Fire Sale - PDF Free Download (2024)

Praise for the novels of Sara Paretsky Fire Sale “Another gripping chapter in the ongoing adventures of the Chicago private investigator . . . tightly written.” —Chicago Sun-Times “The great thing about Sara Paretsky’s novels is that they have meat on their bones, burrowing down to explore issues . . . without taking anything away from the thrills and suspense . . . a cleverly constructed novel that serves a dual purpose of providing first-class entertainment and at the same time reminding us just how brutal man’s inhumanity to man can be.” —The Orlando Sentinel “Warshawski is among the most intriguing of detective characters, and Paretsky among the smoothest of stylists.” —Detroit Free Press “Fast-paced . . . as entertaining as any entry in the series.” —Library Journal “An action-packed thriller.”

—The Wichita Eagle

“Packed with social themes and moral energy, held together by humor, compassion, and sheer feistiness, this novel shows why Paretsky and her heroine are such enduring figures in American detective fiction.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Tense, sharp.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“The author’s strong cast of characters includes a nervy fundamentalist preacher, worried mothers, young starcrossed lovers, an angry former high school classmate, a Romeo with an insatiable appetite, a nervy journalist, impatient businessmen, and assorted thugs, schemers, and dreamers . . . a nifty, dark-edged, fast-paced urban thriller.” —Lansing State Journal continued . . .

“[Warshawski is] as savvy, sardonic, and saucy as ever.” —The Providence Journal-Bulletin “A summer sizzler . . . rich and complex.” —The Associated Press “An engaging read that gives social issues a human face.” —Chicago Tribune “Anyone who has drifted away from Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski should promptly return to the fold. The thirteenth Warshawski novel is one of the best. . . . Paretsky has never been better than she is here at evoking a sense of place.” —Booklist (starred review)

Blacklist “A thoughtful, high-tension mystery.” —The Washington Post Book World “Sara Paretsky’s Chicago private eye, V. I. Warshawski, is one tough cookie . . . memorable.” —The New York Times Book Review “Thoroughly gripping.”

—The Seattle Times

“Because she is still among the very best drivers of narrative engines in the business, Paretsky also has produced a genuinely exciting and disturbing thriller, a raging vehicle that can carry a load of baggage from 1950s blacklisting to present-day terrorist hysteria without missing a beat.” —Chicago Tribune “A stellar entry in a celebrated series, which offers a provocative history lesson along with very contemporary commentary on loyalty and betrayal and how the past shapes the present. . . . A tightly woven and thoughtful thriller, this enticing mix of history and mystery showcases sharp, clever, vulnerable V. I. at her best.” —Booklist (starred review)

“You are getting much more here than an ordinary detective novel.” —The Buffalo News

Praise for Sara Paretsky “Paretsky still writes with the kind of dazzling, diamond-hard clarity that can break your heart on every other page.” —Chicago Tribune “Paretsky is still the best. . . . She doesn’t pull punches.” —The Washington Post Book World “Paretsky’s books are beautifully paced and plotted, and the dialogue is fresh and smart. . . . V. I. Warshawski is the most engaging woman in detective fiction.” —Newsweek “No one, male or female, writes better P.I. books than Paretsky.” —The Denver Post “Articulate and independent . . . Warshawski never wears thin.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Not a lot of mystery writers are as pulse-pounding and as literary.” —Detroit Free Press “Paretsky’s V. I. is a rare literary entity, a woman quick to anger and action, yet sympathetic and credible.” —Publishers Weekly “A character much loved in the crime and suspense genre.” —The Kansas City Star “Paretsky’s novels not only entertain us, keeping us suspended with her twists and turns, but they also make us think.” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel “An old-school crime-writing pro.”—The Boston Globe

ALSO BY SARA PARETSKY Blacklist Total Recall Hard Time Windy City Blues Tunnel Vision Guardian Angel Burn Marks Blood Shot Bitter Medicine Killing Orders Deadlock Indemnity Only

fire sale A V. I . WA R S H AW S K I N O V E L

S A R A PA R E T S K Y

SIGNET Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a G. P. Putnam’s Sons edition. ISBN: 1-4295-1504-X Copyright © Sara Paretsky, 2005 All rights reserved REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. PUBLISHER’S NOTE This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

For Rachel, Phoebe, Eva, Samantha, and Maia— my own hope for change in the world

THANKS

Helen Martin, M.D., was most helpful in coming up with Long QT Syndrome, the heart condition afflicting one of V. I.’s basketball team. I’m grateful for her advice on the condition, its symptoms, and how to treat it. Thanks to Dr. Susan Riter for introducing us. Mr. Kurt Nebel, the district manager at the CID Recycling and Disposal Facility on 138th Street, was quite generous with his time and expertise in explaining how and where the City of Chicago disposes of its garbage. Dave Sullivan made that important introduction, and also helped me spend time in the churches of South Chicago; I am grateful for all my experiences in that beleaguered community. The City of Chicago produces over ten thousand tons of garbage a day; keeping up with it is a daunting task. Although the city’s landfills have been topped off in the last year or two, and Chicago sends most residential garbage out of town, I have kept the landfill at 122nd Street active for the purposes of this book. Thanks to Janice Christiansen, president of FlagSource, for letting me visit their factory, and thanks to Beth Parmley for her informed and lively tour. She also suggested the accident described in chapter 44, “The Recording Angel . . . or Devil?” Sandy Weiss, of Packer Engineering,

THANKS

made this connection for me, and provided invaluable technical advice, including photographs of the accident. Fly the Flag does not resemble FlagSource in any way, shape, or form. Judi Phillips helped with the plant life in V. I.’s childhood garden. Kathy Lyndes gave generously of her time and experience in many ways, including the painstaking work of finishing the draft. Jolynn Parker and the Fact Factory were most helpful as well. Calliope kept me from withering away in front of the computer by stealing my shoes at appropriate moments. The Senior C-Dog did his usual kneecap-endangering job as first reader, copy editor, and creator of chapter titles. I owe special thanks to Constantine Argyropoulos for the CDs he created of V. I.’s music, which include all the pieces she’s sung or heard over the years. Nick Rudall provided Coach McFarlane’s Latin. This is a work of fiction. Nothing in it is intended to reflect the reality of modern American life. For NFL purists, I moved the 2004 Kansas City–New England game from November 22 to November 15. For readers who fear that V. I. does not sufficiently adulate multinational conglomerates, please remember that she is a fictional character, and her views are not necessarily those of the management.

CHAPTERS

Prologue

1. Remembrances of Things Past

2. Homie

3. Enter Romeo (Stage Left)

4. Mountains of Things

5. Imperial Relations

6. Girls Will Be Girls

7. Close Quarters

8. Plant Life

9. The Fog of . . . What?

10. Unions? Not a Prayer!

11. Home on the Range

12. Company Practice

106

13. Hired Gun

115

14. (Re)Tired Gun

122

15. Heart-stopper

134

16. Command Performance

144

17. A Frog in My Jeans

151

18. Visiting Hours

159

19. The Hospitable Mr. Contreras

169

xii

CONTENTS

20. Buffalo—and Gal—Won’t You Come Out Tonight?

176

21. Loose Buffalo in Church

183

22. Poverty’s Whirlpool

193

23. Star-crossed Lovers

202

24. Yet Another Missing Child

212

25. Bedtime Stories

221

26. Annie, Get Your Gun

230

27. Death in the Swamp

238

28. It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, No, It’s . . .

246

29. On the DL—Once Again

252

30. Comrades in Arms

261

31. The Walking Wounded

269

32. Time to Nail the Pastor to the Cross

278

33. Happy Families Are All Alike, Unhappy Families . . .

288

34. And the Rich Ain’t Happy, Either

297

35. Why, Freddy, What a Surprise!

307

36. Shown the Door—Again

314

37. Where the Buffalo Roam

320

38. Primitive Art

331

39. Painful Extraction

341

40. An Acid Touch

349

41. Punk, Cornered Like a Rat

360

42. The Hiding Place

370

43. The Fugitives

378

44. The Recording Angel . . . or Devil?

389

CONTENTS

xiii

45. Down in the Dumps

401

46. Behold: The Purloined Pen

406

47. Office Party

411

48. Dancing Rhino

422

PROLOGUE

was halfway down the embankment when I saw the redorange flash. I dropped to the ground and covered my head with my arms. And felt a pain in my shoulder so intense I couldn’t even cry out. Lying facedown in bracken and trash, I breathed in shallow panting breaths, a dog, eyes glazed, until the pain receded enough that I could move. I edged away from the flames on my hands and knees, then drew myself up on my knees and sat very still. I willed my breaths to come slow and deep, pushing the pain far enough away to manage it. Finally, I gingerly put a hand to my left shoulder. A stick. Metal or glass, some piece of the window that had shot out like an arrow from a crossbow. I tugged on the stick, but that sent such a river of agony flowing through me that I started to black out. I curled over, cradling my head on my knees. When the wave subsided, I looked across at the factory. The back window that had blown apart was awash with fire, blue-red now, a mass so thick I couldn’t make out flames, just the blur of hot color. Bolts of fabric were stored there, fueling the blaze. And Frank Zamar. I remembered him with a sudden appalled jolt. Where had he been when that fireball blew up? I pushed myself to my feet as best I could and stumbled forward.

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Weeping with pain, I pulled out my picklocks and tried to scrabble my way into the lock. It wasn’t until my third futile attempt that I remembered my cell phone. I fumbled it out of my pocket and called 911. While I waited on the fire trucks, I kept trying the lock. The stabbing in my left shoulder made it hard for me to maneuver the thin wards. I tried to brace them with my left hand, but my whole left side was shaking; I couldn’t hold the picklocks steady. I hadn’t expected the fire—I hadn’t expected anything when I came here. It was only some pricking of unease— dis-ease—that sent me back to Fly the Flag on my way home. I’d actually made the turn onto Route 41 when I decided to check on the factory. I’d made a U-turn onto Escanaba and zigzagged across the broken streets to South Chicago Avenue. It was six o’clock then, already dark, but I could see a handful of cars in Fly the Flag’s yard when I drove by. There weren’t any pedestrians out, not that there are ever many down here; only a few cars straggled past, beaters, people leaving the few standing factories to head for bars or even home. I left my Mustang on one of the side streets, hoping it wouldn’t attract any roving punk’s attention. I tucked my cell phone and wallet into my coat pockets, took my picklocks from the glove compartment, and locked my bag in the trunk. Under cover of the cold November night, I scrambled up the embankment behind the plant, the steep hill that lifts the toll road over the top of the old neighborhood. The roar of traffic on the Skyway above me blocked any sounds I made—including my own squawk when I caught my foot in a discarded tire and tumbled hard to the ground. From my perch under the expressway I could see the back entrance and the side yard, but not the front of the plant. When the shift ended at seven, I could just make out the shapes of people plodding to the bus stop. A few cars bumped behind them down the potholed drive to the road. Lights were still on at the north end of the plant. One of

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the basem*nt windows facing me also showed a pale fluorescent glow. If Frank Zamar were still on the premises, he could be doing something—anything—from checking inventory to planting dead rats in the vents. I wondered if I could find a crate in the rubble that would get me high enough to see into the back. I was halfway down the hillside, searching through the debris, when the window went briefly dark, then burst into fiery life. I was still struggling to undo the front lock when sirens keened up South Chicago Avenue. Two trucks, a command car, and a phalanx of blue-and-whites screamed into the yard. Men in black slickers surrounded me. Easy there, miss, move away, we’ve got it covered, the ka-chung of axes breaking metal, my God—look at that thing in her shoulder, get her an ambulance, a giant gloved hand scooping me up as easily as if I were an infant, not a 140-pound detective, and then, as I sat sideways on the command car’s passenger seat, feet on the ground, panting again, a familiar voice: “Ms. W., what in Jesus’ name are you doing here?” I looked up, startled, and felt giddy with relief. “Conrad! Where’d you come from? How did you know I was here?” “I didn’t, but I might have guessed if buildings were blowing up on my turf that you’d be close by. What happened?” “I don’t know.” The current of pain was sweeping through me again, tugging me loose from my moorings. “Zamar. Where is he?” “Who’s Zamar—your newest victim?” “Plant owner, commander,” a man outside my narrow field of vision said. “Trapped in there.” A walkie-talkie squawked, cell phones rang, men talked, engines clanged, soot-grimed faces carried a charred body. I shut my eyes and let the current pull me away. I came to briefly when the ambulance arrived. I stumbled to the rear doors on my own, but the EMT crew had to lift me into the back. When they had me strapped in,

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awkwardly, on my side, the jolting of the ambulance drew me down to a tiny point of pain. If I shut my eyes I felt sick to my stomach, but the light stabbed through me when I opened them. As we swooped in through the ambulance entrance, I vaguely noticed the hospital’s name, but it was all I could do to mutter answers to the questions the triage nurse was asking. I somehow got my insurance card out of my wallet, signed forms, put down Lotty Herschel as my doctor, told them to notify Mr. Contreras if anything happened to me. I tried to call Morrell, but they wouldn’t let me use my cell phone, and, anyway, they had me on a gurney. Someone stuck a needle into the back of my hand, other someones stood over me saying they’d have to cut away my clothes. I tried to protest: I was wearing a good suit under my navy peacoat, but by then the drug was taking hold and my words came out in a senseless gabble. I was never completely anesthetized, but they must have given me an amnesia drug: I couldn’t remember them cutting off my clothes or taking out the piece of window frame from my back. I was conscious by the time I was wheeled to a bed. The drugs and a throb in my shoulder both kept jerking me awake whenever I dozed off. When the resident came in at six, I was awake in that dull, grinding way that comes from a sleepless night and puts a layer of gauze between you and the world. She’d been up all night herself, handling surgical emergencies like mine; even though her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, she was young enough to perch on the chair by my bed and talk in a bright, almost perky voice. “When the window blew apart, a fragment of the frame shot into your shoulder. You were lucky it was cold last night—your coat stopped the bolt from going deep enough to do real damage.” She held out an eight-inch piece of twisted metal—mine to keep, if I wanted it. “We’re going to send you home now,” she added, after checking my heart and head and the reflexes in my left

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hand. “It’s the new medicine, you know. Out of the operating room, into a cab. Your wound is going to heal nicely. Just don’t let the dressing get wet for a week, so no showers. Come back next Friday to the outpatient clinic; we’ll change the dressing and see how you’re doing. What kind of work do you do?” “I’m an investigator. Detective.” “So can you stop investigating for a day or two, Detective? Get some rest, let the anesthesia work itself out of your system and you’ll be fine. Is there anyone you can call to drive you home, or should we get you into a cab?” “I asked them to call a friend last night,” I said. “I don’t know if they did.” I also didn’t know if Morrell could manage the trip down here. He was recovering from bullet wounds that almost killed him in Afghanistan this past summer; I wasn’t sure he had the stamina to drive forty miles. “I’ll take her.” Conrad Rawlings had materialized in the doorway. I was too sluggish to feel surprised or pleased or even flustered at seeing him. “Sergeant—or, no, you’ve been promoted, haven’t you? Is it lieutenant now? You out checking on all the victims of last night’s accident?” “Just the ones who raise a red flag when they’re within fifty miles of the crime scene.” I couldn’t see much emotion in his square copper face—not the concern of an old lover, not even the anger of an old lover who’d been angry when he left me. “And, yeah, I’ve been promoted: watch commander now down at 103rd and Oglesby. I’ll be outside the lobby when the doc here pronounces you fit to tear up the South Side again.” The resident signed my discharge papers, wrote me prescriptions for Vicodin and Cipro, and turned me over to the nursing staff. A nurse’s aide handed me the remnants of my clothes. I could wear the trousers, although they smelled sooty and had bits of the hillside embedded in them, but my coat, jacket, and rose silk blouse had all been slit across the shoulders. Even my bra strap had been cut. It was the

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silk shirt that made me start to cry, that and the jacket. They were part of a cherished outfit; I’d worn them in the morning—yesterday morning—to make a presentation to a downtown client before heading to the South Side. The nurse’s aide didn’t care about my grief one way or another, but she did agree I couldn’t go out in public without any clothes. She went to the charge nurse, who scrounged an old sweatshirt for me from someplace. By the time we’d done all that, and found an orderly to wheel me to the lobby, it was almost nine. Conrad had used police privilege to park right in front of the entrance. He was asleep when the orderly wheeled me out, but he came to when I opened the passenger door. “Woof. Long night, Ms. W., long night.” He knuckled sleep from his eyes and put the car into gear. “You still in the old crib up by Wrigley? I heard you mention a boyfriend to the doc.” “Yes.” To my annoyance, my mouth was dry and the word came out as a squawk. “Not that Ryerson guy, I trust.” “Not the Ryerson guy. Morrell. A writer. He got shot to pieces last summer covering the Afghanistan war.” Conrad grunted in a way that managed to heap contempt on mere writers who get shot to pieces: he himself had been hit by machine-gun fire in Vietnam. “Anyway, your sister tells me you haven’t taken monastic vows, either.” Conrad’s sister Camilla sits on the board of the same women’s shelter I do. “You always did have a way with a phrase, Ms. W. Monastic vows. Nope, none of them.” Neither of us spoke again. Conrad turned his policeissue Buick into Jackson Park. We joined a heavy stream of cars, the tag end of the morning rush, filing through the Jackson Park construction zone onto Lake Shore Drive. A feeble autumn sun was trying to break through the cloud cover, and the air had a sickly light that hurt my eyes. “You called it a crime scene,” I finally said, just to break

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the silence. “Was it arson? Was that Frank Zamar the firemen carried out?” He grunted again. “No way of knowing till we hear from the medical examiner, but we’re assuming it was—talked to the foreman, who said Zamar was the only person left in the building when the shift ended. As far as arson goes— can’t tell that, either, not until the arson squad goes through there, but I don’t think the guy died from neglect.” Conrad switched the conversation, asking me about my old friend Lotty Herschel—he’d been surprised not to see her down at the hospital with me, her being a doctor and my big protector and all. I explained I hadn’t had time to make any calls. I kept wondering about Morrell, but I wasn’t going to share that with Conrad. Probably the hospital hadn’t bothered to call him—otherwise, surely, he would’ve phoned me, even if he couldn’t make the drive. I tried not to think of Marcena Love, sleeping in Morrell’s guest room. Anyway, she was frying other fish these days. These nights. I abruptly asked Conrad how he liked being so far from the center of action. “South Chicago is the center of action, if you’re a cop,” he said. “Homicide, gangs, drugs—we got it all. And arson, plenty of that, lots of old factories and what-do being sold to the insurance companies.” He pulled up in front of my building. “The old guy, Contreras, he still living on the ground floor? We going to have to spend an hour with him before we go upstairs?” “Probably. And there’s no ‘we’ about it, Conrad: I can manage the stairs on my own.” “I know you got the strength, Ms. W., but you don’t think it was nostalgia for your beautiful gray eyes that brought me to the hospital this morning, do you? We’re going to talk, you and I. You’re going to tell me the whole story of what you were doing down at Fly the Flag last night. How did you know the place was going to blow up?” “I didn’t,” I snapped. I was tired, my wound was aching, the anesthesia was dragging me down.

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“Yeah, and I’m the Ayatollah of Detroit. Wherever you are, people get shot, maimed, killed, so either you knew it was going to happen or you made it happen. What got you so interested in that factory?” There was bitterness in his voice, but the accusation stung me to an anger that roused me from my torpor. “You got shot four years ago because you wouldn’t listen to me when I knew something. Now you won’t listen to me when I don’t know anything. I am exhausted from you not listening to me.” He gave a nasty police smile, the pale sunlight glinting on his gold front tooth. “Then your wish is granted. I am going to listen to every word you say. Once we finish running the gauntlet.” The end of the sentence came out under his breath: Mr. Contreras and the two dogs I share with him had apparently been watching for me, because all three came bounding down the front walk as soon as I got out of the car. Mr. Contreras checked his step when he saw Conrad. Although he had never approved of my dating a black man, he had helped me nurse my broken heart when Conrad left me, and was clearly staggered to see us arrive together. The dogs showed no such restraint. Whether they remembered Conrad or not I didn’t know: Peppy is a golden retriever and her son Mitch is half Lab—they give everyone from the meter reader to the Grim Reaper the same high-energy salute. Mr. Contreras followed them slowly down the walk, but when he realized I’d been injured he became both solicitous and annoyed because I hadn’t told him at once. “I would’ve come got you, Cookie, if you’d a only let me know, no need for a police escort.” “It was late at night when it all happened and they released me first thing this morning,” I said gently. “Conrad’s a commander now, anyway, at the Fourth District. This factory that burned last night is in his territory, so he wants to find out what I know about it—he won’t believe it’s sweet nothing at all.”

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In the end, we all went up to my apartment together, the dogs, the old man, Conrad. My neighbor bustled around in my kitchen and produced a bowl of yogurt with sliced apples and brown sugar. He even coaxed a double espresso out of my battered stove-top machine. I stretched out on the couch, the dogs on the floor next to me. Mr. Contreras took the armchair, while Conrad pulled up the piano bench so he could watch my face while I talked. He pulled a cassette recorder from his pocket and recorded the date and place we were talking. “Okay, Ms. W., this is on the record. You tell me the whole story of what you were doing in South Chicago.” “It’s my home,” I said. “I belong there more than you do.” “Forget that: you haven’t lived there for twenty-five years or more.” “Doesn’t matter. You know as well as me that in this town, your childhood home dogs you your whole life.”

1 Remembrances of Things Past

oing back to South Chicago has always felt to me like a return to death. The people I loved most, those fierce first attachments of childhood, had all died in this abandoned neighborhood on the city’s southeast edge. It’s true my mother’s body, my father’s ashes, lie elsewhere, but I had tended both through painful illnesses down here. My cousin Boom-Boom, close as a brother—closer than a brother—had been murdered here fifteen years ago. In my nightmares, yellow smoke from the steel mills still clouds my eyes, but the giant smokestacks that towered over my childhood landscape are now only ghosts themselves. After Boom-Boom’s funeral, I’d vowed never to return, but such vows are grandiose; you can’t keep them. Still, I try. When my old basketball coach called to beg, or maybe command me to fill in for her while she dealt with cancer surgery, I said “No,” reflexively. “Victoria, basketball got you out of this neighborhood. You owe something to the girls who’ve come behind you to give them the chance you had.” It wasn’t basketball but my mother’s determination I would have a university education that got me out of South Chicago, I said. And my ACTs were pretty darn good. But as Coach McFarlane pointed out, the athletic scholarship to the University of Chicago didn’t hurt.

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“Even so, why doesn’t the school hire a substitute for you?” I asked petulantly. “You think they pay me to coach?” Her voice rose in indignation. “It’s Bertha Palmer High, Victoria. It’s South Chicago. They don’t have any resources and now they’re on intervention, which means every available dime goes to preparing kids for standardized tests. It’s only because I volunteer that they keep the girls’ program alive, and it’s on life support as it is: I have to scrounge for money to pay for uniforms and equipment.” Mary Ann McFarlane had taught me Latin as well as basketball; she’d retooled herself to teach geometry when the school stopped offering all languages except Spanish and English. Through all the changes, she’d kept coaching basketball. I hadn’t realized any of that until the afternoon she called. “It’s only two hours, two afternoons a week,” she added. “Plus up to an hour’s commute each way,” I said. “I can’t take this on: I have an active detective agency, I’m working without an assistant, I’m taking care of my lover who got shot to bits in Afghanistan. And I still have to look after my own place and my two dogs.” Coach McFarlane wasn’t impressed—all this was just so much excuse making. “Quotidie damnatur qui semper timet,” she said sharply. I had to recite the words several times before I could translate them: The person who is always afraid is condemned every day. “Yeah, maybe, but I haven’t played competitive basketball for two decades. The younger women who join our pickup games at the Y on Saturdays play a faster, meaner game than I ever did. Maybe one of those twenty-somethings has two afternoons a week to give you—I’ll talk to them this weekend.” “There’s nothing to make one of those young gals come down to Ninetieth and Houston,” she snapped. “This is your neighborhood, these are your neighbors, not that tony Lakeview where you think you’re hiding out.” That annoyed me enough that I was ready to end the

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conversation, until she added, “Just until the school finds someone else, Victoria. Or maybe a miracle will happen and I’ll get back there.” That’s how I knew she was dying. That’s how I knew I was going to have to return once more to South Chicago, to make another journey into pain.

2 Homie

he noise was overwhelming. Balls pounded on the old yellow floor. They ricocheted from backboards and off the bleachers that crowded the court perimeter, creating a syncopated drumming as loud as a gale-force wind. The girls on the floor were practicing layups and free throws, rebounding, dribbling between their legs and behind their backs. They didn’t all have balls—the school budget didn’t run to that—but even ten balls make a stunning racket. The room itself looked as though no one had painted, or even washed it, since I last played here. It smelled of old sweat, and two of the overhead lights were broken, so it seemed as though it was always February inside. The floor was scarred and warped; every now and then one of the girls would forget to watch her step at the three-second lane or the left corner—the two worst spots—and take a spill. Last week, one of our promising guards had sprained an ankle. I tried not to let the daunting atmosphere get me down. After all, Bertha Palmer had sixteen girls who wanted to play, some even playing their hearts out. It was my job to help them until the school found a permanent coach. And to keep their spirits up after the season started, and they went against teams with better facilities, better depth—and much better coaches.

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Those waiting a turn under the baskets were supposed to be running laps or stretching, but they tended to hover over the girls with balls, grabbing for them, or shouting hotly that April Czernin or Celine Jackman was hogging shooting time. “Your mama didn’t spread her legs to pay for that ball— give it over here,” was a frequent taunt. I had to stay alert to squabbles that might erupt into full-scale war while correcting faults in shooting form. And not be bothered by the howling of the infant and toddler in the bleachers. The babies belonged to my center, Sancia, a gawky sixteen-yearold who—despite her six-foot-two body—looked practically like a baby herself. The kids were nominally under the care of her boyfriend, but he sat sullenly next to them, Discman in his ears, looking neither at his children nor at the action on the floor. I was also trying not to let Marcena Love disturb me, although her presence was winding my team up, intensifying the pace of insults as well as of the workout. Not that Marcena was a scout or a coach or even knew very much about the game, but the team was ferociously aware of her. When she’d arrived with me, impossibly soignée in her black Prada spandex, carrying an outsize leather bag, I’d introduced her briefly: she was English, she was a reporter, she wanted to take some notes, and possibly talk to some of them during the breaks. The girls would have swooned over her anyway, but when they found she had covered Usher at Wembley Stadium, they’d screamed with excitement. “Talk to me, miss, talk to me!” “Don’t listen to her, she’s the biggest liar on the South Side.” “You wanna photograph me doing my jump shot? I’m gonna be all-state this year.” I’d had to use a crowbar to get them away from Love and onto the court. Even as they fought over equipment and shooting rights, they kept an eye on her. I shook my head: I was paying too much attention to

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Love myself. I took a ball from April Czernin, another promising guard, and tried to show her how to back into the three-second lane, turning at the last instant to do that fadeaway jumper Michael Jordan made famous. At least my ball went in, always a plus when you’re trying to show off a move. April repeated the shot a few times while another player complained, “How come you let her keep the ball and I don’t get no time, Coach?” Being called “coach” still disconcerted me. I didn’t want to get used to it—this was a temporary gig. In fact, I was hoping to line up a corporate sponsor this afternoon, someone willing to pay good money to bring in a pro, or at least semipro, to take over the team. When I blew my whistle to call an end to free-form warm-ups, Theresa Díaz popped up in front of me. “Coach, I got my period.” “Great,” I said. “You’re not pregnant.” She blushed and scowled: despite the fact that at any one time at least fifteen percent of their classmates were pregnant, the girls were skittish and easily embarrassed by talk about their bodies. “Coach, I gotta use the bathroom.” “One at a time—you know the rule. When Celine gets back, you can go.” “But, Coach, my shorts, they’ll, you know.” “You can wait on the bench until Celine returns,” I said. “The rest of you: get into two lines—we’re going to practice layups and rebounds.” Theresa gave an exaggerated sigh and made a show of mincing over to the bench. “What’s the point of that kind of use of power? Will humiliating the girl turn her into a better player?” Marcena Love’s high, clear voice was loud enough for the two girls nearest her to stop fighting over a ball to listen. Josie Dorrado and April Czernin looked from Love to me to see what I would do. I couldn’t—mustn’t—lose my temper. After all, I might only be imagining that Love was going out of her way to get my goat. “If I wanted to humiliate her, I’d follow her to the bath-

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room to see if she really had her period.” I also spoke just loudly enough for the team to overhear. “I’m pretending to believe her because it might really be true.” “You suspect she just wants a cigarette?” I lowered my voice. “Celine, the kid who disappeared for a break five minutes ago, is challenging me. She’s a leader in the South Side Pentas, and Theresa’s one of her followers. If Celine can get a little gang meeting going in the stalls during practice, she’s taken over the team.” I snapped my fingers. “Of course, you could go in with Theresa, take notes of all her and Celine’s girlish thoughts and wishes. It would raise their spirits no end, and you could report on how public school toilets on Chicago’s South Side compare with what you’ve seen in Baghdad and Brixton.” Love widened her eyes, then smiled disarmingly. “Sorry. You know your team. But I thought sports were meant to keep girls out of gangs.” “Josie! April! Two lines, one shoots, one rebounds, you know the drill.” I watched until the girls formed up and began shooting. “Basketball is supposed to keep them out of pregnancy, too.” I gestured to the bleachers. “We have one teen mom out of sixteen in a school where almost half the girls have babies before they’re seniors, so it’s working for most of them. And we only have three gang members—that I know of—on the team. The South Side is the city’s dumping ground. It’s why the gym’s a wreck, half the girls don’t have uniforms, and we have to beg to get enough basketballs to run a decent drill. It’s going to take way more than basketball to keep these kids off drugs, out of childbirth, and in school.” I turned away from Love and set the girls in one line to running into the basket and shooting from underneath, with the ones in the second line following to rebound. We practiced from inside the three-second lane, outside the three-point perimeter, hook shots, jump shots, layups. Halfway through the drill, Celine sauntered back into the

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gym. I didn’t talk to her about her ten minutes out of the room, just put her at the back of one of the lines. “Your turn, Theresa,” I called. She started toward the door, then muttered, “I think I can make it to the end of practice, Coach.” “Don’t take any chances,” I said. “Better to miss another five minutes of practice than to risk embarrassment.” She blushed again and insisted she was fine. I put her in the lane where Celine wasn’t and looked at Marcena Love, to see if she’d heard; the journalist turned her head and seemed intent on the play under the basket in front of her. I smiled to myself: point to the South Side street fighter. Although street fighting wasn’t the most useful tool with Marcena Love: she had too much in her armory that went beyond me. Like the skinny—oh, all right, slim—muscular body her black Prada clung to. Or the fact that she’d known my lover since his Peace Corps days. And had been with Morrell last winter in Afghanistan. And had shown up at his Evanston condo three days ago, when I’d been in South Shore with Coach McFarlane. When I’d reached his place that night myself, Marcena had been perched on the side of his bed, tawny head bent down as they looked at photographs together. Morrell was recovering from gunshot wounds that still required him to lie down much of the time, so it wasn’t surprising he was in bed. But the sight of a strange woman, and one with Marcena’s poise and ease, leaning over him—at ten o’clock—had caused hackles to rise from my crown to my toes. Morrell reached out a hand to pull me down for a kiss before introducing us: Marcena, an old journalist friend, in town to do a series for the Guardian, called from the airport, staying in the spare room for a week or so while she gets her bearings. Victoria, private investigator, basketball locum, Chicago native who can show you around. I’d smiled with as much goodwill as I could summon, and had tried not to spend the next three days wondering what they were doing while I was running around town. Not that I was jealous of Marcena. Certainly not. I was a

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modern woman, after all, and a feminist, and I didn’t compete with other women for any man’s affection. But Morrell and Love had the intimacy that comes from a long-shared past. When they started laughing and talking I felt excluded. And, well, okay, jealous. A fight under one of the baskets reminded me to keep my attention on the court. As usual, it was between April Czernin and Celine Jackman, my gangb*nger forward. They were the two best players on the team, but figuring out how to get them to play together was only one of the exhausting challenges the girls presented. At times like this it was just as well I was a street fighter. I separated them and organized squads for scrimmage. We took a break at three-thirty, by which time everyone was sweating freely, including me. During the break, I was able to serve the team Gatorade, thanks to a donation from one of my corporate clients. While the other girls drank theirs, Sancia Valdéz, my center, climbed up the bleachers to make sure her baby got its bottle and to have some kind of conversation with its father—so far I hadn’t heard him do more than mumble incomprehensibly. Marcena began interviewing a couple of the girls, choosing them at random, or maybe by color—one blonde, one Latina, one African-American. The rest clamored around her, jealous for attention. I saw that Marcena was recording them, using a neat little red device, about the size and shape of a fountain pen. I’d admired it the first time I saw it—it was a digital gizmo, of course, and could hold eight hours of talk in its tiny head. And unless Marcena told people, they didn’t know they were being recorded. She hadn’t told the girls she was taping them, but I decided not to make an issue of it— chances were, they’d be flattered, not offended. I let it go on for fifteen minutes, then brought over the board and began drawing play routes on it. Marcena was a good sport—when she saw the team would rather talk to her than listen to me she put her recorder away and said she’d finish after practice.

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I sent two squads to the floor for an actual scrimmage. Marcena watched for a few minutes, then climbed up the rickety bleachers to my center’s boyfriend. He sat up straighter and at one point actually seemed to speak with real animation. This distracted Sancia so much that she muffed a routine pass and let the second team get an easy score. “Head in the game, Sancia,” I barked in my best Coach McFarlane imitation, but I was still relieved when the reporter climbed down from the bleachers and ambled out of the gym: everyone got more focused on what was happening on the court. Last night at dinner, when Marcena proposed coming with me this afternoon, I’d tried to talk her out of it. South Chicago is a long way from anywhere, and I warned her I couldn’t take a break to drive her downtown if she got bored. Love had laughed. “I have a high boredom threshold. You know the series I’m doing for the Guardian on the America that Europeans don’t see? I have to start somewhere, and who could be more invisible than the girls you’re coaching? By your account, they’re never going to be Olympic stars or Nobel Prize winners, they come from rough neighborhoods, they have babies—” “In other words, just like the girls in South London,” Morrell had interrupted. “I don’t think you’ve got a worldbeating story there, Love.” “But going down there might suggest a story,” she said. “Maybe a profile of an American detective returning to her roots. Everyone likes detective stories.” “You could follow the team,” I agreed with fake enthusiasm. “It could be one of those tearjerkers where this bunch of girls who don’t have enough balls or uniforms comes together under my inspired leadership to be state champs. But, you know, practice goes on for two hours, and I have an appointment with a local business leader afterward. We’ll be in the armpit of the city—if you do get bored, there won’t be a lot for you to do.”

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“I can always leave,” Love said. “Onto the street with the highest murder rate in the city.” She laughed again. “I’ve just come from Baghdad. I’ve covered Sarajevo, Rwanda, and Ramallah. I can’t imagine Chicago is more terrifying than any of those places.” I’d agreed, of course: I had to. It was only because Love rubbed me the wrong way—because I was jealous, or insecure, or just a South Side street fighter with a chip on her shoulder—that I hadn’t wanted to bring her. If the team could get some print space, even overseas, maybe someone would pay attention to them and help in my quest to find a corporate sponsor. Despite her airy assurance that she had taken care of herself in Kabul and the West Bank, Love had wilted a little when we reached the school. The neighborhood itself is enough to make anyone weep—at least, it makes me want to weep. When I first drove past my old home two weeks ago, I really did break down in tears. The windows were boarded over, and weeds choked the yard where my mother had patiently tended a bocca di leone gigante and a Japanese camellia. The school building, with its garbage and graffiti, broken windows, and two-inch case-hardened chains shutting all but one entrance, daunts everyone. Even when you get used to the chains and garbage and think you’re not noticing them, they weigh on you. Kids and staff alike get depressed and pugnacious after enough time in such a setting. Marcena had been unusually quiet while we produced our IDs for the guard, only murmuring that this was what she was used to from Iraq and the West Bank, but she hadn’t realized Americans knew how it felt to have an occupying power in their midst. “The cops aren’t an occupying power,” I snapped. “That role belongs to the relentless poverty around here.” “Cops are on power trips no matter what force places them in charge of a community,” she responded, but she’d still been subdued until she met the team.

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After she left the gym, I stepped up the tempo of the practice, even though several of the players were sullenly refusing to respond, complaining they were worn out and Coach McFarlane didn’t make them do this. “Forget about it,” I barked. “I trained with Coach McFarlane: that’s how I learned these drills.” I had them working on passes and rebounds, their biggest weaknesses. I forced the laggards under the boards, letting balls bounce off them because they wouldn’t go through the motions of trying to grab them. Celine, my gangb*nger, knocked over one straggler. Even though I secretly wanted to do it myself, I had to bench Celine and threaten her with suspension from the team if she kept on fighting. I hated doing it, since she and April, along with Josie Dorrado, were our only hope for building a team that could win a few games. If they picked up their skills. If enough of the others started working harder. If they all kept coming, didn’t get pregnant or shot, got the high-tops and weight equipment they needed. And if Celine and April didn’t come to blows before the season even got under way. The energy level in the room suddenly went up, and I knew without looking at the clock that we had fifteen minutes left in practice. This was the time that friends and family showed up to wait for the team. Even though most of the girls went home by themselves, everyone played better with an audience. Tonight, to my surprise, it was April Czernin who picked up the pace the most—she started knocking down rebounds with the ferocity of Teresa Weatherspoon. I turned to see who she was showing off for, and saw that Marcena Love had returned, along with a man around my own age. His dark good looks were starting to fray a bit around the edges, but he definitely merited a second glance. He and Love were laughing together, and his right hand was about a millimeter from her hip. When April saw his attention was on Marcena, she bounced her ball off the backboard with such savagery that the rebound hit Sancia in the head.

