"Y’hear what I said?” Tot asks, his cloudy eye seeming to watch me in the passenger seat as he waves the photocopied sheet between us. “February 16th. Don’t you wanna know?”
I nod, trying hard to stay focused on the traffic in front of us.
“Beecher, I’m talking to you.”
“And I hear you. Yes. I’d love to know.”
He turns his head even more. So he sees me with his good eye. I don’t know why I bother. He’s too good at this.
“You already know, don’t you?” Tot asks. “You know what happened on February 16th.”
I don’t answer him.
“Good for you, Beecher. What’d you do-look it up when you got home?”
“How could I not?” I spend every day doing other people’s historical research. All it took was a little extra footwork to do my own. “Khazei wants to pin the murder on me. This is my life on the line, Tot.”
“So you saw the story? About Eightball?”
I nod. Even without his training, it wasn’t hard to find. When it comes to figuring out what happened twenty-six years ago on February 16th, all you really need is a newspaper from the following day: February 17th.
Twenty-six years ago, President Orson Wallace was in his final year of college at the University of Michigan.
“You did the math, didn’t you?” Tot asks.
“That what? That February 16th was a Saturday?”
This is when I’d usually see Tot’s smile creeping through his beard. Right now, though, it’s not there-even though I know Saturday was the breakthrough for him too. At this point, nearly every American has heard the story of how Wallace used to come home every weekend to check on his mom and his sick sister, who suffered from Turner syndrome. So if young Wallace was home in Ohio…
All I needed was the Cleveland News Index and their digital archives of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I searched every keyword I could think of, including the names of family members. Not a single article on February 17th mentioned Wallace. But there was one-and only one-that did mention Wallace’s hometown of Journey, Ohio:
Local Man Goes Missing
From my inside jacket pocket, I pull out the printed-out story, which was buried in the back of the newspaper. Just like Orlando. According to the piece, a twenty-year-old man named Griffin Anderson had gone missing the previous night and was last seen voluntarily getting into a black Dodge Diplomat with two other twenty-year-olds. All three men had tattoos of a black eight-ball on the inside of their forearms-a sign that police said made them a part of a Cleveland gang known as the Corona Kings.
“And that’s all you found?” Tot challenges.
“Was there something else to find?”
“Tell me this first: Why were you testing me?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“What you just did-you were testing me, Beecher. You came to pick me up, you knew you had done the same research, yet you stayed quiet to see what I offered up.” If Tot were my age, this is the part where he’d say I didn’t trust him and turn it into a fight. But he’s got far more perspective than that. “So what’s my grade?” he asks. “When I said the word eight-ball, does that mean I passed?”
“Tot, if you know something else…”
“Of course I know something else-and I also know I’m the one who told you not to trust anyone, including me. So I don’t blame you. But if you’re gonna insult me, try to be more subtle next time.”
“Just tell me what you found!”
He ignores the outburst, making sure I get his real point: No matter how good I think I am, he’s still the teacher. And still on my side.
“It’s about the eight-ball tattoo, isn’t it?” I ask. “I was going to look it up…”
“There’s nothing else to look up-not unless you also happen to have an old colleague who still works in the Cleveland Police Department.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will,” Tot says. “Especially when you hear who, twenty-six years ago, also happened to be in the original police report.”