An Image of Death

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  “By yourself?”

  “I had a sound man, but one morning he walked across an open stretch of ground to take a leak and got hit in the face by a sniper round.”

  I wondered whether that was why he was in a wheelchair.

  As if he was reading my mind, he went on. “I made it back to the world and started shooting local news.” Jericho came up to his chair. Dolan fondled the dog’s ears. “But life’s a bitch, you know? I make it through the Tet offensive, come home in one piece, and then get my leg blown off in a goddamm gas main explosion in Harvey.” He shook his head, as if he were still puzzled about the whole thing.

  I gave him my hand. “I’ll think of you the next time I have a nine-hundred entrance fee.”

  He grinned as we shook. “Gotta keep out the riffraff.”

  I waited for Davis outside. The temperature seemed to have risen a few degrees, and the faint scent of wood smoke hung in the air. “You want to grab some lunch?” I asked when she joined me. “I saw a place around the corner on Touhy. Greek Isles.”

  She hesitated a fraction too long. “Sorry. I—I don’t have time.”

  “No problem.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Listen, thank you for letting me come. I know what you can do with video, but that system really takes it to the next generation.”

  She nodded.

  “So what happens now? We have a Nike t-shirt, a woman missing a tooth, and a tattoo of a torch and stars. Do you think we—”

  She cut me off. “We aren’t going to do anything.”

  “I—I didn’t mean—”

  “Look, Ellie, this ends. Right now. I wanted you here because you do know something about video, and I thought, with a better image, there was a chance you’d recognize the woman. Or the location. But you’ve got to leave it alone now. Let me do my job.”

  I had a vision of myself as somebody’s maiden aunt, an interfering, pesky busybody you tolerate, but just barely. Was that how Davis saw me? We walked to her car. “But you do think the tattoo is significant, don’t you?”

  She opened the Saturn’s door, deposited her briefcase, and slid into the driver’s seat. “Ellie, I’m going now.”

  I leaned into the space between her seat and the door, reluctant to let go. Part of it was the camaraderie. Once Dolan got over his attitude, the three of us had worked well together. I didn’t want it to end. But there was something else, too. A nagging feeling, perhaps a piece of information that I knew and needed to share with Davis. The problem was I couldn’t dig it out of my memory.

  “Ellie.” She grasped the door handle. “I have to go.”

  I straightened up. Whatever it was would come. “Okay. But, listen—if you need anything.…”

  “I know where to find you.”

  The car door slammed shut, and the engine turned over. I trudged back to my car. Narrow rivulets of water from melting snow trickled down Dolan’s driveway. I wondered who did his shoveling. A neighborhood kid? Or one of the landscaping services that turn into snow-plow businesses during the winter months? Fouad, my Syrian friend and sometime gardener, says he makes better money in winter, just by hooking a snowplow to his truck. The secret, he claims, is the cost of labor. The Mexicans he hires each summer go back home from November through April, so he pockets pretty much all of his revenue.

  I got to the Volvo and fished out my keys. Mexican gardeners, Greek restaurants, Russian cleaning ladies—the North Shore was becoming an international crossroads these days. I pictured Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet slinking around the backstreets and alleys of Winnetka. I smiled. It would never work. The fez would be a dead giveaway.

  I opened my car door, thinking about hats, white suits, and foreign intrigue. Then I stopped. A man in a Russian-looking hat had been staring at my house the other day. Driving the cleaning ladies’ van. When he realized I’d seen him, he fled. And Rachel had said a van was involved in the delivery of the tape. I spun around.

  Davis was pulling away from the house. I ran after her, waving my arms. “Wait!” I cried. “Hold on!”

  Her brakes squealed, and the Saturn lurched to a stop. She rolled down her window.

  “Officer Davis…” I panted as I caught up to the car. “Remember what Dolan said about imports? You know, gangs from other parts of the world?”

  She blinked. “Yeah?”

