“I don’t know,” said Ghislaine. “Just other boys in the class. I’d never heard of any of them. They only said the first names…”
“Do you remember them, the first names?”
“I remember one, because they called him ‘Fat Louis.’ They said it in English… ‘Fat Louis.’ ”
“What about the other three?”
“The other three? I think—I do remember one was named Patrice. That stuck in my mind… and the other two… both names started with an H… I remember that much… hmmm… Hervé and Honoré!… That was it, Hervé and Honoré.”
Nestor took a small spiral notebook and ballpoint pen out of his breast pocket and began jotting down the names.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know exactly,” said Nestor. “I have an idea.”
Ghislaine looked down and twisted one hand around the fingers of the other. “You see why I hesitated to talk to a police officer about this? For all I know, you’re obliged to give all this information to—well, whoever you report to, and maybe that’s enough to get Philippe in trouble already.”
Nestor began laughing. “Your brother is in no danger right now, even if I turned out to be a real tough cop. First of all, what you’ve told me so far doesn’t even reach the level of hearsay. I’d have nothing to go on other than his sister’s imagination. Besides, our department has no jurisdiction in anything that goes on inside Lee de Forest or any other public school in Miami.”
“Why not?”
“The school system has its own police force. It’s been out of our hands from the beginning.”
“I didn’t know that. They’ve got their own police force? Why?”
“You wanna hear some hearsay of my own?” said Nestor. “Officially they’re there to maintain order. But mainly, if you ask me, they’re there for damage control. They’re supposed to bottle up bad news before it gets out. They didn’t have any choice with this one. The thing had turned into a riot, and there was no way to keep it in the bottle.”
Ghislaine said nothing. She just looked at Nestor—but her stare became a plea. Finally, looking deeply into his eyes, she said, “Please help me, Nestor.” Nestor! No more Officer Camacho. “You’re my only hope—his life is about to be ruined… before it’s even begun.”
At that moment she was radiant again, radiant as any angel Nestor could possibly imagine. He wanted to put his arms around her and be her protector. He had no idea what to tell her. He only wanted to hold her and assure her that he was by her side.
With as reassuring an expression as he could contrive, he stood up and looked at his watch and said, “It’s time for me to go. But you have my number. You can call me any time, and I mean any time.”
They walked out of Starbucks side by side. They were about the same height. He turned his face close to hers. “I have a couple of ideas, but I need to do some research.”
He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer as they walked. It was supposed to seem like an avuncular hug, the semaphore for “Buck up, girl. Don’t be so worried.” He gave his eyebrows a mysterious arch. “If worse comes to worse, there are always… things… we can do.” He made we carry the weight of the entire police force.
She gave him a look you could anoint a hero of the people with. He thought of her legs, to tell the truth, and looked down to get a seemingly random look at them next to his. So long, firm, and bare… He quickly and resolutely chastened his thoughts.
“Look,” he said, “Is there some way I can talk to Philippe, without making it look like I’m a police officer asking him questions about some case?”
Ghislaine started twisting her fingers again. “I suppose maybe one afternoon you could just happen to be there, I mean at our house, when he comes home from school—something like that?”
“Approaching destination on the right,” said that woman from somewhere up in the GPS cloud. Okay, it was all computerized, that woman’s voice, but still—::::::how do it do it?:::::: Like that time up in Broward when he spun out on a slick pavement and wound up rolling backward into a creek. And he’s sitting there with the water up over the Camaro’s bumpers, wondering how to get out of this, and that woman says in the calmest voice imaginable, “Recalculating,” and in no time she’s back, and