“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.
9
The Lady Is Indisposed
I woke up early the next morning. My dreams had been of crying babies and fires; I’d jerked awake twice feeling suffocated by flames. When I got out of bed it was again with the feeling that someone had dumped a load of gravel in my head, this time without bothering to crush it too fine.
It was only six. Cerise and Elena were still asleep on the sofa bed, Cerise lying spread-eagled on her stomach, Elena on her back snoring. I felt like a captive in my own home, unable to get to my books or television, but if I woke them, it would be worse. I shut the door softly, put on my jeans, and went down the back stairs. It was too early to wake up Mr. Contreras to take the dog for a run. And even though exercise may be the best cure for a sandy head, running sounded like the last thing I was in the mood for.
I walked the half mile to the Belmont Diner, open twenty-four hours a day, and had the cholesterol special, pancakes with butter and a big order of bacon. I lingered as long as I could, following the saga of the search for the Bears new stadium through all three papers, even taking in every word on the latest zoning scandal to beset the mayor’s chief supporters. It’s boring to read about zoning scandals because their revelation never has any impact on election results, so I usually skip them.
Around eight I finally trudged back to my apartment. Life was stirring on Racine Avenue as people headed for work. When I got to my building the banker was leaving for the day, his thick brown hair lacquered to his head.
“Hi,” I said brightly as we passed. “Just getting off the night shift. Have a good day.”
He pretended not to hear me, crossing to the east side of the street as I spoke. Try to be neighborly and you only get stiffed for your pains.
Like LBJ or the Duke of Wellington, Elena could sleep anywhere, anytime. When I opened the kitchen door I could hear her snores oozing from the living room. I also caught my favorite smell, cigarette smoke. Cerise was at the dining-room table, staring moodily at nothing, chain-smoking.
“Good morning,” I said as politely as I could. “I know you’re really upset about your baby, but please don’t smoke in here.”
She shot me a hostile look but stubbed her cigarette out in the saucer she’d been using. I took it to the kitchen and tried to scrub the tobacco stains from it. After a few minutes she followed me in and slumped herself at the table. I offered her breakfast but she wanted only coffee. I put water on to boil and got the beans out of the freezer.
“What floor did your mother live on?”
She looked at me blankly and rubbed her bare arms.
“At the Indiana Arms. I’ll probably need that information if someone is going to search for Katterina.”
“Fifth floor,” she answered after another long pause. “Five twenty-two. It was hard on her on account of the elevator didn’t work, but she couldn’t get nothing lower down.”
“When did you leave the baby with your mother?”
Again she stared at me, but this time I thought there was an element of calculation in her gaze. “We did it Wednesday. Before we left town.” She rubbed her arms some more. “It’s too cold in here. I need to smoke.”
It felt warm to me, but I was dressed; she was still in the outsized T-shirt I’d lent her. I went into my bedroom and got a jacket. She put it on but continued to rub her arms.
I ground the beans and poured boiling water through them. “What time Wednesday?”
“You trying to say I saw the fire and shouldn’ta left my baby?” Her tone was sullen but her eyes were still watchful.
I poured more water into the beans and tried to muster some empathy. Her baby was almost certainly dead. She was with a stranger and a white woman at that. She was terrified of the institutions of law and society and I was conversant with them, so to her I was part of them. She wanted to smoke and I wouldn’t let her.
Thinking about all this didn’t make me feel like running over to embrace her, but it did help me stifle the more extreme expressions of impatience. “Someone set that fir
e,” I said carefully. “Someone hurt your mother and may have hurt your baby. If you were there Wednesday night, you might have seen the arsonist. Maybe he-or she-or they-were hanging around. If you saw someone, we could give the police a description, something to start an investigation with.”
She shook her head violently. “I didn’t see no one. We go there at three in the afternoon. We give Katterina to my mama. We leave for Wisconsin. Okay?”
“Okay.” I poured out coffee for her. “Why are these questions upsetting you so much?”
She was trembling. She took the mug with both hands to steady it. “You acting like I did something bad, like it be my fault my baby’s hurt.”
“No, Cerise, not at all. I’m really sorry if that’s how I sounded. I don’t mean that at all.” I tried to smile. “I’m a detective, you know. I ask questions for a living. It’s a hard habit to break.”
