Burn Marks (6 page)

I couldn’t begin to fathom what she might be talking about and said as much. She didn’t answer right away, and when she finally did I got the impression she’d chosen her words with great care.

“Because I’m working with Boots. Anyone who knows you knows you’ve always opposed everything he stands for.”

“Not everything,” I said. “Just the stuff I know about. Anyway, your cousin doesn’t know me. We just met this afternoon.”

“He knows about you,” she persisted in her raw voice. “You’ve done a lot of significant work one way and another. People who are connected around town hear your name.”

“I don’t need soap any more than you do, Roz. I haven’t said or done anything to make anyone think I’d stand in your way. Hell! I even paid two-fifty to support your campaign. What does your cousin imagine I’m doing? It may be chicken feed to a contractor, but that’s a big outlay for me—I wouldn’t do it frivolously.”

She put her hand on mine. “I appreciate you coming out for me. I know it took a lot for you to do, both the money and the function.” She gave a throaty chuckle. “I’ve had to swallow a few things, too, to be here—the sidelong looks from the party regulars. I know what they’re thinking—Boots is getting a piece of Spanish ass and giving her a spot on the ticket as payment.”

“So what is Schmidt worried about? That I’m from the Legion of Decency and I’m going to cook up a sex scandal? I’m really offended, Roz. Offended by the thought and by you thinking you had to sound me out over it.”

Her callused fingers gripped mine. “No, no, Vic. Don’t take it that way. Luis is my little cousin, my little brother, almost, the way he worries about me. Some men he was talking to told him how negative you are to Boots and he got worried on my behalf. I told him I’d talk to you, that’s all, gringa. Boots has his flaws, after all, I’m not blind to them. But I can use him.”

I didn’t know if I was hearing the truth or not. Maybe she was sleeping with Boots for the good of the Hispanic community—there was very little Roz wouldn’t do to help her people. It would turn my stomach, but I didn’t really care. At any rate, prolonging the conversation wasn’t going to buy me a copy of her thoughts.

“I don’t like you tying your wagon to Boots’s star, but I can’t afford to be picky—I’m self-employed and it’s a pretty small operation. And there’s certainly something to be said for letting Boots do your dirty work. Pulling the plug on abortions at Cook County the way he did, he owes the women in this town something—why shouldn’t it be you.”

Roz gave a husky laugh. “I knew I could count on you, Vic.” She summoned enough of her voice to call her cousin. “Hey, Luis, come on, we gotta go get a drink and shake a few more hands.”

Luis ambled over to the porch with Michael; Carl Martinez apparently had taken off. “You get everything settled, Roz?” It didn’t sound like a casual question.

“Coming up roses. You worry too much, you know—-you’re just like your mama that way.”

We stood up. Roz hugged me. “I may call you yet, Warshawski. Get you to stuff envelopes or hold my hand if I freak.”

“Sure, Roz. Whatever you want.”

I followed her down the shallow steps. When Luis had hustled her around the side of the house, Furey took my arm.

“Let me meet you back at your place, Vic, get things talked out. I don’t want to have matters go completely bust between us without at least saying good-bye in a friendly way.”

I was staring at the corner of the house where Roz had disappeared, still trying to figure out what the hell that whole conversation had been about. I was so busy with my thoughts that I found I’d agreed with Furey without even realizing it.

8

A Devoted Mother

It was dark when I pulled up behind Michael’s silver Corvette on Racine. I’d expected to be home long ahead of him—he’d run into Ron and Ernie after seeing me into my car. When I pulled out they were still talking. However, relying on superior police knowledge of city routes—and professional courtesy from the traffic cops—he managed to beat me. He climbed out of the Corvette when he saw me behind him and came over to me.

“Vic. This is not destined to be our best day. A call came in on the radio while I was driving over. I’m not supposed to be on duty until tomorrow morning, but Uncle Bobby doesn’t care much about official rosters when there’s been a triple homicide. Sorry. I’ll give you a call tomorrow, okay?”

I tried to muster an appropriate expression of sorrow, but I was just as happy to be on my own tonight. The idea of a nice soak in the tub without having to be pleasant to an outsider had been tantalizing me during the long drive home. I barely waited to wave good-bye before heading up the walk to the front door. And the shattering of my dreams of solitude.

Elena was parked on the first-floor landing, her duffel bag at her feet. Next to her sat a young black woman. Even in the dim hall light I could see she was dressed with a stylishness that highlighted Elena’s worn face and bedraggled clothes. When I saw them my guilty worries about my aunt vanished. My stomach knotted and I felt a cowardly impulse to shut the door and head back to Streamwood.

