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  Inside, two girls squabbled over schoolwork on a dining-room table to the right. Dadisi took Gabriel’s overcoat and brought two coffee cups on saucers to the living room, which smelled of resin from a lit Christmas tree. As the men sat before a gas-log fire, Dadisi turned to the girls and called:

  “Take your books up to your room. We’ve got talking to do.”

  The girls left without complaint.

  “Grandkids?”

  Dadisi rolled his eyes. “Afraid not. Wife number two demanded parity with wife number one.”

  Gabriel studied framed posters from Kenya and Botswana on the walls, hand-carved giraffes and elephants on the coffee table. “Very African of you.”

  Dadisi smiled. “Very East Side.” Then serious: “What’s with Stone? You said you had questions.”

  “This is a confidential inquiry for now. Nothing official.”

  “I understand.”

  “You know who his wife is. Well, she hasn’t seen him for a few days and the mayor asked me to look into it.”

  Dadisi studied Gabriel, chewing his lip. “I don’t know him that well socially, just professionally. We had lunch on occasion but just talked shop.”

  “Good enough. What do you know?”

  He shrugged. “I know he worked his ass off and still lost his job. Hell, man, he was teaching four sections of writing classes. And for adjunct pay.”

  “Which is?”

  “Not even three grand per section.”

  Gabriel looked to the fireplace and African posters. “You too?”

  “No, I’m a full-time instructor. American lit. But what Stone taught—composition mainly—is a grind. Twenty students per section, three or four research papers per student, three or four drafts of each that you have to read. Stone couldn’t find time to work on his dissertation. That’s why he started teaching remedial grammar—just so he wouldn’t have so damn many papers to grade.”

  “Remedial grammar?”

  “You go to school?”

  “Back in the day. Saint Louis U.”

  Dadisi shook a finger at Gabriel. “That’s why your name’s familiar: You played for the Billikens.”

  “Thirty years and thirty pounds ago.”

  “I hear you…. Well, we ain’t a private Catholic school. And times have changed. We get inner city high school grads and junior college transfers who we have to stick in remedial courses. Stone thought teaching grammar would be easy—shorter papers to grade. You’re dealing with writing a good sentence and maybe a logical paragraph instead of essays.”

  “You saying it wasn’t easy for him?”

  “It really messed with him. He had no idea—real suburban white bread. He went to Mizzou and before that CBC—a prep school boy. Anyway, he came in the second week of classes in shock. He told me he gave them a diagnostic assignment. ‘These kids have gone through twelve years of public school,’ he said, ‘and still can’t write a grammatically correct sentence—something you and I could do in first grade.’

  “I told him what was happening in the schools—St. Louis, East St. Louis, Kansas City, where kids keep falling further and further behind. Public school issues weren’t on his radar, and he couldn’t believe it. So he went digging.

  “Stone became obsessed with it. The more he uncovered the more he got sucked in. Quit working on his dissertation to research the schools. Not a good career move, I told him. But he wouldn’t listen. And there was something more to it, something else eating at him that he kept close to the vest. Never said anything specific, but something was really driving him.”

  Gabriel sipped at his coffee, thinking.

  “Were you at the faculty party last Friday?”

  “I wouldn’t call coffee and Christmas cookies a party.”

  “I heard Stone and Betancourt had an altercation.”

  “Both are too soft-spoken for an ‘altercation.’ But they had words.”

  “What about?’

  “It was odd. Never heard Jonathan go off like that on anyone. But he’d had a few drinks at lunch. And he was stressed out. Called Betancourt a ‘corrupt son of a bitch.’”

  “That sounds pretty heated to me. Betancourt says Stone underperformed—that’s why he let him go.”

  Dadisi shifted in his chair. “I know nothing about that.”

  Gabriel sipped his coffee again and waited. He heard the girls giggling upstairs and sipped some more. Dadisi studied him, looking over his reading glasses. He licked his lips as if about to speak but apparently decided against it.

  “What?”

