'We've got one really angry kid here.'
'Not necessarily,' said Danny.
Lindsay looked at him and waited. He took his mini-tape recorder out of his pocket.
'Wayne O'Shea, the kids call him Brody,' said Danny.
'He's the one who found the body.'
Danny clicked on the recorder. It whirred to the number Danny had remembered, stopped and began.
Danny: And no one was in the room or outside it when you went in?
O'Shea: No one.
Danny: What did you-?
O'Shea: I saw Alvin. I saw…I'll never forget what I saw.
Danny: And you were in your classroom the entire period?
O'Shea: Yes. I went in to ask Alvin about lunch and we'd heard this noise through the wall. So…
Danny: Do you know if he was having any trouble with any of the students or other teachers or parents?
O'Shea: Everyone liked Alvin. He was smart, a good teacher, maybe a great teacher. He won the Wallen Award, the Dorwenski Award, the Student Favorite Award, all the awards. The students admired him.
Danny: And you?
O'Shea: He was my best friend here. I'll miss him. I'll be haunted by what someone did to him.
Danny: What was the last time you saw him before you found him dead?
O'Shea: He was coming out of the closet.
Danny: He was gay?
O'Shea: No, a real closet, at the back of his laboratory behind the white board. The board slides. He used it as his storeroom.
Danny pushed a button. The tape recorder stopped.
'You looked in the closet,' Lindsay said.
'I looked in the closet.'
Danny was smiling.
'Okay,' Lindsay said. 'What did you find?'
'Traces of blood.'
The limping man stood outside the door and listened to the pacing footsteps and the occasional grumbled words inside the apartment. The hallway was dark and smelled of urine and rotting food.
He had entered the building through the lobby door, though it wasn't much of a lobby and it wasn't much of a door. He had stood outside, hooded against the rain, and looked up at the words HECHT ARMS cut into the gray stone over the door.
There were signs that someone at some time had dutifully replaced the broken lock on the lobby door. The wooden doorjamb was cracked, the broken lock loose in a door that just didn't give a damn any longer.
The lobby was just big enough to stand in and look at the eighteen mailboxes, some of which stood open, some of which were protected by small flimsy padlocks.
Some of the mailboxes bore names printed in black magic marker. Some had names scratched directly into the thin metal. Some bore no name at all.
He didn't need to find a name. He already knew the right apartment. He had been here before, once before. This visit would be very different.
There was an inner lobby door. No lock. He went in and walked down the first-floor hallway, weaving past a pile of newspapers in front of one door, a tricycle with a bent front wheel in front of another. Voices, vague, crying, someone shouting in anger, television sets droning relentlessly on, laughing, applauding.
The limping man paused in front of the door at the dark end of the hallway. He knocked. No answer, though he could hear muttering, pacing beyond the door. He knocked again, louder, much louder. The muttering stopped. The pacing stopped.
'Who is it? What the fuck do you want?' said a voice.
'Adam.'
Silence beyond the door.
Then it opened a few inches.
'Adam?'
Timothy Byrold opened the door wider and looked at his visitor. Timothy, shirtless in a baggy pair of dirty white painter's overalls, needed a shave and a strong comb. He was big, taller than the limping man by three inches, heavier by twenty-five pounds. Timothy seemed to sense the man's disapproval and ran a hand through his thick hair. It did nothing except make the dirty hair stand up. He looked like a clown about to put on his makeup. The image did not strike the limping man as funny.
'What are you doing here?' asked Timothy.
'Can I come in?'
'It's not fit out there for man nor beast,' said Timothy, stepping back.
The limping man stepped in and shut the door behind him.
The studio apartment looked very much as it had the other time he had been here, cot in a corner with the sheet untucked, a single sweat-stained pillow, a rough khaki blanket in a tangle, a sagging sofa that had once been orange but was now a sooty burnt bark color, a small wooden table with two chairs, a battered chest of drawers with a small color television on top of it. A refrigerator sat near the only window.
On the table was a bowl. In the bowl was a mound of what looked like soggy Cheerios. The cereal was being probed by a single, large black fly.
The room was as repulsive as the man.
'It's raining like shit out there,' Timothy said. 'Like shit. I'm stuck in here, in here. And the TV's broken. It's like being in a cell. You know what I mean?'
'Yes.'
'I'm used to wandering, finding things, meeting people,' said Timothy, rubbing his face.
'I know.'
'Hell of a time for a visit,' said Timothy. 'Hell of a time.'
Timothy picked up three magazines from the sofa and dropped them on the floor in a corner to give his guest a place to sit. Then he turned and tried to smile.
'I've got a couple of Cokes.'
'No, thanks.'
'So, have a seat.'
'No, thanks.'
'Then what, what?'
'You ever make a promise?'
'A promise. Yeah, sure. I must have. Everybody makes promises,' said Timothy, noticing, sensing that something was odd about his visitor.
'Did you keep your promises?'
'Some, I guess. Don't remember.'
Timothy sat on the sofa and looked up. Then he saw what was wrong. His visitor was wearing white, skin- tight gloves.
'I made a promise,' the limping man said.
'Interesting,' said Timothy. 'Sure you don't want a Coke? Sure you don't want to start making sense or get the hell out of here?'
'Remember, I know what you are.'
'And I know what you are,' said Timothy. 'So what? That's what you came to talk about? You need a shoulder to cry on? We've got a place for that, remember? Once a week, remember?'
'I remember.'
The limping man moved toward the sofa. Timothy rose. He didn't like the blank look on his visitor's face.
