“Buenas noches,” Mari says, watching us go. I’m sure she’ll send her boys past, once we’re home. I’m glad for that.
There’s still a little daylight, so I leave the car where it is and we walk. Well, I walk, and I carry Isabel. And I feel strong. There’s something about having her in my arms that steadies my nerves.
Except that one nerve Mari hit, the man outside my place.
I feel like I’m on patrol as I watch the street at the same time I ask Isabel all kinds of innocuous things, like, “Did you have a good time?” and “Did you make cookies?” and “Did you learn any new words?” She answers “Si” to everything.
As we approach the house, I feel both anxious and fierce, police training and mama-bear instinct intensified by steroids making my attitude, if nothing else, lethal. At the door I step over a pile of mail and disable the alarm, which I had installed after Tom left. Yes, I have a personal gun tucked away. A Ruger LCP. No, I don’t ever want to untuck it. Not with Isabel here.
“Heyo?” she asks the house, her little helium voice rising so high that I imagine a question mark.
I lock the front door and reset the alarm and sit on the floor to rub my knees, another two reasons I shouldn’t wear heeled boots. I work my numb fingers along the sides of each of my legs and it feels like someone else is doing the massaging.
Yes, this is a strange MS-plus, but since human touch is scientifically proven to be physically and emotionally beneficial for health, at least I’ve got me. As much as I hate being alone, I’m not such bad company.
“Nest?” Isabel asks when she comes back, with Meatball, to find me right where we started. She rubs her eyes.
“Absolutely,” I say, because the dove’s nest, as we call it, is our bedtime ritual, and my favorite part of every day. “Let’s get dry pants first.”
In her room, I change her diaper and we make funny faces and we laugh. I like feeling silly. I like making dumb noises that would be embarrassing in any other circumstance.
Then she gets serious because she needs to rearrange her stuffed animals. She likes things in order. She doesn’t get that from her dad.
While she’s organizing, I search the house for a pacifier—she has at least four, though I can never find one right off. I finally dig one out from between couch cushions. Then I disable the alarm for the back balcony, round up Isabel and Meatball, and take them out back.
“Aypane?” she asks, as though I make them appear.
“I’m sure we’ll see one.” I lift her into the dove’s nest—actually a bunch of lawn-chair cushions and pillows I stripped from Tom’s outdoor furniture and put inside an upended round table. “You two get comfortable,” I say while I check the fenced-in yard below where the rest of the furniture sits bare. I’ve got sensors down there; nobody’s set them off.
I climb in beside Meatball, and we lie on our backs and look up at the sky. Tonight there are snips of sunset colors, wisps of clouds and, most importantly—
“There’s one!” I exclaim when I see a plane headed to O’Hare—and I really do exclaim—“Where’s it going?”
“Antanta,” Isabel says, because she either chooses there, where Tom is, or California, where I wish I were. Or sometimes she says Lombard. Where George is. Sad that they all seem equally impossible to visit.
“You want me to tell you a story about Atlanta?”
“Antanta.” That’s her yes.
I’ve never been to Atlanta; it’s where Tom went to open up another Cloverleaf, his gimmick bar. He would never call it a gimmick, but finding a new cop-populated neighborhood to open another “public house” that sells Irish beer on the cheap seems like a pretty good scheme to me. In Edison Park it works like gangbusters. I certainly bought my share of rounds there, before Tom started comping them.
“Antanta!” Isabel demands, because I didn’t actually say any of that.
“Okay: Jezebel Pickle goes to Atlanta.” Jezebel is our main character. She helps people out of pickles, or she eats them, depending on my mood.
“Once upon a time,” I start, “Jezebel is asked to help an old lady named Kay who lives in Atlanta. So she flies down there—”
“Aypane!”
“That’s right. On an airplane. And when she gets there she finds Kay and she sees that the old lady is sad. Because her dog—what’s her dog’s name?”
