“The accent,” he said. “I’d know that flat nasal tone anywhere.”
He should: he had it himself.
“I figured you for Chicago, too. South side?”
“Close,” he said. “How…?”
“You’re not wearing a Cubbies sweatshirt, now, are ya?”
He grinned. “Hell, no! Screw them and their Yuppie fans.”
“You got that right. Let me buy you a beer…Freddy, is it?”
“Freddy,” he said. “No thanks. I’m workin’. But I’ll buy you one.”
“I already got one. Let’s just get to know each other a little.”
There was not much to know, he said. He was fairly new to the area, working as a bartender for Bill, who was a friend of a friend.
“You got strong hands, Freddy,” I said, stroking one. “Working hands. Steel mill hands.”
His eyes flared. Maybe I’d gone too far.
“I…I got tired of factory life. Just too damn hard. I need to be sharp, not wasted, when I spend time with my kid. I’m a single parent, you know. I’m trying for that quality time thing, you know.”
I bet he was.
“How many kids you got, Freddy?”
“Just the one. Sweet little girl. Cindy. Starts first grade next year. You got any kids?”
“I’m divorced, but I never had any kids. Didn’t think I was cut out for it.”
“Oh, you should reconsider. There’s nothing like it. Being a parent—it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” Really.
“I don’t know,” I said, “I’m afraid I might lose my temper around ’em or something.”
“That can be a problem,” he admitted. “But I’d never lay a hand on Cindy. Never.”
“Spare the rod and spoil the child, Clyde.”
His brow knit. “I don’t believe in that shit. Look—I used to have a bad temper. I’ll be honest with you, Becky. I used to…well, I used to get a little rough with the ladies sometimes.”
I stroked his hand, and almost purred: “I like it a little rough.”
Gag me, as they say, with a spoon.
“I don’t mean that. I don’t mean horseplay or nothing. I mean, I hit women before. Okay? See this Diet Coke? It’s not just ’cause I’m workin’. I don’t drink anymore. I get nasty when I drink, so I don’t drink.”
“It’s a little rough, being a recovering alcoholic, isn’t it, working in a bar?”
“Being somebody who don’t drink is a valuable commodity when you work in a bar-type situation. That’s what Bill likes about me.”
“You’re not…tempted?”
“No. I haven’t had a drink in five years.”
“Five years?” Was he lying, or crazy? Or both? Was this a trick question? He swirled the Diet Coke in the can. “Five years sober. Five years dry. Besides, Becky—this job was all I could get.”
“A strapping boy like you?”
His expression darkened. “I got my reasons. If you want to be my friend, you got to respect my privacy, okay?”
Funny, coming from a guy I just met who already had admitted he was a reformed drunk and supposedly reformed woman-beater. Was there something psychotic in those spooky faded blue eyes?
“Sure, honey,” I said, “I’ll respect your privacy. If you respect me in the morning.”
He grinned again, shyly. “I got to get behind the bar, ’fore Bill tears me a new you-know-what.”
“Can we get together after you get off work?”
“I got to spend the evening with my little girl.”
“Right. Quality time.”
“That’s it. But I ought to have her in bed by nine o’clock.”
I bet.
“You could stop over after that,” he said. “I can give you the address….”
* * *
—
Louise sat next to me in the front seat. She wore the same peasant dress she’d worn to my office; clutched the same patent-leather purse. Her heavy make-up, in the darkness as we sat in the car at the curb, gave her a Kabuki-like visage.
I had phoned her long distance, right after my encounter with Joey at the Nugget. She’d been standing by for my call, as I’d primed her that if I found Maggie, I’d need her to come immediately. I couldn’t take Maggie without Louise present, and not just because the child would rightfully resist going with a stranger.
The fact was, with Louise along, taking Maggie would not be kidnapping. Without her, it would be.
“Are you all right, Louise?”
She nodded. We were in my Buick; we had left her Datsun in a motel parking lot near the Interstate. That’s where we had met, after she made the three-hour drive in two and a half hours. It was now approaching nine-thirty and the sky was a brilliant dark blue with more stars than any child could ever hope to dream upon. Moving clouds seemed to rise cotton-candy-like, but it was only smoke from Oscar Mayer.
We were several blocks from Agnes Evans’s duplex, but the meat-packing smell still scorched the air. Joey Evans and his daughter lived in a single-family, single-story clapboard, smaller and newer than his sister’s place. Built in the fifties sometime. I lived in a house like this when I was six.
“He’s expecting me,” I told her. I’d already told her this, but I’d been telling her a lot of things and I wasn’t sure anything was sticking. She nodded.
“I’ll go up, and knock, and after he lets me in, I’ll excuse myself to go to the restroom, I’ll find the back door, unlock it, and you come in and I’ll keep him busy while you find your way to Maggie’s room.”
She nodded.
“Then you slip out the back door with her. When you’re in the car with her, safe, honk twice. Short honks. Then I’ll get out of there on some excuse, and we’re outa here. You girls will be on your way home.”
She smiled wanly. “Ms. Tree—thank you. Thank you so very much. I knew you could do it. I knew you could.”
