Fire Sale (9 page)

I jumped up the stairs and reached the intruder just as he was opening the door. He flung his flashlight at me. I ducked a second too late and reeled as it hit the top of my head. By the time I regained my balance and got out the fire exit after him, he had cleared the fence and was scrambling up the embankment toward the Skyway. I followed him, but I was too far behind to bother trying to climb the fence; he was already hoisting himself over the concrete barricade next to the road.

I heard horns blaring, and the raw screech of skidding tires, and then the roar of engines as the traffic came back to life.

If he hadn’t cleared all six lanes, I’d hear sirens soon. When a couple of minutes passed without them, I turned and went back down the hill. It was close to seven now; the morning shift should be arriving. I trudged across the muddy ground, reflexively rubbing the sore spot where the flashlight had hit my head.

As I turned around the corner of the building, heading toward the front, I could see Rose Dorrado crossing the yard, her red hair standing out like a flare in the dull day. By the time I got to the main entrance, Rose had the front unlocked and was already inside. A few other people were coming through the gate into the yard, talking quietly to each other. They looked at me without much curiosity as they passed.

I found Rose at the metal lockers, pulling out a blue smock and hanging up her coat. The inside of her locker was pasted with Bible verses. Her lips were moving, perhaps in prayer, and I waited for her to finish before tapping her shoulder.

She looked at me, surprised and pleased. “You got here early! You can talk to people before Mr. Zamar shows up.”

“Someone else was here early, a youngish man. I didn’t get a good look, but maybe in his early twenties. Tall, but his cap was pulled down too low for me to see his face. He had a thin mustache.”

Rose frowned in worry. “Some man was here trying to do something? It’s what I said, it’s what I tried to warn Mr. Zamar about. Why didn’t you stop him?”

“I tried, but he was too fast for me. We could call the police, see if he left fingerprints—”

“Only if Mr. Zamar says it’s all right. What was he trying to do, this man?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know that, either. He heard me and ran off, but I think he was heading for the stairs down to the basement. What’s there, besides all the fabric?”

She was too upset to wonder how I knew about the fabric in the basement, or to question where I had been when the intruder heard me. “Everything. You know, the boiler, the drying room, the dry-cleaning room, everything for running the factory, it’s all down there.
Dios
, we can’t be safe now? We have to keep worrying is someone in here planting a bomb in the morning?”

9

The Fog of…What?

“B
usiness is full of risks. I can handle this fine without you butting in.” Frank Zamar’s stubby hands moved restlessly over his desk, like birds uneasy about landing on a branch.

“According to Rose, you’ve had quite a history of sabotage in the last few weeks: rats in the heating ducts, Krazy Glue in the door locks, and now someone breaking in at six this morning. Aren’t you worried about what’s going on?”

“Rose means well, I know she does, but she had no right to call you in.”

I looked at him in exasperation. “So you’d rather let your plant go up in smoke than figure out who is doing this, or why?”

“No one’s going to burn up my plant.” His square face sagged around the corners; the bravado of his words wasn’t matched by the worry in his eyes.

“Do you have the local gangbangers so pissed off at you that you’re scared to report them? Is this about ‘protection’ payoffs, Zamar?”

“No, it damn well isn’t about paying protection.” He slapped the desk for emphasis, but I wasn’t convinced.

“I’d like to talk to your crew, to see if anyone seems to be hiding something. Or maybe they have an idea about the guy who broke into the plant this morning.”

“No way do you talk to any of my workers! Who told you to mind my business, anyway? You think I’m going to pay you for lurking around my factory?”

He was muttering his complaints, not shouting, which seemed ominous to me: a man afraid of what I would learn. I nodded, though, at his words: no one was going to pay me for spending my time at Fly the Flag.

As I stood to leave, I said casually, “You wouldn’t be doing this yourself, would you?”

“Doing what—you mean, putting dead rats in my own heating system? You are crazy, you, you—nosy bitch! Why would I do such an insane thing?”

“You laid off eleven people this fall. Your business is in trouble. You wouldn’t be the first person to try to sell your plant to the insurance company—solve a lot of problems, wouldn’t it, if sabotage forced you out of business.”

“I laid people off because of the economy. As soon as the economy improves, I’ll hire them back. Now get out of here.”

I took a card out of my bag and laid it on his desk. “Call me when you decide you can tell me who has you so scared you won’t even protect your own business.”

I left the office and walked across the floor to where Rose was stitching an intricate gold logo onto an outsize navy banner. She looked up at me but didn’t stop moving the heavy fabric through the machine. The racket on the floor was intense, what with the sewing machines, the giant electric shears, and the industrial steam pressers; I squatted so I could yell directly into her ear.

“He claims nothing’s going on, despite the evidence. He’s scared of someone or something, too scared to talk about it, in my opinion. Do you have any idea what that could be?”

She shook her head, her eyes on the work in front of her.

“He says it’s not gang protection. Do you believe that?”

