I’d heard the side door shut behind Donny and Reggie; Donny texted me to hurry it up, they wouldn’t wait forever. I stuck the report into an envelope and left the office—about five minutes too late.
Harvey Roccamena charged around the corner of aisle 114, gun out. I hit the floor, rolled up against the shelf. He lifted his hand to fire and I swept all the bottles from the bottom shelf into his path. He sidestepped and his shot went wide, shattering the whiskey behind me.
I scrambled to my feet and flung a bottle at him. It went high, flying over his head to shatter against the shelf behind him. I threw again as he fired. My fourth bottle hit his shoulder and he dropped the gun. He scrabbled for it as I tried to kick it. My toe slammed into his hand, but he held on to the gun and pointed it at my head.
I twisted around, swung my left foot into his gut. Dropped to the floor as he fired, grabbed his leg, upended him into the broken glass.
The gunshots were so deafening that I didn’t hear the forklift engine until it was almost on us. Donny was screaming at me. I jumped onto the forks and clung to the mast as the lift made a tight circle and trundled to the loading bays.
One of the doors was open, waiting. We jumped from the machine and ran. Roccamena stood in the doorway shooting at us.
10
“They should never have fired Gregory,” Donny said.
“So you decided to destroy Roccamena’s inventory in revenge?” I said.
“Of course not.” That was Sonia. “Donny was with me that night. I needed help filling out my tax return.”
“And Donny, tax whiz that he is, was just the man for the job,” I agreed politely. “Reggie would have been a better choice, but he was with Donny at the warehouse, using his snazzy app to undo the keypads at Roccamena’s.”
“I most certainly was not,” Reggie huffed. “I was right here at home with Cassie, wasn’t I, darling? Our home security photos prove it.”
He showed me the date-and-time-stamped pictures on his monitor, Cassie working on a quilt in the family room, him at his desk, doing something on his computer. Their two sons were playing a video game.
“You do remember that I grew up with you, I hope. I remember when you and Stanley worked a racket with the numbers runners outside U.S. Steel. That guy, what was his name? Lime Pit or something—he ratted you to the cops, and each of you claimed it was the other until Sonia stepped in and said you’d both been with her.”
“So?” Reggie said. He sounded blasé, but his shoulders were tense.
“So I learned the only way to tell you apart was Stanley’s birthmark on his left temple.” It was tiny, barely the size of a sunflower seed, but visible in the security photo.
“Stanley drove straight through from Sedona, stayed here with Cassie, and drove home.”
“You can’t prove that,” Sonia cried.
“I can’t prove the driving part,” I agreed, “but the birthmark is there. Anyway, the SA had to release Gregory. The documents I pulled from Roccamena’s desk were Harvey’s printout showing how Horvath had been defrauding the pension fund.
“Horvath created phantom employees. He was sending their benefits to a bank in Saint Kitts. Roccamena finally figured that out—he had a forensic accountant audit the books. He confronted Horvath, killed him, and left him on the warehouse floor. When Donny came in an hour later and started knocking over the inventory, it was gravy. No way to prove how Horvath died or who killed him, but Roccamena and Harvey must have fought—blood from both was on the report. It was good enough for the cops. They figured Roccamena did the damage to the warehouse himself to cover the crime.”
“So Sonia and Donny saved me again.” That was Gregory. He looked better in jeans and a T-shirt than he had in the jail, but he was still slouched in his chair, looking at the floor. “I’m such a fuckup.”
Sonia went over to him and put an arm around his neck. “You’re not a fuckup, Gregory. You just need a little extra support. That’s what we’re here for.”
“What I’d really like to know, Sonia, is why the hell you put me through that song and dance of hiring me, when you Litvaks already had the whole story covered.”
No one spoke for a long moment until Donny said, “She didn’t know. It was all I could do to talk the clean virtuous twins into helping out. Reggie made me promise not to tell Sonia—he didn’t want word getting back to his investors.”
“I have a life,” Reggie snapped. “You can’t grow up, Donny. I gave up all that crap when I left South Chicago. It was only when you told me you were going ahead regardless that I got Stanley involved, and he hated it as much as I did. But we needed him here for the time stamp, and so he came, but he sure as hell won’t do it again, and neither will I.”