3 Enter Romeo (Stage Left)

he man moved forward with an easy smile. “So it is you, Tori. Thought it had to be when April told us your name.” No one had used that pet name for me since my cousin Boom-Boom died. It had been his private name for me— my mother hated American nicknames, and my father called me Pepperpot—and I didn’t like hearing it from this guy, who was a complete stranger. “You’ve been away from the ’hood so long you don’t remember your old pals, huh, Warshawski?” “Romeo Czernin!” I blurted out his own nickname in a jolt of astonished recognition: he’d been in Boom-Boom’s class, a year ahead of me, and the girls in my clique had all snickered about him as we watched him put the moves on our classmates. This afternoon, it was Celine and her sidekicks who laughed raucously, hoping to goad April. They succeeded: April aimed a ball at Celine. I jumped between them, scooping up the ball, trying unsuccessfully to remember Romeo’s real name. Czernin was pleased, perhaps by the juvenile title, or by grabbing the team’s attention in front of Marcena. “The one and only.” He put an arm around me and bent me backward to kiss me. I turned inside his arm and hooked

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my left foot around his ankle, sliding away as he stumbled. It wasn’t the kind of juke move I wanted to encourage in the team, but unfortunately they all had been watching closely; I had a feeling I’d see Celine using it at the next practice. Marcena Love had also been watching, with an amused smile that made me feel as immature as my own gangb*ngers. Romeo dusted himself off. “Same standoffish bitch you always were, huh, Tori? You always were one of McFarlane’s pets, weren’t you? When I found out she was still coaching basketball, I came over to have a talk with her— I figured she’d dump the same crap on my kid she did on me, and now I suppose I have to make sure you treat April right, too.” “Wrong,” I said. “It’s a pleasure coaching April; she’s shaping into a serious little player.” “I hear any reports that you playing favorites, you letting some of these Mexican scum beat up on her, you answer to me, just remember that.” April was turning red with embarrassment, so I just smiled and said I’d keep it in mind. “Next time, come early enough to watch her scrimmage. You’ll be impressed.” He nodded at me, as if to reinforce my acknowledgment of his power, then switched on another smile for Marcena. “Would if I could: it’s my hours. I got off early today and thought I’d take my little girl out for a pizza—how about it, sweetheart?” April, who’d retreated to the background with Josie Dorrado, looked up with the kind of scowl that teenagers use to conceal eagerness. “And this English lady who’s writing about your team and the South Side, she’d like to join us. Met me in the parking lot when I was pulling up in the rig. What do you say? We’ll go to Zambrano’s, show her the real neighborhood.” April hunched a shoulder. “I guess. If Josie can come, too. And Laetisha.” Romeo agreed with an expansive clap on his daughter’s

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shoulder and told her to hustle; he had to do some driving after pizza. Zambrano’s was just about the only place on the South Side that I remembered from my own youth. Most of the other little joints have been boarded over. Even Sonny’s, where you could get a shot and a beer for a dollar—all under the life-sized portrait of the original Richard Daley—isn’t open anymore. I sent the girls off to shower, in a locker room whose dank, moldy smell usually kept me in my own sweaty clothes until I got to Morrell’s. Marcena followed the team, saying she wanted the whole picture of their experience, and, anyway, she needed to pee. The girls gave gasps of excited shock at hearing her use the word in front of a man, and they clustered around her with renewed eagerness. I looked up to the stands to see whether Sancia’s kids had anyone with them while she showered. Sancia’s sister had come in at the end of practice—she and Sancia’s mother seemed to alternate in helping out with the babies. Sancia’s boyfriend was lounging in the hallway with a couple of other guys who had girlfriends or sisters on the team, waiting for them to finish. After my first practice, when the guys had tested my authority with too much bumping and ball playing, I’d forced them to wait outside the gym until the girls were changed. Romeo picked up one of the balls and began banging it off the backboard. He was wearing work boots, but I decided we’d had enough friction without me chewing him out for not wearing soft soles on the scarred court. My cousin Boom-Boom, who’d been a high school star, already recruited by the Black Hawks when he was seventeen, used to make fun of Romeo for trailing after the jocks. I’d joined in, since I wanted my cousin and his cool friends to like me, but I had to admit that even in work boots, Czernin’s form was pretty good. He sank five balls in a row from the free throw line, then began moving around the court, trying different, flashier shots, with less success. He saw me watching him and gave a co*cky smile: all was

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forgiven if I was going to admire him. “Watcha been up to, Tori? Is it true what they say, that you followed your old man into the police?” “Not really: I’m a private investigator. I do stuff that the cops aren’t interested in. You driving a rig like your dad?” “Not really,” he mimicked me. “He worked solo, I work for By-Smart. They’re about the only company hiring down here these days.” “They need an eighteen-wheeler down here?” “Yeah. You know, in and out of their big distribution warehouse, and then over to the stores, not just the one on Ninety-fifth, they’ve got eleven in my territory—South Side, northwest Indiana, you know.” I passed the giant discount store at Ninety-fifth and Commercial every time I rode the expressway down. As big as the Ford Assembly Plant farther south, the store and parking lot filled in almost half a mile of old swamp. “I’m going over to the warehouse myself this afternoon,” I said. “You know Patrick Grobian?” Romeo gave the knowing smirk that was starting to get on my nerves. “Oh, yeah. I do a lot with Grobian. He likes to stay on top of dispatch, even though he is the district manager.” “So you going to show Marcena the northwest Indiana stores after you take the girls to Zambrano’s?” “That’s the idea. On the outside she looks as stuck up as you, but that’s just her accent and her getup; she’s a real person, and she’s pretty interested in how I do my work.” “She drove down with me. Can you take her as far as the Loop when you’re done? She shouldn’t ride the train late at night.” He grinned salaciously. “I’ll see she gets a good ride, Tori, don’t you worry your uptight ass about that.” Resisting an impulse to smack him, I started collecting balls from around the floor. I let him hang on to the one he was playing with, but I put the rest in the equipment room. If I didn’t lock them up at once they evaporated, as I’d learned to my cost: we’d lost two when friends and family were milling around the gym after my first practice. I’d

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scrounged four new ones from friends who belong to tony downtown gyms. Now I keep all ten balls in a padlocked bin, although I’ve had to share keys with the boys’ coach and the PE teachers. While the girls finished changing, I sat at a tiny table in the equipment room to fill out attendance forms and progress reports for the benefit of the mythical permanent coach. After a moment, a shadow in the doorway made me look up. Josie Dorrado, April’s particular friend on the team, was hovering there, twisting her long braid around her fingers, shifting from one skinny leg to the other. A quiet, hardworking kid, she was another of my strong players. I smiled, hoping she wasn’t going to bring up a timeconsuming problem: I couldn’t be late to my meeting with the By-Smart manager. “Coach, uh, people say, uh, is it true you’re with the police?” “I’m a detective, Josie, but I’m private. I work for myself, not the city. Do you need the police for some reason?” I seemed to have a version of this conversation with someone at every practice, even though I’d told the team when I started coaching what I did for a living. She shook her head, eyes widening a bit in alarm at the idea that she herself might need a cop. “Ma, my ma, she told me to ask you.” I pictured an abusive husband, restraining orders, a long evening in violence court, and tried not to sigh out loud. “What kind of problem is she having?” “It’s something about her job. Only, her boss, he don’t want her talking to no one.” “What—is he harassing her in some way?” “Can’t you just go see her for a minute? Ma can explain it, I don’t really know what’s going on, only she told me to ask you, because she heard someone at the laundry say how you grew up down here and now you’re a cop.” Romeo appeared behind Josie, twirling the ball on his fingertip à la the Harlem Globetrotters. “What does your ma need a cop for, Josie?” he asked.

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Josie shook her head. “She don’t, Mr. Czernin, she just wants Coach to talk to her about some kind of problem she’s got with Mr. Zamar.” “What kind of problem she have with Zamar that she wants a dick on his tail? Or is it the other way around?” He laughed heartily. Josie looked at him in bewilderment. “You mean does she want him followed? I don’t think so, but I don’t really know. Please, Coach, it’ll only take a minute, and every day she keeps bugging me, have you talked to your coach yet? have you talked to your coach yet? so I gotta tell her I asked you.” I looked at my watch. Ten to five. I had to be at the warehouse by five-fifteen, and visit Coach McFarlane before I went to Morrell’s. If I went to see Josie’s ma in between, it would be ten o’clock again before I made it home. I looked at Josie’s anxious chocolate eyes. “Can it wait until Monday? I could come over after practice to talk to her.” “Yeah, okay.” It was only the slight relaxation in her shoulders that told me she was relieved I’d agreed to do it.

4 Mountains of Things

threaded my way through the trucks in the yard at the warehouse, looking for the parking area. Eighteenwheelers were backing up to loading bays, smaller trucks were driving up and down a ramp leading to a lower level, a couple of waste haulers were picking up Dumpsters and emptying them, and all around me men in hard hats and beer bellies were shouting at each other to watch where the hell they were going. Trucks had dug deep grooves in the asphalt and my Mustang bounced unhappily through them, splashing my windows with mud. It had been raining off and on all day and the sky still seemed sullen. A century of dumping everything, from cyanide to cigarette wrappers, into South Chicago’s swampy ground had turned the landscape tired and drab. Against this leaden backdrop, the By-Smart warehouse looked ominous, a cavern housing some ravening beast. The building itself was monstrous. A low-slung brick structure, perhaps originally red, turned grimy black with age, it filled two city blocks. The building and the yard lay behind high wire fencing, with a guard station and everything. When I turned off 103rd Street and pulled in, a man in some kind of uniform demanded to see my pass. I told him I had an appointment with Patrick Grobian; the man

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phoned into the cavern and confirmed that I was expected. Parking lay straight ahead, I couldn’t miss it. Straight ahead meant something different to the guard than it did to me. After I’d jolted around two sides of the building, I finally came on the parking area. It looked like the lot to a run-down used-car dealer, with hundreds of beaters parked every which way among the ruts. I found a spot that I hoped was out of the way enough that no one would sideswipe my Mustang. When I opened the door, I looked with dismay at the ground. The warehouse entrance lay several hundred yards away and I was going to have to pick my way through rainfilled potholes in my good shoes. I knelt on the driver’s seat and leaned over to paw through the papers and towels in back. Finally, I dug up a pair of flip-flops I’d used at the beach last summer and wiggled my stocking feet around the little toe bars. It made for a slow and embarrassing waddle across the yard to the entrance, but at least I reached it with only my stockings and trouser cuffs spackled in mud. I slipped on my pumps and stuck the muddy flip-flops into a plastic bag before shoving them into my briefcase. High doors opened onto a consumer nightmare. Shelves stacked with every imaginable product stretched as far as I could see. Directly in front of me dangled brooms, hundreds of them, push brooms, straw brooms, brooms with plastic handles, with wood handles, brooms that swiveled. Next to them were thousands of shovels, ready for every Chicagoan who wanted to clear their walks in the winter ahead. On my right cartons labeled “ice-melt” were stacked halfway to a ceiling that yawned thirty feet overhead. I started forward, and backed up again as a forklift truck rattled toward me at high speed, its front-loader high with cartons of ice-melt. It stopped on the far side of the shovels; a woman in overalls and a bright red vest began slitting the boxes before they were even off the loader. She pulled smaller boxes of ice-melt out and added them to the mound already there.

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Another forklift pulled up in front of me. A man in an identical red vest started loading brooms onto it, checking them against a computer printout. When I stepped forward again, trying to decide on a route through the shelves, a guard moved to intercept me. A large black woman wearing a vest with safety reflectors, she also had a hard hat labeled “Be Smart, BySmart,” and a belt that seemed to hold everything the complete law officer needed—including a stun gun. Above the racket of the conveyor belts and the trucks, she demanded my business. Once again, I explained who I was and why I was there. The guard took a cell phone from her belt to call for approval. When she had it, she gave me a badge and directions to Patrick Grobian’s office: down Aisle 116S, left at 267W, all the way to the end, where I’d find all of the company offices, toilets, canteen, and so on. It was then that I saw big red numbers that labeled the entrance to each row. These were so large that I’d missed them at first. I’d also missed a series of conveyor belts high above the aisles; they had chutes that lowered stacks of goods to various loading depots. Signs proclaiming “No Smoking Anywhere, Anytime” were plastered prominently on the walls and shelves, along with exhortations to “Make the Workplace a Safe Place.” We were facing Aisle 122S, so I turned left at the shovels and walked down six aisles, passing a mountain of microwaves, followed by a forest of artificial Christmas trees. When I reached Aisle 116, I moved into Christmas decorations: avalanches of bells, lights, napkins, plastic angels, orange-faced Madonnas holding ice-white baby Jesuses. Between the mountains of things stretching endlessly away, the conveyor belts ratcheting overhead, and the forklifts rolling around me, I began to feel dizzy. There were people in this warehouse, but they seemed to exist only as extensions of the machines. I clutched a shelf to steady myself. I couldn’t show up at Patrick Grobian’s office looking woozy: I wanted his support for Bertha

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Palmer’s basketball team. I needed to be upbeat and professional. Three weeks ago, when I met the assistant principal who oversaw Bertha Palmer’s after-school programs, I knew I was going to have to find Mary Ann’s replacement myself if I didn’t want to stick around the high school for the rest of my life. Natalie Gault was in her early forties, short, stocky, and very aware of her authority. She was swamped in a flood of paperwork. Girls’ basketball ranked in her consciousness somewhere below upgrading the coffeemaker in the faculty lounge. “I’m only filling in for Mary Ann until the end of the year,” I warned her when she thanked me for taking over at short notice. “I won’t have time to come down here once the playing season starts in January. I can keep the girls conditioned until then, but I’m not a trained coach, and that’s what they need.” “All they really need is for a grown-up to show interest in them, Ms. Sharaski.” She flashed a bright meaningless smile at me. “No one expects them to win games.” “Warshawski. And the girls expect to win games— they’re not playing to show what good sports they are. Which they’re not. Three or four of them could be topnotch players with the right coaching—they deserve more than the short time and mediocre skills I can give them. What is the school doing to find someone?” “Praying for a miracle with Mary Ann McFarlane’s health,” she said. “I know you went to school down here, but back then the school could rent an instrument for any child who wanted to play one. We haven’t offered music in this school for eighteen years, except for the Band Club, which one of the reading teachers runs. We can’t afford an art program, so we tell kids to go to a free downtown program—two hours and two buses away. We don’t have an official basketball team—we have a basketball club. We can’t afford a coach—we need a volunteer, and we don’t have a teacher who has the time, let alone the skills, to take it on. I

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suppose if we could find a corporate sponsor we could hire an after-school coach.” “Who’s down here who could put that kind of money into the basketball program?” “Some small companies in the neighborhood, places like Fly the Flag, sometimes put up money for uniforms or instruments in the band. But the economy’s so bad right now that they aren’t doing anything for us this year.” “Who’s big down here now that the mills are closed? I know there’s the Ford Assembly Plant.” She shook her head. “That’s all the way down on 130th, and we’re too far away and too small for them, even though some of the parents work down there.” Her phone rang at that point. Someone from the city health department was coming by tomorrow to look for rodent droppings—what should they do about the kitchen? A teacher stopped by to complain about the shortage of social studies texts, and another wanted eight students moved out of his room to a different section. By the time Ms. Gault got back to me, she couldn’t remember whether I was Sharaski or Varnishky, let alone whether the school would help find a coach. I ground my teeth, but when I got back to my own office that afternoon I did a search on companies within a two-mile radius of the school. I’d found three that were big enough to afford serious community service; the first two hadn’t even let me make an appointment. By-Smart had both the discount megastore at Ninetyfifth and Commercial, and their Midwest distribution center at 103rd and Crandon. The store told me they didn’t make any community service decisions, that I needed to see Patrick Grobian, the Chicagoland south district manager, whose office was in the warehouse. A kid in Grobian’s office who answered the phone said they’d never done anything like this before, but I could come in and explain what I wanted. Which is why I was hiking through mountains of things on my way to Grobian’s office.

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For some reason, when I was growing up in South Chicago I’d never heard of the By-Smart company. Of course, thirty years ago they had only begun the most phenomenal part of their staggering growth. According to my research, their sales last year had been $183 billion, a number I could hardly comprehend: that many zeroes made my head swim. I guess when I was a kid, their warehouse had already been here at 103rd and Crandon, but nobody I knew worked here—my dad was a cop, and my uncles worked at the grain elevators or steel mills. Looking around me now, it was hard to believe I hadn’t known about this place. Of course, you’d have to be a Trappist monk not to know about the company today—their TV commercials are ubiquitous, showing their happy, nurturing sales staff in their red “Be Smart, By-Smart” smocks. All over America, they’ve become the only retail outlet for a lot of small towns. Old Mr. Bysen had grown up on the South Side, over in Pullman; I knew that from Mary Ann’s telling me he’d gone to Bertha Palmer High. His standard bio didn’t talk about that, instead dwelling on his heroics as a World War II gunner. When he got back from the war, he’d taken over his father’s little convenience store at Ninety-fifth and Exchange. From that tiny seed had sprouted a worldwide empire of discount superstores—to use the overheated imagery of one business writer. Of the sixteen girls I was coaching at Bertha Palmer, four had mothers who worked at the superstore, and now I knew April Czernin’s father drove for them, too. The South Side had been Bysen’s base and then became his hub, I’d learned from Forbes; he’d bought this warehouse from Ferenzi Tool and Die when they went bankrupt in 1973 and kept it as his Midwest distribution center even after he moved his headquarters out to Rolling Meadows. William Bysen, known inevitably as Buffalo Bill, was eighty-three now, but he still came into work every day, still

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controlled everything from the wattage of the lightbulbs in the employee toilets to By-Smart’s contracts with major suppliers. His four sons were all active in management, his wife, May Irene, was a pillar of the community, active in charity and in her church. In fact, May Irene and Buffalo Bill were both evangelical Christians; every day at corporate headquarters began with a prayer session, twice a week a minister came in to preach, and the company supported a number of overseas missions. Several of the girls on my team were also evangelical Christians. I was hoping the company might see this as a faith-based opportunity to serve South Chicago. By the time I got to Aisle 267W, I was just praying that I’d never have to shop again in my life. The aisle emptied into a drafty corridor that ran the length of the building. At the far end I could see the silhouettes of smokers huddled in a wide doorway, desperate enough to brave the chill and rain. A series of open doors dotted the corridor. I poked my head into the nearest, which turned out to be a canteen, its walls banked with vending machines. A dozen or so people were slumped at the scarred deal tables. Some were eating machine stew or cookies, but a number were asleep, their red smocks trailing on the grimy floor. I backed out and started looking into the rooms lining the corridor. The first was a print room, with two large Lexmarks dumping out stacks of inventory. A fax machine in the corner was doing its part in the paperless society. As I stood mesmerized by the flow of paper, a parade of forklifts pulled up to collect output. When they trundled off, I blinked and followed them back into the corridor. The next two doors opened onto tiny offices, where people were doing such energetic things with computers and binders of paper that they didn’t even look at me when I asked for Grobian, just shook their heads and kept typing. I noticed little video cameras mounted in the ceilings: maybe their paychecks were docked if the cameras caught them looking up from their work when they weren’t on break.

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Five guys were waiting in the hall outside a closed door a little farther down the hall. Some were drinking out of cardboard canteen cups. Despite the pervasive cameras and the big sign ordering “No Smoking Anywhere, Anytime,” two were smoking surreptitiously, cupping the cigarettes in their curled fingers, tapping the ash into empty cups. They had the worn jeans and work boots of tired men who worked hard for not very much money. Most had on old bomber or warm-up jackets, whose decals advertised everything from Harley-Davidson to New Mary’s WakeUp Lounge. Grobian’s nameplate was on the door in front of them. I stopped and raised an eyebrow. “The great man at home?” The Harley jacket laughed. “Great man? That’s about right, sis. Too great to sign our slips and get us on our way.” “Because he thinks he’s on his way to Rolling Meadows.” One of the smokers coughed and spat into his cup. New Mary’s Wake-Up Lounge grinned unpleasantly. “Maybe he is. Isn’t the bedsheet queen—what the f*ck was that for, man?” Another smoker had kicked him in the shin and jerked his head in my direction. “It’s okay, I’m not the gabby type, and I don’t work for the company, anyway,” I said. “I have an appointment with the big guy, and ordinarily I would just butt in on him, but since I’m here to ask a favor I’ll wait in line like a good kindergartner.” That made them laugh again. They shifted to make room for me against the hall wall. I listened as they talked about their upcoming routes. The guy in the Harley jacket was getting ready to leave for El Paso, but the others were on local runs. They talked about the Bears, who had no offense, reminded them of the team twenty-five years back, right before Ditka and McMahon gave us our one whiff of glory, but was Lovey Smith the man to bring back the McMahon-Payton era. They didn’t say anything further about the bedsheet queen or Grobian’s ambitions for the home office. Not that I needed to know, but I suppose the

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main reason I’m a detective is a voyeur’s interest in other people’s lives. After a longish wait, Grobian’s door opened and a youth emerged. His reddish-brown hair, cut short in a futile effort to control his thick curls, was slicked down hard. His square face was dotted with freckles, and his cheeks still showed the soft down of adolescence, but he surveyed us with an adult seriousness. When he caught sight of the man in the Harley jacket, he smiled with such genuine pleasure that I couldn’t help smiling, too. “Billy the Kid,” the Harley said, smacking him on the shoulder. “How’s it hanging, kid?” “Hi, Nolan, I’m good. You heading for Texas tonight?” “That’s right. If the great man ever gets off his duff and signs me out.” “Great man? You mean Pat? Really, he’s just been going over the logs and he’ll be right out. I’m real sorry you had to wait so long, but, honest, he’ll be with you in a second.” The youth stepped over to me. “Are you Ms. War-sha-sky?” He pronounced my name carefully, although not quite successfully. “I’m Billy—I said you could come in today, only Pat, Mr. Grobian, he’s not quite a hundred percent, well—he’s running late, and, uh, he may take some persuading, but he’ll see you, anyway, as soon as he gets these guys on their way.” “Billy?” a man shouted from inside the office. “Send Nolan in—we’re ready to roll. And go collect the faxes for me.” My heart sank: a nineteen-year-old gofer with enthusiasm but no authority had organized my meeting with the guy who had authority but no enthusiasm. “Whenever I feel dismayed, I hold my head erect,” I sang to myself. While Billy went up the hall to the print room, the smokers pinched off the ends of their cigarettes and carefully put them in their pockets. Nolan went into Grobian’s office and shut the door. When he came out a few minutes later, the other men trooped in in a group. Since they left the door open, I followed them.

5 Imperial Relations

ffices in industrial spaces aren’t designed for the comfort or prestige of the inhabitant. Grobian got a bigger space than the tiny rooms I’d poked into earlier—it even included a closet in the far corner—but it was painted the same dirty yellow, held the same metal desk and chairs as the others, and, like them, even had a video cam in the ceiling. Buffalo Bill didn’t trust anyone, apparently. Grobian himself was an energetic young man, thirtysomething, shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal muscular arms, with a big marine anchor tattooed on the left bicep. He looked like the kind of guy truckers would respect, with a square quarterback jaw jutting beneath a buzz haircut. He frowned when he saw me behind the men. “You new on the job? You don’t belong in here—check in with Edgar Díaz in—” “I’m V. I. Warshawski. We had an appointment at fivefifteen.” I tried to sound upbeat, professional, not annoyed that it was almost six now. “Oh, yeah. Billy set that up. You’ll have to wait. These men are already late getting on the road.” “Of course.” Women are supposed to wait on men; it’s our appointed role. But I kept the thought to myself: beggars have to have a sunny disposition. I hate being a beggar. When I looked around for a place to sit, I saw a woman

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behind me. She was definitely not a typical By-Smart employee, not with a face whose makeup had been as carefully applied as if her skin were a Vermeer canvas. Her clothes, too—a body-hugging jersey top over a lavender kilt artfully arranged to show black lace inserts—hadn’t been bought on a By-Smart paycheck, let alone off a By-Smart rack, and none of the exhausted workers I’d seen in the canteen could have the energy to create that toned, supple body. The woman smiled when she saw me staring: she liked attention, or perhaps envy. She was in the only chair, so I went to lean against a metal filing cabinet next to her. She held a binder in her lap, open to an array of numbers that meant nothing to me, but when she realized I was staring down at them she shut the book and crossed her legs. She was wearing knee-high lavender boots with three-inch heels. I wondered if she had a pair of flip-flops to put on before going to her car. Two more men joined the four lined up at Grobian’s desk. When he’d finished with them, another three came in. They were all truckers, getting their loads approved, either for what they’d delivered or what they were getting ready to drive off with. I was growing bored and even a bit angry, but I’d be even more upset if I blew a chance to get out from under the girls’ basketball team. I sucked in a deep breath: keep it perky, Warshawski, and turned to ask the woman if she was part of the warehouse’s management team. She shook her head and smiled a little condescendingly. I would have to play twenty questions to get anything out of her. I didn’t care that much, but I needed to do something to pass the time. I remembered the trucker’s remark about the bedsheet queen. She either bought them or lay in them—maybe both. “You the linen expert?” I asked. She preened slightly: she had a reputation, people talked about her. She ordered all the towels and sheets for BySmart nationwide, she said. Before I could continue the game, Billy came back into

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the room with a thick sheaf of papers. “Oh, Aunt Jacqui, there are faxes for you in this bunch. I don’t know why they’ve sent them here instead of up to Rolling Meadows.” Aunt Jacqui stood up, but dropped her binder in the process. Some of the papers fell out and fluttered to the floor, three landing under Grobian’s desk. Billy picked up the binder and put it on her chair. “Oh, dear,” she murmured, her voice languid, almost liquid. “I don’t think I can crawl under the desk in these clothes, Billy.” Billy set the faxes on top of her binder and got down on his hands and knees to fetch the scattered pages. Aunt Jacqui picked up the faxes, riffled through them, and extracted a dozen or so pages. Billy scrambled back to his feet and handed her the sheets from her binder. “Pat, you ought to make sure that floor gets washed more often. It’s filthy under there.” Grobian rolled his eyes. “Billy, this ain’t your mother’s kitchen, it’s a working warehouse. As long as the floor doesn’t catch on fire I can’t be bothered about how dirty it is or isn’t.” One of the truckers laughed and cuffed Billy on the shoulder on his way out the door. “Time you went on the road, son. Let you see real dirt and you’ll come back and eat off Grobian’s linoleum.” “Or let him wash it,” the remaining driver suggested. “That always makes dirt look good.” Billy blushed but laughed along with the men. Pat chatted briefly with the last driver about a load he was taking to the Ninety-fifth Street store. When the man left, Pat started to give Billy an order to go down to the loading bays, but Billy shook his head. “We need to talk to Ms. Warsha-sky, Pat.” He turned to me, apologizing for my long wait, adding that he’d tried to explain what I wanted, but didn’t think he’d done a good job of it. “Oh, yeah. Community service, we already do plenty of that.” Grobian’s frown returned. Busy man, no time for social workers, nuns, and other do-gooders.

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“Yes, I’ve studied your numbers, at least the ones you make public.” I pulled a sheaf of papers out of my briefcase, spilling the flip-flops in their plastic bag onto the floor. I handed business cards to Grobian, Billy, and Aunt Jacqui. “I grew up in South Chicago. I’m a lawyer now and an investigator, but I’ve come back as a volunteer to coach the basketball team at Bertha Palmer High.” Grobian looked ostentatiously at his watch, but young Billy said, “I know some of the girls there, Pat, through our church exchange. They sing in the choir at—” “I know you want money from us,” Jacqui interrupted in her languid voice. “How much and for what?” I flashed an upbeat, professional smile and handed her a copy of a report I’d created on By-Smart’s community actions. I gave another set to Grobian and a third to Billy. “I know that By-Smart encourages grassroots giving at its local stores, but only for small projects. The Exchange Avenue store gave out three one-thousand-dollar scholarships to college students whose parents work in the store, and the staff are encouraged to serve in local food pantries and homeless shelters, but your manager over on Exchange told me Mr. Grobian was in charge of larger giving for the South Side.” “That’s right: I manage the warehouse, and I’m the South Chicago–Northwest Indiana district manager. We already support the Boys and Girls Clubs, the Firemen’s Survivor Fund, and several others.” “Which is great,” I said enthusiastically. “Profits for the Exchange Avenue store last year were a shade under onepoint-five million, a little less than the national average because of the bad economy down here. The store, as far as I could tell, gave away nine thousand dollars. For fifty-five thousand—” Grobian shoved my report aside. “Who talked to you? Who gave out confidential store information?” I shook my head. “It’s all on the Web, Mr. Grobian. You just have to know how to look. For fifty-five thousand, the

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store could cover the cost of uniforms, weight equipment, balls, and a part-time coach. You’d be real heroes on the South Side, and, of course, you’d get a substantial tax benefit from it as well. Heck, you might even be able to supply weight equipment out of old inventory.” All I really wanted from By-Smart was a coach, and I figured for about twelve thousand they could get someone to commit to the job. She (or he) wouldn’t have to be a teacher, just someone who understood the game and knew how to work with young people. A graduate student who had played college ball would be good; someone who was doing a degree in sports management and training even better. I was hoping if I started with four or five times what I wanted, I might at least get a coach. Grobian was still mad, though. He tossed my proposal into his wastebasket. Jacqui, with another of her languid movements, slid her papers toward the trash. They fell about a yard short. “We never give that kind of money to an individual store,” Grobian said. “Not to the store, Pat,” Billy objected, bending over to retrieve Aunt Jacqui’s papers. “To the school. It’s just the kind of thing Grandpa loves, helping kids who show enthusiasm for improving their lives.” Ah: he was a Bysen. That was why he could set up meetings with beggars even though he was inexperienced and had a boss who didn’t want to hear about the matter. That meant Aunt Jacqui was a Bysen, too, so I didn’t have to keep playing twenty questions with her. I smiled warmly at Billy. “Your grandfather went to this high school seventy years ago. Five of the girls on the team have parents who work for By-Smart, so it would be great synergy for the store and the community.” I winced at hearing corpu-speak fall so effortlessly from my lips. “Your grandfather doesn’t believe in giving that kind of money to charity, Billy. If you don’t know that by now, you haven’t been listening to him very hard,” Jacqui said. “That’s not fair, Aunt Jacqui. What about the wing he

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and Grandma built on the hospital in Rolling Meadows, and the mission school they started in Mozambique?” “Those were big buildings that have his name on them,” Jacqui said. “A little program down here that he won’t get any glory for—” “I’ll talk to him myself,” Billy said hotly. “I’ve met some of these girls, like I said, and when he hears their stories—” “Large tears will fill his eyes,” Jacqui interrupted. “He’ll go, ‘Hnnh, hnnh, if they want to succeed they need to work hard, like I did. No one gave me any handouts, and I started out the same place they did, hnnh, hnnh.’” Patrick Grobian laughed, but Billy looked flushed and hurt. He believed in his grandfather. To cover his confusion, Billy started sorting out the papers that Aunt Jacqui had dropped, separating my proposal from several sheets of fax paper. “Here’s something from Adolpho in Matagalpa,” he said. “I thought we agreed not to work with him, but he’s quoting you—” Jacqui took the papers back from him. “I wrote him last week, Billy, but maybe he didn’t get the letter. You’re right to point it out.” “But it looks like he has a whole production schedule.” Jacqui produced another dazzling smile. “I think you misread it, Billy, but I’ll make extra sure we’re all clear on this.” Pat pulled my report out of his trash. “I moved too fast on this one, Billy; I’ll take a closer look at my numbers and get back to your friend. In the meantime, why don’t you go out to the loading bays, make sure that Bron at bay thirtytwo has taken off—he has a tendency to linger, wasting time with the girls on the shift. And you, Ms.—uh, we’ll call you in a couple of days.” Billy looked again at Aunt Jacqui, a troubled frown creasing his smooth young face, but he obediently got up to go. I followed him from the room. “I’d be glad to get you any other information you want that might help your grandfather make a decision about

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the team. Maybe you’d like to bring him to one of our practices.” His face lit up. “I don’t think he’d come, but I could, that is, if I could take off from here, maybe if I came in early. Aren’t Mondays and Thursdays your practice days?” I was surprised and asked how he knew. He flushed. “I’m in the choir and the youth group at my church, our church, I mean, the one my family goes to, and we do these exchanges with inner-city churches sometimes, like, where we trade ministers, and our choirs sing together and stuff, and my youth group has adopted Mount Ararat down on Ninety-first Street, and some of the kids at the church, they go to Bertha Palmer. Two of them play on the basketball team. Josie Dorrado and Sancia Valdéz. Do you know them?” “Oh, yes: there are only sixteen girls on the team, I know them all. So how come you’re working here at the warehouse? Shouldn’t you be in college or high school or something yourself?” “I wanted to do a year of service, something like the Peace Corps, after I finished high school, but Grandpa persuaded me to spend a year on the South Side. It’s not like he’s sick or dying or anything, but he wanted me to work for a year in the company while he was still around to, like, answer my questions, and meantime I can do service through the church and stuff. That’s why I know Aunt Jacqui is just being, well, cynical. She is sometimes. A lot of the time. Sometimes I think she only married Uncle Gary because she wanted—” He broke off, blushing even more darkly. “I forgot what I was going to say. She is really committed to the company. Grandpa, he doesn’t really like the ladies in the family to work in the store, not even my sister Candace, when she was running—but, anyway, Aunt Jacqui, she has a degree in design, I think it is, or fabric, something like that, and she persuaded Grandpa that she would go crazy staying at home. We beat Wal-Mart in towels and sheets every quarter since she took over the buying

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for those things, and even Grandpa is impressed with how thorough she is.” Aunt Jacqui only married Uncle Gary because she wanted a piece of the Bysen family fortune. I could hear the accusations flying around the Bysen dinner table: Buffalo Bill was a tightwad, Aunt Jacqui was a gold digger. But the kid was a hardworking idealist. As I followed him along the corridors to the loading bays, I hoped I could get him to blurt out more indiscretions, like where or what Candace had been running, but he only explained how he came to have his nickname. His father was the oldest son— William the Second. “It’s sort of a family joke, not that I’m crazy about it. Everyone calls Dad ‘Young Mister William,’ even though he’s fifty-two now. So I got nicknamed Billy the Kid. They think I shoot from the hip, see, and I know that’s what Pat is going to tell Dad about me bringing you in here, but don’t give up, Ms. War-sha-sky, I think it would be really great to help the basketball program. I promise you I’ll talk to Grandpa about it.”

6 Girls Will Be Girls

s nearly as I could figure it out, the fight Monday afternoon began over religion and spread to sex, although it might have been the other way around. When I reached the gym, Josie Dorrado and Sancia Valdéz, the center, were sitting on the bleachers with their Bibles. Sancia’s two babies were on the bench, along with a kid of ten or so—Sancia’s younger sister, who was babysitting today. April Czernin stood in front of them, bouncing a ball that some gym teacher had left on the floor. April was a Catholic, but Josie was her best friend; she usually hovered around while Josie did Bible study. Celine Jackman came in a minute after me and cast a scornful look at her teammates. “You two be praying for a new baby in your families, or what?” “At least we praying,” Sancia said. “All that Catholic mumbo jumbo ain’t going to save you none after you been hanging with the Pentas. The truth is in the Bible.” She thumped the book for emphasis. Celine put her hands on her hips. “You think Catholic girls like me are too ignorant to know the Bible, because we go to mass, but you still hang out with April, and last I saw, she was in the same church as me, Saint Michael and All Angels.” April bounced the ball hard and told Celine to shut up.

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Celine went on unchecked. “It’s you good girls who read your Bibles every day, you the ones who know right from wrong, like you with your two babies. So me, I’m too damned to know stuff in the Bible, like do it say anything about adultery, for instance.” “Ten Commandments,” Josie said. “And if you don’t know that, Celine, you are dumber than you’re trying to pretend.” Celine swung her long auburn braid over her shoulder. “You learned that at Mount Ararat on Ninety-first, huh, Josie? You should take April with you some Sunday.” I grabbed Celine by the shoulders and pointed her toward the locker room. “Drills start in four minutes. Hustle your heinie straight in there and change. Sancia, Josie, April, you start loosening your hamstrings, not your lips.” I made sure Celine had left the gym floor before going into the equipment room to unlock the rest of the balls. When I started the warm-up a little later, I was shy only four players, a sign we were all getting to know each other: my first day, over half the team arrived late. But my rule was that you kept doing floor exercises for the number of minutes you’d missed, even when the rest of the team was running drills with balls. That brought most of the team in on time. “Where’s that English lady, the one who’s writing us up?” Laetisha Vettel asked as the girls lay on the floor stretching their hamstrings. “Ask April.” Celine snickered. “Ask me,” I said at once, but April, who was bending over her left leg, had already sat up straight. “Ask me what?” she demanded. “Where the English lady be at,” Celine said. “Or you don’t know, ask your daddy.” “Least I got a daddy to ask,” April fired back. “Ask your mama does she even know who your daddy is.” I blew my whistle. “Only one question you two girls need to answer: how many push-ups will I be doing if I don’t shut up right now and start stretching.”