She hunched a shoulder, not breaking the quick movement of her hands as they guided the needle through the appliqué. “You know this neighborhood. You know there are a lot of street gangs down here. The Pentas, the Latin Kings, the Lions, any of them could do anything bad. But usually they’re more—more violent than this—they would break the windows, something like that, not put glue in the locks.”

“And how did the guy get in this morning?” Maybe I’d left the back door open when I undid the lock this morning: I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t swear to it a hundred percent, either. “Who has keys besides Zamar?”

“The foremen—Larry Ballatra, he’s the day man, and Joey Husack, he’s the second shift.”

“And you, right, since you often come in early?”

Her lips moved in a nervous smile. “Yes, but me, I’m not trying to hurt the plant, I’m trying to keep it open.”

“Or trying to get Zamar to think you’re indispensable, so he doesn’t let you go in the next round of job cuts.”

For the first time her hands slowed and she didn’t feed the fabric through fast enough. She hissed a curse at me as it bunched up under the needle. “Now look what you’ve made me do. And how can you say such things? You’re Josie’s coach! She trusts you. I trusted you.”

A hand suddenly gripped my shoulder and yanked me to my feet. The noise from the machines had been so loud I hadn’t heard the foreman come up behind me.

Although he was holding me, he spoke to Rose Dorrado. “Rose, since when do you have the right to have guests at your workstation? You better not be short when the day ends.”

“I won’t be,” Rose said, her face still red with anger. “And she’s not a guest, she’s a detective.”

“Who you invited into the plant! She doesn’t belong in here. The boss told her to get out, so what business you got talking to her?” He shook my shoulder. “The boss told you to leave, now you’re going to leave.”

He frog-marched me to the door and pushed me outside so hard that I stumbled against a man who was crossing the apron to the front door.

“Steady there, steady there.” He caught me and held me upright. “You’re not drinking on the job, are you, my sister?”

“No, my brother, not today, although, at the moment, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.” I backed away from him and dusted my shoulders where the foreman had gripped them.

He looked startled, then concerned. “You have been fired, perhaps?”

He had a slight Hispanic accent, whether Mexican, Puerto Rican, or even Spanish, I was too ignorant to know. Like much of the work crew, he was a swarthy, thickset man, but his somber suit and tie didn’t belong in a factory.

“I’m an investigator, whom Mr. Zamar doesn’t want to hire, or even talk to. Do you know about the attempts to sabotage the plant?” When the man nodded, I asked what he knew about it.

“Only that some members of the community are concerned. Has there been another episode today?”

I looked at him narrowly, wondering how trustable he was—but, after all, if he knew anything about this morning’s intruder I wasn’t going to give him news by discussing it. When I told him what I’d seen, he only said that Mr. Zamar had many problems, that he couldn’t afford to lose the factory.

“Why won’t he call in the cops?” I demanded.

“If I knew that, I would be a wise man. But I will ask him.”

“And if he answers, do me a favor and let me in on the secret.” I pulled one of my cards from my case and handed it to him.

“V. I. Warshawski.” He read my name carefully. “And I am Robert Andrés. Good day, Sister Warshawski.”

We shook hands on his odd and formal greeting. Even though I spent the rest of the day on work for my paying clients, my mind kept wandering back to Frank Zamar and Fly the Flag. I worried that I had needlessly alienated Rose by suggesting she could be the saboteur. Before I met Zamar it had seemed possible to me, because she was so worried about her job that she might want to prove she was indispensable: there she was, arriving early, finding rats in the air ducts, summoning help—even hiring a detective! Who could fire such a zealous employee?

Now that I’d seen Zamar, I didn’t really believe Rose was involved. Something was worrying him too badly about all these episodes. The man I’d stumbled into at the entrance, Robert Andrés, he might know; I should have gotten his phone number. I’d been too busy feeling angry and humiliated by the foreman tossing me out to take care of fundamentals.

Maybe Zamar was in love with Rose and worried because he thought she was responsible. Or Rose’s daughter with the baby, Julia—he’d donated warm-up jackets, he used to watch her play. Could he be the baby’s father? Was Rose going to destroy Fly the Flag to punish him for that?

“Give it up, Warshawski,” I said out loud. “Any more like that and you’ll be writing scripts for Jerry Springer.”

I was in the western suburbs, looking for a woman who had abandoned a safe-deposit box holding eight million dollars in bearer bonds, and I needed to put all my attention on that project. I located her daughter and son-in-law, who seemed to me to know more than they wanted to say. My client managed the little deli belonging to the woman—she’d gotten worried when the owner suddenly disappeared. A little before three, I finally found the woman in a nursing home where she’d been involuntarily committed. I talked to my client, who rushed out west with a lawyer. I was tired but triumphant as I raced back to South Chicago for my team’s makeup practice.

The girls played well, pleased with their clean gym. For the first time, they actually looked like a team—maybe the fight really had brought them together. We did a short workout, and they left with their heads up, triumphant from my praise—and their pleasure in their own ability.

