Sisters On the Case

by Sara Paretsky

  ‘‘First he said, ‘You did this to me!’ Then he said, ‘I’m gonna sue you for millions! Your pretty ladies will have to work night and—’ That’s when McQuirter shot him.’’

  From the silence on the other end, I knew she was writing it all down on a yellow pad. ‘‘Interesting. I’ll get back to you.’’

  She didn’t get back to me, but she must have worked all night getting in touch with some of her contacts, because the next morning in court the prosecutor got permission to introduce important new evidence. The courtroom was electrified when two women testified that for several years, Dr. McQuirter had augmented his income by controlling a number of prostitutes, most of whom had come to him as adolescent patients or young nurses. The two testified that the doctor had seduced the girls—themselves included—and impregnated them, then aborted their babies (which was illegal in those days) and told them that working for him was the only way to repay their medical bills. They also testified that Lyle Bradford had been a regular patron with an increasingly nasty temper. He had broken one woman’s nose and several had needed medical attention. They had all complained to Dr. McQuirter about him.

  The prosecutor insisted that their testimony plus the fact that Dr. McQuirter had carried a loaded gun to Bradford’s room pointed to premeditated murder. The jury agreed. They brought in a verdict of murder one and sent the doctor away for life.

  Men in Miami slept easier.

  Bulldog wrote a series of interviews with prostitutes. Randall McQuirter’s women spoke bitterly about his treatment of them, but other prostitutes praised his methods of dealing with violent customers. Violence against prostitutes dropped. Bulldog won a Pulitzer. The Miami paper still occasionally refers to the local ob-gyn who avenged prostitutes by castrating violent johns. Another Miami moment.

  But some Miami moments, like some of Angie’s stories, are fabrications.

  The morning after Dr. McQuirter went to prison, I arrived early at the hospital and headed to the coffee shop for one of Carlos’s batidos. Angie, Dr. Gerstein, and Rosa were having coffee at the back corner table. Before they saw me, I saw Angie pour something from a silver pocket flask into each of their cups. They raised them in a toast. ‘‘For the common good.’’

  As I approached the table I saw them as a stranger might: a tall blond woman with legs going almost up to her neck. A nurse who worked after hours at a free clinic and who had a cloud of dark hair and a dimple in her chin, exactly like our chapel Madonna. And a psychiatrist with a face scarred like a pirate’s. As Dr. Gerstein lifted her drink, her sleeve slid toward her elbow. That was the first time I’d seen the row of numbers tattooed on her arm.

  A Family Sunday in the Park: V. I. Warshawski’s First Case

  by Sara Paretsky

  I

  The heat in the attic room was so heavy that not even the flies on the screens had the energy to move. The two children lay on the floor. Sweat rose on their skin, gluing their clothes to the linoleum.

  Normally on a hot August Sunday, they’d be at the beach, but Marie Warshawski had decreed that her son must remain close to home today. Normally the cousins would have disregarded such an edict, but today Victoria—Tori to her cousin—was nervous, wanting to hear as much of the grown-up gossip as possible.

  She and Boom-Boom—Bernard to his mother— often spent Sundays together: that was when Tori’s mother gave music lessons all afternoon in the minute front room of their South Chicago bungalow; Tori either had to read upstairs, ‘‘Taci, taci, carissima’’—or, worse, sit primly in the front room learning from Gabriella’s few good students.

  In the winters, Tori followed Boom-Boom to the makeshift ice rinks where he played a rough brand of pickup hockey. No girls allowed, period, which caused a few fights between the cousins—away from the boys, Boom-Boom made Tori help him perfect the slap shot of his idol, Boom-Boom Geoffrion.

  In the summers, though, the cousins spent every Sunday together: they pooled their coins to take bus and train up to Wrigley Field, where they would climb up over the backs of the bleachers and sneak into the park without paying. Or they dared each other to jump off the breakwater into Lake Calumet, or rode their bikes past the irate guards at the South Works, playing a complicated hide-and-seek among the mountains of slag.

  This Sunday, Tori was too worried about her father to violate Ciocia Marie’s edict. Officer Warshawski had been assigned to Marquette Park: Martin Luther King was leading a march with Al Raby and other Negroes to protest housing segregation in Chicago. There’d been so many marches and riots already this summer, where Tony Warshawski had been away from home for three days, working treble shifts along with every other beat cop on the South Side. Today was going to be worse; he’d told his wife and daughter that before he left for work on Friday.

