tess she didn’t know the boy personally, but she thought she remembered seeing him and Michelle at school events.
“What can I do to help you?” she finally asked.
“I found a drawing that Alex had done that I was curious about, and when I asked him about it, he said his mom took him to see someone called Dean. I’m thinking maybe it’s some kind of counselor. Does that name mean anything to you?”
Cohen pursed her lips and shook her head. “No, not really. We don’t have any Deans on staff here. What was the issue with the drawing?”
“I’m not really sure. It shows Alex and someone else, kind of an ominous-looking figure. And when I asked him about it, he didn’t want to talk about it. He seemed scared by it. What about his teachers? Maybe they know something.”
“Alex was in prekindergarten,” Cohen said as she checked her computer. “He was in room two. Miss Fowden’s group.”
“And she never mentioned anything to you about him?”
“Nothing.”
Tess frowned. “Is she around? I’d love to talk to her.”
Cohen’s nose crumpled apologetically. “She’s not working this summer.”
“I really need to talk to her. Can I call her? Do you know if she’s around?”
Cohen looked at her, uncertain.
“Please. It’s important.”
Cohen smiled. “Sure. Let me try her.”
She picked up her phone, glanced at the computer screen to get the teacher’s number, and dialed. Tess watched anxiously as the call seemed to go unanswered, then Cohen spoke up.
“Holly, it’s Marlene. I’ve got a woman here who needs to talk to you. It’s about Alex Martinez.”
Tess’s heart deflated. From the principal’s tone, she’d evidently reached the teacher’s voicemail.
Tess gave Cohen her cell phone number, which Cohen included in her message. Then she thanked her and left.
As she walked back to the waiting cab, she felt the midday sun weighing down on her, draining and oppressive. She relived her chat with Alex, and the fear she saw on his face was still there, like a wraith, stalking her through the heat haze.
It was still there as the cab drove off, and she pulled out her iPhone to let Jules know she was on her way back. Her hand stopped and she stared at the phone for a moment.
The edge of her mouth cracked with a small grin and she hit two on her speed dial. Reilly’s number.
“Everything okay?” he asked, picking up promptly, as he always did.
“Yeah. I’m at Alex’s school. I just had a chat with the principal. It’s a great little place. Nice people.” She didn’t really want to mention the drawing again. “Tell me something. You guys have Michelle’s phone, right?”
“We do.”
“Could you check and see if there’s a Dean in her contacts list or in her calendar?”
“Why?”
“Alex mentioned something about Michelle taking him to see someone by that name. I don’t know who he is, but . . . might be good to have a chat with him, don’t you think?”
Reilly went silent for a second, then said, “This is about the drawing, isn’t it?”
She cursed inwardly. He knew her way too well. “Yes. I asked him about it, okay? He was scared, Sean. He was definitely scared and he didn’t want to talk about it. All I could get out of him was that Michelle was also curious about it and took him to see this Dean to discuss it. That’s worth checking out, isn’t it? I mean, what if someone was threatening him? What if it’s related to what happened to Michelle?”
Reilly went quiet again. “Dean.”
“That’s it.”
“Okay,” he relented, clearly not convinced. “I’ve got to go.”
“Love ya, big guy.”
“Right back at ya.”
She put her phone away, stared out the window, and exhaled heavily, trying to ignore the prickles of impatience that were stabbing away at every pore of her body.
35
Sitting at the solitary booth in the back of the Black Iron Burger Shop on East Fifth Street, Perrini wiped the last traces of the burger and the side of onion rings from his mouth and stretched his arms out lazily. As freelance jobs went, this one was almost embarrassingly easy. He knew this was a rarity, especially after one of the previous year’s jobs for Guerra had turned from strictly an information-gathering exercise into shutting down the local operation of a particularly aggressive Mexican cartel that was trying to muscle its way into the city.
Initially he had balked at turning off one of his newest suppliers of cash-stuffed envelopes, but the rival cartel that had hired Guerra in the first place were so pleased with how things had turned out that they had given Perrini a rather sizeable bonus, albeit one from which Guerra had creamed off a hefty twenty-percent commission. Nevertheless, it would be enough to put Nate, Perrini’s eldest son, through college, and a good one, too.
Perrini had taken no chances with the fallout. Within a week of the entire upper echelon of the incoming cartel’s New York City contingent being sent to Rikers, Perrini had ensured that his sometime contact had been fatally stuck with a rather nasty shank by an up-and-coming lieutenant of the incumbent African-American gang in the South Bronx, a favor arranged by an old friend at the Forty-first. The killing had been marked down to a racial slur and had therefore been logged as having nothing to do with a turf war between competing Mexican gangs.
It was a win-win for Perrini, as the freshly triumphant outfit was from then on more than generous with both their cash and their product. In fact, he had a twenty-gram bag of their finest uncut cocaine sitting in his left trouser pocket at this very moment.
He waved over the waitress to ask for another vanilla malt and saw Lina Dawetta walk into the restaurant. He watched her glance around edgily, clearly making sure there was no one she knew in there. She then walked over to the booth and sat on one of the vacant stools facing the detective.
Seeing as the restaurant was just a couple of blocks from the precinct house, bumping into somebody one of them knew was an occupational hazard, though the only time it had happened to date, Perrini had calmly fielded a sly smile from a homicide detective with whom he was on no more than corridor-greeting terms. Let them think he was screwing a lowly PAA. Though the powder was gradually taking its toll, Lina was strikingly attractive in an olive-skinned, auburn-haired Sicilian way, and Perrini knew that the unspoken code between male cops would keep his wife from ever hearing about it.