Ed McBain - Driving Lessons

Katie and Carl asked to see the manager and were told by a sixteen-year-old kid wearing a red and yellow uniform that the manager was conducting a training session just now and wouldn’t be free for ten, fifteen minutes. Carl told her to inform the manager that the police were here. They ordered coffee and donuts at the counter, and carried them to one of the booths. The manager came out some three minutes later.

She was nineteen or twenty, Katie guessed, a pert little black woman with a black plastic name tag that told them she was JENNIE DEWES, MGR. She slid in the booth alongside Carl, looked across at Katie, and said, ‘What’s the trouble?’

‘No trouble,’ Katie said. ‘We’re trying to pinpoint the exact time a Coca Cola would have been purchased here on Wednesday afternoon.’

Jennie Dewes, Mgr looked at her.

‘You’re kidding, right?’ she said.

‘No, we’re serious, miss,’ Carl said.

‘You know how many Cokes we serve here every day?’

‘This would’ve been a Coke you served sometime around three o’clock this past Wednesday,’ Katie said.

‘You mind if I see your badges, please?’ Jennie said.

Katie opened her handbag, fished out her shield in its leather fob. Carl had already flipped open his wallet.

‘Okay,’ Jennie said, and nodded. ‘This would’ve been drive-in or counter?’

‘Drive-in,’ Katie said.

‘Three o’clock would’ve been Henry on the window. Let me get him.’

She left the booth, and returned some five minutes later with a lanky young blond boy who looked frightened.

‘Sit down, son,’ Carl said.

The boy sat. Sixteen, seventeen years old, Katie guessed, narrow acne-ridden face, blue eyes wide in fear. Jennie sat, too. Four of them in the booth now. Jennie sitting beside Carl, Henry on Katie’s left.

‘We’re talking about three days ago,’ Carl said. ‘Blue Ford Escort with a student driver plate on it, would you remember?’

‘No, sir, I’m sorry, I sure don’t,’ Henry said.

‘Don’t be scared, Henry,’ Katie said. ‘You’re not in any trouble here.’

‘I’m not scared, ma’am,’ he said.

‘Blue Ford Escort. Yellow and black student driver plates on the front and rear bumper.’

‘Young blonde girl would’ve been driving.’

‘Pulled in around three, ordered a Coke.’

‘Not at the window,’ Jennie said suddenly.

They all looked at her.

‘If this is the right girl, I saw her inside here. Pretty white girl, blonde, sixteen, seventeen years old.’

‘Sixteen, yes. Brown eyes.’

‘Didn’t notice her eyes.’

‘Man with her would’ve been older.’

‘Thirty-two.’

‘Wasn’t any man with her when I saw her.’

‘What time was this?’ Katie asked.

‘Around three, like you say. She was coming out of the ladies’ room. Went to the counter to pick up her order.’

‘Picked up a Coke at the counter?’

‘ Two of them was what she picked up. Two medium Cokes.’

They found her at a little past noon in the River Close Public Library, poring over a massive volume of full-color Picasso prints. The table at which she sat was huge and oaken, with green-shaded lamps casting pools of light all along its length. There was a hush to the room. Head bent, blonde hair cascading over the open book, Rebecca did not sense their approach until they were almost upon her. She reacted with a startled gasp, and then recovered immediately.

‘Hey, hi,’ she said.

‘Hello, Rebecca,’ Katie said.

Carl merely nodded.

The two detectives sat opposite her at the table. A circle of light bathed the riotous Picasso print, touched Rebecca’s pale hands on the open book, and Carl’s darker hands flat on the table top.

‘Rebecca,’ Katie said, ‘what happened to the second Coke container?

‘What?’ Rebecca said, and blinked.

‘You bought two Cokes,’ Carl said. ‘The techs found only one empty container in the car. What happened to the other one?’

‘I guess I threw it out,’ Rebecca said.

‘Then there were two containers, right?’

‘I guess so. Yes, there probably were.’

‘Why’d you throw it out?’ Katie asked.

‘Well... because I’d finished with it.’

‘Rebecca... the container you threw out wasn’t yours, was it?’

‘Yes, it was. I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re...’

‘It was Mr Newell’s, wasn’t it?’

‘No, I distinctly remember...’

‘The one he was drinking from, isn’t that true?’

‘No, that was in the holder. The cup holder. On the center console. I’m sorry, but I’m not following you. If you can tell me what you’re looking for, maybe I can help you. But if you...’

‘Where’d you toss the container?’ Carl asked.

‘Somewhere on the... the street, I guess. I really don’t remember.’

‘Where on the street?’

‘I don’t remember the exact location. I just opened the window and threw it out.’

‘Was it somewhere between the drive-in and the spot where you ran down Mrs Newell?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘We’ll look for it,’ Carl said.

‘We’ll find it,’ Katie said.

‘So find it,’ Rebecca said. ‘What’s so important about a stupid Coke container, anyway?’

‘The residue,’ Katie said.

And suddenly Rebecca was weeping.

The way she tells it...

This was after she’d been informed of her rights, and after her attorney and her father had both warned her, begged her not to answer any questions.

But she tells it, anyway.

She is sixteen, and so she must tell it.

The video camera whirs silently as the little blonde girl with the wet brown eyes tells the camera and her lawyer and her father and the state attorney and all the assembled police officers exactly how this thing came to pass.

She supposes she fell in love with Mr Newell...

She keeps referring to him as ‘Mr Newell’. She does not call him Andrew or Andy, which is odd when one considers the intimate nature of their relationship. But he remains ‘Mr Newell’ throughout her recitation. Mr Newell and his passionate love of art, which he transmits to his students in a very personal way, ‘What do you see? What do you see now ?’

And, oh, what she sees is this charming, educated man, much older than she is, true, but seeming so very young, burning with enthusiasm and knowledge, this sophisticated world traveler who studied in Italy and in France and who is now trapped in a shoddy little town like River Close with a wife who can only think of making babies!

She doesn’t learn this, doesn’t hear about his wife’s... well, obsession, you might call it... until she begins taking driving lessons with him at the beginning of August. They are alone together for almost two hours each time, twice a week, and she feels confident enough to tell him all about her dreams and her desires, feels privileged when he confides to her his plans of returning to Europe one day, to Italy especially, where the light is golden and soft.

‘Like you, Rebecca,’ he says to her one day, and puts his hand on her knee and dares to kiss her, dares to slide his hand up under her short skirt.

There are places in River Close...

There are rivers and lakes and hidden glades where streams are drying in the hot summer sun, no rain, the trees thick with leaves. The little blue Ford Escort hidden from prying eyes while Mr Newell gives her lessons of quite another sort. Rebecca open and spread beneath him on the back seat. Mr Newell whispering words of encouragement and endearment while he takes her repeatedly, twice a week. Rebecca delirious with excitement and wildly in love.