  White people on the South Side had vowed to do everything they could this summer of 1966 to show King and the other agitators he’d brought with him that they should stay in Mississippi or Georgia, where they belonged.

  That was how Boom-Boom’s mother put it. She was furious that the cardinal made every priest read a letter to the parish on brotherhood and open housing.

  ‘‘Our Chicago Negroes always knew their place before these Communists came in to stir them up,’’ she fumed.

  Her own parish priest at St. Czeslaw’s read Cardinal Cody’s letter, since he was a good soldier in Christ’s army, but he also preached a thundering sermon, telling his congregation that Christians had a duty to fight Communists and look after their families.

  Aunt Marie repeated the gist of Father Gielczowski’sremarks when she dropped in on Gabriella earlier in the week. ‘‘If we don’t stop them in Marquette Park, they’ll be here in South Chicago next. Father Gielczowski says he’s tired of the cardinal sitting in his mansion like God on a throne, not caring about white people in this city. We’re the ones who built these churches, but Cardinal Cody wants to let those ni—’’

  ‘‘Not that word in my house, Marie,’’ Gabriella had said sharply.

  ‘‘Oh, you can be as high-and-mighty as you like, Gabriella, but what about us? What about the lives we worked so hard to make here?’’

  ‘‘Mama Warshawski, she tells me always how hard it is to be Polish in this city in 1920,’’ Gabriella said. ‘‘The Germans were here first, next the Irish, and they want no Poles taking their jobs away. She tells me how they call Papa Warshawski names when he looks for work. And Antoni, he has to do many hard jobs at the police, they are Irish, they aren’t liking Polish people at first. It is always the way, Marie, it is sad, but it is always the way, the ones that come first want to keep out the ones who come second.’’

  Marie made a noise like the engine on the truck her brother Tomas drove for Metzger’s Meats; she pursed her lips and leaned over to ask Gabriella how she would feel if her precious Victoria brought home one of them as a husband.

  All Gabriella and Marie had in common was the fact that their husbands were brothers. On politics, on child-rearing, even on religion, they were forever in each other’s hair. Maybe especially on religion. Marie had an icon of the Virgin in every room in her house. The Sacred Heart of Jesus inside her front door was a sight that shocked and fascinated Tori—the large red heart, with flames shooting out the top and barbed wire crushed around its throbbing middle (‘‘Those are thorns,’’ Ciocia Marie snapped. ‘‘If your mother cared about your immortal soul, you’d go to catechism like Bernard and learn about Jesus and his crown of thorns.’’)

  Gabriella wouldn’t allow such images in her home and she told Victoria it was pagan to worship the heart of your god: ‘‘almost a cannibal, to want to display the heart—barbarica!’’ Gabriella didn’t think like this because her father was a Jew: after all, her mother and her Aunt Rosa—who like Gabriella had migrated to Chicago from Italy—were Catholics. It was more that Gabriella openly scorned religion.

  When Father Gielczowski from St. Czeslaw’s came to visit Gabriella, to demand that she get Victoria baptized
to save her daughter from eternal torment, Gabriella told him, ‘‘Religion is responsible for most of the torments people suffer here in this life. If there is a God, he won’t demand a few drops of water on my daughter’s head as proof of her character. She should be honest, she should always work her hardest, do her best work, and when she says, ‘I will do this thing,’ she must do that thing. If she cannot live in such a way, no water will change her.’’

  The priest had been furious. He tried to talk to Tony Warshawski about Gabriella.

  Peace-loving Tony put up his big hands and backed away. ‘‘I don’t try to come between my wife and my daughter. If you were a married man, Father, you’d know that a mother tiger protecting her young looks tame next to a mother human. No, I’m not lecturing my wife for you.’’

  After that, Father Gielczowski glowered at Victoria whenever he saw her on the street. He tried to tell Marie to keep her own son away from the den of unbelievers, but Bernard Warshawski—who was usually as placid as his brother Tony—told the priest not to meddle in his family.

