The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021
Page 34
Because we did not question. (Why would we question?)
Because rage is justice, if you are the meek.
Because it is said—Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth.
Because when flames burst inside you, you know that you are redeemed.
Because it is time for my parole, Jesus is commanding you—Turn my minion loose!
Because you are fools who think you see a putty-skinned plain old woman in prison clothes humbling herself before you, a harmless old bag with a collapsed face and collapsed breasts to her waist—you have not the eyes to see who I am, as with his laser eyes Charlie saw at once—You are beautiful.
Because Charlie perceived in me within a minute of seeing me, I might be a sword of God.
Because I might be a scourge of the enemy.
Because I had wanted to be a nun, but the nuns rejected me.
Because you will all pay, that the nuns rejected me.
Because if you release me, I have more justice to seek.
Because you hold the keys to the prison, but one day you will suffer as we suffer, in the flaming pits of Hell.
Because you are trying to find a way to comprehend me. So you can pity me. So you can be superior to me. She was brainwashed. She was not responsible. She was fed hallucinogens—LSD. She was weak-minded, under the spell of the madman.
Because you are mistaken. Because you have no idea what is in my heart.
Because beside Charlie, who was our beautiful Christ, you are vermin.
He would grind you beneath his feet.
Because we made her famous—“Sharon Tate.”
Because the slut would be forgotten by now if we had not made her famous.
Because I dipped my hands in her hot, pulsing blood. Shoved my hands into her big belly. Eviscerate—Charlie commanded.
Because you see?—I am meeting your eyes, I am not looking away.
Because I am not servile to the Board of Parole like others who appear meekly before you.
Because I am a woman of dignity. Because prison has not broken my spirit, which is suffused with Charlie’s love.
Because I can see, you are filled with loathing for me. As I am filled with loathing for you.
Because even in death her eyes were the color of burnt sugar, her skin flawless and so smooth . . . I thought that I would tell Charlie—I will go back and skin her! Should I go back and skin her!
Because I was sure that Charlie would laugh and say—Yes! Go back and skin the slut and return to me wearing her skin, then I will love you above all the others because you are more beautiful than all of them.
Because this did not happen, and yet it is more real to me than many things that have happened.
As Charlie is more real to me than any of you.
Because we would tear out your throats with our teeth if we could.
Because it is ended now—my (last) parole hearing.
Because I leave you with my curse—DEATH TO PIGS.
*”Parole Hearing, California Institution for Women, Chino, CA” was inspired by the fiftieth anniversary, in August 2019, of the infamous Manson murders that so riveted the country at the time, along with the subsequent trial of Manson and several of his young female disciples. The speaker is an imagined disciple of Manson, partly fictitious and partly based upon Leslie Van Houten who, denied her twenty-second request for parole recently by the intervention of the governor of California, was revealed to be the oldest female inmate in the California prison system.
How must it feel, I wondered, to have thrown away one’s life for the (fantasized) love of a psychopathic con man? To have committed grisly murders at the bidding of another? All of Manson’s “girls” denied at the time of their trial that Charlie Manson had directed the murders, so powerful was his spell over them; later, they would alter their stories and express some degree of “remorse,” no doubt urged by their attorneys.
Fifty years is a long time to brood over guilt, conscience, some hope of redemption; yet, very likely, the embittered person who gleefully hacked living persons to death, stabbing one of the victims as many as forty times, probably remains unchanged in her heart, and regrets only having been punished for her crimes and having lost the love of her stunted life, “Charlie.”
And yes, anyone who could revert to such savagery once might well do it again, at any age, and write upon a wall DEATH TO PIGS. And next time, the helpless victim could be a member of the parole board to whom she is speaking here, or, indeed, one of us.
Sara Paretsky and her investigator, V. I. Warshawski, helped transform the depiction of women in the mystery world. Paretsky’s awards include Ms. Magazine’s Woman of the Year and the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold and Silver Daggers, along with the Cartier Diamond Dagger and the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master title. She lives in Chicago.
