“What’re you going to do? Expel him? Is that why you got me up here?”
“Believe me, Mr. Valarian, it pains me to say this, but yes, that is the board’s decision. For the welfare of St. Ives Academy and the other students. Surely you can understand—”
“Oh, I understand,” Valarian said bitterly. “You bet I understand.”
“Peter will be permitted to remain here until the end of the week, under supervision, if you require time to make other arrangements for him. Of course, if you’d rather he leave with you this afternoon...”
Valarian got jerkily to his feet. “I want to talk to my son. Now.”
“Yes, naturally. I sent for him earlier and he’s waiting in one of the rooms just down the hall.”
He had to fight his anger as he followed the headmaster to where Peter was waiting. He felt like hitting something or somebody. Not the boy, he’d never laid a hand on him and never would. Not Locklear, either. Somebody. Himself, maybe.
Locklear stopped before a closed door. He said somberly, “I’ll await you in my office, Mr. Valarian,” and left him there alone.
He hesitated before going in, to calm down and work out how he was going to handle this. All right. He took a couple of heavy breaths and opened the door.
The boy was sitting on a straight-back chair — not doing anything, just sitting there like a statue. When he saw his father he got slowly to his feet and stood with his arms down at his sides. No smile, nothing but a blank stare. He looked older than ten. Big for his age, lean but wide through the shoulders. He looks like I did at that age, Valarian thought. He looks just like me.
“Hello, Peter.”
“Chip,” the boy said in a voice as blank as his stare. “You know I prefer Chip, Papa.”
“Your name is Peter. I prefer Peter.”
Valarian crossed the room to him. The boy put out his hand, but on impulse Valarian bent and caught his shoulders and hugged him. It was like hugging a piece of stone. Valarian let go of him, stepped back.
“I just had a long talk with your headmaster,” he said. “Those thefts, the fire yesterday... he says it was you.”
“I know.”
“Well? Was it?”
“No, Papa.”
“Don’t lie to me. If you did all that...”
“I didn’t. I didn’t do anything.”
“They’re kicking you out of St. Ives. They wouldn’t do that if they weren’t sure it was you.”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care you’re being expelled?”
“I don’t like it here anymore. I don’t care what the headmaster or the teachers or the other kids think. I don’t care what anybody thinks about me.” Funny little smile. “Except you, Papa.”
“All right,” Valarian said. “Look me in the eyes and tell me the truth. Did you steal money, set that fire?”
“I already told you I didn’t.”
“In my eyes. Up close.”
The boy stepped forward and looked up at him squarely. “No, Papa, I didn’t,” he said.
In the car on the way back to the city he kept seeing Peter’s eyes staring into his. He couldn’t get them out of his mind. What he’d seen there shining deep and dark... it must’ve been there all along. How could he have missed it before? It had made him feel cold all over; made him want nothing more to do with his son today, tell Locklear he’d send somebody to pick up the boy at the end of the week and then get Out of there fast. Now, remembering, it made him shudder.
Lugo was looking at him in the rear view mirror. “Something wrong, Mr. Valarian?”
At any other time he’d have said no and let it go at that. But now he heard himself say, “It’s my son. He got into some trouble. That’s why I had to go to the school.”
“All taken care of now?”
“No. They’re throwing him out.”
“No kidding? That’s too bad.”
“Is it?” Then he said, “His name’s Peter, but his mother calls him Chip. She says he’s like me, a chip off the same block. He likes the name, he thinks it fits him too. But I don’t like it.”
“How come?”
“I don’t want him to be like me, I wanted him to grow up better than me. Better in every way. That’s why I sent him to St. Ives. You understand?”
Lugo said, “Yes, sir,” but they were just words. Lugo was his driver, his bodyguard, his strong-arm man; all Lugo understood was how to steer a limo, how to serve the mob with muscle or a gun.
“I don’t want him in my business,” he said. “I don’t want him to be another John Valarian.”
“But now you think maybe he will be?”
“No, that’s not what I think.” Valarian crossed himself, picturing those bright, cold eyes. “I think he’s gonna be a hell of a lot worse.”
Opportunity
Coretti and I went to check the thing out.
The call had come in to the captain of detectives at eight thirty-five from an occasionally reliable department informant named Scully. We were logging reports in the squad room when the word came down. It had been a quiet night, like you can get in early winter; the sound of the wind and a thin rain snapping at the windows, and none of us relished the thought of leaving the warmth of the squad room. So we matched coins with the two other teams of inspectors on the four-to-midnight swing to see who would take the squeal. Coretti and I lost.
It didn’t sound like much, but then you never know. A parlor collector for a string of bookie joints in Southern California had vanished with a substantial amount of weekend receipts. Scully didn’t know how much, but since the betting had been unusually heavy at Caliente on Saturday his guess was six figures. Scully’s tip, uncorroborated and filtering north on the grapevine, was that this Feldstein had beat it to San Francisco and gone into hiding in a tenement hotel near Hunters Point. The captain thought we ought to run a check.
Coretti and I rode the elevator down to the garage in the basement of the Hall of Justice and signed a check-out slip for an unmarked sedan. We drove out into the frigid, drizzling San Francisco night. The hotel Scully had named was off Third Street, in an area that was primarily industrial. At least it wouldn’t be a long ride.
Neither of us had much to say. We’d been partners a long time and we didn’t need a lot of conversation. The heater in the sedan made labored whirring sounds and threw nothing but cold air against our feet.
Coretti picked up Third at Townsend, followed it out over China Basin. I lit a cigarette as we passed over the bridge, and as soon as I exhaled smoke the pain in my stomach almost doubled me over on the seat. I jammed my hand under my breastbone and held it there, waiting for the sharpness of the seizure to subside so I could breathe again.
“Arne,” Coretti said, “you all right?”
I fumbled out the bottle of prescription painkiller, swallowed some of it. It was strong stuff and it worked quickly. Pretty soon I said, “Yeah. Okay now.”
“The ulcer again?”
“What else,” I said.
“You take that medicine like it was candy. Doesn’t seem to be helping much.”
“It’s mostly for the pain. Doc says I’ve got to have an operation. He’s afraid the thing will rupture.”
“So when you going in, Arne?”
“I’m not.”
He gave me a sharp look. “Why not? Man, a perforated ulcer can kill you.”
“I can’t afford an operation right now. I’m up to my ass in bills. You’ve got a family, Bob. You know how it is.”
“Yeah, I know how it is.”
“Maybe next summer,” I said. “The car loan’Il be paid off then.”
“Does the captain know how bad the ulcer is?”