She buried her face in the mug and didn’t answer me. I gave it up and went into my bedroom. The bed was still unmade. My running clothes had fallen on the floor at the end when I’d kicked the covers off in the night. Untangling my sweats from the bedclothes, I stuffed them into the closet and pulled the covers back up onto the bed. The room wasn’t exactly ready for House Beautiful, but it was all the housekeeping I was in the humor for.
I lay on the bed and tried to remember the name of the insurance man I’d met at the Indiana Arms on Thursday. It was a bird; that had struck me particularly at the time because his bright-eyed curiosity had made him seem birdlike. I shut my eyes and let my mind drift. Robin. That was it. I couldn’t delve the last name from my memory hole, but Robin would get me to him.
I pulled the phone from the bedside table and put it on my stomach to dial. When the Ajax operator connected me with the arson and fraud division, I asked the cheery receptionist for Robin.
“He’s right here-I’ll put him on for you.”
The phone banged in my ear-she must have dropped the receiver-then I got a tenor. “Robin Bessinger here.”
Bessinger. Of course. “Robin, it’s V. I. Warshawski. I met you at the Indiana Arms last week when you were digging through the rubble there.”
“V.I. You the detective?”
“Uh-huh.” I sat up and put the phone back on the bedside table. “You said if anybody’s been killed, the police would have had a homicide investigation set up. So I assume everybody was rescued?”
“As far as I know.” I’d forgotten how cautious he was. A bird making sure the worm wasn’t really a rifle barrel. “You know anything to the contrary?”
“A baby was staying there Wednesday night. Staying with its grandmother on the fifth floor.” He started to interrupt and I said hastily, “I know, I know. Against the rules. The grandmother has disappeared-maybe one of the smoke victims-so I don’t know if they found the baby or not.”
“A baby in there. Sweet Jesus, no… I don’t know anything about it, but I’ll call someone at the police and get back to you. Was it your friend? The one you said had been burned out?”
I’d forgotten referring to Elena as my friend. “No, not her. The grandmother was sort of a friend of hers, though, and the mother just got back into town and found her little girl and her own mama both missing. She’s pretty distraught.” Or hostile. Or fried.
“Okay.” He fumbled around for a moment. “I’m just real sorry. I’ll call you back in a couple of minutes.”
I gave him my phone number and hung up. I looked distastefully at my bedroom. Because I’m there only to sleep I don’t usually pay much attention to it. The queen-size bed takes up a good deal of the available space. Since the closet is large I keep the dresser in there to have enough room to walk around, but it still makes me feel hemmed in to spend much time there during the day. More than ever I resented Elena’s snoring presence down the hall, pinning me to one room in my own home.
I paced the short distance from the door to the head of the bed a few times but I kept banging my shin on the bedstead, I couldn’t possibly practice my singing in these quarters, especially not with Cerise in the kitchen. Finally I lay on the floor between the window and the bed and did leg lifts. After forty or so with each leg Robin called back. He sounded subdued.
“V. I. Warshawski?” He stumbled a bit on my last name. “I-uh, I’ve been talking with the police. They say the fire department didn’t bring out any children from that place last week. Are you sure the baby was in there?”
I hesitated. “Reasonably sure. I can’t swear to it, though, because I don’t know any of the people involved.”
“They’re going to send a team out to comb the rubble, to see if they can find any, well, any remains. They’d like you to be available to come downtown to meet with them, though.”
I promised to check in with my answering service every hour if I left my apartment. Slowly hanging up the phone, I wondered what to say to Cerise. As I walked to the door Elena pounded on the other side.
“Yoo-hoo! Vicki! Victoria, I mean. Poor little Cerise isn’t feeling too hot. Can you come out and help me settle her upset tummy?”
Poor little Cerise had vomited all over the kitchen table. Elena, at her brightest as she enjoyed the drama, wiped her face with a damp towel while I cleaned up the mess.
“It’s the shock, you know,” my aunt cooed. “She’s worried sick about her baby.”
I looked at the younger woman narrowly. She was sick, ail right, but I was beginning to think a little more than shock underlay her behavior.
