I flexed my shoulders, sore from the tensions of the afternoon. I was still tired, too, from Monday night’s jaunt. So many of my brother and sister PIs seem to get beaten up, thrown in the slammer, or hungover, without needing to rest afterward. I looked at my face in the rearview mirror; true, the light was bad, but I looked pale.
I called Mary Ann, to tell her I would be there in about an hour if that wasn’t too late for her. Someone answered the phone but didn’t speak, which alarmed me, but eventually her deep, gruff voice came over the ether to me.
“It’s all right, Victoria, I’m fine, just a little tired. Maybe you don’t need to stop here tonight.”
“Mary Ann, are you alone? Did someone answer the phone for you?”
“My neighbor’s here, Victoria; she picked up the phone while I was in the bathroom, but I guess she didn’t say anything. I’m going back to bed now.”
There was something in her voice that was making me uneasy. “I need to stop to see April Czernin; I’ll be heading north in about forty-five minutes. I’d like to drop in just for a minute, leave you some groceries and maybe see you if you’re still up-I won’t wake you if you’re asleep. You did give me keys, you know.”
“Oh, Victoria, you always were an obstinate, persistent pest. If you must come, I guess I can stand it, but if you’re going to be later than forty-five minutes call so that I don’t stay up for you.”
“You guess you can stand it?” I repeated, hurt both by the words and her exasperated tone. “I thought-”
I broke off midsentence, remembering that she was ill, that pain made people react in uncharacteristic ways. My own mother, who had waited up nights for my father, occupying both herself and me with music, cooking, books-we read Giovanni Verga’s plays aloud together in Italian-and she never complained about the wait, the worry. Then one night, in the hospital, she suddenly started screaming that he didn’t love her, had never loved her, terrifying herself almost as much as she did me and my dad.
“Josie’s still missing,” I said to my coach. “How well do you know her? Can you think of anyone she’d imagine she’d feel safe staying with? She has an aunt in Waco who claims Josie isn’t there, but maybe the aunt would lie for her.”
“I don’t know the Dorrado girls personally, Victoria, but I’ll call some of the other teachers in the morning. Maybe one of them can suggest something. I’m in the kitchen and I need to lie down.” She hung up abruptly.
Despite my admonitions to myself, Mary Ann’s brusque manner hurt me. I sat in the dark, my sore joints aching. I had a new bruise on my thigh from where I’d landed on Freddy; I could feel the knot under my jeans.
I dozed off in the warm car, but after a few minutes a knock on my window made me jump out of my skin. When my heart stopped racing, I saw it was Celine’s uncle. I rolled down the window.
“You okay, missus? You took a bad fall out there.”
I forced a smile. “I’m fine. Just a little sore. Your niece-she’s a very talented athlete. Do you think you could help her break away from the Pentas? They’re going to slow her down, keep her from making the most of her gifts.”
We chatted a bit about it, about the difficulty of raising children in South Chicago, and, sad to say, his brother had abandoned the family, and Celine’s ma, she drank, not to mince words, but he’d try to make an effort with Celine: he appreciated what I was doing for her.
We finished our dance of thanks for each other’s concern about Celine. He took off, and I phoned the Czernins. I might have hung up if Sandra had answered, but it was April, her voice sluggish.
“It’s the drugs, Coach,” she said when I said I hoped I hadn’t woken her. “They make me feel like I’m in this big tub of cotton balls, I can’t see anything or feel anything. Do you think I can stop taking them?”
“Whoa, there, girl, you stay on those meds until your doctor tells you different. Better you feel a little dopey for a few weeks now than have to live your life on an oxygen tank, okay? I’m a few blocks from your house with a charger for your phone. Can I bring it in? There’s something I want to ask you to look at, too.”
She brightened at once: she clearly needed more company than her mother. I would have to talk to her teachers, find someone who could stop by with homework, and get some classmates to bring her gossip. When I got to the front door, April was there to open it, but her mother was standing behind her.
