Chapter 16: After School

The three of us had a good laugh at the couple we’d left in the office as we walked through the halls. Horace and Beverly would be good for each other. They were both good people, and there was no reason for them to both be lonely when they clearly liked each other so much. And, Horace might order Beverly around and Beverly might do whatever Horace said, but it was going to be Beverly running the relationship. I thought it was pretty funny that it was going to be the ‘slave’ in charge and the ‘master’ doing whatever she wanted.

As we walked, Alice asked “Larry, is ... that ... something you want?”

I was pretty sure I knew what ... that ... was, but talking around a subject just leads to confusion and then pissed off people. I stopped and waited until Alice and Melanie had stopped too. “I’m sure I know what you’re asking about, but just to verify that what I say is actually an answer to what you think you are asking about, can you rephrase that to be more clear? What is ‘that’ that you want to know about?”

“I guess I want to know if you’re looking forward to Wednesday morning. Will you want that to continue every week?”

“Alice, it’s not that simple. As an ordinary decent human being, I have certain values, wants, and needs. As a male, I have more wants and needs on top of them. Some of those are opposites. ‘Mutually exclusive’, I guess is the way it’s usually said. If Horace had called me into his office a week ago, had Beverly strip, and then offered to have her take care of me every week, I’d have jumped on that. Oh, yeah! Now, though, it seems kinda piggish to want Beverly when I have the two of you. So, yes I want that but no I certainly don’t need that. Did that make any sense?”

Melanie said “So, as a twelve-year-old boy you want all of Beverly that you can get, but as an adult man with two women of your own, you can live without it?”

“That’s exactly it. My twelve-year-old hands want to play with those things all day, every day. For that matter, my one-year-old mouth wants to get breakfast from those things every morning. My thirty-eight-year-old mind is telling my hands and my mouth to shut up, I have a much better deal and I shouldn’t be a pig.”

Alice said “Well, I think you should be happy with the two of us. We’ll do whatever you want and you’ve said that we are both beautiful, but I know that men don’t want to stay home. If we aren’t enough and you need someone else, I’d rather you went to Beverly than to, say, Sandra.”

“I can agree to that. Just, expect the twelve-year-old boy inside of me to pout some.”

“You own six different holes. Surely one of them will always be available if you need it.”

“Six should be more than enough. I still want the rest of them, though. There are millions of them out there!” If what I’m talking about had happened these days, of course, I would have added “Gotta catch ‘em all!”

There had still been someone working in the office and several students in the halls, but almost everyone had left the school. That wasn’t true, at my office. We still had a full set of coaches and investigators waiting for us. We even had a bunch of our athletes waiting for us outside the door. Why were they...?

One of them answered my question before I even asked myself. “Coach, none of us got to beat up the police today and we want another chance. What time do you need us to be here in the morning?”

“Lemme talk to those people in there. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll get you an answer as fast as I can.”

They let us in, and I got the man at my desk to get up so we could put Melanie back safe in the corner again. Even Irene was in there.

Irene was a fine-looking woman. Her face wasn’t that pretty, but she kept her body in good enough shape that the boys talked about her as much as they did all the cheerleaders. She was also fast enough to make any boy who touched her regret it immediately, so all they did was talk.

Irene never came to any of our coaches’ meetings at my house. I don’t think she wanted to get mistaken for one of the girls I had the Crib send over. It was a valid concern. She was in better shape than most of them and better looking than some. After a couple of beers, we’d have had trouble telling the girls apart.

Hmmm. With Alice and Melanie staying with me, I needed to re-think those meetings. I didn’t want anyone mistaking them for one of the whores, either.

First things first. “Okay, before we go any further, are any of you fine upstanding law enforcement officials going to be back tomorrow?”

I think I got four different answers so I didn’t really hear any of them, but I got the gist just fine. Yes, they would all be back in the morning to continue the circus and witch-hunt. Good enough.

I stuck my head back out the door and told the boys “We’ll need four or five in the parking lot about seven or so. Then, two more at each door to the girls’ locker room. 7:30 should be early enough for that. Everyone should get relieved by someone fresh after an hour or two. We don’t know how long this is gonna last yet. That’s it, I think. Thanks for helping out, and thanks for staying late today.”

I got a bunch of “Sure, Coach” and a few other things as they all took off. Good enough. Now, if only I could get rid of everyone inside my office that easily.

There were three different conversations going on at once in there. Apparently, W-C’s coaches’ office was the only place in the whole country with the proper facilities to run this investigation. It seemed that everyone had agreed that the FBI’s part was the highest priority, but that didn’t mean that the other cops had nothing to do.

The FBI needed to be tracking down those porn-movie people before the trail got too cold. And they turned into snuff-movies. Sure, I completely agreed, but _I_ didn’t know anything about them. I maybe knew some people who might know more, but they sure as hell weren’t going to talk to me with feds leaning over my shoulder listening in. I was NEVER going to learn anything useful as long as I had cops up my ass, and the whole time we were jerking off here, those guys were getting farther away.