“I haven’t done it yet. We haven’t. Now, you need to have a clear head about you, Louise! I want to get you in and out, with Maggie, without him knowing till we’re tail-lights. I don’t want any violence going down—that husband of yours looks like he could bench-press a grand piano.”
She nodded.
“Wait five minutes after I go to the door; then go around behind the house and find the back door. How long?”
“Five minutes.”
“When you’re safe in the car, how many times will you honk?”
She raised two fingers, as if making the peace sign. “Short honks.”
“Good, Louise.” I patted her shoulder. I felt confident about this. About as confident as you feel when you make your first dental visit in five years.
He answered my first knock. He was wearing a blue and white checked sportshirt and jeans; he looked nice. He asked me to come in, and I did. He smelled like Canoe cologne; I didn’t even know they still made that stuff.
“It’s not much, Becky,” he said, gesturing about, “but it’s enough for Cindy and me.”
Whether he and his sister had similar decorating styles, or whether one of them had done the other’s home, I couldn’t say; but it was the same rent-to-buy decor, just a tad sparser than sis’s place. The TV was a console, apparently an old used model, with a Nintendo unit on the floor in front representing the only visible extravagance. Over the couch was another discount-store oil painting, this one a sad-eyed Gacy-like clown handing a red balloon to a little girl who looked disturbingly like Maggie.
“You really keep the place neat,” I said, sitting on the couch.
“Cindy helps me. She’s really the strong one in the family.”
“I’d love to meet her.”
“Maybe next time. She’s asleep. Besides, I don’t like her to see me with other ladies.”
“Other ladies?”
; “Other than her mommy.”
“But you’re divorced.”
“I know. But she’s only six. She doesn’t understand stuff like that. Of course, then, neither do I.”
What sort of sick relationship did this son of a bitch have with little Maggie? Had he turned her into a “wife”? A six-year-old wife? This guy was lucky I wasn’t armed.
“Look,” I said, smiling, trying to maintain the pretense of warmth, “I need to use the little girl’s room. Where…?”
He pointed the way. It was through a neat compact kitchen, which connected to a hall off of which was Maggie’s room. Or, Cindy’s room. At least she didn’t sleep with her daddy.
She sure looked angelic right now, blond hair haloing her sweet face on the overstuffed pillow. Her room was the only one that wasn’t spare—even in the meager glow of the night light, I could see the zoo of stuffed animals, the clown and circus posters, the dolls and their little dresses. Daddy gave her everything.
The sick bastard.
When I returned, having flushed a toilet I really had had to use, I left the back door, off the kitchen, unlocked.
I sat down next to Joey—keeping in mind I needed to call him Freddy—and he said, “I can get you a beer, if you like.”
The last thing in the world I wanted was for him to go traipsing through the kitchen while Louise was sneaking in.
“No thanks, I’m fine. I just got rid of a beer, honey.”
He laughed embarrassedly. I nudged him with an elbow, gently. “What are you doing with beer in the house, anyway? You haven’t had a drink in five years, right?”
A smile creased his pleasant face. “You’re sure a suspicious girl. I keep a few brews in the fridge for company.”
“You entertain a lot?”
“Not much. My sih…”
He started to say “sister,” I think; then shifted gears.
“My friends Bill and Agnes both like their beer. In fact, Bill sometimes likes it too much.” He shook his head. “A guy who runs a bar shouldn’t drink up the profits.”
“He’s lucky to have you around.”
“Actually, he is. I only hope he can stay in business. I sure need this job.”
The child’s scream shook the house.
Evans and I both bolted off the couch, and then, framed in the archway of the hall leading to the kitchen, there was Louise, pulling the unwilling little girl by the arm. The child, wearing an oversize, man’s white tee-shirt with Bart Simpson on it, was screaming.
Louise, her eyes crazed, her Kabuki face frozen with rage, slapped the little girl savagely; it rang like a gunshot off the swirl-plaster walls.
That silenced the little girl’s screams, but tears and whimpering took their place.
“Louise!” Evans said, face as white as a fish’s underbelly. “What…”
Her purse had been tucked under one arm. Now, still clinging to the little girl with one hand, she dug her other hand into the brown patent-leather bag and came back with a snout-nosed black revolver.
“You bastard,” she said, “you sick bastard…”
Those had been my thoughts, exactly, earlier, but now I was having new thoughts….
“Louise,” I said, stepping forward. “Put the gun down.”
“You did it to her, didn’t you?” she said to him. “You did it to her! You fucked her! You’ve been fucking her!”
The little girl was confused and crying.
Evans stepped forward, carefully; he was patting the air gently. “Louise—just because your father…”
“Shut-up!” she said, and she shot at him. He danced out of the way as the shot rang and echoed in the confined space; the couch took the slug.
I wasn’t waiting to see who or what took the next one: I moved in and slapped the gun out of her hand; then I slapped her face, hard.
I had a feeling I wasn’t the first one to do that to Louise. She crumpled to the floor and she wept quietly, huddling fetally; her little girl sat down close to her, stroking her mother’s blond hair.