“Juan.” Juan is Maricarmen’s grandson. The one I helped out. Isabel must’ve seen him, and probably a kid or two of his, when she stayed this time. I’m thankful she didn’t come home throwing signs.
“Juan snapped at Kay and ran away,” I say. “And so Jezebel takes the job. And she finds Juan, of course. But he’s mean and ferocious and he barks and he bites.”
Isabel pops in her pacifier and snuggles against me and pulls the bear to her face, all precursors to la-la land.
I tell her some more of the story, the Jezebel version of my incident with Johnny Marble, and I’m trying to find a way toward a satisfying conclusion but before I get there, I look down at Isabel, and she is passed out. Dead weight, dreamland.
Good thing, because I wasn’t sure I could sell a happy ending.
Since she’s asleep, I’m content to stay awhile and snuggle. It’s amazing, how a little kid who just wants familiar comfort provides it, tenfold.
When the sky’s blue goes black and clouds come in, orange against the city lights, I take Isabel into her room and hold her in my arms for a few minutes more, swaying just so. Seeing her sleep so peacefully always puts me at ease; I figure I must be doing something right.
Then I hear my phone, the real world intruding. Nerves raveled, I’m as gentle as I can be as I put her in her crib and get the call just in time.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” a robot says, “this is CVS pharmacy calling for, Gina, Simonetti. Your prescription is ready for pickup—”
I hang up, go back into Isabel’s room, and get another look at her. I’ll do it for her.
For her, I’ll do whatever it takes.
5
“Mabicabi?” Isabel mumbles through her pacifier. When she wakes up, she’s in the car seat and we’re on our way to daycare.
I turn to show her the smile on my face. “No, baby. Today is Miss Gabby.”
“Miss Gabby!”
I’m glad she loves daycare. That makes it suck just a little less for me.
The pharmacy is out of the way but it has a drive-through, and keeping Isabel strapped in saves time. I don’t know why I’m in a hurry to get to the station; nobody’s expecting me.
When I get the scrip I call Metzler. “Your turn,” I say to his voicemail.
“Your turn,” Isabel repeats.
“That’s right,” I say, because her r’s are starting to sound like r’s.
We park outside Diana’s, a Puerto Rican place on Augusta, for empanadillas and platanos maduros to go. We stuff our faces while we walk to West Town Day Care, a converted house on Sacramento across from the park. I like that they take the kids outside when it’s nice. And that Isabel gets to run in the grass. Feel the sun on her face. Chase around a wide-open space.
I try not to think about the sickos who troll the park for kicks, the gangs who supposedly put their differences aside to play basketball on the court across the street, or the fact that I’m leaving a baby in a place where gunshots ring out as often as summertime fireworks.
“Good morning, Isabel,” Gabby says when she opens the front door and buzzes the gate. She looks like she rolled into work straight from last night’s club.
Some parents might object to leaving their kid with a twentysomething who parties, but I think twentysomething girls should party, so long as they can hack a hangover well enough to show up the next day. I wouldn’t be able to handle a throng of toddlers for eight hours on my best day. It’s not rocket science; it takes more patience.
Anyway, there was only one time I thought about offering Gabby a couple Tylenol.
I help Isabel climb the s
teps. I wipe her hands and face and hug her before I hand her off along with the week’s payment.
“Bye,” Isabel says, her confident little bird-peep voice.
“I love you,” I say, and I have to get out of there before I snatch her back and take her with me. I feel that impulse every time, and every time I have to remind myself that daycare is the only way I can get another day with her.
My commute to the station is quick and I’m in the parking lot at Area Central before I finish the empanadillas. I did buy six. I try to actually chew the last two.
Just before eight o’clock I check my makeup in the rearview and change into heels. I’ve got to stand tall today. I’ve got to walk the walk.
