Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (2 page)

I
picked my way back across the room, retrieved my flashlight from where it had
landed, and started up the basement stairs. Even though I knew the family were
more frightened of me than I of them—and with far better reason—I couldn’t stop
the unreasoning part of my body from sweating clammily as I went. When the
woman spoke below me, I jumped and bit back a cry.

“These
children ain’t starving, young lady. This may not seem like much to you, but I
can look after them. I’m looking after them all right.”

Gift
Horse

I
slid into a seat, breathless, in the middle of Sonja Malek’s report on plans
for the spring benefit. Marilyn Lieberman, Arcadia House’s executive director,
waved a hand at me, and Lotty Herschel lifted a questioning eyebrow, but no one
interrupted the speaker. Arcadia House, like most nonprofits, survives on a
shoestring of grants and donations; the board’s main job is raising money.

Most
of us have worked together for years, through different incarnations of women’s
activism. I’ve known Lotty the longest, going back to my student days when she
showed women in an underground group how to perform abortions.

“I
saved the most exciting news for last,” Sonja said, her plump cheeks pink with
triumph. “Gateway Bank has written us a check for twenty-five thousand.”

“Hey,
great!” I joined the excited chorus. “How’d you swing that?”

“Praise
where praise is due.” Marilyn Lieberman patted the shoulder of the woman on her
left. “Deirdre’s got inside connections.”

Deirdre
Messenger ducked her head. Her straight, fair hair fell forward, hiding her
flushed cheeks.

“Been
screwing Gateway’s chairman in a good cause, Deirdre?” someone said.

When
the women around her laughed, Deirdre gave a short, mirthless bark. “It just
feels that way. It’s really Fabian. He’s done some legal work for them. ...

”

Her
voice trailed off, leaving us feeling as though we’d said something improper.
Unlike most of us, Deirdre didn’t have a special expertise but tapped her
husband’s wealthy contacts to fund the projects on whose boards she sat.

Sal
Barthele, chair of Arcadia’s board, pulled the meeting back together.

“Vic,
you want to talk about security now? Or do you need time to catch your breath?”

“No,
that’s okay.” Because Arcadia House is a battered women’s shelter, people think
we must spend a lot of energy fighting off abusive men. Truth is, most of these
guys are cowards who don’t want outsiders to know what they do in private.
We’ve only had three try to storm the place in the seven years we’ve been open.

Still,
we want Arcadia to be absolutely safe for women and their children.

Two
weeks ago someone had managed to climb over the wall, swing an ax through the
wooden play equipment, and run off before the woman on night duty had been able
to call the cops. Marilyn Lieberman hired a temporary security guard, but I was
asked to suggest some permanent solutions. None of them was cheap: take down
the brick wall and put up iron—but would that make residents feel they were in
jail; a system of light sensors around the perimeter; a permanent nighttime
security force.

My
own preference was for replacing the wall. Although the current one was six
feet high—the maximum the city code allows—it was easy to scale. And being
brick it blocked a view of the street from inside the house. We did have a TV
monitor on it, but it was child’s play to evade that. Near-term, though, a new
wall was the most expensive solution. The discussion continued, passionately,
until Sonja Malek looked at her watch, gasped something about her sitter, and
swept her papers into her briefcase. Everyone else started packing up.

Sal
pounded the table. “You ladies ready to vote on this? No? Why doesn’t that
surprise me? We put the same energy into deciding what kind of toilet paper to
buy as we do deciding whether we want the kids tested for AIDS. You ladies want
to learn how to rank your passions or you’ll be worn out before you’re fifty.
You be ready to vote next month, or Marilyn and I are going to make the
decision for you.”

“Yes,ma’am
!” Someone saluted Sal smartly as people started straggling to the door.

Deirdre
Messenger came over to me. “So where were you until eight-thirty, Vic?”

She
spoke with a jocularity that grated on me. It implied an intimacy that didn’t
exist. I’d known her only vaguely when I was in law school with her husband—she
used to join us for lunch in the law building’s common room. She’d been
beautiful, then, in a dreamy, fairy style. Twenty years later her cornsilk hair
had darkened only slightly, but her dreaminess had disappeared into a taut
bitterness.

I
didn’t snub her now; she didn’t recover easily from slights. “Just the usual
curse of the computer, made more exciting by my decaying office. I lost a whole
report and had to re-create it from scratch. Fortunately I’d been scrupulous
about updating my research files, so I could rough out a document in a hurry.”

Marilyn
Lieberman and Lotty had stopped to listen to my tale of woe. To them I added my
encounter with the homeless woman and her children.

“Vic!
You didn’t leave them down there, did you?” Marilyn cried.

I
flushed. “What should I have done?”

“Called
the city,” Lotty said crisply. “You have friends among the police, after all.”

“And
what would they have done? Arrested her for neglect and put the children into
foster care.”

Lotty’s
thick brows snapped together. “One child has asthma, you say? And who knows
what’s going on in the others’ lungs. You don’t always use good judgment, Vic:
in such a situation foster care might not be so cruel.” Her Viennese accent
became more pronounced, a sign with her of anger.

Marilyn
shook her head dubiously. “The problem is—there are shelters for women with
children. Of course there are. But they aren’t always safe places.

And
most of them are only open at night, so you have to figure out something to do
during the day.”

“I
thought of suggesting she come here,” I said, “but I know you don’t—”

“We
can’t,” Marilyn interrupted. “We can’t start blurring the line, when we need
all the beds we have for domestic violence cases.”

“So
what are you going to do?” Deirdre had stood to one side as we spoke, as if she
didn’t feel part of the group and yet was loath to leave us.

I
took a breath and looked at them challengingly. “I suggested she move into one
of the empty offices upstairs. The place is coming down in a few weeks, after
all.”

