Fire Sale

by Sara Paretsky

  “About fifteen husbands down here coulda taken him out anytime over the last ten years-the English broad wasn’t the only piece of ta-well, you know, friend, he kept tucked in that cab of his. Against the law, of course, and against company policy, but-” He shrugged expressively.

  “Was he seeing anyone else? Marcena doesn’t have an angry husband who’d go after Romeo-Bron, I mean.” I thought uneasily about Morrell, but that was ridiculous-even if I could picture him mad enough to beat up a man over a woman, even if I could picture him doing it over Marcena, I couldn’t picture him doing it with his bad leg.

  The men made a few suggestive comments about some of their acquaintances, but they agreed in the end that Marcena was Romeo’s first fling in almost a year. “His girl was getting upset, all the harassing the kids in school gave her. Finally, he promised the missus he’d stop, but, what I hear, this English pus-English lady, she was so classy and so exotic, he couldn’t resist.”

  I remembered young Mr. William’s eagerness to find out who was squiring Marcena around the South Side. “Did Grobian know about her?”

  “Probably not,” put in the handlebar mustache. “Bron wouldn’t’ve still been driving if Pat knew.”

  “Figured that was what that Mexican punk was talking to Bron about,” the Harley jacket said.

  My heart skipped a beat. “What Mexican punk?”

  “Don’t know his name. He’s always hanging around jobsites down here, seeing what he can steal or get away with. My son, he goes to Bertha Palmer, he pointed them out to me, Bron and the Mexican. Last week, week before, I don’t remember, I was picking my boy up after a game-see, he plays football at the high school-and there was this punk in the parking lot, and there was Bron and the English lady. Punk probably figured Bron would slip him a few bucks not to tell the company he had the lady in his cab with him.”

  One of the other guys guffawed and said, “Probably thought Bron would pay him not to tell his old lady. I’d be a hell of a lot more scared of Sandra Czernin than Pat Grobian.”

  “Me, too.” I grinned, although I was thinking about Freddy, the chavo who hung around jobsites looking for what he could finagle. Blackmail, that fit Freddy’s unattractive profile. It made a certain kind of sense. But would Freddy have attacked Bron and Marcena? Maybe Romeo-Bron, I really should call him by his name-maybe Bron threatened to have him arrested for blackmail and Freddy lost his head?

  “Can’t see Bron paying blackmail to anyone,” a third trucker drawled.

  “So maybe the punk squealed,” the mustache said. “Because Grobian and Czernin were sure going at it Monday afternoon.”

  “Fighting?” My eyebrows shot up.

  “Arguing,” he amplified. “I was waiting on my clearance, and Bron was in there, they were shouting at each other a good fifteen minutes.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know-Bron wanted help with his daughter’s hospital bills.”

  “From Grobian?” Nolan in the Harley jacket snorted. “Billy is probably the only person in the world who could believe Grobian would give a rat’s ass about someone’s girl. Not that it wasn’t a hell of a blow what happened to Czernin’s kid, but sitting good with the Bysen family, that’s what Grobian thinks about first, last, and foremost. And helping pay some guy’s hospital bills, he knows the Bysens would never sit still for that-even though Czernin had twenty-plus years with the company!”

  “They may have been fighting when Czernin went in, but they must’ve kissed and made up because Czernin was crowing like a rooster when he got into his rig,” the third driver said.

  “He didn’t say anything?” I asked.

  “Just that he might have a winning ticket.”

  “Winning ticket?” I repeated. “Lottery ticket, is that what he meant?”

  “Oh, he was carrying on like a fool,” the handlebar said. “I asked him the same thing, and he said, ‘Yeah, the lottery of life.’”

  “Lottery of death is what it turned out to be,” Nolan said somberly.

  Everyone was quiet for a moment, remembering that Bron had died. I waited for the silent tension in the men to ease before asking if they knew where Billy the Kid was.

  “Not here. Ain’t seen him all week, come to think of it. Maybe he went back to Rolling Meadows.”