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I spoke with enough menace in my tone to send the two back to pulling their toes toward their chins, left leg, hold eight, right leg, hold eight. I was tired, and not interested in thinking of empathic ways to reach the adolescent psyche. The ride from South Chicago to Morrell’s home in Evanston was about thirty miles, an hour on those rare days when the traffic gods were kind, ninety minutes when they more frequently weren’t. My own office and apartment lay somewhere near the middle. Keeping on top of my detective agency, running the dogs I share with my downstairs neighbor, doing a little caretaking for Coach McFarlane were all taking a toll on me. I’d been handling everything okay until Marcena Love arrived; until then, Morrell’s place had been a haven where I could unwind at day’s end. Even though he was still weak, he was an alert and nurturing presence in my life. Now, though, I felt so jolted by Marcena’s presence there that going to see him had turned into the final tension of the day. Morrell keeps open house in Chicago most of the time— in any given month, everyone from fellow journalists to refugees to artists passes through his spare room. Usually, I enjoy meeting his friends—I get a view of the larger world I don’t normally see—but last Friday I’d told him bluntly that I found Marcena Love hard to take. “It’s only for another week or two,” he’d said. “I know you two rub each other the wrong way, but honestly, Vic, you shouldn’t worry about her. I’m in love with you. But Marcena and I have known each other twenty years, we’ve been in tight holes together, and when she’s in my city she stays with me.” I’m too old to have the kind of fight where you give your lover an ultimatum and break up, but I was glad we’d postponed any decision on living together. Marcena had stayed away on Saturday night, but returned the day after, sleek as a well-fed tabby, exuberant about her twenty-four hours with Romeo Czernin. She’d arrived at Morrell’s just as I was putting a bowl of pasta on the table,

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burbling about what she’d seen and learned on the South Side. When she exclaimed how super it was to drive such an enormous truck, Morrell asked how it compared with the time she managed to get a tank through Vukovar to Cerska in Bosnia. “Oh, my God, what a time we had that night, didn’t we?” she laughed, turning to me. “It would have been right up your alley, Vic. We stayed long past our welcome and our driver had disappeared. We thought it might be our last night on Earth until we found one of Milosevic’s tanks, abandoned but still running—fortunately, since I don’t know how you turn one of those things on—and I somehow managed to drive the bloody thing all the way to the border.” I smiled back at her—it was indeed the kind of thing I’d have done, with her enthusiasm, too. I felt that twinge of envy, country mouse with city mouse. My home adventures weren’t tame, exactly, but nothing I’d done compared to driving a tank through a war zone. Morrell gave an almost invisible sigh of relief at seeing Marcena and me in tune for a change. “So how did the semi compare with the tank?” “Oh, an eighteen-wheeler wasn’t nearly as exciting—no one was shooting at us—although Bron tells me it has happened. But it’s tricky to drive; he wouldn’t let me take it out of the parking lot, and, after I’d almost demolished some kind of hut, I had to agree he was right.” Bron. That was his real name; I hadn’t been able to come up with it. I asked if the Czernins had put her up for the night; I was wondering how April Czernin’s hero worship of the English journalist would survive if she knew her father were sleeping with Marcena. “In a manner of speaking,” she said airily. “You spend the night in the semi’s cab?” I asked. “These modern trucks sometimes almost have little apartments built into them.” She flashed a provocative smile. “As you guessed, Vic, as you guessed.”

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“You think you have a story there?” Morrell interposed quickly. “My God, yes.” She ran her fingers through her thick hair, exclaiming that Bron was the key to an authentic American experience. “I mean, everything comes together, not exactly through him, but around him, anyway: the squalor, the heartache of these girls imagining that their basketball may get them out of the neighborhood, the school itself, and then Bron Czernin’s story—truck driver trying to support a family on those wages. His wife works, too; she’s a clerk of some kind at By-Smart. My next step is his firm, By-Smart, I mean, the firm he drives for. One knows about them in a vague way, of course: they’ve been making European retailers shake in their boots since they launched their transatlantic offensive three years ago. But I didn’t realize the head office was right here in Chicago, or at least in one of the suburbs. Rolling-something. Fields, I think.” “Rolling Meadows,” I said. “That’s right. Bron tells me old Mr. Bysen is incredibly pious, and that at headquarters the day starts with a prayer service. Can you imagine? It’s utterly Victorian. I’m dying to see it, so I’m trying to organize an interview up there.” “Maybe I should come with you.” I explained my efforts to enlist the company as a sponsor for the team. “Billy the Kid might get us in to meet his grampa.” She flashed her enthusiastic smile at me. “Oh, Vic, super if you can manage it.” We’d ended the evening still in relative harmony, which was a mercy, but I still didn’t sleep well. I slipped out of Morrell’s place early this morning, while he was still asleep, so I could drive to my own home and give the dogs a long run before my day started: today would take me down to coach again at Bertha Palmer, and I had promised Josie Dorrado to talk to her mother after practice. The dogs and I ran all the way down to Oak Street and back, about seven miles. All of us needed the workout, and

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I thought I was feeling a lot better until Mr. Contreras, my downstairs neighbor, told me I was looking seedy. “Thought with Morrell coming home, you’d perk up, doll, but you’re looking worse than ever. Don’t go tearing off to your office now without eating a proper breakfast.” I assured him I was fine, truly fine, now that Morrell was home and mending well, that my current overload was temporary until I found a real coach for the girls at Bertha Palmer. “And whatcha doing about that, doll? You got anyone lined up?” “I’ve put out a few feelers,” I said defensively. Besides meeting with Patrick Grobian at By-Smart, I had talked to the women I play Saturday pickup games with and to someone I know who runs a volunteer program for girls at the park district. So far, I’d come up empty, but if Billy the Kid could pry some bucks loose from Grampa one of my contacts might become more enthusiastic. I fled the apartment before Mr. Contreras got himself revved into a high enough gear to keep me for another hour, promising over my shoulder that I’d eat breakfast, really. After all, my family motto is never skip a meal. Right underneath the Warshawski coat of arms—a knife and fork crossed over a dinner plate. Privately, I was affronted at being told I looked bad. When I got into my car, I studied my face in the rearview mirror. Seedy, indeed: I was merely interestingly haggard, my lack of sleep making my cheekbones jut out like an anorexic runway model’s. In lieu of eight hours in bed, all I needed was a good concealer and some foundation, although not when I was going to spend two hours with sixteen teenagers on a basketball court. “Morrell thinks I’m beautiful,” I grumbled out loud, even if Marcena Love is there in front of him right now, suave and perfectly groomed, probably had her makeup on just so when she commandeered the tank and headed for the border. I snapped my seat belt in hard enough to pinch

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my thumb, and made a rough U-turn into traffic. When I get my turn to hijack a tank, I’ll put on fresh lipstick, too. I stopped at a diner for scrambled eggs, stopped at a coffee bar for a double espresso, and reached my office by ten. I concentrated on SEC filings and checked arrest records around the country for a man one of my clients was looking to hire. For the first time in a week, I actually managed to stay focused on my real work, completing three projects and even sending out the invoices. I ruined my better mood by trying to phone Morrell while I waited at a light on Eighty-seventh Street and only reaching his answering machine. He had probably gone to the botanic gardens in Glencoe with Marcena; they’d talked about it last night. I had no problem with that whatsoever. It was great that he was feeling well enough to be up and about. But the idea added to the ferocity with which I stomped on Celine and April at the start of practice. The team kept quiet for about five minutes, barring the usual jostling and the mutterings that they couldn’t do it, the exercises were too hard, Coach McFarlane never made them do this. Celine, who seemed primed for mischief today, broke the silence by asking if I knew Romeo and Juliet. She was standing on her left leg and pulled her right leg straight over her head by the heel. She had extraordinary flexibility; even when she was driving me to the brink of pounding her, she could transfix me by the fluid beauty of her movements. “You mean, the civil war that makes two star-crossed lovers take their life?” I said cautiously, wondering where this was going. “Not by heart.” Celine momentarily lost her balance. “Huh?” “Shakespeare. It’s how he describes Romeo and Juliet.” “Yeah, it’s like a play, Celine,” Laetisha Vettel said. “If you ever came to English class, you’d a heard about it. Shakespeare, he lived like a thousand years ago, and wrote Romeo and Juliet up in a play before there was a movie. Before they even knew how to make movies.”

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Josie Dorrado repeated the line. “‘Star-crossed lovers.’ That means even the stars in heaven wouldn’t help them.” To my astonishment, April kicked her warningly in the leg. Josie blushed and started touching her toes with a ferocious energy. “That what ‘star-crossed lovers’ means?” Theresa Díaz said. “That’s me and Cleon, on account of my mama won’t let me see him after supper, even for a study break.” “That’s because he in the Pentas,” Laetisha said. “Your mama is smarter than you, you listen to her. Get clear of the Pentas yourself, girl, you want to live to your next birthday.” Celine pulled her left leg up, her long braid swaying. “You and Cleon should do like April’s daddy. I hear everyone do like Coach did on Thursday, call him Romeo. Romeo the Roamer, he got the English lady in his—” April jumped her before she finished the sentence, but Celine had been ready for it—she swung her left leg like a weight, knocking April to the floor. Josie jumped in on April’s side, and Theresa Díaz hustled in to help Celine. I grabbed Laetisha and Sancia as they were about to pitch in and marched them to the bench. “You sit there, you stay there.” I ran to the equipment room and picked up a janitor’s bucket. It was full of nasty water, which suited me just fine: I rolled it out to the gym and poured it over the girls. The cold, foul water brought them up from the floor, sputtering and swearing. I seized Celine and April by their long braids and pulled hard. Celine started to throw another punch. I let go of the braids and grabbed Celine’s arm, bringing it up behind her back while pinning her right shoulder against me. I got my right arm under her chin and held her close while I gripped April’s hair again with my left. Celine cried out, but the sound was covered by the larger yells from Sancia’s babies and her sister, who were all screaming. “Celine, April, I am going to let go of you, but if either of you makes a move I am going to knock you out. Got it?”

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I moved my forearm tighter under Celine’s chin to let her know how serious I was and tugged sharply on April’s braid. The two stood mutely for a long moment, but finally both gave a sullen assent. I let them go and sent them over to the bench. “Sancia, tell your sister to take your children into the hall. We’re going to talk as a team and I won’t have the three of them howling during our meeting. All of you girls, sit down. Now. Move it.” They scuttled to the bench, frightened by my show of strength. I didn’t want to manage through fear. While they settled themselves I stood quietly, trying to get centered, to focus on them, not on my own frustrations. They watched me wide-eyed, for once completely silent. Finally, I said, “You all know that if I report this fight to your principal, Theresa, Josie, Celine, and April will be suspended not just from the team but from school. All four were fighting, and”—I held up a hand as Celine started to protest that April jumped her—“I do not give a rat’s tailbone about who started it. We’re not here to talk about blame, but about responsibility. Do any of you want to play basketball? Or do you want me to tell the school that I’m too busy to coach a bunch of girls who only want to fight?” That started an uproar; they wanted to play; if Celine and April were going to fight, they shouldn’t be on the team. Someone else pointed out that if Celine and April were thrown out, they wouldn’t have much of a team. “Then they just be selfish,” another girl shouted. “If all they care about is their head games, they should stay out of the gym.” One of the girls who usually never spoke up suggested I punish the two for fighting, but not take them off the team. That idea brought a wide murmur of support. “And what do you suggest by way of punishment?” I asked. There was a lot of bickering and snickering over possible penalties, until Laetisha said the two should wash the

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floor. “We can’t play today until that floor get mopped up, anyway. They clean the floor today, then we have practice tomorrow.” “What’s been going on here?” I turned, as startled as my team to see an adult standing behind me. It was Natalie Gault, the assistant principal who couldn’t remember my name. “Oh, Ms. Gault, these two—” “Delia, did I ask you to report?” I cut off the tattletale. “The team has had a little friction, but we’ve sorted it out. They’re going home now, except for four who are staying to wash the floor. Which, although there is a mop and a bucket in the equipment room, and a janitor drawing a paycheck, seems to have been building up dirt since my graduation back in the Stone Age. April, Celine, Josie, and Theresa here are going to build team skills by cleaning off the grime. We’d like to use the gym tomorrow for a makeup practice.” Ms. Gault measured me with the same look the principal’s staff used to give me when I was a student all those years back. I felt myself wilting as I used to back then; it was all I could do to keep my glib patter going to the end. Gault waited long enough to let me know she knew I was covering up a serious problem—which the blood trickling down Celine’s leg and on April’s face testified to, anyway—but finally said she would sort things out with the boys’ coach: if we were going to clean the gym, we should have the right to use it first. She said she’d get the janitor to bring in additional mops and a new box of cleaning solution. Building teamwork through scrubbing floors turned out to be a successful exercise: by the end of the afternoon, the four malefactors were united in their anger against me. It was after six when I finally let them go. Their uniforms were soaked and they were limp with fatigue, but the floor gleamed as it hadn’t since—well, a day twenty-seven years ago when my own teammates and I had scrubbed it. After a far worse episode than a mere gang fight. It wasn’t an

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episode in my life I liked to dwell on, and even now—even now I wouldn’t think about it. I followed them into the locker room while they changed. Mold made little furry patches along the showers and the lockers, some of the toilet seats were missing, some of the toilets were filled with used napkins and other bloody detritus. Maybe I could get Ms. Gault to pressure the janitor into scrubbing this now that the team had cleaned the gym. I held my nose and called to Josie that I would wait for her in the equipment room.

7 Close Quarters

osie lived with her mother—and her older sister and her sister’s baby, and her two young brothers—in an old building on Escanaba. As we drove over, Josie implored me not to tell her mother she’d been punished. “Ma, she thinks I should go to college and all, and if she knows I been in trouble over basketball maybe she’ll say I can’t play no more.” “Do you want to go to college, Josie?” I pulled up behind a late-model pickup parked outside her building. Four speakers stood in the bed, with the volume cranked so high that the truck itself was vibrating. I had to lean over to hear Josie’s response. “I guess I want to go. Like, I don’t want to spend my life working as hard as Ma does, and if I go to college maybe I can be a teacher or coach or something.” She picked at a loose cuticle, staring at her knees, then burst out, “I don’t know what college is, what it’s like, I mean. Like, would they be all stuck up, not liking me because I’m Latina, you know, and growing up down here. I met some rich kids at church, and it’s, like, their families don’t want them to know me, on account of where I live. So I’m worrying college would be like that.” I remembered the church exchange program that Billy the Kid had mentioned. His choir had been singing with

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Josie’s Pentecostal church choir. I could well imagine families as rich as the Bysens not wanting their children getting too friendly with girls from South Chicago. “I grew up down here, Josie,” I said. “My mother was a poor immigrant, but I still went to college up at the University of Chicago. Of course, there were morons there who thought they were better than me because they grew up with a lot of money and I didn’t. But most of the people I met, students and professors, all they cared about was what I was like as a person. If you want to go to college, though, you’re going to have to work hard on your studies as well as your basketball. You know that, right?” She hunched a shoulder and nodded, but the confidence was over; she undid her seat belt and got out of the car. As I followed her up the walk to the front door, I saw five youths lounging around the truck, smoking reefer. One of them was the guy who sat morosely in the bleachers with his and Sancia’s children during practice. The other four I hadn’t seen before, but Josie clearly knew them. They called out to her, something taunting that I couldn’t hear over the booming speakers. Josie yelled back, “You better hope Pastor Andrés don’t come round—he totally fix that truck for you like he did before.” The youths shouted something else at her. When it looked as though she was going to stay to fight, I pushed her up the front walk. The noise followed us up the stairs to the second floor; even though the Dorrados lived in the back of the building, I could still feel the bass rocketing inside my stomach as Josie unlocked her front door. The door led directly into a living room. A girl was sitting on the couch, dressed only in a baby-doll T-shirt and underpants. She was watching television with a ferocious intensity, her hand moving from an open chip bag in her lap to her mouth. An infant lay next to her on the plasticcoated cushion, staring vacantly at the ceiling. The only decorations in the room were a large, plain cross on one wall and a picture of Jesus blessing some children.

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“Julia! Coach is here to see Ma. Put some clothes on,” Josie cried. “What you thinking, sitting around naked in the middle of the afternoon?” When her sister didn’t move, Josie walked over and yanked the potato chip bag from her lap. “Get up. Get out of this dreamworld and into the daylight. Is Ma home?” Julia hunched over, so that her face was only a yard from the screen, where a woman in red was leaving a hospital room; a man accosted her. The conversation, in Spanish, had something to do with the woman in the room behind them. Josie stood between the set and her sister. “You can see Mujer again tomorrow, and the day after and the day after that. Now, go put on your clothes. Is Ma home?” Julia got sullenly to her feet. “She’s in the kitchen. Mixing María Inés’s formula. Take María Inés out with you while I put on my jeans.” “I gotta meet April. We have a science project together, so don’t expect me to stay home looking after your own baby,” Josie warned, scooping up the infant. “Sorry, Coach,” she added over her shoulder to me. “Julia lives inside that telenovela. She even named the baby for one of the people in it.” I followed her through a doorway into a room that doubled as a dining and bedroom: bed linens were folded neatly at one end of an old wood table; plates and silver were stacked at the other. Two air mattresses lay under the table; next to them, a box held Power Rangers and other action toys that must have belonged to Josie’s brothers. Julia shoved her way past Josie into a small room on our left. Twin beds were neatly made. The linens were startling, bright replicas of the Stars-and-Stripes. I hadn’t realized patriotism was so important to the Dorrados. A rope slung above the two twin beds was festooned with baby clothes. On the wall above one bed, I glimpsed a poster for the University of Illinois women’s basketball team: Josie’s side of the room. Like most of the girls on the team, the U. of I. women were her heroines, because that’s where Coach McFarlane had gone to school. Despite the

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clutter in the cramped quarters, everything was neatly organized. We passed on to the kitchen, a room just big enough for one person to stand in easily. Even back here, the thud from the giant speakers outside still carried faintly. Josie’s mother was warming a bottle in a pan of hot water. When Josie explained who I was, her mother wiped her hands on her baggy black pants and apologized repeatedly for not being in the living room to greet me. She was short, with bright red hair, so unlike her tall, skinny daughters that I blinked at her rudely. When I shook hands and called her “Ms. Dorrado,” she said, “No, no, my name is Rose. Josie, she didn’t say you was coming over today,” she explained. Josie ignored the implied criticism and handed the baby to her mother. “I ain’t staying around to babysit. April and me, we had to stay late at practice, and now we need to work on our science project.” “Science project?” Rose Dorrado repeated. “You know I don’t want you doing anything like cutting up frogs.” “No, Ma, we ain’t doing nothing like that. It’s on public health, like, how do you keep from catching the flu in school. We have to set up the study, uh, pamters.” She cast a cautious look at me. “Parameters,” I corrected. “Yeah, we’re gonna do that.” “You get back here by nine o’clock,” her mother warned. “You don’t and you know I’m sending your brother to look for you.” “But, Ma, we’re late starting on account of Coach kept us late,” Josie protested. “Then you work that much harder,” her mother said firmly. “And what about your supper? You can’t ask Mrs. Czernin to feed you.” “April brought an extra pizza home with her Thursday, when Mr. Czernin took us out with the lady reporter. She said she saved that for her and me to eat tonight.” She didn’t wait for further reaction but bolted back through

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the apartment. We heard an extra jolt on top of the bass as Josie slammed the door. “Who is this lady reporter?” her mother asked, testing some formula on her wrist. “Josie said something about her on Thursday, but I didn’t follow it.” I explained who Marcena Love was, and what she was doing with the team. “Josie’s a good girl, she helps me a lot, like with little María Inés, she should have a treat now and then,” her mother sighed. “She doing okay with the basketball team? You think maybe basketball can get her a scholarship for college? She needs an education. I won’t have her end up like her sister . . .” her voice trailed away, and she patted the baby reassuringly, as if trying to say she wasn’t blaming it for her worries. “Josie works hard and she looks good on the court,” I said, not adding that the odds of making a college team from a program like Bertha Palmer’s were pretty abysmal. “She said you want to talk to me about a problem of some kind?” “Please, let me give you something to drink; then we can talk more easily.” Given a choice of instant coffee or orange Kool-Aid I started to refuse anything, but remembered in the nick of time the important hospitality rituals in South Chicago. Romeo Czernin was right: I had been away from the ’hood too long if I was going to turn up my nose at instant coffee. Not that my mother ever served it—she’d do without other things before giving up her Italian coffee, bought at a market on Taylor Street—but instant was certainly a staple on Houston Street when I was growing up. Baby propped on her shoulder, Rose Dorrado poured some of the water she’d been boiling to heat the bottle into two plastic mugs. I carried those into the living room, where Julia, in jeans, had reestablished herself in front of her telenovela. Josie’s two young brothers had come home, too, and were fighting their sister over the channel she was tuned to, but their mother told them if they wanted to

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watch soccer they had to mind the baby. The boys quickly fled back down to the street. I sipped the thin, bitter coffee while Rose fretted out loud about the future of her boys without a father; her brother tried to help out, playing with them on Sundays, but he had his own family to look after, too. I looked at my watch and tried to push Rose Dorrado to the point. The story, when it came out, wasn’t the tale of personal violence I’d been imagining. Rose worked for Fly the Flag, a little company on Eighty-eighth Street that made banners and flags. “You know, your church, your school, they want a big banner for parades or to hang in the gym, that’s what we do. And we iron them if you need that done. Like, you keep it rolled up all year and you want it for your graduation march, only our shop has the machines big enough to press one of those banners. I been there nine years. I started even before my husband left me with all these children, and now I’m like a supervisor, although, of course, I still sew, too.” I nodded politely and congratulated her, but she brushed that aside and went on with her tale. Although Fly the Flag made American flags, those had just been a sideline to their main business until September 11. They’d always produced the outsize flags that schools and other institutions liked to spread across an upper balcony or wall, but before September 11 such enormous flags had had a limited market. “After the Trade Center went down, there was a very big demand for them, you understand, everyone wanted a flag for their business, even some rich apartment buildings wanted to hang them from the roofs, and suddenly we had a lot of orders, almost too much, we couldn’t even keep up with it. Everything we do is by hand, you know, for this kind of banner, but for the flags we use machines, and so we even had to buy a second machine.” “Sounds great,” I said. “South Chicago needs more business success stories.”

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“We do need these businesses. I need this job: I got four children to feed, plus now Julia’s baby. If this business don’t stay in business, I don’t know what I can do.” And now she came to the crux of the matter. Since the summer, work had fallen off. Fly the Flag was still running two shifts, but Mr. Zamar had laid off eleven people. Josie’s mom had a lot of seniority but she was afraid for the future. “It sounds very worrying,” I agreed, “but I’m not sure what you want me to do about it.” She laughed nervously. “Probably it’s all my imagination. I worry too much because of having so many children to feed. I make good money at the plant, thirteen dollars an hour. If they close, if they go to Nicaragua or China, like some people think, or if Mr. Zamar—if some accident happens to the building—where else can I work? Only at BySmart, and there you start at seven dollars. Who can feed six people on seven dollars an hour? And the rent. And we’re still paying for María Inés, for her birth, I mean. The hospital, they charge so much interest, and then she needs her shots, all the children, they all need shoes . . .” Her voice trailed off into a sigh. All during Rose Dorrado’s rambling remarks, Julia continued to watch the television as if her whole life depended on it, but the tension in her thin shoulders showed she was acutely aware of her mother’s words. I drank my coffee down to the last undissolved crystal: I couldn’t waste anything here. “So what’s happening at the plant?” I tried to bring her back to her problem. “Probably it’s nothing,” she said. “Maybe it’s nothing; Josie kept saying not to bother you with it.” When I pressed her harder, though, she finally blurted out that last month, when she arrived at work—and she always got there early, always anxious that she be thought a good employee—if there were going to be more layoffs she couldn’t let anyone say she had a bad attitude—anyway, she arrived to find she couldn’t get her key in the lock.

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Someone had filled the keyholes with Krazy Glue, and they lost a whole day’s work while they waited for a locksmith to come and drill them out. Then another time she opened the factory and found it full of a really bad smell, which turned out to be dead rats in the heating ducts. “Because I’m there early I got all the windows open, and we could still do some work, it wasn’t too bad, but you can imagine! We were lucky the weather was not so bad—in November, you know, it could be a blizzard, or rain or something.” “What does Mr. Zamar say?” She bent over the baby. “Nothing. He tells me accidents happen at plants all the time.” “Where was he when the locks were glued shut?” “What do you mean?” Rose asked. “I mean, wasn’t it surprising that you discovered they were glued shut? Why wasn’t he there?” “He don’t come in early because he stays late, until seven or eight at night, so he don’t come in usually till eight-thirty in the morning, sometimes even nine.” “So he could have glued the doors shut himself when he left the night before,” I said bluntly. She looked up startled. “Why would he do that?” “To force the plant out of business in a way that let him collect the insurance.” “He wouldn’t do that,” she cried, too quickly. “That would be wicked, and, really, he is a good man, he tries hard . . .” “You think maybe one of the people he laid off could be doing it for revenge?” “Anything is possible,” she said. “That’s why—I’m wondering—when Josie told me a lady cop is coaching now instead of Mrs. McFarlane—can’t you go in there and find out?” “It would be much better if you’d call the police, the real police. They can ask—” “No!” the word came out so loudly that the baby hiccupped and began to cry.

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“No,” she said more quietly, rocking the infant against her shoulder. “Mr. Zamar, he told me no police, he won’t let me call. But you, you grew up here, you could ask some questions, no one would mind questions from the lady who helps the girls play basketball.” I shook my head. “I’m just one person working alone, and an investigation like this, it’s time-consuming, it’s expensive.” “How much money?” she asked. “I can pay you something, maybe when I finish paying the hospital for Julia.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell her my usual fee was $125 an hour, not to someone who thought she was lucky to feed five children on thirteen dollars an hour. Even though I often do pro bono work—too often, my accountant keeps telling me—I didn’t see how I could conduct an investigation at a shop where the owner didn’t want me. “But don’t you see, if you don’t find out, if we don’t stop this, the plant will close, and what will happen to me, to my children?” she cried out, tears in her eyes. Julia hunched deeper inside her T-shirt at her outburst and the baby squalled more loudly. I rubbed my head. The idea of one more obligation, one more rope tying me to my old neighborhood, made me want to join Julia on the couch with my head buried in an imaginary world. With a leaden hand, I pulled my pocket diary out of my bag and looked at my commitments. “I can come down early tomorrow, I guess, but you know I’m going to have to talk to Mr. Zamar, and if he orders me off the premises I won’t be able to do anything else but leave.” Rose Dorrado beamed at me in relief. She probably figured once I took the first step, I’d be committed to the whole journey. I hoped very much she was wrong.

8 Plant Life

hugged my windbreaker close to my chest and slipped through a loose piece of the chain-link fence. The pale steel of a late-fall dawn was just beginning to lighten the sky, and the air was cold. When I told Rose Dorrado I’d come by Fly the Flag this morning, I’d originally planned to arrive around eight-thirty to question the crew. Last night, though, when I was talking to Morrell about the situation, I realized I should come early: if someone was sabotaging the plant before the morning shift arrived, I might catch them in the act. I’d had another late night last night, between staying at the school with my warring players, calling on Rose, and then, finally, stopping to check on Mary Ann McFarlane on my way north. Although a home care provider came in four times a week and did laundry and other difficult jobs, I’d gotten in the habit of bringing her food, sometimes dinner, sometimes just extra treats she enjoyed that no one else thought worth shopping for. Mary Ann lived just north of my old neighborhood in an apartment like my own, four rooms built railway style in an old brick eight-flat. She had been in bed when I reached her last night, but she called out to me in a voice still strong enough to reach the hall. I shouted back a greeting as I

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bent to pet Scurry, her dachshund, who was turning inside out in his eagerness at seeing me. What I would do with the dog when—if—he needed a new home was one of my ongoing concerns. I already had a golden retriever and her gigantic half-Lab son. A third dog would bring the health department down on me—not on account of the dogs, but to put me into a locked ward. By the time I got to the bedroom, my old coach had hoisted herself out of bed and made it to the doorway. She was clutching the edge of the dresser, but she waved off my offered arm and stood panting until she got her breath back. In the bedroom’s dim light she looked ghastly, her cheeks sunken, the skin around her neck hanging in folds. She used to be a stocky woman; now cancer and chemicals had sucked the life out from under her flesh. The chemo had also turned her bald. The hair was growing back, covering her head with a coarse, gray-streaked red stubble, but even when she was as bald as Michael Jordan she had refused to wear a wig. When I first saw her like this, it had been a shock: I was so used to her muscular energy that I couldn’t think of her as ill, or old. Not that she was old—she was only sixty-six, I’d learned to my surprise. Somehow, when she was coaching me, and teaching me Latin, she’d looked as formidably ancient as her bust of Caesar Augustus. She waited to talk until she’d walked to the kitchen and was sitting at the old enamel table there. Scurry jumped up onto her lap. I put the kettle on for tea and unpacked the groceries I’d picked up for her. “How did practice go today?” she asked. I told her about the fight; she nodded approvingly of the way I’d handled it. “The school doesn’t care if those girls play or not. Or even if they attend—under No Child Left Behind, Celine Jackman is dragging the test scores down, so they’d have been just as happy if you kicked her out, but basketball’s her lifeline. Don’t let her get suspended if you can help it.” She stopped to catch her breath, then added, “You’re not making any of that tofu slop, are you?”

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“No, ma’am.” When I first started cooking for her, I’d tried making her miso soup with tofu, thinking it would be easier for her to digest, and maybe help her get some strength back, but she’d hated it. She was a meat-andpotatoes woman through and through, and if she couldn’t eat much of her pot roast these days she still enjoyed it more than tofu slop. While she slowly ate as much of the meal as she could manage, I went to the bedroom to change her sheets. She hated my seeing the blood and pus in her bed, so we both pretended I didn’t know it was there. On days when she was too weak to get out of bed, her embarrassment at the condition of the linens was more painful than the tumors themselves. While I bundled everything into a bag for the laundry service, I glanced at the books she’d been reading. One of Lindsay Davis’s Roman mysteries. The most recent volume of LBJ’s biography. A collection of Latin crossword puzzles—all the clues were in Latin, no English hints at all. It was only her body that was failing. When I got back to the kitchen, I told her Rose Dorrado’s story. “You know everyone in South Chicago. You know Zamar? Is he likely to sabotage his own factory?” “Frank Zamar?” She shook her head. “I don’t know that kind of thing about anyone, Victoria. People down here get desperate, and they do the things desperate people do. I don’t think he’d hurt anyone, though: if he’s trying to destroy his own plant, he won’t do it while any of his employees are on the premises.” “He have kids in the school?” “He doesn’t have a family, as far as I know. Lives on the East Side, used to be with his mother, but she’s been gone three, four years now. Quiet man, fifty-something. Last year he donated uniforms to our program. Josie’s mom probably put him up to it. That’s how I met him at all— Rose Dorrado got him to come watch Julia play. That’s Josie’s sister, you know. She was my best player, maybe

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since you were in school, until she had the kid. Now her life’s unraveled, she doesn’t even come to school.” I slapped the sponge against the counter hard enough to bounce it across the room. “These girls and their babies! I grew up in that neighborhood, I went to that high school. There were always some girls who got pregnant, but nothing like what I’m seeing down here now.” Mary Ann sighed. “I know. If I knew how to stop them I would. Girls in your generation weren’t so sexually active so young, for one thing, and you had more possibilities in front of you.” “I don’t remember too many kids in my class going to college,” I said. She paused, catching her breath. “Not what I mean. Even the ones who only wanted to get married and raise a family down there, they knew their husbands would work, there were good jobs. Heck, there were jobs. Now no one feels they have a future. Men who used to make thirty dollars an hour at U.S. Steel are lucky to work for a quarter of that at By-Smart.” “I tried to talk to your center, Sancia, about birth control—I mean, she already has the two babies. Her boyfriend hangs around during practice; he looks like he’s at least twenty-five, but if the word work has ever crossed his mind he’s dismissed it as something in a foreign language, probably obsolete. Anyway, I suggested if Sancia was going to stay sexually active it would help her chances in school and in life if she didn’t have any more children, but her mother came over to me the next day and told me she would yank her daughter out of basketball if I talked any more about birth control to the team, but—I can’t leave them lurching around in ignorance, can I?” “I’d be glad if every kid in that school practiced abstinence, believe me,” Mary Ann said bluntly, “but since that’s as likely as the dinosaurs reviving, they should have reliable information about contraception. But you can’t go giving it to them unsolicited. Trouble is, Sancia’s mother

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goes to a Pentecostal church that believes if you use birth control you go to hell.” “But—” “Don’t argue with me about it, and don’t, for heaven’s sake, argue with the kids. They take their faith very seriously in those storefront churches. You see them reading their Bibles before practice?” “Another change from my youth,” I said wryly, “the mass defection of Latinos from mass. I’ve read about it, of course, but hadn’t experienced it before. And they don’t seem to have a problem proselytizing among some of the other girls on the team—I’ve had to break that up once or twice.” Mary Ann showed her strong teeth in a grin. “It’s hard work being a teacher these days—what you can talk about, what you can’t, what can get you and the school sucked into a lawsuit. Still, Rose Dorrado is a more practical mom than Sancia’s mother. Since Julia’s baby, she’s been on Josie like a hawk, checking who she sees after school, not letting her go out alone with any of the boys. Rose wants that kid in college. April’s folks are pushing her, too.” “Come on!” I protested. “If Romeo—Bron—Czernin has one thought above his zipper, it’s about himself.” “Her mother, then,” Mary Ann conceded. “She’s determined that her kid is going to get out of South Chicago. She tolerates the basketball in case it gets April a scholarship, but she’s probably one of a dozen parents in that school sitting on the kid’s head and making her do homework every night.” The long conversation had worn out my coach. I helped her back into bed, took Scurry for a walk around the block, and then went north to deal with my own dogs. My downstairs neighbor had let them out, but I drove to the lake so they could run. I took Mitch and Peppy up with me to Morrell’s, where I left them when I got up the next morning at five to return to the South Side. Even though the city was still shrouded in the mantle of night, the expressway was already busy—although, when is

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it ever not? Trucks, anxious people getting to the early shift, detectives looking for who knows what, filled the ten lanes. It was only when I exited at Eighty-seventh Street and headed east that the streets became quiet. Fly the Flag stood against the embankment of the Skyway on South Chicago Avenue. I suppose there was a time when the avenue was full of active, prospering factories and shops, but I couldn’t remember it. Unlike the Skyway overhead, where traffic was thick with commuters from northwest Indiana, the avenue was deserted. A few cars were not so much parked as abandoned along the curbs, hoods sprung or axles reeling at odd angles. I left my Mustang on a side street so it wouldn’t stand out among the wrecks, and walked two blocks south to Fly the Flag. Only a CTA bus, grinding slowly north like a bear lumbering into the wind, passed me. Except for an iron works, whose locked yard protected a modern sprawling plant, most of the buildings I passed looked as though only some defiant opposition to gravity kept them upright. Windows were missing or were boarded over; strips of aluminum waved in the wind. It’s a sign of the neighborhood’s desperate job shortage that people will work in these collapsing structures. To my surprise, Fly the Flag didn’t share the general decay along the avenue. Rose Dorrado’s story had half persuaded me that Frank Zamar was engineering his company’s demise himself, but, if he was, I’d have expected him to let the plant itself run down: a lot of arson is caused by malign neglect—letting buildings carry more power than their wiring can stand, not repairing frayed wires, letting garbage accumulate in strategic corners—rather than outright torching. At least from the outside, Fly the Flag looked in good shape. Flashlight in hand, I made my way around the exterior. The yard was small, big enough for an eighteen-wheeler to maneuver in if necessary, but not for much more than that. A drive led down to a basem*nt-level loading dock; there were two ground-level entrances.

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I walked all the way around the building, looking for holes in the foundation, looking for cuts in the electric cable and gas line leading into the plant, or for footprints in the damp ground, but didn’t see anything unusual. All of the entrances were locked; when I probed with my picklocks, I didn’t feel any obstructions. I looked at my watch: six-oh-seven. Flashlight trained on the lock, I used my picks to open the rear door. Someone from the Skyway might see me, but I doubted anyone up there cared enough about life down here to call the cops. Inside the plant, the layout was pretty simple: a large open floor where the giant cutting and pressing machines stood, long tables where people sewed, all dominated by the biggest American flag I’d ever seen. When I shone my flashlight up on it, the stripes looked so soft and rich I wanted to touch them. By climbing up on a tabletop and stretching up a hand, I could just reach the bottom stripe. It felt like a silken velvet, so voluptuous that I wanted to hug it to myself. The careful stitching along the stripes showed the workers believed in the slogan they’d posted above it: “We Fly the Flag Proudly.” I jumped down and wiped my footprints from the table before continuing to explore. In one corner, space had grudgingly been given over to a tiny canteen, a dirty toilet, and a minute office where Frank Zamar did his paperwork. In an alcove next to the canteen stood a row of beatup metal lockers, enough that I guessed they must be for employees to store their personal things in during the day. On the other side of the room, an open-sided service elevator went down to the basem*nt. I used its hand crank to lower myself. The front opened onto the dock; the rear to the storeroom where bolts of fabric were kept. There were hundreds of bolts of all different colors and long spools of braid, even a wire cage holding flagpoles of different lengths. Everything the compleat flag producer required. It was after six-thirty now, not enough time to check Zamar’s office before Rose Dorrado showed up to prove her zeal as an employee. I wondered idly if she had glued

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the locks herself: she could be trying to prove she was indispensable by protecting the plant from saboteurs. Collecting enough dead rats to stink up the heating vents seemed like a horrible job, but I supposed it all depended on how determined you were. I saw a set of iron stairs leading to the main floor and was starting up them when I heard a noise above me, a thud of the kind a door makes when it closes. If it was Rose Dorrado, I was okay, but if not—I turned off the flashlight, sticking it in my pack, and crept upward by feel. I could hear footsteps; when my eyes were level with the floor, my view was blocked by a giant sewing machine, but I could see a cone of light wobbling around the worktables— someone picking their way. If it was someone with a legitimate reason to be there, they would have switched on the fluorescent overheads. A pair of high-tops appeared around the edge of the sewing machine, laces slapping against the floor. An amateur: a pro would have tied his shoes. I ducked down. My picklocks jangled against the iron banister. The feet above me froze, turned, and started running. I jumped up the stairs and reached the intruder just as he was opening the door. He flung his flashlight at me. I ducked a second too late and reeled as it hit the top of my head. By the time I regained my balance and got out the fire exit after him, he had cleared the fence and was scrambling up the embankment toward the Skyway. I followed him, but I was too far behind to bother trying to climb the fence; he was already hoisting himself over the concrete barricade next to the road. I heard horns blaring, and the raw screech of skidding tires, and then the roar of engines as the traffic came back to life. If he hadn’t cleared all six lanes, I’d hear sirens soon. When a couple of minutes passed without them, I turned and went back down the hill. It was close to seven now; the morning shift should be arriving. I trudged across the muddy ground, reflexively rubbing the sore spot where the flashlight had hit my head.

