by Neil Turner
Michelle had captivated me from the moment I first laid eyes on her at Marquette. I’ve often wondered how I landed her. She had enjoyed being seen around campus with a star collegiate athlete, so I’d always known that was part of the attraction. We dated through our undergraduate years, then she set off for an MBA at Georgetown and I stayed behind for law school. I assumed that was the end of it—people from families like hers didn’t marry down to my level. We hooked up again five years later at a Marquette undergrad class reunion. Michelle was by then an HR up-and-comer at Coca-Cola and I was running errands at a prestigious Milwaukee law firm. The rest, as the cliché goes, was history. She’d had to teach me how to rise above the limits of my less-than-GQ looks, beginning by clothing me as if I were one of the hereditary hoity toity. Then she’d taught me how to carry and comport myself with the proper attitude. To my amazement, it worked. I suddenly found female eyes following me around rooms and had reveled in my inclusion within the circle of other men dressed and prepped for success.
I live in perpetual fear that the thin veneer papering over the real me will blow away to reveal my mediocrity… especially now that I don’t have Michelle to cover for me. I’ve often wondered if marrying me had been nothing more than an act of defiance against her overbearing father. What other explanation could there be?
I stuff the phone in my pants pocket and turn to Deano, who deigns to wag his tail before rolling over for another belly massage. I oblige him again.
“What next?” I ask myself after he nods off. A quick read through the eviction notice confirms that it has to do with property tax arrears. How can that be? Mama was always fastidious about paying bills. Can I check the Cook County court records online? I plug the modem line from my MacBook Pro into a wall jack and dial my ISP. My homepage begins loading, seemingly one pixel at a time. I lean over and open the drawer where Papa keeps his papers. Recent utility bill stubs are on top. All marked paid. Below that is a collection of crap: shopping coupons, a newsletter from the village, another from the library district, and bank statements. At the bottom of the drawer is a staggering invoice from Smolinski’s Funeral Home. The bastards had really soaked Papa for Mama’s funeral. How do they sleep at night? I wonder while I slam the drawer shut. There must be more papers somewhere. A cancelled property tax check or a property tax bill stamped “PAID” would be a welcome sight. I make a mental note to ask Papa about that.
My homepage is still loading. How the hell did the internet ever take off in the age of dial-up modems? I abandon the dial-up effort and connect to my iPhone personal hot spot while adding a high-speed internet connection to my to-do list. Then I open the refrigerator and stare at an Eli’s cheesecake. I could probably entice my daughter out of her room with this; Brittany shares my weak spot for Eli’s. Sphinx Financial had obligingly had an ongoing supply delivered to me in Atlanta. They’d also shipped in the Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles I developed a taste for during an English vacation. With such a sense of entitlement in the corporate suite at Sphinx—excesses initiated and blessed by President and CEO Hank Fraser—it’s no wonder things ended badly.
Deciding that it’s best to leave Brittany to herself for a bit longer, I reluctantly defer the cheesecake feast and gobble down a handful of chocolate chip cookies. Then I return to the computer and Google “Peter Zaluski, Cedar Heights, Illinois.” Who is the guy that Mrs. Vaccaro claims is behind the eviction notice? Twenty-three entries scroll onto the screen. Some are official village links, others connect to news stories, and a few lead to dead ends. I open the link for the Village of Cedar Heights and click through to the Village Manager page. Peter Zaluski smiles back at me. He’s a good-looking guy with startling blue eyes, a neatly trimmed mustache, and vaguely Slavic features under a thick mane of black hair. The smile betrays a hint of arrogance, or so I imagine.
“So, you tried to kick my parents out of their home,” I say to his image. Just the sight of this guy rubs me the wrong way. The website includes a brief bio. Business Admin grad from Northern Illinois University. Married, five kids, active in his parish—the Catholicism explaining the litter of children. Membership in the Polish American Association. A quick peek at their website suggests he’s very active indeed. To give the devil his due, he seems to have a history of doing some good things there. Polishing his career apple? Back to the village website bio. Played football at NIU. That’s all it says about his athletic career, so he couldn’t have been anything special. The bio tells me that Zaluski put in years of service at the civic and county level before he landed the Cedar Heights job. So, he’s achieved nothing of consequence. Typical bureaucrat.