  “Well, that would—I mean—that could include Russian gangs, couldn’t it?”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “I think you should follow me home. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  ***

  When I walked into Lillian Armstrong’s kitchen, it was clear why she needed a cleaning lady. A tower of dirty dishes balanced beside the sink. Torn Ho-Ho wrappers littered the floor. Open cartons of Chinese take-out, their contents congealed and gummy, lay on the counter. A dirty ashtray sat on the table, the butts smeared with lipstick. The sharp odor of ammonia cut through the residue of stale cigarette smoke. Two cats streaked out of the room as we entered.

  I wanted to take a blowtorch to the place. Instead, I crossed to the window. “Would it be okay if I opened this?”

  Lillian shrugged resignedly, as if I were an irritation she was obliged to endure. She and I didn’t have what you’d call a “neighborly” relationship. In fact, in the five years she’d lived next door, this was the first time I’d been inside her house. The day she’d moved in, she made sure to tell me how she wouldn’t be around much, since she spent summers at her cottage in Michigan and winters in her Florida condo. Glancing around now, I was glad she’d been true to her word.

  A heavy woman with thinning blue hair, she wore a quilted red robe and matching slippers. Despite some tautness around her cheekbones, the result of at least one facelift, pockets of flesh sagged under her eyes, and a wattle seemed to be growing under her chin.

  She took a drag off her cigarette. “You’re lucky you caught me.” She addressed herself to Davis, who stood at the kitchen threshold as if taking another step would land her in a DMZ. “I had to fly up for a doctor’s appointment. Then I got the flu.”

  Given the organisms that were likely proliferating in her house, I was surprised it wasn’t plague.

  “I won’t keep you too long, ma’am,” Davis said. “I just have a couple of questions. Do you engage a cleaning service, Mrs. Armstrong?”

  Lillian gazed around, as if noticing the detritus for the first time, and nodded. “They do a lousy job, don’t they?” She sighed. “But then, what can you expect?”

  Davis didn’t reply.

  “Not one of them speaks a word of English,” She went on. “And they don’t know the first thing about cleaning. How could they? They were milking cows or picking potatoes two weeks before I got them. And the turnover. I get a different one every week. I just get ’em broken in, and there’s a new one.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been thinking of changing services.”

  “I’d like the name of that service, ma’am. And the number.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No, ma’am. Just a routine check.”

  Lillian stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. A curl of smoke hovered over the kitchen table. “If they’re illegal, I don’t know a thing about it, see? All I do is hire them. I don’t ask for their green cards.”

  “We realize that, ma’am.”

  Lillian arched her eyebrows, as if she expected Davis to tell her exactly what she did know, but Davis had her game face on. “When does the service come?”

  “As a matter of fact, they’ll be here tomorrow.”

  None too soon, I thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  When I looked outside the next morning, Davis’ red Saturn was parked at the curb. She was huddled in the front seat, holding a cup with the familiar green logo on it. I’d assumed she would call DM Maids yesterday, after we left Lillian’s, but she shook her head when I brought it up.

  “I call now, I warn them we’re looking for something. They’ll circle the
wagons, and I get nothing. I’ll meet the van tomorrow morning.” She added, “By myself.”

  Now I made a pot of vanilla coffee and poured myself a cup. Coffee is one of the few domestic things I do well. I thought about offering to freshen hers, but, recalling her admonishment not to get involved, I refrained. I did test the waters with a wave as I took Rachel to school, just to see what would happen.

  Not much, it turned out, though Rachel merited a smile.

  “What’s Officer Davis doing here, Mom?” Rachel asked.

  “It has to do with that tape that was dropped off the other day.”

  “The one I don’t want to know about?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Oh. By the way, the U.S. Field Hockey Association is coming through Chicago this weekend, and they’re having a demo at Soccer City. Can I go?”

  “I don’t see why not.” I turned onto Sunset Ridge Road. It had sleeted overnight, and a thin layer of ice coated the street. I drove carefully. “How’d you find out about it?”

  “I was surfing the Net. And guess what.”

  I flicked on the windshield wipers. “What?”

