Burn Marks (2 page)

3

Not St. Peter

The kinds of places Elena could afford didn’t seem to advertise in the papers. The only residential hotels listed in the classifieds were in Lincoln Park and started at a hundred a week. Elena had paid seventy-five a month for her little room at the Indiana Arms.

I spent four hours futilely pounding the pavements. I combed the Near South Side, covering Cermak Road between Indiana and Halsted. A century ago it housed the Fields, the Searses, and the Armours. When they moved to the North Shore the area collapsed rapidly. Today it consists of vacant lots, auto dealers, public housing, and the occasional SRO. A few years ago someone decided to restore a blockful of the original mansions. They stand like a macabre ghost town, empty opulent shells in the midst of the decay that permeates the neighborhood.

The stilts of the Dan Ryan L running overhead made me feel tiny and useless as I went door to door, asking drunk or indifferent supers about a room for my aunt. I vaguely remembered reading about all the SRO’s that came down when Presidential Towers went up, but somehow the impact this had on the street hadn’t hit me before. There just wasn’t housing available for people with Elena’s limited means. The hotels I did find were all full— and victims of last night’s fire, savvier than me, had been there at dawn renting the few rooms available. I realized that the fourth time a blowsy manager said, “Sorry, if you’d gotten here first thing this morning when we had something …”

At three I called off the search. Panicked at the prospect of housing Elena for some indefinite future, I drove into my Loop office to call my uncle Peter. It was a decision I could make only while panicked.

Peter was the first member of my family to make something substantial of his life. Maybe the only member besides my cousin Boom-Boom. Nine years younger than Elena, Peter had gone to work in the stockyards when he returned from Korea. He quickly realized that the people getting rich in meat packing weren’t the Poles hitting cows over the head with hammers. Scraping together a few bucks from friends and relations, he started his own sausage manufacturing firm. The rest was the classic story of the American dream.

He followed the yards to Kansas City when they moved there in the early seventies. Now he lived in a huge house in the tony Mission Hills district, sent his wife to Paris to buy her spring clothes, shipped my cousins off to expensive private schools and summer camps, and drove late-model Nissans. Only in America. Peter also distanced himself as much as possible from the low-budget end of the family.

My office in the Pulteney Building was definitely down market. Most of the Loop expansion in recent years has been to the west. The Pulteney is at the southeast fringe where peep shows and pawnshops push the rents down. The Wabash L rattles the fourth-floor windows, disturbing the pigeons and dirt that normally roost there.

My furnishings are Spartan gleanings from police auctions and resale shops. I used to hang an engraved sketch of the Uffizi over the filing cabinet, but last year I’d decided its intricate black detail looked too drab with all the olive furniture. In its place I’d put up some splashy posters of paintings by Nell Blaine and Georgia O’Keeffe. They gave the room a little color, but no one would mistake it for the hub of an international business.

Peter had been there once, when he brought his three children to Chicago for a tour several years ago. I had watched him swell visibly as he calculated the gap between our net present values.

Getting hold of him this afternoon took all my powers of persuasion, mixed in with a little bullying. My first worry, that he might be out of the country, or equally inaccessible on some golf course, proved groundless. But he had a phalanx of assistants convinced it was better to handle my business themselves than to disturb the great man. The most difficult skirmish came when I finally reached his personal secretary.

“I’m sorry, Miss Warshawski, but Mr. Warshawski has given me a list of family members who he’ll let interrupt him and your name isn’t on it.” The Kansas twang was polite but unyielding.

I watched the pigeons check themselves for lice. “Could you get a message to him? While I hold? That his sister Elena will be arriving in Kansas City on the six o’clock flight and has cab fare to his house?”

“Does he know she’s coming?”

“Nope. That’s why I’m trying to get hold of him. To let him know.”

Five minutes later—while I paid prime daytime rates to hold—Peter’s deep voice was booming in my ear. What the hell did I mean, sending Elena to him unannounced like this. He wasn’t having his children exposed to a lush like that, they didn’t have guest space, he thought he’d made it clear four years ago that he was never—

“Yes, yes.” I finally stanched the flow. “I know. A woman like Elena would just not fit into Mission Hills. The drunks there get manicures every week. I understand.”

