On one side of the floor, a team of women were folding banners into packing crates. As luck had it, Larry Ballatra, the foreman, was right in front of me, barking orders to the crew. I passed him without pausing, going straight to the iron stairs. He glanced at me but didn’t seem to really notice me, and I ran up to the work floor.
Rose was at her station, working this time on an American flag, outsize, like the one hanging over the shop floor. The soft fabric was falling from her machine into a wooden box: the U.S. flag must not touch the ground. I squatted next to her so that she could see my face.
She gasped and turned pale. “You, what are you doing here?”
“I’m worried, Rose. Worried about you, and about Josie. She said you had to take a second job, and you left her in charge of the boys and the baby.”
“Someone has to help out. You think Julia can do it? She won’t.”
“You said you want Josie to go to college. It’s too much responsibility for her, at fifteen, and, besides, it makes it hard for her to study.”
Her lips tightened in anger. “You think you mean well, but you know nothing about life down here. And don’t tell me a story about growing up here, because you still know nothing, anyway.”
“Maybe not, Rose, but I know something about what it takes to leave here to go to college. If you can’t be with Josie, making sure she gets her homework done, what’s she going to do? If she gets frustrated with the responsibility, she could start cruising the streets, she could come home with another baby for you to look after. What job is important enough for that?”
Anger and anguish chased each other across her face. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t have a mother’s heart? I have to take this other job. I have to. And if Mr. Zamar, if he sees you here, he will fire me anyway from this job, then I have nothing for my children, so leave before you destroy my whole life.”
“Rose, what changed overnight? Monday, you needed me to find the plant saboteurs; today, you’re scared of me.”
Her face was contracted in torment, but her hands kept steadily feeding fabric through the machine. “Go, now! Or I will yell for help.”
I didn’t have any choice except to leave. Back in my car, I didn’t go anywhere for a while. What had changed in three days? Me offending her wouldn’t have caused this agonized outburst. It had to be something else, some threat Zamar or the foreman had used against her.
What were they making her do? I couldn’t imagine, or I could imagine lurid things, but not likely things-you know, prostitution rings, that kind of misery. But what hold could they have on Rose Dorrado? Her need to keep working, I suppose. Perhaps there was some connection to the boxes going into the panel truck, but the truck had left while I was in the plant, and I had no idea how to track it.
Finally, I put the car into gear and drove slowly down the avenue to Mt. Ararat Church of Holiness, at Ninety-first and Houston-just a block south of the house where I grew up. I came at the church from Ninety-first-I didn’t want to see the wrecked tree in my mother’s front garden again.
In a neighborhood where twenty people with Bibles and an empty storefront constitute a church, I hadn’t known what to expect, but Mt. Ararat was big enough to have an actual building, with a steeple and a few stained-glass windows. The church was locked, but a sign on the door listed the hours for services (Wednesday choir practice, Thursday evening Bible study, Friday AA meetings, and on Sundays, Sunday school and church) along with Pastor Robert Andrés’s phone numbers.
The first number turned out to be his home, where I got an answering machine. The second number, to my surprise, connected me to a construction company. I asked for Andrés, somewhat uncertainly, and was told he was out on a job.
“A funeral, you mean?”
“A construction job. He works for us three days a week. If you need to reach him, I can give the foreman your phone number.”
The woman wouldn’t direct me to the jobsite, so I gave her my cell phone number. A few minutes later, Andrés called back. Construction noise at his end made conversation difficult; he had trouble understanding who I was or what I wanted, but “Billy the Kid,” “Josie Dorrado,” and “girls’ basketball” seemed to get through, and he gave me the address where he was working, over at Eighty-ninth and Buffalo.
Four town houses were going up in the middle of a long, empty block. The little boxes, rising out of the rubble of the neighborhood, had a kind of gallant optimism about them, splashes of hope against the general gray of the area.
One house seemed close to completion: someone was painting trim, a couple of guys were on the roof. I took a hard hat from my trunk-I keep one handy because of all the industrial sites I visit-and walked over to the trim painter. He didn’t look up from his work until I called out to him; when I asked for Robert Andrés, he pointed his brush at the next building over and went back to work without speaking.
No one was outside the second house, but I could hear a power saw and loud shouting from within. I picked my way around rusted pipe and wedges of concrete, the crumbling remains of whatever had stood here before, and climbed over the ledge through the open hole where the front door would be.
A stairwell rose in front of me, the risers fresh sawn, the nailheads new and shiny. I could hear desultory hammering from the room beyond me, but I followed the sound of shouting up the stairs. All around me were open joists, the skeleton of the house. In front of me, three men were about to lift a piece of drywall into place. They bent and chanted a countdown in unison in Spanish. On “cero” they started lifting and walking the wallboard into place. It was heavy work; I could see trapeziuses quivering even on this muscular crew. As soon as the wallboard was up, two more men jumped to either end and began hammering it home. Only then did I step forward to ask for Pastor Andrés.
“Roberto,” one of the guys bellowed, “lady here asking for you.”