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As I turned around the corner of the building, heading toward the front, I could see Rose Dorrado crossing the yard, her red hair standing out like a flare in the dull day. By the time I got to the main entrance, Rose had the front unlocked and was already inside. A few other people were coming through the gate into the yard, talking quietly to each other. They looked at me without much curiosity as they passed. I found Rose at the metal lockers, pulling out a blue smock and hanging up her coat. The inside of her locker was pasted with Bible verses. Her lips were moving, perhaps in prayer, and I waited for her to finish before tapping her shoulder. She looked at me, surprised and pleased. “You got here early! You can talk to people before Mr. Zamar shows up.” “Someone else was here early, a youngish man. I didn’t get a good look, but maybe in his early twenties. Tall, but his cap was pulled down too low for me to see his face. He had a thin mustache.” Rose frowned in worry. “Some man was here trying to do something? It’s what I said, it’s what I tried to warn Mr. Zamar about. Why didn’t you stop him?” “I tried, but he was too fast for me. We could call the police, see if he left fingerprints—” “Only if Mr. Zamar says it’s all right. What was he trying to do, this man?” I shook my head. “I don’t know that, either. He heard me and ran off, but I think he was heading for the stairs down to the basem*nt. What’s there, besides all the fabric?” She was too upset to wonder how I knew about the fabric in the basem*nt, or to question where I had been when the intruder heard me. “Everything. You know, the boiler, the drying room, the dry-cleaning room, everything for running the factory, it’s all down there. Dios, we can’t be safe now? We have to keep worrying is someone in here planting a bomb in the morning?”

9 The Fog of . . . What?

usiness is full of risks. I can handle this fine without you butting in.” Frank Zamar’s stubby hands moved restlessly over his desk, like birds uneasy about landing on a branch. “According to Rose, you’ve had quite a history of sabotage in the last few weeks: rats in the heating ducts, Krazy Glue in the door locks, and now someone breaking in at six this morning. Aren’t you worried about what’s going on?” “Rose means well, I know she does, but she had no right to call you in.” I looked at him in exasperation. “So you’d rather let your plant go up in smoke than figure out who is doing this, or why?” “No one’s going to burn up my plant.” His square face sagged around the corners; the bravado of his words wasn’t matched by the worry in his eyes. “Do you have the local gangb*ngers so pissed off at you that you’re scared to report them? Is this about ‘protection’ payoffs, Zamar?” “No, it damn well isn’t about paying protection.” He slapped the desk for emphasis, but I wasn’t convinced. “I’d like to talk to your crew, to see if anyone seems to be hiding something. Or maybe they have an idea about the guy who broke into the plant this morning.”

“B

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“No way do you talk to any of my workers! Who told you to mind my business, anyway? You think I’m going to pay you for lurking around my factory?” He was muttering his complaints, not shouting, which seemed ominous to me: a man afraid of what I would learn. I nodded, though, at his words: no one was going to pay me for spending my time at Fly the Flag. As I stood to leave, I said casually, “You wouldn’t be doing this yourself, would you?” “Doing what—you mean, putting dead rats in my own heating system? You are crazy, you, you—nosy bitch! Why would I do such an insane thing?” “You laid off eleven people this fall. Your business is in trouble. You wouldn’t be the first person to try to sell your plant to the insurance company—solve a lot of problems, wouldn’t it, if sabotage forced you out of business.” “I laid people off because of the economy. As soon as the economy improves, I’ll hire them back. Now get out of here.” I took a card out of my bag and laid it on his desk. “Call me when you decide you can tell me who has you so scared you won’t even protect your own business.” I left the office and walked across the floor to where Rose was stitching an intricate gold logo onto an outsize navy banner. She looked up at me but didn’t stop moving the heavy fabric through the machine. The racket on the floor was intense, what with the sewing machines, the giant electric shears, and the industrial steam pressers; I squatted so I could yell directly into her ear. “He claims nothing’s going on, despite the evidence. He’s scared of someone or something, too scared to talk about it, in my opinion. Do you have any idea what that could be?” She shook her head, her eyes on the work in front of her. “He says it’s not gang protection. Do you believe that?” She hunched a shoulder, not breaking the quick movement of her hands as they guided the needle through the appliqué. “You know this neighborhood. You know there

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are a lot of street gangs down here. The Pentas, the Latin Kings, the Lions, any of them could do anything bad. But usually they’re more—more violent than this—they would break the windows, something like that, not put glue in the locks.” “And how did the guy get in this morning?” Maybe I’d left the back door open when I undid the lock this morning: I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t swear to it a hundred percent, either. “Who has keys besides Zamar?” “The foremen—Larry Ballatra, he’s the day man, and Joey Husack, he’s the second shift.” “And you, right, since you often come in early?” Her lips moved in a nervous smile. “Yes, but me, I’m not trying to hurt the plant, I’m trying to keep it open.” “Or trying to get Zamar to think you’re indispensable, so he doesn’t let you go in the next round of job cuts.” For the first time her hands slowed and she didn’t feed the fabric through fast enough. She hissed a curse at me as it bunched up under the needle. “Now look what you’ve made me do. And how can you say such things? You’re Josie’s coach! She trusts you. I trusted you.” A hand suddenly gripped my shoulder and yanked me to my feet. The noise from the machines had been so loud I hadn’t heard the foreman come up behind me. Although he was holding me, he spoke to Rose Dorrado. “Rose, since when do you have the right to have guests at your workstation? You better not be short when the day ends.” “I won’t be,” Rose said, her face still red with anger. “And she’s not a guest, she’s a detective.” “Who you invited into the plant! She doesn’t belong in here. The boss told her to get out, so what business you got talking to her?” He shook my shoulder. “The boss told you to leave, now you’re going to leave.” He frog-marched me to the door and pushed me outside so hard that I stumbled against a man who was crossing the apron to the front door. “Steady there, steady there.” He caught me and held me

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upright. “You’re not drinking on the job, are you, my sister?” “No, my brother, not today, although, at the moment, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.” I backed away from him and dusted my shoulders where the foreman had gripped them. He looked startled, then concerned. “You have been fired, perhaps?” He had a slight Hispanic accent, whether Mexican, Puerto Rican, or even Spanish, I was too ignorant to know. Like much of the work crew, he was a swarthy, thickset man, but his somber suit and tie didn’t belong in a factory. “I’m an investigator, whom Mr. Zamar doesn’t want to hire, or even talk to. Do you know about the attempts to sabotage the plant?” When the man nodded, I asked what he knew about it. “Only that some members of the community are concerned. Has there been another episode today?” I looked at him narrowly, wondering how trustable he was—but, after all, if he knew anything about this morning’s intruder I wasn’t going to give him news by discussing it. When I told him what I’d seen, he only said that Mr. Zamar had many problems, that he couldn’t afford to lose the factory. “Why won’t he call in the cops?” I demanded. “If I knew that, I would be a wise man. But I will ask him.” “And if he answers, do me a favor and let me in on the secret.” I pulled one of my cards from my case and handed it to him. “V. I. Warshawski.” He read my name carefully. “And I am Robert Andrés. Good day, Sister Warshawski.” We shook hands on his odd and formal greeting. Even though I spent the rest of the day on work for my paying clients, my mind kept wandering back to Frank Zamar and Fly the Flag. I worried that I had needlessly alienated Rose by suggesting she could be the saboteur. Before I met Zamar it had seemed possible to me, because she was so

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worried about her job that she might want to prove she was indispensable: there she was, arriving early, finding rats in the air ducts, summoning help—even hiring a detective! Who could fire such a zealous employee? Now that I’d seen Zamar, I didn’t really believe Rose was involved. Something was worrying him too badly about all these episodes. The man I’d stumbled into at the entrance, Robert Andrés, he might know; I should have gotten his phone number. I’d been too busy feeling angry and humiliated by the foreman tossing me out to take care of fundamentals. Maybe Zamar was in love with Rose and worried because he thought she was responsible. Or Rose’s daughter with the baby, Julia—he’d donated warm-up jackets, he used to watch her play. Could he be the baby’s father? Was Rose going to destroy Fly the Flag to punish him for that? “Give it up, Warshawski,” I said out loud. “Any more like that and you’ll be writing scripts for Jerry Springer.” I was in the western suburbs, looking for a woman who had abandoned a safe-deposit box holding eight million dollars in bearer bonds, and I needed to put all my attention on that project. I located her daughter and son-in-law, who seemed to me to know more than they wanted to say. My client managed the little deli belonging to the woman—she’d gotten worried when the owner suddenly disappeared. A little before three, I finally found the woman in a nursing home where she’d been involuntarily committed. I talked to my client, who rushed out west with a lawyer. I was tired but triumphant as I raced back to South Chicago for my team’s makeup practice. The girls played well, pleased with their clean gym. For the first time, they actually looked like a team—maybe the fight really had brought them together. We did a short workout, and they left with their heads up, triumphant from my praise—and their pleasure in their own ability. On my way home, while I sat motionless in the rush hour traffic, I called my answering service to pick up my messages. To my astonishment, I had one from Billy the Kid. When I

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reached him on his own mobile phone, he stammered that he’d told his grandfather about me and the Bertha Palmer basketball program. If I wanted, I could go to corporate headquarters in the morning to sit in on the prayer meeting that would start the day. “If Grandpa has time, he’ll talk to you afterward. He couldn’t promise me he’d see you, or do anything for you, but he did say you could come out there. The only thing is, you have to be there by around seven-fifteen.” “Great,” I said with a heartiness I was far from feeling. Even though I’m often up early, I’ve never been as big a cheerleader for mornings as Benjamin Franklin was. I asked young Billy for directions to the Rolling Meadows office. He spelled these out for me. “I’m actually going to be there myself, Ms. War-sha-sky, because I’m helping a little with the service. The pastor is coming up from Mount Ararat Church of Holiness, you know, the one where my home church is doing the exchange, to preach the morning service. Aunt Jacqui will probably be there, too, so it’s not like everyone will be a stranger. Anyway, I’ll call Herman, he’s the guard on the morning shift, he’ll know to let you in. And Grandpa’s secretary, I’ll let her know, just in case, you know, in case Grandpa has time to talk to you. How’s the basketball team doing?” “They’re working hard, Billy, but of course they don’t start playing other teams until New Year’s.” “What about, uh, Sancia, and, uh, Josie?” “What about them?” I asked. “Well, you know, they go to Mount Ararat, and, well, how are they doing?” “Okay, I guess,” I said slowly, wondering if I could enlist Billy’s help in tutoring Josie: if she was going to go to college, she’d need extra help. But I didn’t know what kind of a student he’d been himself, and I didn’t want to start a conversation like that in the middle of the expressway. “So can I come over sometime and watch them practice? Josie said you’re real strict about not letting boys in the gym.”

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I told him we might find a way to make an exception if he could get off work early some afternoon, and ended the conversation with a warm thanks for getting me into his grandfather’s office. Even if it did mean getting up again at five so I could trek across Chicagoland. When he’d hung up, I thought again about my time with Rose Dorrado this morning. I had handled the whole situation badly, and I needed to apologize to her. It was Josie who answered the phone. I could hear Baby María Inés squalling close at hand, and before she answered she yelled at her sister to take the child. “It’s your baby, Julia, you do some of the work for a change . . . Hello? Oh, Coach, oh!” “Josie, hi. Is your mom there? I’d like to talk to her.” She was silent for a moment. “She hasn’t come home yet.” I eyed a beat-up Chevy that wanted to muscle in front of me, and eased up to make room for it. “I went to the factory this morning; did she tell you that?” “I haven’t seen her since breakfast, Coach, and now I got to figure out how to make dinner for my brothers, and everything.” The worried undertone in her voice got through to me. “Are you worried that something’s happened to her?” “No-o, I guess not. She called and all, she say she going—I mean, she said she had something else to do, maybe extra work, I guess, but she don’t say what, just help out with the boys’ supper, and, you know. But I already get their breakfast, ’cause Ma leaves for work before we get up, and now the baby is crying, Julia won’t help, and I got my science project.” I could picture the crowded apartment. “Josie, put the baby to bed. She can cry for a while without it doing her any harm. Unplug the TV and do your science project in the living room. Your brothers are big enough they can open a can of something, and they can play with their Power Rangers in the dining room. You got a microwave? No? Well, you got a can of soup? Heat it up on the stove and let them eat. Your education comes first. Okay?”

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“Uh, okay, I guess. But what am I going to do if this keeps on?” “Will it?” A semi honked at me; I’d lost track of the traffic, and a big gap had opened in front of me. “If she got another job, it will.” “I’ll talk to your mom about it. I need to, anyway. Can you write down my number? Tell her to call me when she gets in.” When she’d repeated my cell phone number, I reiterated my message. Before I hung up, I heard her yelling at her sister that she could look after María Inés or Josie was going to put her to bed. I guess I’d done one good deed for the day—two, if I counted finding my client’s missing employer. When I reached Morrell’s, the dogs danced around me, as ecstatic as if it had been twelve months, not twelve hours, since we last met. Morrell told me proudly that he had taken them over to the lake—a real feat: he hadn’t been able to walk up the single flight of stairs to his condo when I brought him back from Zurich seven weeks ago. He still needed a cane to walk, and Mitch had challenged Morrell’s balance several times; he’d had to lie down for an hour after the exertion, but he’d managed the four blocks there and back without mishap, and didn’t seem any worse for the outing. “We’ll celebrate,” I said enthusiastically. “I outdid Sherlock Holmes today, at least this afternoon, and you outdid Hillary on Everest. Are you up to another excursion, or shall I go get something?” He was not only fit enough to go out but eager: we hadn’t had an evening together for a long time. While I was in showering and changing, Marcena returned. When I got out, she was sitting on a couch with a bottle of beer, fondling Mitch’s ears. He thumped his tail gently when I came into the room, to acknowledge that he knew me, but he was looking at Marcena with an expression of idiotic bliss. I should have realized she’d be as good with dogs as with everything else.

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She lifted her beer bottle to me in a toast. “How are the budding athletes?” “Coming along. Actually, they were fighting over you on Monday: they missed you. You coming back any time soon?” “I’ll try to get over to the school one of these afternoons. The last few days, I’ve been doing research in the community.” She grinned provocatively. “Thus intensifying the conflict on the court,” I said drily. “Just so you know, South Chicago is the kind of small community where everyone minds their neighbors’ business.” She gave me a mocking bow of thanks. “Really, Marci,” Morrell said, “you want to write about these people. You can’t stir them up and create the story just so you have something dramatic to cover.” “Of course not, darling, but is it my fault if they pay too much attention to me? I’m trying to see the nuts and bolts of the community. I’m doing other things, though: I’m trying to get the head office to let me interview old Mr. Bysen. He never talks to the press, his secretary told me, so I’m trying to find a different angle. I thought about pitching your basketball program as an entrée, Vic.” “Actually, my basketball program has gained me an entrée of my own,” I said airily. “I’m going out to morning prayers tomorrow.” Her eyes widened. “Do you think—oh, help, wait a second.” Her cell phone had started to ring. She fished it out of the cushions. Mitch pawed her leg, annoyed that she’d abandoned him, but she ignored him. “Yes? . . . Yes . . . She did? Really, how funny! What did he do? . . . Oh, bad luck. What do you do now? . . . You are? Are you sure that’s a good idea? . . . What, now? . . . Oh, all right, why not. In forty-five minutes, then.” She hung up, her eyes sparkling. “Speaking of South Chicago, that was one of my community contacts. There’s a meeting I want to sit in on, so I’ll leave you two for an evening of private bliss. But, Vic, I want to go with you in the morning.”

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“I suppose,” I said doubtfully, “but I’m going to take off at six-thirty—I was told to be there by seven-fifteen, and I don’t want to blow a chance to talk to Buffalo Bill.” “Buffalo Bill? Is that what they call him? Oh, of course, because he’s a bison. No problem. What time will you be getting up? That early? If I’m not out here by six, come get me, okay?” “There is an alarm next to the bed,” I said, annoyed. She flashed a wide smile. “But I may not hear it if I get in too late.” Five minutes later, she was gone. Morrell and I went down to Devon Avenue for samosas and curry, but I found it hard to recapture my earlier celebratory mood.

10 Unions? Not a Prayer!

eavenly Father, Your power fills us with awe, and yet You condescend to love us. Your love pours down on us constantly and as its proof, You sent us Your darling Son as a precious gift to bring us close to You.” Pastor Andrés’s public voice was deep and rumbly; with the mike overamplifying him, and the faint Hispanic accent, he was hard to understand. At first I strained to follow him, but now my attention wandered. When Andrés first came into the meeting room with Billy the Kid, I’d been startled enough to wake up for a moment: the pastor was the man I’d bumped into yesterday morning at Fly the Flag—the one who wondered if I were drunk at nine in the morning. His church, Mt. Ararat Church of Holiness in Zion, was where Rose Dorrado and her children worshiped. I knew the ministers at these fundamentalist churches wielded tremendous authority in the lives of their congregations; maybe Rose had confided her fears about sabotage to Andrés. And maybe, in turn, Andrés had persuaded the plant owner to explain why he wouldn’t bring in the cops to investigate the sabotage. It wasn’t possible to squeeze past all the people between me and the front of the room to talk to him before the service; I’d intercept him on his way out at the end. If the service ever did end. Every now and then, what seemed to

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be an approaching climax jerked me briefly awake, but the pastor’s deep voice and accent were a perfect lullaby, and I would drift off again. “With Your Son, You show us the way and the truth and the light, with Him at our head we will move through all life’s obstacles to that glorious place where we will know no obstacles, no grief, where You will wipe away all our tears.” Nearby, other heads were nodding, or eyes shifting to wristwatches, the way we used surreptitiously to peek at each other’s test papers in high school, all the time imagining no one could tell our eyes weren’t glued to our own desktops. In the front row, Aunt Jacqui had her hands folded piously in prayer, but I caught a glimpse of her thumbs moving on some handheld device. Today, she was wearing a severe black dress that didn’t quite match the evangelical mood of the meeting, despite its color: it was cinched tightly to show off her slim waist, and the buttons down the front ended around her thighs, allowing me to see that the design on her panty hose went all the way up her legs. Next to me Marcena was sleeping in earnest, her breath coming in quiet little puffs, but her head bobbed forward as if she were nodding in prayer—no doubt a skill she’d learned at her fancy girls’ school in England. When we’d left Morrell’s condo at six-thirty, her face was gray and drawn; she’d slumped in the passenger seat, groaning. “I can’t believe I’m going to chapel at dawn after three hours’ sleep. This is like being back at Queen Margaret’s, trying to make the headmistress believe I hadn’t crept into hall after hours. Wake me when we’re ten minutes from By-Smart so I can put on my face.” I knew how little sleep she’d had, because I knew what time she’d gotten in last night: three-fifteen. And I knew that because Mitch had announced her arrival with considerable vigor. As soon as he started barking, Peppy joined in. Morrell and I lay in bed, arguing over who had to get out of bed to deal with them.

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“They’re your dogs,” Morrell said. “She’s your friend.” “Yeah, but she isn’t barking.” “Only in the sense of barking mad, and, anyway, she provoked them,” I grumbled, but it was still me who stumbled down the hall to quiet them. Marcena was in the kitchen, drinking another beer, and letting Mitch play tug-of-war with her gloves. Peppy was on the perimeter, dancing and snarling because she wasn’t included in the game. Marcena apologized for waking the house. “Stop playing with Mitch so I can get them to lie down and shut up,” I snapped. “What kind of meeting went on this late?” I took the gloves away from Mitch, and forced both dogs to lie down and stay. “Oh, we were inspecting community sites,” Marcena said, wiggling her eyebrows. “What time do we need to set out? It really takes almost an hour? If I’m not up by six, knock on the door, will you?” “If I remember.” I shuffled back to bed, where Morrell was already sound asleep again. I rolled over, hard, against him, but he only grunted and put an arm around me without waking up. I assumed from Marcena’s suggestive grin that site inspections meant she’d been out with Romeo Czernin in his big truck, having sex at the CID landfill golf course, or maybe the high school parking lot. What point was there in acting so cute about it? Because he was married, or because he was a blue-collar guy? It was as though she thought I was a prude whom this kind of teasing would both offend and titillate. Maybe because I’d told her the kids were talking about their affair, or whatever it should be called. “Let it go,” I whispered to myself in the dark. “Relax and let it go.” After a while I managed to doze off again. Morrell was still asleep when I got up at five-thirty to give the dogs a short run. When we got back from our dash to the lake, I opened the door to the spare room so Mitch

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and Peppy could wake Marcena while I showered. I put on the one business outfit I’d left at Morrell’s. It was a perfectly nice suit in an umber wool, but when Marcena appeared in a red-checked swing jacket I did look like a prude next to her. There’s no easy way to get from Morrell’s place by the lake to the vast sprawl beyond O’Hare where By-Smart had its headquarters. My own eyes sandy with fatigue, I threaded my way along the side streets, which were already full, even at this hour. I had the radio on, keeping awake to Scarlatti and Copeland, mixed in with ads and dire warnings about traffic mishaps. Marcena slept through it all, through the radio, through the woman in the Explorer who almost creamed us as she pulled out of her driveway without looking, the man in the Beemer who ran the red light at Golf Road, and then gave me the finger for honking. She even slept, or skillfully feigned sleep, when Rose Dorrado called me back around a quarter to seven. “Rose! I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I suggested you could be involved in sabotaging the plant; that was wrong of me.” “I don’t mind, you don’t need to mind.” She was mumbling, hard to hear over the traffic sounds. “I think—I think I worry for nothing about what is happening—a few accidents and I am imagining the worst.” I was so startled I let my attention slip from the road. A loud honking from the car to my left brought me back in a hurry. I pulled over to the curb. “What do you mean? Glue doesn’t fall accidentally into locks, and a sackful of rats doesn’t just drop into a ventilation system.” “I can’t explain how these things happen, but I can’t worry about them no more, so thanks for your trouble, but you need to leave the factory alone.” That sounded like a rehearsed script if ever I heard one, but she hung up before I could press her further. Anyway, I couldn’t afford to be late out here; I’d have to worry about Rose and Fly the Flag later.

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I gave Marcena’s shoulder a tap. She groaned again, but sat up and began putting herself together, putting on makeup, including mascara, and fishing her trademark red silk scarf out of her bag to knot under her collar. By the time we turned onto By-Smart Corporate Way, she looked as elegant as ever. I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror. Maybe mascara would further enhance the red in my eyes. By-Smart’s headquarters had been designed along the utilitarian lines of one of their own megastores and appeared as big, a huge box that overwhelmed a minute park around it. Like so many corporate parks, this one looked tawdry. The prairie had been stripped from the rolling hills, covered with concrete, and then a tiny bit of grass Scotchtaped in as an afterthought. By-Smart’s landscaper also included a little pond as a reminder of the wetlands that used to lie out here. Beyond the wedge of brown grass, the parking lot seemed to stretch for miles, its gray surface fading into the bleak fall sky. When we’d tapped our high-heeled way across the lot to the entrance, it was clear that the building’s utility stopped at its shape. It was constructed from some kind of pale gold stone, perhaps even marble, since that seemed to be what covered the lobby floor. The lobby walls were paneled in a rich red-gold wood, with amber blocks set into them here and there. I thought of the endless rows of snow shovels, flags, towels, ice-melt in the warehouse on Crandon, and Patrick Grobian, hoping to make the move out here from his dirty little office. Who could blame him, even if it meant sleeping with Aunt Jacqui? This early in the day, no receptionist sat behind the giant teak console, but a sullen-faced guard got up and demanded our business. “Are you Herman?” I asked. “Billy the Ki—young Billy Bysen invited me up for the morning prayer meeting.” “Oh, yes.” Herman’s face relaxed into a fatherly smile. “Yes, he told me a friend of his would be stopping by for the prayer meeting. He said you should go straight to the

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meeting room. This lady with you? Here, these passes are good for the day.” He handed over a couple of large pink badges labeled “Visitor,” with the day’s date stamped on them, without even asking for photo IDs. I didn’t think Herman’s sudden friendliness was because we knew a member of the family, but because Billy the Kid made the people around him happy and protective—I’d seen the same reaction in the truck drivers who’d been teasing him on Thursday night. Herman also handed us a map, marking the route to the meeting room for us. The building was constructed like the Merchandise Mart, or the Pentagon, with concentric corridors leading to labyrinths of cubicles. Although each corner had a black plastic tag identifying its location, we kept getting turned around and needing to retrace our steps. Or I kept getting turned around; Marcena stumbled blindly in my wake. “You going to pull yourself together before we meet Buffalo Bill?” I snarled. She smiled seraphically. “I always rise to the occasion. This one just doesn’t seem to need my best effort yet.” I bit back a retort: I couldn’t win at any sniping interchange. I knew I was on the right trail, or corridor, when we started meeting other people heading the same way we were. We got a lot of stares—strangers in the midst, women, to boot, in the midst of a sea of gray- and brownsuited men. When I double-checked that we were going the right direction, I found people assumed we were vendors from outside the company. I wondered if morning church was a required ritual for doing business with By-Smart. As we looked around for seats together, a woman whispered to me that the front row was reserved for the family and for senior officers of the company. Marcena said that was fine, the farther from the center of the action the better. We found two chairs together about ten rows back. When Billy the Kid had invited me to the prayer meeting, I’d pictured something like the Lady Chapel at a

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church where a friend of mine is in charge—statues of Mary, candles, crucifixes, an altar. Instead, we were in a nondescript room in the interior of the fourth floor, windowless except for the skylights. I saw later it was a kind of multipurpose room, smaller and less formal than the auditorium, where employees could hold exercise classes or other activities that weren’t exactly work related. This morning it was set up with chairs fanning out in concentric half circles from a blond wood table in the middle. Old Mr. Bysen arrived just before the session got under way, when everyone else was seated. A thickset man whose midsection had expanded in old age, he wasn’t fat, but certainly substantial. He carried a cane, but he still walked briskly, using the cane almost like a ski pole to propel himself along. An entourage, chiefly of men in the ubiquitous gray or brown, clustered in his wake. Billy the Kid, in jeans and a clean white shirt, entered with Andrés at the tail of the parade. His reddish-brown curls were slicked down heavily. In this room of gray-and-white men, Andrés’s dark skin stood out like a rose in a bowl of onions. There were a few women besides Marcena and me; one of them arrived in Bysen’s entourage. She appeared both deferential and self-assured—the perfect personal assistant. Her face was flat, like a skillet, and covered in heavy pancake. She was carrying a slim gold portfolio that she unzipped and left on the desktop, open so that both she and Bysen could see it. It was she who sat at Bysen’s right hand as the inner circle fanned out in the padded chairs; Aunt Jacqui, who arrived a few minutes later, only rated the front row. Morning service seemed to be where Bysen held court. Before the prayers started, a number of people came up to hold low-voiced conversations with him. The skillet-faced woman paid careful attention to them all, jotting notes into the gold portfolio. Besides the pastor and Billy the Kid, there were four other men at the table; people waiting for their moment with Bysen would engage with one or another of those

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four, but everyone, I noticed, had a smile and a quick word with Billy. At one point, he happened to catch sight of me in the audience; he gave his sweet shy smile and a little wave, and I felt momentarily cheerier. After about fifteen minutes of attending his vassals, Bysen nodded at the woman, who put away her portfolio. This was the signal for everyone to get back to their chairs. Billy, blushing with importance, got up to introduce the pastor from Mt. Ararat, with a few words about his own involvement in South Chicago, and how important church life, and Pastor Andrés’s work, were for that community. Andrés gave an invocation, and Billy read a passage from the Bible, the bit about the rich man with the unfaithful steward. When he’d finished, he took a seat near his grandfather. We started with prayers for everyone involved in BySmart’s far-flung enterprises, petitions for the wisdom of management to make good decisions, petitions for the workers here and abroad, for the strength to do what was required of them. As Pastor Andrés moved into his address and the rest of us dozed, Bysen kept his attention fixed on the minister, his heavy brows twitching. I was dozing myself when the tempo of Andrés’s voice picked up. His voice became louder, more declamatory. I sat up to pay attention to his conclusion. “When Jesus talks about the steward who has misused his master’s gifts, He is talking to us all. We are all His stewards, and to those whom the most is given, from them is the most expected. Heavenly Father, You have bestowed on this company, on the family who owns it, very great gifts indeed. We beseech You in Your Son’s name to help them remember they are Your stewards only. Help everyone in this vast company to remember that. Help them to use Your gifts wisely, for the betterment of all who work for them. Your Son taught us to pray ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ The success of By-Smart leaves much temptation in its path, the temptation to forget that many who labor are heavy-laden, that they will present

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themselves to Your Son with many, many tears for Him to wipe away. Help everyone who works here in this great company to remember the lowest in our midst, to remember they have the same divine spark, the same right to life, the same right to a just return for the fruits of their labor—” A loud clatter startled me. Mr. Bysen had pushed himself out of his chair, shoving his walking stick so that it had bounced on the floor. One of the gray men at the table jumped to his feet and took the old man’s arm, but Bysen shook him off angrily and pointed to the stick. The man stooped for it and handed it to Bysen, who stumped toward the exit. The skillet-faced woman quickly slid the gold portfolio under her arm and followed him, catching up with him before he reached the door. In the audience, everyone had woken up and was sitting straighter in the uncomfortable chairs. A buzz went through the room, like wind through prairie grasses. Marcena, who’d jerked awake at the commotion, nudged me and demanded to know what was going on. I shrugged in incomprehension, watching the man who’d retrieved Bysen’s stick: he was having an angry conversation with Billy the Kid. Pastor Andrés stood with his arms crossed, looking nervous but belligerent. Billy, scarletfaced, said something that made the older man fling his arms up in exasperation. He turned his back on Billy and told the rest of us that the service had been going on longer than usual. “We all have meetings and other important projects to attend to, so let’s end by bowing our heads for a minute, and asking God’s blessing on us as we try to face the many challenges we encounter. As Pastor Andrés reminds us, we are all only stewards of God’s great gifts, we all carry heavy burdens, we all can use divine help on every step of our journey. Let us pray.” I bowed my head dutifully with the rest of the room, but glanced at Aunt Jacqui from under my eyelashes. Her head was lowered, her hands were still, but she was smiling in a

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secretive, gloating way. Because she wanted Billy to be on the hot seat with his grandfather? Or because she enjoyed turmoil for its own sake? We sat silently for about twenty seconds, until the grayhaired man announced “Amen,” and strode to the exit. As soon as he was gone, the rest of us burst into excited conversation. “Who was that?” I asked the woman on my left, who was checking her cell phone as she got up to leave. “Mr. Bysen.” She was so astonished I didn’t know that she sat back down. “Not him. The man who finished the service just now, the one arguing with Billy the—with young Billy Bysen.” “Oh—that’s young Mr. William. Billy’s father. I guess he wasn’t too pleased with the minister Billy brought up from the South Side. I see you’re a visitor—are you one of our suppliers?” I smiled and shook my head. “Just an acquaintance of young Billy from South Chicago. He invited me here today. Why was Mr. Bysen so upset by Pastor Andrés’s remarks?” She looked at me suspiciously. “Are you a journalist?” “Nope. I coach basketball at a high school on the South Side.” Marcena was leaning across me to listen in on the conversation, her nifty little fountain-pen recorder in her hand; at the journalism question, she gave a wolfish smile and said, “I’m just a visitor from England, so the whole thing was confusing to me. And I had trouble understanding the pastor’s accent.” The woman nodded condescendingly. “You probably don’t get too many undocumented Mexicans in England, but we see a lot of them here. Anyone could have told young Billy that his grandfather wouldn’t enjoy hearing that kind of message, even if the pastor had delivered it in plain English.” “Is he Mexican?” I asked. “I wasn’t sure from the accent.” Marcena kicked my shin, meaning, they’re giving us information, don’t get their backs up.

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Our informant gave a meaningless laugh. “Mexico, El Salvador, it’s all the same thing; they all come to this country thinking they have a right to a free lunch.” A man in front of us turned around. “Oh, Buffalo Bill will get that nonsense out of Billy’s system fast enough. It’s why he sent the Kid down to South Chicago.” “But what nonsense?” Marcena looked and sounded hopelessly ignorant; she was almost batting her eyelashes. What a pro. “Didn’t you hear him talking about workers and the fruits of their labors?” the man said. “Sounded a lot like union organizing, and we won’t stand for that at By-Smart. Billy knows that as well as the rest of us.” I looked to the front of the room, where Andrés was still talking to Billy. With his short, square body, he did look more like a construction worker than a minister. I suppose he could have been a union organizer: a lot of the little churches on the South Side can’t support a pastor, and the staff have to work regular jobs during the week. But would Billy have really tried to bring an organizer into Buffalo Bill’s prayer service? The impression I’d gotten last Thursday had been that Billy loved his grandfather, that he thought only the best of him. Billy clearly also was attached to Andrés; as the room cleared, he’d stayed next to Andrés, and his posture suggested embarrassment and apology. As I watched, the pastor put a hand on the young man’s shoulder, and the two of them made their way out. I suddenly remembered my own mission with Andrés. Calling out that I’d be back in a minute, I threaded my way through the chairs and sprinted after them, but by the time I got to the far exit they had disappeared into the maze. I ran down the hall, checking different turns, but I’d lost them. When I got back to the meeting room, a couple of janitors were folding up the chairs, stacking them on pallets along the wall. When they’d finished with that, they opened a door and began pulling out exercise mats. A woman in

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leotard and tights carried in a large boom box; Aunt Jacqui, who’d disappeared when I was trying to find Andrés, came back into the room in her own exercise gear and began doing stretches that emphasized the smooth curve of her buttocks. The man who’d told us By-Smart wouldn’t allow unions followed my amazed gaze, his own resting on Jacqui’s rear end as she bent to the floor. “Aerobics meet here next. If you and your friend want to work out, you’d be welcome to stay.” “So By-Smart does it all,” Marcena laughed. “Prayers, push-ups, whatever employees need. How about physical sustenance? Can I get breakfast? I’m famished.” The man put his hand in the small of her back. “Come to the cafeteria with me. We all get a little hungry on church mornings.” As we followed our guide back through the maze, we could hear the boom box begin an insistent beat.