  Besides, the sisters-in-law only lived four blocks apart; they needed each other’s help in keeping an eye on two of the most enterprising children in a wild neighborhood. Tony and Bernard suspected, too, that Gabriella and Marie also needed the drama of their arguments. True, Gabriella gave music lessons, Marie worked in the Guild of St. Mary, but both led lives of hard work; they needed excitement, and recounting each other’s monstrous deeds or words gave their lives a running drama.

  Right now, the excitement was a little too much for everyone. The mayor, the cardinal, Police Superintendent Wilson, they’d all agreed that Martin Luther King and Al Raby had the right to march in Marquette Park. They’d also agreed that the ensuing violence might be horrific. And Tony Warshawski was one of the officers assigned to the park.

  Tony hadn’t been home for thirty-six hours already. Gabriella was worried for his safety; she and Marie had argued about it Saturday night.

  ‘‘Me, I have seen those photographs from Birmingham and Little Rock. The hatred in those faces— I thought I was looking at Fascists from the war!’’

  ‘‘Oh, the press, the press,’’ Marie said. ‘‘They want to make good Christians look bad. They try to make the police look bad, too, when they’re just trying to protect property.’’

  ‘‘But in Birmingham, the police, they are going against little black girls. Is that right, to send a large dog onto a small child? Besides, here in Chicago, Antoni, he tells me the police have the strictest orders to protect Dr. King and all the marchers.’’

  ‘‘Yes, I heard Tony say that, and I can’t believe it!’’ Little flecks of spit covered Marie’s mouth. ‘‘The police! They’re collaborating with these outside agitators, instead of looking after the community. They should know that the community isn’t going to take that betrayal sitting down!’’

  ‘‘Marie!’’ Gabriella’s voice was quiet with fury. ‘‘What happens if this community attacks my husband, who is, after all, your own husband’s brother? What then? What will Bernard do if Antoni is injured in such a way?’’

  Marie stalked away in a huff, dragging Boom-Boom with her. Gabriella sighed and took her daughter into her arms. ‘‘Mia cara, cuore mio, you must not let this hatred poison you. I must send you to your Zia Maria tomorrow, because tomorrow come the girls to study their music with me. These lessons, they bring the money for your education, if you are ever to go to a university, which you must, carissima, devi studiare all’università, devi avere una vita all’esterno di queste fabbriche e questa ignoranza!’’

  A life outside the steel mills and the ignorance of the neighborhood: Gabriella’s goal for her daughter. But meanwhile, this adored daughter had to live in the neighborhood, and that meant, perforce, spending Sundays with la regina dell’ignoranza, Zia Maria!

  ‘‘And do not run off to make some difficult or dangerous exploit with your cousin, Victoria, you must promise me that! I know Marie believes you are Eve in the Garden of Eden, leading her precious weak boy into danger, and me, I see him leading you too often, but truly, one must agree that together you each lead the other where no sane person would travel. On this weekend you must be like a good girl who knits and bakes and stays at home for Papa, do you hear me, Victoria? On this weekend, I give you a commandment! Promettimelo, cara!’’

  Gabriella repeated her adjuration the next day when Boom-Boom came to collect his cousin after mass. Victoria looked her mother in the eyes and promised.

  They rode their bikes the four blocks to Boom-Boom’s house, while Gabriella made tea and readied her front room for her students. Victoria took her new Brownie, the special present for her tenth birthday a week earlier. She had photographed her father in his uniform, her mother tending her rhododendron, her cousin in a Blackhawks jersey. Today she snapped an angry Ciocia Marie sweating in her hot kitchen.

  Marie served Sunday dinner, roast pork loin and boiled potatoes, that no one felt like eating in the heat. She fussed over Boom-Boom when he picked at the heavy food: was he coming down with something? Marie’s brother Tomas, who was also at dinner, said that Boom-Boom was healthy as a hog.

  ‘‘Stop pretending that the boy is some kind of weakling—he’s playing ice hockey with sixteen-year-olds.’’

  ‘‘Only because you encourage him, Tomas!’’ Marie snapped, her thin cheeks flushed pink. She had suffered eleven miscarriages before and after Boom-Boom’s birth and could never believe her only child wasn’t a frail scrap that the Lord might snatch from her at any second.

