I found her in the poorest section of Calvary, hard by the exhaust and noise from Chicago Avenue. I knew the section well because Matthew almost wound up there. Until my mom found some cash. And Matthew slept where he slept.
Z was dressed in black, a wisp of a hat riding atop her mop of red hair. She stood ramrod straight, hands clasped in front of her, and stared at a small patch of ground. I watched her lips move as she prayed and ducked behind a tree when she blessed herself. She knelt and placed something on the ground, blessed herself again, and got up to go. I waited, then walked over to the plot she’d been standing before. Z had placed a set of black rosary beads beside the grave marker. I left the beads where they were and jotted down the name carved in the rock. When I got back to the parking lot, Z’s VW was gone. I started up my car and followed suit.
26
By the time I got home from Calvary, the skies had cleared and the day was beginning to heat up. Even better, Sarah Gold sat on my front steps.
“You’re early,” I said.
“It’s my first parade. I’m excited.”
“What do you got there?” I pointed to a white bag by her feet.
Sarah pulled out a handful of silver tubes. “What do you think?”
“What is it?”
“Face paint. Red, white, and blue.”
“Not happening.”
“It’s the Fourth of July.”
I shook my head. Sarah already had a tube of red open and a tube of blue. She smeared a couple of fingers worth down both sides of her face.
“I live here, Sarah.”
“It will be fun.” She handed me the tube of red. “Please?”
I squirted a little on my finger and wondered what I’d gotten myself into. Maybe it was just what I needed.
A half hour later, we were standing in front of a diner on Central called Prairie Joe’s. They sat us at a table outside. Sarah ordered the huevos rancheros. I got scrambled eggs. Our orders were served with warm tortillas and coffee. By the time we finished, it was almost eleven, and the street was filling up with life. We walked for a bit and drank it in. Parents carrying cups of Starbucks and pushing strollers. Kids in baseball caps. Ice cream. Balloons. Flags. And face paint. I’d agreed to turn myself into a red, white, and blue fool, but only once the parade actually started.
We stopped at an antiques shop where Sarah looked at an old set of silver and a wooden box of some sort. Then we walked next door to the Spice House. I’d never been in the Spice House and, apparently, with good reason. The moment I walked through the door, I started sneezing.
“You all right?”
I shook my head and retreated to a bench outside.
“What’s in there?” I said.
“Spices.”
“What kind of spices?”
“Well, the sign says they have eight different kinds of paprika.”
“Great.”
I stayed on the bench while Sarah perused the stores of paprika, pepper, and whatever else they ground up inside the god-awful place. She came out with a small bag she kept at a careful distance.
“Sorry about that,” she said.
“What did you get?”
“Cumin, red pepper, and chili powder. Good for tacos.”
We walked some more. The sun was bright and hot now. A trombone had fired up somewhere, and the parade started. I bought us some ice cream. People smiled at us. Mostly because of Sarah, but I smiled back anyway. She linked her arm in mine and whispered in my ear.
“Time for the face paint.”
I laughed and let her smear my face with streaks of color. Then I did the same to her. After that, we painted the faces of a couple of kids whose parents weren’t around. We watched the parade go by. Yelled and cheered at the Evanston Marching Kazoo Band. Then some cops and firemen. Uncle Sam on a high two-wheeled bicycle did crazy circles around the parade mascot, Sparky the Firecracker. Kids floated by on floats. Old people rode past in cars that were even older. The governor of Illinois stopped to shake my hand. Best I could tell, he wasn’t even wearing a monitoring bracelet.
We watched for two hours and got sunburned until someone gave us some sunscreen. Then we headed down the block to a bar called Clarence’s. It had an outdoor patio that was filled with parade people. We found a table, and I went up to get a couple of beers. Sarah drank half of hers in one go.
“Fun?” I said.
“Wonderful.” She clinked her nearly empty glass into mine. “Thank you very much.”
“You don’t go to parades in Michigan?”
“Charlevoix has a parade. We usually watch it from our boat.”
“Nice.”
“Not really. You sit out there all day with the same seven people.”
“I guess it would be all right if it were the right seven people?”
“I guess. You want another one?”
“Sure.”
Sarah started to get up, but a waitress was nearby and took her order. Sarah sat back down. We’d wiped off the face paint, but a handful of guys at the bar couldn’t keep their eyes off her anyway. She was wearing shorts, a yellow tank top, and oversize sunglasses. With her hair pulled back and the glow from her day in the sun, I couldn’t blame them.
“What?” Sarah slid the glasses up on her forehead.
“Huh?”
“You’re sitting there, smiling.”
“Can’t I smile?”
“It’s just that you don’t do it that often.”
“Do what?”
“Smile.” She broke out a killer as the waitress put down our second round of beers. “It looks good on you, Ian. The smile, that is.”
“You think so?”
“I do.”
The beer was cold. Sarah insisted we clink glasses again. She giggled and slid her eyes over my shoulder, toward her admirers at the bar.
“They’ve been ogling you since we got here,” I said.