Elena sprang jerkily to her feet and opened her arms in a wide meaningless gesture. “Victoria, sweetie, your nice neighbor let us in so we wouldn’t have to wait for you in the lobby. The old gentleman. He’s a real gem, you don’t find too many as chivalrous as him today. He told us you hadn’t left town so I figured we’d just wait for you ′stead of coming back later.”

“Hi, Elena,” I said weakly. “I found a room for you. Over on Kenmore.”

“Oh, Vicki, Victoria, I mean, family’s family and I knew you wouldn’t let me down. This here is Cerise. She’s the daughter of a buddy of mine from the Indiana Arms. Cerise, meet my niece Victoria. Finest niece a woman could ever want. If anyone can help you, she will.”

Cerise held out a slim, manicured hand. “Pleased to meet you.” Her voice was almost inaudible.

“I can’t put her up, Elena,” I said grimly. “No amount of sweet-talking is going to make me turn my place into a way station for victims of Wednesday night’s fire.”

Elena pursed her lips in exaggerated hurt. “No way, sweetie. I wouldn’t dream of it. Cerise here needs a detective. When I heard her story I knew you were just the gal for her.”

I wanted to pull my hair out by the roots or scream or anything extreme that would keep me from pounding my aunt. Before I could formulate a nonviolent response, the door to one-north opened and the banker popped out again.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said disagreeably. “I might have known. Well, this time I am calling the cops. I saw your pimp pull off just now in that silver Corvette. What are these—your drug clients?”

“What do you do all day long at work?” I snapped. “Spy on the clerks to see who’s taking five minutes too long at her coffee break? You must be one of the most popular guys around if all you do is peer over people’s shoulders into their business.”

“It’s my business if you conduct your sleazy affairs at all hours—”

“No, no, honey,” my aunt popped up. “She’s a detective. A professional. We’ve come to consult her on business. You don’t want to frown in that angry way—it’s just as important for a man to keep his looks these days as it is for a girl, and you’ll get terrible wrinkles around your eyes if you keep scowling like that. And you’ve got very nice eyes.”

“Elena, just be quiet, will you? We can discuss Cerise’s problem upstairs. Take her on up, okay?” I wasn’t going to resolve anything with the guy if Elena was mediating.

Elena protested, hurt, that she was just trying to help me get along better with my neighbors, but she finally agreed to start upstairs. I looked at the banker, debating whether I should say something conciliatory—it’s not a great idea to have a vendetta with a neighbor in a six-unit building.

“Be sure to give the cops the Corvette’s plates when you call, will you?” I told him. “The fellow who drives it is a detective with the Central District’s Violent Crimes Unit. The beat guys’ll enjoy razzing him about getting accused of being a pimp. If you didn’t catch the plate, it’s ‘fureous’—that’s F-U-R-E-O-U-S.” Some days I’m just more conciliatory than others.

He scowled at me with dark angry eyes, trying to decide whether I was bluffing. Hearing the license plate spelled out apparently made him decide I wasn’t. He stalked back into his apartment and slammed the door. From the south unit I could hear Peppy’s insistent whimpering as she begged to join in the fray. I ran up the stairs two at a time to avoid Mr. Contreras’s predictable harangue.

I ushered Elena and Cerise into my apartment. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Soda?”

“I’ll take a beer,” Cerise said.

“Sorry, I don’t have beer. Coffee, milk, or juice. Or I have seltzer and some Coke.”

Cerise settled on a Coke while Elena asked for some of that wonderful coffee like my ma used to make. I served up the remains of the pasta salad I’d taken to yesterday’s picnic and heated a couple of rolls. Neither woman seemed to have eaten much recently. Beyond Cerise’s asking what the queer white things in the salad were, and accepting “calamari” with a wise nod, they both ate rapidly without speaking.

“So what’s the problem that needs a detective?” I asked when they’d finished.

Cerise looked at Elena, asking her to speak for her.

“It’s her baby,” my aunt said.

In the bright light of my living room I could see Cerise wasn’t as old as her sophisticated clothes had made her look downstairs. She might have been twenty, but any legitimate bar would card her.

“Yes,” I said as encouragingly as possible.

“We think she died in the fire,” Elena said.

“Died in the fire?” I repeated stupidly.

“At the Indiana Arms,” my aunt said sharply. “Don’t gape there like a carp, Vicki. You must remember it.”

“Yes, but-you think? Don’t you know?”

I’d spoken to Cerise. She shook her head and again turned to Elena. My aunt spoke briskly, using wild hand motions and pursing her lips periodically to underscore a dramatic point.