“Mommy,” Maggie said. “Don’t cry, mommy. Don’t cry.”
I picked up the gun.
Evans was standing looking down at his wife and child. He looked at me sharply, accusingly.
“I’m a private detective,” I explained. “She hired me to get Maggie back.”
“She told you I beat Maggie, right?” he snapped. “And worse?”
I nodded.
“Why the hell do you think I ran from her?” he said, plaintively; his face was haunted, his eyes welling. “I wasn’t the one beating Maggie! But the courts would’ve given Maggie to her mommy. They would never have believed me over her. How else could I have stopped this?”
I didn’t have an answer for him; he wasn’t necessarily right—the courts might have realized Louise was the abusing parent. But they might not have. I sure hadn’t.
He knelt beside his wife; the little girl was on one side of her, and he was on the other. They were mostly in the kitchen. Louise didn’t seem to notice them, but they tried to soothe her just the same.
“Her father did terrible things to her,” he said softly. “She got me all confused with him. Looked at me and saw her daddy—thought I’d do the same things to Maggie he done to her.”
“But the only one imitating her father,” I said, “was Louise.”
“Mommy doesn’t mean to hurt me,” the little girl said. “She loves me.” It was almost a question.
Sirens were cutting the air; responding to the gun shot.
“I was wrong,” he said, looking at me with eyes that wanted absolution. “I shouldn’t have run. I should have stayed and tried to fix things.”
Who could blame him, really?
Something in Louise had been broken so very long ago.
But as I watched them there, the little family huddling on the cold linoleum, I had to hope that something at long last could start being mended.
DETECTIVE: V. I. WARSHAWSKI
STRUNG OUT
Sara Paretsky
ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT figures in the ascent of female mystery writers in the last quarter of the twentieth century is Sara Paretsky (1947– ). Not only has her tough private eye character, Victoria Iphigenia (generally and understandably known as V.I., but called “Vic” by her friends) Warshawski, been one of the most famous and popular fictional detectives in America for more than three decades, but Paretsky was the guiding force in the creation of Sisters in Crime, the highly successful organization devoted to getting more attention for women crime writers.
Her education indicated a political or sociological career (she received a B.A. in political science from the University of Kansas, a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago, and an M.B.A., also from Chicago), and she worked in community service in Chicago before turning to writing mystery fiction. The first V. I. Warshawski novel, Indemnity Only, was published in 1982, and there have been more than twenty books since then, all but two featuring her hard-boiled P.I.
V.I. earned a law degree and worked for a short time as a public defender but soon went out on her own to become a private investigator specializing in white-collar crimes that frequently turn violent. She is physically fearless, with a background in karate and street fighting developed in her early years in a tough neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago—and she carries a Smith & Wesson automatic.
Among Paretsky’s numerous awards is a Grand Master for lifetime achievement given by the Mystery Writers of America.
“Strung Out” was originally published in Deadly Allies, edited by Robert J. Randisi and Marilyn Wallace (New York, Doubleday, 1992).
Strung Out
SARA PARETSKY
I
PEOPLE BORN NEAR the corner of 90th and Commercial used to have fairly predictable futures. The boys gre
w up to work in the mills; the girls took jobs in the bakeries or coffee shops. They married each other and scrimped to make a down payment on a neighborhood bungalow and somehow fit their large families into its small rooms.
Now that the mills are history, the script has changed. Kids are still marrying, still having families, but without the certainty of the steel industry to buoy their futures. The one thing that seems to stay the same, though, is the number who stubbornly cling to the neighborhood even now that the jobs are gone. It’s a clannish place, South Chicago, and people don’t leave it easily.
When Monica Larush got pregnant our senior year in high school and married football hero Gary Oberst, we all just assumed they were on their way to becoming another large family in a small bungalow. She wasn’t a friend of mine, so I didn’t worry about the possible ruin of her life. Anyway, having recently lost my own mother to cancer, I wasn’t too concerned about other girls’ problems.
Monica’s and my lives only intersected on the basketball court. Like me, she was an aggressive athlete, but she clearly had a high level of talent as well. In those days, though, a pregnant girl couldn’t stay in school, so she missed our championship winter. The team brought her a game ball. We found her, fat and pasty, eating Fritos in angry frustration in front of the TV in her mother’s kitchen. When we left, we made grotesque jokes about her swollen face and belly, our only way of expressing our embarrassment and worry.
Gary and Monica rewrote their script, though. Gary got a job on the night shift at Inland Steel and went to school during the day. After the baby—Gary Junior—was born, Monica picked up her GED. The two of them scrimped, not for a down payment, but to make it through the University of Illinois’s Chicago campus. Gary took a job as an accountant with a big Loop firm, Monica taught high school French, and they left the neighborhood. Moved north was what I heard.
And that was pretty much all I knew—or cared—about them before Lily Oberst’s name and face started popping up in the papers. She was apparently mopping up junior tennis competition. Tennis boosters and athletic-apparel makers were counting the minutes until she turned pro.
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 158