“Moppet geography,” Seal conjectured. “I’d suspect they have a world map chalked out on the floor across which the class marches Napoleonically.” (“… THREE AND FOUR…”)
“And that’s your lady friend drilling them?”
Seal failed to answer. Was it? Not since that candlelit evening a month ago had he seen or talked to Miss Springer, a bounteously endowed divorcee in her thirties. He did not have her address; she was not in the phone book. Twenty years on the force and he could not relocate a simple winsome woman — until yesterday when, quite inadvertently, he met her leaving this nursery school where, it turned out, she taught.
He had walked with her to the branch post office where she mailed off a package of school business to something called the Ubiquity Mailing Service in San Francisco. She seemed flustered at seeing him, resistant to his overtures. Still he persisted until she accepted his dinner invitation for tonight. Now, hearing her amplified voice, reservations fought him like mosquitoes. This was Miss Springer, with the drill-sergeant voice? Had police work diluted his judgment?
The question was pigeonholed. A blue sedan parked between the school and the corner candy store and its driver, an elegant, graying gentleman in stylish garb, worked free. Armed with a brief case and a small box camera, he crossed the street to the school, nodded to the heavy-set handyman at the bright red door, and vanished inside.
“Why, that’s Antoine Grivas,” remarked Seal.
“Don’t know him,” said Hinschelman, “but I’ve seen that guy at the door.”
“Big name in education, Grivas. World traveler, twelve languages, crack photographer, and heads up a large philanthropic outfit — Foster Children International.”
“Know him, Inspector?”
Seal shook his head. “I’ve seen him wandering around the slums with his camera. Then, happened onto a showing of his photographs at a local art gallery a month ago. Same day and place I first met Miss Springer, though I scarcely thought them connected in any way.”
“What kind of photographs?”
“Poverty. Torn posters on old board fences, rundown tenement buildings, close-ups of underprivileged children, the faces of the poor.”
“And you paid to see that?”
“No, just happened by the gallery. No admission fee. It was the afternoon of my last day on the force and I was en route, with your old nemesis Captain Stout, for a glass or two of Auld Lang Syne. We took a look in. Regrettably, sirens in the street called Stout back to duty and, left alone, I met Miss Springer. My evening continued with her.”
“Did you tell her you were a cop?”
“No, didn’t mention it. Why?”
“The fact that you didn’t is why. Dame like that, hanging around art galleries, might look down her nose at a cop.”
“I hardly think she’s that sort.”
“But she did disappear.”
“Like a lead bar at eighty fathoms.”
“What’s a hotshot photographer like him doing with a cheap Brownie camera?”
“Could be primitivism’s back in vogue.”
“So now you find out she and Grivas are teaching in the same kiddie school. Jealous, Inspector?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” dissembled Seal. Nosy fellow, Hinschelman. His mind is like his fingers on a safe knob or lifting a wallet. Annoyingly acute. Was it in fact jealousy, this pollution of his happy mood? Was Grivas the gray force behind her tantalizing secretiveness, her refusal to tell him where she lived?
He thanked heaven he was well back in the park — behind the green foliage, beyond the equestrian bronze of the dyspeptic General Grant. To be spotted by her and thought spying would be unthinkable. Spying he was, in point of fact, but she could hardly have known it was five-year-old William Wagner — one of her blue-chip marching pupils — he rode tail on. Nor, under any circumstances, could he tell her.
“… WHO’S ON CHINA? COME BACK, WILLIAM; N-O-W YOU’VE GOT IT, THREE AND FOUR…”
“Little William’s your quarry, right?” came from Hinschelman.
“William, alias Billy. Yes.”
“Like to have a look at him.”
“You will. They’ll soon break for afternoon recess and adjourn to that candy store.”
“What’s his problem? What’s his mother worried about?”
“The source of the lad’s daily income. Each morning he is delivered to the Peter Pan School, pockets bare of funds. In the afternoon he returns home clinking small change, devoid of appetite, his mouth a rainbow of bilious colors from the candy shop. She — his mother — is the daughter of an old friend. She cornered me at a recent soiree and I was trapped into volunteering my services. I now tail a five-year-old when I should be out playing golf. And now to find that Miss Springer works here—”
Hinschelman shook his head, dissatisfied. “His mother couldn’t just ask the kid where he gets it?”
“Oh, no. Modern psychology forbids it. To ask where he gets the money would be not only a sign of distrust but an encroachment on his privacy.”
“Oh, my — oh, for — and you believe that?”
“Not exactly,” chuckled Seal.
“Me, I’d have it out of him in fifteen seconds,” spat Hinschelman in disgust. “She couldn’t call up the school and ask them?”
“She prefers not to. It could be the initial manifestation of, say, kleptomania, in which case she wants nothing known of it for the boy’s sake, and in which case she’d seek more discreet professional help.”
“And how do you plan to go about it?”
“I’m not sure yet. Miss Springer has now reared her shampooed head.”
Hinschelman cracked his knuckles. “Well, Inspector, maybe it’s your lucky day — me running into you here in the park.”
“How is that?” queried Seal.
“You have a thing going for this Miss Springer, right? You’re having her over for dinner tonight. You don’t hardly want her to see you crawling around in that candy store. Six-feet-two and distinguished mustache and two-hundred-dollar sports jacket, you might not blend in.”
“I’ve been pondering that.”
“Sweat no more, Inspector. I’d kind of like to do something legal. Anyway, I wouldn’t even be here, out of Bagwell State Pen, if it hadn’t of been for you getting me a job and going to bat for me.”
“Or been in it,” appended Seal, who had twice abridged his friend’s freedom.
“Oh, I’d of been there all right. I was in and out while you were still playing polo. But it was you got me going straight. I’ll do the candy store.”
Seal was touched. “Thoughtful of you, Aaron. If you could get a line on his purchases, note the denomination with which he makes payment—”
“No problem. I’d of wandered over anyway. That fat guy at the door, I’ve seen him somewhere and it’s bugging me.” He rose. “You say Billy’s wearing a red suit and cap, blond hair?”
“Beanie cap, celluloid propeller. I believe they’re coming out for recess right now.”
Hinschelman left, and from the red door issued half a hundred shrieking children. On the school’s narrow concrete forecourt the handyman coerced them into a hand-holding column of twos. Would Miss Springer present herself to escort them? She did not. From the column’s head the man appraised them sourly, barked a muffled command; and off they trooped behind him, gaggling like geese — out the gate and down the sidewalk to the candy store. Were they all filching money at that tender age?
At City Hall the clock struck two. My God, thought Seal, and vaulted to his feet as though kicked upright. At two — at this minute — he had an appointment for an eye examination, a booking he’d sought for ten days. He turned and walked quickly uphill, striding rhythmically, he soon found, for a new class in geography had begun and Anchors Aweigh drummed him forward. He could not seem to disentangle his long legs from the march’s beat or the brisk Prussian commands of Miss Springer.