When I get upstairs on the floor, I find Majette holding court with a couple patrollers. I walk up behind him as he’s saying—
“… the suspect gets the big idea he’s going to rape her. He fuckin’ tells her so. What’s she going to do? No gun. No backup. And she knows this psycho already beat on his own mother, so it’s not like he’s gonna go soft for anybody. He’s not going to listen to reason. So he’s got her pinned there in the stairwell, and he’s taking off his belt. But Simonetti? She’s not going down that way. So she goes for his ballsack—”
“I did the four-ball, actually,” I interrupt; may as well do some street-fight damage to Marble’s eyes while I’m recounting my supposed heroics. Majette’s version obviously isn’t accurate, either, but in this room, a good story can’t be entirely true.
Parrillo, one of the uniforms, says, “I don’t know how Marble walked away after that, girl.”
“He ran.” It’s not a lie.
The guys circle around me, waiting for the rest of it. Good thing I’ve got it rehearsed.
“It was pretty intense,” I say. “Majette’s right, the guy was psycho…”
Then everybody gets quiet, faces straight, like what I said was preposterous. “What?”
I turn around. The answer is Iverson. She’s come up the steps behind me.
“Simonetti.” She doesn’t look surprised. Or pleased. Then again, she’s got the reputation for being about as personal as a backhoe.
She says, “My office.”
When I follow her in there she shuts the door and directs me to the folding chair in front of her desk. She asks, “How are you?” just like she would ask anybody else, if she had to.
“I’m great,” I say, and as soon as I sit down I want to get up; I feel like a speed train, unstoppable, and I don’t want to pull the brake. “I’m ready to work.”
Iverson sits down. “I don’t get it. Any normal cop in your situation milks the Medical. Goes to the fucking Bahamas with paid leave and a clear conscience and only comes back when the physical therapist won’t let him skate anymore. This is not that. What is this?”
Part of me thinks she knows what this is, and that she’s hoping I’ll tell her so I’ll prove we share a trust.
The other part of me thinks she suspects what this is, and that if I tell her I’ll prove to be an idiot asking to get fired.
So now, for my next performance: “I think you know enough about my situation with my brother’s child to know I’ve got to provide a stable home.”
“Your personal life is not my problem. Unless this thing with Johnny Marble is personal?”
“Only in that he assaulted me.”
“He didn’t do anything to you until you went looking for him.”
“I wasn’t looking for him. Duppstadt called and asked me about a case I caught last week. Marble’s the suspect. After Dupe told me what happened to Kay St. Claire, I offered to go talk to her.”
“On your day off.”
“I had time.”
“Bullshit. Why didn’t Kanellis go?”
Now she’s angling—trying to get me to bust Dupe or Andy to save myself. But if I didn’t do anything wrong, “I take full responsibility.”
“Including whatever damage was incurred by chasing the alleged suspect?”
“What, he’s going to sue me? He saw me, he ran. I ran after him.”
“And then?”
Here goes. “Marble exited the stairwell and ran down the stairs. I followed. As I was pursuing him, hospital security entered below—from the first floor—and Marble must’ve assumed he was trapped. I was descending the stairs when he came back up at me. I thought I had enough momentum. I threw myself at him. I thought I could keep him off his feet until security reached us.”
“What about your service weapon?”
“Marble stripped it. He stripped my gun from my hands.” There. I said it: I told the lie. I look at my hands.
Iverson doesn’t say anything. Does she know I’m lying?
I look at her; I know I’ve got to be firm on this point: “I knew there were civilians present—in the stairwell below, and in the halls and behind the walls all around us. I was not going to use my gun unless I had to. So I fought him. He overpowered me—”
“—And took your gun.”
“Yes.”
I look up at her. She is smiling.
“What?”
“How do you feel?”
“Fine.” She can’t see my hands tingling.
“You’re sweating.”
“It’s hot in here.”
“You’re shaking.”
Fuck. She knows. “I’m nervous. I didn’t know I’d have to defend myself—”
“What did you think was going to happen? Coming here?”
“I thought I’d be getting back to work. My doctor said I’d be cleared with the medical section—”
“And you wanted to make a show of it.”
