Fire Sale

by Sara Paretsky

  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. April, heartsore in every sense of the word, I didn’t want to push hard on her, but I did have the charger for Billy’s phone-I could question her while dropping it off, but I’d save that option for last. But Julia-Julia was another story. I turned the steering wheel hard to the left and made a U-turn back to South Chicago.

  39 Painful Extraction

  Rose Dorrado’s face was even duller than when I’d been here two nights ago. Like Sandra Czernin, she hadn’t washed, or even combed, her hair lately, and the red curls were matted and tangled, but she stepped aside to let me into the apartment. Betto and Samuel were on the couch, watching Spiderman. María Inés was propped up between them, cooing and clapping her hands aimlessly. She was wrapped in a little piece of red-and-white striped bunting. More of those flag remnants. I stared at it, wondering how many times I’d seen it without noticing it.

  “Now what?” Rose was saying in a leaden voice. “You’ve found my Josie? She’s dead?”

  I shook my head. “Didn’t Julia give you my message? The Bysens have a big team out looking for Billy; maybe they’ll turn him up. The good news is that Josie is almost certainly with him. Have you talked to your sister in Waco?”

  “It’s good news that my girl is out sleeping with a boy? I don’t need another baby in this house.” Even the angry words came out in a listless tone. “Anyway, my sister, she never heard from them. Around the building, they say you found Bron Czernin and that English lady Monday night. They were using Billy’s fancy car, and you found them next to it, lying in the landfill. So what’s not to say that Billy and Josie are there, too, and you didn’t find them.”

  The story had certainly gotten garbled as it raced around the neighborhood. “I can’t guarantee that, of course,” I said quietly. “But I know Billy gave his car to Bron because he didn’t want his family finding him through his license plate, so I don’t think he was with Bron. Anyway, when I found the car it was under the Skyway. No one knows how Bron and Marcena ended up by the landfill.”

  “So where did they go, Billy and Josie? Not to the pastor, not to you, I even went to see Josie’s father-I thought, maybe you were right, maybe she did turn to him, but he could hardly remember which child she was.”

  We talked it over in as many ways as we could think of-which were pretty meager. I had a feeling Billy was staying in South Chicago -whatever was bothering him about his family was right here in this neighborhood, and he wouldn’t be able to leave it alone.

  “I’ll call everyone on the team,” I finally promised. “Monday night, I just scouted around their homes, looking for Billy’s car or any sign the two of them were there. But before I go, Rose, I need to know a couple of things, from you, and from Julia.”

  I had come to ask Julia about the soap dish, but I wanted to know about that bunting. “Tell me about the sheets, the ones on Josie’s and Julia’s beds-and now this fabric you’ve wrapped María Inés in. Did Zamar make those at Fly the Flag?”

  “Oh, those sheets.” She half lifted an apathetic shoulder. “As if any of that matters now. He thought-the pastor thought, why not sell towels, sheets, pot holders, things like that, through the churches? Something good for the community, making sheets in the community, buying, selling, it was a dream of the pastor, that we have a buying cooperative-he was thinking maybe in time we could buy and sell everything, clothes, food, even drugs, and save money and make money. He started with Mr. Zamar, and Mr. Zamar, he tried, he really did, even though the pastor, he accused him, that Mr. Zamar didn’t want the cooperative to work. But I was there, I was sewing, we made five hundred sheets, a thousand towels-and only seventeen people bought them, mostly the mothers of the girls who play basketball. Who can make a living when only seventeen people buy what you are selling?”

  “So was that the second shop where you were working?” I asked, puzzled. “Making sheets for the cooperative?”

  She gave a crack of hysterical laughter. “No and no and no. The second shop, it was right where the first shop is. Only we did it in the middle of the night, so the pastor wouldn’t see. As if he doesn’t hear everything going on in the neighborhood, he’s like God, the pastor, what he doesn’t see he knows anyway.”

  I squatted next to the boys, who’d been watching us nervously. “Betto, Samuel, your mama and I have to talk. Can you go into the dining room?”