  “Like I said, I know nothing. But if you want to get an idea what sort of teacher Stone was, you might check his student evaluations. Talk to Martha Walczyk.”

  Gabriel drove back across the Mississippi. The St. Louis skyline, once dominated by early redbrick “skyscrapers” of twelve stories, now glistened with towering steel and glass buildings against the gray sky. The Gateway Arch shimmered on the riverfront. As traffic slowed, Gabriel telephoned Walczyk.

  “My man Dadisi alerted me to the existence of ‘student evaluations.’ Would there be some for Professor Stone?”

  “There should be a set for each class. On the last day, usually, the instructor distributes the forms and leaves the room so students can give an honest anonymous appraisal. A student then collects them and brings them to my office. The instructor gets copies and the originals go in his personnel file.”

  “I was wondering, Martha, if I might have a look at the most recent batch for Jonathan Stone.”

  Silence. Ahead on the bridge a car had spun out in the snow and sat sideways, blocking two lanes. Gabriel slowed. Finally Walczyk said:

  “I’d like to help you, lieutenant, but personnel files are confidential. I could not give you access on my own authority. However, if some higher authority issued instructions.…”

  She paused. Gabriel steered past the stalled car.

  “Mrs. Walczyk, as a law enforcement officer serving the citizens of St. Louis, I order you to allow me access to those files as they are vital to my investigation. I take full responsibility.”

  “Since you put it that way, I’ll have copies in this afternoon’s mail. You should get them by Thursday.”

  “Thursday?”

  “No mail delivery Wednesday.”

  “Why not?”

  “Christmas.”

  “Right, right. Let’s do this instead: I’ll send a cab for them tomorrow morning.”

  Gabriel hung up and sped away. Christmas. That would throw a wrench into things.

  - 4 -

  Next morning Gabriel left his apartment on the west side of Forest Park and drove up Union Boulevard to the North Patrol Division. Union used to be a nice street, a major north-south corridor with venerable homes, schools, and businesses. Now it was down-at-the-heels and turning tawdry, and, except for the occasional gas station, the Division office—unornamented, sterile, and institutional—was the only new structure for blocks.

  He hated the neighborhood where he was officed, the darkened factories, the nearby pawnshops and check cashing stores. The failure it all signaled. Unkempt yards in the summer with men drinking in vacant lots, many of them obviously under age. Even in wintertime, he’d see them gathered round a fire in a metal drum, passing a bottle. The jobs had gone, but the people remained. Things had deteriorated dramatically since he was a kid, but he didn’t know who to blame. Everyone seemed to be doing their job.

  He found The Gecko sitting in his cubicle. He even looked like a gecko: slender, chinless, bug-eyed. Nonetheless, The Gecko liked the handle the street cops laid on him. It made him feel like one of the guys.

  “Anything on Stone?”

  The Gecko perused an oversized computer monitor on the desk in front of him. “Negative, negative, negative, lieutenant. No tickee, no washee, no nothing. No credit card purchases or ATM action. Not arrested, hospitalized, or morgued-up. Did not pass ‘Go’ at airport security. No bank account or cell-phone activity.”


  “I could have told you about the latter; he left it at home.”

  “Interesting.”

  “You think so?”

  “Maybe he was called out suddenly and forgot it in the rush. Or maybe he didn’t want to leave a trail.”

  “Or maybe neither. Stone was a book guy, not a chatterer. Often didn’t carry it.”

  The Gecko swiveled around in his desk chair to face Gabriel. “I note the past tense. You figure he’s dead?”

  “I figure I’m not the English professor here and don’t know dick about verb tenses. Whichever, you better go back and check his previous cell calls. Let’s see who he’s been talking to.”

  “Gotcha. Nothing yet on the car either. Maybe it’s a carjacking and murder.”

  “When people lose their job on Friday, seldom do they get carjacked on Saturday.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Yeah, that bit is, Gecko. But stick to your computers. You’re not ready for detective work. Takes imagination.”

  “Speaking of computers, what about Stone’s?”

  “On my way downtown to pick it up from his wife.”