On my way home, while I sat motionless in the rush hour traffic, I called my answering service to pick up my messages. To my astonishment, I had one from Billy the Kid. When I reached him on his own mobile phone, he stammered that he’d told his grandfather about me and the Bertha Palmer basketball program. If I wanted, I could go to corporate headquarters in the morning to sit in on the prayer meeting that would start the day. “If Grandpa has time, he’ll talk to you afterward. He couldn’t promise me he’d see you, or do anything for you, but he did say you could come out there. The only thing is, you have to be there by around seven-fifteen.”

“Great,” I said with a heartiness I was far from feeling. Even though I’m often up early, I’ve never been as big a cheerleader for mornings as Benjamin Franklin was. I asked young Billy for directions to the Rolling Meadows office.

He spelled these out for me. “I’m actually going to be there myself, Ms. War-sha-sky, because I’m helping a little with the service. The pastor is coming up from Mount Ararat Church of Holiness, you know, the one where my home church is doing the exchange, to preach the morning service. Aunt Jacqui will probably be there, too, so it’s not like everyone will be a stranger. Anyway, I’ll call Herman, he’s the guard on the morning shift, he’ll know to let you in. And Grandpa’s secretary, I’ll let her know, just in case, you know, in case Grandpa has time to talk to you. How’s the basketball team doing?”

“They’re working hard, Billy, but of course they don’t start playing other teams until New Year’s.”

“What about, uh, Sancia, and, uh, Josie?”

“What about them?” I asked.

“Well, you know, they go to Mount Ararat, and, well, how are they doing?”

“Okay, I guess,” I said slowly, wondering if I could enlist Billy’s help in tutoring Josie: if she was going to go to college, she’d need extra help. But I didn’t know what kind of a student he’d been himself, and I didn’t want to start a conversation like that in the middle of the expressway.

“So can I come over sometime and watch them practice? Josie said you’re real strict about not letting boys in the gym.”

I told him we might find a way to make an exception if he could get off work early some afternoon, and ended the conversation with a warm thanks for getting me into his grandfather’s office. Even if it did mean getting up again at five so I could trek across Chicagoland.

When he’d hung up, I thought again about my time with Rose Dorrado this morning. I had handled the whole situation badly, and I needed to apologize to her.

It was Josie who answered the phone. I could hear Baby María Inés squalling close at hand, and before she answered she yelled at her sister to take the child.

“It’s your baby, Julia, you do some of the work for a change…Hello? Oh, Coach, oh!”

“Josie, hi. Is your mom there? I’d like to talk to her.”

She was silent for a moment. “She hasn’t come home yet.”

I eyed a beat-up Chevy that wanted to muscle in front of me, and eased up to make room for it. “I went to the factory this morning; did she tell you that?”

“I haven’t seen her since breakfast, Coach, and now I got to figure out how to make dinner for my brothers, and everything.”

The worried undertone in her voice got through to me. “Are you worried that something’s happened to her?”

“No-o, I guess not. She called and all, she say she going—I mean, she said she had something else to do, maybe extra work, I guess, but she don’t say what, just help out with the boys’ supper, and, you know. But I already get their breakfast, ’cause Ma leaves for work before we get up, and now the baby is crying, Julia won’t help, and I got my science project.”

I could picture the crowded apartment. “Josie, put the baby to bed. She can cry for a while without it doing her any harm. Unplug the TV and do your science project in the living room. Your brothers are big enough they can open a can of something, and they can play with their Power Rangers in the dining room. You got a microwave? No? Well, you got a can of soup? Heat it up on the stove and let them eat. Your education comes first. Okay?”

“Uh, okay, I guess. But what am I going to do if this keeps on?”

“Will it?” A semi honked at me; I’d lost track of the traffic, and a big gap had opened in front of me.

“If she got another job, it will.”

“I’ll talk to your mom about it. I need to, anyway. Can you write down my number? Tell her to call me when she gets in.”

When she’d repeated my cell phone number, I reiterated my message. Before I hung up, I heard her yelling at her sister that she could look after María Inés or Josie was going to put her to bed. I guess I’d done one good deed for the day—two, if I counted finding my client’s missing employer.

When I reached Morrell’s, the dogs danced around me, as ecstatic as if it had been twelve months, not twelve hours, since we last met. Morrell told me proudly that he had taken them over to the lake—a real feat: he hadn’t been able to walk up the single flight of stairs to his condo when I brought him back from Zurich seven weeks ago. He still needed a cane to walk, and Mitch had challenged Morrell’s balance several times; he’d had to lie down for an hour after the exertion, but he’d managed the four blocks there and back without mishap, and didn’t seem any worse for the outing.

“We’ll celebrate,” I said enthusiastically. “I outdid Sherlock Holmes today, at least this afternoon, and you outdid Hillary on Everest. Are you up to another excursion, or shall I go get something?”