School Days - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,34

for fifteen hundred dollars. You sold them to the two kids for three thousand dollars."

"What kids?"

I slapped him hard with my left hand.

"Grant and Clark," I said. "One or both."

"Grant asked me. Clark kid had the dough."

"And you taught them to shoot," I said.

"Yeah."

I brought my gun up suddenly and fired into the salt a foot to the left of his head. He screamed. I fired into the salt a foot to the right of him. He doubled up, screaming, "No, no, no, no, no."

"Don't you even look at that girl again," I said. "Ever."

I put my gun away and walked out of the garage.

"You shoot him?" DiBella said.

"No," I said.

"Probably should have," DiBella said.

I nodded.

"Probably," I said.

Chapter 34

I DROPPED GEORGE in Dowling Center. "I'll drive you home," I said.

She shook her head.

"Might be a good place to sort of crash a little while," I said.

She shook her head again.

"And you're sure Animal won't get me?"

"He won't," I said.

She got out of the car and lingered for a moment on the sidewalk with the car door open. Her bruises had started to yellow. Her lip was down. She was looking better.

"Thanks for, like, helping me," she said.

"You're welcome," I said.

She took my card out of the pocket of her jeans and looked at it for a moment.

"Call me if you need me," I said.

She nodded and looked again at my card. "Bye," she said.

"Bye."

She closed the car door and turned and walked away, still holding my card in her hand. I watched her until she turned the corner past the town green and disappeared behind the Town Hall. Then I pulled away and found a parking spot near the Coffee Nut and parked and went in to see if the gang was around.

They were.

"Hey," Janey said as I came in.

She was sitting with her friend of the white top, whose name turned out to be Erika, and Carly Simon, looking crisp in a green polo shirt and tan shorts.

"Coffee?" he said, and nodded at the empty seat in the booth.

I sat. Other kids in other booths looked at me covertly. Animal had made my rep, bless his heart.

"Is George, like, okay?" Janey said.

"She's fine," I said. "Animal has promised me that he won't bother her again."

"You shake him up again?" Carly said.

There was in his voice an implication of shared knowledge, as though he had shaken up a few people in his time, too. I smiled. I had known Major Johnson when he was only a little older than Carly. Different planets.

"We reasoned together," I said. "Talk to me a little more about Jared Clark."

"What's to tell," Carly said. "He didn't bother us; we, you know, didn't bother him."

"Did he get bullied much?" I said.

The girls both deferred to Carly. It's good to be a football hero.

"No," Carly said. "Like, he didn't play ball or nothing, and he didn't joke around, and most of the time, he wasn't, like, even around. But nobody bothered him much."

Carly looked at Erika and Janey.

"You think?" he said.

"No," Erika said. "He was just, like, around, and nobody really noticed him much."

"Girlfriend?" I said.

Janey shook her head as she thought about it.

"I mean, he never asked anybody out," she said. "That I know about. Erika, you know anybody?"

"Nope."

Erika had longish nails with the tips painted white, and she admired them unconsciously while she spoke.

"I suppose he might have hooked up with one of the loser girls, you know?" Erika said. "But we wouldn't know that anyway. None of them hang with us."

"Was Jared a loser?" I said.

Janey thought about the question carefully. Evidently, loser was a precisely defined category.

"Well," Janey said, "no, not exactly, I guess. I mean, he was shy and everything. And he wasn't popular, but he wasn't a geek. He was like more of a loner."

"But people weren't actively cruel to him?"

All three of them shook their heads.

"How about Wendell Grant?" I said.

"He played ball," Carly said.

"Any good?" I said.

Carly shrugged.

"He was okay," Carly said. "Big, you know. Took up a lot of room. But he was really dumb. Couldn't remember the plays. And clumsy. Coach designed a sweep right for me behind Dell, and Dell could never pull and get out there. He, like, messed it up every time. Coach finally forgot about it."

"Was he dumb in school?"

"Oh, you better believe it," Erika said. "He was in my geometry class and he called that guy from olden times-you know, Pythagoras. He called him Py-tha-gor-us, and we all, like, broke up, you