  The Gecko stared at Gabriel. “Ellen Cantrell, Eyewitness News. I always wanted to screw her—before I was married. Those lips.…”

  Gabriel patted his shoulder. “Now that shows some imagination, Geck. Maybe there’s hope for you after all.”

  Gabriel drove downtown, parked across the street from Police Headquarters, and walked around the corner to City Hall, facing a north wind sluicing cold air down Tucker Boulevard. He mounted the stone steps and ducked inside the building. Used to be anyone could enter City Hall through most any door without a problem. Now the only public entrance was on the east side, where citizens—except for cops—had to surrender their weapons, empty their pockets, and pass through a metal detector. He waved at the officer manning the device and moved around it and up the steps into the rotunda.

  The building, modeled after the Parisian city hall and built in 1898, still looked good from the outside, with its ornate towers, pink granite, buff sandstone trim, and burgundy clay-tile roof. Inside, the cavernous rotunda and marble grand staircase were unpeopled. Dim hallways led to gerry-rigged office entrances with cheap paneling and dirty glass. It was depressing.

  Ellen Cantrell made him wait fifteen minutes. Finally her secretary—red and green polka-dotted bowtie today—told him to go in.

  She sat at her desk, dressed in black—mourning? An odd choice for Christmas Eve. Even he had felt festive enough to don a red silk tie that morning. She did not invite him to sit, instead nodding toward a black-fiber computer bag on the corner of her desk.

  “There’s his laptop, lieutenant, but I doubt you’ll find anything helpful.”

  Meaning that she had already gone in and checked. Maybe she deleted embarrassing files or photos. Or added some.

  “Not much to report yet, Ms. Cantrell. No sign of him. Hasn’t used a credit card.”

  That made her thoughtful. “What else are you doing?”

  “We’ve issued a bulletin on the car but no sign yet. And I’m interviewing co-workers. Nothing from the TSA or elsewhere.”

  “Is that all? We need to find him.”

  He noted the use of the plural “we.” Maybe that included the mayor. Perhaps others. Now that Gabriel was trucking in the world of literature, language, and grammar, its importance seemed to resonate everywhere.

  “I understand your concern. The easiest thing would be to alert the media and have them run a photo.”

  “I realize it hamstrings you, but this investigation must be discreet. The last thing we want is publicity.”

  Gabriel puzzled over her aversion to publicity. Seemed like just the thing to speed the case along. Apparently that puzzlement showed, for she went on.

  “Of course I’m deeply concerned about Jonathan. But I don’t want this to somehow become an embarrassment to the mayor—given my proximity and public presence—if there’s nothing to it. I strongly suspect that Jonathan is just off doing research or taking a vacation and forgot to tell me or told me when I was preoccupied.”

  “A vacation?”

  “He’s been terribly overworked. Grading papers constantly and writing his dissertation whenever he has a free moment. He’s devoted to his students and his profession.”

  “Did you know, Ms. Cantrell, that he lost his job?”

  Two vertical creases formed at the center of her forehead. “You mean he was fired?”

  “It comes to that. Not hired back for the new semester. Performance not up to snuff says his department chair.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Jonathan.… Maybe he was consumed by his research.”

  “Maybe,” said Gabriel, reaching for the laptop.

  He started to turn away then turned back.

  “One last thing, Ms. Cantrell. Do you keep a gun at home?”

  “Why?”

  “Just trying to rule out things.”

  “I do. Not Jonathan.”

  “Have you checked to see if it’s still there?”

  “It’s where it always is, in my purse.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s okay, lieutenant. I have a concealed-carry permit. As a reporter I was coming and going at odd hours in odd places. Still do. You know the city.”

  “Yeah, I know it.” Gabriel said.

  Outside Cantrell’s office a black-haired woman who sat waiting looked up at Gabriel. “Hey there, tall, dark, and handsome.”

  “I’ll cop to tall and dark.”

  “So they’ve even got you carrying a computer these days?”

  He looked at the satchel in his hand. “No, this is for my virtual lunch—only way I can lose weight.”

