In Too Deep(41)

I pondered trying to pack my bag for tomorrow when Albertine beeped, telling me it had a potential match. I sat up, opening the file. "Well, we have a name."

"What's that?" Melina called from the other room. "What did you say?"

"I said we have a name," I called back. "Want to check?"

Melina was next to me in five seconds, looking over the picture on the screen. "Yeah, that's him. The short one with the angry eyes."

"Short one is Victor Pinzetti, originally from, oh get this, your neck of the woods. Cleveland."

"No wonder he works for the government. Cleveland's nearly as bad as Lima."

"Oh, I don't know," I replied. "It does have LeBron. And Drew Carey."

Melina rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the screen. "It says he belongs to the Environmental Protection Agency."

"That's probably who signs his paycheck, for sure," I said. "However, I can guarantee you that he isn't getting forty thousand dollars a year like this file says. Give Albertine a bit more time to track Pinzetti down, and we’ll know more.”

"Is that the next step?" Melina asked. "Turn Albertine loose on him?"

"Not exactly, but track him, yes. Now that we have something to go on, we can really go much faster. By dinner time we should have every bit of financial and electronic information on him, and we can make our plans for what to do next. In the meantime, let's see how those bikes are coming along."





* * *



"Good morning everyone, for those who didn't have me last year, I'm Mr. Swagger. Welcome to College Prep English Two. Let's get started."

The assortment in front of me was your typical group of students. While technically in the college preparation track, when the school had four different tracks (remedial, general, college prep, and honors), the simple fact was, most of the kids in this class weren't the best and brightest. Then again, they hadn’t given up on school either, so they had potential.

"Hey, Mr. Swagger?"

I checked my seating chart, double checking the name. "Yes, Yvonne?"

"So like, how much homework are you going to be asking of us? An hour a week? Two?"

I shook my head. "I assign to standard, not to time. I passed out a syllabus to everyone who was in the course last year, but if you missed it or forgot it, I'll be passing out another copy today.

Yvonne nodded, reassured. I had her last year, and while she was a good student, she was one of those types who were trying to do everything at once and often had a problem with the amount of stuff she had going on at one time. Cheerleader, college prep and some honors classes, music, and from what I knew she was one of the more popular girls in the sophomore class. Add in that the rumor mill was that she was dating one of the starting linebackers for the football team, and she had quite a lot to handle.

"Okay, now that we have that out of the way, let's get books handed out. We'll be using a few different books this semester, but in order to not blow out your lockers I've decided to spread them out," I said to some light laughter. "So first things first, the state book. These need to be turned in at the end of the semester, so I'd prefer if you all put covers on them, no tape on them, please. You guys have been doing this for years, I don't need to give you the whole rundown. If you need covers, I have a bunch left over from last year's drug awareness campaign that you can use."

Class continued, most of it boring, but I kept notes in my head. It's the most important thing a teacher can do. Every year there were new faces to learn, and new information to process. You had to know how to handle each class, and see how the particular mix of students would work together. You even have to keep your ear to the ground around the rumor mill and social scene, just to try and head off problems before they could blow up in your class. And of course, you had to know how to get the best out of each student. This could change over time too. Forget grading papers, motivating students is the hardest thing I did on the job.

Lunch period rolled around and I went out to the cafeteria, drawing lunch monitor duty first day. The school had an outside eating area, which was popular during good weather. For a late August day it was actually unexpectedly cool, so there were quite a few students sitting and hanging out while either eating their lunch line food or brown bag lunches. I actually had the unexpected pleasure of a good packed lunch myself. Melina, after our workout the night before, made me tuna salad, a nice blend of mustard and mayonnaise. I smeared spoonfuls onto whole grain crackers and enjoyed my meal.

I’d just chewed up my last cracker, washing it down with ice water when I saw something that caught my attention. While Truth or Consequences is small, there are still problems. I saw two groups of students coming closer, and I repositioned myself. These fights tended to be fast and vicious. The fighters knew that they had only seconds to cause damage before getting broken up. Thankfully, there was seldom any weapons involved.

The situation was still at the level of words when I stepped close. "Don't you boys have somewhere else to go?" I asked, looking between the two in front. I was disappointed to note that one of the basketball players was involved in one of the groups. I'd have to address that later. "Carlos? Hank? Any reason you guys are hanging out around here?"