  “No,” I said. “He’s disappeared. The family has a big detective agency out looking for him.”

  The trio looked at each other wide-eyed. This was clearly news to them, and welcome as a fresh source of gossip, although the Harley jacket said the Kid had just been there.

  “Today?” I said.

  “Nope. Last time I was in-that’d be Monday afternoon. Something was eating him, but I didn’t know he’d have the guts to walk out on the family.”

  None of the three had any ideas, about what was eating Billy, or where he might have run to. In the middle of a lively discussion about the merits of Vegas over Miami if you were running away from home, Grobian’s door opened. To my surprise, it was young Mr. William who emerged, with Aunt Jacqui at his elbow, businesslike today in a taupe military-style jacket, with a bias-cut silk skirt in the same shade twirling around her knees.

  “Our lucky week,” the Harley jacket muttered. “Grobian must be on the hot seat for that prick to come down here twice in a row.”

  None of the men spoke directly to William. Some of them might have known Mr. William when he was Billy’s age, but he’d probably never inspired the kind of lively banter the men treated his son to.

  “You men waiting on your dispatch clearances? You can go on in,” William said curtly.

  He passed by without noticing me-I guess my hard hat and torn pants made me look like one of the men-but Aunt Jacqui wasn’t so oblivious. “Are you hoping to get Patrick to take you on as a driver? We’re down a man, with Bron Czernin dead.”

  The trio of truckers paused outside Grobian’s open door. The mustache frowned at her remark, but none of them risked a comment.

  “You are the queen of tact, aren’t you?” I said. “While we’re all having a good time, you’re down more than a driver. Aren’t you short a supplier, too?”

  William squinted at me, trying to place me. “Oh. The Polish detective. What are you doing here?”

  “Detecting. What are you doing about your flag sheets and towels that Fly the Flag was producing for you?”

  “What do you know about those?” William demanded.

  “That he signed a contract and then realized he couldn’t meet the price and came back to renegotiate.”

  Jacqui produced a dazzling smile. “We never, never renegotiate our contracts. It’s Daddy Bysen’s very first law of business. I did tell the man that-what was his name, William? Anyway, it doesn’t matter-I told him that, and he finally agreed he would meet the price we’d all agreed on. We were supposed to take delivery of the first order last week, but, fortunately, we had a backup supplier, so we’re only five days behind schedule.”

  “Backup supplier?” I echoed. “Is this the person who’s been selling sheets through the churches in South Chicago?”

  Jacqui laughed, the malicious laugh she gave whenever someone in the Bysen family was looking foolish. “Someone very, very different, Ms. Polish Detective; if you’re investigating those sheets, I think you’ll find yourself at a dead end.”

  Mr. William looked at her reprovingly, but said, “I always maintained Zamar was unreliable. Father keeps saying we should give South Side businesses priority just because he grew up down here. Nothing will convince him they can’t meet the production schedules they agree to.”

  “It is pretty darn unreliable to die in the fire that destroys your plant,” I said.

  Mr. William glared at me. “Who talked to you, anyway, about his contract with us?”

  “I’m a detective, Mr. Bysen. I ask questions and people answer them. Sometimes they even tell me the truth. Speaking of which, you were here Monday afternoon, and so was your son.”

  “Billy?”

  “You
have other sons? I don’t know how you two missed each other. You really didn’t see him?”

  William pressed his lips together. “What time was he here?”

  “About this same time. Four-thirty, five. I figure you said something to him that made him decide to take off.”

  “You figure wrong. If I’d known he was here-damn it, you’d think I was one of the stock clerks, not the CFO of this company. No one tells me one damn thing about what’s going on.”

  He pushed open Grobian’s door. “Grobian? Why in hell didn’t you tell me Billy was here Monday afternoon?”

  The truckers crowded in front of Grobian’s desk backed away so that William could look directly at the warehouse manager. Grobian was startled, that much was clear from his expression.

