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Now it was Thursday evening, eleven days since he saw Kaira, and he was trying to get through a chapter in economics. The final exam was in eight days.
He’d thought about asking Matt Kapok if he might want to study together. They greeted each other every day in class. But he didn’t want to leave the house, just in case Kaira called, and he would have been embarrassed to invite Matt over here, where, who knows, his parents might accuse Matt of being a drug dealer.
The speech final was also a week from Friday, but he wasn’t too worried about that. There were no more speeches due, and the stuff in the book was all obvious stuff, like how you should look your prospective employer in the eye at a job interview.
He reread a paragraph in his econ book and studied the graph next to it. It was just beginning to make sense when the phone rang, shattering his thoughts.
He waited nervously for a moment before returning to the graph.
“Theodore, telephone!” his mother called.
He tried to remain calm. Most likely it was just X-Ray. He took a deep breath, then went into the kitchen.
His mother mouthed the words “a girl” as she handed him the phone.
“Yeah, hi,” he said, trying to sound casual.
“Hi, how’s it going?”
He recognized the slightly nasal vo
ice of Detective Debbie Newberg. He walked back into his bedroom as he spoke to her.
“Oh, uh, fine.”
“You probably thought I’d forgotten about you.”
“Uh, no, not really.”
“How certain are you that the guy’s name was Habib?”
“Not real certain.”
“Could it have been Felix?”
“Felix? No, I don’t think so.”
“How about Moses?”
“No. I’m pretty sure he said it was Habib.”
“Maybe he had a nickname. Is that possible?”
“I guess.”
“Did he ever refer to himself as X-Ray?”
He took a breath, then said he’d never heard that name before.
“How about Armpit?”
He almost dropped the phone.
“Hello? Are you there?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”
“Does Armpit ring a bell?”