11 Home on the Range

ut, Grandpa, I wasn’t trying—” “In front of the entire workforce. I never thought you would have so little respect. Your sister, yes, but you, William, you I thought appreciated what I’ve spent my life building up here. I won’t have it torn down by some welfare cheat who doesn’t have the backbone to support himself and his family, so he needs to steal from me and mine.” “Grandpa, he’s not a welfare—” “I understand how it happened: like everyone else in the world, he saw how good-natured you are and took advantage of it. If that’s what goes on at that church, that Mount Ararat, it should change its name to Mount Error-rat, and you, my boy, should stay as far away from them as possible.” “But, Grandpa, it really isn’t like that. It’s about the community—” I was in the antechamber to Bysen’s office, the room where the secretaries guarded the great man’s gate. One of the inner doors wasn’t completely shut; Buffalo Bill’s bellow carried easily through the crack, as easily as it rode over young Billy’s efforts to explain himself. The big desk in the middle of the room was empty and I was heading toward the sound of battle when someone called to me from the corner. It was a thin, colorless woman

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at a small metal desk, doing things on a computer, demanding my name and business in the pinched nasal of the city’s old South Side. When I said that Billy had arranged a meeting for me with his grandfather, she flicked a nervous glance from the inner office to her computer screen, but answered the phone before responding to me. “I don’t see you in the book, miss, for having an appointment with Mr. Bysen.” “Billy probably thought he could take me directly to his grandfather after the service.” I smiled easily: I’m not threatening, I’m a team player. “Just a second.” She answered the phone again, putting her hand over the mouthpiece to speak to me. “You’ll have to talk to Mildred; I can’t authorize you to see Mr. Bysen without her say-so. You can sit down; she’ll be back in a minute.” The phone kept ringing. Her eye on me, the assistant said in her prim, nasal voice, “Mr. Bysen’s office . . . It really was not a big serious event, but if you need to talk to Mr. Bysen, Mildred will get back to you to set up a phone meeting.” I strolled around the room, looking at the pictures on the wall. Unlike most corporate offices, there wasn’t any art to speak of, just photographs of Bysen. He was greeting the president of the United States, he was laying a cornerstone for the thousandth By-Smart emporium, he was standing next to a World War II–vintage plane. At least, I guess it was Bysen—it was some young man in a leather helmet and goggles with his hand resting on one of the engines. I gazed at him intently, straining to hear the argument in the inner office. “Billy, there are a million sob stories and a million swindlers out there. If you’re going to take your place in this company, you’re going to have to learn how to recognize them and deal with them.” This time the speaker was the reedy, petulant baritone who’d dismissed us from the prayer service: Mr. William, dealing sternly with his impulsive son. I looked longingly at

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the crack in the door, but the woman in the corner appeared primed to leap up and tackle me if I made a false move. I wanted to go in before Marcena finished breakfast and joined me—I didn’t want her urge for an interview with Bysen to get in the way of my own agenda. And she was too skillful at getting people to notice her for me to have much hope of keeping Bysen’s attention once she’d joined us. She’d shown that again, when I left her in the cafeteria a few minutes ago—she’d persuaded the guy we’d been talking to to join her for a full cooked breakfast. Just as she had with the girls on the basketball team, Marcena understood how to make the guy (just call me Pete; I’m in procurement and whatever you want I can get it for you, hah, hah, hah) feel she was the perfect empathic listener. As they stood in front of the scrambled eggs, she had already gotten him to start talking about By-Smart’s history with union organizers. I could learn something from her about how to conduct interrogations. I’d looked wistfully at the eggs, but picked up a carton of yogurt to eat as I hunted for Buffalo Bill’s office: not only did I want to see him alone, I also wanted to get to him while young Billy was still on the premises. I was hoping that Grandpa would have enough tenderness for his grandson to overlook the regrettable lapse made by the preacher, and I knew I’d do better with the old man if the Kid were with me. From the sound of things, today was not going to be a good day for putting the bite on Grandpa. If a pastor preaching about fair labor practices was a welfare cheat, I hated to think what a bunch of girls who couldn’t afford their own coach would be called. However, the reedy baritone’s attack on Billy seemed to calm down the old man; I heard him rumble, “Grobian can put some backbone into Billy; that’s why he’s down in the warehouse.” “That doesn’t make it any better, Father. If he’s so naïve that some preacher can take advantage of him, he shouldn’t be out on his own in the field,” Mr. William said.

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At that point, so many voices jumped in at once that I couldn’t make out any individual sentences. Behind me, the phone kept ringing; the fracas at the service was apparently setting off seismic shocks around the company. As the assistant repeated her insistence that the sermon hadn’t been a big deal, a couple of men strode into the office. “Mildred?” the taller, older one called. “She’s in with Mr. Bysen, Mr. Rankin. Good morning, Mr. Roger. Do you want some coffee?” “We’ll go on in.” The shorter, younger one, Mr. Roger, was clearly another Bysen—unlike Mr. William, he looked strikingly like Buffalo Bill: the same stocky body, the same thick eyebrows and pincer-shaped nose. When the pair pushed open the door to the inner office, I followed them, ignoring a flustered protest from the corner. Bysen was standing in front of his desk with Billy, young Mr. William, and Mildred, the skillet-faced woman from the meeting. Another man, tall and thin like Mr. William, was with them, but the two I’d followed ignored everyone but Bysen and Billy. “Good morning, Father. Billy, what in hell were you thinking, bringing a rabble-rouser into the prayer meeting?” Again an attack on Billy by one of his grown sons made Bysen rise to the Kid’s defense. “It’s not as bad as all that, Roger. We’ll have to spend the morning putting out fires, is all—half the board has heard about it already. Bunch of silly old women: the stock dropped two-fifty on the rumor that we’re letting in the union.” He cuffed his grandson on the head. “Just a couple of guys with more zeal than forethought, that’s all. Billy says this spi—Mexican preacher isn’t a labor leader.” Billy was bright-eyed with emotion. “Pastor Andrés only cares about the welfare of the community, Uncle Roger. They have forty percent unemployment down there, so people have to take jobs—” “That’s neither here nor there,” William said. “Really,

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Father, you let Billy get away with murder. If Roger or Gary or I did something that drove the stock down that far, you’d be—” “Oh, it will come back up, it will come back up. Linus, you get onto the corporate communications staff? They good to go? Who is this? One of the speechwriters?” Everyone turned to look at me: the skillet-faced woman, who was standing next to Bysen’s desk with a laptop open in front of her, the two sons, the man named Linus. I smiled sunnily. “I’m V. I. Warshawski. Morning, Billy.” Billy’s face relaxed for the first time since his grandfather had stormed from the meeting. “Ms. War-sha-sky, I’m sorry I forgot about you. I should have waited for you after the meeting, but I wanted to escort Pastor Andrés to the parking lot. Grandpa, Father, this here is the lady I told you about.” “So you’re the social worker down at the high school, hnnh?” Buffalo Bill lowered his head at me like a bull about to charge. “I’m like you, Mr. Bysen: I grew up on the old South Side, but I haven’t lived there for a long time,” I said easily. “When I agreed to fill in as a basketball coach for the girls’ team, I was truly dismayed by the terrible changes in the neighborhood and at Bertha Palmer. When were you last in the school?” “Recently enough to know that those kids expect the government to hand them everything. When I was in school, we worked for—” “I know you did, sir: your work ethic is extraordinary, and your energy is an international byword.” He was so surprised at my riding over his harangue that he stared at me, openmouthed. “When I played on the Bertha Palmer team, the school could afford to pay a coach, it could afford to pay for our uniforms, it had a music program where my own mother taught, and boys like you got to go to college on the GI bill.” I paused, hoping he’d make a tiny connection between his own government-funded education and the kids on the

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South Side, but I didn’t see a dawning light of empathy in his face. “Now the school can’t afford any of these things. Basketball is one of the things—” “I don’t need a lecture from you or anyone, young woman, on what kids need or don’t need. I raised six of my own without any government help, hnnh, hnnh, and without any charity, hnnh, and if these kids had any spine, they’d do just like I did. Instead of littering the South Side with a bunch of babies they can’t feed, and then expecting me to buy them basketball shoes.” I felt such an impulse to slap his face that I turned my back on him and jammed my hands into my suit jacket pocket. “They’re really not like that, Grandpa,” Billy said behind me. “These girls work hard, they do the jobs they can get down there, at McDonald’s, or even at our store on Ninetyfifth, a lot of them work thirty hours a week to help their families besides trying to stay in school. I know if you saw them, you’d be really impressed. And they’re crazy about Ms. War-sha-sky, but she can’t stay on coaching down there.” Crazy about me? Was that what the girls at Mt. Ararat were saying, or was this Billy’s interpretation? I turned back around. “Billy, you keep sticking your naive nose into things you don’t know jack sh*t about.” The man who’d been in the room with Mr. William spoke for the first time. “Jacqui told me you had this insane idea that Father would bankroll your pet project; she says she warned you that he wouldn’t be the least bit interested, and now, on today of all days, when you’ve done your best to destroy our good name with our shareholders, you waste more valuable time by encouraging this social worker to come up here.” “Aunt Jacqui wouldn’t even listen to Ms. War-sha-sky, Uncle Gary, so I don’t know how she can figure out whether it’s a good proposal or not. She threw her copy out without even taking one look at it.” “It’s okay, Billy,” I said. “Do your folks understand I’m not a social worker? I’m doing volunteer work that I don’t

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have the skills for. Or the time. Since the government in the form of the Board of Education can’t hand the girls at Bertha Palmer the help they need, I’m hoping the private sector will pick up the slack. By-Smart is the biggest employer in the community, you have a history of helping out down there, and I’d like to encourage you to make the girls’ basketball team one of your programs. I’ll be glad to bring you down to one of our practices.” “My own girls do volunteer work,” Bysen observed. “Good for them, good for the community. I’m sure it’s good for you, hnnh?” “What about your sons?” I couldn’t resist asking. “They’re too busy helping run this business.” I smiled brightly. “My problem in a nutshell, Mr. Bysen. I own my own business, and I’m too busy running it to be an effective volunteer. Let me bring you down and show you the program. I know the high school would be thrilled if their most famous graduate came back for a visit.” “Yes, Grandpa, you should come with me. When you meet the girls—” “It would only encourage them to expect handouts,” Uncle Gary said. “And frankly, while we’re putting out the fire Billy created, we don’t have time for community work.” “Can’t you shut up about that for two minutes?” Billy cried out, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “Pastor Andrés is not a labor organizer. He only worries about all the people in his congregation who can’t do stuff we take for granted, like buy shoes for their children. And they work hard, I know they do, I see them at the warehouse every day. Aunt Jacqui and Pat sit in that back room calling them names, but these people are working fifty and sixty hours a week, and we could do better by them.” “It was a mistake to let you get so involved in that church down there, Billy,” Bysen said. “They see how goodhearted you are, so they’re playing on that, they’re telling you things about us, about the company, and about their own lives that are distortions. These people aren’t like us, they don’t believe in hard work the way we do, that’s why

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they depend on us for jobs. If we weren’t down in that community seeing they got a paycheck, they’d be loafing around on welfare, or gambling.” “Which they probably do, anyway,” Mr. Roger added. “Maybe we should take Billy out of the warehouse, send him to the Westchester or Northlake store.” “I’m not leaving South Chicago,” Billy said. “You all stand around acting like I’m nine, not nineteen, and you’re not even polite enough to talk to my guest, or offer her a chair or a cup of coffee. I don’t know what Grandma would say about that, but it’s not what she taught me all these years. All you care about is the stock price, not about the people who keep our company going. When we’re standing in front of the Judgment Seat, God won’t care about the stock price, you can count on that.” He shoved past his grandfather and uncles and stopped briefly to shake my hand, and assure me that he would talk to me in person. “I do have a trust fund, Ms. War-sha-sky, and I really care what happens to that program.” “You have a trust that doesn’t mature until you’re twenty-seven, and if this is how you behave we’ll make it thirty-five,” his father shouted. “Fine. Do you think I care? I can live on my paycheck like everyone else on the South Side.” Billy stormed from the office. “What’d you and Annie Lisa feed your kids, William?” Uncle Gary asked. “Candace is a junkie and Billy is an overwrought baby.” “Yeah, well, at least Annie Lisa raised a family. She doesn’t spend her life in front of a mirror trying on fivethousand-dollar outfits.” “Save it for the competition, boys,” Buffalo Bill grunted. “Billy’s an idealist. Just got to channel that energy in the right direction. But don’t go threatening him like that over his trust fund, William. While I’m still on the planet, I’ll see the boy gets his share of his inheritance. When I’m in front of the Judgment Seat, God will surely want to know about how I treated my own grandson, hnnh, hnnh, hnnh.”

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“Yes, whatever I say or do I can be sure you’ll undercut it,” William said coldly. He turned to me. “And you, whoever you are, I think you’ve hung around our offices long enough.” “If she’s one of the people influencing Billy down there, I think we’d better find out who she is and what she’s telling him,” Mr. Roger said. “Mildred? We got time for this?” His assistant looked at the laptop and tapped a couple of keys. “You really don’t have time, Mr. B., especially if you have to take phone calls from the board.” “Ten minutes, then, we can take ten minutes. William can call back the board, doesn’t take any great genius to tell them they’re letting the rumor mills grind ’em down.” Pink stained William’s cheeks. “If it’s that trivial a problem, let Mildred handle it. I have a full day scheduled without Billy’s setting the house on fire.” “Oh, don’t take these things so personally, William. You’re too thin-skinned, always have been. Now, what’s your name again, young woman?” I repeated my name and handed cards around the room. “Investigator? Investigator? How in hell did Billy get involved with a detective? You and Annie Lisa ever talk to the boy?” Roger demanded. William ignored him, and said to me, “What are you doing with my son? And don’t try shuffling around with lies about girls’ basketball.” “I have only the truth to tell about girls’ basketball,” I said. “I met your son for the first time last Thursday, when I went to the warehouse to talk to Pat Grobian about getting By-Smart to back the team. Billy was enthusiastic, as you know, and sent me up here.” Buffalo Bill stared at me under his heavy brows, then turned to the man he’d called Linus. “Get someone on this, see who she is and what she’s doing there. And while you’re calling around, we’ll all just go into the conference room and talk this over. Mildred, put through those calls to Birmingham for me, I’ll take ’em in there.”

12 Company Practice

n the conference room, the party was essentially configured the way it had been for prayers, with Bysen at the head of the table and Mildred on his right. The sons and Linus Rankin sat along the sides. Mildred’s assistant, the nervous woman in the corner of the front room, came in with a stack of phone messages, which Mildred distributed to the men. I handed Mildred the report I’d created for my meeting at the warehouse; when I told her I’d only brought two copies, she sent her assistant scurrying to photocopy it. The assistant came back in short order, somehow juggling a stack of copies and a tray holding coffee, soda cans, and water. While we’d been waiting, the men had all whipped out cell phones. Linus was asking someone to find out about me, and William was working his way through his share of the messages, calling board members to reassure them that By-Smart was not budging on unions. Roger was dealing with a vendor who didn’t think he could meet By-Smart’s price demands. Gary held an animated conversation about a problem with a store where the overnight crew had been locked in: someone had had an epileptic seizure, as nearly as I could gather from my frank eavesdropping, and bitten off her tongue because no one could get the door open to admit the EMTs.

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“Locked in?” I blurted out, when he hung up, forgetting I was trying to be supersaccharine to all these Bysen men. “None of your business, young woman,” Buffalo Bill snapped. “But when a store is in a dangerous neighborhood, I won’t risk our employees’ lives by leaving them exposed to every drug addict walking the streets. Gary, get onto the local manager: he has to have a backup available to let people out in case of emergencies. Linus, we got a legal exposure here?” I bit my own tongue to keep from saying anything else, while Rankin made a note. He was apparently the corporate counsel. Roger flung his own cell phone down in disgust and turned to William. “Now, thanks to your idiot son, we have three vendors who think they can back out of their contracts because our labor costs are going to be going up, if you please, and they know we’ll understand that unless they shut down and move to Burma or Nicaragua, they can’t meet our price standards.” “Nonsense,” the old man interjected. “Nothing to do with Billy, just the usual whiny weaseling. It’s a game with some people, to see whether we have the guts God gave a goose. You boys are all too thin-skinned. I don’t know what will happen to this company when I can’t be here in the kitchen every day, taking the heat.” Mildred murmured something in Bysen’s ear; he gave his “hnnh, hnnh” snort and looked at me. “Okay, young woman, come to the point, come to the point.” I folded my hands on the table and looked him in the eye, or as much of the eye as I could see below his overhanging brows. “As I said, Mr. Bysen, I grew up in South Chicago and attended Bertha Palmer High. From there, I went to the University of Chicago, having played in high school on a championship team; that earned me the athletic scholarship that made my university education possible. When you were at Bertha Palmer, and some years later when I was a student, the school provided programs in—” “We all know the sad story of the neighborhood’s de-

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cline,” William snapped. “And we all know you’ve come here expecting us to give a handout to people who won’t work for a living.” I felt blood rushing to my cheeks and forgot my need to stay on my best behavior. “I don’t know if you really believe that, or if you keep saying it so you don’t have to think about the reality of what it’s like to support a family on seven dollars an hour. It might do for everyone at this table to try to do that for a month before being so quick to jump to judgment on South Chicago. “A lot of the girls on my team live in families where mothers are working sixty hours a week without overtime pay on just that wage. They may be in your warehouse, or your store on Ninety-fifth, Mr. Bysen, or at the McDonald’s, but, I assure you, they are working hard, harder than me, harder than you. They aren’t on street corners looking for a handout.” William tried to interrupt me, but I glared at him at least as fiercely as his father ever did. “Let me finish, and then I’ll listen to your objections. These women want their kids to have a decent shot at a better life. A good education is the best chance these young women will have for that kind of shot, and athletics are a key factor in keeping them in school, maybe even giving some of them a chance at college. For you to fund a program that would give my sixteen teenagers access to proper equipment, proper coaching, and a facility where they didn’t risk a broken leg every time they tried a fast break, would be a great act of charity. Its cost would be down in the noise even for your South Chicago store; for the company as a whole, you’d never notice it, but the PR opportunity would be enormous. “I just heard Mr. Roger Bysen—persuade—some manufacturer or other to supply you with something at six cents a piece less than they wanted to. Mr. Gary Bysen is annoyed that an employee bit her tongue off because she was locked in overnight. When these things are reported, they make you seem like the Scrooge of North America, but if you rolled out an important program in Mr. Bysen’s own

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neighborhood, his own high school, you could look like heroes.” “You’ve got ten kinds of nerve, I’ll hand you that,” William said in his weedy baritone. Bysen’s thick eyebrows met across his nose, so deeply was he frowning. “And you think fifty-five thousand dollars is ‘down in the noise,’ hnnh, young woman? Your own business must be very successful indeed if that sum seems trivial to you.” I scribbled some calculations on the paper in front of me. “Your guy Linus will get my numbers for you, I’m sure, so I won’t detail them for you, but if there were a way to cut a dollar into forty thousand pieces, one of those forty thousand pieces would be the equivalent in my operation to fifty-five thousand dollars in yours. I think that’s trivial. And that doesn’t even include the tax benefits. Nor the intangibles, the PR benefits.” Gary and William both tried to speak at once; Linus Rankin’s cell phone rang at the same time, and Bysen himself was starting to roar when Marcena pushed open the conference room door and danced in. She gave me a quick wink, meant to be too subtle for the men to notice, and turned to Bysen. “I’m with Ms. Warshawski—Marcena Love—your Pete Boyland was talking to me about procurement and I got held up. Is that you next to the Thunderbolt on the wall out there? My father flew Hurricanes out of Wattisham.” Buffalo Bill broke off midsnort. “Wattisham? I spent eighteen months there. Hurricane was a good ship, good ship, doesn’t get the respect it deserves. What was your father’s name?” “Julian Love. Seventy Tiger Squadron.” “Hnnh, hnnh, you and I will have to have a talk, young lady. You work with this basketball gal?” “No, sir. I’m just visiting from London. I’ve been touring South Chicago, actually with one of your lorry drivers, I mean, truck drivers. Sorry, I can’t get the American lingo quite right.”

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Marcena’s accent had become more pronounced the longer she spoke. Bysen was bathing in it, but his sons weren’t as enthusiastic. “Who is letting you in the cab of one of our trucks?” William demanded. “That is against the law, as well as against corporate policy.” Marcena held up a hand in a fencer’s stop. “I’m sorry. Are you in charge of the trucks? I didn’t know I was breaking any laws.” “I still want his name,” William said. She made a rueful face. “I have put my foot in it, haven’t I? I don’t want to get some bloke in trouble, so let’s just say I won’t do it again. Mr. Bysen, is there any chance I could meet with you before I go back to England? I grew up on my father’s aerial battles; I’d love to hear your version of those years; my father would be thrilled to know I met up with one of his old war buddies.” Bysen preened and snorted a little and told Mildred to figure out a free time slot some time in the next week, before turning to glower at me. “And you, young woman, with your fancy cutting dollar bills into forty thousand pieces, we’ll get back to you.” Linus had been talking on his cell phone during Marcena’s performance; he got up now to hand a piece of paper to Bysen. The old man scanned it, and scowled at me even more fiercely. “I see you’ve destroyed a number of important businesses, young woman, and you’ve meddled in affairs that were none of your business. Do you always butt in where no one wants you, hnnh?” “Young Billy wants me meddling in girls’ basketball, Mr. Bysen—that’s good enough for me. I know he’ll be eager to hear how our conversation went.” Bysen stared at me for a long moment, as if weighing Billy’s needs against my meddlesomeness. “We’re through here, young woman. William, Roger, see she gets out the door.” William told his brother he’d take care of me. When we’d

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left the conference room, his hand on the small of my back, he said, “My son is basically a good kid.” “I believe you. I saw him at the warehouse and was impressed with how the men responded to him.” “The problem is, he’s too trusting; people take advantage of him. Added to that, my father has always been so indulgent with him that he doesn’t have a good sense of how the world really works.” I couldn’t see where this was going, so I said cautiously, “It’s a common problem with self-made men like your dad: they’re overly strict with their own offspring, but the third generation doesn’t get those same restrictions.” He looked startled, as if I’d uncovered a subtle truth about his life. “So you noticed how the old man treats him? It’s been the same story since Billy was born: every time I try to set—not even the same limits Dad gave us, just some kind of parental guidance—Dad undercuts me, then blames me for—well, that’s neither here nor there. I am the company’s chief financial officer.” “And obviously very good at it, to turn in the numbers you do.” We were being so lovey-dovey, I thought I’d try molasses. “If I had real authority, we could pass Wal-Mart, I know we could, but my company decisions are just like my parental—anyway, I want to know when you’re planning on seeing Billy, and what you’re planning to say to him.” “I’m going to tell him exactly what got said in our meeting and ask him to interpret it for me: you’re all strangers to me, so I don’t understand what you mean when you say things.” “That’s just it,” William said. “We all say things, but we work together as a family. My brothers and I, I mean: we grew up fighting, the old man thought it made us tougher, but we run this company as a family. And we present a family front to competitors.” So I wasn’t supposed to take dissension among the brothers to a bigger public. I had destroyed some important businesses with my meddling; I needed to know that

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By-Smart would fight me hard if I tried to do anything to them. “Is Billy living in South Chicago?” “Of course not. He may be infatuated with that storefront preacher, but he comes home to his mother at the end of the day. Just watch what you say and do with him, Ms.—uh—because we’ll be watching you.” Our moment of palliness was apparently at an end. “Warshawski. I believe you will—I saw all the spy cams in the warehouse. I’ll be real careful what I say just in case you’ve put one in my car.” He forced a laugh. So we still were pals after all? I waited for him to come to the point, schooling my face into the bland mask that makes people think you’re a discreet listener—not the woman who destroyed Gustav Humboldt. “I need to know who this English woman is riding with in South Chicago. It could be bad for us, from a liability standpoint, I mean, if she got injured.” I shook my head regretfully. “She hasn’t told me who she’s met down there, or how she’s met them. She has a lot of friends, and she makes friends easily, as you saw with your dad just now. I’d think it could be almost anybody, maybe even Patrick Grobian, since she likes to make sure the top man is in her court.” The mention of Grobian’s name seemed to bother him, or at least put him off balance. He drummed his fingers on the doorjamb, wanting to ask something else, but unsure how to phrase it. Before he figured it out, Mildred’s nervous assistant claimed his attention: one of his directors was returning his call. He went to Mildred’s desk to answer the phone. I walked over to the picture of Buffalo Bill and the airplane. If I stood on tiptoe and squinted down, I could see the name of a photographer’s studio with an address in Wattisham at the bottom of the matting. Marcena was not only a more skilled interrogator than I, but a cleverer investigator. It was depressing.

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William was still on the phone when Buffalo Bill escorted Marcena out of the conference room, his hand on her waist. He frowned when he saw I was still there, but he spoke to Marcena. “You don’t come without those photographs of your father, young woman, you hear?” “Absolutely not; he’ll be thrilled to know I’ve met you.” While they did an intricate separation dance, William put a hand over the mouthpiece and beckoned me to his side. “Find out who this gal is riding with, okay, and give me a call.” “In exchange for funding for my program?” I said brightly. He stiffened. “In exchange for keeping it under discussion, certainly.” I looked mournful. “That offer won’t really make me summon my best effort, Mr. William.” Bysens weren’t used to beggars trying to be choosers. “And that kind of attitude definitely won’t bring forth any effort on my part, young—” “The name is Warshawski. You can call me that.” Marcena had finished with Buffalo Bill; I turned my back on young William and headed down the hall with her. Once we were clear of the office, her shoulders sagged and she dropped her perky grin. “I am so fa*gged!” she said. “You should be; you’ve done a full day’s work this last hour, what with Pete, and Buffalo Bill. I’m a little beat, myself. Is there really a Julian Love who flew Hurricanes in the war?” She smiled mischievously. “Not exactly. But my father’s tutor at Cambridge did, and when I was up, I used to have tea with him once or twice a term. I heard all the stories; I think I can fake it.” “I don’t suppose he flew out of Wattisham, either.” “It was Nacton, but Buffalo Bill won’t remember after all these years what one airfield or another looked like. I mean—he thinks I’m old enough to have a father who flew in the war!”

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“And the photographs of your father, I suppose, will get lost in the mail. Sad, really, because they were taken before digital photography, and now they can’t be replaced.” She gave a loud shout of laughter that made several people stare at us. “Something like that, Vic, something very like that, hnnh, hnnh.”

13 Hired Gun

hursday started early, with a call from my answering service. I was luxuriating in a private morning with Morrell—I hadn’t seen Marcena since dropping her off after yesterday’s prayer service. I’d gotten up to turn on Morrell’s fancy espresso machine. I was turning pirouettes in the hall, happy to be able to prance around naked, when I heard my cell phone ringing in my briefcase. I don’t know why I didn’t just let it go—that Pavlovian response to the bell, I suppose. Christie Weddington, the operator with my answering service who’s known me longest, felt entitled to be severe. “It’s someone from the Bysen family, Vic: he’s already called three times.” I stopped dancing. “It’s seven fifty-eight, Christie. Which one of the great men?” It was William Bysen, whom I thought of as “Mama Bear,” sandwiched between Buffalo Bill and Billy the Kid. I resented the interruption, but I hoped it might mean good news: Ms. Warshawski, your fearless disposition and your brilliant proposal have caused us to shred one of our billions into forty thousand small pieces for the Bertha Palmer school. Christie gave me William’s office number. His secretary was, of course, already at her post: when the big gun starts firing early, the subalterns are there ready to load.

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“Is this Ms. Warshawski? It is? Do you normally make people wait this long before you get back to them?” That didn’t sound exactly like the harbinger of glad tidings. “Actually, Mr. Bysen, I’m usually too busy to return calls this fast. What’s up?” “My son didn’t come home last night.” Heart-stopping—kid was nineteen, after all, but I gave a noncommittal “oh” and waited. “I want to know where he is.” “Do you want to hire me to find him? If so, I’ll fax a contract for your signature, after which I’ll need to ask a bunch of questions, which will have to be done over the phone, since I have a full calendar today and tomorrow.” He sputtered, taken aback, then asked where Billy was. I was getting cold, standing naked in the living room. I picked the afghan up from Morrell’s couch and draped it over my shoulders. “I don’t know, Mr. Bysen. If that’s all, I’m in the middle of a meeting.” “Is he with the preacher?” “Mr. Bysen, if you want me to look for him I’ll fax you a contract and call you later with a list of questions. If you want to know whether he’s with Pastor Andrés, then I suggest you call the pastor.” He hemmed and hawed, and finally demanded my rates. “One-twenty-five an hour, with a four-hour minimum, plus expenses.” “If you want to do business with By-Smart, you’d better rethink that rate structure.” “Am I talking to a canned recording? The worried father wants me to negotiate my fee?” I burst out laughing, then suddenly thought maybe he was making me a subtle offer. “Are you saying that By-Smart will fund my basketball program if I’ll lower my fee for asking about your kid?” “It’s possible that if you can locate Billy, we’ll discuss your proposal.” “Not good enough, Mr. Bysen. Give me your fax number; I’ll send you a copy of the contract; when I get back a signed copy, we’ll talk.”

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He wasn’t sure he was ready to go that far. I hung up and went into the kitchen to flip on the espresso machine. My cell phone started ringing as I was going back up the hall: my answering service, with Bysen’s fax number. Hey-ho. I stopped in the small bedroom Morrell uses as a home office and sent through a contract. This time, I turned my phone off before going back to bed. “Who was that so early? You spent a lot of time with him—should I be worried?” Morrell demanded, pulling me down next to him. “Yep. I’ve met his papa and his kid already—I’ve never even laid eyes on your family and we’ve been knowing each other for almost three years now.” He bit my earlobe. “Oh, yes, my kid, a little something I’ve been meaning to tell you about. Anyway, you get to meet my friends. Have you met this guy’s friends?” “Don’t think he has any, at least, not any as cool as Marcena.” When I finally got to my office, a little before ten, I had a fax from William waiting for me: he had signed the contract, but had exed out several provisions, including the four-hour minimum, and the paragraph on expenses. Whistling between my teeth, I sent an e-mail: I regret not being able to do business with you but will be glad to talk to you in the future about your needs for an investigator. Not that I never negotiate my fees—but never with a company that has annual sales of over two hundred billion. While I was online, I checked By-Smart’s stock. It had dropped ten points by the end of the trading day yesterday and was down another point this morning. The question about whether By-Smart was going to open its doors to unions had made CNN’s breaking news banner on my home page. No wonder they were gnashing their teeth over Billy up in Rolling Meadows. By eleven, Mama Bear had decided he could meet my terms. He then wanted me to drop everything to dash out to Rolling Meadows. By-Smart was so used to a parade of vendors, offering everything, including their firstborn off-

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spring, for the chance to do business with the Behemoth, that young Mr. William actually couldn’t grasp that someone might not want to jump through his hoops. In the end, after a time-wasting argument, when I’d hung up once and threatened to twice more, he answered my questions. They hadn’t seen Billy since he left the meeting yesterday. According to Grobian, Billy had gone to the warehouse, put in eight hours, and then disappeared. He usually returned to the Bysen complex in Barrington Hills by seven at the latest, but last night he hadn’t shown up, hadn’t answered his cell phone, hadn’t called his mother. When they got up at six, they found he’d never returned. That was when Mama Bear had made his first call to me. Thank goodness, I had left my own phone in the living room. “He’s nineteen, Mr. Bysen. Most kids that age are in college, if they’re not working, and even if they live at home they have their own lives, their own friends. Their own girlfriends.” “Billy isn’t that kind of boy,” his father said. “He’s part of True Love Waits, and his mother gave him her own Bible and engagement ring to seal his vows. He would never go out with a girl if he didn’t intend to marry her.” I forbore to mention that teens who take pledges of chastity have the same rate of sexually transmitted diseases as nonpledgers. Instead, I asked if Billy had ever spent a night away from home in the past. “Of course, when he’s gone to camp or to visit his aunt in California or—” “No, Mr. Bysen, I mean, like this, without telling you. Or his mother.” “No, of course not. Billy is very responsible. But we’re concerned that he’s too much under the thumb of that Mexican preacher who came up here yesterday, and since you spend a lot of time down in South Chicago we decided you were the best person to make inquiries for us.” “‘We,’” I repeated. “Is that you and your wife? You and your brothers? You and your dad?”

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“I—you ask too many questions. I want you to get to work finding him.” “I’ll want to talk to your wife,” I said, “so I need her phone number, home, office, cell, I don’t care which.” This caused more spluttering: I was working for him, his wife was worried enough. “You don’t need me, you need a tame cop,” I snapped. “You must have fifty or sixty of ’em scattered around the city and suburbs. I’ll tear up the contract and messenger it out to you.” He gave me his home phone number and told me to report back by noon. “I have other clients, Mr. Bysen, who’ve been waiting a lot longer than you have for help. If you think your son’s life is in imminent danger, then you need the FBI or the police. Otherwise, I’ll report when I know something.” I really, really hate working for the powerful: they think they’re the boss of the whole world, as we used to say in South Chicago, and that includes being the boss of you. While I was on the phone with Bysen, Morrell had made me a cappuccino and a pita with hummus and olives. I sat at his desk, eating, while I talked to Bysen’s wife. In a quiet, almost little-girl voice, Annie Lisa Bysen told me nothing: oh, yes, Billy had friends, they were all in the church youth group together, they sometimes went camping together, but never without him talking to her first. No, he didn’t have a girlfriend; she repeated his participation in True Love Waits, and how proud they were of Billy after their experience with their daughter. No, she didn’t know why he hadn’t come home, he hadn’t talked to her, but “my husband” was sure he was with that preacher in South Chicago. They had asked their own pastor, Pastor Larchmont, to call down to the South Side church, but Larchmont hadn’t been able to reach anyone yet. “It was probably a mistake, that exchange program with the inner-city churches, they have so many bad kids who can influence Billy. He’s so impressionable, so idealistic, but Daddy Bysen wanted Billy to go work in the ware-

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house. It was where he started his business, and all the men in the family have to go. I tried to tell William we should just let Billy go to college, like he wanted, but you might as well talk to Niagara Falls as get Daddy Bysen to change his mind, so William didn’t even try, just sent Billy down there, and ever since it’s been Pastor Andrés, Pastor Andrés, as if Billy was quoting the Bible itself.” “What about your daughter, Billy’s sister—does she know where he is?” A long pause at the other end. “Candace—Candace is in Korea. Even if it wasn’t so hard to get to her, Billy wouldn’t do that; he knows how much William—how much we— would hate it.” I wished I did have time to drive up to South Barrington to the Bysen enclave. There’s so much that you get from body language that you can’t see over the phone. Did she really believe her son would avoid his sister on his parents’ say-so—especially if he was running away from home? Did Annie Lisa do everything Daddy Bysen said? Or did she resist passively? I tried to get Candace’s e-mail address, or a phone number, but Annie Lisa refused even to acknowledge the question. “What about your sister-in-law, Jacqui Bysen. Did Billy talk to her at the warehouse yesterday?” “Jacqui?” Annie Lisa repeated the name doubtfully, as if it were in a strange language, maybe Albanian, that she’d never heard of. “I guess it never occurred to me to ask her.” “I’ll do that, Ms. Bysen.” I took the names of the two youths she thought her son might be closest to, but I expected the Bysens were right: Papa and Mama Bear had insulted a man Billy looked up to, and Baby Bear had probably fled to him for cover. If he hadn’t, I suppose I could begin the unenviable job of trying to find Candace Bysen. I would also check area hospitals, because you never know—accidents happen even to the children of America’s richest men. I scribbled all this down in a set of notes, since I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t keep track of so many details in my head.

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I had business in the Loop for a couple of significant clients, but I finished before one and drove early to the South Side. I stopped by the warehouse to talk to Patrick Grobian first. He and Aunt Jacqui were deep in a discussion of linens; neither had seen Billy today. “If he wasn’t a Bysen, he’d be out on his can, believe me,” Grobian snapped. “No one who wants a job with BySmart comes and goes as they please.” Aunt Jacqui stretched, catlike, with the same look of mischief around her mouth I’d seen yesterday during the uproar at the prayer meeting. “Billy is a saint. You’ll probably find him eating honey and locusts in a cave someplace, maybe even under the boxes in the basem*nt—he’s always preaching to Pat and me about work conditions here.” “Why?” I widened my eyes, innocence personified. “Is there something wrong with work conditions here?” “It’s a warehouse,” Grobian said, “not a convent. Billy can’t tell the difference. Our work conditions comply with every OSHA standard ever written.” I let that lay. “Would he go to his sister, do you think?” “To Candace?” Jacqui’s carefully waxed brows rose to her hairline. “No one would go to Candace for anything except a trick or a nickel bag.” I left while she and Grobian enjoyed a complicit laugh over that witticism. I had to be at the school for basketball practice at three, which is when Rose’s shift also ended. I couldn’t keep the girls waiting for me, so that meant if I wanted to talk to Rose I had to go back to the factory.

14 (Re)Tired Gun

he yard in the middle of the afternoon looked different than at six in the morning. A half-dozen cars were parked on the weedy verge, a panel truck stood in the drive, partly blocking my way, while several men were hauling fabric, shouting to each other in Spanish. I drove the Mustang onto the weeds, next to a late-model Saturn. The factory’s front doors stood open, but I went down to the loading bay, where a second truck was docked, motor running. I went over next to it and pulled myself up onto the lip of the dock, hoping to avoid both the foreman and Zamar. I sketched a grin and a wave at the men, who had stopped to stare at me. They had driven a forklift up to the back of the truck and were loading boxes, which they hurriedly covered with a tarp when they saw me watching. I pursed my lips, wondering what they were hiding. Maybe they were even smuggling some kind of contraband. Maybe this somehow lay behind the sabotage attempts, but they were staring at me with so much hostility that I went on in to the main part of the factory. On one side of the floor, a team of women were folding banners into packing crates. As luck had it, Larry Ballatra, the foreman, was right in front of me, barking orders to the crew. I passed him without pausing, going straight to the

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iron stairs. He glanced at me but didn’t seem to really notice me, and I ran up to the work floor. Rose was at her station, working this time on an American flag, outsize, like the one hanging over the shop floor. The soft fabric was falling from her machine into a wooden box: the U.S. flag must not touch the ground. I squatted next to her so that she could see my face. She gasped and turned pale. “You, what are you doing here?” “I’m worried, Rose. Worried about you, and about Josie. She said you had to take a second job, and you left her in charge of the boys and the baby.” “Someone has to help out. You think Julia can do it? She won’t.” “You said you want Josie to go to college. It’s too much responsibility for her, at fifteen, and, besides, it makes it hard for her to study.” Her lips tightened in anger. “You think you mean well, but you know nothing about life down here. And don’t tell me a story about growing up here, because you still know nothing, anyway.” “Maybe not, Rose, but I know something about what it takes to leave here to go to college. If you can’t be with Josie, making sure she gets her homework done, what’s she going to do? If she gets frustrated with the responsibility, she could start cruising the streets, she could come home with another baby for you to look after. What job is important enough for that?” Anger and anguish chased each other across her face. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t have a mother’s heart? I have to take this other job. I have to. And if Mr. Zamar, if he sees you here, he will fire me anyway from this job, then I have nothing for my children, so leave before you destroy my whole life.” “Rose, what changed overnight? Monday, you needed me to find the plant saboteurs; today, you’re scared of me.” Her face was contracted in torment, but her hands kept

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steadily feeding fabric through the machine. “Go, now! Or I will yell for help.” I didn’t have any choice except to leave. Back in my car, I didn’t go anywhere for a while. What had changed in three days? Me offending her wouldn’t have caused this agonized outburst. It had to be something else, some threat Zamar or the foreman had used against her. What were they making her do? I couldn’t imagine, or I could imagine lurid things, but not likely things—you know, prostitution rings, that kind of misery. But what hold could they have on Rose Dorrado? Her need to keep working, I suppose. Perhaps there was some connection to the boxes going into the panel truck, but the truck had left while I was in the plant, and I had no idea how to track it. Finally, I put the car into gear and drove slowly down the avenue to Mt. Ararat Church of Holiness, at Ninety-first and Houston—just a block south of the house where I grew up. I came at the church from Ninety-first—I didn’t want to see the wrecked tree in my mother’s front garden again. In a neighborhood where twenty people with Bibles and an empty storefront constitute a church, I hadn’t known what to expect, but Mt. Ararat was big enough to have an actual building, with a steeple and a few stained-glass windows. The church was locked, but a sign on the door listed the hours for services (Wednesday choir practice, Thursday evening Bible study, Friday AA meetings, and on Sundays, Sunday school and church) along with Pastor Robert Andrés’s phone numbers. The first number turned out to be his home, where I got an answering machine. The second number, to my surprise, connected me to a construction company. I asked for Andrés, somewhat uncertainly, and was told he was out on a job. “A funeral, you mean?” “A construction job. He works for us three days a week. If you need to reach him, I can give the foreman your phone number.”