  “Didn’t see him, Chief. He cleared out his locker, but you already know that. He must have come in just to do that.”

  William frowned some more, but decided to let it go at that; he came back out to the hall to resume his attack on me. “Who hired you to look at Fly the Flag’s business? Zamar didn’t leave anything but debts.”

  “Now, how do you know that?” I said. “Busy man like you, CFO of America’s fifth-biggest company, and you have time to look into one tiny supplier?”

  “Attention to detail makes us successful,” William said stiffly. “Is there any idea of foul play in that fire?”

  “Arson always makes one suspect foul play,” I said, equally stiff.

  “Arson?” Jacqui managed to widen her dark eyes without wrinkling her forehead. “I heard it was faulty wiring. Who told you arson?”

  “Why does it matter to you?” I said. “I thought you had your new supplier hard at work and everything.”

  “If someone is setting fires in South Chicago companies, it affects us; we’re the biggest company down here, we could be vulnerable, too.” Mr. William tried to sound stern but only managed peevish. “So I need to know who told you it was arson.”

  “Word gets around in a small community,” I said vaguely. “Everyone knows each other. I’d think your pit bulls from Carnifice would have picked up the story. After all, they’re staking out Billy’s pastor; they must have talked to the people he knows.”

  “They tried,” Aunt Jacqui started to say at the same time William demanded how I knew Carnifice was watching Andrés.

  “Now, that’s easy. Strangers stand out down here. Too many vacant lots, so you know when someone is lurking, and too many people who don’t have jobs, so they spend their days chilling on the streets. What did your guys find out about Billy’s car?”

  “By the time we got to it, it had been stripped,” William said shortly. “Tires, radio, even the front seat. Why didn’t you let me know right away you’d found it? I had to learn about that from that black policeman who acts like he’s in charge down there.”

  “That would be Commander Rawlings, and he acts like he’s in charge because he is. As for why I didn’t call you, too much was going on for me to think about you-like hiking two miles across the marsh to find your dead driver. Events happened too fast for me to think of calling you.”

  “What did you find in the car?” Jacqui asked.

  “You wondering if I ran off with Billy’s stock portfolio?” I asked. “He left a couple of books in the trunk. Violence of Love, the one by the murdered archbishop, and”-I shut my eyes, conjuring the titles I’d seen in the dark-“Rich Christians and Poverty, something like that.”

  “Oh, yes.” Jacqui rolled her eyes. “Rich Christians in the Age of Hunger. Billy read us so many passages at dinner I had to become anorexic-no decent person could keep eating, according to him, with children dying all over the place. Did you pick up any papers, thinking they might be a stock portfolio?”

  I looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Rose Dorrado told me you’d gone through her books, even shaking her Bible so that all her page markers fell out. What did Billy run off with?”

  “Nothing that I know of,” William said, looking with annoyance at his sister-in-law. “We were hoping he might have left some kind of clue about his plans. He’d given away his cell phone and his car, which makes him hard to trace. If you know anything about him, Ms.-uh-you would do well to tell me.”

  “I know,” I said, bored. “Or I’ll never eat lunch in this town again.”

  “Don’t treat it like a joke,” he warned me. “My family has a lot of power in Chicago.”

  “And Congress and everywhere else,” I agreed.

  He glared at me, but strode down the corridor without answering. Jacqui clicked along next to him in her high heels, her bias-cut skirt swirling around her knees in a very feminine way. I felt acutely aware of my torn trousers and dirty parka.

  35 Why, Freddy, What a Surprise!

  The truckers didn’t take long with Grobian. When they came back out, the Harley driver gave me a wink and a thumbs-up, which sent me in to see the manager with a lighter heart. Is it such a bad thing to depend on the kindness of strangers?

  Grobian was talking on the phone while signing papers. His buzz cut was still at a military length-to keep it like that he had to get it mowed every couple of days, although it was hard to know how the manager of a domain like his found time to fit it in. He was in his shirtsleeves, and I couldn’t help noticing how big his forearms were: a tattoo with the marine logo covered about four hairy inches.