Andrés stepped through the open area that would eventually be another wall. I wouldn’t have known him in his hard hat and equipment apron, but he apparently recognized me from our encounter on Tuesday outside Fly the Flag-as soon as he saw me, he turned and went back to the other room. At first, I thought he was running away from me, but apparently he was merely telling the foreman that he’d be taking a break, because he came back a minute later without the apron and gestured to me to go back down the stairs.
Buffalo Avenue was relatively quiet in the middle of the afternoon. A woman with a pair of toddlers was heading toward us, pushing a shopping cart full of laundry, and on the far corner two men were having a heated exchange. They were listing so precariously I didn’t think they’d be able to connect if they came to blows. The real action in South Chicago heats up as the sun goes down.
“You are the detective, I think, but I’ve forgotten your name.” One on one, Andrés’s voice was soft, his accent barely noticeable.
“V. I. Warshawski. Do you do counseling at jobsites in the neighborhood, Pastor?”
He shrugged. “A small church like mine, it cannot pay my full wage as a pastor, so I do a little electrical work to make ends meet. Jesus was a carpenter; I am content in His footsteps.”
“I was at By-Smart yesterday morning and attended the service. Your sermon certainly electrified the congregation. Were you trying to give Billy’s grandfather a lecture on unions?”
Andrés smiled. “If I start preaching about unions, the next thing I know I’ve invited pickets to jobsites like this one. But I know that’s what the old one believes, and that poor Billy, who wants only to do good in the world, had a fight with his family because of what I said. I tried to call the grandfather, but he wouldn’t speak to me.”
“What were you preaching about, then?” I asked.
He spread his hands. “Only what I said-the need for all people to be treated with respect. I thought that was a safe and simple message for such men, but apparently it was not. This neighborhood is in pain, Sister Warshawski; it is like the valley of dry bones. We need the Spir
it to rain down on us and clothe our bones with flesh and animate them with spirit, but the sons of men must do their part.”
The words were spoken in a conversational tone; this wasn’t prayer or preaching or public show, just the facts as he saw them.
“Agreed. What concrete things should the sons and daughters of women and men do?”
He pursed his lips, considering. “Provide jobs for those who need work. Treat workers with respect. Pay them a living wage. It is a simple thing, really. Is that why you came to find me today? Because Billy’s father and grandfather are searching for hidden meanings? I am not educated enough to speak in codes or riddles.”
“Billy was very upset yesterday morning because of the way his father and grandfather reacted to you. He chose not to go home last night. His father wanted to know if Billy is staying with you.”
“So you are working for the family now, for the Bysen family?”
I started to deny it, reflexively, and then realized that, of course, yes, I was working for the Bysen family. Why should that make me feel ashamed? If things kept on at the current rate, the whole country would be working for By-Smart within the decade.
“I told Billy’s father I’d try to locate him down here, yes.”
Andrés shook his head. “I think if Billy does not want to talk to his father right now, that is his right. He is trying to grow up, to think of himself as a man, not a boy. It will do his parents no harm if he stays away from home for a few nights.”
“Is he staying with you?” I asked bluntly.
When Andrés turned as if to walk back into the house, I quickly added, “I won’t tell the family, if he really doesn’t want them to know, but I’d like to hear it from him in person first. The other thing is, they think he has come to you. Whether I tell them I can’t find him, or that he’s safe but wants to be left alone, they have the resources to make your life difficult.”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “Jesus did not count any difficulties as a reason to turn back from the way to the Cross, and I pledged myself long ago to follow in His steps.”
“That’s admirable, but if they send the Chicago police, or the FBI, or a private security firm, to break down your door, will that be the best thing for Billy, or for the members of your church, who count on you?”
That made him turn back to me, with a glimmer of a smile. “Sister Warshawski, you are a good debater, you make a good point. Perhaps I do know now where is Billy, but perhaps I do not, and if I do know I can’t tell someone who works for his father because my duty is to Billy. But-by five o’clock, if the FBI breaks down my door, they will find only my cat Lazarus.”
“I’m certainly plenty busy between now and five; I won’t have time to call the family before then.”
He bowed his head in a courtly fashion and started back to the house. I walked with him. “Before you go back inside, can you tell me anything about Fly the Flag? Did Frank Zamar explain to you why he wouldn’t call the police about the sabotage in his plant?”
Andrés shook his head again. “It will be a good thing for you to work with the girls on their basketball, instead of all these other matters.”
It was a pretty stinging slap in the face. “All these other matters are directly connected to the girls and their basketball, Pastor. Rose Dorrado is a member of your church, so you must know how worried she is about losing her job. Her kid Josie plays on my team-she took me home to her mother, who asked me to investigate the sabotage. It really is a simple story, Pastor.”
“South Chicago is full of simple stories, isn’t it, each beginning in poverty and ending in death.”
This time he sounded pompous, not poetic or natural; I ignored the comment. “And now something has gone even more amiss. Rose has taken a second job, one that keeps her away from her children in the evening. It’s not just that her children need her, but I have the feeling she was coerced into taking this job, whatever it is. You’re her pastor; can’t you find out what the problem is?”
