Burn Marks

by Sara Paretsky

  On Friday, Lotty finally let the rest of the world loose on me. She laid down the law with all her imperial force: Anyone who wanted to see me had to do so on Sheffield Avenue. Unfortunately there were any number of people eager enough to talk to me to meet that condition.

  First in line was Alison Winstein, the deputy prosecutor whose life Lotty had saved last year. She took me through what I knew and what I surmised. Like all prosecutors, she didn’t feel like giving much back but she did let me know that they had obtained warrants for Alma and Farmworks. They had wanted to subpoena the county contract files but Boots was a pretty wily fighter-neither he nor Ralph would turn over records without a pretty good battle.

  After Ms. Winstein left I went through the account of my escapade in the papers. Murray had put together a pretty strong story without talking to me-he’d gotten an exclusive with Mr. Contreras and managed to track Elena down before the hospital released her. I grinned to myself over the interview with my neighbor. Of all the men I know, Murray is the one Mr. Contreras likes least-thinks of him as a snothead and a hot dog. Murray earned his byline on that one.

  When I’d finished with the papers I called Robin Bessinger at Ajax. He’d seen the stories and was in a chastened frame of mind. “I’m sorry we questioned your judgment, Vic. You were the pro on this one. I-could we have dinner again?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I’ll have to think about that. But you could do one thing for me-cut a check for Saul Seligman. I’ll take it over to him in the morning.”

  “We’d kind of like to subrogate against MacDonald and Meagher,” Robin said.

  “Be my guest. But don’t keep the old guy hanging. He’s had a rough three weeks, with his favorite old building going and his chief lieutenant getting murdered. I know you can grease those bureaucratic wheels. Drop it off for me on your way home and I’ll take it to him tomorrow.”

  Robin agreed, somewhat unwillingly. It was perhaps the hope of dinner-et cetera-with me that made him agree at all. I was going to have to build up my strength and get over a lot of wounds before I was in the humor for much et cetera.

  Lotty had gone to Beth Israel to see her more pressing patients, but she came back at lunch to heat some homemade chicken soup for me. “You’re too thin, Liebchen. I want to see those purple circles disappear from your eyes,”

  I obediently ate two large helpings and a few slices of toast. While I was finishing the toast Murray showed up. I didn’t much feel like talking to him, but the sooner I did it the faster it would be behind me. And when I’d done I was glad because he knew what had happened to Furey- suspended without pay, out on $100,000 bond for felonious assault on me, Elena, and Mr. Contreras.

  “They’re never going to prove a case against him with that young girl-what was her name? Cerise? Sergeant McGonnigal did tell me off the record that they’re missing some heroin they’d copped in a drug raid a month or so ago. He also figures the department’s going to sit on that one.”

  “What about Boots?” I asked. “How do things look for the election next month?”

  Murray made a face. “This is Chicago, sweetheart, not Minneapolis-he got a standing ovation at last night’s meeting of the County Board. And the campaign funds are still coming in-too many of those contractors owe the old guy too much. They’re not going to jump ship unless he falls below the waterline.”

  “Has he backed away from Roz?”

  “Same story-she’s just too popular in the Hispanic wards. Boots lets her go he can kiss the Humboldt Park-Logan Square vote good-bye. And don’t forget there’s a sizable Mexican population out in the Mount Prospect area-her support isn’t all in the city.”

  “So why did she bother?” I burst out. “Why did she care what I did or who I talked to? That’s what burns me. The way people were carrying on I thought she was sitting on bigamy or illegitimate children tucked in an orphanage. Turns out it was just business as usual in this town. I’m sick to death of it, but it’s so goddamn usual, why did she think it would matter?”

  Murray shrugged his massive shoulders. “Maybe she felt vulnerable. First woman Boots has backed in a big way. First Hispanic. Maybe she was afraid the rules would be different for her. You of all people ought to be able to figure that one out.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Suddenly I was very tired, so tired that I started drifting off to sleep while Murray asked me something about Elena. I tried to answer coherently but he saw I was struggling.

