بخش 03 - فصل 11

11

Holly spends Sunday evening in her apartment, trying to watch The Godfather Part II on her computer. Usually this would be a very pleasant occupation, because she considers it one of the two or three best movies ever made, right up there with Citizen Kane and Paths of Glory, but tonight she keeps pausing it so she can pace worry-circles around the living room of her apartment. There’s a lot of room to pace. This apartment isn’t as glitzy as the lakeside condo she lived in for a while when she first moved to the city, but it’s in a good neighborhood and plenty big. She can afford the rent; under the terms of her cousin Janey’s will, Holly inherited half a million dollars. Less after taxes, of course, but still a very nice nest egg. And, thanks to her job with Bill Hodges, she can afford to let the nest egg grow.

As she paces, she mutters some of her favorite lines from the movie.

‘I don’t have to wipe everyone out, just my enemies.

‘How do you say banana daiquiri?

‘Your country ain’t your blood, remember that.’

And, of course, the one everyone remembers: ‘I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart.’

If she was watching another movie, she would be incanting a different set of quotes. It is a form of self-hypnosis that she has practiced ever since she saw The Sound of Music at the age of seven. (Favorite line from that one: ‘I wonder what grass tastes like.’)

She’s really thinking about the Moleskine notebook Tina’s brother was so quick to hide under his pillow. Bill believes it has nothing to do with the money Pete was sending his parents, but Holly isn’t so sure.

She has kept journals for most of her life, listing all the movies she’s seen, all the books she’s read, the people she’s talked to, the times she gets up, the times she goes to bed. Also her bowel movements, which are coded (after all, someone may see her journals after she’s dead) as WP, which stands for Went Potty. She knows this is OCD behavior – she and her therapist have discussed how obsessive listing is really just another form of magical thinking – but it doesn’t hurt anyone, and if she prefers to keep her lists in Moleskine notebooks, whose business is that besides her own? The point is, she knows from Moleskines, and therefore knows they’re not cheap. Two-fifty will get you a spiral-bound notebook in Walgreens, but a Moleskine with the same number of pages goes for ten bucks. Why would a kid want such an expensive notebook, especially when he came from a cash-strapped family?

‘Doesn’t make sense,’ Holly says. Then, as if just following this train of thought: ‘Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.’ That’s from the original Godfather, but it’s still a good line. One of the best.

Send the money. Keep the notebook.

An expensive notebook that got shoved under the pillow when the little sister appeared unexpectedly in the room. The more Holly thinks about it, the more she thinks there might be something there.

She restarts the movie but can’t follow its well-worn and well-loved path with this notebook stuff rolling around in her head, so Holly does something almost unheard of, at least before bedtime: she turns her computer off. Then she resumes pacing, hands locked together at the small of her back.

Send the money. Keep the notebook.

‘And the lag!’ she exclaims to the empty room. ‘Don’t forget that!’

Yes. The seven months of quiet time between when the money ran out and when the Saubers boy started to get his underpants all in a twist. Because it took him seven months to think up a way to get more money? Holly thinks yes. Holly thinks he got an idea, but it wasn’t a good idea. It was an idea that got him in trouble.

‘What gets people in trouble when it’s about money?’ Holly asks the empty room, pacing faster than ever. ‘Stealing does. So does blackmail.’

Was that it? Did Pete Saubers try to blackmail somebody about something in the Moleskine notebook? Something about the stolen money, maybe? Only how could Pete blackmail someone about that money when he must have stolen it himself?

Holly goes to the telephone, reaches for it, then pulls her hand back. For almost a minute she just stands there, gnawing her lips. She’s not used to taking the initiative in things. Maybe she should call Bill first, and ask him if it’s okay?

‘Bill doesn’t think the notebook’s important, though,’ she tells her living room. ‘I think different. And I can think different if I want to.’

She snatches her cell from the coffee table and calls Tina Saubers before she can lose her nerve.

‘Hello?’ Tina asks cautiously. Almost whispering. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Holly Gibney. You didn’t see my number come up because it’s unlisted. I’m very careful about my number, although I’ll be happy to give it to you, if you want. We can talk anytime, because we’re friends and that’s what friends do. Is your brother back home from his weekend?’