The news stories amount to a handful of references to village business, plus a couple of press releases from Cedar Heights applauding Zaluski’s accomplishments on its behalf. I’m not going to uncover any of his misdeeds on the village website. I backtrack to Zaluski’s picture and stare with an unreasoning antipathy at this stranger who made life difficult for my parents.
“If you really screwed them over, I’m coming after you,” I promise the image.
Deano lumbers to his feet and strolls over to rest his head in my lap. He’s a hefty old guy now with a salt and pepper face betraying his age—“dignified” in Mama’s telling. I scratch behind his ears while his soulful brown eyes stare up into mine as if to say, “Where’s Papa? What the hell’s going on?”
I gaze down into his eyes. “I wish to hell you could talk. I’ll bet you know exactly what happened here last night.”
Chapter Six
My nerves are wound as tightly as they were in the lead-up to a big match during my collegiate volleyball career: sweaty palms, rubbery knees, and a stomach in turmoil. It’s the day after bond call and I’m at the Cook County Jail to visit Papa in lockup for the first time. The door swings open. A beefy, acne-scarred Latino guard marches Papa to our designated cubicle and backs away, leaving us to stare at each other through a scratched-up Plexiglas partition. Papa’s haunted hazel eyes convey unfathomable sadness. Mama had loved those eyes, claiming more than once that she’d been drawn into their twinkling light like a moth to a flame, albeit with happier results. Today that incandescence is utterly extinguished—yet another victim of Tuesday night’s shooting.
Papa slumps into a battered blue plastic chair. “I am sorry, Anthony.”
I pull my seat forward to get my nose right up to the glass. “What’s done is done, Papa. We need to look ahead.”
His eyes flicker to mine. “They leave me here now?”
“We’ll ask the court to review the bail decision.”
“I think they no want me out of jail,” he says with weary resignation. “Why we fight them?”
Because my life is in shambles and I came back to be with you in our home—not to visit you in this hellhole. Brittany might be a great kid, but I need adult support. I need someone else’s strength to draw upon. I think all this but say nothing.
“You no borrow money for bail, Anthony.”
As if I could. A call to our realtor in Atlanta suggested that it’s time to lower the asking price on our house there. I’d been hoping to squeeze a few bucks out of the place. Not that there’s much equity to begin with—especially after broker fees and closing costs. Our Atlanta banker says Michelle will have to co-sign any loans while I’m out of work. That’s the type of proposition the term “non-starter” was coined to describe. The bail bondsmen aren’t interested in our sliver of equity, nor would they touch Papa’s house—not with an eviction notice and tax foreclosure in the works. I suppose some loan shark might offer a few bucks on the house at thirty percent interest, with the added attraction of having me kneecapped if I default. I’m not that desperate. Well, not yet anyway.
I inject an unfelt note of optimism into my reply about the bail money. “We’ll think of something.”
“Brittany is ashamed?” he asks morosely while running a hand across his head in a gesture that used to smooth a full head of largely vanished coal-black hair.<
br />
True, but Papa doesn’t need to hear it. “No, she’s just worried about you.”
His expression calls bullshit on me but he doesn’t pursue it. “I wish I not buy this gun,” he mutters in a voice heavy with regret.
“Since when have you had a gun, anyway?” I ask in bewilderment. Papa never allowed so much as a cap gun or BB gun into our home and made us promise to leave any house if a weapon turned up.
“We buy it after the home invasions happen,” he explains with a sad shake of his head. “Mama, she get scared. She not trust the new renters.”
I recall Mama telling me that she was afraid of what was happening to the neighborhood in the wake of the eminent domain episode, especially after a couple of violent home invasions—the first serious crime I recall taking place on Liberty Street. I’m shocked to hear my parents had been frightened enough to purchase a gun.
I decide to change the subject. “I found an attorney through the Marquette Law Alumni Association who can advise us on the foreclosure. His firm also has a criminal defense guy. I’ll talk to him, too.”