  “You go back to bed, kid. Once more Wonder Woman saves the city. Go to sleep.” He patted me on the shoulder and took off, magnanimous because I’d let him garner so much glory.

  It was late in the afternoon, after I’d slept a while, that Velma Riter dropped in. When Lotty told me who had come I wanted to dive back under the covers. Instead I staggered to the living room on woolly legs and braced myself for her onslaught.

  She stood in the middle of the room twisting a copy of the Star around and around in her hands.

  “Quite a story you were digging up,” she finally said in a voice like dry soil.

  I looked at her warily. “It doesn’t seem to be hurting Roz much. Of course there’s still a month till the election.”

  “I don’t know who I’m madder with-Roz for doing all this or you for turning on a sister and making it all public.”

  I rubbed my face with the heels of my hands. “I don’t have a pat answer for that, Velma. Does being a feminist mean you have to support everything your sisters do? Even if you think they’re abusing you?”

  “But talk to her in private, couldn’t you do that?”

  “She wouldn’t let me. I tried. She just wants those golden apples too bad, Velma. I’m sure she’ll do a good job. She’ll be better than most, I expect. But she isn’t enough of a risk-taker to try for the apples without getting some worms to help her.”

  Velma flung up her arms. “It’s too much. Too much for me, anyway. I should have stayed with photography-it’s safer.”

  I looked at her directly. “Velma-your pictures are honest-and they involve a lot of risk-emotional risk, I’d think you’d want that in a woman you came out in public for. Well, I do. And I won’t take it, to be spun around-by anyone. And especially not by someone like Roz, trading on old loyalties and asking us to countenance-well, worms.”

  “She didn’t do it for the money, you know,” Velma said.

  I made an impatient gesture. “I know-she did it for her cousin, family loyalty, wanting Hispanics to have a bigger piece of county action. Just because her motives were so damned wonderful doesn’t make me like it any better.”

  Velma stared at me unblinkingly for a minute. “Well, anyone looking at your body knows you take risks, Warshawski. I’ll give you that. I did resign from her staff today. She-she-” The wide, generous mouth crumpled. “She talked to me so sweet, you’d think that voice was every mother in the world singing a lullaby. That hurt. I had to quit.”

  I looked at her and nodded without speaking. She winked back her tears and left abruptly.

  48

  The Birthday Party

  On Saturday, before I took old Mr. Seligman his check, I stopped at a Pontiac dealership on Western and bought myself a bright red Trans Am. I’ve never owned a new car before, especially not one with twin exhausts and 180 horsepower. I didn’t know what I was going to do for money to pay for it, but when it moved up to fifty with just a whisper of gas it seemed like the car I’d been waiting for all my life.

  After that I took my time going north and west to Norwood Park. Eileen had decided to go ahead with the party for Bobby. So much planning had gone into it, involving so much of the neighborhood, that she didn’t feel she could turn it off now. The people on either side were lending their yards so there’d be a place for a refreshment tent and for some pipers.

  I’d called Eileen to tell her I wasn’t up to seeing Bobby, but she’d begged me to come.

  “Vicki, try to understand. Michael is his godson. He was like a seventh child to
Bobby and his great hope in the department. He was only yelling at you out of his hurt for Michael.”

  “It doesn’t work for me, Eileen. Michael wanted to kill me and he damned near did it. By the time Bobby finished with me I felt he wished it had happened.”

  “No, no, don’t ever think such a thing.” Her warm rich voice cracked in distress. “Tony’s child? Gabriella’s? It was himself he wanted to attack, for letting himself be so betrayed. He-Bobby’s a good man, Vicki. A good cop too. You know that. Tony would never have taken him up if he wasn’t. But-he’s not good at thinking through these things, figuring out why he lashed out at you the way he did. He has other strengths, but not that one. I’m asking you-begging you-to understand and be better than him. It would mean so much. Not just to him, but to me. So if you can’t do it for him, will you do it for me?”

