"What's going on?"

Mike smiled at him and spoke in his nice-guy voice. "That's what I'm here to ask you. Your mother tells me you've missed a couple of days of school."

David hung his head. "Yes. I'm sorry. I should have gone to the nurse."

"Why don't you tell me about it," Mike suggested and sat down again.

David stood where he was and spoke, mostly to his supreme authority, his mom. "I just went to a friend's house," he told her. "No big deal." He didn't seem a bit afraid of Mike.

"Would you rather talk about this at the station?" Mike asked.

"No, no!" Janice said. "That won't be necessary. He'll come clean," she said, now joking a little. "Go ahead, David, tell the officer everything and get it over with." David stood in front of Mike as if he were on the carpet and Mike were the headmaster of his school. He lowered his chin to his chest and mumbled, "I didn't feel well. I cut school. I hung out with a friend. I'm sorry, Mom. I know I should have told you."

"The friend's name?" Mike asked.

"Brandy Fabman."

"Jesus," Janice exploded. "That girl!"

Mike turned to her. "I'd love that glass of water you offered."

She blushed as she caught herself opening her big mouth with an editorial comment. There was no water source in the room. She couldn't send her son or her secretary from the office, or her maid, to the kitchen to get water. She had to leave the room and wait on a cop herself.

David acknowledged Mike with a respectful smile for pulling off the maneuver.

"And what did you and Brandy do?" Mike asked when she was gone.

"Today? We went out for breakfast. We walked on Madison Avenue. We went to her place. We watched videos." He blushed and scratched his head. "That's about it."

Mike picked up the blush and knew what they'd been doing. "How about yesterday?"

"Pretty much the same thing. We go to the Plaza Diner on Madison. They'll tell you we were there. It was, like, a one-time thing. Brandy was upset. Her mom had this surgery and wanted her to stay home. I was just keeping her company. I hate school."

"Oh, David." Mrs. Owen came back into the room with a glass of water in her hand, shaking her head angrily. "How could you say such a thing? You love school. Without school, you'll never get ahead in life." She handed the glass of water to Mike. "Here you go."

"Thanks." Mike felt kind of sorry for the kid. Maybe he didn't want to get ahead in life. "Tell me about the dogs," he said.

"What dogs?" Now Janice Owen was really taken aback.

Forty-five minutes later, with a clear picture of David's situation at home, Mike was in the elevator on his way up to Brandy Fabman's apartment. What he'd seen was a kid involved with a girl. He was playing hooky and felt bad about lying to his mother, but didn't seem to have anything else on his conscience. A lot of kids were like that. David had a lovely home, prominent family, concerned mother. Not an uncommon picture for this, or any other part of town. The father was on his way home but didn't make it before Mike left. Mike did not think it was the right moment to bring up the pot-smoking issue. He wanted to get David alone in the station house feeling safe before he really questioned him about his comings and goings in Central Park-with the tape recorder going and another detective at his side. Maybe a woman. He had no particular female in mind, of course. They'd make a video of his statement. He'd been in the park. He wasn't clean, and none of it was part of the fiction he told his mom.

He also thought that the story about John and the dog sounded pretty odd, but kids loved animals. Mike had always wanted a dog himself. He didn't get the feeling the boy was involved in the Maslow case. David had never even heard of Maslow, had no connection to him, or motive for hurting him. But Mike was a detective and would not rule anything out. What he thought he saw was a kid seeking attention to please a girl. But there was a lot more going on than he was willing to tell in front of his mother.

At the Fabman home, Brandy opened the door before he rang the bell. She was a small girl, all excited by the visit. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. She looked like any kid still in the baby fat stage.

"Hi, I'm Brandy," she said. "Were you the cop terrorizing David?"

Mike nodded. "He's a lot shorter now. I'm Lieutenant Sanchez."

"You're cute," Brandy said.

Under his mustache, Mike smiled. Then her mother wiped it off his face. Cheryl Fabman appeared and immediately took center stage. A real stunner, Brandy's mother had the looks that Janice Owen could only dream about. Slender body in a green cashmere T-shirt and matching green silk toreador pants. High heels made her legs look two miles long. She, too, had red nails and heavy gold jewelry. Maybe the nails and jewelry were symptoms of a disease called the Park Avenue Syndrome.

"Hi, I'm Cheryl, Brandy's mom. Please speak freely," she instructed him, as if she were the one doing the interview. Then she grabbed his hand and held on to it for a while.

Brandy smiled at him and showed off her tongue pierce. Cheryl turned her head, caught sight of it, and almost fell down in a dead faint. Apparently she hadn't known it was there.

Fifty-two

After the policeman left, Janice was too keyed up to return to work. She wanted some answers and once again she was enraged at her absent husband. She and David had been visited by the police. It was outrageous. Poor David was being harassed for cutting school. She did not think the police were the appropriate ones to bother her about it. This was a family matter. She talked to herself, because Bill wasn't there to consult. She was upset because the lieutenant who had come to talk to them had no education himself; he probably hadn't been to college and didn't know what David's stresses and issues were all about. The man was clearly in awe of their lovely home and envious of their situation, and he wanted to humiliate them by interrogating their child.

After the lieutenant left, David gave her no comfort at all. After everything she'd done for him that day, he just grunted and retreated to his room the way he always did. That left her with nothing to do but pace back and forth in front of his door, sniffing at the air flow. If the true purpose of the cop's visit had something to do with David's taking drugs, she was going to be really angry. She would not tolerate drugs in her home. This was definitely Bill's fault.

As she paced, Janice relived the Sunday evening several years ago when David had come home from an afternoon play date with some friends so drunk he could hardly stand up. They had gone out to an Italian restaurant for dinner despite his obvious inebriation. When David's head literally fell into his plate of spaghetti, Bill thought it was a riot. To divert them from any possibility of a substantive discussion about alcohol, he regaled them with stories of his own drunken days at Amherst and all the fun it had been back in the good old seventies.

"Good thing you didn't order a tomato-based sauce," he quipped, proud that his son was being initiated into manhood.

"Wait a minute. It's not the same," Janice had protested. But when she pointed out that Bill had been in college when he'd started drinking and David was only in the eighth grade-and also that it was a far more dangerous world these days-Bill had aligned himself with David in pooh-poohing her and causing her to react with more heat than she meant to. Because of Bill's lack of parenting skills all of this had happened.

Finally she knocked on his door. "David, I want to talk to you."

No answer.

She knocked again. "I'm sleeping," came the answer.