Phi Kappa Death

On University Ave. we all felt safe. I did especially. I was old and confident. The police academy didn’t work out too well as I’m sure my late parents would have expected. I was already in my thirties and was takin’ up too much room in my little desk at the University of Texas at El Paso. The University was affectionately referred to as UTEP by young bright eyed girls ‘n’ boys that frequently bumped into me in the hallways, assuming I was working as an electrician. The only person I ever seemed to have any type of conversation with was the janitor, Tyrone, when he felt like letting off some steam about the brats that left potato chip crumbs and coke bottles all over the floors. My name is Daniel Wells but everyone, including Tyrone, referred to me as Pops, considering I could have been the father of any one of these kids at this school. The first and only class I decided would be worth my time was a detective fiction course that looked like it wouldn’t bore me to death. The class was full the first day. It quickly evaporated into a desolate fifty percent occupancy after our sweet, southern, tough as nails professor gave out the reading list for the semester.
After the first week, I had gotten comfortable enough to scan the room for anyone close to my age. No luck. I saw sorority girls, football players, the typical weird kid that swears he wants no friends but is just too shy, the over-achieving kiss ass and your run of the mill C average students that managed to cheat their way through high school. First kid I talked to was the weird kid.
“Hey kid. Can I bum a smoke from ya?”
He gave me a real ‘fuck you’ look and reached inside his long black trench coat.
“Sure thing Pops.”
I returned the favor.
“How do you like the class so far kid?”
He lit his smoke as I was about to ask him for the subsequent light when he decided to turn away from me and walk toward an area I wasn’t going to be in.
My second encounter was with a real hot pair of shorts that was young enough to date my nephew. She sauntered up on to me twirling her hair with flyer in hand. She handed it to me with a devilish smile chewing on her bubble gum like a goddamned cow. She had been hangin’ out with her friend that looked like a young hot librarian. Like Jodie Foster at 18 with cat-eye glasses. Standing nonchalantly between the two was a hunky big guy in a football jersey looking back and forth at their racks and asses like a damned see-saw.
“Hey. You want to go to a party, Pops?”
I smiled back instinctively. How could you not smile at such angelic dimples? I was pissed she made me smile.
“Not my thing hot pants. I’d cramp your style.”
She laughed at the sky and probably at me.
“Cramp my style? HA! Whatever daddy-o.”
For some reason I got the feeling she was making fun of me. At that point I had decided to head back inside from the designated student smokers corner and try to find someone slightly above babysitting age. I saw a pissed off black guy squeezin’ the water out of his mop and thought he probably needed the company as much as I did.
“Hey, Chief. These kids always act like such little assholes?”
The janitor didn’t look up. He assumed I was directing my question at the professor that was discussing something with a colleague I didn’t understand near the vending machine.
“Hey there, Chief. Did I offend you?”
Tyrone looked up at me with a long exhausted face and a toothpick hangin’ out.
“Nah, man. But yeah. These kids are a real letdown if you ask me.”
I gave a weird look. I was thinking about this 40-something year old moppin’ floors and wondered why he might be in a position to judge our aspiring future.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“Well, take that rich bitch outside lookin’ up at you with them big eyes. You know she’s just snugglin’ up to you so that you’ll buy her and her stuck up friends alcohol for their little party. And take that little prick in the coat. It’s gotta be a hundred goddamn degrees outside?”
I gave him a nod and a half smile. As I nodded I noticed that the conversation between the popular three had ceased. Miss Hot Pants put her hand on the football player’s backpack and walked off pulling him away from smarty pants and into her ample bosom.
“Well, thanks for the conversation. The name’s Daniel.”
Tyrone went back to squeezin’ out the mop.
“Tyrone. Sure thing Pops.”
Great, even the janitor can see I stick out like a sore thumb here. He turned away from me and went outside to pick up all the loose pamphlets Candy, the sorority girl, had left on the floor. I heard Tyrone as the door closed.
“Little bitch.”
After my first week of class I cuddled up to my detective novel that was assigned to us to read over the weekend. It was ok. We hadn’t gotten to the Hard-Boileds yet, my favorites, and we were still stuck on those boring Brits and their nice, neat, clean little murders and puzzle games. After a few Glenlivets, aged 18 years, I was a bit bored. I began to look at the flyer Candy had given me for her party. “What the hell,” I said. I figured I could always blend into the walls as I had when I was their age.
The house was jam-packed with people, beer, and liquor with no chasers whatsoever. These kids didn’t care. Either that or they had no Earthly idea how to throw a good party. I was in favor of the latter theory. The music was terrible. I prefer Old Blue Eyes myself, but what did my old ass know. Around midnight everyone was either drunk or throwin’ up when I heard a loud scream coming from one of the bedrooms. I was the only one that noticed it over the loud, thumping, bullshit music. I put my drink down and ran to the back of what was obviously someone’s parents’ house. Candy was screaming over her best friend’s body holding onto her boyfriend’s football jersey and balling her little stupid eyes out.
“Someone call an ambulance,” I said in a real authoritative and parental tone.
They all jumped. The poor girl looked like she had passed out. She wasn’t bleeding. She hadn’t hit her head. There was no blood. Her name was Belinda. She apparently was Candy’s best friend, or so I gathered from the mucus-filled slobbering coming from Candy’s mouth. I looked around the room to discover a cause of death. Nothing too glaring, just a couple of pictures with Candy and Belinda with the football team and an apparent suicide note next to the bed written in Belinda’s class notebook.
