Fire Sale (22 page)

“The police,” she spat. “If they even answer my call, you think they would care?”

“I know the watch commander down there,” I offered. “I could phone him.”

“You come, Ms. V. I. War—War—”

I realized she was reading from one of the cards I’d left with her daughters, that she didn’t in fact know my name. When I pronounced it for her, she reiterated her demand that I come. The police wouldn’t listen to her, she knew all about that; I was a detective, I knew the neighborhood, please, it was all too much for her right now, the factory burning down, being out of work, all those children, and now this?

I was tired, and I’d had two glasses of heavy Italian red. And I’d been in South Chicago once already today, and it was twenty-five miles, and I’d split my shoulder open this afternoon…and I told her I’d be there as soon as I could.

25

Bedtime Stories

I
t was close to eleven when we pulled up in front of the Dorrado apartment on Escanaba. Mr. Contreras was with me, and we’d brought Mitch as well. Who knows—his hunting stock might give him a good tracking nose.

My neighbor had been predictably annoyed that I was going out again, but I shut him up by the simple expedient of inviting him to join me. “I know it’s late, and I agree I shouldn’t be driving. If you want to ride along and help keep me alert, that’d be great.”

“Sure, doll, sure.” He was touchingly ecstatic.

I went into my bedroom and dressed in jeans and put on a couple of loose knit tops under my navy peacoat. I got my gun out of the wall safe. I wasn’t expecting a battle with Billy, if, in fact, he and Josie had run off together. But drive-by shootings were a dreary commonplace in the old ’hood, and I didn’t want to end up lying on the floor of an abandoned warehouse with some punk’s stray bullet in my back, just because I hadn’t come prepared. That was the real reason we were taking Mitch, too—not too many gangbangers dis a big dog.

Before we left Lakeview, I called Billy’s mother. Her phone was answered by a man who was some kind of butler or secretary—anyway, a call screener. He was very reluctant to disturb Mrs. William, and when I finally pushed him into bringing her to the phone it was clear why: Annie Lisa was high on something other than life. Whether it was modern and respectable, like Xanax, or old-fashioned and reliable, like Old Overholt, she had a delay, like a satellite echo, in answering anything I said.

I spoke slowly and patiently, as if to a child, reminding her that I was the detective who was looking for Billy. “When did you last hear from him, Ms. Bysen?”

“Hear from him?” she echoed.

“Did Billy call you today?”

“Billy? Billy isn’t here. William, William is angry.”

“And why is William angry, ma’am?”

“I don’t know.” She was puzzled and talked about it at some length. “Billy went to work, he went to the warehouse, that’s what a good boy does, he works hard for a living, it’s what Daddy Bysen always told us, so why does that make William angry? Unless it’s because Billy is doing what Daddy Bysen says, William always hates for Billy to follow Daddy Bysen’s orders, but William also likes children who work hard. Children who lie around using drugs and getting pregnant, they get sent away, so he should be happy that Billy went to the warehouse again.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m sure deep down he’s ecstatic, just hiding it from you.”

Irony was a mistake: she thought I was saying William was hiding Billy from her. I cut her questions off and asked for Billy’s sister’s phone number.

“Candace is in Korea. She’s doing mission work, and we’re proud that she’s turning her life around.” Annie Lisa spoke the sentences like an inexpert news reader looking at a teleprompter.

“That’s nice. But in case Billy called his sister to talk over his plans, can you give me her phone number?”

“He wouldn’t do that; he knows William would be very angry.”

“How about her e-mail address?”

She didn’t know it, or wouldn’t give it. I pressed her as hard as I could without alienating her, but she wouldn’t budge: Candace was off-limits until she’d finished serving her sentence.

“Would Billy have turned to any of his aunts or uncles?” I pictured him confiding in Aunt Jacqui while she smirked and preened.

“No one understands Billy the way I do. He’s very sensitive, like me—he isn’t like the Bysens. None of them has ever really understood him.”

That seemed to be the limit, both of what I could get and what I could take from her. Mr. Contreras, who’d gone to his own place for a parka and a pipe wrench, was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with Mitch. As we left, we could hear Peppy’s forlorn whine from behind his front door.

The Dorrados’ building was alive in the way urban apartments always seem to be. As we walked up the three flights of stairs, we heard babies squalling, stereos cranked up high enough to send vibrations down the banisters, people shouting in a variety of languages, and even a couple locked in ecstasy. Mitch’s hackles were on end; Mr. Contreras kept a tight hold on his leash.