  “They’re having this camp over Presidents’ Day weekend, and I sort of asked—well, I e-mailed someone and they wrote back, and said if I—”

  “Whoa,” I cut in. “What did you do?”

  “They’re gonna let me scrimmage with some of the players at the demo on Saturday, and if they think I’m good enough, they might let me into the camp.”

  “Oh, they might, might they?”

  “Yeah.” She shot me a look. “So, what do you think, Mom?”

  A truck thundered by in the opposite direction, spewing clumps of wet snow across the Volvo’s windshield. I turned the wipers on high. “Assuming you get in, who’s going to pay for this camp? And, by the way, where is it?”

  “Virginia Beach.”

  “The East Coast?”

  She flashed me a hopeful smile.

  With her blond curls and blue eyes, my daughter doesn’t look that much like me, but our personalities were becoming uncannily similar. She was already finagling, manipulating, trying to order the universe to her liking. And it probably rankled her—as much as it did me at her age—that she still needed an adult to supply things like money and permission and plane reservations.

  On the other hand, field hockey was an activity any parent should want to encourage. A teenage girl running around a field outside for hours—what could be wrong with that? It was healthy, it kept her out of trouble, and the pride she’d feel if she did make the camp was one of those affirmations the Character Ed people at her school say every kid deserves. I pulled into the school’s parking lot.

  “Tell you what. If you get in, I’ll call your father. Maybe we can work something out. An early birthday present or something.”

  “Thanks, Mom!” She beamed as she got out of the car.

  I blew her a kiss. If that’s what it took to make her happy, I’d call my ex five times a day.

  I was nursing a second cup of coffee back home when a white van rolled up Lillian’s driveway. The side door slid open, and a woman climbed out. I recognized the frayed coat and tired walk. It was the same woman as last time. Apparently, there was no turnover this week.

  The driver’s door swung open, but the man who jumped out wasn’t short or squat. Nor was he wearing a fur hat. Bundled up in a hooded green parka, this man was tall and beefy. I put down my coffee. I should tell Davis it wasn’t the same man. She shouldn’t waste her time. But before I could throw on my coat, she was out of her car.

  She waited until the driver had escorted the woman inside Lillian’s house before intercepting him. As he headed back to the van, she flashed her ID at him. The man froze, then slid one hand into his pocket. Panic spilled over me. What did he have in his pocket? I lunged for the phone.

  Davis stood her ground and shifted, but kept her hands near her sides. The man’s hand came out of his pocket with what looked like a driver’s license.

  I put the phone back on the base.

  Davis took the license, pulled out a notepad with her other hand and started scribbling. I could see her lips move, but the man’s responses were limited to an occasional nod or shake of his head. Not much of a conversation. A few minutes later, the driver hurried back to the van, hoisted himself up, and pulled away. Davis shoved the pad back into her pocket and started toward her car. I went outside and caught her just as she opened her door.

  “It wasn’t the same man,” I said.

  “I gathered that,” she said dryly. “He said he’s new on the job.”

  “Did he say what happened to the other guy?”

  She shook her head. Then, as if suddenly realizing I wasn’t a cop or anyone worth sharing information with, she gave me a brisk nod and lowered herself into her car. “Have a nice day Ellie. And no, I don’t need any help.”

  ***

  Driving down to Cabrini Green that afternoon, I automatically locked the Volvo’s doors before realizing I didn’t have to anymore. For nearly thirty years, Cabrini, one of Chicago’s public housing developments, was synonymous with gangs, drugs, and violence. People driving into the city avoided Division, the street where Cabrini was located, and it wasn’t a stop on any sightseeing tour.

  In the mid-nineties, though, the cluster of buildings known as the “reds,” the “whites,” and the “rowhouses” were slated to be torn down. Quickly. Most of them were. One day there was urban blight; the next day it was gone. No one needed to ask why. North of the Loop and west of the Gold Coast, Cabrini was prime Chicago real estate. With the right kind of development, the land would generate major bucks. So the residents moved out, Starbucks moved in, and acres of luxury housing rose from Cabrini’s ashes.