“Oh, Reggie,” Sonia said reproachfully. “Your own brother? If he was in danger again I can’t believe you’d let him suffer.”
“Then keep him out of danger.” Reggie scowled.
After another pause, Donny said, “I hear the whole company has shut down. I thought Roccamena’s kids could keep it going.”
“They could if they had the capital,” I said. “Ajax canceled the bridge loan they’d provided while they waited for their adjusters to figure out the bottom line on the claim. Roccamena’s is gone, which is sad. They had a wonderful whisky supply.”
Donny grinned. “Someone told me you were a whisky drinker. I just happened to have a case of Oban delivered to me. I kept a bottle for you. Along with whatever Sonia’s paying you, of course.”
11
I set the bottle of Oban on my dining room table, in between two of the red wineglasses my mother had brought with her from Italy all those years ago. Next to them I set my framed photo of my parents, not the formal one—Tony in his dress blues, Gabriella in her burnt velvet concert gown—but a snapshot I’d taken with the Brownie camera they’d given me for my tenth birthday. They were sitting in plastic garden chairs in our minute garden on South Houston, fingers loosely linked. Tony was watching her, his beloved wife, while Gabriella smiled at some private thought.
I wondered what my dad would have done with Donny, if he’d have let him off the hook or made the arrest. Would he have seen him as someone protecting his vulnerable brother, or just the punk who never even committed grand enough crimes to qualify for a federal prosecutor?
“It was the dress, Mama,” I explained to Gabriella. “Why couldn’t Mr. Litvak let Sonia have that one beautiful thing? Maybe her life would have moved onto a different track if she’d seen herself as someone special, someone who got to wear that dress.”
Note
Although I grew up in rural Kansas and V.I. Warshawski on the South Side of Chicago, I always feel most at home, my freest in writing about her, when I mine her memories of her old neighborhood. Three of the stories in this collection are based in South Chicago (“Death on the Edge” and “Wildcat” are the other two). This story grew out of my own revenge fantasy over a close friend who suffered a wrongful firing. I thought if I was half as good a friend as I wanted to be, I would have wreaked havoc on the offending business. Instead, it all came out on the page, and in the Litvak family, who turn dysfunction into an art form.
Miss Bianca
Abigail made her tour of the cages, adding water to all the drinking bowls. The food was more complicated, because not all the mice got the same meal. She was ten years old and this was her first job; she took her responsibilities seriously. She read the labels on the cages and carefully measured out feed from the different bags. All the animals had numbers written in black ink on their backs; she checked these against the list Bob Pharris had given her with the feeding instructions.
“That’s like being a slave,” Abigail said, when Bob showed her how to match the numbers on the mice to the food directives. “It’s not fair to call them by numbers instead of by name, and it’s mean to write on their beautiful fur.”
Bob just laughed. “It’s the only way we can tell them apart, Abby.”
Abigail hate
d the name Abby. “That’s because you’re not looking at their faces. They’re all different. I’m going to start calling you Number Three because you’re Dr. Kiel’s third student. How would you like that?”
“Number Nineteen,” Bob corrected her. “I’m his nineteenth student, but the other sixteen have all gotten their PhDs and moved on to glory. Don’t give the mice names, Abby: you’ll get too attached to them and they don’t live very long.”
In fact, the next week, when Abigail began feeding the animals on her own, some of the mice had disappeared. Others had been moved into the contamination room, where she wasn’t supposed to go. The mice in there had bad diseases that might kill her if she touched them. Only the graduate students or the professors went in there, wearing gloves and masks.
Abigail began naming some of the mice under her breath. Her favorite, number 139, she called “Miss Bianca,” after the white mouse in the book The Rescuers. Miss Bianca always sat next to the cage door when Abigail appeared, grooming her exquisite whiskers with her little pink paws. She would cock her head and stare at Abigail with bright black eyes.
In the book, Miss Bianca ran a prisoners’ rescue group, so Abigail felt it was only fair that she should rescue Miss Bianca in turn, or at least let her have some time outside the cage. This afternoon, she looked around to make sure no one was watching, then scooped Miss Bianca out of her cage and into the pocket of her dress.