It wasn’t the best opening to a plea for financial aid. After he’d finished shouting his outrage I explained the problem. The news that Elena was still in Chicago did not, as I’d hoped, bring him enough relief to agree to bail her out.

“Absolutely not. I made this totally clear to her the last time I helped her. That was when she foolishly squandered Mother’s house in that cockamamie investment scheme. You may remember that I retained a lawyer for her who saw that she was able to salvage something from the sale. That was it—my last involvement in her affairs. It’s time you learned the same lesson, Vic. An alkie like Elena will just milk you dry. The sooner you realize it, the easier your life will be.”

Hearing some of my own negative thoughts echoed on his pompous lips made me squirm in my chair. “She paid for that lawyer though, Peter, if I remember rightly. She hasn’t ever asked you for cash, has she? Anyway, I live in four rooms. I can’t have her staying with me. All I want is enough money to make the rent on a decent apartment for a month while I help her find a place she can afford.”

He gave a nasty laugh. “That’s what your mother said that time Elena showed up at your place in South Chicago. Remember? Not even Tony could stomach having her around. Tony! He could tolerate anything.”

“Unlike you,” I commented dryly.

“I know you mean that as an insult but I take it as a compliment. What did Tony leave you when he died? That squalid house on Houston and the remains of his pension.”

“And a name I’m proud to use,” I snapped, thoroughly roused. “And come to that, you wouldn’t have gotten your little meatball machine off the ground without his help. So do something for Elena in exchange. I’m sure wherever Tony is now he’d consider it a just quid pro quo.”

“I paid Tony back to the nickel,” Peter huffed. “And I don’t owe him or you shit. And you know damned well it’s sausages, not meatballs.”

“Yeah, you paid back the nickel. But a share of the profits, even a little interest, wouldn’t have killed you, would it?”

“Don’t try that sentimental crap on me, Vic. I’ve been around the block too many times to fall for it.”

“Just like a used car,” I said bitterly.

The line went dead in my ear. The pleasure of having the exit line didn’t compensate for losing the fight. Why in hell were the survivors in my father’s family Peter and Elena? Why couldn’t Peter have died and Tony been the one to hang around? Although not in the shape he was the last few years of his life. I swallowed bile and tried to shut out the image of my father the last year of his life, his face puffy, his body wrenched by uncontrollable coughing.

Pressing my lips together bitterly, I looked at the stack of unanswered mail and unfiled papers on my desk. Maybe it was time I got into the twentieth century while I still had a decade left to do it in. Make a big enough success of my work that I could at least afford a secretary to do some of the paperwork for me. An assistant who could take on some of the legwork.

I shuffled through the papers impatiently until I finally found the numbers I needed for my upcoming presentation. I called Visible Treasures to see how late I could bring them in for overnight processing. They told me if I got them there by eight, they would typeset them and create transparencies for me at only double overtime. When I got the price quote I felt a little better—it wasn’t going to be quite as bad as I’d feared.

I typed up my drafts on my mother’s old Olivetti. If I couldn’t afford an assistant, maybe at least I should blow a few thousand on a desktop publishing system. On the other hand, the force it took to use the Olivetti’s keyboard kept my wrists strong.

It was a little after six when I finished typing. I dug through my drawers looking for a manila folder to put the charts in. When I didn’t find a fresh one I dumped the contents of an insurance file onto the desk and stuck my documents into it. Now the desktop looked like the city landfill right after the trucks drop off their loads. I could see Peter looking at it, his face creasing into little rivulets of suppressed smugness. Maybe being committed to truth, justice, and the American Way didn’t have to include working in slum conditions.

I put the insurance material back into its folder and took it over to the filing cabinets, where I found a section on business expenses that seemed close enough. With a glow of virtue I stuck “insurance” in between “Illinois Bell” and “lease.” Having gotten that far, I went through the two weeks of mail sitting on the desk, writing a few checks, filing documents, and trashing the circulars. Near the bottom of the stack I found a thick white letter the size of a wedding invitation with “Cook County Women for Open Government” in engraved script on the top left.