  Boom-Boom’s father, Uncle Bernie, had to work the afternoon shift at the docks this Sunday, so he missed dinner. Another of Marie’s brothers, Karl, was there with his wife, who quickly changed the subject. Since she insisted on talking about the impending march in Marquette Park, it didn’t help the atmosphere at the table.

  Finally the children were permitted to make their escape up the steep stairs to Boom-Boom’s room. The cousins lived in identical houses: four downstairs rooms, attics that had been turned into their bedrooms, unfinished basements that the fathers kept planning to fix up as family rooms on their days off.

  In the small houses of South Chicago, no conversation was ever private. After squabbling halfheartedly over Tori’s refusal to sneak out the window and head for the beach, the cousins lay on the floor, where it was coolest, and dozily listened to the adults in the dining room below.

  With the children gone, the conversation became franker and coarser. Tomas had been fired from his job at Metzger’s Meats last week, and he blamed it on the Negroes.

  ‘‘But he was stealing from the company,’’ Tori whisperedto Boom-Boom. ‘‘How could that be Martin Luther King’s fault?’’

  ‘‘He was not!’’ Boom-Boom fired back. ‘‘Wujek Tomas was framed by the janitor, and he’s a nigger like King and all those other Commies.’’

  ‘‘Boom-Boom! Gabriella says that’s the worst word to say, worse than ‘God damn it,’ or any other swear word.’’

  For a moment, the cousins forgot the argument downstairs in their own fight, which degenerated quickly to punches. Although Boom-Boom was a year older and bigger, he was also the one who’d taught Tori to defend herself, which she was ready to do at a moment’s notice. It was only when he tore her shirt at the collar that they stopped, looking at each other with dismay: what would Gabriella say when she saw the torn shirt, or Marie when she saw the bruise on Boom-Boom’s shoulder?

  In the silence that followed their fistfight, Wujek Tomas’s loud angry voice came up the attic stairs. ‘‘All I’m saying is, I’m going to kill Tony.’’

  The front door slammed. Tori ran to the window and saw Tomas get into his car. It was a Buick Wildcat convertible, nicer and more expensive than anything anyone else in the family could afford. Where had he got the money for it, everyone asked; it was Gabriella who told Tony, while Tori was in her own attic bedroom listening to her parents, that Wujek Tomas stole meat from Metzger’s and sold it to s
upper clubs in Wisconsin. Tony told Gabriella that was all hearsay, so why would Wujek Tomas want to kill Tony?

  Downstairs, Marie was demanding that Karl follow Tomas and stop him, but Uncle Bernard said Tomas would cool off in time, and Uncle Karl added that no one could catch Tomas in his Wildcat, anyway.

  ‘‘But he said he would kill my dad,’’ Tori whispered to Boom-Boom, her eyes wide with terror. ‘‘I have to find my dad, I have to warn him.’’

  ‘‘Tori, you can’t go to Marquette Park. You promised Zia Gabriella you would stay here at my house all afternoon.’’

  It was part of the ongoing battle between Gabriella and Marie that Boom-Boom had to use Italian when addressing his aunt and uncle: Zia Gabriella, Zio Tony, while Tori had to address Boom-Boom’s parents in Polish: Ciocia Marie, Wujek Bernie.

  ‘‘I don’t care. If your stupid wujek hurts my dad, Mama’s heart will break in half, way worse than that throbbing heart of Jesus in your doorway.’’

  Before Boom-Boom could stop her, Tori had run to the back window. She opened the screen, lowered herself so that she was hanging by her arms over the roof to the kitchen lean-to a few feet below, and dropped. She rolled down the shingles and jumped to the ground. She ran to the front of the house, where she’d left her bike, and took off.

  Boom-Boom waited an instant too long to follow her. His mother had run to the front door to screech at her niece to come back this minute, right now! and not to lead Bernard into danger. A moment later, she ran up the attic stairs and grabbed her son’s arm as he was following his cousin out the back window.

  II

  Even half a mile from the park, Victoria could hear the screaming: ten thousand throats open in hate. The cops at the intersection, uniforms wet under the hot sun, were so tense that they shouted at everyone—old women asking what the trouble was, even a priest riding up on a bicycle—the cops shouted at them all, including Victoria Warshawski darting under the sawhorses that blocked Seventy-first Street.