  He didn’t really look at me, just waved me to a folding chair while he finished his conversation. My hard hat and torn trousers weren’t as feminine as Jacqui’s fluttering skirt, but they did help me blend in. As I sat, I noticed mud caked on my leather half boots. Not surprising, considering how I had crawled under the fence to get into the warehouse, but annoying all the same.

  When Grobian hung up, it was clear I wasn’t who he was expecting, but equally clear that he didn’t remember me.

  “V. I. Warshawski,” I said heartily. “I was here two weeks ago, with young Billy.”

  His lips tightened: he would have shown me the door, not a chair, if he’d looked at me when I came in. “Oh. The do-gooder. Whatever Billy may tell you, the company doesn’t care about your school day care program.”

  “Basketball.”

  “What?”

  “It’s basketball, not day care, which shows you haven’t really studied the proposal. I’ll send you a new set of numbers.” I clasped my hands on his desk with the saintly smile of a confirmed do-gooder.

  “Whatever it is, we’re not supporting it.” He looked at his watch. “You don’t have an appointment. In fact, how did you get in? No one at the front gate phoned-”

  “I know. It must be hard for you to stay on top of your schedule with Billy gone. Why did he run away, anyway? He came down here, after-” I suddenly remembered the conversation I’d had with Billy after church on Sunday.

  “Oh, of course. You squealed on him to his dad-you reported seeing him with Josie Dorrado, and Billy came here to confront you. You said a few minutes ago that you didn’t see Billy on Monday, so did he confront you on Sunday? You come into the office on Sunday afternoons? Have you told Mr. William about that?”

  Grobian shifted in his chair. “I don’t see what that has to do with you.”

  “Besides being a do-gooding basketball coach, I’m one of the detectives the family hired to look for Billy. If your conversation with him was the immediate cause of his disappearance, then the family will want to know about it.”

  He looked at me narrowly: I might have Mr. William’s ear, or even Buffalo Bill’s-or I might be a con artist. Before he could challenge me, I added, “Mr. William and I just had a little conversation in the hall right now. I’m the detective who found Billy’s Miata the other night, where it had burrowed into the shrubbery underneath the Skyway.”

  “Yeah, but Billy wasn’t at the wheel when it went off the road.”

  “Is that a fact, Mr. Grobian.” I leaned back in the chair so I could see his face better. “Just how do you know that?”

  “Co
ps told me.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’ll call Commander Rawlings at the Fourth District to check, but when I saw him yesterday they didn’t know who was driving it.”

  “Must have been chatter on the floor, then.” His pale eyes shifted to the door and back. “The truckers all gossip about each other. Would have been better if they’d talked to me about Czernin before he died instead of after.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, this English lady Czernin was balling.” He watched to see if vulgarity would make a do-gooder detective wince, but I kept a look of polite interest on my face. “I hear she was in the car, not Billy, and no one knows how she got hold of it.”

  “I see,” I said slowly. “So you didn’t know about her until she showed up next to Bron on the golf course yesterday morning?”

  “If I had, Bron would have been at the unemployment office on Monday. We don’t tolerate rules violations, and having outsiders in the cab is a big By-Smart no-no.”

  “But if she was in Billy’s Miata, she wasn’t in the cab with Czernin.”

  “Czernin was-” He cut himself off. “He’d been driving her around the neighborhood the last two weeks, that’s what I learned on the floor when I told the men what had happened to him.”

  “You tell me Marcena Love was in Billy’s Miata and also that she was in Bron’s cab,” I said. “But the truck and the car weren’t together, so Bron was driving for By-Smart that night, right?”

  He looked at me, stone-faced. “He signed out a load at four twenty-two. He reached his first delivery in Hammond at five-seventeen. He was thirteen minutes late to his next delivery, in Merrill, and twenty-two minutes late to the third, in Crown Point. After that, which was ten-oh-eight, we didn’t hear from him again. Now, if that’s it-”