  And so I found myself ducking under a billboard of Boots Meagher at the corner of Nagle-a smiling year-round fixture proclaiming that “Boots Is Chicago”-and crossing into Bobby’s neighborhood. Bobby’s neighborhood. Michael’s neighborhood. Where my father and uncles and Aunt Elena grew up. Where Boots and Ernie and Ron came from. Where they all grew up together and helped each other out because the one thing you must never forget in Chicago is to look out for your own.

  Usually when I cross the invisible line into Norwood Park I feel as though I’ve gone into Munchkin land, a place of tidy tiny bungalows on minuscule well-tended lots. It’s a mirage of a neighborhood-it seems to have nothing to do with the sprawling, graffiti-laden, garbage-ridden city to the southeast.

  Today, though, it seemed dead. The October air was gray and the houses looked drab and colorless. Even the bursts of fall flowers in the tidy yards seemed drained of vividness, the bronze mums looking brown, the gold ones merely sickly. I wished I was anywhere in the world but here.

  I pulled my new toy into a line with other cars blocking the street. No one would be out ticketing today. I dragged myself slowly up the short drive. Laughter and the sound of bagpipes were coming from the back. A few knots of people had spilled over into the front yard. They smiled and waved at me in the happy camaraderie of a big party and I dutifully waved back.

  When I got to the back the crowd was packed into every inch of turf, not just in Eileen’s yard by the two adjacent. A canopy with Bobby’s name done up in lights stood in the middle. I couldn’t see the pipes or anyone I knew. I stood awkwardly on the fringe until Eileen suddenly came from nowhere and pulled me to her large soft breasts.

  “Oh, Vicki, oh, it’s so good to see you. Thank you so much for coming. I was afraid… Anyway, Bobby’s over here. He’ll be so pleased-he hasn’t said-but you know…” Tears sparkled on her long black lashes. She took my hand and made her way through the throng to the densest part, where Bobby stood. Beyond him a piper was playing and the crowd was urging Bobby to dance.

  Eileen waited until the howl of the reel had ended before thrusting me forward. “Bobby. Look who’s come.”

  When Bobby saw me the smile died from his face. He looked at me with some combination of embarrassment and rigidness.

  “You guys gotta excuse me,” he said abruptly to the group around him. “I need to see this young lady for a few minutes.”

  He took me into the house, a slow procession through the jam of happy neighbors, fellow cops-I even saw Officer Neely looking flushed and relaxed in a bright fuchsia dress-and screaming grandchildren.

  Inside the house two of Bobby’s daughters were constructing a giant cake. They squealed when they saw him. “Daddy! You know you’re not supposed to come in here.”

  “It’s okay, girls-I ain’t seen nothin’. I’m just going down to the family room with Vicki for a few minutes. You keep everyone out, okay?”

  “Sure, Daddy, but go on before you see something!” They shooed us down the steps.

  Bobby had finished the basement himself, installing a bathroom, real floors and walls, building in bunk beds for his two sons when there’d been six children in seven rooms upstairs. Only two of their daughters were still at home, but he’d left the beds for his grandchildren to sleep in-he loved having them stay over.

  He turned on a lamp and sat on the red plaid couch next to the bunk beds. I sat in the shabby armchair facing him, next to the fake fireplace. He moved his big hands uncomfortably, trying to think of something to say. I didn’t help him.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said at last.

  “I didn’t want to come. Eileen talked me into it.”

  He looked at the floor and muttered, “I said a lot of things I shouldn’t have last week. I’m sorry.”

  “You hurt my feelings, Bobby.” I couldn’t keep my voice from cracking. “Your golden boy damned near killed me and you talked to me like I was some kind of street scum.”

  He rubbed his face. “I-Vicki, I talked to Eileen about it, she tried to make sense out of it for me. I don’t know why I did it, that’s God’s truth. Dr. Herschel called me. That’s how I knew you were in trouble. You know about that part, don’t you?”

  I nodded without speaking.

  “I knew by then it was Mickey. Well, you’d tried to tell me, but it wasn’t until she told me he’d shot the old man that I-don’t look at me like that, Vicki, you’re making it hard to say this and it’s hard enough to start with.”

  I turned my head toward the cowboy coverlets on the bunk beds.