  They apparently still remembered me as the woman who could get you charred, because they scuttled off the couch into the back of the apartment with just one frightened look at their mother. If only I had that effect on Pat Grobian or the pastor. We sat down, the baby sleeping between us.

  “Why didn’t Zamar want Pastor Andrés to see the second shop?”

  “Because we were using illegals!” she shouted. “People who are so desperate for money they work for nothing. Now do you understand?”

  “No.” I was completely bewildered. “You need money; you can’t afford to work in a sweatshop. What were you doing there?”

  “Oh, if you are this stupid how did you ever go to a big university?” She waved her hands wildly. “How can I believe you can find my daughter? I wasn’t working, I mean, I was working, but I was supervising, he was paying me to supervise, to make sure people stay at the machines, don’t steal nothing, don’t take long breaks, everything that-that I hate!”

  Maybe I was too stupid to find Josie, but not so stupid that I asked her why she did it, not a woman who’d been feeding six mouths on twenty-six thousand a year. Instead, I asked how long it had been going on.

  “Only two days. We started two days before the fire. The day you came to the factory because of the sabotage, Mr. Zamar called me in, he was very angry because I was bringing a detective to the plant. ‘But the sabotage, Mr. Zamar,’ I said, ‘those rats, the glue, and then some chavo around this morning trying to do something bad again,’ and he said, like this-” She broke off to imitate Zamar sitting with his head buried in his hands, “He said, ‘Rose, I know all about it, a detective, she will only get the plant closed down.’ And then the next day, he came and offered me this job, this supervising job, and he said if I take it it’s five hundred fifty dollars extra a week, if I don’t want it he fires me for bringing you to the factory. Only the pastor, he can’t know. Mr. Zamar knows I go to church, he knows how much my faith means to me, but he knows how much my children mean to me, and he catches me between these two sharp thorns, the thorn of my love for Jesus, the thorn of my family, what am I to do? God help me, I took the work, and then I am truly punished because two days later the plant burns; Mr. Zamar is killed. I only thank God that it happened early, before me and the workers arrived. I thank God for the warning, that He didn’t kill me in the fire on the spot, that I have a chance to repent, but why must my children suffer as well?”

  I stared at her in dawning horror. “You mean the pastor set fire to the building because Zamar was running a sweatshop?”

  She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t say that. But when he found out about the sweatshop, he was very, very angry.”

  Andrés had threatened Zamar that if he sent his business out of Chicago, the pastor would see he had no business left to protect. Was Andrés such a megalomaniac that he thought he really was God on the South Side? My head was reeling, and I couldn’t even find the strength to sit up straight.

  I finally went to a smaller question, something I could manage. “Where did the people come from, the ones in the midnight factory?”

  “Everywhere, but mostly Guatemala and Mexico. Me, I speak Spanish; I grew up in Waco, but my family was from Mexico, so Mr. Zamar, he knew I could talk to them. But the worst thing, the worst thing is, they owe money to a jefe, and Zamar, he actually turned to a jefe to get workers in his factory. Never did I think I would be doing such a thing, translating for him with that kind of mierda.”

  Jefes, heads, they’re go-betweens, fixers, who charge illegal immigrants exorbitant fees to smuggle them
into the country. No poor immigrant can afford a thousand dollars for a trip across the border, complete with fake green card and social security number, so the jefes “lend” them the money. When they get here, the jefes sell people to companies looking for cheap labor. The jefes pocket most of the wages, doling out just enough for room and board. It’s a system of slavery, really, because it’s almost impossible ever to buy your way out of one of these contracts. I could imagine Pastor Andrés would be furious with any local business who bought people’s work like that.

  “This Freddy, he isn’t a jefe, is he?” I blurted out.

  “Freddy Pacheco? He is too lazy,” she said scornfully. “A jefe may be evil, but he works hard; he has to.”