“I cannot force anyone to confide in me against their wishes. And she has two daughters who are old enough to look after the house. I know in the ideal world that you live in, girls of fifteen and sixteen should have a mother’s supervision, but down here girls that age are considered grown up.”
I was getting extremely tired of people acting like South Chicago was a different planet, one that I couldn’t possibly comprehend. “Girls of fifteen should not become mothers, whether they are in South Chicago or Barrington Hills. Do you know that every baby a teenage girl has chops her lifetime earning potential by fifty percent? Julia already has a baby. I don’t think it will help her or Rose or even Josie, if Josie starts running around the streets and has one of her own.”
“It is necessary for these girls to put their trust in Jesus, and to keep their lives pure for their husbands.”
“It would be lovely if they did, but they don’t. And since you know that as well as I do, it would be really great if you stopped telling them not to use contraceptives.”
His mouth tightened. “Children are a gift of the Lord. You may think you mean well, but your ideas come from a bad way of thinking. You are a woman, and unmarried, so you don’t know about these matters. You concentrate on teaching these girls to play basketball and do not injure their immortal souls. I think it is better-”
He broke off to look over my shoulder at someone behind me. I turned to see a young man ambling toward us along Ninety-first Street. I didn’t recognize his sullen pretty-boy face, but something about him did seem vaguely familiar. Andrés clearly knew him: the pastor called out something in Spanish, so rapidly I couldn’t follow it, although I did hear him asking “why” and tell him not to come here, to leave. The younger man stared sullenly at Andrés, but finally hunched a shoulder and sauntered back the way he’d come.
“Chavo banda!” Andrés muttered.
That much I understood from my days with the public defender. “Is he a punk? I’ve seen him around, but I can’t think where. What’s his name?”
“His name doesn’t matter, because he is only that: a punk one sees around, taking from jobsites, or even doing little jobs for bigger thugs. I don’t want him at this jobsite. Which I must return to.”
“Tell Billy to call me,” I shouted to his back. “Before the end of the day, so I can pass the word on to his parents.” Although, frankly, in the mood I was in, I’d be happy to see the cops break down the minister’s damn door.
He flung out a hand at me, a wave of some kind-assent, dismissal?-I couldn’t tell, because he continued into the house, an effective brush-off. He knew a lot, Pastor Andrés did, about Billy, about the chavos banda of the neighborhood, about Fly the Flag, most of all about right and wrong: it was better for me to mind my own business, he’d said, not to meddle with any of it, which meant to me that he knew why Frank Zamar didn’t want the police involved in exploring the sabotage at the plant.
I walked back to my own car. Should I leave it alone? I should. I didn’t have the time or the desire to look into it. And maybe if Andrés hadn’t told me an unmarried woman shouldn’t know or talk about sex, I would have left it alone. I tripped on a piece of concrete and did a kind of cartwheel to keep from going over completely.
I wished my Spanish were better. It’s similar to Italian, so I can follow it, but I don’t speak Italian often enough these days for either language to stay fresh in my mind. I had a feeling Andrés knew this chavo banda better than just from seeing him around the neighborhood; I had a feeling Andrés specifically didn’t want me to see him with this chavo. Next week, I’d make it a little project, to try to find out who this particular punk was.
At practice that afternoon, I couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to the game. Josie, in particular, was like a cat on a hot shovel. I figured the load of domestic responsibilities her mother had dumped on her must be getting to her, but it didn’t make working with her easier. I called a halt to scrimmage twenty minutes early and could hardly wai
t for them to get out of the showers before taking off myself.
Billy the Kid phoned me as I was leaving Coach McFarlane’s house. He wouldn’t tell me where he was; in fact, he would barely talk to me at all.
“I thought I could trust you, Ms. War-sha-sky, but then you go and start working for my father, and on top of that you bothered Pastor Andrés. I’m an adult, I can take care of myself. You have to promise to stop looking for me.”
“I can’t make such a sweeping promise, Billy. If you don’t want your dad to know where you are, I guess that’s a reasonable request, as long as I can assure him you’re not being held somewhere against your will.”
His breath came heavily over the phone to me. “I haven’t been kidnapped or anything like that. Now promise me.”
“I’m tired enough of all the Bysens to be willing to run an ad in the Herald-Star promising never to talk to any of you again about each other or anything else.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke? I don’t think this is very funny. I just want you to tell my dad that I’m staying with friends, and if he sends anyone else looking for me I’m going to start calling shareholders.”
“Calling shareholders?” I repeated blankly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That’s my whole message.”
“Before you hang up, you ought to remember something about your cell phone: it puts out a GSM signal. A bigger, richer detective agency than mine would have equipment to track you. As would the FBI.”
He was silent for a moment. In the background, I could hear sirens, and a baby crying: the sounds of the South Side.
“Thank you for the tip, Ms. War-sha-sky,” he finally said in a careful voice. “Maybe I misjudged you.”
Fire Sale Page 13