LOVE & OTHER CRIMES
Sara Paretsky
1
“They’re trying to frame Gregory,” she announced baldly.
“Who are ‘they,’ who is Gregory, and what are ‘they’ saying he did?” I asked.
“Fucking Warshawski snob,” she said. “I might have known. Like your mother, too good to walk around the planet with the ordinary mortals.”
“Anyone who compares me to my mother is paying me the highest possible compliment. But I still don’t—oh, Gregory? Baby Gregory? Are you Sonia Litvak?” She’d given her name as Sonia Geary when she made the appointment.
“I got married. Did you think that was impossible?” she jeered.
She saw my inadvertent glance at her bare left hand. “It didn’t last. Neither did yours, what I heard, but you had to keep your own name, didn’t you? No one else could be as good as a Warshawski.”
“Do you want to tell me who framed Gregory for what?” I asked. “Or just needle me about my family?”
“I want you to understand I don’t need any Warshawski pity or handouts. I came here for help and I plan to pay your bill.”
“That assumes I agree to help you,” I snapped.
“But—you have to!” She was astonished. “You’re from South Houston, same as me. And I need a private cop to go up against the city, although come to think of it, your father was a Chicago cop and—”
“If you insult my father on top of my mother, you’ll have to leave.”
“Oh, don’t get your undies in a bundle,” she grumbled. “I never went to finishing school.”
It was as close as she would come to an apology. I turned away to type Gregory Litvak’s name into a legal database, and he popped right up: charged with second-degree homicide along with criminal destruction of property. Ten days ago, someone—allegedly Gregory Litvak—had gone through the Roccamena warehouse and smashed about twenty-five million dollars’ worth of wine and booze.
Sonia was reading over my shoulder. “See, I told you—they framed him for this.”
“Sonia—this doesn’t prove anything about anyone.”
I scrolled down the screen. Roccamena had fired Gregory a week or so before the destruction. The state—and the liquor distributor—claimed he sought revenge by rampaging through the warehouse.
He might still have made bail, but the crime held a second, more serious offense: when the cleanup crew started hauling out the debris, they’d found the body of Eugene Horvath mixed in with the broken bottles in aisle ninety-seven. Horvath was Roccamena’s accountant; the state’s theory was that Gregory blamed him for losing his job.
“They fired Gregory for no reason,” Sonia burst out. “And then, because they feel guilty, they have to frame him for destroying the warehouse and killing Horvath. The Roccamenas probably did it themselves to collect insurance.”
“What made the police pick up Gregory?” I asked.
“His prints were on the forklift. Well, of course his prints were on the forklift. He drove it for them, loading and unloading crap for them all day. Eighteen years he worked there, and then, bingo, he’s getting close to bei
ng a hundred percent vested, out the door with him. I need you to prove he didn’t do it.”
She glared fiercely. When she’d been young, carting baby Gregory around, her hair grew in lopsided clumps around her head, as though she got her brother Donny to cut it for her. Today the thick curls, dyed bright orange, were symmetrically shaped. Her face was covered with the armor of heavy makeup, but beneath that, she was still the ungainly, needy girl of fifteen.
Sonia didn’t want Warshawski pity, and I didn’t want to give her any, so it annoyed me to find myself stirred by it.
“He has a lawyer, right? Or is he in the system?”
“The public defender. We’re trying to put the money together for a real lawyer, but we can’t even make bail right now. They set it for two million. Who can come up with that kind of money? Reggie could help, but he won’t. Taking his brats to Disney World instead of taking care of his own flesh and blood.”
I didn’t think suggesting that his children were also Reggie’s flesh and blood would help. Instead, I laboriously pried details from her. Reggie had moved to Elgin, with his own little company. Sonia was vague about what they did, but it had something to do with computers. She seemed to think Reggie had become another Gates or Jobs, and that he wouldn’t help Gregory out of spite.