“What do you think we are, Tori, a public charity you have to stop by and look after? I can take care of my girl without your help. I didn’t even know you’d given her a goddamn phone until this afternoon, and, if I’d known she was asking for one, I would have bought it for her myself.”
“Take it easy, Sandra,” I snapped. “It’s Billy’s phone; she’s just using it until he comes back for it.”
“And didn’t Bron get killed on account of he had that phone on him?”
I stared at her. “Did he? Who told you that?”
“One of the women at work, she said they really wanted Billy, but they killed Bron because he was driving Billy’s car and using Billy’s phone, they thought he was Billy.”
“It’s the first I ever heard of this, Sandra.” I wondered if there was any truth to the notion or if it was just one of those stories that circulate after a disaster. If I was the cops, or had Carnifice’s resources, I guess I could go to the By-Smart store where Sandra worked to track it down. Maybe Amy Blount would be willing to go down there tomorrow.
“April, can you let me in for a minute? I want to show you and your mom a picture, see if it means anything to you.”
“Oh, Coach, sure, sorry.” April backed out of the doorway to let me pass.
It hurt to see her move in such a slow and clumsy way, when just a short time earlier she’d been loping around like a colt with the other girls on the team. To cover my emotion, I spoke almost with Mary Ann’s brusqueness, pulling out the drawing of the frog and handing it to them.
“Where’d you find that?” Sandra demanded.
“Over at 100th and Ewing. Bron showed it to you?”
She sniffed loudly. “He had it lying on the counter in that workshop of his. I asked him what it was, and he said it was a gimmick. He was making something for one of the guys he knew, and this was the drawing the guy gave him. He was always doing stuff like that.”
“Good-hearted, helping out his pals?” I suggested.
“No!” Her face contorted. “Always imagining he had an idea that was going to make him rich. Frogs on insulating rubber, I ask you, who was ever going to buy that, and he laughed and said, oh, someone at By-Smart would fall for it.”
“Stop it!” April cried out. “Stop making fun of him. He made good stuff, you know he did, he made that desk for you, only you were so stupid you sold it so you could go to Vegas with your girlfriends last Easter. If I’d known you were going to sell it, I would have bought it from you myself.”
“With what money would that be, miss?” Sandra demanded. “Your trust-”
A loud crash, glass shattering in the rear of the house, interrupted her. I had my gun out and was running through the dining room to the kitchen before either of them could react. The kitchen was empty but I heard someone moving in the lean-to. I pulled the door open, crouching low, and hurled myself at the legs.
The space was too small for the intruder to fall over, but he crashed against the worktable, and I backed away just out of his reach to hold my gun on him.
“Freddy Pacheco!” I was panting heavily, and my words came out in short bursts. “We can’t keep meeting like this. What the hell are you doing in here? If you’ve come for the picture you drew, you are way, way too late.”
He straightened up and tried to come at me but backed off when he saw the gun. “You bitch, what you doing here? You following me? What you want from me?”
“So much I hardly know where to begin.” I leaned over and smacked his mouth, too fast for him to react. “Respect, for beginners. You call me ‘bitch’ one more ti
me and I’ll put a bullet in your left foot. Second time, in your right foot.”
“You wouldn’t fire that, ’hos are too-”
I shot at the wall behind his head. The noise vibrated horribly in the closed space, but Freddy turned a greenish tint and collapsed against Bron’s worktable. An unpleasant stench rose from him, and I felt ashamed once more for using my gun to terrify someone-but the shame didn’t make me send him out into the alley with my blessing.
I heard Sandra tiptoe into the kitchen behind me. “You have a creep in your house, Sandra. Call 911. Right now.”
She started to argue with me, her reflex, but when she looked past me and saw Freddy she scuttled away. The phone was by the stove; I heard her shrieking into the phone, and yelling at April to stay the hell out of the kitchen.
“So, Freddy, tell me about the frog. You drew this picture for Bron and he was going to make it for you, is that right?”
