Haunted (Michael Bennett 10)

I had a phantom pain on the left side of my face where his mother had slapped me. Harry Grissom had told me she was out of line, but I knew she wasn’t. She was a mother who’d lost her son. I understood all those mothers who went on TV and told people how great their children were even after they’d been caught doing terrible things.

One young man, shot by a security guard, was seen on video shooting a young mother in front of her infant. And that night the robber’s mother was on TV talking about what a good boy he was and how he could never do anything like that.

I got it. No parent ever wanted to admit that his or her child had some horrendous character flaw. Who knows what led Diego down a different path? I couldn’t figure out why Brian felt like he needed to sell drugs, either. In that sense, I shared a lot with Diego’s mother.

I helped Bridget with a project about the Civil War, which of course she enhanced by making an interactive map, complete with pop-up paper cannons. It was a pretty good representation of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. She had facts and figures written behind pull tabs on the map. And right at the Union line she had written “The high-water mark of the Confederacy.” That was the exact phrase I had been taught as a child in school—it means the farthest north Robert E. Lee had led his army.

Then I tried to help Trent with a book report on Jackie Robinson. I had felt the book might’ve been targeted for kids older than he was and was pleasantly surprised at how well he’d understood it. I sometimes worried that he would lose touch with his African American heritage after being raised in an Irish American household. However, he clearly understood the importance of Robinson’s entrance into major-league baseball. He also learned about the struggles that Robinson went through and the raw, naked hatred he endured.

Trent turned from the report and said, “I’m checking out a book about Jesse Owens tomorrow. Did you know that he was in the Olympics before World War II and forced Adolf Hitler to admit that the Germans weren’t the master race?”

I smiled with pride at my sixth grader. “I don’t know if Hitler ever said it out loud, but Jesse sure made him look like a doofus. A bigger doofus than he really was.” The smile Trent gave me lifted my spirits more than I thought anything could.

After eleven, when the kids were no longer up to distract me from my thoughts, Mary Catherine joined me on the balcony.

She shivered and wrapped her robe tightly around her as she snuggled up next to me and put her arm around my waist. “You’ll catch your death from a chill out here, Michael Bennett.”

“You’re from Ireland. I would’ve thought you were used to a cool breeze.”

“Cool breezes are pleasant. This is a nor’easter.”

“That’s what they say in Boston. Here in New York we don’t acknowledge anything those people say. It’s just a cold wind from the north.”

Despite the fact that she was shivering, I realized she had something to say or she wouldn’t still be standing there. Without admitting I was wrong or that it was too cold to be standing on a balcony, I turned to her and followed her into the living room, where we both sat on the couch. Only then did I realize how cold it had been on the balcony.

Mary Catherine didn’t rush into it. We just sat there together, holding hands like teenagers. I had explained to her what had happened almost as soon as I got home, and, mercifully, she hadn’t asked any questions since.

Finally she said, “Michael, if I had something important to tell you, is it possible to get you to promise that you won’t do anything rash and will keep yourself under control?”

“That is an oddly worded request. What about me and the way I’m acting makes you think I might lose control?”

“It’s about Brian’s trouble.”

I sat up. “Did something happen? Is Brian okay?”

“Yes. Brian is fine. But I may have found out some information about the man Brian was working for.”

“What? How?” I took a moment, cleared my head, and said, “Tell me what you know.”

She said, “I need your word of honor that you will keep control.”

All I said was, “You have it.”

“One of Brian’s friends talked to me at school. He was very hesitant and doesn’t want me to mention his name or anything about him. He said that Brian worked for a man named Albert. He’s a drug dealer from the Bronx who uses high school students as employees.”

“Do you have a last name?”

“No, but he lives somewhere near Fordham Heights and is called Caracortada.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

“I looked it up, and I think it means ‘Scarface.’ That matches up with the description I got. He has a scar on the left side of his face.”

“It also goes along with every dope dealer I ever met who wanted to emulate Tony Montana from the movie Scarface.” My mind was racing with possibilities. “How on earth did you find any of this out?”

“I know enough about police work to say you never divulge a source.”

I looked at that beautiful face, carefully moved a strand of blond hair, and tucked it behind her ear. That sincere and earnest personality often showed in her expression. She had made up her mind.