Settling Old Scores: BWWM Second Chance Romance (19 page)

Attendance
was soaring at the Math Club! Some of the young ladies were
apparently swooning a little over Kevin, and dragging their friends
in with them. Kevin was amused and pleased. "If it gets you to
study math, I will play along," he thought. They really were a
fun group. One of the girls asked Kevin before the meeting if he had
a girlfriend, in front of everyone. Kevin smiled and said no,
thinking that was the answer they were hoping for. Then, they wanted
to know why not. Kevin answered that question obtusely. Then, they
started to openly speculate why not, which really got hilarious. The
kids were definitely alive and curious about everything.

Then,
Kevin got busy getting them back on the math track and off the
hormone track. The girls naturally attracted some guys to the club,
too. The boys were serious students that wanted to show off a little
to the girls. On today's speed math session, Kevin talked about
finding the decimal equivalent of certain fractions. He started by
having them compute the decimal equivalent of 1/7th, 1/13th, and
1/17th. The answers were .142/857, .076/923, .05882352/941176470, and
the numbers just kept repeating after that. "Do you notice
anything interesting about these sequences?" Kevin asked as he
drew lines splitting the numbers into parts. The kids immediately
became alert.

Marcy
Greenberg finally piped up with a smile after some concentration and
said, "If you split the sequences in half, they all add up to
nine."

"Great
work Marcy," Kevin said.

The
other kids were blown away by the discovery and Marcy just beamed
that she was the one to catch it. That started a great discussion
about converting fractions. Kevin pointed out that most calculators
wouldn't even calculate 17 places of precision in the case of 1/17th.
"If you knew this characteristic after you have computed half
the answer, the other half was merely the nine's complement of what
you had computed. What a great shortcut!" Kevin said.

What
Kevin was most pleased about was that the kids were starting to look
at numbers differently. The whole deal with the repeating decimals
was premised on being able to convert the fraction into something
that ended in nine. In math, nine and eleven were special numbers
with special properties. They were starting to see some of these
characteristics; numbers weren't just scratches on paper anymore. It
was gratifying. He showed them how a two digit number that had digits
that added up to eleven was easy to multiply by nine. "For
example, 92x9= 81 and its reciprocal 18 for a product of 828. Or
another example, 74x9=63/36=666. Now, let's leverage it to 902*9 or
605*9 he said as he wrote 8118 & 5445 on the board. One simple
multiplication and you have an answer to a three by one digit
multiplication," he said.

“
English
and Algebra are not so very different,” Kevin told the kids.
That got him some stares and eye rolls! They all laughed at how
enthusiastic Kevin was. "Kids like it when you have passion for
your subject," Kevin thought. He felt good about making an
impression on these kids.

Mr.
Sharpe watched the proceedings and was quite pleased. At the end of
the presentation, Kevin asked him what he thought about the meeting.
He told Kevin he had a gift for explaining things and making it fun.
Naturally, he pitched Kevin again about becoming a teacher.

"You
know, after today I think I just might be able to do it. We both know
it is easier to demonstrate passion and wit when you get to pick your
topic. In a classroom situation where you have a goal of covering
prescribed material, it is harder to be as creative," Kevin said
with a smile.

"I
still have hopes for you Kevin. You have a talent for this," Mr.
Sharpe said.

28.
Found

As
he drove home, Kevin thought about his day. It occurred to him that
he should ask Matt about sleeping in the dumpster behind the funeral
home. Maybe, he knew or saw something about the McCanns or Sylvia
from that summer of the riot. He wondered if Pat's mom knew a lot
more about her former husband than she had previously told her
daughter. He also made a note to stop and see Mr. Bailey again.

When
Kevin got home, it was close to 4:30 pm. He had just settled in a bit
and the phone rang. It was Willie. "Hey Kevin. I finally sat
down with Tom Perkins and talked with him about the Greenberg case.
He had to go back to the file to refresh himself on it. So, that's
what the delay in getting back to you is about. He says the case is a
big cluster fuck. They never found a body, never worked that hard to
find one either."

Willie
continued on, "It was pretty easy to establish that she was a
hooker. The landlord confirmed it. She had been arrested on one
occasion for the same thing, too. Nobody saw anything. They did
question the usual suspects about it. They brought in Jesse Campbell,
Tyrone Jenkins, and Sam McCann after the riots. I think that was more
for the sake of formality than anything else. There was nothing that
could be pinned on any of them. Nobody came forward to say they saw
something. That was a big surprise,” he said sarcastically.

Kevin
asked a few more questions. Without a body, they couldn't even call
it a homicide. If they had a body, there was nothing linking the body
to anyone. Willie invited Pat and Kevin over for dinner on Saturday
night at his house. Kevin accepted and wrote down the address and
time. They talked some more and Kevin hung up. He felt like he was
wasting his time on Sylvia Greenberg, but he wasn't going to give up
quite yet.

That
night when Pat came in, he caught her up on Willie's call and what a
dead end the case was at. She was okay with the Saturday dinner date.
Kevin didn't want to tell Pat about his work at the library. He
didn't want to get her worked up over what was probably nothing. He
did tell Pat how Matt slept in some of the dumpsters on the Avenue
back in those days. Pat was a little surprised that he knew as much
as he did about the neighborhood. "Pretty amazing how invisible
those vagrants become; nobody sees them after a while," Pat
said.

"I
suspect he had some sort of a system as to when and how he slept in
those dumpsters. Most likely, it was done after they had been
emptied. I am going to ask Matt about that tomorrow. There was one
behind the funeral home he says he slept in on occasion. There was
another one behind the TV and appliance store. That generally had
just corrugated stuff in it. That's the one he saw me show Willie my
gun from," said Kevin.

