Fire Sale

by Sara Paretsky

  Marcena pointed out that we were matching ghouls, with our shaved heads and bruises. “We should have done this for Halloween, not for your Thanksgiving Day dinner. What was that thing that skinned me?”

  “A hand-operated conveyor belt,” I said. “Didn’t you ever see it in Bron’s trailer? They use them for getting big loads on and off; it should have been tied up, but they were either careless or hoping it would do serious damage. Although they planned for you to be dumped at the landfill, as they did me-it was just Mr. William, ineffectual idiot, who took you to the golf course by mistake.”

  “And Mitch was my hero, leading you to the rescue, Morrell says. The hospital is rotten not to let dogs in. I’d like to give him a big, slurpy kiss. How come you got away with less damage than me?” Her eyes might sparkle, but her speech was labored; among the paraphernalia around her bed was a morphine pump.

  I shrugged awkwardly. “Luck of the draw. You took a horrible knock on the head when the forklift went over; you couldn’t maneuver the way I was able to.”

  I asked if she remembered anything about her time at the factory, such as how she got clear of the falling forklift, but she said her last coherent memory was driving up behind Fly the Flag in Billy’s Miata-she couldn’t even remember who all had been present-if Aunt Jacqui had been there, or Buffalo Bill himself.

  I told her I had her recording pen, but wanted to hang onto it, at least until we saw how the endless legal battles were going to shape up. “The state may try to impound it. I’ve actually put it in a bank vault to keep the Bysen mafia from stealing it out of my office, but, of course, their legal team is trying to suppress the recordings altogether.”

  “You can keep it if you let me have a copy of the contents. Morrell says that William and Pat Grobian were arrested for Bron’s death. Is there any chance they’ll be found guilty?”

  I made an impatient gesture. “The whole legal process is going to be a long and dreary battle; I’ll be amazed if it even comes to trial before Billy is married with grown grandchildren of his own…Marcena, how much of this business did you know, before Bron’s death. Did you know he was sabotaging the factory?”

  Underneath her shroud of bandages she blushed faintly. “I got too caught up in it-it’s why I always get the best in-depth stories wherever I go, because I do get caught up in my subjects’ lives. Morrell says I manipulate the news I’m covering, but I don’t. If I take part, I don’t make suggestions or pass judgment, I just watch-it’s no different than Morrell going on a raid with a tribal chief in Afghanistan.”

  She stopped to catch her breath, then continued in a more muted voice, “That factory owner-what was his name, Zabar? Oh, right, Zamar-he wasn’t supposed to die. And when Bron decided to use that bloke, that gang member, Freddy, I did say Freddy wasn’t the strongest filament in the bulb, but Bron said he couldn’t go into the factory himself, because his kid’s best friend’s mum worked there, and she’d recognize him if she happened to see him. But I did help make the little gadget over at his house-his kid was at school, his wife was at work.”

  Her eyes sparkled again at the memory; it didn’t take much imagination to follow her mind down its track, to sex in Sandra’s bed while the wife was standing in front of the By-Smart cash register. She’d helped construct a murder weapon, but what she remembered was the sexual excitement. Maybe she’d feel something else when she recovered: she faced two more major surgeries before she could go home.

  She saw some of what I was thinking in my face. “You are a bit of a prude, aren’t you, Vic? You take a lot of chances yourself-don’t tell me you don’t know that adrenaline kick from skating close to the edge.”

  I fingered my own head bandage reflexively. “Adrenaline thrills? Maybe that’s my shortcoming: I take risks so I can get the job done-I don’t take jobs so I can run risks.”

  She turned her head aside, impatient with me, or abashed-I’d never understand how she thought.

  “What about those extra meetings with Buffalo Bill?” I asked. “He confess to all his dirty business practices?”

  “Not in so many words. But a few admiring comments and he talked more than he realized. I’d say a streak of paranoia runs through the man, not enough to derail him, but the fact that he sees the world as his enemy means he’s always on the attack, which I guess has fueled his success. We had a lot of ‘hnnh, hnnhing’ over the necessity to do things like pile garbage in the parking lots of smaller shops to get customers to agree that they’d be smart to ‘By-Smart.’”

  “So you’ve got yourself quite a nice story,” I said politely.

  She grinned weakly. “Even though I don’t remember the climax, it didn’t come out too badly. Except for poor Bron. He was so greedy he couldn’t imagine there’d be a big fat stick of dynamite inside that carrot they were dangling in front of him.”

  “Greedy isn’t the word I’d use,” I objected. “He was desperate for a way to help his daughter, so he was going to shut a blind eye to the risk he might be running.”

  “Maybe, maybe.” Her color was fading; she lowered the hospital bed and shut her eyes. “Sorry, I’m weak as a cat, I keep dropping off.”

  “You’ll recover fast when you’re out,” I said. “You’ll be back in Fallujah or Kigali, or whatever the next war zone is, in no time.”