“It was his idea, man, he said his kid told him the pastor put out Diego’s stereo. So Bron wanted to know how, man, and I told him, so he had me draw him a picture.”
“So you drew the picture. And then you went and put the frog in the drying room at the factory.”
“No, man, no way. I never killed nobody.”
“Then what were you doing the morning I found you there, huh? Looking for work?”
He brightened. “Yeah, that’s it, man, I wanted a job.”
“And Bron found one for you: burning down the factory, killing Frank Zamar.”
“It was an accident, man, the only thing supposed to happen was the electricity go out-” He shut up, suddenly realizing he was saying too much.
“You mean you killed a man because you didn’t know you’d be starting a fire? You were surrounded by fabric and solvent and you didn’t know they’d burn up?” I was so furious, it was hard not to shoot him on the spot.
“I didn’t do nothing, man, I ain’t saying one word more without my lawyer.”
He eyed my gun uneasily, but I couldn’t bring myself to brandish it again, even to get him to choke out a few more words. I was beside myself, though, at the mayhem he’d caused, all out of his colossal stupidity.
“So what are you doing in here?” I demanded. “What did you break in for? To get the drawing?”
He shook his head but wouldn’t speak.
I looked around the worktable. “The leftover tubing? Leftover acid?”
“Acid? What are you talking about?” Sandra said sharply behind me.
“A little trick Freddy learned from Pastor Andrés,” I said without turning around. “How to use nitric acid to short out a wire. Bron made a device for Freddy and Freddy burned down Fly the Flag. Although he says he didn’t mean to. Are the cops on the way?”
Sandra grasped only one part of my statement. “How-dare-you! How dare you come in here to my house of mourning and say Bron was setting fires? Get out of my house! Get out now!”
“Sandra, you want to be alone with Freddy, you and April?”
“If he’s going to tell lies to the police about Bron, I don’t want them arresting him.” She started kicking at my calves.
“Sandra, stop! Stop! This guy broke in, he’s dangerous, we need to give him to the police. Please! Do you want him to hurt April?”
She didn’t hear me, just kept kicking me, pulling at my hair, her face red and swollen. All of her furies and griefs of the last week-the last thirty years-were spilling out of her onto me.
I moved into the corner of the workshop, trying to get away from her. She came after me, unaware of Freddy, of the broken glass, of everything but me, her old enemy. “You knew Boom-Boom slept with me,” she spat. “You couldn’t stand it. You thought he belonged to you, you-you man-woman!”
The insult pricked me in a remote way, a place that would be sore later, but not now, now when I had to focus my energy on Freddy. She was jumping around too much, and the space was too small for me to stay between her and Freddy. She whirled past me and he grabbed her, pinning her flailing arms. She suddenly went limp, sagging against him. A knife appeared in his right hand; he held it at Sandra’s throat.
“You get out of here, now, bitch, or I’m killing this woman,” he said to me.
If I shot at him, I had a good chance of hitting her. I backed out of the room. April was in the kitchen. Her swollen face was ashen, and she was having trouble breathing.
“Baby, you and I are going to go outside. You are going to take nice deep breaths. Come on.” I put on my stern coach’s voice. “Breathe in. Hold it for four. Now let it go, slowly, slowly, I’m going to count and you let it out a little bit on each count.”
“But, Ma, is he-will he-”
“April, start breathing. He’s not going to hurt her, and, anyway, the cops will be here soon.”
I hustled April down the sidewalk and into my car. I got the passenger seat back as far as it would go, to ease the pressure on her lungs. I took the door key off my ring, turned on the engine, and set the heater going full blast.
“You lock the doors when I get out. You don’t open them for anyone. I’m going around to the back to try to help your mom, okay?”
Her lips trembled and she was gasping for air, but she nodded a little.
“And keep breathing. It’s the most important thing you can do right now. Breathe in, count four, breathe out, count four. Got it?”
“Y-yes, Coach,” she whispered.