She put down her beer and leaned close until our lips were almost touching. “Want to give them something to talk about?”
“I thought we were friends?” I said.
“We are.” She eased back in her chair and took another sip from her pint. “Actually, I was worried about you this morning.”
“Why?”
“You got out of your car like a black cloud. Grim.”
“Sorry.”
She waved her hands around us. “It’s the summer. A parade. We’re young and drinking beer. How bad can that be?”
“You’re right.”
“I know I’m right. So why?”
“Don’t mess around, Sarah.”
She slipped her hands over mine. They were warm and strong.
“I’m not messing around, Ian. If you have a problem, I’d like to think I can help.”
“It’s not a problem.”
“Then what is it?”
Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was her. Maybe it was just the need to feel something more. Something I could hang on to. Whatever it was, it opened the door. And I walked through.
“I visited a graveyard this morning.”
She didn’t expect that. Probably wished she’d just drunk her beer and kept her mouth shut. But now she was in for it. And so it went.
“Why?”
“I had a twin brother, Matthew. He died when he was ten. Today’s the anniversary.”
“I’m so sorry.”
It was the second time she was sorry for me. And I still hated it.
“Let’s just forget about it.”
“No.”
“Yes. It was a long time ago, and I paid my respects this morning.”
She was quiet for a bit, studying the dregs in her glass. “Can I at least ask how?” she said.
“How Matthew died?”
Sarah nodded.
“You don’t want to know.”
“What does that mean?”
“We were swimming in Lake Michigan and he drowned.”
“You were there?”
“
Me and my stepfather. Matthew got caught in a riptide. They found his body three days later.” I watched her face pale as she realized what I was telling her. “That’s right, Sarah. Jake and I both had brothers who drowned when we were kids.”
“What does it mean?”
“Probably nothing.”
“It doesn’t freak you out?”
“I told you the other day, the Wingate letter bothers me. As far as my brother’s death goes, there’s no connection to Havens.”
“You don’t know that. What if the person who sent the letter knows about your past and is manipulating you as well?”
“How? I decided to take Z’s seminar myself. I didn’t tell anyone. No one influenced me. And I didn’t receive the Wingate letter. Havens did.”
“It’s still a little strange if you ask me.” Sarah’s phone buzzed. She checked the number. “It’s Jake.” She clicked on her phone. “Hey, we were just talking about you. Yeah, he’s right here.” Sarah reached over and squeezed my hand. “You want to come over?”
She pulled the phone from her ear. “He’s at Medill now.” She put the phone back to her ear. “Jake, we’re at a place called Clarence’s on Central. We’ve got a table outside.” A pause. “Cool. See you then.”
Sarah clicked off and slipped her phone onto the table. “He’s gonna come over.”
“Fine.”
“I think you need to tell him about Matthew.”
“There’s no connection, Sarah.”
“We don’t know that. We can’t know that.”
When I didn’t respond, she ordered us two more beers. With their arrival the dark talk vanished. At least for the moment. We were sitting and sipping when Havens walked in.
“You guys look like you’re having fun. What’s up, Joyce?”
I gave him a nod. Sarah patted the seat beside her. Our waitress materialized at Havens’s elbow. He ordered whatever we were having and sat back in his chair. “You go to the parade?”
“It was great,” Sarah said.
“Why were you at Medill?” I said.
“I was at Wingate’s school this morning. A couple more old-timers agreed to meet with me.”
“About what?”
Our waitress arrived with Havens’s pint. He took a sip. “Good beer. What is it?”
“Daisy Cutter,” I said. “Local brew. What did you get at the school?”
He studied me over the rim of his glass. “You need to chill, Joyce.”
“Sage advice coming from Mr. Intensity himself. I’m fine, Havens. Now, what did you find at the school?”
“Not much. They all remembered Wingate, of course. No one seemed to have any idea why it happened. I told them about the letter I got.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Well, I did.” Another sip of beer and a smug smile.
“Ian and I were just talking about the letter,” Sarah said.
“We were?” I said.
“Sort of.” She widened her eyes at me as if to ask permission.
“Go ahead.”
So she told Havens about my brother. And how he died. She didn’t go into all the details. Just a few, spare facts. Then she tried to tie it into what happened to Havens’s brother. When she’d finished, Sarah waited, but Havens demurred.
“Maybe we leave it for another day.”
I tipped my pint, the tiniest nudge his way. Sarah sensed the shift and acceded to it, spinning out a new thread of conversation. About the parade. The weather. Evanston. Medill.
We drank for another hour. Sarah cozied her chair up to Jake’s, dropping one elbow on the table and tucking a hand under her chin. The closer she got, the less he seemed to speak. I was like a discarded piece to a puzzle no one ever finished anyway. At least that’s how I felt. Sarah excused herself to go to the bathroom. And then it was me and Jake.
“You think Sarah’s got a point?” he said. “About someone targeting the two of us?”
“Because of our brothers?” I shook my head. “No. They might have picked you out and sent the letter. Figured you’d take it personally once you knew the facts. But they didn’t reach out to me.”