  “I called John and the Finch. They weren’t as upset as I was-they knew Mickey’d been acting queer since the day before when you brought that damned bracelet of his in. And they’d wondered about some other things. Of course they’d never told me-I was the lieutenant and he was my fair-haired boy.” He gave a harsh laugh. “What was the story with the bracelet? Why did it send him into orbit?”

  I explained. “I tried to tell you Wednesday. I didn’t know what it was-I don’t think he’d worn it around me more than once or twice. He thought-you know, as long as Elena was alive she could link it to him. Well, not just that. She could tie him to the fire at the Indiana Arms. He was the person, too, who knocked us both out and tried to burn us at the other place.” I started shivering as the memories hit me. I tried to push them aside but I couldn’t.

  Bobby grunted and stood up to reach for one of the cowboy coverlets. He tossed it to me and I wrapped myself in it. After a bit my shivering stopped, but both of us sat lost in our own reveries.

  At least my last visitor yesterday was benign-Zerlina, again taking three buses, wanted to know how her daughter came to die. She shared a Coke and more of Lotty’s chicken soup and wept with me. She shook her head in amazement when she learned Elena had saved my life: “Thought she’d pickled her brain too good years ago to come up with something like that, but the Lord provides when you least expect it.”

  As if following my thoughts, Bobby asked abruptly about my aunt.

  “It’s like it all never happened. I stopped by the Windsor Arms-the hotel where she’s living now-last night. She was out front with a bottle and a crowd of greasy old men, showing her little finger in a splint and bragging over her heroics. Some people even a whirlwind won’t change, I guess.” I laughed mirthlessly.

  Bobby nodded a couple of times to himself. “I want you to understand something, Vicki. Try to, anyway. Tony, your daddy, took me under his wing when I joined the force. He must have been a good thirteen, fourteen years older than me. A lot of guys were coming back from the war then, they didn’t make it easy on us rookies. Tony looked out for me from day one.

  “I thought I could do the same for Mickey and it hurts me, hurts my pride Eileen tells me it is, that I could be so wrong. I keep thinking to myself, what would Tony think, he saw me making such a colossal mistake?”

  He didn’t seem to want an answer but I gave him one anyway. “You know what he’d say, Bobby, that anyone can make a mess but only a fool wallows in it.”

  Bobby smiled painfully. “Yeah, well, maybe. Yeah, probably. But here’s what you gotta understand, Vicki. I
thought the best thing I could do to pay Tony back for all he did for me was look out for you. I never could understand the way Tony and Gabriella brought you up, not making you mind the way my own girls did. And you just didn’t seem like a real girl to me, the things you wanted and wanted to do. I’m not even sure I like you all that well. I just thought I owed it to Tony to look after you,”

  I thought he’d finished, but he only stopped to crack his knuckles, get himself over the hump. “So you’re not like other girls, Eileen-Eileen never minded a minute, she always loved you like you were her own daughter. But I just couldn’t deal with it. And then when you exposed Mickey-he was like my son and you were like an alien monster. But if he’d had your guts and your honesty, he’d never of gone along with those buddies of his to begin with. Never dug himself that kind of hole.

  “So I’ve had to think about it. Think about you, I mean. Start from the beginning. I love my girls. I don’t want them any different from how they are. But you’re the daughter of the two people I loved best, next to Eileen, and you can’t do things different than you do, shouldn’t do them different, not with Gabriella and Tony bringing you up. Do you understand?”

  The door at the top of the stairs opened and Bobby’s daughter Marianna called down. “Daddy! People are waiting for you!”

  “Be up in a jiffy, sugar!” he yelled back. “Don’t let them start without me.”

  He got up. “Okay? Is that enough?”

  I stood up too. “Yeah, I think that’s enough.” I fished in my pocket and handed him a small parcel. “I brought that along for you. Just in case, you know-just in case I felt like giving you a present.”

  He undid the paper and opened the little box. When he looked inside and saw Tony’s shield lying in the cotton, he didn’t say anything, but for the second time that week I saw him cry.

  Sara Paretsky

  ***

  FB2 document info