“I think we’ll have a doctor take a look at her,” I said. “Help me get her dressed and down to my car.”
“No doctor,” Cerise said thickly. “I’m not seeing no doctor.”
“Yes, you are,” I snapped. “This isn’t a one-woman social agency. You just threw up all over my kitchen and I’m not spending the day nursing you.”
“No doctor, no doctor!” Cerise screamed.
“She really doesn’t want to go, Vicki,” Elena stage-whispered at me.
“I can see she doesn’t want to go,” I said brittlely. “Just put her clothes on while I hold her arms still. And please don’t call me Vicki. It’s not a name I care for much.”
“I know, I know, sweetie,” Elena promised hastily, “It keeps slipping my mind.”
Since Gabriella had driven home the point forcefully to Elena all through my childhood-“I didn’t name her for Victor Emmanuel to have people talk to her as though she were a silly ingenue”-I didn’t see how Elena could have forgotten, but this wasn’t the time to argue the point.
Dressing Cerise made me glad I hadn’t chosen nursing in a mental hospital as my career. She fought against my hold, screaming and thrashing around in the kitchen chair. I’m in good shape, but she strained my muscles to the utmost. At one point she raked open my left arm with a long fingernail. I somehow managed to hang on to her.
Elena worked with an ineffectuality that brought me close to the screaming point myself. She put Cerise’s underpants on backwards and only managed to slide her skirt on after a good fifteen minutes of work.
“Just do her shoes,” I panted. “She can wear the T-shirt on top. My keys are in the living room. I left them on the coffee table. Unlock the dead bolts.”
I tried to explain which key worked which lock, but gave it up as Elena grew more confused. By some miracle she managed to undo them in less than an hour. Cerise had stopped fighting me by then. She hunched limply over the kitchen table sobbing to herself and offered no resistance as I escorted her out the door. I took the keys from Elena.
“You’d best get your bag. I’m going to drop you off at your new place as soon as Cerise has seen the doctor.”
Elena tried to put up a fight of her own, but I was past any feelings of guilt. I kept Cerise propped up against the wall and repeated my demand. My aunt finally shuffled back into my apartment. After an absence long enough that I wondered if she was back at the Black Label, she came out again. She’d taken a shower; her graying hair hung around her head in damp r
inglets, but her makeup was complete and, for once, on target. The violet nightgown still hung out the side of the duffel bag. She let it trail along the floor as she followed me down the stairs.
10
A Little Help from My Friends
Lotty Herschel’s storefront clinic is about three miles from my apartment, near the corner of Damen and Irving Park. During the short drive Cerise threw up again in the backseat, then started shivering uncontrollably. I thought I might kill Elena, who knelt on the front seat watching Cerise and giving me minute-by-minute updates on what she was doing.
I jerked the car to a stop next to a fireplug in front of the clinic and jogged inside. The small waiting room, painted to look like the African veldt, was packed with the usual assortment of wailing infants and squabbling children. Mrs. Coltrain was keeping order, handling the phone and typing records with her usual calm. I sometimes suggest to Lotty that she found Mrs. Coltrain in a catalog offering to supply offices with old-fashioned grandmothers-not only does she have nine grandchildren, but she wears her silvery hair in a bun.
“Miss Warshawski.” She beamed at me. “Good to see you. Do you need to talk to Dr. Herschel?”
“Rather urgently. I have a young woman in my car who’s been throwing up and seems now to be going into shock. Can you ask Lotty if she’d see her now if I brought her in, or if I should take her to the hospital?”
Mrs. Coltrain refused to call Lotty or me by our first names-we gave up urging them on her long ago. She relayed my message to Carol Alvarado, the clinic nurse, and after a couple of minutes Carol came out to help me bring Cerise in. Cerise’s skin was cold. It felt thick, like wet plastic, not at all like living tissue. She was conscious enough to walk if we supported her, but her breathing was shallow and her eyes were rolling.
A murmur of resentment swelled around us as we brought Cerise past the waiting room into the examining area-people who’ve been waiting an hour or more for the doctor don’t appreciate line jumpers. Carol got Cerise onto a table and wrapped her in a blanket. Lotty swept in a few minutes later.
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