'High on life.'
'Yeah.'
The houses on either side of the street were set among trees and their yards were broad. In the driveways were Volvo station wagons and Volkswagen Rabbits, here and there a Mercedes sedan. Only occasionally a Chevy Caprice or a Buick Skylark. Smithfield was not obsessive about buying American.
'You ever have to bust her?'
Cataldo shook his head. 'I don't think there's a town ordinance against gang bangs. If there is, we don't enforce it. We've brought her in a couple of times for failing to disperse when ordered but, christ, we don't even have a matron full time. Her mother always comes down.'
'How's the kid act when you pick her up?' I said.
Cataldo swung into the curving drive in front of the high school. In the faculty lot to the right I could see Susan's Bronco, looming like a rhinoceros above the Datsuns and Chevettes. The school was mid-sixties red brick, square and graceless. One of the glass doors in the entry had been shattered, and a piece of plywood closed the gap. Susan had moved up from the junior high school when someone retired. No more eighth graders she had said at the time, and two years later she showed no regrets. Susan doing high school guidance had always seemed to me like Greta Garbo co-starring with Dean Jones.
'Mostly depends on how drunk or stoned or whatever, you know. If she was drunk she'd be abusive, if she was stoned she'd be sort of quiet and not with it-go-aheadarrest-me-I-don't-give-a-shit sort of attitude. If she was sober, she'd be sullen and tough and smoke cigarettes in the corner of her mouth.' 'She have any boyfriends?'
Cataldo drove on out of the driveway of the high school and we cruised across the street into a development of high-priced homes.
'April.' He grinned. 'She has several at a time, usually for half an hour in the back seat of Dad's Buick.'
'Besides that?'
He shook his head. 'No. She hangs on the wall with Hummer a lot, but no dating or that crap.' He looked over at me for a moment. 'You got to understand these kids, Spenser. Having a boyfriend just isn't something you ask about kids like her. You know? I mean, she don't go down to the fucking malt shop either.'
'You got a malt shop in this town?'
'No.' Behind the lifeless November lawns, merged one into the next, the new colonial houses gleamed in the rain, expensive variations of the same architectural plan like the Kyles' furniture on a larger scale, a neighborhood set: grand, functional, costly, neatly organized, and as charming as a set of dentures. It made me think fondly of L.A. In L.A. there was room for lunacy.
'If you were going to look for her, where would you start?' I said.
Cataldo shrugged, 'Boston, I suppose. She's not around town. Or at least I haven't seen her in the last few days. Usually kids take off from here, they go to Boston.'
'Anyplace special?'
'In Boston, how the hell do I know? That's your area, man. I get in maybe twice a year for a Sox game.'
'Why do you think she acts like she does?' I said.
Cataldo laughed. 'Before I got on the cops I worked ten years as a roofer. What the hell do I know about why she acts that way? She's a goddamned creep, like a lot of the kids in this town.'
'How about Hummer and his group-can you get me in touch with them, would they know where she went?'
'I can put you in touch. They won't tell you shit. Hummer's the worst creep in town.'
'Bad kid?'
Again Cataldo shrugged. 'Yeah-bad in the wrong way, you know?'
We turned down a hill and took a right. The rain came steady and cold against the windshield and rattled on the roof of the car. 'When I was a kid we were bad-a lot of guys I grew up with are in the joint. But they were bad for a reason. They stole stuff because they wanted money. Or they got in fights because somebody insulted their sister or made a pass at their girl or came onto their turf, you know? These kids sneak around and break Coke machines and trash the school windows or set fire to. some guy's store-for what? Prove how tough they are. Shit. Toughest kid in this town would get his ass kicked by one of the pom-pom girls in East Boston.' He shook his head. 'They don't know how to act. It's like they never learned about how to act, about how a guy is supposed to act.'
We were near the south edge of town now. Across the street a gas station, a bowling alley, and a small cluster of stores. The gas station was one that sold gas only. Correct change or credit cards after 6 P.m. The bowling alley had been converted from something else. There were kids leaning against the front wall under the marquee out of the rain, collars turned up, smoking with cigarettes cupped in their hands.
'The one with the fur collar,' Cataldo said, 'and the boots half laced?'
'Yeah.'
'That's Hummer,' he said.
'Why don't you swing down back and drop me off, and I'll stroll over and talk with him.'
'He'll give you some shit,' Cataldo said. 'Want me along?'
I shook my head. 'My line of work,' I said, 'taking shit.'
Cataldo nodded. 'Me too,' he said.
