A Farewell to Legs: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,61

afford to live on what he made in a civil service job as a janitor (pardon me, custodian).

Oh. Did I mention his wife is CEO of a small brokerage house?

I caught up with Reese near the gymnasium, which he watches like a hawk to make sure no one scuffs the floor, which is always freshly waxed. He was watching a class going on inside, during which some fifth graders were playing Dodge Ball, and looking concerned. Nothing scuffs a floor like Dodge Ball.

“Hey, Reese,” I said, and he turned his head for a millisecond to see who was speaking. “How you doing?”

“How you doing, Aaron?” he said. “Would you look at that kid? Black shoes. Running on my gym floor wearing black shoes. And do they stop him? No. You know what that’s going to do to my floor?”

“Maybe the kid can’t afford a separate pair of shoes for gym, Reese,” I said.

He snorted. “In this town? Kid could probably afford a separate pair of shoes for each class in the day.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him my son’s shoes had needed replacing for a month and a half.

“Hey, Reese, what do you know about this stink bomb thing? Did they ever figure out who did it?” I had to protect my source, and clearly, if “they” had found out, she’d know about it.

He turned, looking me up and down for a second. “That was the damnedest thing,” Reese said. “I couldn’t figure it out.”

“Were you here each time?”

“Of course I was here,” he said, as if the idea of the school being open without him was patently absurd. “I was near the locker room when it happened, even. Heard some running as I turned the corner. The girls inside were already screaming. Felt like I let them down, you know.”

“You can’t be everywhere.”

“No, but I should have been there. Kids put their trust in you, Mrs. Mignano puts her trust in you, you should be able to protect. . .” It was clearly a personal affront to Reese that some 10-year-old had decided to patronize the Kwik N’ EZ and have some fun.

“Anything you can tell me that might point me in a direction?”

“Why, Aaron?” he asked. “You writing about it?”

“Maybe,” I said. (Sure. I’m writing about it. You’re reading about it, aren’t you?)

“The first one was the gym,” Reese said. “That wasn’t that bad, because it was just one bomb, and it’s such a big room, with doors that open to the outside, it didn’t make that much of a stink.”

“But the parents did,” I suggested.

He widened his eyes. “Oh, you better believe it!” Reese said. “Anne got calls all that morning—the phone was ringing before the fumes cleared. It’s amazing how fast they work.”

“The second one was the boys’ room?” I asked, trying to keep him on topic.

“Yeah, that was probably the worst one,” he shook his head. “Small space, tiny window. There were three boys in there at the time.”

“Did you see it?”

“No,” he lamented, shaking his head. The man looked as if someone had suggested he’d betrayed his country and cheated on his wife. “I was downstairs cleaning up where some little third grader had gotten sick.”

“You can’t be everywhere at once,” I repeated. “Tell me about the locker room.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “I didn’t see anybody in the area before, and naturally afterward, all I heard was screaming and footsteps. But I can tell you one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Whoever did it had on the right sneakers. Wasn’t a scuff mark on that floor. No, sir.”

Somehow, that observation didn’t seem like it was going to be a tremendous amount of help to me.

Chapter

Eleven

Because my faith in my agent was roughly equivalent to my faith in my cable company to lower its rates, I spent much of the morning going through the Hollywood Creative Directory. The HCD, as we just-barely-outsiders call it, is an exhaustively detailed list of production companies in Hollywood (or thereabouts), their personnel, their credits, and little details like their addresses, phone numbers, faxes, and email addresses. And if that sounds like it ought to cost you a pretty penny, rest assured that it does. Three times a year.

What you do is, you go through the HCD in alphabetical order, looking for companies which you believe might be interested in the letter-perfect screenplay you’ve just completed. You compile a list of those which have done something similar in the past, or are run by an actor/actress/producer/director whom you think