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The woman wouldn’t direct me to the jobsite, so I gave her my cell phone number. A few minutes later, Andrés called back. Construction noise at his end made conversation difficult; he had trouble understanding who I was or what I wanted, but “Billy the Kid,” “Josie Dorrado,” and “girls’ basketball” seemed to get through, and he gave me the address where he was working, over at Eighty-ninth and Buffalo. Four town houses were going up in the middle of a long, empty block. The little boxes, rising out of the rubble of the neighborhood, had a kind of gallant optimism about them, splashes of hope against the general gray of the area. One house seemed close to completion: someone was painting trim, a couple of guys were on the roof. I took a hard hat from my trunk—I keep one handy because of all the industrial sites I visit—and walked over to the trim painter. He didn’t look up from his work until I called out to him; when I asked for Robert Andrés, he pointed his brush at the next building over and went back to work without speaking. No one was outside the second house, but I could hear a power saw and loud shouting from within. I picked my way around rusted pipe and wedges of concrete, the crumbling remains of whatever had stood here before, and climbed over the ledge through the open hole where the front door would be. A stairwell rose in front of me, the risers fresh sawn, the nailheads new and shiny. I could hear desultory hammering from the room beyond me, but I followed the sound of shouting up the stairs. All around me were open joists, the skeleton of the house. In front of me, three men were about to lift a piece of drywall into place. They bent and chanted a countdown in unison in Spanish. On “cero” they started lifting and walking the wallboard into place. It was heavy work; I could see trapeziuses quivering even on this muscular crew. As soon as the wallboard was up, two more men jumped to either end and began hammering it home. Only then did I step forward to ask for Pastor Andrés.

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“Roberto,” one of the guys bellowed, “lady here asking for you.” Andrés stepped through the open area that would eventually be another wall. I wouldn’t have known him in his hard hat and equipment apron, but he apparently recognized me from our encounter on Tuesday outside Fly the Flag—as soon as he saw me, he turned and went back to the other room. At first, I thought he was running away from me, but apparently he was merely telling the foreman that he’d be taking a break, because he came back a minute later without the apron and gestured to me to go back down the stairs. Buffalo Avenue was relatively quiet in the middle of the afternoon. A woman with a pair of toddlers was heading toward us, pushing a shopping cart full of laundry, and on the far corner two men were having a heated exchange. They were listing so precariously I didn’t think they’d be able to connect if they came to blows. The real action in South Chicago heats up as the sun goes down. “You are the detective, I think, but I’ve forgotten your name.” One on one, Andrés’s voice was soft, his accent barely noticeable. “V. I. Warshawski. Do you do counseling at jobsites in the neighborhood, Pastor?” He shrugged. “A small church like mine, it cannot pay my full wage as a pastor, so I do a little electrical work to make ends meet. Jesus was a carpenter; I am content in His footsteps.” “I was at By-Smart yesterday morning and attended the service. Your sermon certainly electrified the congregation. Were you trying to give Billy’s grandfather a lecture on unions?” Andrés smiled. “If I start preaching about unions, the next thing I know I’ve invited pickets to jobsites like this one. But I know that’s what the old one believes, and that poor Billy, who wants only to do good in the world, had a fight with his family because of what I said. I tried to call the grandfather, but he wouldn’t speak to me.”

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“What were you preaching about, then?” I asked. He spread his hands. “Only what I said—the need for all people to be treated with respect. I thought that was a safe and simple message for such men, but apparently it was not. This neighborhood is in pain, Sister Warshawski; it is like the valley of dry bones. We need the Spirit to rain down on us and clothe our bones with flesh and animate them with spirit, but the sons of men must do their part.” The words were spoken in a conversational tone; this wasn’t prayer or preaching or public show, just the facts as he saw them. “Agreed. What concrete things should the sons and daughters of women and men do?” He pursed his lips, considering. “Provide jobs for those who need work. Treat workers with respect. Pay them a living wage. It is a simple thing, really. Is that why you came to find me today? Because Billy’s father and grandfather are searching for hidden meanings? I am not educated enough to speak in codes or riddles.” “Billy was very upset yesterday morning because of the way his father and grandfather reacted to you. He chose not to go home last night. His father wanted to know if Billy is staying with you.” “So you are working for the family now, for the Bysen family?” I started to deny it, reflexively, and then realized that, of course, yes, I was working for the Bysen family. Why should that make me feel ashamed? If things kept on at the current rate, the whole country would be working for BySmart within the decade. “I told Billy’s father I’d try to locate him down here, yes.” Andrés shook his head. “I think if Billy does not want to talk to his father right now, that is his right. He is trying to grow up, to think of himself as a man, not a boy. It will do his parents no harm if he stays away from home for a few nights.” “Is he staying with you?” I asked bluntly.

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When Andrés turned as if to walk back into the house, I quickly added, “I won’t tell the family, if he really doesn’t want them to know, but I’d like to hear it from him in person first. The other thing is, they think he has come to you. Whether I tell them I can’t find him, or that he’s safe but wants to be left alone, they have the resources to make your life difficult.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “Jesus did not count any difficulties as a reason to turn back from the way to the Cross, and I pledged myself long ago to follow in His steps.” “That’s admirable, but if they send the Chicago police, or the FBI, or a private security firm, to break down your door, will that be the best thing for Billy, or for the members of your church, who count on you?” That made him turn back to me, with a glimmer of a smile. “Sister Warshawski, you are a good debater, you make a good point. Perhaps I do know now where is Billy, but perhaps I do not, and if I do know I can’t tell someone who works for his father because my duty is to Billy. But— by five o’clock, if the FBI breaks down my door, they will find only my cat Lazarus.” “I’m certainly plenty busy between now and five; I won’t have time to call the family before then.” He bowed his head in a courtly fashion and started back to the house. I walked with him. “Before you go back inside, can you tell me anything about Fly the Flag? Did Frank Zamar explain to you why he wouldn’t call the police about the sabotage in his plant?” Andrés shook his head again. “It will be a good thing for you to work with the girls on their basketball, instead of all these other matters.” It was a pretty stinging slap in the face. “All these other matters are directly connected to the girls and their basketball, Pastor. Rose Dorrado is a member of your church, so you must know how worried she is about losing her job. Her kid Josie plays on my team—she took me home to her mother, who asked me to investigate the sabotage. It really is a simple story, Pastor.”

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“South Chicago is full of simple stories, isn’t it, each beginning in poverty and ending in death.” This time he sounded pompous, not poetic or natural; I ignored the comment. “And now something has gone even more amiss. Rose has taken a second job, one that keeps her away from her children in the evening. It’s not just that her children need her, but I have the feeling she was coerced into taking this job, whatever it is. You’re her pastor; can’t you find out what the problem is?” “I cannot force anyone to confide in me against their wishes. And she has two daughters who are old enough to look after the house. I know in the ideal world that you live in, girls of fifteen and sixteen should have a mother’s supervision, but down here girls that age are considered grown up.” I was getting extremely tired of people acting like South Chicago was a different planet, one that I couldn’t possibly comprehend. “Girls of fifteen should not become mothers, whether they are in South Chicago or Barrington Hills. Do you know that every baby a teenage girl has chops her lifetime earning potential by fifty percent? Julia already has a baby. I don’t think it will help her or Rose or even Josie, if Josie starts running around the streets and has one of her own.” “It is necessary for these girls to put their trust in Jesus, and to keep their lives pure for their husbands.” “It would be lovely if they did, but they don’t. And since you know that as well as I do, it would be really great if you stopped telling them not to use contraceptives.” His mouth tightened. “Children are a gift of the Lord. You may think you mean well, but your ideas come from a bad way of thinking. You are a woman, and unmarried, so you don’t know about these matters. You concentrate on teaching these girls to play basketball and do not injure their immortal souls. I think it is better—” He broke off to look over my shoulder at someone behind me. I turned to see a young man ambling toward us along Ninety-first Street. I didn’t recognize his sullen

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pretty-boy face, but something about him did seem vaguely familiar. Andrés clearly knew him: the pastor called out something in Spanish, so rapidly I couldn’t follow it, although I did hear him asking “why” and tell him not to come here, to leave. The younger man stared sullenly at Andrés, but finally hunched a shoulder and sauntered back the way he’d come. “Chavo banda!” Andrés muttered. That much I understood from my days with the public defender. “Is he a punk? I’ve seen him around, but I can’t think where. What’s his name?” “His name doesn’t matter, because he is only that: a punk one sees around, taking from jobsites, or even doing little jobs for bigger thugs. I don’t want him at this jobsite. Which I must return to.” “Tell Billy to call me,” I shouted to his back. “Before the end of the day, so I can pass the word on to his parents.” Although, frankly, in the mood I was in, I’d be happy to see the cops break down the minister’s damn door. He flung out a hand at me, a wave of some kind—assent, dismissal?—I couldn’t tell, because he continued into the house, an effective brush-off. He knew a lot, Pastor Andrés did, about Billy, about the chavos banda of the neighborhood, about Fly the Flag, most of all about right and wrong: it was better for me to mind my own business, he’d said, not to meddle with any of it, which meant to me that he knew why Frank Zamar didn’t want the police involved in exploring the sabotage at the plant. I walked back to my own car. Should I leave it alone? I should. I didn’t have the time or the desire to look into it. And maybe if Andrés hadn’t told me an unmarried woman shouldn’t know or talk about sex, I would have left it alone. I tripped on a piece of concrete and did a kind of cartwheel to keep from going over completely. I wished my Spanish were better. It’s similar to Italian, so I can follow it, but I don’t speak Italian often enough these days for either language to stay fresh in my mind. I had a feeling Andrés knew this chavo banda better than just from

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seeing him around the neighborhood; I had a feeling Andrés specifically didn’t want me to see him with this chavo. Next week, I’d make it a little project, to try to find out who this particular punk was. At practice that afternoon, I couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to the game. Josie, in particular, was like a cat on a hot shovel. I figured the load of domestic responsibilities her mother had dumped on her must be getting to her, but it didn’t make working with her easier. I called a halt to scrimmage twenty minutes early and could hardly wait for them to get out of the showers before taking off myself. Billy the Kid phoned me as I was leaving Coach McFarlane’s house. He wouldn’t tell me where he was; in fact, he would barely talk to me at all. “I thought I could trust you, Ms. War-sha-sky, but then you go and start working for my father, and on top of that you bothered Pastor Andrés. I’m an adult, I can take care of myself. You have to promise to stop looking for me.” “I can’t make such a sweeping promise, Billy. If you don’t want your dad to know where you are, I guess that’s a reasonable request, as long as I can assure him you’re not being held somewhere against your will.” His breath came heavily over the phone to me. “I haven’t been kidnapped or anything like that. Now promise me.” “I’m tired enough of all the Bysens to be willing to run an ad in the Herald-Star promising never to talk to any of you again about each other or anything else.” “Is that supposed to be a joke? I don’t think this is very funny. I just want you to tell my dad that I’m staying with friends, and if he sends anyone else looking for me I’m going to start calling shareholders.” “Calling shareholders?” I repeated blankly. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “That’s my whole message.” “Before you hang up, you ought to remember something about your cell phone: it puts out a GSM signal. A bigger,

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richer detective agency than mine would have equipment to track you. As would the FBI.” He was silent for a moment. In the background, I could hear sirens, and a baby crying: the sounds of the South Side. “Thank you for the tip, Ms. War-sha-sky,” he finally said in a careful voice. “Maybe I misjudged you.” “Maybe,” I said. “Do you want—” but he hung up before I could finish asking him if he wanted to see me. I pulled over to the curb to relay Billy’s message to his father. Naturally enough, Mr. William wasn’t pleased, but his response took the form of petulant bullying (“That’s all? You think I’m paying your fee for sending me a disrespectful message? I want my son now.”) But when I told him I was going to have to quit the assignment, he stopped complaining about the message and demanded that I get back to work. “I can’t, Mr. William, not when I promised Billy to stop looking for him.” “What’s that got to do with it?” He was astonished. “It was a good ploy—he won’t be suspecting you.” “It’s my word, Mr. William—I don’t have three thousand stores to carry me through lean times. My good word is my only asset. If I lose that, well, it would be a bigger disaster for me than losing all those stores would be for you, because I wouldn’t have any capital to start over again.” He still didn’t seem to understand: he was willing to overlook my insolence, but he wanted his son without delay. “Fee, fie, foe, fum,” I muttered, slamming the car into gear. Halfway up Lake Shore Drive to Morrell’s place, I decided to put everything behind me, the Bysens, the South Side, even my important paying clients and my tangled love life. I needed time alone, just for myself. I went to my own apartment and collected the dogs. When Morrell didn’t answer the phone, I left a message on his voice mail, told a startled Mr. Contreras I’d be back late on Sunday, and took off for the country. I ended up in a B and B in

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Michigan, took the dogs for ten-mile rambles along the lakeshore, read one of Paula Sharpe’s quirky novels. Every now and then, I wondered about Morrell, with Marcena down the hall, but not even those thoughts undid my essential pleasure in my private weekend.

15 Heart-stopper

y peaceful mood held until Monday afternoon, when April Czernin collapsed in the middle of practice. At first, I thought Celine Jackman had taken her out in an escalation of their ongoing feud, but Celine was in the backcourt; April had been driving under the basket when she fell all in a heap, as if she’d been shot. I blew my whistle to stop practice and ran to her side. Her skin was blue around the mouth, and I couldn’t feel a pulse. I started CPR on her, trying to keep my own panic at bay so my horrified team wouldn’t disintegrate completely. The girls crowded around us. “Coach, what happened?” “Coach, is she dead?” “Did someone shoot her?” Josie’s face loomed next to mine. “Coach, what’s wrong?” “I don’t know,” I panted. “Do—you—know of any health problems, problems April has?” “No, nothing, this never happened before.” Josie’s cheeks were white with fear; she could hardly get the words out. “Josie,” I kept pushing on April’s diaphragm, “my cell phone is locked in the equipment room, inside my bag in the desk.”

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I took my hands away from April for a brief second and handed the keys to her. “Go get it, call 911, tell them exactly where we are. Repeat for me!” When she parroted back my instructions, I told her to move. She ran, stumbling, to the equipment room. Sancia went with her, murmuring petitions to Jesus. Celine I sent to the principal’s office: gangb*nger she might be, but she had the coolest head on the team. Maybe the school nurse was still here, maybe she knew something about April’s history. Josie came back with the phone, her face pinched and white: she was so nervous, she couldn’t figure out how to use the phone. I stepped her through it, not pausing in my work on April’s chest, and had her put the phone to my head so I could talk to the dispatcher myself. I waited long enough for an acknowledgment of our location, then told Josie to take the phone and try to reach April’s folks. “They’re both at work, Coach, and I don’t know how to get them. April’s mom, she’s a cashier over at the By-Smart on Ninety-fifth and, well, you know, her dad, he drives that truck, I don’t know where he is.” Her voice cracked. “Okay, girl, it’s okay. You call . . . this number, and hit the send key.” I squinted, trying to calm down enough to remember Morrell’s number. When I finally came up with it, I had Josie type it in and then hold the little phone up to my head. “V. I.,” I said, continuing my work on April’s chest. “Emergency, with Romeo’s kid . . . need to find Romeo. Ask . . . Marcena, okay? If she can . . . track him down . . . have him . . . call my cell.” Years in battle zones made Morrell accept what I said without wasting time on useless questions. He simply said he was on it and let me get back to the task at hand. I didn’t know what else to do while I waited for the ambulance, so I kept pushing on April’s chest and blowing into her mouth. Natalie Gault, the assistant principal, sailed into the room. The girls reluctantly pulled back to let her in next to me.

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“What’s happened here? Another team fight?” “No. April . . . Czernin . . . collapsed. You got anything . . . in her file . . . on medical history?” Sweat was running down my neck, and my back was wet with it. “I didn’t check for that—I thought this was more of your gang warfare.” I didn’t have energy to waste on anger. “Nope. Nature’s doing. Worried . . . about her heart. Check her file, call . . . her mother.” Gault looked down at me, as if deciding whether she could take an order from me. Fortunately, at that moment, we had one of the South Side’s major miracles: an ambulance crew actually arrived, in under four minutes. I got gratefully to my feet and wiped sweat from my eyes. While I gave the techs a sketch of what had happened, they moved in next to April with a portable defibrillator. They slid her onto a stretcher and pulled up her damp Tshirt to attach the pads, one below her left breast, the other on her right shoulder. The girls crowded in, anxious and titillated at the same time. As if we were in a movie, the techs told us to stand clear; I pulled the girls away while the techs administered a shock. Just as in a movie, April’s body jerked. They watched their monitor anxiously; no heartbeat. They had to shock her twice more before the muscle came back to life and began a sluggish beat, like an engine slowly turning over on a cold day. As soon as they were sure she was breathing, the techs packed up their equipment and began running across the gym with the stretcher. I trotted along next to them. “Where are you taking her?” “University of Chicago—it’s the closest pediatric trauma center. They’ll need an adult to admit her.” “The school is trying to find the parents,” I said. “You in a position to okay medical treatment?” “I don’t know. I’m the basketball coach; she collapsed during practice, but I don’t think that gives me legal rights.” “Up to you, but the kid needs an adult and an advocate.”

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We were outside now. The ambulance had drawn a crowd, but the students stood back respectfully as the techs opened the door and slid April inside. I couldn’t let her go alone; I could see that. I scrambled into the back and took her hand. “It’s okay, baby, you’ll be okay, you’ll see,” I kept murmuring, squeezing her hand while she lay semiconscious, her eyes blunking back in her head. The heart monitor was the loudest sound in the world, louder than the siren, louder than my cell phone, which rang without my hearing it until the EMT crew told me to turn it off because it could interfere with their instruments. The irregular beeping bounced in my head like a basketball. A-pril’s still alive but isn’t stable, A-pril’s still alive but isn’t stable. It drowned any other thoughts, about BySmart, or Andrés, or where Romeo Czernin might be. The sound seemed to go on forever, so when we arrived at the hospital I was startled to see we’d covered seven city miles in twelve minutes. As soon as we pulled into the ambulance bay, the EMTs whisked April into the emergency room and left me to grapple with her paperwork, a frustrating bureaucratic battle, since I had no idea what kind of insurance her parents had. The school had a little policy on the athletes, but only for injuries sustained while playing; if this was a preexisting condition, the policy wouldn’t cover it. When the ER staff saw I didn’t know enough to fill out the forms, they sent me off to a tiny cubicle to wrestle with an admissions official. After forty minutes, I felt like a boxer who’d been punched for thirteen rounds but couldn’t quite fall over. Because April had come in as a pediatric emergency, they were treating her, but they needed parental consent, and they needed to be paid—not, I need hardly add, in that order. I couldn’t guarantee the payment, and I wasn’t legally able to give consent, so I tried to track down April’s mom at work, which was in itself a bureaucratic nightmare; it took me nine minutes to find someone with the authority

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to deliver a message to an employee working the floor, but that someone said Mrs. Czernin’s shift had ended at four and she wasn’t in the store any longer. She wasn’t at home, either, but the Czernins did have an answering machine, with a message delivered in the hesitant voice of someone uncomfortable with technology. I tried Morrell again. He hadn’t been able to track down Marcena. Only because I’d run out of other ideas, I called Mary Ann McFarlane. My old coach was alarmed when she heard what had happened—she didn’t know about any health problems April had, certainly she had never collapsed before. Several times last year, she’d suddenly run out of steam during drills, but Mary Ann had put that down to lack of conditioning. The coach knew nothing about health insurance, either: she assumed most of the girls on the team had green cards, entitling them to Medicaid, but she’d never needed to check. And, of course, both April’s parents worked, so the Czernins probably didn’t qualify for public assistance. When I hung up, the admissions official told me if I couldn’t get April’s care sorted out they’d have to move her to County. We argued over it for a few minutes, and I was demanding to see a supervisor, when a woman burst in on us. “Tori Warshawski, I might have known. What did you do to my girl? Where’s my April?” Her use of Boom-Boom’s old name didn’t register with me at first. “Did you get the message I left on your machine? I’m sorry I had to notify you that way, Mrs. Czernin. April collapsed during practice. We were able to revive her, but no one knows what’s wrong. And they need her insurance information here, I’m afraid.” “Don’t ‘Mrs. Czernin’ me, Tori Warshawski. If you hurt my girl, you are going to pay for it with the last drop of blood in your body.” I stared at her blankly. She was a thin woman, not thin like Aunt Jacqui or Marcena, with the carefully tended slimness of the wealthy; she had tendons in her neck like

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steel cables, and deep grooves around her mouth, from smoking or worry or both. Her hair was bleached and scraped back from her head in waves as hard as coiled wire. She looked old enough to be April’s grandmother, not her mother, and I racked my tired brain for where we might have met. “You don’t know me?” she spat. “I used to be Sandra Zoltak.” Against my will, a wave of crimson flooded my cheeks. Sandy Zoltak. When I last knew her, she’d had soft blond ringlets, a plump soft body, like a Persian cat, but a sly smile, and a way of turning up when you didn’t expect or even want her. She’d been in Boom-Boom’s class in high school, a year ahead of me, but I’d known her. Oh yes indeed, I’d known her. “I’m sorry, Sandy, sorry I didn’t recognize you. Sorry, too, about April. She collapsed suddenly in practice. Does she have anything wrong with her heart?” My voice came out more roughly than I’d meant, but Sandra didn’t seem to notice that. “Not unless you did something to her. When Bron told me you was filling in for McFarlane, I told April she had to be careful, you could be mean, but I never expected—” “Sandy, she was going in for a basket and her heart stopped beating.” I talked slowly and loudly, forcing her to pay attention. Sandy had been riding with demons all the way to the hospital, worrying about her child; she needed someone to take it out on, and I wasn’t just convenient, I was an old enemy, from a neighborhood that stored grudges as carefully as if they were food in a bomb shelter. I tried telling her what we’d done to help April, and what the impasse was here at the hospital, but she poured furious accusations over me: my negligence, my bullying, my desire to get back at her through her daughter. “Sandy, no, Sandy, please, that’s all dead and gone. April’s a great kid, she’s about the best athlete on the team, I want her to be healthy and happy. I need to know,

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the hospital needs to know, does she have some kind of heart problem?” “Ladies,” the woman at the admissions cubicle interrupted us in magisterial tones, “save your fight for the home, please. All I want to hear right now is billing information for this child.” “Naturally,” I snapped. “Money comes way ahead of health care in American hospitals. Why don’t you tell Mrs. Czernin what’s happening with her daughter? I don’t think she can answer any billing questions until she knows how April’s doing.” The administrator pursed her lips, but turned to her phone and made a call. Sandy stopped shouting and strained to listen, but the woman was speaking so quietly we couldn’t make out what she was saying. Still, within a few minutes a nurse from the emergency room appeared. April was stable; she seemed to have good reflexes, good recall of events: although she couldn’t name the mayor or the governor, she probably hadn’t known those facts this morning. She could name her teammates and recite her parents’ phone number, but the hospital wanted to keep her overnight, and maybe for a few days, for tests, and to make sure she was stable. “I need to see her. I need to be with her.” Sandra’s voice was a harsh caw. “I’ll take you back as soon as you finish with the paperwork here,” the nurse promised. “We told her you’d arrived, and she’s eager to see you.” When I was fifteen, I would have wanted my mother, too, but it was hard to picture Sandy Zoltak thinking about another person with the passion and care my mother had felt for me. I found myself blinking back tears—of frustration, fatigue, longing for my mother—I didn’t know what. I abruptly left the area, prowling around the hall until I saw Sandra return from the emergency room to the admissions desk. When I went over, she was fishing an insurance card out of her wallet. By-Smart was written on it in big letters; I was relieved but surprised—from what I’d read, the

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company didn’t provide insurance to their cashiers. Of course, Romeo drove for them; maybe he had real benefits. When Sandra had finished filling out forms, I asked if she wanted me to wait for her. Her mouth twisted. “You? I don’t need your help for anything, Victoria Iffy-genius Warshawski. You couldn’t get a husband, you couldn’t have a kid, now you’re trying to muscle into my family? Just go the hell away.” I’d forgotten that tired old insult the kids used to use. My middle name, Iphigenia, the bane of my life—who had let it out on the playground to begin with? And then my mother’s ambitions for me to go to college, the support of teachers like Mary Ann McFarlane, my own drive, some of the kids thought I was a snot, an egghead, an iffy genius. Being Boom-Boom’s cousin, and his sidekick, had been a help in high school, but all those taunts, maybe that’s why I’d done some of the things I’d done, trying to prove to the rest of the school that I wasn’t just a brain, that I could be as big an idiot as any other adolescent. Despite her spitefulness, I handed Sandra a business card. “My cell phone’s on here. If you change your mind, give me a call.” It was only six o’clock when I walked out of the hospital. I couldn’t believe it was that early—I thought I must have been working all night, I felt so beat. I looked aimlessly around Cottage Grove Avenue for my car, wondering if I’d forgotten to set the alarm, when I remembered it was still down at the high school—I’d ridden to Hyde Park in the ambulance. I picked up a taxi at the stand across the street and bullied the driver into going south. All the way down Route 41, the cabbie kept hectoring me on how dangerous it was, and who was going to pay his fare back north? I refused to take part in one more fight, leaning back in the seat with my eyes shut, hoping that would make the driver close his mouth. He may have kept up his complaint, but I did fall into a sound sleep that lasted all the way to the high school parking lot.

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I made my way home more by luck than skill, and fell back down into the well of sleep as soon as I got home. My dreams weren’t restful. I was back in the gym, fifteen years old. It was dark, but I knew I was there with Sylvia, Jennie, and the rest of my old basketball team. We’d run the length of the room so many times, we automatically avoided the sharp edges of the bleachers, and the horse and hurdles leaning against the wall. We knew where the ladders were, and which one had the climbing ropes looped around it. I was the strongest: I clambered up the narrow steel ladder and unhooked the climbing ropes. Sylvia was like a squirrel on the ropes. She clung with her thighs, hauling up the underpants and the sign. Jennie, keeping watch at the gym doors, was sweating. Homecoming was the next night, and the dream switched to that. Even in my dream, I felt thick with grievance against Boom-Boom—he’d promised to take me and now he wouldn’t. What did he see in Sandy, anyway? It was the exposure waiting round the bend in my mind that woke me. I wasn’t going to let myself dream to the end, to Boom-Boom’s anger and my own mortification. I sat in bed, sweating, panting, seeing Sandy Zoltak again as she’d been then, soft, plump, with a sly smile for the girls, a foxy one for the guys, her shimmery satin dress a blue that matched her eyes, going into the gym on Boom-Boom’s arm— I pushed aside the memory and thought instead how I wouldn’t have known Sandy on the street today—I certainly hadn’t known her in the hospital. It must have been that random thought that brought the punk I’d seen on the street when I was talking to Pastor Andrés back into mind, the “chavo banda” Andrés chewed out for showing up at his construction site. Of course I’d seen him before: he’d been in Fly the Flag last Tuesday morning. “A punk one sees around, taking from jobsites, or even doing little jobs,” Andrés had said. Someone had hired him to vandalize Fly the Flag. Was it Andrés, or Zamar, or someone Andrés knew? It was four in the morning. I wasn’t going to go all the way down to

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South Chicago to see if the chavo was trying for a repeat attack against Fly the Flag. But the thought stayed with me through the rest of my uneasy sleep. All day Tuesday, when I had a heavy schedule at my agency, I kept wondering about this chavo and the flag factory, about the cartons they’d been taking out of the plant that they hadn’t wanted me to see the last time I was there. In the evening, when I’d finished my real work, I couldn’t resist going back down to Fly the Flag to see for myself what was going on. And while I was creeping around the plant in the dark, I watched it blow up.

16 Command Performance

hat was the tale I told Conrad, mostly warts, mostly all. When I finished talking, it was late afternoon. The anesthesia in my system kept pulling me under, and I drifted off to sleep from time to time. Once when I woke up, Conrad was stretched out asleep on the floor. Mr. Contreras had been compassionate enough to put a pillow under his head, I saw with some amusem*nt; my neighbor had left while we were both asleep, but came back half an hour or so later with a big bowl of spaghetti. At first, Conrad kept challenging me; interviewing me had him off balance, and he was jumpy, aggressive, interrupting every few sentences. I was too tired and too sore to fight. Whenever he broke in, I would only wait for him to finish, and then just start the previous sentence again from the beginning. Finally, he settled down, not even barking at me when I took phone calls—although my long conversation with Morrell made him leave the room. Of course, Conrad had calls of his own, from the medical examiner’s office, from his secretary, from the Tenth Ward alderman, and a couple of newspaper and TV stations. While he was dealing with the media, I bathed and put on clean clothes, a tough job with the pain stabbing from my shoulder down my left arm. I risked wetting the dress-

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ing by washing my hair, which stank of smoke, and felt better for getting all the grime off my body. I talked until I was hoarse. Not that I told Conrad every detail; he didn’t need to know about my private life, or my complicated reaction to Marcena Love. He didn’t need to know my ancient history with Bron Czernin and Sandy Zoltak, and I didn’t hand him Billy the Kid or Pastor Andrés on a platter. Still, I covered all the essentials, including a lot more detail than he wanted on the Bertha Palmer basketball program—especially when I suggested that the Fourth Police District might adopt the team as part of their community outreach. I didn’t hide anything that I’d learned at Fly the Flag, not even my own break-in at the premises the week before, or the chavo banda I’d intercepted or Frank Zamar’s refusal to let me call the cops then. I told Conrad how Rose Dorrado had brought me into the flag factory to begin with, and then ordered me to stay away. And I told him that Andrés knew this chavo by sight. “And that’s the whole truth, Ms. W., so help you God?” Rawlings said when I’d finished. “Too many people doing weird things in God’s name these days,” I grumbled. “Let’s just say I’ve given you an honest factual narrative.” “Where does this Marcena Love fit into the picture?” “Don’t think she does,” I said. “I’ve never seen her near the factory, for one thing, and there’s nothing connecting Czernin to it, either. She might have heard something, roaming around the South Side, that’s all. I’m guessing a look at Zamar’s books will tell you what you need to know.” “Meaning?” “Meaning, I’m wondering if the guy was in a hole and was being squeezed. Rose Dorrado said he’d bought a fancy new machine he was having trouble paying for. Say Zamar didn’t, or couldn’t, respond when his creditors put dead rats in his ventilator shaft. This annoyed them enough that they made the biggest statement possible, took out his factory and him at the same time.”

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Conrad nodded and switched off his recorder. “It’s a good theory. It might even be right—it’s worth looking into. But I want you to do me a favor. No, take that back: I want a promise out of you.” My brows jumped up to my hairline. “And that would be?” “Not to do any more investigating on my turf. I’ll get our forensics accountants to check into Zamar’s finances, and I don’t want to find that you’ve been there ahead of them, helping yourself to his files.” “I promise you that I will not help myself to any of Zamar’s files. Which, I have a feeling, are charcoal now, anyway.” “I want more than that, Vic. I don’t want you investigating crimes in my district, period.” “If someone in South Chicago hires me, Conrad, I will investigate to the best of my ability.” Despite the spurt of anger I felt, I almost laughed—I hadn’t wanted to be sucked back into South Chicago, but as soon as someone told me to stay away my hackles went up and I dug in my heels. “That’s right, cookie,” Mr. Contreras put in. “You can’t be letting people tell you what you can and can’t do for a living.” Conrad glared at the old man but spoke to me. “Your investigations are like Sherman’s march through Georgia: you get where you’re going, but God help anyone within five miles of your path. South Chicago has enough death and destruction without you adding your investigative skills to my war zone.” “That badge and gun don’t make you owner of the South Side,” I began, my eyes hot. “It’s just that you cannot bear the memory—” The doorbell rang before I could finish my own offensive retort. Peppy and Mitch began a deafening barking, whirling around me in circles to let me know someone was approaching. Mr. Contreras, in his element when I’m on the disabled list, bustled out, the dogs clattering behind him.

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The interruption gave me time to take a breath. “Conrad, you’re too good a cop to be threatened by anything I do. I know you’re not afraid I’ll steal glory you have coming to you if I turn up something that helps you solve a case. And you’re a generous coworker with women. So your reaction is totally about you and me. Do you think I—” I broke off as I heard the expedition to the third floor making its way up the stairs: the dogs racing up and down as Mr. Contreras slowly puffed his way upward, and the hollow thump of a cane against the hard stairwell carpet. Morrell was coming to visit me. It was his first time moving this far from his own place since he’d come home, and I was touched, and delighted—so why was I feeling embarrassed? Surely not because Morrell would see me with Conrad—and absolutely not because Conrad would see me with Morrell. Which meant I was blushing for no good reason. Then, over the sound of the cane and Mr. Contreras’s heavy tread, I heard Marcena’s light, high voice and my embarrassment receded into annoyance. Why was she raining on my parade once again? Didn’t she have to get back to England, or Fallujah? I turned my back on the door and doggedly continued my speech to Conrad. “If you’ve been holding a grudge against me for four years, that makes me feel sad. But, even so, you’re asking something that you have no right to, under law, something you must know I wouldn’t agree to, even if it would end your bitter feelings against me.” Conrad looked at me, lips compressed, trying to make up his mind how to answer. The dogs raced in before he decided, dancing around me with their tails waving like banners: they’d brought me company, and they wanted petting and cheers for being so clever. Behind them, I could hear Marcena saying to Mr. Contreras, “I adore horse racing; I had no idea you could see it in Chicago. Before I go home, you must take me to the track. Are you a lucky punter? No? No more am I, but I never can resist.”

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So now she was charming the socks off my neighbor, too. I got to my feet again as she and Mr. Contreras came through my little vestibule. “Marcena! What a pleasure. And horse racing, of course, another passion of yours that I never knew about, like World War Two fighter planes! Come meet Commander Rawlings, and tell him how much you adore model trains, and how your Uncle Julian—or was it your Uncle Sacheverel?—used to let you play with his H.O. layout at Christmas.” Conrad had an unexpected passion for model railroads; his living room held an intricate setup that he turned to when he needed to unwind, and he had a small shop in his garage where he built houses and molded miniature scenery. Conrad shook his head several times, just a reflex, startled by my sudden chirpy outburst, while Marcena looked at me through narrowed eyes. I introduced them, and went out to the landing to find Morrell. He had reached the top of the stairs, but was getting his breath back before coming in to face a crowd. Peppy came out to see what we were doing, but Mitch had also fallen for Marcena and was staying close to her. “So you’ve been back in the wars, my mighty Amazon?” Morrell pulled me close and kissed me. “I thought the house rule was only one of us could be injured at a time.” “Just a flesh wound,” I said gruffly. “It hurts horribly right now, but it’s not serious. Thanks for coming. I’m just finishing with the cops; Commander Rawlings wanted complete chapter and verse.” “I would have been here sooner, but Marcena didn’t get in until noon, and she needed to rest before setting out again. Sorry to bring her, darling, but I don’t trust myself driving in city traffic yet.” One of the bullets had nicked Morrell’s right hip where the sciatic nerve comes out. The nerve had been damaged, and it wasn’t clear how completely it would recover. His occupational therapist had urged him to learn to use hand controls to drive, but he was resisting, not wanting to ac-

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knowledge that he might not regain full use of his leg. I put my arm around him, and we went back into my apartment, where Marcena was petting Mitch and asking Conrad about his work. Conrad was answering her tersely. His jaw was rigid, and when he saw me come in with Morrell he broke off midsentence. I introduced the two men before sitting heavily down again—all this commotion was wearing me out. “You been shot, huh?” Conrad said to Morrell. “Not running in front of a bullet meant for Vic, were you?” “No, these were all meant for me,” Morrell said. “Or, at least, for anyone trying to get into Mazar-e-Sharif that day. Or that’s what the army told me—I don’t remember it myself.” “Sorry, man, tough. I took a few at Hill 882.” Conrad was embarrassed at letting his feelings about me goad him into plain bald rudeness. For several minutes, he and Morrell and Mr. Contreras traded war stories—my neighbor had somehow survived one of World War II’s bloodiest battles without being hurt, but he had seen plenty of other dead and wounded men. Marcena had her own store of war zone anecdotes to contribute. South Side street fighter that I am, I’ve seen my share of ugly fights, but these were small and personal, so I kept them to myself. “‘War is sweet to those who never saw one,’” Morrell said, adding to me, “Erasmus, I think—you’ll have to ask Coach McFarlane how he said it in Latin.” His words broke the chain of reminiscences; Conrad turned to Marcena. “Vic was telling me you’ve been riding around the South Side, Ms. Love. Have you been on your own?” Marcena looked at me reproachfully; I hadn’t been a good chum, telling on her to the cops. “You’ve spent a lot of time down there lately, you’ve seen a lot of the community, and people talk to you frankly,” I said. “I told Commander Rawlings, because you might have seen or heard something that would be useful to him.” “I can ask my own questions, Vic, thanks, and don’t go

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tipping off witnesses again, okay? Maybe Ms. Love and I will go out for coffee and let you two be alone.” “Absolutely,” Marcena said. “Morrell, when you’re ready for me to drive you back to Evanston, ring me on my mobile. This will be great, Commander: I’ve needed to talk to someone in the police to round out my picture of South Chicago. So much of it seems to be under permanent surveillance.” Conrad ignored her to stand over me. “Vic, I meant what I said about you messing up my turf. Take care of the basketball program. Deal with the financial crooks on La Salle Street. Leave the Fourth District to me.”