“You can listen to me practice, Miss Bianca,” Abigail told her. She moved into the alcove behind the cages where the big sinks were.
Dr. Kiel thought Abigail’s violin added class to the lab, at least that’s what he said to Abigail’s mother, but Abigail’s mother said it was hard enough to be a single mom without getting fired in the bargain, so Abigail should practice where she wouldn’t disturb the classes in the lecture rooms or annoy the other professors.
Abigail had to come to the lab straight from school. She did her homework on a side table near her mother’s desk, and then she fed the animals and practiced her violin in the alcove.
“Today Miss Abigail Sherwood will play Bach for you,” she announced grandly to Miss Bianca.
She tuned the violin as best she could and began a simplified version of the first sonata for violin. Miss Bianca stuck her head out of the pocket and looked inquiringly at the violin. Abigail wondered what the mouse would do if she put her inside the violin. Miss Bianca could probably squeeze in through the f-hole, but getting her out would be difficult. The thought of Mother’s rage, not to mention Dr. Kiel’s or even Bob Pharris’s, made her decide against it.
She picked up her bow again but heard voices out by the cages. When she peered out, she saw Bob talking to a stranger, a small woman with dark hair.
Bob smiled at her. “This is Abby; her mother is Dr. Kiel’s secretary. Abby helps us by feeding the animals.”
“It’s Abigail,” Abigail said primly.
“And one of the mouses, Abigail, she’s living in your—your—” The woman pointed at Miss Bianca.
“Abby, put the mouse back in the cage,” Bob said. “If you play with them, we can’t let you feed them.”
Abigail scowled at the woman and at Bob, but she put Miss Bianca back in her cage. “I’m sorry, Miss Bianca. Mamelouk is watching me.”
“Mamelouk?” the woman said. “I am thinking your name ‘Bob’?”
Mamelouk the Iron-Tummed was the evil cat who worked for the jailer in The Rescuers, but Abigail didn’t say that, just stared stonily at the woman, who was too stupid to know that the plural of mouse was mice, not “mouses.”
“This is Elena,” Bob told Abigail. “She’s Dr. Kiel’s new dishwasher. You can give her a hand, when you’re not practicing your violin or learning geometry.”
“Is allowed for children working in the lab?” Elena asked. “In my country, government is not allowing children work.”
Abigail’s scowl deepened: Bob had been looking at her homework while she was down here with the mice. “We have slavery in America,” she announced. “The mice are slaves, too.”
“Abigail, I thought you liked feeding the animals.” Dr. Kiel had come into the animal room without the three of them noticing.
He wore crepe-soled shoes, which let him move soundlessly through the lab. A short stocky man with brown eyes, he could look at you with a warmth that made you want to tell him your secrets, but just when you thought you could trust him, he would become furious over nothing that Abigail could figure out. She had heard him yelling at Bob Pharris in a way that frightened her. Besides, Dr. Kiel was her mother’s boss, which meant she must never ever be saucy to him.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Kiel,” she said, her face red. “I only was telling Bob I don’t like the mice being branded, they’re all different, you can tell them apart by looking.”
“You can tell them apart because you like them and know them,” Dr. Kiel said. “The rest of us aren’t as perceptive as you are.”
“Dolan,” he added to a man passing in the hall. “Come and meet my new dishwasher—Elena Mirova.”
Dr. Dolan and Dr. Kiel didn’t like each other. Dr. Kiel was always loud and hearty when he talked to Dr. Dolan, trying too hard not to show his dislike. Dr. Dolan snooped around the lab, looking for mistakes that Dr. Kiel’s students made. He’d report them with a phony jokiness, as if he thought leaving pipettes unwashed in the sink was funny when really it made him angry.
Dr. Dolan had a face like a giant baby’s, the nose little and squashed upward, his cheeks round and rosy; when Bob Pharris had taken two beakers out of Dr. Dolan’s lab, he’d come into Dr. Kiel’s lab, saying, “Sorry to hear you broke both your arms, Pharris, and couldn’t wash your own equipment.”