  “Hnnh,” she murmured. “Hnnh, hnnh.”

  Back in my car, I could hardly summon the energy to drive. Prude, she’d called me. Was that really me? Next to Marcena, I felt like some large slow object, maybe a rhinoceros, trying to do a pirouette around a greyhound. I had an impulse to go home and spend the day in bed, watching football and feeling seriously sorry for myself and my beat-up body, but when I got home the old man was packed up and ready to go to Max’s. He had a large casserole filled with his wife’s recipe for sweet-potato pudding. He had brushed the dogs until their coats shone, and tied orange bows around their necks-Max had said the dogs could come as long as they behaved and as long as I repaired any damage Mitch did to his garden.

  In the evening, when we’d eaten the way one always does on these holidays, and I was in the garden with the dogs, Morrell limped out to join me. He didn’t need his cane for short periods now, a hopeful sign.

  With the crowd inside, and me watching the football game while Morrell talked politics with Marcena’s father, we hadn’t really spent any time together today. The sky was already dark, but the garden was protected by a high wall that kept the fiercest of the lake winds at bay. We sat under the trellis where a few late-blooming roses produced a feeble sweetness. I tossed sticks for the dogs to keep Mitch from digging.

  “I’ve been jealous of Marcena.” I was astonished to hear myself say that.

  “Darling, not to be indelicate, but a Siberian tiger in the living room is less obvious than you are.”

  “She takes so many risks, she’s done so much!”

  Morrell was astounded. “ Victoria, if you took any more risks, you’d have been dead before I ever met you. What do you want? Skydiving without a parachute? Climb Mount Everest without oxygen?”

  “Insouciance,” I said. “I do things because people need me, or I think they do-Billy, Mary Ann, the Dorrados. Marcena does things out of a spirit of adventure. It’s the spirit, that’s what’s different between us.”

  He held me more tightly. “Yes, I can see that-she must look as though she’s free, and you feel too tightly bound. I don’t know what to say about that, but-I like knowing I can count on you.”

  “But I’m tired of people counting on me.” I told him the image I’d had, the rhino and the greyhound.

  He gave a loud shout of laughter but took my hand. “Vic, you’re beautiful in motion, or even when you’re lying still-not that that happens very often. I love your energy, and the grace you have when you run. For Christ’s sake, stop being jealous of Marcena. I can’t imagine you casually helping Bron Czernin rig a lethal device in his back kitchen and then not telling the cops because you didn’t want to ruin you
r big story. And it’s not because you’re so damn conscientious, it’s because you use your brain, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, not really convinced, but ready to drop the subject.

  “Speaking of jealousy, why does Sandra Czernin have it in for you?” Morrell asked.

  I felt my face turning crimson in the dark garden. “When we were in high school, I helped play a very nasty practical joke on her. My cousin Boom-Boom invited her to the senior prom. My mom had just died, my dad was kind of clinging to me, didn’t want me dating, and Boom-Boom had said I could go with him. But when I found out he was taking Sandra and I’d be like a fifth wheel, I really lost it. We’d already had some disagreements, she and I, so the prom felt like a total betrayal to me. She slept around, all us girls knew that, but I wouldn’t acknowledge that Boom-Boom did, too. She used to be pretty, in a soft, Persian cat kind of way, and I suppose, well, never mind that. Anyway, I was furious, and-and my basketball team and I, we stole her underpants out of her locker when she was in the pool-we used to have a swim program at Bertha Palmer. The night before the prom, we broke into the gym and shinnied up the ropes and hung her pants from the ceiling, with a big red S drawn on them, next to Boom-Boom’s letter jacket. When Boom-Boom found out it was me, he didn’t speak to me for six months.”

  Morrell was roaring with laughter.

  “It’s not funny!” I shouted.

  “Oh, it is, Warshawski, it is. You are such a pit dog. Maybe you don’t have a spirit of insouciance, but whatever your spirit is-it keeps a lot of people on their toes.”

  I figured he meant it as a compliment, so I tried to take it as one. We sat in the garden until I was shivering in the chill air. After a while, we went back to his place with the dogs-a Loop-bound guest volunteered to drive Mr. Contreras home. We huddled in bed much of the weekend, two sore and fragile bodies, bringing each other such comfort as this mortal life affords.

  On Monday, I had a call from Mildred, the Bysen family factotum, to say they had cut a check for Sandra Czernin and were messengering it down to her. “You might like to know that Rose Dorrado started work this morning as a supervisor in our Ninety-fifth Street store. And Mr. Bysen feels he’d like to make a special gesture to Bertha Palmer High, since that’s where he went to school. He’s going to build a new gym this summer, and, next winter, he’ll install coaches for both the girls’ and the boys’ basketball teams. We’ll be holding a press conference on this down at the school this afternoon. We’re creating a whole new program for teens called the ‘Bysen Promise Program.’ It will help teens keep a Christian focus through athletics.”