17 A Frog in My Jeans

hat’d you do to get a police commander so annoyed with you, Pepperpot?” Morrell asked. “Nothing he won’t get over in another decade or two.” I leaned against him and shut my eyes. “He thinks Cookie here got him shot four years ago,” Mr. Contreras put in, “when it was his own darn fault for not listening to her to begin with. Good thing, if you ask me, ’cause it made him—” “It’s never a good thing to get shot.” I couldn’t bear to hear Mr. Contreras celebrate Conrad’s and my breakup, especially not in front of Morrell. “And maybe I should have had that bullet instead of him. Anyway, Marcena will charm him out of his bad mood.” “Probably will,” my Job’s comforter agreed. “She’s perky enough for a whole squad of cheerleaders.” Morrell laughed. “She’s a prizewinning journalist—I don’t think she’d appreciate being compared to a cheerleader.” “But she is full of zip,” I murmured, “and she knows how to home in on everyone’s wavelength.” “Except yours,” Morrell said. “But I’m a pepperpot, not a cheerleader.” He pulled me closer. “I like pepper better than cheers, okay?”

“W

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“Yeah, but, cookie, you could learn something from her,” Mr. Contreras said, his brown eyes full of concern. “Look how she got Conrad Rawlings eating out of her hand, after he’d been threatening you.” I stiffened but didn’t say anything; the old man had been so supportive all day it would be mean to turn on him, and, anyway, it would just prove his point. I looked up to see Morrell grinning at me, as if reading my mind. I punched him in the ribs, but settled back against his shoulder. Finally, after fidgeting around the living room for several minutes, my neighbor announced he was taking the dogs out. “You two ain’t fit for anything but sleep right now,” he said, then turned brick red at the innuendo. “Don’t worry; sleep is all I’m fit for.” I thanked him for all his help during the day. “Especially the spaghetti—a real corpse reviver.” “Clara’s old meatball recipe,” he beamed. It took another ten minutes for him to finish his strictures on Conrad, his advice for my recovery, his promise to intercept Marcena so she wouldn’t wake us when she came back. “That’s right,” I said. “You two figure out a strategy for the Arlington track that’ll set you up for the rest of your life. Morrell and I will design a strategy for healing our torn-up bodies.” We did pretty well sleep the clock around, at least in shifts. I got up briefly to talk to Marcena, who came up the stairs, despite Mr. Contreras’s efforts to hold her at bay, so she could fetch Morrell. Morrell hobbled out in his jeans to say he’d stay with me until I could drive him home myself. Marcena lingered in the doorway to report on the super time she’d had with Conrad; he’d promised her a ridealong next week to round out her picture of the South Side—she’d get a Kevlar vest and everything, just like being back in Kosovo. I felt as though my skin might ignite from the force of the energy she was putting out, or maybe from my jealousy. “You able to tell him anything useful out of your nocturnal junkets?”

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She grinned. “My eyes haven’t been scanning the streets that closely, Vic, but I did want to thank you for not ratting out Bron to him—if word gets back to By-Smart about him having me in his truck, it could cost him his job.” I felt a sudden jolt: I couldn’t believe I had forgotten about April Czernin so completely. “When did you last talk to Bron? Since yesterday? Does he know about April?” “Oh, his daughter, right, Morrell told me. He can’t take personal calls on his cell phone: it belongs to the company, and they monitor every call he makes and gets, so I didn’t try to reach him. Anyway, he was headed for home, so I’m sure his wife told him.” “You didn’t try to reach him yourself?” I couldn’t keep the scorn out of my voice. “Even when you found out his kid was close to dying?” “I don’t think it would have been helpful for him to hear it fourth-hand from the hospital via you to Morrell to me. Or for his wife to talk to me if I reached her.” She sounded disdainful, like the headmistress annoyed with the poor work of an unpromising student, but at least she’d stopped bubbling over like the La Brea tar pits. “No wonder Sandra Czernin thinks my name is mud down there. I’m the person who introduced him to the woman he’s been seeing the sights with.” I shut the door on her, but had to open it a second later—Peppy and Mitch had followed Marcena upstairs, and while Mitch, like every other male I knew, was clinging to Marcena, Peppy wanted to be let in with me. I glared at Mitch’s retreating tail and stumped over to the phone. Once again I got Sandra’s stilted voice on her answering machine; I figured she, at least, was at the hospital—who knew where Bron was. I left a message, explaining that I’d been hit in the explosion at Fly the Flag, and asking Sandra to call me with news about April. I was still groggy from anesthesia and my long day with Conrad, but Morrell said he’d slept enough for the time being. He settled himself on the couch with Peppy and his new laptop. He was working on the book he’d been re-

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searching when he got shot. His original laptop had been stolen while he lay bleeding on a mud track in Afghanistan; he’d backed up most of his files onto a portable key, but there was material he was trying to reconstruct, notes he’d been taking shortly before he was hit that he hadn’t had time to organize or copy. I went back to bed but slept fitfully, the pain in my shoulder jerking me awake whenever I turned in my sleep. At one-thirty, I woke to an empty bed; Morrell was still working. I got out two of my mother’s red Venetian glasses and poured Armagnac for us. Morrell thanked me, but didn’t look up long from his screen—his reconstruction had him totally absorbed. While he wrote, I watched William Powell and Myrna Loy dash around San Francisco, solving crimes with their faithful terrier, Asta. “Myrna Loy solved crimes in evening gowns and high heels; maybe that’s my problem—I spend too much time in blue jeans and sneakers.” Morrell smiled at me absently. “You’d look wonderful in one of those old forties dresses, Vic, but you’d probably trip a lot chasing people down alleys.” “And Asta,” I went on. “How come Mitch and Peppy don’t cleverly retrieve clues as people hurl them in through the windows?” “You shouldn’t encourage them,” he murmured, frowning over his computer. I finished my Armagnac and went back to bed. When I woke again, it was nine and Morrell was sleeping soundly next to me. He’d flung his left arm clear of the bedclothes, and I sat for a while, looking at the jagged raw scar along his shoulder where one of the bullets had gone in. Conrad had scars like that, older, less angry, one underneath his rib cage, one in his abdomen. I used to look at those while he slept, too. I got up abruptly, staggering slightly as the pain hit me, but made it to the bathroom without falling. Disregarding the young surgeon’s instructions, I stood under a hot shower, protecting the wound by wrapping a dry-cleaning

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bag over my shoulder. Come to think of it, I’d have my own jagged little scar, discreetly concealed on my back. A dainty, ladylike scar, the kind that Myrna Loy could have sported and still looked sexy in her backless gowns. Peppy tapped after me while I struggled into a bra and a blouse. I let her out the back door before trying to make my breakfast. I had planned to go to the store this morning. No bread. No fruit, not even an old apple. No yogurt. A little milk that smelled as if it should have been drunk yesterday. I poured it down the sink, and made myself a cup of stove-top espresso, which I drank out on the back porch, hugging my arms against the thin gray air, eating some rye crackers to keep my stomach company. I lounged around most of the day, calling clients, doing what I could at home from my laptop, finally venturing out in the late afternoon to get some food. I had hoped to get down to Bertha Palmer for basketball, but I had to call the school to cancel. Friday, to my annoyance, I still had enough anesthesia in me that I continued to be too groggy to do much, but Saturday I woke early. The thought of lounging around the house for one more day made me feel like nails on a blackboard. Morrell was still asleep. I finished dressing, including putting on a sling that the hospital had given me with my discharge papers, then scribbled a note that I propped on Morrell’s laptop. When I got downstairs, Mr. Contreras was glad to see me, but not happy when I announced I was going out for a while with Peppy. Even though she’s so well trained she’ll heel without straining on her leash, he thought I should spend the weekend in bed. “I’m not going to do anything stupid, but I’ll go nuts if I lie around the house. I’ve already spent almost three days in bed—way beyond my lounging limit.” “Yeah, you never yet listened to nothing I had to say, why should you start today? Whatcha gonna do when you’re out on the Tollway and that shoulder of yours won’t

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let you turn the steering wheel fast enough to get out of the way of some crackpot?” I put my good arm around his shoulders. “I’m not going on the Tollway. Just down to the University of Chicago, okay? I won’t go over forty-five, and I’ll stay in the right lane all the way there and back.” He was only mildly mollified by my sharing my plans, but he knew I was going to go whether he grumped or not; he muttered that he’d walk Mitch and slammed his door on me. I was halfway down the walk when I remembered that my car was still in South Chicago. I almost rang the bell to get Mr. Contreras to take Peppy, but didn’t think I could face him again today. No dogs on the CTA; I went down to Belmont to try my luck with cabs. The fourth one I flagged was willing to drive to the far South Side with a dog. The driver was from Senegal, he explained during the long ride, and had a Rottweiler for companionship, so he didn’t mind Peppy’s golden hairs all over his upholstery. He asked about the sling and tutted solicitously when I explained what had happened. In turn, I asked him how he came to be in Chicago, and heard a long story about his family and their optimistic hopes that his being here would make their fortune. My Mustang was still on Yates, where I’d parked it Tuesday evening. My lucky break for the week: it had all four tires, and all the doors and windows were intact. The cabdriver kindly waited until I had Peppy inside and the engine going before he left us. I drove over to South Chicago Avenue to look at the remains of Fly the Flag. The front was still more or less intact, but a big chunk of the back wall was missing. Pieces of cinder block were strewn around, as if some drunk giant had stuffed a hand through the window and pulled off bits of the building. I slipped on long feathers of ash, the residue of the rayons and canvas that had gone up in Tuesday’s fireball. With my arm in a sling, keeping my balance was tricky, and I ended up tripping on a piece of rebar,

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landing smartly on my good shoulder. The pain made my eyes tear up. If I injured my right arm I wouldn’t be able to drive, and Mr. Contreras would have a field day, probably field month, full of “I told you so”s. I lay in the detritus, looking at the low gray sky overhead, flexing my right arm and shoulder. Just a bruise, nothing I couldn’t ignore if I put my mind to it. I twisted around and sat on one of the pieces of cinder block, absently picking through the remains around me. Fragments of windowpane, a whole roll of marigold braid miraculously intact, warped shards of metal that might once have been spools, an aluminum soap dish in the shape of a frog. Now that was a strange thing to find in a place like this, unless the bathroom had been blown to bits and this had fallen through to the fabric storage area. But the bathroom had been a nasty utilitarian hole: I didn’t remember seeing anything as whimsical as a frog in it. I tucked it into my peacoat pocket and pushed myself back to my feet. Just as well I was in jeans and sneaks for this particular adventure, instead of a backless evening gown: the jeans could go through the washer. I went as far as the back wall, but the ruin inside looked too unstable to risk going inside for further exploration. The front was intact, but the fire had started in the back, on the building’s Skyway side—out of sight of the street. I could have gone in through the loading dock, but that meant hoisting myself up, and my shoulder gave an almighty jolt when I tried it. I returned to my car, frustrated by my limited mobility, and headed north, keeping the pace sedate so I could steer one-handed. When we got to Hyde Park, I parked outside the University of Chicago campus, and let Peppy chase squirrels for a while. Despite the cold weather, a number of students were sitting outside with coffee and textbooks. Peppy made the rounds, giving people that soulful look that says, you can feed this dog or you can turn the page. She managed to cadge half a peanut butter sandwich before I called her sharply to heel.

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When I had bundled her back into the Mustang, I went into the old social sciences building to scrub the worst of the ash off my clothes and hands: I couldn’t visit April looking like a Halloween ghoul. As I turned to go, I saw the gash in my coat’s shoulder, where they’d cut it away from me in the emergency room. I didn’t look like a ghoul, but a bag lady.

18 Visiting Hours

alloons and stuffed animals lined the scuffed corridors of the children’s hospital, looking like desperate offerings to the arbitrary gods who play with human happiness. As I wound my way along halls and up stairwells, I passed little alcoves where adults sat waiting, silent, unmoving. Passing the patient rooms, I heard snatches of overly bright talk, moms using sheer energy to coax their children to health. When I got to the fourth floor, I didn’t have any trouble finding April’s room: Bron and Sandra Zoltak Czernin were fighting in a nearby alcove. “You were out screwing some bitch and your kid was dying. Don’t tell me you love her!” Sandra was trying to whisper, but her voice carried beyond me; a woman walking the hall with a small child attached to an IV looked at them nervously and tried to shepherd her toddler out of earshot. “You didn’t even get to the hospital until almost midnight.” “I came here as soon as I heard. Have I left the hospital for one second since? You know damned well I can’t take calls on the truck phone, and I get home to find you gone, the kid gone, no message from you. I figured you and April were out, you’re always taking her off someplace, buying her crap we don’t have money for.

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“As far as you’re concerned, I don’t exist. I’m just the paycheck to cover the bills you can’t pay on your own. You didn’t even have the sense or decency to call me, the kid’s own father. I had to get the news off the answering machine, and it wasn’t you who called but that goddamn Warshawski bitch. That’s how I find out my own kid is sick, not from my own wife. Mrs. High-and-Mighty, Virgin Mary had nothing on you for purity, and you wonder why I look for human flesh and blood someplace else.” “At least you can be sure April is your daughter, which is more than Jesse Navarro or Lech Bukowski can say about their own kids, all the time you spent with their wives, and now, now they’re saying April has this thing with her heart, this thing, she can’t play basketball anymore.” Sandra’s thin aging face was twisted in pain. “Basketball? She’s sick as a horse, and you’re upset she can’t play a stupid goddamn ball game? What’s with you?” Bron smashed the wall with the palm of his hand. A nurse making rounds paused next to me, gauging the level of anger in the alcove, then shook her head and moved on. “I don’t care about the stupid goddamn ball game!” Sandra’s voice rose. “It’s April’s ticket to college, you—you loser. You know damned well she can’t go on your paycheck. I’m not having her do like me, spend her life married to some creep who can’t keep his pants zipped, working her life away at By-Smart because she can’t do any better. Look at me, I look as old as your mother, and talk about the High-and-Mighty Mother of God, that’s how she looks on you, and me, I’m supposed to get down on my knees and slobber thanks because I married you, and you can’t even support your own kid.” “What do you mean, I can’t support her? f*ck you, bitch! Did she ever go to school hungry or—” “Did you even listen to the doctor? It will cost a hundred thousand dollars to fix her heart, and then the drugs, and the insurance pays ten thousand dollars of it? Where are you going to find the money, tell me that? The money

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we could’ve been saving if you hadn’t spent it on drinks for the boys, and the whor*s you screw around with, and—” Bron’s head seemed to swell with anger. “I will find the money it takes to look after April! You cannot stand there telling me I don’t love my own daughter.” The woman with the small child approached them timidly. “Can you be a little quieter, please? You’re making my baby cry, shouting like that.” Sandra and Bron looked at her; the little girl on the IV was crying, silent hiccupping sobs that were more unnerving than a loud howl. Bron and Sandra looked away, which is how Bron caught sight of me. “It’s goddamn Tori Warshawski. What the f*ck were you doing, pushing my girl so hard she went and collapsed?” His voice rose to a roar that brought aides and parents scurrying to the hall. “Hi, Bron, hi, Sandra, how’s she doing?” I asked. Sandra turned away from me, but Bron erupted from the alcove, pushing me so hard he flung me against a wall. “You hurt my girl! I warned you, Warshawski, I warned you if you messed with April you’d answer to me!” People watched in horror as I carefully righted myself. The pain coursing down my left arm brought tears to my eyes, but I blinked them back. I wasn’t going to get into a fight with him, not in a hospital, not with my left arm in a sling, and, anyway, not with a guy so worried and helpless that he had to pick a fight with anyone who looked at him crossways. But I wasn’t going to let him see me cry, either. “Yes, I heard you. I can’t remember what you said you’d do if I saved her life.” Bron pounded a fist against his palm. “If you saved her life. If you saved her life, you can kiss my ass.” I turned to Sandra. “I heard you say it was her heart. What happened? I never saw her weak or short of breath at practice.” “You’d say that, wouldn’t you?” Sandra said. “You’d say anything to protect your butt. She has something wrong

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with her heart, it’s something she was born with, but you ran her too hard, that’s why she collapsed.” I felt cold with a fear that Bron hadn’t inspired in me: these words sounded like a prelude to a lawsuit. April’s treatment would cost more than a hundred thousand dollars; they needed money; they could sue me. My pockets weren’t deep, but they sure hung lower than the Czernins’. “If she was born with the condition, it could have happened anytime, anywhere, Sandra,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “What do the doctors say they can do to treat her?” “Nothing. Nothing but rest unless we can come up with the money to pay their bills. All the blacks, they have it easy, just show their welfare cards and their kids get whatever they need, but people like us, people who work hard all the time, what do we have to show for it?” Sandra glared up the hall at the woman with the small child, who happened to be black, as if the four-year-old had designed the managed care companies that decreed what medical care Americans could get. A nurse who’d come out of one of the patient rooms stepped forward, trying to intervene, but the Czernins were in their own private universe, the world of anger, and no one else could get into it with them. The nurse went back to whatever she’d been doing, but I stayed on the battlefield. “And I’m married to Mr. Wonderful here, who hasn’t been home one night all week and then acts like he’s Saint Joseph, the greatest father of all time.” Sandra turned her bitter face back to Bron. “I’m surprised you even know your own daughter’s name, you sure as hell forgot her birthday this year, out with that English bitch, or was it Danuta Tomzak from Lazinski’s bar?” Bron grabbed Sandra’s thin shoulders and started shaking her. “I do love my daughter, you damn c*nt, you will not say different, not here, not anywhere. And I can get the f*cking money to pay for her heart. You tell that SOB doctor not to move her, not to check her out of the hospital, I’ll have the money for him by Tuesday, easy.”

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He stormed down the corridor and slammed his way through a swinging door that led to a stairwell. Sandra’s mouth was a thin bitter line. “Mary had the Prince of Peace, I get the Prince of Pricks.” She turned her scowl on me. “Is he going to ask that English woman he’s been screwing for money?” I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t know if she has any.” And who forks over a hundred grand to the daughter of a man she cares about only as a good story to tell her friends back home? I didn’t say it—Sandra was only clutching at straws; she didn’t have any sense right now, no sense of what was possible and what wasn’t. “You said the insurance would cover only ten thousand dollars. Is that your insurance?” She shook her head and said through tight, thin lips, “I can’t get coverage because I only work thirty-four hours a week. By-Smart says that isn’t full-time work, it has to be forty hours a week. So Bron buys the insurance, for him and April, we decided we couldn’t afford to cover me, and when the hospital, when they called the company yesterday, it turns out that that’s all the coverage she gets for being sick and we pay, Mother of God, we pay two thousand six hundred dollars a year. If I’d known, I’d’ve been putting all that money in a savings account for April.” “What is it that’s really wrong with April?” I asked. Sandra twisted her hands together. “I don’t know. The doctors use fancy language so you won’t know if they’re doing the right thing for your kid or not. Were you working her too hard because she’s mine?” I wished I’d listened to Mr. Contreras and stayed home. All I wanted right now was to crawl into a cave and sleep until spring. “Can we talk to a doctor? If I understand what the diagnosis is, maybe I can help find treatment.” I was thinking of my friend Lotty Herschel, who’s a surgeon at Beth Israel Hospital on Chicago’s far North Side. Lotty treats her

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share of indigent patients; she might know how to help the Czernins dance around the insurance system. “She fainted once, last summer, when she’d been at a basketball camp, but I didn’t think anything of it, girls faint all the time, I know I did when I was her age. I wanted her to have every opportunity, I wasn’t going to have you lord it over my kid the way you do over me.” I blinked, reeling under the flow of words and the contradictory ideas jostling for airspace. I was about to utter a reflexive protest, that I didn’t lord it over her, but when I remembered our history together I felt myself blushing. That night just before the homecoming dance, if I could call up one evening of my life to do differently that would be the one, unless it was the time I’d snuck a pint of whiskey from Lazinski’s the night my mother died— enough. I had enough bad memories to make me squirm all day if I dwelt on them. The nurse who’d tried to intervene in Sandra and Bron’s fight was still lingering nearby. She agreed to page a doctor to come to April’s room to talk to the family. While we waited, I crossed the hall to April’s room. Sandra followed me without protest. April was in a room with three other kids. When we came in, she was watching television, her face puffy from the drugs she was taking. A giant teddy bear was propped up next to her in bed, brand new, holding a balloon that read, “Get Well Soon.” April shifted her groggy gaze from Soul Train to her mother, but her face brightened when she saw me. “Coach! This is so cool, you coming to see me. You gonna let me come back to the team, even if I miss next week?” “You can rejoin the team as soon as the docs and your mom say you’re ready to play. Great bear—where’d he come from?” “Daddy.” She flicked a wary glance at her mother: the bear had probably already been the focus of a quarrel, but I found it heartbreaking, Bron wanting to do something for his daughter and coming up with this outsize toy.

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We talked a little about basketball, about school, what she was missing in her biology class, while Sandra fussed with her pillows, straightened the sheets, pushed April to drink some juice (“You know the doctor said you have to have lots of fluids with this drug you’re taking.”). By and by, a young resident came in. He had a chubby, cherubic face, complete with a circlet of soft dark curls, but he had an easy way about him, bantering lightly with April while he checked her pulse and asked her how much she was drinking and eating. “You got that big bear there to try to scare me off, huh, but I don’t scare that easy. Keep him away from your boyfriend, though, boys your age can’t stand up to bears.” After a few minutes, he left her with a nod and a wink, and ushered Sandra and me down the hall, out of April’s earshot. I introduced myself and explained my role in April’s life. “Oh, you’re the heroine who saved her life. That how you got your arm in a sling?” I hoped hearing the doctor call me a heroine would soften Sandra’s views of me. I explained briefly about my injury and asked what the story was on April. “She has something we call Long QT Syndrome. I could show you the EKG and explain how we know and why we call it that, but what it really means is a kind of arrhythmia in the heart. With proper treatment, she can certainly lead a normal, productive life, but she absolutely has to give up basketball. If she keeps playing, I’m sorry to put it bluntly, Ms. Czernin, but the outcome could be very bad.” Sandra nodded bleakly. She’d gone back to twisting her fingers together, thumbs pushing so hard that the backs of her hands were covered in purplish-red welts. I asked the resident what the proper treatment was. “We’ve started her on a course of beta-blockers to stabilize her heart.” He went into a long explanation about the buildup of sodium ions in the chamber, and the function of beta-blockers in stabilizing the ion exchange, then added, “She should go to a pacemaker, to an implanted

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cardioverter defibrillator. Otherwise, I’m afraid, well, it’s a question of time before there’s another serious episode.” His pager sounded. “If there’s anything else, please page me. I’ll be glad to talk to you at any time. We’re going to discharge April Monday if her heart is stable, and we’ll keep her on the beta-blockers for the time being.” “Like I can afford those,” Sandra muttered. “Even with my employee discount, it’s going to be fifty bucks a week for her medication. What do they think, that only rich people get sick in this country?” I tried to say something commiserating, but she turned on me again; our brief moment of rapport was gone. There was a limit to how much time as a punching bag I felt I owed her; I’d passed it some time back. I told her I’d keep in touch and headed down the hall to the stairwell. On my way out the hospital’s front door, I almost collided with a tall teenager, who was entering from Maryland Avenue. I was intent on my own thoughts, and didn’t look at her until she gasped, “Coach.” I stopped. “Josie Dorrado! This is great that you came to see April. She’s going to need lots of support in the weeks ahead.” To my astonishment, instead of answering she turned crimson and dropped the pot of daisies she was holding. She half opened the door and made a flapping gesture with her right arm, signaling to someone outside to take off. I stepped over the plants and dirt and pushed open the door. Josie clutched my left, my sore arm, trying to pull me back inside. I gave a squawk loud enough that she let go of me and muscled my way past her roughly to look at the street. A midnight blue Miata was heading up Maryland, but a group of heavyset women, slowly making their way across the street, blocked the license plate. I turned back to Josie. “Who brought you here? Who do you know who can afford a sports car like that?” “I came on the bus,” she said quickly. “Oh? Which one?”

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“The, uh, the, I didn’t notice the number. I just asked the driver—” “To drop you at the hospital entrance. Josie, I’m ashamed of you for lying to me. You’re on my team; I need to be able to trust you.” “Oh, Coach, you don’t understand. It’s not what you’re thinking, honest!” “Excuse us.” The trio of heavyset women who’d been on the street were frowning magisterially at us. “Can you clean up your mess? We’d like to get into this hospital.” We knelt down to clean up the flowers. The pot was plastic and had survived the fall. With a little help from the guard at the reception desk, who found me a brush, we got most of the dirt back in the pot and reorganized the flowers; they looked half dead, but I saw from the price sticker that Josie had got them at By-Smart for a dollar ninetynine: you don’t get fresh, lively flowers for two bucks. When we’d finished, I stared up at her thin face. “Josie, I can’t promise not to tell your mother if you’re going out with some older guy she doesn’t know or doesn’t approve of.” “She knows him, she likes him, but she can’t—I can’t tell—you gotta promise—” “Are you having sex with him?” I asked bluntly, as she floundered through unfinished sentences. Red streaked her cheeks again. “No way!” I pressed my lips together, thinking about her home, her mother’s second job, which would have to support the family now that Fly the Flag was gone, her sister’s baby, about Pastor Andrés and his strictures against birth control. “Josie, I will promise not to say anything to your mother for the time being if you make a promise to me.” “What’s that?” she demanded, suspicious. “Before you sleep with him, or with any boy, you must make him wear a condom.” She turned an even darker shade of red. “But, Coach, I can’t—how can you—and the abstinence lady, she say they don’t even work.”

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“She gave you bad advice, Josie. They aren’t a hundred percent effective, but they work most of the time. Do you want to end up like your sister Julia, watching telenovelas all day long? Or do you want to try for a life beyond babies, and clerking at By-Smart?” Her eyes were wide and frightened, as if I’d offered her the choice between cutting off her head or talking to her mother. She had probably imagined passionate embraces, a wedding, anything but what it meant to lie with a boy. She looked at the door, at the floor, then suddenly bolted up the stairs into the interior of the hospital. I watched as a guard at the entrance stopped her, but when she looked back down at me I couldn’t bear the fear in her face. I turned on my heel and walked into the cold afternoon.

19 The Hospitable Mr. Contreras

let Peppy back out of the car to chase squirrels around the campus again while I sat on the Bond chapel steps, knees up to my chin, sore back resting against the red doors. A few snowflakes were drifting out of the leaden sky; the students had abandoned the quads. I pulled the collar of my navy peacoat up around my ears, but cold seeped in through the gash in the shoulder. What warning signs should I have noticed in April before Monday? Was anyone else on my team at risk? I didn’t even know if the school performed physicals on its athletes before letting them compete, although a program too poor to pay for a coach and balls probably didn’t have a budget for group EKGs and X-rays. If Sandra decided to sue me—I’d cross that bridge, but I should get a few things on paper now, while they were fresh in my mind—April fainting last summer, Sandra’s own history. “Girls faint all the time,” she’d said; she had herself, although I never remembered her doing so. Maybe she’d swooned in Boom-Boom’s arms . . . Surely he hadn’t slept with her. The idea of it infuriated me. But what was I doing, turning him into a saint? All these years I’d assumed he took her to the dance just to punish me, but that was because I hadn’t ever wanted to think of him having a life apart from mine. Sandra slept around, we all knew that, so

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why not with Boom-Boom? And he was a sports hero, not exactly leading a celibate life. Peppy came up to nuzzle me, worried by my stupor. I stood up and tossed a stick for her as best I could. She was satisfied; she took the stick over to the grass to chew. I realized I felt as battered by Bron and Sandra’s furies as by my physical ills. Had there ever been a time when they twined their arms around each other, looked soulfully into each other’s eyes? Sandra had been thirty when April was born, so a high school pregnancy hadn’t forced them to the altar. Something else had, but I didn’t have friends in the neighborhood who could tell me. Did he sleep around because she looked down on him? Did she despise him because he slept around? What was the chicken and what the egg behind such intense hostility? I got slowly to my feet and called to Peppy. She came running up, pink tongue hanging, grinning with pleasure. I ran my fingers through her silky gold hair, trying to absorb some of her pure joy in the world before putting my weary body into motion again. At my office, I went through my log of calls from yesterday. A couple of clients I should have been attending to. Three messages from Mr. William, wanting his son, two from Murray Ryerson at the Herald-Star wanting to know if there was an important story about Fly the Flag. Fires in South Chicago are a dime a dozen; the story had rated only a paragraph in the metro sections of the city newspapers, and Murray was the only reporter I knew who’d caught my name in the small print (misspelled and misidentified as “Chicago police sergeant I. V. Warshacky,” but Murray had seen through that easily enough). I called Morrell first. He and Mr. Contreras had sent out for Thai food for lunch, and had played a little gin. My neighbor had left, but Morrell couldn’t settle down to his writing; maybe he’d done too much the last few days. When I explained that I was going to do a little work at the office, then try to see Lotty, Morrell said he’d be glad to come with me if she was home; he was going a little stir-crazy.

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Lotty was in. Unlike Murray, she didn’t scan crime news in the papers, so she was surprised and concerned to hear I’d been injured on the job. “Of course you can come by, my dear. I’m going to the store, but I plan to be home this afternoon. Around three-thirty, then?” After dictating my notes on my encounter with Sandra and Bron, I talked briefly with Murray: there was no big story down at Fly the Flag, unless you counted the disaster in lives like Rose Dorrado’s. He listened to my passionate description of her life for a few minutes, before interrupting me to say he’d see if he could interest the ChicagoBeat editor in a human interest story down there. “What about the dead man in the building?” I asked. “Has the ME identified him? Was it Frank Zamar?” I heard the click of Murray’s fingers on his keyboard. “Yeah, uh, Zamar, that’s right. He had an alarm and a sprinkler system down there. The bomb and arson people are guessing the alarm sounded and he went down to see what the problem was. There’s a big drying room at the back of the plant, big propane-fueled blower. The fabric must have been smoldering and set off the propane just as he got down there—it looked as though he was trying to run away but the fire swallowed him.” I dropped the phone. I’d been on the outside, playing spy, while Frank Zamar walked into an inferno. I became aware of Murray’s voice coming tinnily from near my right knee. I picked up the receiver. “Sorry, Murray. I was there, you know. I should have been inside, checking the place over. I’d seen someone there a few days earlier, I should have been inside.” My voice was rising in panic, and I kept repeating the same sentence: “I should have been inside.” “Hey, Warshawski, easy does it, easy does it. Would the guy have let you in? You said he stiffed you when you were there last week. Where are you? Your office? Need me to come by?” I gulped back my hysteria and said shakily, “I think I just need to eat. It’s been a while.”

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When he’d reiterated his offer of help, and urged me on to food and rest, he hung up on the promise of trying to do a story on Rose and some of the other people who’d worked at Fly the Flag. I walked down to La Llorona, a Mexican diner that’s hanging on to its lease by its fingernails—my office is in a neighborhood that’s gentrifying so fast rents seem to double every day. After two bowls of Mrs. Aguilar’s chickentortilla soup, and a short nap on the cot in my office’s back room, I finished my phone calls. I left voice messages with my impatient clients. I didn’t tell them I was late because I’d been injured—it makes you seem unreliable if you go and get shot or stabbed when they’re expecting you to be thinking about their problems. I just said I had preliminary reports for them, which would be true by the end of the day tomorrow, if my shoulder would let me type all afternoon. I didn’t even try to reach Mr. William: whatever was yanking his chain, I couldn’t deal with the Bysen family today. Mitch barked from behind Mr. Contreras’s door when I came in, but either my neighbor was busy or he was still miffed with me for disregarding his advice this morning. When he didn’t come out to greet me, I took Peppy up to my place. Morrell greeted me with relief—he was sick of his book, sick of my small space, tired of being up three flights that were so hard for him to negotiate that he felt almost like a prisoner. He limped slowly down the stairs with me for the drive over to Lotty’s. Lotty used to live in a two-flat near her clinic, but a few years ago she’d moved to one of the tony old buildings on Lake Shore Drive. In the summer, it’s impossible to park near her place, but on a cold November afternoon, with the gray day fading to the black of early night, we found a space without too much trouble. She greeted us warmly, but didn’t spend time on chitchat. In a back room overlooking Lake Michigan, she stripped off my bandages with quick, skilled fingers. She

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clicked her teeth in annoyance, partly with me, for getting it wet in the shower, partly with the surgeon who’d stitched me up. A sloppy job, she announced, adding that we were going to go over to her clinic where she would put me together properly; otherwise, I’d have adhesions that would be hard to work out once the wound healed. We had a little argument over who would drive: Lotty didn’t think I could be trusted with only one good arm, and I didn’t think she could be trusted, period. She thinks she’s Stirling Moss, driving the Grand Prix, but the only similarities I can see are the speed she travels, and her belief that no one should be in front of her on the track. Morrell laughed as we argued but voted for Lotty: if I didn’t feel like driving when she finished, we’d be stuck at the clinic without a car. In the end, neither the drive nor the restitching was as big an ordeal as I’d feared—the former because the main streets were so thick with Saturday shoppers that even Lotty had to go slowly. At her clinic, a storefront about a mile west of my apartment, in a polyglot neighborhood on the fringes of the North Side’s new construction, she shot Novocain into my shoulder. I felt a faint tugging as she cut the old stitches and put new ones in, but either because of her skill or the anesthetic I could actually move my arm pretty easily when she finished. With Lotty lying back in an easy chair in her office, we finally got to April Czernin’s woes. Lotty listened intently, but shook her head with genuine sorrow over the limited help the Czernins could get. “The insurance really only covers ten thousand dollars of her care? That’s shocking. But it’s so typical of the problems our patients face these days, being forced to make these choices of life and death because of what the insurance does or doesn’t pay. “But as for your girl, we can’t take her on as a Medicaid patient, because she’s not indigent; as soon as the billing department finds out she has insurance, they’ll do exactly what the university did, call the company and be told the

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policy won’t cover the defibrillator. The only thing I can suggest is that they try to get her involved in an experimental trial, although the treatment for Long QT is pretty standard at this point, and it may be hard to find a trial group anywhere they can afford to travel to.” “I think Sandra Czernin would go anywhere if she thought it gave April a fighting chance. Lotty, I keep worrying that I should have noticed something before she collapsed.” She shook her head. “Sometimes there may be a fainting spell—you say the mother reports one last summer—but often these collapses come out of the blue, with no warning.” “I’m afraid to go to school Monday,” I confessed. “I’m afraid to ask any of these girls to run up and down the court for me. What if there’s another one with some time bomb ticking in her chest or brain?” Morrell squeezed my hand. “Tell the school they have to test the girls before you’ll continue the program. I’m sure the moms would agree, at least enough of them to force the school to take action.” “Bring them up to the clinic and I’ll do EKGs on them, or Lucy will,” Lotty offered. She was meeting Max Loewenthal for dinner; she invited Morrell and me to join her, which seemed like a welcome change of pace to both of us. We went to one of the little bistros that have sprung up on the North Side, one that had a wine list Max likes, and lingered late over a bottle of Côte du Rhône. Despite my worries and injuries, it was the most pleasant evening I’d spent since Marcena’s arrival. In the cab home, I fell asleep against Morrell’s shoulder. When we got to my place, I stood drowsily on the curb, holding his walking stick while he paid off the driver. In the way you don’t really notice things when you’re half asleep, I saw a Bentley across the street, a man in a chauffeur’s uniform at the wheel. I saw the lights in my living room, without thinking about it, but when we’d made our slow

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way up the stairs, and I saw my apartment door ajar, I woke up in a hurry. “I’m going inside,” I muttered to Morrell. “If I’m not out in two minutes, call 911.” He wanted to argue about which of us got to be the hero, or the fool, but he had to agree that between my injuries and his, I was the one in better shape—and I was the one with street-fighting smarts. Before either of us could do anything, heroic or foolhardy, Peppy and Mitch started barking and whining from the far side of my door. I kicked the door all the way open, then flattened myself against the wall. The two dogs bounded out to greet us. My lips compressed now more with annoyance than fear, I followed them in.