“Maybe. Anyway, I’m sorry about Matthew.”
“Me, too.”
We touched glasses. In a splintered moment, we knew more about each other than we could in a million lifetimes. And none of it was happy.
“I was going to head into the city,” he said. “Got a friend who has a boat. He goes up and down the lake, checking out the different firework shows. Ten, fifteen people. Beers, some food.”
“Thanks, but I think I’m gonna stick close to home tonight.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I bet Sarah’s game.”
“I’ll ask her.”
They insisted on another round of drinks. I said no. Sarah all but dragged me out of my chair, demanding I go with them. To the boat. And Havens’s party. Again, I said no. She kissed me when they left. Told me she loved me the way you do when you’ve had too much to drink and that she’d call. Havens told me he’d pick me up tomorrow afternoon for our meeting with Moncata. Then they were gone. And I was alone. I wandered into the bar and ordered a fresh beer. The Cubs were on, in and of itself enough to make me call it a night. I was toying with that idea, along with a couple of others, when a hand plucked at my shoulder.
“Northwestern?”
I turned to find the young woman from the Street Ministry, dark hair with streaks of gold, smiling and sliding onto the stool next to me. She held out her hand.
“Remember me? Theresa.”
27
I took her just inside the door to my house. In the living room, on the coffee table. The next time I remember was in my bed, her hands running across my back, thighs gripping and squeezing. The last time she was above me, eyes closed in concentration, teeth shining, hips moving to their own sweet rhythm. If there was any more after that, it was news to me. I just hoped I had fun.
I woke up at a little after three a.m. Her scent was still on my sheets, but the girl was gone. I felt my way downstairs, the pounding footsteps of a headache close behind. Articles of my clothing were scattered around the living room. Nothing of hers. I sat on the couch and vaguely remembered a second bar after Clarence’s. There was a barber’s chair, me in it, head back, mouth open. Theresa stood over me with a bottle of tequila and some lime juice. Upside-down margaritas they called them. I licked at the lint in my mouth. Then I got myself a glass of water and five aspirin. I made sure the front door was locked and crawled upstairs. Before I went to sleep, I checked my phone. No messages. I wondered where my two classmates were and fell into the black again.
28
The Street Ministry burned down barely two hours later. Grace Washington hit my cell phone at a little after eight a.m. I was foggy on the details, but she said I needed to come down. Right now. Something in Grace’s voice told me I ignored her at my peril, so I dragged myself out of bed and got dressed. The aspirin and water must have helped because I didn’t feel half as bad as I deserved.
They had the street roped off with cops redirecting traffic. I found a parking space a couple of blocks away and began to walk. The implications of the fire started to sink in. As did Grace’s cryptic warning. And then I thought about Theresa. I wondered if she’d be there. That was when the headache returned in earnest.
Grace was standing in a pile of debris that used to be her office. Now there was nothing left. No roof, no walls. No building. Just a twist of melted plastic and scorched timber. I waited while she finished talking to one of the firefighters. No one else from the ministry seemed to be around. Specifically, no Theresa. I breathed a small sigh of thanks.
“What do you think?” Grace kicked at a pile of plaster as she spoke. There was a simmering anger in her voice, but I wasn’t sure where it was focused.
“How did it happen?” I said.
“How do you think? Someone torched it.”
“Are they sure?”
“Follow me.”
We stepped through the remnants of a wall and into an alley that ran behind the ministry. She walked down about twenty feet and pointed. A couple of firefighters were crouched over a smoking hunk of rubble.
“That used to be our back door. They say it was kicked in. They found gasoline poured along the walls and floors.”
“Was anyone inside?”
Grace laughed. “That’s the thing. Someone called an hour ahead of time. Told us they were going to burn it so we could clear everyone out.”
“What?”
“It was the police, Ian. Worse than any gang. They want to burn, they burn.”
“Did you see anybody?”
“Who wants to see? Then what? Snitch on a Chicago cop?”
A fireman dragged a length of hose down the alley and yelled at us to move back.
“They can’t,” I said.
“They can and they do. You think the neighborhood’s gonna care? Hell, they’ll throw a party.”
Spray from the hose kicked back on us as the fireman began to water down the rubble. We walked inside. Or what was left of it. Grace lit up a cigarette. I didn’t think the firemen would appreciate that, but no one was around to stop her.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“Will you have the money to rebuild?”
She gave me a tight smile. “That’s the flip side to dealing with the Chicago PD.”
“What does that mean?”
“We keep our mouth shut, let them burn us out, and maybe, maybe, they help with the insurance. Write it up so we get twice as much as the building’s worth.”
I shook my head.
“Uh-huh.” Grace pointed the lit end of her cigarette at me. “Now, you’re learning.”
“Why did you call me down here?” I said.
“Why do you think?” She took a final drag and dropped the butt to the ground. Smoke streamed out both nostrils as she spoke. “You’re the only fresh face that’s been in here for a year and a half. Got to be you.”
The Innocence Game Page 12