Sal
Barthele, who’d been talking to the head of the shelter’s counseling staff,
came in on the tail end of our discussion. “You’ve lost your white liberal
mind, Vic. What’s Conrad say to this?” Sal, who’s black herself, takes an
amused interest in my ups and downs with a black man.

“I
just date the guy. I don’t ask his advice every time I blow my nose.”

“I’m
not asking about his male mind, sugar—doesn’t worry me. What does his cop mind
say?”

“I
expect if I tell him he’ll agree with Lotty. The city will come in, send the
children to three separate homes, where at least one will be sexually molested.
The mother will lose her remaining grip on reality and turn into one of those
tormented creatures you see on Michigan Avenue, ranting to herself and looking
ready to throttle any passerby who talks to her.”

I
spoke more bitterly than I’d intended, and everyone shifted uneasily. I hugged
myself, trying to pull in, away from my anger. When Deirdre grunted aloud, as
though she’d been kicked in the stomach, the sound seemed remote.

“Easy
does it, Vic.” Marilyn’s voice—professional, calm, for distraught women or
staff members—brought me back to the room. “Not all foster care ends so
disastrously. In a case like this, don’t you think you should give the system a
chance? Surely it’s better than leaving the kids underground without proper
sanitation or food.”

“Maybe
I could try to talk to her,” Deirdre offered tentatively, as though I might
ridicule her ability.

“Good
idea.” Marilyn used her counselor’s voice for people successfully resolving
problems. “Deirdre does a lot of work for Home Free, you know—the housing
advocates.”

I
hadn’t known that. Home Free wasn’t a name I recognized, but what energy I have
for volunteer work goes to women’s programs, so I don’t know a lot of the work
done in other equally needy arenas.

Deirdre
was looking at me pugnaciously, as though challenging me and fearing me at the
same time. Her expression pushed me back a step.

“If
you can persuade her to get some help, more power to you I wanted her to let me
bring the asthmatic kid to Lotty—you would take a look at her, wouldn’t you ...
?”

“Vic,
I would—I will—of course. But don’t let your idealism carry you away.

You
know why we couldn’t eradicate TB from the street fifteen years ago when we had
the possibility? Because people won’t take their medication unless you’re there
to oversee it. I can look—I do look—at a hundred sick, desperate people a
month, but I can’t make them be well.”

I
managed a grin. “Lotty, if I get the girl to your clinic I will stand over her
with my Smith & Wesson until she takes all of whatever drugs you deem her
to need.”

“I
like that,” Marilyn said. “A progressive Dirty Harry. Make my day: don’t take
your antibiotics.”

Even
Lotty had to smile at that. Sal added a ribald cap to the joke and Marilyn gave
a loud crack of laughter.

Under
cover of their noise Deirdre muttered at me, “I know you don’t think I can do
it, but why don’t you tell me where your office is.”

My
anxiety not to hurt her made me imbue her offer with more importance than I
thought it was worth. “Sure. Let’s give it a try. The Pulteney Building,
southwest corner of Wabash and Monroe. Want to meet me around three tomorrow?”

“You’re
joining the hordes at my house Wednesday night. I’m spending tomorrow in the
kitchen.”

I
flinched from the venom in her voice. She and Fabian were hosting a retirement
party for my favorite law professor. I’d been surprised but much pleased to
have been included in the guest list. Now, though, I was getting annoyed, with
Deirdre for throwing me off balance, and with myself for trying to placate her,
a combination that made me wave my hands wildly when I answered.

“I
hope you’re not sacrificing your day for me; I eat anything. Cold pizza,
McDonald’s, you name it.”

She
bared her teeth, trying for a smile. “I’m not doing it for you, Vic: I’ve got
every damned high hat in the city coming to watch Fabian grin and shuffle in
front of Manfred Yeo, hoping he can get the federal judgeship he’s aching for.

I’ll
be spending the day mincing vegetables and stuffing goddam little cream puffs
so people will know what a proper gent Fabian is.” She finished with a savage
parody of an English accent.

I
winced. “If it’s that hideous a prospect, I’ll stay away—give you one less
cream puff to stuff.”

“Don’t
do that, Vic: you’ll be the one human in the house. Anyway, Manfred wanted you
to come. Fabian asked if there were any of his old students he wanted to see,
and he mentioned you especially. Of course, all the ones who’ve gone on to be
judges and shit will be there, but you were one he knew Fabian wouldn’t think
of.” Her voice and face softened, making her look fragile.

“How
many people will you have?”

“Thirty-five.
Senator Gantner’s son is showing up. If I could, I’d hide in the basement of
your office building. I’ll come down to see you Friday afternoon.” She pulled a
coat over her hunched shoulders, waited a minute to see if any of the remaining
group would leave with her, and walked out alone.

“There’s
something wrong with that woman,” Sal pronounced when we’d heard the front door
shut behind her. “I get the feeling she’d be happier in one of the beds
upstairs than around the table down here.”

“She’s
just shy,” Marilyn said. “She always does her homework for the board here, and
I know she does a good job for Home Free. It’s hard on her, not having a career
when the rest of you do. What was she upset about now, Vic? Your homeless
family?”

“Oh,
she and Fabian are hosting a big do on Wednesday, but Deirdre’s so bitchy about
it that it’s making me think I should come down with the flu. She’s making all
the food for thirty-five people. He makes a good living—why can’t they cater
it?”

“You
going to Fabian Messenger’s?” Sal laughed. “Doesn’t he give highfalutin advice
to Republican bigwigs? What do you two have in common?”

I
laughed. “Only the fact that we went to law school together in the golden days
of student protest. He took names for the administration during the famous
sit-in while I was inside helping organize the first women’s union. Then he did
three years as a Supreme Court clerk and returned to his alma mater in glory.