Donny worked for Klondike insurance. This was an agency that had the inside track on a lot of city and county business, which somehow, inevitably, also seemed to mean some of their clients were Mob fronts. It sounded as though he was the agency’s handyman, repairing broken machines, changing lightbulbs, ordering supplies. I could picture him siphoning off supplies and selling them on craigslist, but not engineering the big deals that make a successful mobster.
“So it’s not like Donny’s got a lot of money,” Sonia was continuing to whine, “and then his ex is sucking the marrow out of his bones. He doesn’t even get to see the kid except weekends and then the kid doesn’t want to hang around Donny because Donny doesn’t have a PlayStation or any of that crap.”
“Stanley can’t help?” I asked.
“He dropped all the way out.” Sonia snorted. “First he was in business with Reggie, but he said late-stage capitalism was draining his lifeblood, whatever the fuck that means. He lives in a cabin in the hills somewhere in Arizona and thinks great thoughts. Or maybe it’s no thoughts.”
That left baby Gregory.
“Gregory is super smart,” Sonia said. “Like, he had really high ACT scores, so Daddy wanted him to go to college. He even got a scholarship to go to the University of Illinois, but then he never went. So Daddy threw him out of the house, which was when I was married, and he lived with me, then Ken threw him out, which led to me beating Ken up and him getting an order of protection and then a divorce. Anyway, that’s when Donny found Gregory a job at Roccamena’s, and he’s been there ever since. Until they fired him for no reason at all.”
“They must have told him something.”
She tossed her head, but the orange curls didn’t move. She must have sprayed some kind of epoxy on them.
“Ask him yourself. Maybe you can turn on some Warshawski charm and he’ll tell you stuff he won’t talk to me about.”
The chin beneath the thick makeup wobbled; she fished in her handbag and blew her nose, a good loud honk. “You going to help me or not?”
Not, I chanted silently. Not, not, not.
So why did I find myself printing out a copy of my standard contract for Sonia? I thought when she saw my fees and the nonrefundable deposit she’d walk out, but she signed it with every appearance of nonchalance, counted out five hundred dollars in twenties, and swept from the office. Sort of. She was wearing a sweatshirt that proclaimed her attachment to Liggett Bar and Grill’s Slow Pitch team; the sleeve snagged on the lock tongue on her way out and she had to stop to pull it free.
2
Even the cockiest gang members look wilted after a week at County, and Gregory Litvak hadn’t been cocky to begin with. Like all the Litvaks, he was short, with wide shoulders and a mass of wiry curls. Unlike his siblings, he sat hunched on his side of the table, looking at the floor.
I hadn’t seen him since he was a baby, seemingly glued to his sister’s hip, but when the guard brought him into the room for lawyers and clients, I recognized him at once.
“I used to live up the street from your family,” I said, to break a growing silence. “I sold my house when my dad died. Are you still in South Chicago?”
“I, uh, moved,” he mumbled, without looking up. “After Karen and Arthur died. Over to Fernwood. Sonia and Donny, they found me a place.”
It took a minute for me to realize Karen and Arthur were his parents. “Did Sonia tell you she’s hired me to find evidence to exonerate you?”
His thick neck bobbed fractionally. He’d been shifting boxes of liquor at the Roccamena warehouse for the best part of twenty years; his broad shoulders were also heavily muscled. I could see him easily bashing—but I was on his team. Put those thoughts firmly away. Anyway, he wasn’t a fighter: the bruises all over his face and arms showed that he was easy prey in the halls and exercise yard.
“Sonia says you didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t.” His voice, even in protest, remained a monotone. “It sounds awful, what happened, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t do it.”
“You didn’t see it?” I was puzzled.
He looked up for a second. “They showed me pictures. But I didn’t see it happen. I don’t know who did it.”
“Do you have an alibi for the night?”
“I live alone. I guess you could ask Gattara.” He gave a bark of unhappy laughter. “That’s my cat. It’s the name of a wine we—they sell. It has a cat on the label.”
“Donny says you do have an alibi.”