I felt a little foolish arriving with an old man, a dog, and a gun, although the gun at least was neatly tucked inside my down vest. The dog and the man were pretty much just out there where anyone could see them. They certainly knocked Rose off balance.

“A dog? Not a dog, he’ll eat the baby. Who is this? Your father? What are they doing here?”

Behind her I could hear María Inés howling. “I’ll leave the dog tied up in the hall here. We thought he might help track Josie, if we got enough of a clue on where she’s gone to track her.”

I added an introduction to Mr. Contreras, without explaining his relationship to me—that was so complicated I didn’t think I could do it in one sentence. My neighbor astonished me by bypassing Rose to pick up the wailing infant. Maybe it was his deep, soft voice, or just because he was calm: Rose was so wired she could have powered the whole South Side, with enough to spare for Indiana, but in a matter of minutes Mr. Contreras had the baby quiet, resting against his flannel shirt and blinking sleepily at the room. I knew he’d raised a daughter, and he had two grandsons, but I’d never seen him in action with babies.

The couch, where Julia was usually planted watching television, had been pulled out into Rose’s bed. Beyond, in the dining room, I saw Betto and Sammy, lying on their air mattresses under the dining room table. They weren’t moving, but, as I looked, I saw the living room lamp glint on their eyes: they were awake and watching. Rose was pacing round and round in the tiny space between the bed and the door, wringing her hands, bleating disjointed, contradictory statements.

I took her arm and led her forcibly to the bed. “Sit down and try to think calmly. When was the last time you saw Josie?”

“This morning. She was dressing for school, and I was leaving, I was going to the alderman’s office, he’s a good person, I’m thinking maybe he knows of a job, something that pays better than By-Smart, and I went to two places, but they’re not hiring, and I came back to make lunch for Betto and Sammy, they come home for lunch, but Josie, she eats at school, and that’s it, I never see her since then, since this morning.”

“Did you two argue about anything? About Billy, maybe?”

“I was very angry that she had this boy staying here. Any boy, I would be angry, but this boy, with his family so rich, what is she thinking? They could hurt us. Everybody knows how they don’t want their son dating no Mexican girl, everybody knows they called down to the church and made threats to Pastor Andrés.”

Rose sprang back to her feet in her agitation. The disturbance made the baby start to whimper again; Mr. Contreras interrupted to ask for María Inés’s bottle.

Rose fished for it on the floor next to the bed, and went on talking. “I said, how did she think she was raised, to have a boy in the room with her overnight? Does she want a baby, like Julia? To ruin her life for a boy, especially a rich boy who don’t need to worry about nothing? He says he’s a Christian, but the first sign of trouble they run away fast, those rich Anglo boys. She is supposed to go to college, that’s what I tell her, she wants to go, with April. Then she don’t have to be like me, going around begging for jobs and not getting hired.”

“Did she say anything back, threaten to run away, anything like that?”

She shook her head. “All this, we say all this after that boy’s family come here. They accused her, they call her ugly names, and, God forgive me, we all lied, we all say, no, Billy don’t come here. The grandfather, he was like the police, he listen to nothing, nothing I say, and he actually go into the bedroom, into the bathroom, checking to see if something is there from Billy. He says, if Billy comes here, if I hide him, he’ll deport me. Don’t you try, I tell him, because I am a U.S. citizen same as you, I belong in this country same as you.

“And the son, Billy’s father, he’s even worse, looking in my Bible, looking in the children’s books, like we have money we stole from them maybe—he even take my Bible and shake it all over the floor, so all my page markers come loose, but when they leave,
Dios,
what a fight I had with Josie then. How could she put us all at such risk and all for a boy. They’re like buses, I tell her, always another one will come along, don’t ruin your life, not like Julia here.

“She fights, she argues, she cries, but she don’t say she’s running away. Then in the afternoon, this boy, this Billy, shows up with a box of groceries, and Josie acts like he’s Saint Michael coming down from heaven, only then he left again, without her, and she sat all day like Julia, in front of the television, watching their telenovelas.”

I rubbed my head, trying to take in the torrent of information. “What about Julia? What does she say?”

“She says she knows nothing. Those two, they fight day and night now, not like before, before María Inés. Then they were so close, you think they were one person sometimes. If Josie has a secret, she don’t say nothing to Julia about it.”

“I’d like to ask her myself.”