“The whole point of an SRO, Vicki, is that it’s single resident occupancy. Single means no one else in the room with you, not even a cockroach, if you get my drift. And certainly no babies. And here’s Cerise, trying to get her life together, and she has the sweetest little baby you ever saw, fourteen months old and just starting to toddle, and what’s she supposed to do with it while she’s out hunting for work?”

Elena paused, as if waiting for an answer, but I didn’t try to interrupt the flow.

“So she leaves it with her ma, same as you would if it was you. If Gabriella was still alive, I mean, being as how she always wanted the best for you. And Cerise’s ma is just the same. Nothing too good for Cerise and she’ll risk getting thrown right out on her rear end”—-Elena smacked her own behind to emphasize the point—“if it’d help Cerise here make a decent life for the baby.”

When I didn’t say anything she repeated her last point sharply.

“Great,” I managed.

Elena beamed. “So her ma is kind of a pal of mine. We’ve knocked back a few beers together, not that I drink, you understand, nor does she, just a few beers now and then in a sociable kind of way.” She stared at me defiantly, but I didn’t challenge the statement.

“So Zerlina—that’s Cerise’s ma—is watching the baby while Cerise is out of town Wednesday night when we have the fire. Now Zerlina’s vanished—poof—and poor Cerise can’t find out if her dear little baby made it out of the building alive.”

She slapped her hands together for effect and watched me expectantly. All I could think was that it was Sunday night, almost four days since the fire—-why was Cerise surfacing only now?

“So I told her you’d help,” Elena prompted me impatiently.

“Help do what?”

“Well, Vicki—Victoria—she needs to find the poor little thing. She’s afraid it’ll get her ma in trouble if she goes to the police. You know, for keeping a baby in the room. Maybe she’d never be able to find another place. I said you were just the person for her.”

“Why has it taken this long for Cerise to miss the baby?” I demanded.

“I been out of town.” It was Cerise’s first contribution to the conversation since she’d asked about the calamari. “Otis, he the baby’s father, he took me up to the Dells. We trying to work things out, you know, I want him to marry me and make a home for me and Katterina and he don’t want to do it. So he promised me a vacation.”

I rubbed my forehead, trying to push the more harrowing images of her life out of my brain. “And you just got back today?”

“I went to the hotel,” she burst out. “I went straight there. People say I don’t love Katterina, leaving her with my mother and all, but I do. I just can’t look after her and have my own life too, not twenty-four hours a day. I can’t even get a job if I got to stay with her all the time. But I went there first thing, Otis dropped me there, you can ask him, that was yesterday. And I saw about the fire, and I hunted all over for my mama and finally I found Elena this afternoon. But she don’t know where Mama is. Except maybe in the hospital where they took the people who was hurt in the fire.”

“Maybe the fire fighters found Katterina,” I offered. “Maybe she’s with DCFS. Have you tried calling them?”

“I can’t call them. They just want to take my baby from me, say I’m an unfit mother.” She started to cry, her long red earrings bobbing into her shoulders.

“There, there.” Elena put a soothing arm around her shoulders. “That’s what we need you for, Vicki. We need someone who knows how to talk to all these people, who can handle it without getting Cerise or Zerlina in trouble.”

It didn’t sound to me as though there was much hope that Katterina had made it through the fire. If a baby had been found there, surely the newspapers would have trumpeted it.

“I’m sorry,” I said helplessly to Cerise. “Sorry about Katterina. But you really are the best person to go to the police and to DCFS—you’re her mother, you’re the only one with a right to ask questions.”

She kept crying without looking up at me. I tried explaining that the police were not going to care that Zerlina had had a baby in the room with her, that they couldn’t keep her from renting a room ever again, but it washed over both Cerise and Elena like the tide.

I thought of the woman I’d talked to at the Emergency Housing Bureau, the despair she’d shared with the other people in the room, the few rooms and the many people to fill them. If you were that helpless, the police might become another bureaucratic menace, ready to use their power to keep you out of a place to live.

“Okay,” I finally said. “I’ll make some calls for you tomorrow.”

Elena took her hand from Cerise’s shoulder and came over to where I was sitting in the armchair. “That’s my girl. I knew I could count on you. I knew you was too much your ma’s daughter to say no to a fellow human being in trouble.”

“Right,” I agreed sourly. I looked at the clock on the bookshelves. It was ten. Even if I sent Elena over to the Windsor Arms this late she couldn’t take Cerise with her. Gritting my teeth, I pulled out the sofa bed, dug around in my drawers for a long T-shirt for Cerise to sleep in, and locked myself in my bedroom.