  “That’s wonderful news,” I said. “I know Mr. Bysen’s Christian practices will be highly regarded on the South Side.”

  She started to ask me what I meant by that but decided to change the subject, just asking for my fax number so she could send me the complete details.

  The press conference took place right before Monday’s basketball practice. The girls were so excited that it proved impossible afterward to keep them focused on their workout. I finally sent them home early, but told them they’d have to have a double practice on Thursday to make up for it.

  The Bysen Promise Program wouldn’t start formally until next fall, which meant I was stuck with coaching the team for the rest of the season. To my surprise, I found I was glad to stay with them.

  During the dreary winter months, Billy flew to Korea to see his sister. He brought her home with him, and they bought one of the little houses Pastor Andrés had been helping build. I had the feeling that Billy and Josie’s passion might have run its course. He was such a scrupulous kid, he continued to look after her, to see that she worked hard on her academics, but his energy now was turned to a program he and his sister were running called “The Kid for Kids,” to provide tutoring and job training for young people in the neighborhood.

  Right after New Year’s, April Czernin had her cardioverter defibrillator implanted. It would be several months before she could return to school, but she did show up for the Lady Tigers home games, where the other girls treated her as a kind of mascot. Celine and Sancia, the co-captains, were very solemn about dedicating their games to her.

  Sandra used part of the rest of Bron’s indemnity check to build a small addition to her house, so her parents could move in and help look after April. She also bought a used Saturn, but the rest of the money she squirreled away for April. She knew she had me to thank for getting her the money so fast, and without any legal battles-or fees-but it didn’t make her any less venomous when we ran into each other at the high school.

  During the winter, I also kept having to make depositions to the various lawyers involved in the legal battles over By-Smart’s operations. They were following a predictable course of discovery, investigation, motions, continuances-I didn’t know if a judge would set a trial date in my lifetime.

  I was outraged to learn that Grobian had actually gone back to work at the warehouse: Billy, flushing painfully, said his grandfather admired Grobian for his forcefulness. William, on the other hand, was taking an extended leave of absence: Buffalo Bill couldn’t forgive his son’s wish that he have a stroke and die. And Gary had begun divorce proceedings against Aunt Jacqui-another legal battle that was likely to go on for a few decades. She wasn’t going to relinquish those Bysen billions at all easily.

  The only good thing, really, to come out of the By-Smart carnage was a thaw in my relationship with Conrad. After basketball practice, we’d meet sometimes for a cup of coffee or a whiskey. I never told Morrell about it-Conrad and I were old friends-we could have a drink now and then. After all, it wasn’t like he was staying with me the way Marcena was staying at Morrell’s while she recovered her strength. Even if Morrell preferred my conscientious spirit to her insouciance, I didn’t much like finding her propped up in the living room every time I went over.

  If this were Disney, if this were that kind of fairy tale, I’d end by saying that the Lady Tigers went on to win the sectional and the state. I’d say they played their hearts out for me, their battered coach, and for Mary Ann, whose funeral we attended together late in February.

  But in my world, things like that don’t happen. My girls won five games during the whole season, where last year they had won two. That was all the victory I was going to get.

  I had dinner with Lotty the day after the Lady Tigers’ season ended, and told her how discouraged I felt. She frowned in disapproval, or disagreement.

  “ Victoria, you know my grandfather, my father’s father, was a very observant Jew.”

  I nodded, surprised: she rarely talked about her dead family.

  “During the terrible winter we spent together in 1938, the fifteen of us crowded into two rooms in the Vienna ghetto, he gathered all his grandchildren together and told us that the rabbis say when you die and present yourself before the Divine Justice, you will be asked four questions: Were you fair and honest in your business dealings? Did you spend loving time with your family? Did you study Torah? And last, but most important, did you live in hope for the coming of the Messiah? We were living then without food, let alone hope, but he refused to live hopelessly, my Zeyde Radbuka.

  “Me, I don’t believe in God, let alone the coming of the Messiah. But I did learn from my zeyde that you must live in hope, the hope that your work can make a difference in the world. Yours does, Victoria. You cannot wave a wand and clear away the rubble of the dead steel mills, or the broken lives in South Chicago. But you went back to your old home, you took three girls who never thought about the future and made them want to have a future, made them want to get a college education. You got Rose Dorrado a job so she can support her children. If a Messiah ever does come, it will only be because of people like you, doing these small, hard jobs, making small changes in this hard world.”

  It was a small comfort, and that night at dinner it felt like a cold one. But as the Chicago winter lingered, I found myself warmed by her grandfather’s hope.

&nb
sp; ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sara Paretsky is the author of thirteen previous books, including eleven V. I. Warshawski novels. The winner of many awards, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers’ Association, she lives in Chicago.

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