I looked at my watch: it had been over ten minutes since Sandra called the cops. On my way around the house, I called 911 again on my cell, which didn’t automatically register on the emergency room screen. I explained where I was and said we had called over ten minutes ago. The dispatcher spent several agonizing minutes looking for Sandra’s call. She finally found it and said they were sending someone.
“When?” I said. “Now or with the Messiah? I have a kid going into cardiac arrest. Get an ambulance here on the double!”
“You don’t have the only emergency in this city, ma’am.”
“Look, you and I both know the story of the far South Side. I have a home invasion, I have the invader here and a very sick child. Pretend this is Lincoln Park and get me a team NOW!”
The dispatcher said huffily that every emergency was treated alike and she couldn’t manufacture an ambulance for me.
“I probably could build one in the time I’ve been waiting. If this kid dies, it will be front-page news, and tapes of these calls will be played coast to coast. Your kids and grandkids will know them by heart.” I snapped my phone shut and ran around to the back of the house.
Light streamed through the broken window leading into Bron’s workshop, but the back door had been opened and slammed shut with a lot of violence-it hung unevenly in the frame now. I had my gun out, and grabbed a lid from a garbage can to use as a shield. At the door, I squatted down on my haunches, using the lid to pull the door all the way open. No sound. I duckwalked into the kitchen, caricature of a cop. My feet skidded on ball bearings that Freddy had dumped onto the floor, and I fell onto my knees. The noise brought a muffled scream from the room beyond.
I stood upright and hurried into the dining room. Sandra wasn’t there or in the living room. I looked in the bedroom and saw the dresser had been knocked over to block the closet door. I yanked it out of the way. Sandra was lying on the floor, huddled in a little ball, whimpering.
I knelt next to her. “Are you hurt, Sandra? Did he cut you?”
She didn’t say anything, just lay crying like a hurt dog, little squeaks of misery. I felt for her throat, but didn’t find blood, and I couldn’t see any on the floor under her. Freddy had dumped all the bedding onto the floor; I grabbed a blanket and wrapped her up.
In the few minutes I’d been outside with April, Freddy had gone through the house like locusts through Egypt. He’d dumped out the drawers in the bedroom and the medicine cabinet; he’d run upstairs to April’s dormer, overturned her bureau, and pulled the mattress from her bed. And then he’d kicked ope
n the back door and fled. Probably Diego had been waiting in the alley in the pickup.
I went slowly back downstairs to Sandra. “I have April safe outside in my car. If the ambulance doesn’t get here soon, do you want me to drive her to the hospital?”
Her teeth were chattering, but she clenched them together and hissed, “You don’t take my girl away from me, Tori.”
“No, Sandra, I won’t. You can ride along. What made that punk break your house up like that?”
“He s-s-said-he wanted the rec-c-c-cording,” she burst out. “L-l-like I was-was-a radio st-st-station. Give me the rec-c-cording, he k-kept saying.”
“The recording?” I echoed. “What recording?”
She was shaking and miserable; she didn’t want to answer stupid questions from me. I got her to the couch, put on water for tea, and went out to my car. To my relief, when I unlocked the door April was still breathing. I was just explaining the situation to her when the blue-and-whites finally came screaming around the corner.
42 The Hiding Place
Total confusion followed the arrival of the squad cars.
Men ran through the alley and took up positions around the house, all the time squawking importantly through their walkie-talkies. I kept April in my car-it would be a tragic irony if she survived her heart failure and Freddy’s assault only to get shot by one of these Lone Rangers. It took forever to get the men (and the one woman in the group) to understand that there had been a home invasion, that the perp had fled, and that April and her mother needed medical help.
They finally got an ambulance to come. Even though April was breathing on her own, her pallor was bad, and I was relieved to have professionals take over her care. Sandra was still shaking too badly to make it down the walk on her own, but the crew carried her to the ambulance with a kind of impersonal briskness that seemed to brace her and make her function better.
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