Pat
said she was still thinking about how to bring the subject of her dad
up with her mom without upsetting her. "That's the last thing I
want to do," she said. They sat around a little and talked some
more. Kevin told her about the girls in Mr. Sharpe's math group sort
of drooling over him one minute and speculating if he liked girls the
next. Pat laughed aloud and said, "You don't have any idea what
it's like being a ninth grade girl. I wouldn't want to be that age
again for anything."

The
next morning, Kevin went and got Matt again. They went up to the
Greek place as planned and ate the same breakfast. As they ate, Kevin
quizzed Matt about his dumpster life. Matt told him more about it.
There was a cycle to his wanderings. He generally stayed in the
dumpsters by the TV repair place in the summer on Thursday and Friday
nights. By Saturday night, it was too full to stay in. Then he would
switch to the funeral home dumpster. That was good for Saturday and
Sunday. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, he would be in the bad
order cabooses by the river.

"Did
you see the same people going to Sylvia's all the time?" Kevin
asked.

"She
had some regulars. They looked like middle age Jewish guys to me. One
was the guy that owned the pharmacy on the west end. Another was the
guy that owned the appliance store," he said.

Then,
Kevin told Matt that Sylvia just up and disappeared the night the
grocery store burned. He told Matt that they thought she was dead but
really didn't know. Matt seemed almost nonchalant as he replied
slowly, "I was in the dumpster behind the funeral home that
night. I got my BBQ from the rib place and settled in there to eat it
because I was hungry. The west part of the Avenue had been partly
burned. It was a Saturday night. I thought I was pretty safe on that
end of the things. Sam McCann came out of the funeral home just about
the time it got dark. He walked over to the upstairs entrance to
Sylvia's apartment. He forced the door open like it was nothing &
went up the stairs."

Matt
continued in his monotone voice, "I heard some yelling from up
there, then silence. He came back down the stairs, walked over to the
dumpster, got a triple corrugated box from right beside the dumpster,
and a gas can out of the trunk of his car. He went to the back
entrance of the store and set the other can down. Then he took the
knocked down box back up the front entrance to Sylvia's. He came back
down the stairs with the box set up and set the box in the hearse the
funeral home had.

He
went to the back door of the grocery store and forced his way in
there. He grabbed the can and went inside. Within minutes, the place
was on fire and he came out. He went back to his car and drove off.
That's when I got out of there fast. I headed for the river. When I
left, I looked up towards English Avenue. His hearse was parked
there."

Kevin
was stunned at what Matt just told him. Things jived pretty well. The
store was burned on a Saturday night. He didn't have an eyewitness to
the burning of the funeral home, but he had one to the burning of the
grocery store.

"Matt,
you are the key to this whole thing. Would you be willing to tell a
detective the same thing you just told me? That box may have
contained her body," said Kevin.

"Sure,
why not. I got nothing to lose. I ain't afraid if that's what you are
asking me," Matt said.

"No
Matt. There is nobody on the planet that could possibly question your
courage. That's not what I am asking. You are going to end up around
lawyers and suits questioning you. Some will even question if you
made this up or if you have a real working memory of much of
anything," Kevin said.

"She
used to give me money sometimes. She was kind. That counts for a hell
of a lot with me. I was there. I know what I saw," Matt said.

Kevin
told Matt he was going to call the detective that had the case and
set up a meeting. Matt had no problem with that. Kevin had another
flash of insight as he slid out of the booth and went to a pay phone.
He was thinking that the torn up basement floor in one of the houses
on English Avenue might contain a body, and that the raised vegetable
garden was made from the soil that was removed to make room for the
body.

Kevin
placed a call to Tom Perkins. He told him who he was and told him
what Matt had told him. Without hesitation, Tom agreed to meet them
downtown in his office in thirty minutes. Kevin and Matt left what
remained of their meals and headed downtown. Detective Perkins was a
tall thin guy in his forties. He chain smoked Lucky Strikes and wore
a blank chronically tired look. Something about the guy reminded
Kevin of the theory of the Irish. Perkins had a terrier look to him,
Kevin thought. He brought a stenographer in to get Matt's statement
down and excused Kevin from the process. An hour later, he was
finished with Matt and had Kevin come in. Kevin gave a brief
statement that told of his last meeting with Sylvia in the grocery
store the night she disappeared. Then he told the detective his
little theory about where the body probably was and pointed out that
the McCanns owned the buildings. That got Perkins’ attention.
Detectives like to find bodies, who knew? Perkins warned Matt and
Kevin not to talk to anyone about what they had discussed and sent
them on their way. He told them he would get back to them.

Kevin
dropped Matt off at his hotel. Then, he went back up to the old
neighborhood to see William Bailey. He found him back on his porch
reading and drinking his coffee. Mr. Bailey looked at Kevin over the
tops of his reading glasses and gave him a faint smile. "I
wondered to myself if I would see you again," he said.

"Oh
yeah, I am back," Kevin grinned back.

"Well,
pull up a chair and sit down boy. Want some coffee?" Mr. Bailey
said. "Go inside and get a cup from the cupboard in the
kitchen."

Kevin
came out with a cup, poured a short one and sat down. "I got
nothing in particular to ask you about. You're plain good company.
That's why I stopped by," he said. Then they started to talk.
Kevin asked about his work for the railroad and his union activities.
It turned out that there were about thirty men that worked on the
Empire Builder as porters in its heyday that lived in town. They
talked about the AFDC, too.

It
was a fascinating discussion for Kevin in that he knew nothing about
the subject other than the same tired things everybody repeated back
to each other until they became gospel. Mr. Bailey told him about how
it started out as an add-on to the Social Security Act, way back in
1936 and was called ADC at first. "Roosevelt decided back then
that a great nation wouldn't let kids starve or go hungry," Mr.
Bailey said.