I was about to pitch it when I suddenly realized what it was—in a fit of insanity I had agreed to be a sponsor for a political fund-raiser. Marissa Duncan and I had worked together in the public defender’s office an aeon or two ago. She was one of those people who live and die for politics, whether in the office or on the street, and she chose her issues carefully. She’d been active in our drive to unionize the PD’s office, for example, but she’d steered clear of involvement in the politics of abortion—she didn’t want anything to drag her down if she decided to run for office.

She’d left the PD a number of years ago to work in Jane Byrne’s disastrous second mayoral campaign; she now had a cushy job with a big public relations firm that specialized in selling candidates. She phones me only when she’s masterminding some great campaign. When she called four weeks ago I’d just finished a tricky job for a ball-bearing manufacturer in Kankakee. She’d caught me basking in the glow that comes from a display of competence combined with a large check.

“Great news,” she’d said enthusiastically, riding over my tepid hello. “Boots Meagher is going to sponsor a fund-raiser for Rosalyn Fuentes.”

“I appreciate your letting me know,” I said politely. “I won’t have to buy the Star in the morning.

“You always did have a great sense of humor, Vic.” Politicians can’t afford to tell you they think you’re a pain in the butt. “But this is really exciting. It’s the first time Boots has ever endorsed a woman in such a public way. He’s going to hold a party at his place in Streamwood. It’ll be a terrific chance to meet the candidate, get to know some of the people on the County Board. Everyone’s going to be there. Rostenkowski and Dixon may even stop by.”

“My heart is turning over just at the thought. How much you selling tickets for?”

“Five hundred to sponsor.”

“Too rich for my blood. Anyway, I thought you said Meagher was sponsoring her,” I objected, just to be obnoxious.

A thread of impatience finally hit her voice. “Vic, you know the drill. Five hundred to be listed in the program as a sponsor. Two-fifty to be a patron. A hundred to get in the front door.”

“Sorry, Marissa. Way out of my league. And I ain’t that big a fan of Boots anyway.” His real name was Donnel— he’d gotten the nickname when the ′72 reformers thought they could get Daley’s men of the county slate. They’d run some poor earnest wimp whose name I couldn’t even remember on the slogan of “Give Meagher the Boot.” When Daley muscle got the big guy reelected by a landslide, his supporters at the Bismarck celebration party had screamed “Boots, Boots” when he appeared and he’d never been called anything else since.

Marissa said earnestly, “Vic, we need more women out there. Otherwise it’s going to look as though Roz has sold out to Boots and we’ll lose a lot of our grass-roots support. And even though you’re not with the PD anymore, your name still commands a lot of respect with local women.”

Anyway, to make a long story short, she’d used flattery, Fuentes’s pro-choice record, and my guilt for having dropped out of political action for so long to get me to agree to be a patron. And I did have a two-thousand-dollar check beaming at me from the desk.

The thick white envelope held the invitation, a copy of the program, and a return envelope for my two hundred and fifty dollars. Marissa had scrawled on the program in her giant, schoolgirl hand, “Really looking forward to seeing you again.”

I flipped through the booklet, looking at the list of sponsors and patrons. Having agreed to hold the fundraiser, Boots had gone all out putting the arm on the regular Dems. Or maybe that was Marissa’s work. The pages glittered with judges, state reps, state senators, and directors of large corporations. Near the end of the list of patrons was my name. From some ancient yearbook or birth certificate Marissa had dug up my middle name. When I saw the “Iphigenia” jumping out at me, I was tempted to call her and withdraw my support—I try to keep my mother’s lunacy in naming me a secret known only to family.

The function was this coming Sunday. I looked at my watch-seven-fifteen. I could call Marissa and still make it to Visible Treasures in time.

Late though it was, she was still in her office. She tried to sound pleased at hearing from me, but couldn’t quite carry it off—Marissa likes me better when I’m doing favors for her.

“You all set for Sunday, Vic?”

“You bet,” I said enthusiastically. “What are we wearing? Jeans or evening gowns?”

She relaxed. “Oh, it’s casual—barbecue, you know. I’ll probably wear a dress, but jeans will be fine.”