  The woman, Laura Berkman, stood, and Gabriel bent to her as they feigned an embrace. The same perfume, even though that was ancient history.

  “Still ferreting out corruption and double-dealing?” he asked.

  “A never-ending quest. But it beats the hell out of the copy desk. You back downtown?”

  “Off the record? The bureaucracy moves in mysterious ways, but I’m working on it.”

  She lifted her own computer bag from the floor beside her chair and made toward Ellen Cantrell’s office. “Tell me about it over a drink this afternoon. Missouri Grille at four. Some of the old crew are getting together.”

  “Screw the old crew, for all the good they did me. But ‘yes’ to the drink. See you then, babe.”

  He didn’t have to think twice about it. He had nothing else on his platter.

  - 5 -

  Back at the North Division offices, a large envelope from Martha Walczyk sat on his desk. He dropped off Stone’s laptop with The Gecko, telling him to have it dusted for prints before he got to work on it which, Gabriel understood, wouldn’t happen till Thursday.

  Then he drove back downtown to the YMCA for hoops. Basketball was art, meditation, and dance all rolled into one. A few trips up and down the court, a couple of jump shots, and all his thoughts and cares slid from him like warming snow from a pitched roof.

  Afterward, he hung around the locker room for a couple hours—shooting the breeze with Fearn on basketball and the job, meditating in the sauna, getting a massage, and reading magazines in the TV room.

  He took a walk downtown. No point in going back to the office. Most everyone would be marking time awaiting the holiday. And being “detached” from the organizational chart meant that he worked with little or no supervision.

  Snow—turning progressively darker shades of gray—remained in piles along the curbs. Though still mid-afternoon the sky too darkened. His ears stung from the cold.

  At Macy’s he looked at the window displays. He recalled a similar snowy afternoon some fifty years earlier, holding his mother’s hand, his father at her side, gazing at the toy trains and animated puppets. Even then, at that age, he noted the stares his parents drew—a black man with a light-skinned Latina was a rare sight in a largely segregated city. Now, howeve
r, whenever he dated a white woman no one seemed to give a damn, or at least didn’t make their feelings known.

  It was nearly five when Gabriel walked into the Missouri Bar and Grille, a few blocks down Tucker Boulevard from City Hall. For years a hangout for cops, newspaper people, ballplayers, cabbies, and other night prowlers. Open three-hundred-sixty-five days a year and serving food and drinks till three a.m. The blue neon lights and aligned liquor bottles on the back bar made it feel nice and seedy and old-fashioned. Signed photos of celebrities and athletes adorned the walls. Tonight lots of loud conversation. He found Laura Berkman sitting at the bar and managed to squeeze in next to her.

  “Thought you had forgotten about me,” she said.

  “You’re always on my mind. Just didn’t want to arrive before you did and have to talk to assholes. You know how I am sometimes—capable of ‘brutal force’ and ‘violating civil rights.’”

  “Glad to see you’ve buried the hatchet.”

  “I’d like to bury it in that bastard’s skull. But that’s all in the past, right? Now words are my only weapons. I’m getting into literature and language.”

  Berkman smiled and combed back her hair with her fingers as if to draw attention to her face—still unlined at forty and attractive in a sultry, gypsy way. Large earrings dangling. A slender neck. “You had a drink yet?” Gabriel shook his head. “Then let’s get you started.”

  He ordered a Bud Light and a shot of Dickel, and Berkman said, “I understand you’re on special assignment for the mayor.”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that rumor.”

  “You know everything’s always off the record with me, Carlo, until you tell me different.”

  “Let’s just say I’ve got something going that might bring me back to my rightful place in the pecker order.”

  She smiled. “True enough, that. But at least nowadays there’s some dark meat in the queue.”

  Gabriel grabbed his whiskey as the bartender slid it to him. He took a sip. “My ticket was punched before the shit hit. Captain, maybe even Deputy Commander. Five years and out with a fat pension, then Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama. Somewhere warm with hot babes.”