He reached into his jacket for a cigarette and stuck it between his teeth. “You want me to do you a solid, is that it?” he asked, fumbling for a light.
She swatted the cigarette from his mouth, sending it flying halfway across the room. “I want you to talk to me.”
“Well, I’m not giving up the rest of my boys,” he shot back. “You can’t make me do that.”
“Use your head, dope! I just laid my own two eyes on them-I can make them from their school photos.” Des shook her head at him in disgust. “I’m wasting my time here. You’re just a lame-assed punk. I’m running you in.” She started for the door with Ronnie in tow.
He panicked. “No, wait! W-we can work this out. What… what do you want to know?”
“I want to know why.”
“We thought it would be cool,” he answered simply.
“You thought it would be cool to burn down Center School? Man, what are you on? Because I have got to get me some of that.”
“Not a thing,” Ronnie insisted. “Never when we go out on a mission. That’s forbidden.”
“So this is the ‘real’ you talking?”
“Absolutely. And this is something we gave a lot of thought to, okay? We thought it would serve ’em right, okay? All they keep doing is arguing about this place. Jerking us around. Pretending they care about us when they don’t. We’re sick of being jerked around. We’re sick of them telling us they want what’s best for us. They don’t. So we thought we’d show ’em just how we feel, okay?”
Des glanced around at the aging classroom. “You hate this place, is that it?”
He let out a nasty laugh. “I hate everything.”
“Then I really don’t know how to talk to you, Ronnie,” Des said regretfully. “Because if you truly believe what you’re saying then you’re coming from the same moral place as a terrorist. You’re not fit to live among other people. Come on, let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” he wondered, wide-eyed.
“You don’t ask the questions. I do.”
She ushered him outside through the front door and flashed her light three times at Mitch. Their go-ahead signal. His job now was to repair the window and clean up the broken glass-with luck, the school would know nothing about this in the morning. Her job was to lead Ronnie Welmers to her cruiser, which she’d parked in the lot behind town hall.
She put him in the front seat and got in next to him behind the wheel. “Okay, it’s time to deal,” she said, looking him right in the eye. “For starters, the Mod Squad is history. I know who you are and where you live. Anything happens again-graffiti, antics, anything-all five of you go directly to jail. And I am so not goofing, understand?”
He nodded, swallowing. “What else do you want?” he asked, his reedy voice soaring an octave.
She started up her cruiser, pulled out of the parking lot and headed north on Dorset Street in the 2-A.M. stillness. “I want you to be a man instead of a punk. I want you to be responsible.”
“For what?” he asked, watching the road carefully, desperate to know where she was taking him.
“For your little brother. And those ladies next door. They’ve got themselves a problem. And I’m going to tell you straight up what it is-your dad, in case you didn’t know it.”
“I know it,” Ronnie said quietly.
“What’s his story, anyway?”
“He’s a dead man walking. His business is in the toilet. He’s bitter, broke, horny. Plus he’s a total ass.” Ronnie sneaked a hopeful look at her. “Word, did you break his nose?”
“Why, what did he say?”
“That he got hit in the nose with a golf club, by accident.”
“Works for me,” she said, straight-faced.
“You have it wrong, you know. He’s not hot for Phoebe. He’s hot for Mrs. Beddoe.”
Des glanced over at him in surprise. “How do you know that?”
“Phoebe told me.”
“You two are friends?
“Kind of.”
“Why did your dad give Ricky that black eye?”
“Because Ricky talked back to him.”
“Ricky told me you gave it to him.”
“No way. I love the little turd. All we’ve got is each other. He’s just afraid the law will come down on Dad and we’ll end up in some foster home.”
She thought this over as she steered her cruiser up the Old Post Road in the darkness. “You like Phoebe a lot, don’t you?”
“I mean, yeah…” he answered uncomfortably. “But they’re grooming her for the big leagues. She’ll go off to Yale, marry a lawyer.”
“You could do that. Go to Yale, be a lawyer.”
“I’m not that smart.”
“Word, I used to be married to a Yale Law School graduate-they aren’t that smart.” She glanced across the seat at him. He looked incredibly young, riding there next to her. They always looked younger when they were in custody. And smaller. “From now on, Phoebe’s family to you. If I get one more phone call from that mother of hers, I’m busting you for tonight’s antics, understand?”
“Does this mean you’re not busting me now?”
“Depends. Do you realize the enormity of what you almost did?”
“Why are you asking me that?” asked Ronnie, frowning.
“Because if you don’t, then I’ll have to run you over to the Troop F Barracks in Westbrook, where they’ll lock you up in a cell for the night with the rest of the trash. Man, are they going to love that smooth white flesh of yours. In the morning you’ll be arraigned at New London Superior Court on-”
“I understand,” Ronnie said urgently.
“What do you understand?”
“What I almost did tonight. How heavy it would have been.”
“If your father steps out of line again, I want to hear from you. He lays a hand on you or your brother, he gets busy with the Beddoe ladies, you pick up the phone and you call me.”
“You want me to rat out my own father to the police?”
“Not to the police, to me.”
“God, this is too freakin’ weird.”
“Life is freakin’ weird. Get used to it.” Des came to a stop by the stone pillars at the foot of Somerset Ridge. “Up to you, big man. Either we deal or we head for Westbrook. What’s it to be?”
“I’ll call you,” he said hoarsely.
“Smart move,” she said, easing down the road toward his house. “I knew you had it in you.”
“Damn,” Ronnie Welmers marveled, shaking his head. “You’re not very nice, are you?”
“That’s where you are way wrong,” Des said, flashing a smile at him. “Remember this day, sweetness. Remember it often. Because I am the nicest person you will ever meet.”
CHAPTER 15
Des was out there enforcing the seventy-five-foot limit when Mitch pulled into the firehouse parking lot. The polling place was mobbed. Voters lined up out the door all the way to Dorset Street. Dozens of vocal demonstrators crowded the curb with save our school and WE CARE signs. It seemed as if every registered voter in town had shown up to weigh in on the future of Center School. And, quite possibly, the future of Dorset itself.
Mitch tried to wangle a smile out of Des as he eased on past her into a parking space, but the resident trooper had her game face on. All he got was a curt nod.
“Quite a lovely girl, isn’t she?” Sheila Enman spoke up from the seat next to him, her eyes twinkling at Mitch.
“Yes, she is, Mrs. Enman,” he said, watching Des in his rearview mirror as First Selectman Paffin approached her with his hand stuck out and a broad grin on his face.
“One helluva caboose on her, too,” the old lady observed, craning her neck for a better look. “Me, I never looked like that in trousers.”
The polls closed at eight o’clock. The tally, which was posted on the town’s Web site later that evening, was surprisingly lopsided. The thirty-four-million-dollar school bond proposal failed by a no vote of 3,874 to 2,175. The Center School would be spared.
Mitch was positively elated. He liked Dorset just the way it was.
One of the reasons the no vote was so resounding was Wendell Frye’s generous bequest to the town. In the fine print of his amended will Hangtown had pledged one-half million dollars to Center School for the construction of a world-class art studio complex for Dorset’s young people. The money was not transferable to a new school facility-if the town tore down Center School, the bequest would be voided.