‘Yes. He came in around six, while we were finishing up dinner. Mom said there was still plenty of pot roast and potatoes, she’d heat them up if he wanted, but he said they stopped at Denny’s on the way back. Then he went up to his room. He didn’t even want any strawberry shortcake, and he loves that. I’m really worried about him, Ms Holly.’

‘You can just call me Holly, Tina.’ She hates Ms, thinks it sounds like a mosquito buzzing around your head.

‘Okay.’

‘Did he say anything to you?’

‘Just hi,’ Tina says in a small voice.

‘And you didn’t tell him about coming to the office with Barbara on Friday?’

‘God, no!’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Still in his room. Listening to the Black Keys. I hate the Black Keys.’

‘Yes, me too.’ Holly has no idea who the Black Keys are, although she could name the entire cast of Fargo. (Best line in that one, delivered by Steve Buscemi: ‘Smoke a fuckin peace pipe.’)

‘Tina, does Pete have a special friend he might have talked to about what’s bothering him?’

Tina thinks it over. Holly takes the opportunity to snatch a Nicorette from the open pack beside her computer and pop it into her mouth.

‘I don’t think so,’ Tina says at last. ‘I guess he has friends at school, he’s pretty popular, but his only close friend was Bob Pearson, from down the block? And they moved to Denver last year.’

‘What about a girlfriend?’

‘He used to spend a lot of time with Gloria Moore, but they broke up after Christmas. Pete said she didn’t like to read, and he could never get tight with a girl who didn’t like books.’ Wistfully, Tina adds: ‘I liked Gloria. She showed me how to do my eyes.’

‘Girls don’t need eye makeup until they’re in their thirties,’ Holly says authoritatively, although she has never actually worn any herself. Her mother says only sluts wear eye makeup.

‘Really?’ Tina sounds astonished.

‘What about teachers? Did he have a favorite teacher he might have talked to?’ Holly doubts if an older brother would have talked to his kid sister about favorite teachers, or if the kid sister would have paid any attention even if he did. She asks because it’s the only other thing she can think of.

But Holly doesn’t even hesitate. ‘Ricky the Hippie,’ she says, and giggles.

Holly stops in mid-pace. ‘Who?’

‘Mr Ricker, that’s his real name. Pete said some of the kids call him Ricky the Hippie because he wears these old-time flower-power shirts and ties. Pete had him when he was a freshman. Or maybe a sophomore. I can’t remember. He said Mr Ricker knew what good books were all about. Ms … I mean Holly, is Mr Hodges still going to talk to Pete tomorrow?’

‘Yes. Don’t worry about that.’

But Tina is plenty worried. She sounds on the verge of tears, in fact, and this makes Holly’s stomach contract into a tight little ball. ‘Oh boy. I hope he doesn’t hate me.’

‘He won’t,’ Holly says. She’s chewing her Nicorette at warp speed. ‘Bill will find out what’s wrong and fix it. Then your brother will love you more than ever.’

‘Do you promise?’

‘Yes! Ouch!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ She wipes her mouth and looks at a smear of blood on her fingers. ‘I bit my lip. I have to go, Tina. Will you call me if you think of anyone he might have talked to about the money?’

‘There’s no one,’ Tina says forlornly, and starts to cry.

‘Well … okay.’ And because something else seems required: ‘Don’t bother with eye makeup. Your eyes are very pretty as they are. Goodbye.’

She ends the call without waiting for Tina to say anything else and resumes pacing. She spits the wad of Nicorette into the wastebasket by her desk and blots her lip with a tissue, but the bleeding has already stopped.

No close friends and no steady girl. No names except for that one teacher.

Holly sits down and powers up her computer again. She opens Firefox, goes to the Northfield High website, clicks OUR FACULTY, and there is Howard Ricker, wearing a flower-patterned shirt with billowy sleeves, just like Tina said. Also a very ridiculous tie. Is it really so impossible that Pete Saubers said something to his favorite English teacher, especially if it had to do with whatever he was writing (or reading) in a Moleskine notebook?

A few clicks and she has Howard Ricker’s telephone number on her computer screen. It’s still early, but she can’t bring herself to cold-call a complete stranger. Phoning Tina was hard enough, and that call ended in tears.

I’ll tell Bill tomorrow, she decides. He can call Ricky the Hippie if he thinks it’s worth doing.

She goes back to her voluminous movie folder and is soon once more lost in The Godfather Part II.