  Rose and I sat silent after that. She seemed relieved to have finally gotten her story off her mind: her face was brighter, more animated, than it had been since before the fire at the factory. I felt duller-as if I really were too stupid even to go to college, let alone find her daughter.

  On the screen in front of me, Spiderman was easily tying up the villain who had been trying to rob the local bank, or maybe it was the local banker trying to rob his customers, but, either way, Spiderman hadn’t even broken a sweat. Not only that, it had taken him less than half an hour to identify the villain and track him down. I desperately needed some superpowers, although even ordinary human powers would do right now.

  The baby, which had slept through our talk, began to fuss. Rose sat up and said she was going to the kitchen to heat a bottle, she’d bring me a cup of coffee.

  I took the baby from her. “Is Julia still here? I need to ask her some questions about the soap dish, that frog I showed you after church on Sunday.”

  Rose went to the back of the apartment; I began to pat the baby’s little back. I sang her the Italian children’s songs my mother used to sing to me, the song of the firefly, the song of the grandmother, with her bottomless kettle of soup. Singing steadies me, makes me feel closer to my mother. I don’t know why I do it so seldom.

  Rose returned with a bottle and a cup of bitter instant coffee just as María Inés began to fuss in earnest. Julia trailed after her mother, looking at me suspiciously: Rose had told her we were going to discuss the soap dish, and any trust we had built up at practice this afternoon wasn’t going to carry over to tonight.

  I handed Rose the baby and stood so I could look Julia in the eye, more or less-she was a couple of inches taller than me. “Julia, I’m too tired for a night of lies or half-truths. Tell me about the soap dish. Did you or did you not give it to Freddy?”

  She shot a glance at her mother, but Rose was frowning at her. “You tell the truth now, just like the coach said, Julia. Your sister is missing, we don’t want to be a dentist taking the story out of you little bit by little bit with a drill.”

  “I did give it to him, all right? I didn’t tell you a lie about that.”

  I smacked the couch arm. “The whole story, at once. This is more important than your hurt feelings. When was this?”

  Julia’s face turned as red and round as her baby’s, but when she saw neither her mother nor I had any sympathy for her she said sulkily, “Christmas. Last year, already. And Freddy looked at it, he said, what did he want with some girly present like that? And then I found out he gave it to Diego, and Diego gave it to Sancia.”

  “And then?”

  “What do you mean, ‘And then?’”

  I heaved a loud sigh. “Did Sancia keep it? Does she still have it?”

  She hesitated, and her mother pounced on her before I could open my mouth. “You tell me this minute, Julia Miranda Isabella!”

  “Sancia showed it to me,” Julia yelled. “She bragged how Diego loved her, he gave her this beautiful thing, even with a little piece of soap in it shaped like a flower, and what did Freddy give me? I was furious. I said, how funny, I gave Freddy one just the same as this. Diego, he’s Freddy’s cousin, she asked Diego, did he steal Freddy’s soap dish?, and Diego, he said, no, Freddy gave it to him. So she was all insulted, secondhand goods, she said, and she wouldn’t keep it, she gave it back to me! Like I was trash who needed something like that, something I bought with my own money and my own boyfriend didn’t want!”

  The tears began to roll down her cheeks in earnest, but Rose and I just looked at her in exasperation. “Where is it now?” I asked.

  “I threw it out. Only, Betto and Sammy, they wanted it. I said, fine, they could use it as a tank, they could break it, I didn’t care.”

  “Do they still have it?” I asked.

  Again she hesitated, and again it was her mother who forced her to speak. Freddy had come to her; he had changed his mind, he did want this soap dish after all. Diego had told him about it, about Sancia giving it to her, and could he have it back?

  “He spoke to me so nice, like he did last year, before he made María Inés inside me, like I was beautiful, all those things. So I dug it out of Sammy’s box and gave it to him, and then he left, not even a good-bye kiss, not even ‘How is María Inés?’”

  “Congratulations on a close escape,” I said drily. “The farther you stay away from him, the better off you are. When was this?”

  “Three weeks ago. In the morning, after Ma went to work and everyone else left for school.”