I backed down some and apologized. I didn’t have anything personal against any of them, and I knew they had a miserable job to do. Me giving them shit didn’t make their job any easier. Still, if they wanted me to cough up some leads, they were going to have to accept that absolutely no one involved would ever talk to me while I had them up my ass. Something was going to have to give. I had nothing to give the FBI and I never would until they gave me some space.

The State Patrol guys were concentrating on the corruption angle. I guess there were enough crimes to go around for everyone. They wanted to know more about my statements about systematic corruption in the athletic programs.

That was easy. I told them to not take my word for it, to go talk to the coaches and players in all the other teams our girls had played. Anyone who knew roundball would be able to tell which teams were better than ours and should have won our games. The same for VMC. They should be able to tell which games VMC should have lost, too. Just bribing one or two coaches or referees wouldn’t have thrown that many games.

I threw Irene and Melanie under the bus. “Talk to Coach Sanders, there. Talk to her girls. For that matter, talk to Melanie, here. She played for VMC. She can tell you which schools should have beaten her team.”

That got THOSE guys off my back. It didn’t get them out of my hair, though, since that ended up as a conference with Irene, Melanie, me, and Alice all participating.

The city cops were still trying to figure out how many people were missing. With the sole exception of Melanie who I had taken in, VMC’s entire girls’ basketball team was still missing. Their coach and the other nine girls were still in the wind. So were all three referees from that game. The score-keeper was the only game official who wasn’t missing. VMC’s bus driver was still missing.

Those were all of the ‘known’ missing people. The cops were also trying to identify all of the unknown missing people. They had gone through VMC’s records and then gone to the home-of-record for each of the ten girls. Four of them had no one home. Kidnapped? Dead in the riot? Dead by traffic accident during a trip to the City? Just away from the house for a few hours for work or a movie? They didn’t know yet.

They could say that there were no known dead from the riot. Quite a few people had visited the hospital or a doctor, and some were still in the hospital, but no bodies had shown up yet. They had brought some dogs in and they were positive that there were no dead bodies anywhere on school property. That was as close as they would get to saying “nobody died”.

Alice was their first big lead. She could identify several of the VMC parents and tell the cops that yes, she’d seen them at the game or no, she hadn’t seen them but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. For one girl, Regina, Alice could tell them that she’d never seen her parents. She never had any family go to the games. If her parents weren’t at home, either, there was something wrong. Maybe she was an orphan.

She admitted that, yes, she and her husband had gone to the game to watch Melanie and her teammates win the district championship. She hadn’t seen her husband since the game ended. That was fine with her, as she hadn’t loved him for many years and he had never loved her. They had only gotten married because when she was 16 he got her drunk and pregnant.

Oh, he was 32 at the time. He was 51 now and she hoped he stayed missing. Even if he showed up again, SHE was going to stay with Larry, the man who pulled the two rapists off of her.

Yes, she had been raped by two different men after the game. No, she couldn’t identify them. They were just two big black men. She might be able to identify them if they dropped their pants. One was very large. The other one wasn’t as big around but it was pretty long. She’d gotten several very good looks at it while the bastard was shoving the whole thing down her throat.

She started crying while she was talking about it. I reached for her and she jumped in my lap and hugged me like she’d fall off a cliff if she let go. “I don’t want to let Larry out of my sight. I’m afraid to go to the BATHROOM without him. And he got my daughter back. I’m going to take care of him and do whatever he wants for the rest of his life.”

Well, shit. Of course they all wanted to know how I got her daughter back. I looked each one in the eye.

“I can’t tell you that. Tell a bunch of cops I committed a violent crime? I’d go to jail. Who would take care of Alice and Melanie?”

Alice chimed in with “If you line up all the big black men from that riot with head injuries and broken arms, I can probably identify my two rapists. If they drop their pants I’m sure I could.”

Oh, man! I didn’t remember anything like that. I sure as hell hadn’t busted anyone’s head or arm. Hitting Tiny would be a really bad idea. Even if I’d ripped Tiny’s arm completely off, he would probably have taken it from me and beat me to death with it before he went to the hospital to have it sewn back on.

It was a good story, though. They knew I knew a lot more than I was telling them. Now, they knew why I wasn’t talking. I didn’t want to go to jail for beating the shit out of a couple of rapists.

Of course the cops jumped on that. They wanted me to ID the two rapists. No way, José. “Do you not see what’s going on here? I’ve got the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen giving me a lapdance. Those two rapists are, like, my best friends! If I had a million dollars I’d give it to them!”

Alice stopped hugging me long enough to slap my back.

“Hey! I’ve got you. Nothing else matters. If they ever touch you again I’ll kill them, but I’m not gonna get mad at them for giving you to me.”

“I’m not a ... a party favor to be handed around!”

“No, honey. Not any more. You were for a while there, but you aren’t any more. Nobody else, ever again. Unless you want to. As long as you don’t want to, they have to go through me first before they can get to you.”

She pulled back enough to grab my head with both hands and kiss me. “Nobody else. Ever again. I belong to you.”