20 Buffalo—and Gal—Won’t You Come Out Tonight?

r. Contreras was sitting in the easy chair in my living room. Facing him, on the couch, were Buffalo Bill Bysen and his personal assistant, Mildred. Even at ten o’clock on a Saturday night, she wore heavy makeup. Mr. Contreras looked up at me with the same guilt-filled defiance that the dogs use when they’ve been digging up the yard. “So that’s why there’s a Bentley out there on Belmont: waiting for the head of one of the biggest companies in the world, and he came to visit me.” I rubbed my hands together in a display of fake heartiness. “It’s delightful that you were able to drop in, but I’m afraid I’m going to bed. Help yourself to the liquor cabinet, and keep the music down—the neighbors are picky.” I went to the front door to tell Morrell that the coast wasn’t exactly clear but it was okay to come in. “I’m sorry, doll,” Mr. Contreras followed me out. “When they showed up and said they needed to see you, well, you’re always telling me not to butt in, so I didn’t like to tell them ‘no,’ case you’d arranged it; you didn’t want me knowing your plans or nothing today.” I bared my teeth at him in an evil grin. “How thoughtful of you. How long have they been here?” “About an hour, maybe a little longer.”

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“I have a cell phone, you know, and I’ve given you the number.” “Do you mind?” Mildred came out to the hall to join us. “Mr. Bysen’s day starts early tomorrow. We need to get this over with so we can return to Barrington.” “Of course you do. Morrell, this is Mildred—I’m afraid I don’t know her last name—she’s Buffalo Bill Bysen’s factotum. Mildred, this is Morrell. He doesn’t like to use his first name.” Morrell held out a hand, but Mildred only nodded perfunctorily and turned to lead us back into my apartment. “Mildred and Buffalo Bill have been sitting in the living room for an hour,” I said to Morrell. “Mr. Contreras let them in, thinking it was an emergency when they showed up uninvited, and now they’re very cross that we didn’t use ESP to drop everything and rush home to look after them.” “His name to you is Mr. Bysen,” Mildred said through tight lips. “If you treat all your clients this rudely, I’m surprised you have any.” I looked at her thoughtfully. “Are you a client, Mildred? Or is Buffalo Bill? I don’t remember you hiring me. I don’t remember giving you my home address, either.” “Mister Bysen,” she said with heavy emphasis, “will explain what he needs you to do.” When we were all back inside, I introduced Bysen to Morrell, and offered refreshments. “This isn’t a social visit, young woman,” Bysen said. “I want to know where my grandson is.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. If that’s all you wanted, you could have saved yourself the drive from Barrington by letting your fingers do the walking.” Mildred sat herself back on the couch next to Bysen and opened her gold leather portfolio, pen poised, ready to take a note or order an execution at a second’s notice. “He talked to you on Thursday. You called him, and he talked to you. Now you tell me where he is.” “Billy called me, not the other way around. I don’t know where he is, and I don’t have his cell phone number. And I

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promised him I wouldn’t look for him as long as I believed he was safe and not being held against his will.” “Well, that’s just fine, you talk to the boy on the phone, and you know he’s safe and sound, hnnh? You met him two times, and you know him so well you can tell from his voice on the phone that he’s safe? Do you know how much a kidnapper would like to get hold of one of my grandchildren? Do you know what he’s worth? Hnnh? Hnnh?” I pressed my right fingers against the bridge of my nose, as if that would push thoughts into my brain. “I don’t know. I’m guessing the company’s worth around four hundred billion, and if you’ve divvied it up evenly—you have six children? So sixty-seven billion a head, and then if young Mr. William is being fair with his own kids, I suppose—” “This isn’t a joke,” Buffalo Bill roared, pushing himself to stand. “If you don’t produce him for me by this time tomorrow, I’ll—” “You’ll what? Cut off my allowance? It may not be a joke, but you’re turning it into a farce. Your son hired me to look for Billy, and in a thoughtless moment I agreed. When Billy learned about it from someone on the South Side, he called and told me to tell Mr. William to lay off or he, Billy, would start calling shareholders.” Buffalo Bill scowled and sat back down. “Hnnh. What did he mean by that?” My lips moved into an unpleasant smile. “It seemed to mean something to your son, so I presume it means something to you.” “It could mean any of a dozen things. What did it mean to you? Hnnh? You didn’t ask him what he was going to tell the shareholders?” Was this the real reason for this absurd trip from the gated splendors of Barrington Hills to my four-room apartment? “If you wanted to discuss this with me, why not just phone me, or ask me to come out to your office? I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a really, really long day and I’d like to go to bed.”

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Bysen’s scowl deepened and his heavy brow contracted so tightly that I couldn’t see his eyes at all. “Grobian called from the warehouse yesterday. He said he’d seen Billy on the street, over on Ninety-second Street, his arm around some Mexican girl.” “Then you know he’s safe.” “I don’t know that at all. I want to know who that Mexican is. I won’t have my boy taken in by some wetback’s hard-luck story, marrying her, promising her diamonds or whatever she thinks she can squeeze out of his granddaddy’s fortune. You’ve met Billy, you see what he’s like, he’s a sucker for other people’s troubles. Boy even hands out dollar bills to panhandlers with their Streetwise papers. Can’t do a real job, and they cadge dollar bills from naive boys like Billy.” I sucked in a deep breath. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Morrell give his head a tiny shake—a little warning— go easy, V. I., don’t go straight for the guy’s jugular. “Unwise marriages are such a regular feature of daily life, if Billy’s taken up with someone unsuitable I don’t think I can stop him, Mr. Bysen. But he seems to share his grandmother’s religious values; if he gets involved with someone, my guess is it will be a churchgoing young woman. Even if she’s poor, she probably won’t be a gold digger.” “Don’t you believe that for one second. Look at that creature Gary brought home, claimed to be a Christian. We should never have let him go so far away to school, but Duke seemed like a place with lots of good Christian boys and girls, and she was part of the Campus Fellowship.” Mildred murmured something in his ear and he broke off, turning to glare at me again. “I want to know who that girl is, that girl who’s attached herself to Billy.” I fought off a yawn. “You have so many resources, you don’t need my help. Look at how easily you tracked me down. My phone’s unlisted; I have all my bills sent to my office so my home address doesn’t show up on Lexis, but here you are. Someone on your payroll knows someone in

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the phone company, or in the Secretary of State’s office, who’s willing to violate the law to help you out. Get them to find out who Billy’s dating.” “But he knows you, he trusts you, you’re at home down there. I send one of our own security people down to look for him, he’ll know they came from me, and then he’ll, well, it’ll upset him. Whatever terms William agreed to with you, I’ll match them.” “I’m sorry, Mr. Bysen. I told your son I was quitting, I explained the reason, I sent him a certified letter spelling it out. I promised Billy I’d lay off, and I’m laying off.” Bysen stood again, leaning on his walking stick. “You’re making a serious mistake, young woman. I offered you a fair arrangement, very fair, William’s terms sight unseen, no bargaining. “You don’t want to help me, I can make life difficult for you, very difficult. You think I don’t know how much your mortgage is worth? What would you do if I got all your clients to leave you for a different investigator, hnnh? What if I made things so difficult for you, you had to come crawling to me, begging me to hire you on any terms, hnnh?” Mr. Contreras sprang to his feet, and Mitch, alarmed by the tone in Bysen’s voice, began to growl, low and deep in the throat, the one dogs make when they’re serious. I jumped up to put a hand on his collar. “Don’t you go threatening her,” Mr. Contreras cried. “She said she don’t want to work for you, take it like a man. It ain’t the end of the world. You don’t need to own her along with everything else in creation.” “But he does, he does. It’s the only thing that keeps him going, gobbling all of us up like so many shrimps on the buffet table.” The image made me laugh with genuine amusem*nt, but I looked wonderingly at Bysen. “What is it like to have an appetite like that, so ravenous that nothing will satiate it? Do your sons share it? Will William have the same naked neediness to make your empire grow when you’re dead and gone?”

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“William!” Bysen spat out his son’s name. “Whiny old woman. Why, that sharp little operator Jacqui would do a better—” Once again, Mildred cut him off, with a deferential murmur in his ear, adding to me, “Mrs. Bysen is sick with worry over Billy. She’s eighty-two; she doesn’t need this. If you know where Billy is and won’t tell us, it might kill her. We might even be able to charge you as an accessory in kidnapping him.” “Oh, go home,” I said. “You’re used to people needing you so desperately that they’ll put up with anything to stay on your good side, whatever that might be. When you meet someone who doesn’t need or want your business, you don’t know how to act: should you cajole me, tell me his granny’s heart is breaking, or threaten to have me up on federal charges? Go back to the suburbs and think of a serious approach before you talk to me again.” I didn’t wait for a reaction from my visitors, but pulled on Mitch’s collar to get him to turn around. Calling to Peppy, I led them through my apartment to the kitchen and sent them down the back stairs to the yard to relieve themselves. I leaned on the porch railing, eyes shut, trying to relax the tension in my neck and shoulders. My wound was throbbing, but Lotty’s work had lowered the level of pain to something I could live with. The dogs clambered up the stairs to me, making sure I was okay after Bysen’s threats. I ran my fingers through their fur, but stayed on the porch, listening to the faint sounds of the city around me: the rumbling of the El a few blocks away, a distant siren, laughter from a neighboring apartment—my own lullaby. By and by, Morrell hobbled out to join me. I leaned against his chest and pulled his arms around me. “Are they gone?” He laughed softly. “Your neighbor got into a fight with Buffalo Bill. I think Contreras was so guilt stricken about letting them in, he had to take it out on Bysen. Mildred kept trying to break it up, but when Contreras said Bysen

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was a coward, picking on a lone young woman like you, Bysen got furious and trotted out his war record, and Contreras had to top it off with his Anzio reminiscences, so I figured the time had come to move everyone out.” “Even Mr. Contreras?” “He wanted to stay to make sure you weren’t still mad at him, but I promised him you weren’t, only tired, and that you’d talk to him in the morning.” “Yessir,” I said meekly. We turned and went back inside. As I was undressing, I found the frog-shaped soap dish in my coat pocket. I took it out and looked at it again. “Who are you? What were you doing down there?” I demanded of it. Morrell came over to see what it was. He hummed a line or two from Doctor Dolittle, “She walks with the animals, talks with the animals,” but when I explained what it was, and where I’d found it, he suggested I put it in a baggie. “It might be evidence. In which case, fondling it might delete any other prints on it.” “I should have thought of that. Dang—I’ve had it in my coat all day.” I should give it to Conrad, for his bomb and arson team. But Conrad had been rude to me. On Monday, I’d send it to a private forensics lab I work with. As we lay in the dark, Morrell asked if I really knew where Billy was. “No-o, but Grobian—he’s the manager at the By-Smart warehouse down on 103rd—if Grobian really saw him with a Mexican girl, I figure it’s someone Billy met at Mt. Ararat—he sings in the choir there. So maybe I’ll go down to church in the morning.”

21 Loose Buffalo in Church

dozen children in white and navy—skirts for the girls, trousers for the boys—were doing a synchronized dance in the aisle when I slipped into Mt. Ararat the next morning. According to the notice board out front, church started officially at ten. It was about eleven now. I’d come late on purpose, hoping things would be nearing an end; instead, the service seemed to be barely under way. I’d driven Morrell back to his own place in Evanston before coming down—he said he’d stayed in Chicago with me because he thought I was going to be laid up with my wounded shoulder, not for the pleasure of holing up with Mr. Contreras and the dogs. I understood his point, but I still felt forlorn; I dropped him at his door without going inside. If Marcena was curled up in front of the television, so be it. As I drove south, it began to snow. By the time I reached the church, a thin dusting covered the ground. Thanksgiving was two weeks away. The year was drawing to a close, the sky pressing down as if urging me to lie flat and sleep the winter away. I parked on Ninety-first Street and hurried into the church—I’d decided Mt. Ararat deserved a skirt, or expected a skirt, and the cold air whipped through my panty hose and up my thighs. I stopped inside the front door to get my bearings. The

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building was hot, with a bewildering barrage of sound and motion. The dancing children weren’t the only people in the aisles, just the only ones doing something organized— as I watched, people would jump up into the aisles with a hand held up in the air, and stand for a time before returning to the pew. The children were wearing long-sleeved T-shirts with red tongues of fire on the fronts, and the legend “Mt. Ararat Troop Marching for Jesus” on the backs. They were doing a routine involving kicking, clapping, and stomping, with more spirit than skill, but the congregation was applauding them and shouting encouragement. An electric band accompanied them, harmonium and guitar with drums. The choir director, an imposing woman in a scarlet robe, was singing, moving with an electric energy of her own. She moved between the congregation and the front lip of a raised platform where the choir and the ministers shared space with the band. Both she and the band were miked up so high I couldn’t make out any of her words, let alone what language she was singing in. Behind her, wood armchairs were arranged in two semicircles. In the middle one sat Pastor Andrés, wearing navy robes with a pale blue stole. Five other men were ranged around him, including one very old man whose bald head bobbed uncertainly on a thin neck, like a large sunflower on a stalk too thin to support it. The choir stood behind the men in two densely packed rows, singing along with the choir director, slapping tambourines and twirling around as the spirit moved them. There was so much twirling and arm waving, it was hard to pick out individual faces. I finally spotted Billy in the back row. He was mostly blocked from view, partly by a tangle of electric cable that snaked between the mikes in front of the minister and the band, partly by a massive woman in front of him who moved with such fervor that he only appeared at intervals—kind of like the moon popping out from behind a

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heavy cloud. What made him most noticeable was that he was the one chorister to stand still. Josie I recognized more easily, since she was at the far end of the front row of the choir. Her thin face was alight, and she shook her tambourine with an abandon she never showed on the basketball court. I scanned the choir, and then the congregation, looking for other members of my team. The only one I saw was Sancia, my center, near the back of the church, with her two babies, her mother, and her sisters. Sancia was staring vacantly in front of her—I didn’t think she’d noticed me. When I took a seat in a pew partway up the right side, a trim woman in a black suit turned to clasp my hand and welcome me. Another woman bustled up from the back to hand me a program and an offering envelope, and also to say how welcome I was. “Your first time here, sister?” she asked in a heavy Spanish accent. I nodded, adding my name. “I coach basketball at Bertha Palmer. Some of the girls on the team come here.” “Oh, wonderful, wonderful, Sister Warshawski, you are really helping these girls. We are grateful.” In a few minutes, a wave ran through the congregation. You couldn’t hear the murmur above the music, but people poked each other, heads turned: “el coche” cared enough about the children to attend their church. Sancia and her family caught the whisper and turned, stunned to see me here, out of context. Sancia managed a weak smile when she saw me looking at her. I also caught sight of Rose Dorrado twisting around in a pew on the other side of the aisle to look at me. I smiled and waved; she pressed her lips together and turned to face the front again, hugging her two little boys close to her. I was shocked at the change in Rose’s appearance. She had always been tidily groomed, holding herself well, and even when she was angry with me her face had been full of vivacity. Today, she’d barely troubled to comb her hair, and

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her head was hunched turtlelike down in her shoulders. The loss of Fly the Flag had devastated her. The children marching, or stomping, for Jesus finished their routine and sat down in a row of folding chairs in front of the choir. The man with the bald bobbing head stood next, offering a long tremulous prayer in Spanish, punctuated by emphatic chords from the harmonium and “Amens” from the congregation. Even though he used a mike, his voice was so quavery I could only catch a word here or there. When he finally sat down, we had another hymn, and two women passed through the congregation with offertory baskets. I put in a twenty, and the women looked at me in consternation. “We can’t make change right now,” one of them said, worried. “Will you trust us to the end of the service?” “Change?” I was astonished. “I don’t need change.” They thanked me over and over; the woman in front of me who’d welcomed me had turned to watch, and she once again whispered news about me to the people around her. My cheeks turned red. I hadn’t meant to show off; it was one of those moments of blind ignorance where I hadn’t realized how really poor everyone in the church must be. Maybe everyone who said I didn’t understand the South Side anymore was right. After the collection, and another hymn, Andrés began his sermon. He spoke in Spanish, but so slowly and so simply I could follow a lot of it. He read from the Bible, a passage about the laborer deserving his salary—I caught the words “digno” and “su salario,” and guessed that “obrero” must be a worker; I didn’t know the word. After that he started talking about criminals in our midst, criminals stealing jobs from us and destroying our factories. I assumed he was talking about the fire at Fly the Flag. The harmonium began playing an insistent backbeat to the sermon, which made it harder for me to understand, but I thought Andrés was urging a message of courage onto people whose lives were hurt by the criminals “en nuestro medio.”

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Courage, yes, I suppose one needed courage not to be rolled under by the wheels of misery that ran through the neighborhood, but Rose Dorrado had plenty of courage; what she needed was a job. When I thought about the load she was carrying, all those children, and now the factory gone, my own shoulders slumped. People engaged actively in the sermon, shouting “Amen” at frequent intervals, or “Sí, señor,” which I first thought was an assent to Andrés, before realizing they were calling on God. Some stood in the pews or jumped into the aisles, pointing a hand heavenward; others shouted out Bible verses. After the sermon had gone on for twenty minutes or so, my attention began to wander badly. The wood pew was pressing through my coat and my knit top into my shoulder, and my pelvic bones began to ache. I began hoping the spirit would make me spring to my feet. It was close to noon; I was wishing I’d brought a novel when I realized people were shifting and turning in their pews to look at another new arrival. I craned my head as well. To my astonishment, I saw Buffalo Bill stumping his way up the aisle, walking stick in hand. Mr. William was behind him, his arm supporting an old woman in a fur coat. Despite the coat, and the diamond drops in her ears, she had the round amiable face of a Hallmark card grandmother. This must be May Irene Bysen, the grandma who taught Billy his manners and his faith. Right now, she looked a little frightened, a little bewildered by the noise and the strange setting: her soft chin was thrust out, and she clung to her son, but she was looking around, as I had, trying to spot her grandchild. Completing the parade was Aunt Jacqui, her gloved hand on Uncle Gary’s arm. Instead of a coat, Jacqui wore a thigh-length cardigan with bat-wing sleeves. Perhaps she’d chosen thigh-high boots and thick tights to close a gap between her miniskirt and Buffalo Bill or her motherin-law’s outrage. The effect was eye-catching enough to

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briefly break the electric current running through the congregation as Andrés’s delivery approached a climax. A fourth man, with the bulky build of an off-duty cop, brought up the rear of the entourage. Buffalo Bill’s bodyguard, presumably. I wondered if they’d driven themselves, or if they’d left someone in the Bentley. Maybe they had a different vehicle for the South Side, an armor-plated Hummer or something. Bysen didn’t notice me as he muscled his way past the people in the aisles. He found a partly empty pew near the front; without turning his head to see if his wife and children were following, he sat down, hands on his knees, glowering at Andrés. Jacqui and Gary found seats in the pew behind Buffalo Bill, but Mr. William handed his mother in next to his father. The bodyguard took up a position against the wall at the far side of the pew, where he could survey, or try to survey, the crowd. The minister didn’t falter in his delivery. In fact, with all the commotion in the aisles, people standing or sitting down, dancing, calling out to Jesus, he might not even have noticed the Bysen party’s arrival. His sermon was building in fervor. “Si hay un criminal entre nosotros, si él es suficientemente fuerte para dar un paso adelante y confesar sus pecados a Jesús, los brazos de Jesús, lo sacarán adelante . . .” Andrés stood like the Prophet Isaiah, his voice loud, his eyes blazing. The congregation responded with a surge of ecstasy so strong it carried me along with it. He repeated his call, in such a loud exultant voice that even I could follow it: “If there is a criminal among us, if he is strong enough to come forward and confess his sins to Jesus, Jesus’ arms are strong enough to hold him up. Jesus will carry him forward. Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavyladen, those are the words our Savior spoke. All you who labor and are heavy-laden, put down those burdens— entréguenselas a Jesús, dénselas a Jesús, vengan a Jesús— give them to Jesus, bring them to Jesus, come to Jesus!”

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“Vengan a Jesús!” the congregation cried. “Vengan a Jesús!” The harmonium played louder, insistent, urgent chords, and a woman stumbled forward. She flung herself at Andrés’s feet, sobbing. The men sitting with him got up and stood with their hands held out over her head, praying loudly. Another woman staggered up the aisle and collapsed next to her, and, after a few minutes, a man joined them. The electric band was pounding out something with a disco beat, and the choir singing, swaying, shouting. Even Billy was finally in motion. And the congregation kept calling, “Vengan a Jesús! Vengan a Jesús!” The intense emotion hammered against my chest. I was sweating and could hardly breathe. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it any more, a woman in the aisle collapsed. My own head spinning, I half rose to go to her aid, but two women in nurse’s uniforms rushed to her side. They had smelling salts, which they held under her nose; when she was able to sit, they escorted her to the rear of the church and laid her on a pew. When I saw them pour her a glass of water, I went back to ask for a glass for myself. The nurses wanted to use their smelling salts on me, but I told them I only needed water and a little air; they made space for me on the rear pew: my faintness made me welcome as one of the saved. After a bit, when I thought I could stand without falling over, I went outside—I needed cold air and quiet. I leaned against the church door, gulping in air. Across the street stood a giant Cadillac, the size and shape of a cabin cruiser, its motor running. Bysen’s chauffeur was at the wheel, a television screen, or maybe a DVD player, propped up on the dashboard in front of him. In its way, the Caddy was even more conspicuous than the Bentley had been, but I didn’t really expect any punks to attack a cabin cruiser outside a church on Sunday afternoon. I stayed outside until the cold seeped through my coat and stockings and my teeth were chattering. When I got back inside, I thought the level of passion in the room was

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finally dropping. The people at the altar were calming down, and no one else seemed willing to come forward. The harmonium played a few expectant chords, Andrés held his arms out to the congregation, but no one moved. Andrés was returning to his chair when Buffalo Bill got to his feet. Mrs. Bysen grabbed his arm but he shook her off. The organist played a few hopeful chords as Bysen charged up the aisle. The choir director, who had sat down and was fanning herself, quickly swallowed some water and returned to her place on the lip of the dais. The congregation began clapping again, ready to stay all afternoon if another sinner was coming to God. Bysen didn’t kneel on the platform. He was yelling at Andrés, as far as anyone could see, but of course it was impossible to hear anything over the music. In the second row of the choir, Billy stood stock-still, his face white. I pushed through the mob packing the center aisle to the far left side, which was empty, and trotted to the front of the church. The band was also on this side. The choir director and the musicians seemed to know that something was amiss: the organist stopped the insistent disco beat of the call to salvation in favor of something more brooding, and the woman began humming in harmony, fumbling her way toward a song. What hymn was appropriate for tycoons haranguing ministers during the service? I picked my way through the thicket of electric cords to the choir. The children who’d been marching for Jesus when I arrived were kicking bored heels against their chairs; two boys were surreptitiously pinching each other. The harmonium player frowned at me; the man with the acoustic guitar put his instrument down to come over to me. “You can’t be back here, miss,” he said. “Sorry. Just leaving.” I flashed a smile and walked behind the Marching Troop for Jesus, past the massive woman in front of Billy, to the Kid himself. He was staring at his grandfather, but when I touched his sleeve, he turned to me. “Why did you bring him here?” he demanded. “I thought I could trust you!”

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“I didn’t bring him. It wasn’t too hard to figure out that you might be here—you’ve been worshiping at Mt. Ararat, you admire Andrés, you sing in the choir. And then Grobian told someone he’d seen you on Ninety-second Street with a girl.” “Oh, why can’t people just mind their own business? Boys walk down the street with girls all over the world, every day! Does it have to go up on the By-Smart Web site because I do it?” We’d both been hissing at each other to be heard above the electronic music, but his voice rose to a wail now. Josie was eyeing us along with the rest of the choir, but while they were frankly curious she looked nervous. “And now what’s he doing?” Billy demanded. I looked behind me. Buffalo Bill was trying to get to his grandson, but the five men who’d been helping with the service were blocking his path. Bysen actually tried to strike one of them with his walking stick, but the men made a circle around him and moved him from the dais— even the old one with the bobbing head and quavering voice was shuffling along, one hand on Bysen’s coat. Mrs. Bysen struggled out the far side of the pew, her arms stretched out toward her grandson. I noticed Jacqui stayed in her seat, wearing the catlike smile of malicious pleasure she put on for Bysen family discomfiture. Mr. William and Uncle Gary knew their duty, though, and joined the bodyguard in the aisle. For a moment, it looked as though there was going to be a pitched battle between the Bysen men and the Mt. Ararat ministers. Mrs. Bysen was being buffeted dangerously in the melee; she wanted to reach her grandson, but the ministers and her sons were squeezing her between them. Billy watched his family, white-faced. He made a helpless gesture toward his grandmother, then jumped down from the riser and disappeared behind a partition. I clambered over the riser to follow him. The partition blocked the body of the church from a narrow space that led to a robing room. I ran through the

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room as its second door was swinging shut. When I pushed it open, I found myself in a big hall where women were fussing around with coffeepots and Kool-Aid pitchers. Toddlers crawled unsupervised at their feet, sucking on cookies or plastic toys. “Where’s Billy?” I demanded, and then saw a flash of red and a door closing at the far end of the room. I sprinted across the room and out the door. I was just in time to see Billy climb into a midnight blue Miata and roar south on Houston Street.

22 Poverty’s Whirlpool

illy’s been sleeping here.” I made it a statement, not a question. Josie Dorrado was sitting on the couch with her sister and the baby, María Inés. The television was on. I had muted the sound when I came in, but, for once, Julia seemed more interested in the drama of her family’s life than in what was happening on the screen. Josie bit her lips nervously, pulling off a piece of skin. “He wasn’t here. Our ma don’t let no boys sleep over.” I had driven straight to the Dorrado apartment from the church, waiting outside in my car until Rose walked up the street with her children, and then following her to their front door. “You,” Rose said dully when she saw me. “I might have guessed. What devil was in me the day I asked Josie to bring you home? Ever since that day it’s been nothing but bad luck, bad luck.” It’s always good to have an outsider to blame your troubles on. “Yes, Rose, that’s a terrible blow, the destruction of the factory. I wish either you or Frank Zamar had talked to me frankly about what was going on there. Do you know who burned down the plant?” “Why do you care? Will it bring my job back, or return Frank to life, if you find out?”

“B

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I pulled the soap dish out of my shoulder bag. I’d sealed it in a plastic bag, but I handed it to Rose and asked if she recognized it. She barely gave it a glance before shaking her head. “It wasn’t in the employee bathroom at the factory?” “What? Something like that? We had a dispenser on the wall.” I turned to Josie, who had peered over her mother’s shoulder at the little frog. “You recognize this, Josie?” She shifted from foot to foot, looking nervously behind her into the living room, where Julia was sitting on the couch. “No, Coach.” One of the little boys was jumping up and down. “Don’t you ’member, Josie, we seen them, they was at the store, and—” “Quiet, Betto, don’t be butting in when Coach is talking to me. We seen them—saw them—around, they had them at By-Smart around Christmas last year.” “You buy one?” I prodded, puzzled by her nervousness. “No, Coach, I never.” “Julia did,” Betto burst out. “Julia bought it. She wanted to give it—” “She bought it for Sancia,” Josie put in quickly. “Her and Sancia used to hang out, before María Inés came.” “Is that right?” I asked the boy. He hunched a shoulder. “I dunno. I guess so.” “Betto?” I knelt so my head was at his level. “You thought Julia bought it for a different person, not for Sancia, didn’t you?” “I don’t remember,” he said, his head down. “Leave him alone,” Rose said. “You went and bothered Frank Zamar and he got burned to death, now you want to bother my children so you can see what bad things happen to them?” She grabbed his hand and dragged him into the apartment. The other boy followed, casting me a terrified glance. Great. Now the boys would think of me as the bogey-

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woman, able to get them murdered in a fire if they spoke to me. I pushed Josie into the apartment. “You and I need to talk.” She sat on the couch, the baby between her and her sister. Julia had clearly been paying attention to our exchange at the door: she sat tense and alert, her eyes on Josie. In the dining room beyond, I could see the two boys sitting under the table, quietly crying. Rose had disappeared, either into the bedroom or the kitchen. It occurred to me that the couch had to be her bed: when I was here before, I’d seen the twin beds where Josie and Julia slept, and the air mattresses for the boys in the dining room. There wasn’t any other place in the apartment for Rose. “So where did Billy sleep?” I asked. “Out here?” “He wasn’t here,” Josie said quickly. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “When he left Pastor Andrés’s house he had to go somewhere. He drove you to the hospital yesterday. I know you and he are seeing each other. Where did he sleep?” Julia tossed her long mane of hair. “Me and Josie shared one bed, Billy slept in the other.” “Why you have to go shooting off your mouth?” Josie demanded. “Why you have to let that rich gringo stay here in your bed when he could buy a whole house if he want a place to sleep?” Julia shot back. Little María Inés began to fuss on the couch, but neither sister paid any attention to her. “And your mother was okay with this arrangement?” I was incredulous. “She don’t know, you can’t tell her.” Josie looked nervously at the dining room, where her brothers were still staring at us. “The first time, she was at work, she was at her second job, and she never even got home until one in the morning, and then, last night and Friday, Billy, he come in—came in through the kitchen door after she was in bed.”

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“And Betto and your other brother won’t tell her, and she won’t notice? You two are nuts. How long have you and Billy been dating?” “We’re not dating. Ma won’t let me date anyone because of Julia having a baby.” Josie scowled at her sister. “Well, anyway, the Bysens don’t want Billy dating no spic girl,” Julia flashed at her. “Billy never called me a spic. You’re just jealous because a nice Anglo boy is interested in me, not some chavo like you picked up!” “Yeah, but his grandpapa, he called Pastor Andrés, he told him he’d report Pastor to the Immigration if he hear Billy going around with any Mexican girls in the church,” Julia shot back. “Wetbacks, he called us, you just ask anyone, you can ask Freddy, he was there when Billy’s grandfather called. And after that, how long was it before he called you?” “He don’t need to call me; he sees me every Wednesday at choir rehearsal.” The baby began crying more loudly. When her mother and her aunt still ignored her, I picked her up and started patting her back. “How about now?” I asked, “Now that he’s not living at home. Does Billy call you now?” “Yes, once, to say, can he come over here, but then, he give away, gave away, his cell phone, on account of he said there’s something in the phone, a detective could find him,” Josie muttered, staring at her knees. So he’d paid attention to my warning about the GSM signal. “Why doesn’t he want to go home?” Julia gave a syrupy smile. “He’s in l-o-v-e with the little wetback here.” Josie slapped her sister; Julia started pulling her hair. I put the baby down and yanked the sisters apart. They glared at each other, but when I let them go, they didn’t lunge for each other. I picked the baby up again and sat cross-legged on the floor. “Billy’s family, they were rude to Pastor Andrés,” Josie

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added. “Billy, he really cares about this neighborhood, do people have jobs, do they have enough to eat, like that, and his family, they just want to exploit us.” Billy had definitely been preaching to his little wetback, and she was an attentive student. The baby grabbed at my earrings. I unclutched her tiny fist and pulled out my car keys for her to play with. She threw them on the floor with an excited crow of laughter. “Who’s Freddy?” I asked. The sisters looked at each other, but Julia said, “Just a guy who goes to Mt. Ararat, it’s a small church, we all been knowing each other since we was little.” “Since we were little,” Josie corrected. “You want to talk Anglo, be my guest. Me, I’m just a teenage mom, I don’t have to know anything.” “Your mom and your aunt are such bad liars. I know, that makes you cry to hear it, but it’s true,” I spoke to the baby and blew bubbles on her stomach. “Now, who is Freddy really?” “He’s really just a guy who goes to Mount Ararat.” Julia stared at me defiantly. “You ask Pastor Andrés, he’ll tell you.” I sighed. “Okay, maybe, maybe. There’s something about him you don’t want me to know, though. It wouldn’t be his DNA, would it?” “His what?” Julia said. “DNA,” Josie said. “We covered that in biology, which you’d know if you ever went to school, it’s like how people identify—oh.” She looked at me. “Like you think he’s María Inés’s father or something.” “Or something,” I said. Julia spoke through clenched teeth. “He’s just a guy at church, I hardly know him except to talk at church.” “But this casual acquaintance told you he heard old Mr. Bysen call the church and threaten the pastor with deportation?” “It—he thought we should know,” Julia stammered. Josie was crimson. “Billy been—Billy has been—singing

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in the church, like, since August, and him and me, we went out for a co*ke after rehearsal once, I guess maybe in September, and Mr. Grobian, he’s at the warehouse, he’s Billy’s boss, like, he saw us and he told on us, like, it was a crime, Billy taking me for a co*ke, and then Ma, she heard, she said no way can I see him ’less Betto and Sammy are with me. So it’s like I have to babysit if I want to see him, which would be horrible if you was on a date, to have your brothers with you, but, see, his ma, his mom, she don’t—she doesn’t want him going out with me, so we never really was dating. Were dating. Except yesterday, he took me up to the hospital to see April.” So Billy had fallen in love with Josie, so much in love he was teaching her English grammar. And she loved him right back, which is why she was changing her speech. And that was also why Billy was fighting the idea of going back to Barrington. Maybe his ideals played a role, too, but mostly it was those pesky stars, crossing lovers once again. I thought of my own jealous worries about Morrell and Marcena Love—you don’t have to be fifteen to live in a soap opera. “You won’t tell Ma, will you, Coach?” Josie said. “I can’t believe your ma doesn’t already know,” I said. “You’d have to be brain-dead not to know when there was an extra person in this apartment. She’s probably just too depressed about the fire at Fly the Flag to deal with you and Billy right now. And about that fire—what’s the story on this soap dish? Which one of you bought it?” “I got it at By-Smart,” Julia said quickly. “Like Josie said, I bought it for Sancia last Christmas. They’re real cute, these frogs, and they don’t cost hardly anything. But they had like a hundred of them, so how can I know if it’s the one I bought or not? Where you find this, anyway?” “Outside Fly the Flag. In all the rubble from the building.” “Outside Ma’s job? What was it doing there?” Julia’s bewilderment seemed genuine—she and her sister looked at each other, as if seeing whether the other knew something she wasn’t saying.

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“I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t mean a thing, but it’s my only clue. By the way, Betto thought you got it for someone else, Julia.” “Yeah, well, he was like six years old last Christmas, so I don’t know how he knows who I bought presents for.” Julia stared at me in hauteur. “All he cared about was, did he get his new Power Ranger?” “You two make it sound so plausible, but I have to say I don’t believe you. I’m going to take this to a forensic lab. They’ll test it for fingerprints, they’ll test it for chemicals, they’ll tell me what it was doing at the plant, and who was doing it.” “So?” The sisters stared at me sullenly, united on this one matter. “So what?” I said. “So you know there won’t be fingerprints, or you don’t care who left them, or what?” “So if Sancia gave it to someone else, I can’t help it,” Julia said. “Coach McFarlane said you were the best player she had coached in decades, maybe ever,” I said to Julia. “Why don’t you go back to school, use your brains for your own future, instead of for spinning up lies for grown-ups like me. You could go back to the game; Sancia does, with her two little ones.” “Yeah, well, her ma and her sisters help her out. Who’s going to help me? No one.” “You are so unfair!” Josie cried. “I didn’t get you pregnant, but because you went and had a baby now I have to sneak around like a criminal if I want to see a boy! And I help you with María Inés all the time, so there!” I handed María Inés to Julia. “Play with her, talk to her. Give her a chance, even if you don’t want one for yourself. And if you decide, either of you, to start telling the truth, give me a call.” I gave them both business cards and stuck the frog back in my bag. When they stared at me, speechless, I got up and went through the dining room, looking for Rose. Betto and Sammy scuttled deeper under the table at my approach: I

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was the woman who could get them charcoal roasted if they talked to me. Rose was lying on Josie’s bed in the girls’ bedroom. I ducked under the clothesline hung with María Inés’s wardrobe and watched her, wondering whether I had anything to ask that justified waking her. Her bright red hair clashed with the red in the American flag pillowcase; the Illinois women’s team smiled down at her. “I know you’re standing there,” she said dully, without opening her eyes. “What is it you want?” “I only went to Fly the Flag in the first place because you wanted me to look into the sabotage going on there. Then you told me to back off. What made you change your mind?” I kept my voice gentle. “It’s all about the job,” she said. “I thought—what I thought, I can’t even remember now. Frank—he told me. He asked me to tell you to go away.” “Why?” “I don’t know. I only know he said it could ruin my job, a detective on the premises. But my job is ruined, anyway—I have no job. And Frank, he was a decent man, he paid good, he did what he could for people, he’s dead. And I wonder, was it because I brought a detective on the premises?” “You don’t really believe that, do you, Rose? It wasn’t because I was there that someone put rats in the heating ducts or glued the doors shut.” I went to sit on Julia’s bed. It smelled faintly of María Inés’s diapers. Despite the Dorrados’ Pentecostal religion, a little Virgin of Guadalupe stood on the pasteboard chest of drawers between the two beds. I suppose no matter what you think of God, everyone needs a mother to look after them. Rose slowly turned her head on the pillow and looked at me. “But maybe they was scared, I mean, whoever did those things, maybe when they saw a detective asking questions they got scared and burned down the factory.” It was possible, I suppose; the thought made me queasy, but I said, anyway, “And you don’t have any idea who this was?”

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She shook her head slowly, as if it weighed a great deal and she could barely move it. “The second job you took—is that enough to support the children?” “The second job?” she gave a harsh bark that might have been a crow laughing. “That was also for Frank Zamar. His second business that he was starting. Now—oh, Dios, Dios, in the morning