He came into the animal room now and smiled in a way that made his eyes close into slits. Just like a cat’s. He said hello to Elena, but added to Dr. Kiel, “I thought your new girl was starting last week, Nate.”
“She arrived a week ago, but she was under the weather; you would never have let me forget it if she’d contaminated your ham sandwiches—I mean your petri dishes.”
Dr. Dolan scowled, but said to Elena, “The rumors have been flying around the building all day. Is it true you’re from Eastern Europe?”
Dolan’s voice was soft, forcing everyone to lean toward him if they wanted to hear him. Abigail had trouble understanding him, and she saw Elena did, too, but Abigail knew it would be a mistake to try to ask Dr. Dolan to speak more slowly or more loudly.
Elena’s face was sad. “Is true. I am refugee, from Czechoslovakia.”
“How’d you get here?” Dolan asked.
“Just like your ancestors did, Pat,” Dr. Kiel said. “Yours came steerage in a ship. Elena flew steerage in a plane. We lift the lamp beside the golden door for Czechs just as we did for the Irish.”
“And for the Russians?” Dolan said. “Isn’t that where your people are from, Nate?”
“The Russians would like to think so,” Kiel said. “It was Poland when my father left.”
“But you speak the lingo, don’t you?” Dolan persisted.
There was a brief silence. Abigail could see the vein in Dr. Kiel’s right temple pulsing. Dolan saw it also and gave a satisfied smirk.
He turned back to Elena. “How did you end up in Kansas? It’s a long way from Prague to here.”
“I am meeting Dr. Kiel in Bratislava,” Elena said.
“I was there in ’66, you know,” Dr. Kiel said. “Elena’s husband edited the Czech Journal of Virology and Bacteriology and the Soviets didn’t like their editorial policies—the journal decided they would only take articles written in English, French, or Czech, not in Russian.”
Bob laughed. “Audacious. That took some guts.”
Abigail was memorizing words under her breath to ask her mother over dinner: perceptive, editorial policies, audacious.
“Not so good idea. When Russian tanks coming last year, they putting husband in prison,” Elena said.
“Well, welcome a
board,” Dr. Dolan said, holding out his soft white hand to Elena.
She’d been holding her hands close to her side, but when she shook hands Abigail saw a huge bruise on the inside of her arm, green, purple, yellow, spreading in a large oval up and down from the elbow.
“They beat you before you left?” Dr. Dolan asked.
Elena’s eyes opened wide; Abigail thought she was scared. “Is me, only,” she said, “me being—not know in English.”
“What’s on today’s program?” Dr. Kiel asked Abigail abruptly, pointing at her violin.
“Bach.”
“You need to drop that old stuffed shirt. Beethoven. I keep telling you, start playing those Beethoven sonatas, they’ll bring you to life.” He ruffled her hair. “I think I saw your mother putting the cover over her typewriter when I came down.”
That meant Abigail was supposed to leave. She looked at Miss Bianca, who was hiding in the shavings at the back of her cage. It’s good you’re afraid, Abigail told her silently. Don’t let them catch you, they’ll hurt you or make you sick with a bad disease.
Rhonda Sherwood’s husband had been an account manager for a greeting card company in town. His territory was the West Coast. When he fell in love with a woman who owned a small chain of gift shops in Sacramento, he left Rhonda and Abigail to start a new life in California.
It was embarrassing to have your father and mother divorced; some kids in Abigail’s fifth grade class made fun of her. Her best friend’s mother wouldn’t let her come over to play anymore, as if divorce were like one of Dr. Kiel’s and Dr. Dolan’s diseases, infectious, communicable.
When her husband left, Rhonda brushed up on her shorthand and typing. In May, just about the time that school ended, she was lucky enough to get a job working for Dr. Kiel up at the university. Rhonda typed all his letters and his scientific papers. Over dinner, she would get Abigail to test her on the hard words she was learning: Coxiella burnetti, cytoblasts, vacuoles. Rhonda mastered the odd concepts: gram staining, centrifuging. Dr. Kiel was not a kind man in general, Rhonda knew that, but he was kind to her, a single mom. Dr. Kiel let Rhonda bring Abigail to the lab after school.
Love & Other Crimes Page 4