Rose protested, halfheartedly: Julia would be asleep, and she was too angry with Josie to know anything.

Mr. Contreras patted her hand. “Victoria here won’t say nothing to upset your girl. She’s used to talking to young people. You just sit down and tell me about this beautiful little girl here. She’s your grandkid, huh? She’s got your beautiful eyes, don’t she?”

His reassuring rumble followed me as I picked my way through the tightly packed dining room to the girls’ bedroom. The skin prickled at the back of my neck, knowing the two boys were lying under the table watching me.

The bedroom overlooked an air shaft, and lights from neighboring apartments came in through the thin curtain. When I ducked under the clothes hanging from the rope, I could see Julia’s face, with her long lashes fluttering against her cheeks. I could tell from her squinched eyelids that, like her little brothers, she was only pretending to sleep. I sat on the edge of the bed—the tiny room didn’t have space for a chair.

Julia’s breath came out in quick shallow gusts, but she lay perfectly still, willing me to believe she was asleep.

“You’ve been angry with Josie ever since María Inés was born,” I said, matter-of-factly. “She’s going to school, she’s playing basketball, she’s doing all the things you used to do, before you had María Inés. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

She lay rigid, in angry silence, but after several minutes, when I didn’t say anything else, she suddenly burst out, “I only did it once, once when Ma was at work, and Josie and the boys were in school. He said a virgin can’t get pregnant, I didn’t even know until—I thought I was dying, I thought I had cancer inside me. I didn’t want a baby, I wanted to get rid of it, only the pastor, he and Ma said that’s a sin, you go to hell.

“And then, the day he did it to me, Josie came in, she came home early from school, she saw me, and she was, like, how could you?, you’re a whore. We used to be best friends, even when Sancia and me was friends, and now, whenever I complain about María Inés, she’s, like, you didn’t have to be a whore. Her and April, they say they’re going to college, they say their basketball take them to college. Well, Coach McFarlane, that’s what she used to say to me. So when Billy came over on Thursday and begged for a place to sleep, I invited him in, I thought, you do it to her, to Josie, make her get a baby, see what she says then!”

She was panting, as if waiting for me to criticize her, but the whole story was so sad I only wanted to cry. I reached under the coverlet for one of her clenched hands and squeezed it gently.

“Julia, I would love to watch you play basketball. Whatever your sister says, or your mother, or even your pastor, there’s no shame in what you did—in having sex, in getting pregnant. The shame is the boy who did it lying to you and you not knowing any better. And it would be another shame if you let your baby stop you from getting an education. If you keep lying around the house, feeling angry, you’ll ruin your life.”

“And who look after María Inés? Ma, she got to work, now she saying if I don’t go to school I got to get a job.”

“I’ll make some calls, Julia, and see what kind of help I can find. In the meantime, I want you to come to our practice on Thursday. Bring María Inés. Bring Sammy and Betto: they can watch María Inés in the gym with us while you work out. Will you do that?”

Her eyes were dark pools in the half-light. She clutched my hand tightly and finally mumbled, “Maybe.”

“And before you go out with another boy, you need to learn something about your body, about how you get pregnant, and what you can do to keep from getting pregnant. You and I will talk about that, too. Are you still seeing María Inés’s—father?” I stumbled on the word—the person who got her pregnant wasn’t acting like a father to the baby.

“Sometimes. Just to say, ‘Hi, look, this is your baby.’ I don’t let him do nothing to me, if that’s what you mean. One baby is enough for me.”

“He doesn’t help support María Inés?”

“He got two more children spread around this neighborhood,” she cried. “And he don’t have no job. I ast him and ast him, and he never do nothing, now he cross the street if he see me coming.”

“So is it this Freddy whom you and Josie were mentioning yesterday?”

She nodded again, her silky hair ruffling the nylon pillowcase.

“Who is he?”

“Just a guy. I met him at church, that’s all.”

I wondered if Pastor Andrés, with his stern lectures on sex, ever talked to Freddy about scattering children he couldn’t support around the South Side, but when I put it into words Julia turned away from me. I realized I wasn’t just making her uncomfortable, I was getting pretty far a field from Josie’s disappearance.

“So when Billy stayed here on Friday and Saturday night, did he and Josie have sex together?”

“No,” she said dully. “He said, her and me should sleep together, he didn’t want temptation in their path. He quoted a bunch of Bible verses. It was almost as bad as Pastor Andrés being in the room with me.”