“This defense lawyer, he does something the Williams man does not?”
“They’re both criminal defense attorneys.”
“We not pay Williams?”
“That’s right,” I reply. “He’s a public defender.”
“Who pays?”
“The state funds the public defender’s office.”
“This other lawyer, who pays him?”
“We would.”
“He does this all the time?” Papa asks.
“Well, maybe not a steady diet of murders, but he defends people, yes.”
“Williams works on murder cases all the time?”
“I think so,” I reply uncertainly. “Mostly violent crime, anyway.”
The look on Papa’s face when he responds recalls the moments of my childhood when I’d uttered yet another idiocy. “Then I think we want Williams. Experience is best teacher, no?”
Put that way, running with Williams seems like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, it assumes Williams isn’t a public defender because he can’t cut it in private practice.
“You not spend your money for lawyer,” Papa says. “Capisci?”
Yes, I understand—Mike Williams is our man by default. I hope Mama’s dictum that “you always get what you pay for” doesn’t turn out to be prophetic. The next issue to tackle is the alarming possibility that Brittany and I may be on the verge of homelessness. I prop my elbows on the ledge in front of me. “Papa, I don’t understand this eviction thing. The court papers say the house is in foreclosure because you didn’t pay your property tax. It also mentions repairs and maintenance not being done. What’s going on?”
“Your mama, she look after these things. She talk about the sunroom and more tax. Always more tax,” he mutters with anger creeping into his voice. His hands are beginning to move in time with his words, a sure signal that he’s growing agitated. Do Italians really talk with their hands? Damned right they do. This one does, anyway.
“They reassessed you because of the sunroom?” I ask.
“Yes, she say something like that.”
“And you didn’t pay the taxes?”
“Your mother talk to lawyer so we not have to pay.”
“She filed an appeal?”
“She talk with Mr. Rosetti. They do this to him, too. His lawyer, he send some papers to court for us.”
“You won the appeal?”
Papa shrugs. “I no know what happen. When Mama get sick, I tell her no worry about this no more.”
Great. Clear as mud. Why the hell didn’t they just talk to me? I lean in. “There’s got to be more, Papa, something we don’t know. The village didn’t go to court and get an eviction notice without demonstrating a pressing need to get you out of the house.”
“I no understand these things, Anthony. After your mama pass, I no listen to them no more. I tell them leave me alone, you no have my home to make stores!”
“What about papers?” I ask. “I looked in the kitchen drawer but didn’t see anything about this.”
“Mama keep in box in bedroom closet. When more papers come, I put there.”
Well, that’s a starting point. I’ll review them over the weekend and drop in on Mr. Rosetti to find out what he knows about the reassessment and appeal. “Mrs. Vaccaro mentioned a Peter Zaluski from the village. She seems to think he’s got something to do with this.”
An ember flares in Papa’s eyes. “It no matter no more,” he says with an air of finality. “We no speak of him again.”
“For God’s sake, you’re going to go on trial for murder! I need to know about this guy.”
Sullen silence greets my outburst.
“Papa, please talk to me.”
“It no matter now.”
Jesus! I slap a hand on the table. “Damn it, Papa, you wouldn’t be here if you’d come to me with this in the first place! The least you can do now is give me a hand when I’m trying to help!”
Papa’s eyes narrow dangerously in a look that had presaged the occasional backhand in the years of my youth. “I ask your mama what you say to do. She tell me you always busy but you listen to what she say. She say no worry. If big problem, you will fix for us. ‘No one can take our home, Francesco,’ she always tell me, ‘Not in America!’”
“I never heard about anyone bothering you after the shopping center plan fell through,” I mutter lamely. “I didn’t know about the tax lien, either.”
He scrutinizes me from beneath those menacing bushy eyebrows. “Maybe you no listen so good to your mama.”
Did I always pay as much attention as I should have? Probably not, preoccupied as I was with scaling the corporate ladder and living the good life in Atlanta. “Maybe I could have paid more attention.”
