Free The Finishing School by Michele Martinez Page A

seems to me Carmen ain’t popped her cherry yet, and I’m thinking about gettin’ in her pants. I like virtuous girls. More of a challenge, you feel me? But we ain’t never do nothin’ much about it. I try to kiss her once, and she get scared and run away. But she sixteen, so why you care? That ain’t statutory rape, is it?”
    “I don’t do those cases, but I think the age of consent is seventeen in New York,” Melanie said.
    “I don’t think so,” Juan Carlos said, shaking his head. “My shorty Bathead got locked up for statutory-raping some bitch who fourteen. I remember he say two more years and he wouldna had no trouble.”
    “Bathead, you said?” Ray-Ray asked, looking up from his note taking.
    “Yeah. Call him that because his head got, like, a dent from where somebody smash him with a bat. He talk real slow from it, too.”
    “Can we focus, please?” Melanie said. “We don’t have all day. Tell us about giving the drugs to Carmen.”
    “What drugs?”
    “The heroin.”
    “Carmen told you I give her heroin? Why she say that?” He looked very confused.
    Melanie turned to Ray-Ray. “What was the stamp again on the decks we found in his sock?”
    “WMD,” Ray-Ray said.
    “We’re not interested in WMD. Tell us about Golpe,” she said to Juan Carlos.
    “I don’t know Golpe,” he replied. “
¿Es una marca de drogas
? ”
    “I can’t feed you the answers, Juan Carlos.
You
tell
me
what Golpe is.”
    “You talking about a stamp? Ain’t nobody use Spanish stamps in New York. Jersey neither. Only place I heard of Spanish stamps is Puerto Rico, the DR, some shit like that.”
    “Tell us about the two girls who OD’d. Whitney and Brianna. Did you ever meet them?” Melanie asked.
    “The girls who OD’d last night, you mean?”
    She and Ray-Ray exchanged glances. Now they were getting somewhere. “Yes,” she said.
    “Yeah, I heard about it on TV.” As Juan Carlos looked at Melanie, his eyes suddenly went wide. Sweat began to collect on the dark fuzz of his upper lip. “The shit that OD’d ’em, it was WMD?”
    “What?” Melanie asked.
    “You sayin’ those girls OD’d on WMD? You know, weapon a’ mass destruction, the stamp I be moving?”
    “Did you sell drugs to them, Juan Carlos?” she asked, avoiding his question.
    His breathing got heavier, and he looked ready to cry. “I don’t know what Carmen tell you, but that ain’t me. They put WMD in every spot from here to Jersey City, okay? Hundreds of mu’fuckers movin’ that shit. Coulda been anyone who sold it to them girls. It ain’t me. I swear.”
    “Did Carmen ever introduce you to Whitney Seward or Brianna Meyers?” she asked, slowly and clearly.
    “Why she tell you that? Why she say something that ain’t true?” he asked, an edge of hysteria in his voice.
    “I’m not asking you about what Carmen said. I’m asking you about what happened. Did you ever meet Whitney Seward or Brianna Meyers?”
    Tears stood out in Juan Carlos’s eyes. “No more questions. I want a lawyer,” he said.
     
13
     
    MISS HOLBROOKE’S SCHOOL occupied several adjoining town houses on the south side of an expensive block in the East Seventies. Ray-Ray Wong double-parked in front of the main doors and slapped a police placard into the window of the G-car. Melanie climbed out, picking her way carefully through the slush to the curb. Their government sedan looked incongruous among the glamorous vehicles jockeying for position there. Navy and black Mercedeses and enormous, sparkling SUVs, driven by dark-skinned chauffeurs, all wearing blazers and cell-phone earpieces. Even if Melanie could’ve afforded to buy a brand-new Range Rover and garage it in the city—which, needless to say, she couldn’t—it would never have occurred to her to hire a driver and ride around town in the back.
    It was the last day of classes before holiday recess, and a few girls trickled in late. They varied in age from kindergartners to high-schoolers, but