Jeff, the football-playing boyfriend, had his arm around Candy trying to keep her calm while holding back the little amount of puke I could see was still in his mouth. I wasn’t sure if it was from the drinking or the total shock of a possible dead girl at a party where he supplied minors with alcohol. As the sirens were heard and lights flashed outside the house, I could see Jeremy, that weird kid in the coat, run off and jump over the fence into the neighbors yard. I decided somethin’ was up and bolted after him, wheezing from the twenty years of smoking. I caught up with him and slammed him to the ground.
“Where you off to so quick, punk? Where’s the party at?”
I hadn’t realized the irony of that statement until the kid caught me on it.
“Back there, asshole.”
I slapped him around a bit and searched around in his coat pocket.
“Ecstasy? Well, well. Is that why that girl is unconscious back there?”
Jeremy gave me a genuinely frightened look. “Who?”
“Don’t give me that shit, Germ? Belinda. You give this shit to ‘er and she passed out? Did she O.D.?”
The little shit started to cry.
“Belinda? No man. No. Is she okay? Is Belinda okay?”
I propped him up on his feet and dusted him off a bit.
“What’d you care kid? I thought kids like you hated the preps.”
“Look you old fart. I’ve been tryin’ to get with Belinda for a year now. Things have come a long way since the ‘80s or whenever.”
I gave him an old school “fuck you” and sent him on his way. Somethin’ was up and it wasn’t an accidental O.D.
My suspicions were confirmed the following Monday when the announcement had been made that Belinda had passed away from undisclosed causes. Jeremy didn’t show. I swung by the mop closet to see if Tyrone had heard anything in the hallways.
“Sure, Pops. Could have been anyone of these little assholes. You know that Jeremy kid sells them drugs. I tried to score some smoke from him once and he gave me a big ‘fuck you.’ I heard that fat girl Clarissa say somethin’ ‘bout her and…shit it’s the boss ‘round the corner. I gotta mop.”
Thanks, Tyrone. I was back to square one. Before I headed out the door back to my car I saw Tyrone about to throw away a pamphlet for the party still on the floor with a phone number on it. The phone number was written with swirling curls and hearts. I grabbed Tyrone’s hand before it reached the trashcan.
“I’ll take care of that for you, Tyrone.”
He gave me the ol’ shrug of the shoulders and handed me the paper.
“You know, I got another mop in the closet, too.”
After I got home and got a few single malts in me I decided to call the number and see what happened. A female voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Yes, this is Dan Weiss calling to see if you are happy with your current phone service?”
The voice on the other line was shaky and sobbing.
“I don’t need this. You know my daughter just died, asshole. How does that feel?”
Great, actually. I had a hunch. I looked next to the hearts on the back of the paper and there was an abbreviated message that looked like a text message. These goddamned kids didn’t know how to write anymore.
GO MNRS!
I got this bitch.
Next day in class I had to give a presentation on Raymond Chandler. I decided to go with a new school PowerPoint with all the bells and whistles to show these kids you could still teach an old dog new tricks.
After the typical: Chandler was born on, wrote The Little Sister, Big Sleep, Hard-boiled speech, I had a couple more slides to show the kiddies.
Candy. I know it was you.

The class looked at me like I was a real asshole. I wrapped it all up for them in my last two minutes I had left of my presentation.
“For those of you that attended that lovely party hosted by our wonderful Candy and belated Belinda let me just say that was awesome. I haven’t had a time like that in…well, ever. Candy, I would especially like to thank you for making it really exciting by poisoning your best friend Belinda. I know you must have been pretty peeved to find out your boyfriend Jeff was boinking her which was obvious from the many pictures of him on her corkboard. Pictures that outnumbered the ones of you two together. You must have been pretty pissed off when you discovered the first test grade she got back from this class that you saw dangling out of her notebook, which she got an A on and you got an F. I’m sure when you saw Jeff outside our class Friday and realized he was not there to see you but to see your friend Belinda. You knew this because he never came to see you after class. I heard you bitching about it when I was talkin’ to my good friend Tyrone, the janitor that knows all your secrets. None of you have the common decency to pick up after yourselves for the poor ol’.. well the poor man. You also figured out what must have been goin’ down under your nose when you discovered that Belinda had stuck her phone number in Jeff’s book bag as you all were leaving school. That’s why you pulled it out and tried to throw it away, leaving it for poor Tyrone to pick up after you. You knew Jeremy sold junk and figured if you got your friend Belinda drunk enough, some Vicodin you bought from Jeremy would send the poor girl over. That’s right, I got the medical report from a friend of mine at St. Lukes. [That was my final .ppt slide] Problem is, love-struck Jeremy didn’t know this and flipped out when he heard Belinda had passed out. He zeroed in on you before I did. “
I looked at the prof with a tired old look.
“Sorry lady, I’m too old for this shit,” and I left her with one thought that she could take or leave.
“Patricia Cornwell is kind of a dick for leavin’ her husband don’t ya think?”
I picked up my brown leather old man’s bag and headed out. The scene wasn’t for me. On my way out I ran into Tyrone. Without looking up at anyone, he stared into his mop bucket and said, “Little bitch.”