  “Did he say why he wanted it?”

  “I told you! He said because he wanted something from me, after all, and he was sorry, all those things!”

  “Where is Freddy now?” I demanded.

  Julia looked at me nervously. “I don’t know.”

  “Guess, then. Where does he hang out? What bar, where are his other babies? Anything.”

  “Are you going to hurt him?”

  “Why do you protect him?” Rose burst out. “He’s a bad man-he left you with a baby, he steals, he cares for no one but himself! His mother brought him to church every Sunday and what does he do but hang around outside in Diego’s truck, insulting the service with their music. In five years, his pretty-boy looks will be gone and then he will have nothing.”

  Rose turned to me. “Sometimes he goes to Cocodrilo, it’s a bar across from the church. The other girl who also has his baby, I don’t think he sees her, either, but she’s over on Buffalo. If you kill him yourself with your bare hands, I will swear to the police you never saw him, never touched him.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t think I will come to that. But if it does-muchas gracias!”

  40 An Acid Touch

  The lights were on in the church when I pulled up to the corner of Ninety-second and Houston. I went up the shallow step to the front door to see what was going on. Thursday night Bible study, six-thirty to eight, November topic, the book of Isaiah. It was just after six-thirty now, so the pastor was hard at it.

  Directly across the street from the church was a vacant lot where a handful of cars and trucks were parked at skewed angles-including a Dodge with big speakers in the back and a license plate beginning “VBC.” Next to the lot, three decrepit houses propped each other up. Cocodrilo, the bar where Freddy drank, was on their far side. The bar was really just the ground floor of a narrow two-flat, whose clapboard sides were sagging and peeling. The windows were covered with a thick mesh screen that didn’t allow much light to seep out.

  I had called Morrell from the car to let him know I would be a little late, just a little. He had sighed, the exaggerated sigh of a lover who is always being stood up, and said if I wasn’t home by eight he and Don would eat without me.

  The exchange sent me into Cocodrilo in a bristly mood. I let the door bang shut behind me, like Clint Eastwood, and put on my Clint Eastwood face: I own this bar, don’t mess with me. There were maybe fifteen people inside, but it was a small place, and dark, just a narrow room with a high counter and a couple of rickety tables jammed against the wall, so it was hard to survey the crowd.

  The television over the bar was tuned to a soccer match, Mexico versus some small Caribbean island. A few men were watching, but most were t
alking or arguing in a mixture of Spanish and English.

  Cocodrilo seemed to be a young man’s bar, although there were a few older faces-I recognized one of the men from this afternoon’s construction site. And it was definitely a man’s bar: when I walked in, conversation died down as they eyed me. A trio near the door thought they’d try a smart remark, but my expression sent them back to their beer with a surly remark in Spanish-whose meaning I could certainly guess, even though it hadn’t been in my high school text.

  I finally spotted Diego, my center Sancia’s boyfriend, in a small knot at the far end of the room. The man next to him had his back to me, which made him easy to recognize-he had the thick, dark hair and camouflage jacket I’d trailed through the warehouse a couple of hours earlier.

  I pushed my way past the trio at the door and tapped him on the shoulder. “Freddy! And Diego. What a wonderful coincidence. We’re going to talk, Freddy.”

  When he turned, I saw Rose was right: he did have sort of pretty-boy good looks in his high cheekbones and full lips, but she was also right-indolence and drugs were eating away at them.

  Freddy looked at me blankly, but Diego said, “The coach, man, she’s the basketball coach.”

  Freddy stared at me in dawning alarm, then shoved me hard enough to send me reeling. He barged down the narrow length of the room to the front door, knocking over a bottle of beer as he went.

  I righted myself and took off after him. No one tried to stop me, but no one moved out of my way, either, so Freddy was out on the street before I caught up with him. I put on a burst of speed, forgetting my sore thighs, my swollen hands, my shoulder. He was crossing the vacant lot to Diego’s truck when I launched myself at him. I knocked him to the ground and fell heavily on top of him.