Papa waves the comment aside and stands up. “I am tired, Anthony. I go to sleep now. You come back tomorrow?”
“Uh, sure,” I stammer, scrambling to my feet, as well. “Are you okay?”
He nods and gives me a half-hearted wave before the jailer leads him away.
The potential implications of my neglect finally register. I recall my bemusement while listening to Mama prattle on and on about the little events of their life. I usually made the dutiful calls to Cedar Heights from the office, pecking away at my computer keyboard or doodling on a notepad while Mama talked. At least half of what she told me went in one ear and out the other. I’m staggered by the realization that I may be partially at fault for what has befallen Papa—perhaps even wholly culpable. I’m incensed with and sickened by myself as I leave the jail.
The message indicator chirps when I power up my iPhone in the parking lot, so I call voicemail.
“Tony, it’s Michelle.” I can picture my ex-wife gathering her thoughts in the ensuing silence. Her response to my call last night had been a terse email saying she was sorry about what happened. I’d left another message to call me, this time mentioning that I have to raise bail and need to know what assets we have that I can use. The mention of money was sure to get her attention. Thanks to the Rice family fortune, Michelle had walked away from our marriage as wealthy as she’d entered it. Probably at Daddy Rice’s insistence, she hadn’t invested a dime of her own wealth into our marriage. I’m now effectively broke, despite the hefty annual incomes we’d burned through and the mountain of now worthless stock options I’d been so enamored with. She declared the outcome “equitable.”
“This underscores why I needed to leave and come here,” her voice mail continues. “I can’t afford to be involved in any way—not in this court thing of your father’s and not with you. I’m sorry, but that’s the way things have to be.”
There was a time when I admired Michelle’s ability to relentlessly pursue her own agenda to the exclusion of all other considerations. What I didn’t anticipate was me becoming a potential liability when Sphinx failed. Within a month, I was cast aside on the scrapheap of people who had outlived their
usefulness. So much for the pledge in our wedding vows to stand by one another “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer” and so on. Maybe there was an asterisk I missed, a clause buried in the fine print of the paperwork we signed. I’ve landed on the “for worse” and “for poorer” side of the ledger all by my lonesome.
Michelle’s voice takes on a reproving note. “I’m concerned about the effect this is having on Brittany. I think you should be, too. Maybe she should be here.”
Really? After bailing on us to protect her precious career? My anger, bubbling hotter and hotter as I’ve listened, finally boils over. I savagely rip the car door open. My phone goes flying when the door rebounds into me. I scramble after it and put it back to my ear.
Michelle is still talking. “On the advice of my attorney, I’ve closed the joint credit card and bank account we’ve been maintaining until the house sells. I’ve asked the bank to wire an extra couple of thousand dollars with the child support this month. That covers your share of the account balances and should help out with whatever you need there. You have my personal email address if there’s anything else. Don’t contact me at work again. Have Brittany call me.”
“Fuck you!” I bellow, channeling an incomprehensible degree of rage into the scream. Rage is new to me. Disconcerting. Maybe even a little frightening.
I ignore the startled looks of the people in the parking lot and slam the door behind me after I climb into the Porsche. I put every one of its three-hundred-and-thirty-three supercharged horsepower to work peeling out of the jail’s parking lot. Even they aren’t enough to escape my anger… or to outrun my burgeoning guilt.
Chapter Seven
Mike Williams slams a hand against a wall in the hallway outside the courtroom we’ve just exited a few days later. “This reeks of politics!”
The depth of his anger surprises me, coming only moments after he’d remained calm throughout Papa’s latest court appearance. A grand jury handed down a true bill of indictment over the weekend, which cleared the way for the state’s attorney to officially charge my father with first-degree murder only a week after the shooting. Papa has just been arraigned and has pleaded not guilty. The next step on the way to his trial will be hearings and arguments ad nauseam while the prosecution and defense jockey for pre-trial advantage. The case has been designated a priority prosecution, a tag Cook County courts can apply to five trials at any given time. It’s a tactical maneuver by the state’s attorney to limit Papa’s time to prepare for trial.