“He told me,” Gregory said, listless. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. I guess he thinks he can rescue me. Him and Sonia, like they’ve always done.” His voice trailed away.
3
My dad used to say that Donny Litvak would end up in prison, but only after taking over the Chicago Mob. “Kid’s constantly skating close to the edge, except on the wrong side,” he grunted, “but he’s got brains and the Outfit could use a few.”
Gabriella would respond, “The one who should be in prison is the mother. She pays no attention to her children, so they run around like—like teppisti. The girl, she is even worse than the brothers. I thought maybe I could help, but—!”
There were five Litvak children—Sonia, who was a couple of years older than me, and four younger brothers. Donny was in my year, but I never saw him in school, only on the streets. He ran with the sports kids, so my cousin Boom-Boom was part of his life, but he also hung out with the guys who boosted booze from delivery trucks to help out the local bars. In exchange they got a few bucks and free cigarettes.
The cops picked Donny up a couple of times, until he got more skilled at avoiding capture. On at least one occasion, Sonia stomped to the station and stared down the desk sergeant.
“Donny was with me. Baby Gregory has croup, it takes two of us to look after him when he’s feverish and coughing like that.”
Except when Sonia was at school herself, baby Gregory was part of her wardrobe. When he grew too heavy for her to carry, he held on to the belt loops on her jeans. He was an unhappy baby who cried easily; the howls in the police station brought out the watch commander, who let Donny go, even though he knew as well as Sonia that her brother was guilty as charged.
Reggie and Stanley, identical twins two years younger than Donny, flew below the radar. Boom-Boom used to say they were running a gambling game that moved around in the dark, but no one ever proved anything. However, when they graduated from high school, they had saved enough pocket money to pay for college.
Mrs. Litvak was a massively fat woman who spent her days in front of the television with a cup that she refilled frequently from an unplugged coffeepot in the corner of the kitchen. It infuriated my mother that she neve
r seemed to stir whenever any of the boys got into trouble.
Mr. Litvak was an engineer at the Ford Assembly Plant on 130th. He had a ferocious temper, and in a neighborhood of small houses divided by narrow passageways, we all knew all the fights.
Mr. Litvak claimed his wife slept around: You’re lucky I let those damned kids live in my house when not one of them is mine. That’s why Donny keeps getting Cs. Your children have the IQs of monkeys. No, wait, monkeys are smart. Your children have the IQs of hamsters.
Mrs. Litvak wasn’t intimidated, or at least she fought back: her husband was a mama’s boy who couldn’t wipe his own ass if his mother wasn’t there to do it. And so on.
The children dressed in odd, mismatched clothes. A rich aunt in New York sent Sonia her daughter’s castoffs, but they were two or three sizes too small, and so the girl went to school in her mother’s clothes, clumsily cut down to fit her. Once a year, for the Jewish New Year, Mr. Litvak marched the children to services, the older boys looking like clowns in their father’s sports jackets, Sonia looking like a middle-aged woman in her mother’s ill-fitting dress.
Kids like the Litvaks would normally be the butt of taunts and assaults, but Donny and Sonia seemed to have some kind of force field around them—it repelled attack, but it also repelled any overture of friendship. Sonia’s basilisk stare dried up words in the biggest bully’s mouth.
My mother either didn’t sense the force field, or figured she could penetrate it. She knew what it was like to be an outsider and an outcast; she thought all Sonia needed was an adult to show her some kindness.
Each fall, when school started, Gabriella commissioned a new dress for me from Signora Rapellini, who made the few elegant outfits Gabriella herself owned. My mother had a good eye for color and fit; one September, she asked Signora Rapellini to make something for the Litvak girl at the same time.
When we picked up the clothes, I didn’t want to go with Gabriella to the Litvak house. I had a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach about what could go wrong. Sonia answered the door, Gregory on her hip. We could hear the TV in the background and Mrs. Litvak’s hoarse demand to know who was at the door. The twins were fighting over something. All the noise drowned out Gabriella’s little speech, offering Sonia something to bring luck in the new school year.