  There was one exception. A smattering of low-income housing was figured into the plan, no doubt to relieve the city’s guilt at relocating thousands of people. Twenty-four low-rise units were put out for bid, and Feldman Development snagged the job. Ricki Feldman proceeded to build four small apartment buildings on a narrow street near Division and Sedgwick. Construction was nearly complete when she announced that one of the buildings would be donated to Transitions for foster-care graduates. In a few weeks’ time, some lucky young people would be living practically rent-free in a sparkling new Chicago apartment.

  I slowed as I turned onto the street. Just when I thought it was safe to dislike Ricki Feldman, she did something, well, almost noble.

  Jordan Bennett, his shoulders hunched against the cold, waited as I parked the car. He rubbed his hands together, as if the leather gloves he was wearing weren’t doing much good. He probably got them in L.A. I wound my scarf around my neck and crossed the street. He grunted and led me inside.

  Mac and the crew were already setting up. We’d decided to shoot B-roll inside the empty apartment and do an interview with Jordan. Then we’d come back in a few weeks to film the young people moving in. That would allow us to create a nice before-and-after sequence—from scenes of an empty apartment to the same shots of the apartment full of people, furniture, and hope.

  Mac Kendall is the black sheep of his family. His relatives come from places like Winnetka, Barrington, and Lake Forest, but he lives in a small house in Northbrook. Even more appalling, at least to his family, is the fact that he actually works for a living. He began by shooting weddings, graduations, and Bar Mitzvahs, but has since built up a thriving corporate business. We met when we were both working for local TV and were assigned to cover a story about graft in the restaurant business. We’ve been working together ever since.

  He was setting up lights when I walked in. Lean and rumpled, with shaggy brown hair, he’d been growing a neat Van Dyke beard. Much to his chagrin, though, it was coming in equally gray as brown. A wicked-looking scar on his left cheek deters most people from messing with him. It also hides the fact that he’s one of the most gentle, sensitive men I’ve ever known.

  “Hey, Mac, how goes it?”
>
  He grunted, too. Must be the weather. Chicago winters have a way of making you conserve your strength. He finished bouncing a light off the ceiling, then pulled out his exposure meter. Fifteen years ago you needed a crew member just to light a set; today most people shoot with available light. Except Mac. He uses lighting to create a specific mood. It takes time to set up, but the results are worth it.

  I wasn’t sure what he was going after today: a bright, cheerful eight o’clock morning? Muted afternoon light? Or maybe a limbo-type scene with faces appearing out of a dark, undefined background? Over the years, it’s become a game: I try to figure out his intention from the angle of the lights, the scrims, and filters. When we’ve discussed it in advance, it’s a no-brainer, but other times, like today, he keeps me guessing.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’re going for a bright, hopeful look. Ten o’clock in the morning. Springtime. Right?”

  Mac pushed his hair off his forehead. “Close.” He favored me with a smile. “First day of kindergarten. Cheerful. Clean. Nothing but possibilities.”

  “I like it.”

  Once he was satisfied with the lights, we laid down a variety of shots: establishing shots, pans, moves, a few passes on a dolly. Then we reset the lights in the hallway for the interview with Jordan. I ran him through the questions, and he answered smoothly, basically repeating our conversation in his office. When we were done, Mac shot cutaways.

  It was after three by the time we finished. We still had a few minutes before the light began to fade—winter afternoons in Chicago merge into dusk without warning—so Mac shot some exteriors, including a few tracking shots of Jordan walking into and out of the building. I watched as Mac directed, telling Jordan where to start, stop, and which side of the door to enter. It occurred to me, as I watched the child of privilege working for the child from foster care, that the universe has a way of balancing the scales.

  “Okay.” Mac looked up from the viewfinder. “That’s a wrap.”

  As Mac and the crew broke down the equipment, Jordan crossed the street. He looked like a kid who’s been given everything he wanted for Christmas. “This is really gonna happen, isn’t it?”