“A show?” She’s calling me on it. I’m too rehearsed. But, “No show. I want to help Kay St. Claire. And Rosalind Sanchez—they’re the real victims.”
Iverson sits back. “I’m sorry, but that’s just fucking stupid. You aren’t a social worker. You don’t sympathize with victims. And you don’t get credit for a fight you lose any sooner than you do for winning one without following the rules. Like I told you the last time you sat in that chair: this job is not about you. It’s about safely and systematically getting the bad guys.” She looks at me and waits until I make eye contact again and then she says, “I don’t think you can do it.”
“Are you firing me?” I can’t believe it. I feel stuck to the seat.
“No. I do that now, and I’m the one admitting your mistakes.” She leans forward, over her desk. “Twice now you’ve shown me you think the chase is more important than the charge. That’s not being police. It can’t happen again.”
“I understand.”
“I want to be on your side. I want to believe you respect the rules. But if you want to keep the Job, you’ve got to get smart. You want to keep the Job, you stick with this plan: you take the Medical and a day or two at home while I find you a desk. You play nice with whichever dick I send over to follow up with you about your gun. And you let us get Marble.”
“You’re telling me if I want to work, I can’t work?”
“That’s right.”
I try to look like I’m okay with the plan. I don’t think I pull it off. “Are there any leads? On Marble?”
“I’ve got the best people I know on the case.”
“Weiss,” I say, because he’s the only one I know, but I immediately feel like I gave away a secret.
“Weiss is one of them, yes.” She says his name like he’s a square of sod.
“He came to the hospital,” I explain, as if he isn’t a threat, investigating me instead of Marble.
“Do you have a problem with Weiss?”
“No.”
“I don’t know if I do or not.” She sits back again. “No matter. I only need him to find Marble. You: you’re the one who’s going to put him away.”
“You want me to testify? As a victim?”
“A victim, yes, and a hero. Unless there’s some truth you don’t think you should tell.” She isn’t saying I should perjure mysel
f. She’s saying if I’m going to come clean, I should do it now.
I can’t. “I’ll testify. Of course.”
“Good. Just make sure you sit on your hands, or something. The shaking is questionable.” Iverson waves at the door. “Now please, get out of here.” She finds paperwork in front of her and begins to read, her goodbye.
“Okay,” I say, dumbstruck.
I get up and go out and close the door behind me and I try for a game face but really, I must look like I just got my star taken away, so I make like I’m in a rush and head for the elevator. Nobody bugs me. Maybe they think I just got my star taken away.
When I get in the elevator, I’m alone, and I see myself in the mirrored security camera. It distorts my face so my eyes sit on the sides of my head and my nose is a flattened hook.
I’m as stupid as I look, if I believe Iverson is on my side. She acts like she’s giving me a chance, but if she wants me to testify, what she really wants is for this Marble case to go away, me first.
The thing is? I can’t testify. Because it will be a case against Marble for what he did to me—not his mother, not Sanchez—just me. And it will come down to my version of the fight versus his. And Marble will be the one telling the truth.
That means I’ve got to get somebody else to take the stand.
* * *
I call Metzler on my way to Rosalind Sanchez’s apartment.
I get his voice mail. “Hi Rick, it’s Regina. There must have been a mix-up with the Medical Section—they put me on limited release. I can’t do the job from a desk. Will you please call me back?”
I get stuck in traffic on the Dan Ryan, so I get my book and use the time to go over what I know about Sanchez.
By the time I spoke to her last Thursday, she’d changed her mind about pressing charges, so most of what I’ve got comes secondhand from Mike Day, the responding officer, and he didn’t give me much either. I know Sanchez is a student at UIC. She lives on campus and works part-time at Fatso’s, a hamburger joint in Ukrainian Village. The night of the assault she’d been at work, and just after midnight set out to grab a beer with a friend. That’s when Marble attacked her.
Sanchez knew Marble—he was a regular customer at Fatso’s. She told Day that Marble was a weirdo, and that he would often sit and watch her.
The Lies We Tell Page 5