Warshawski 09 - Hard Time (27 page)

His shoulders started to heave again. I kept my arm around him but drank some cocoa myself to try to keep my own stomach from turning inside out on me. Family night at the Baladines. Fun for everyone.

“Now listen here, young man,” Mr. Contreras spoke roughly. “I been a soldier, I been a machinist, I spent my life with men who could take your daddy apart and line up all his arms and legs in a row and not even work up a sweat, and let me tell you that is not how a real man acts, setting a dog on his kid.”

“Damn straight,” I said. “Why don’t we bring the dogs up here for the night and let Robbie sleep downstairs with you? That way if BB shows up he’ll get an earful of Mitch but no son.”

Robbie cheered up at that. I helped him back down the stairs to Mr. Contreras’s and held the dogs while he went inside. The old man said he reckoned Robbie could wear one of his pajama shirts to sleep in tonight and they’d get him some blue jeans and T–shirts in the morning.

“I know you’re really tired, but could you answer one question for me before you go to bed?” I was unfolding the sofa bed while Mr. Contreras brought in clean sheets. “What were you wanting to tell me when you phoned me last week?”

He’d forgotten about it in the stress of his journey. That phone call to me was what made BB and Eleanor decide to send him to military camp, but it had lost its importance to him. He blinked his eyes anxiously, then suddenly remembered.

“You know that man who got pulled out of Lake Michigan? I’m pretty sure he came out to see BB. With Mr. Trant, you know.”

“Teddy Trant from Global? Are you sure?”

“Come on, doll. Boy’s asleep on his feet. This will wait until tomorrow.”

“You’re right. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” I said, but Robbie, taking off his military shirt with a sigh of relief and putting on one of Mr. Contreras’s violently striped pajama tops, said, “Of course I recognize Mr. Trant, and I’m pretty sure it was the guy I saw on television with him. He was really, really angry, but I couldn’t hear what he said and, well, they kind of locked me in the nursery with Rosario and Utah. On account of Mom said I was—a little snoop—who’d go telling tales out of school. But I woke up in the middle of the night because they were standing under my window and Mr. Trant was saying that should solve the problem for the time being if only Abigail—Mrs. Trant, you know—didn’t start getting helpful ideas again.”

“Okay, Victoria. Boy’s going to bed now. No more detecting tonight.”

“Ms. Warshawski, thank you for letting me stay here, and you too, sir, only I’m sorry I don’t know your name, and I’m sorry about the dogs, about making them leave. Maybe—maybe tomorrow I won’t be so chicken around them.”

I squeezed his shoulder. “Get a good sleep. Like the man said, tomorrow is another day.”

It was only as I started back up the stairs that I remembered my fears about BB bugging my apartment. I hoped I was wrong, but my stomach turned cold as I imagined what Baladine might do next.

33 Thrown in the Tank

Lemour arrested me as I unlocked my front door Friday afternoon. He flung me against the stone railing and yanked my purse from my shoulder. A Du Page County deputy sheriff who was with him tried to calm him down and was thrust roughly aside.

When Lemour had the cuffs locked, he flashed a warrant under my nose for the arrest of one Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski, acting upon information and belief that she did unlawfully and without the permission of the parents seize and hold against his will Robert Durant Baladine, a minor child not her own.

Mr. Contreras erupted with the dogs. Mitch broke away from him and launched himself at Lemour. The detective punched his head. Mitch yelped and huddled on the ground. Lemour started to kick him, but I threw myself between his foot and the dog. We went over in a heap of leash, detective and me, with Peppy joining in to mew worriedly at her son.

“That’s it, Warshki,” Lemour panted from the pavement. “I’m adding resisting arrest to the kidnapping charge. You’ll be lucky if you’re home in time for Christmas. And I’ll have this dog put to sleep for assaulting me.”

Homebound commuters began to crowd around to see what the show was. One young woman said she thought it took a lot of nerve to beat a dog and then threaten to put it to sleep.

“He’s obviously perfectly friendly and he’s on a leash, aren’t you, good doggy.” She scratched his ears, carefully avoiding looking at me.

“Shut the hell up unless you want to be arrested for interfering with the police,” Lemour said savagely.

She backed away as the sheriff’s deputy once more muttered an ineffectual intervention.

My hands were cuffed behind me. I’d fallen hard on my side and lay there on the walk, the wind knocked out of me, my right cheek smarting from grazing the concrete. Mitch climbed to his feet and shook himself like a boxer who’s taken a bad blow but is ready to go back in the ring. Peppy licked him anxiously. He’s a big ugly dog, half black Lab, half golden Peppy, and I’ve never been crazy about him, but right now his attempts to grin, wag his tail, show there were no hard feelings, made my eyes smart.

I rolled forward onto my knees. Mr. Contreras anxiously helped me up, keeping one eye on Lemour, who was brushing concrete crumbs from his suit, his face patchy–red with rage. When he got to his feet the dogs started toward him.

“Mitch, Peppy! Stay!” I was gasping for breath, but the dogs for once paid attention and sat. “Get them inside before Lummox here loses his head completely and shoots them,” I said to Mr. Contreras. “And take my handbag before this cretin steals my wallet. Can you call Freeman for me? Also, will you get a message to Morrell? I’m supposed to meet him for a picnic tomorrow. In case I can’t get out on time, will you call and tell him? His number’s in my electronic diary, there in my bag.”

Mr. Contreras was looking so bewildered I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, although he did pick up my handbag from where Lemour had dropped it. I started to repeat myself, but Lemour, furiously trying to straighten his tie, grabbed my arm and jerked me down the walk. He tried to throw me into the back of the squad car, but he wasn’t big enough to get the right leverage. The Du Page sheriff’s deputy took my left arm and whispered something apologetic as he pushed me behind the cage.

“Uh, Doug, uh, can you give me the key? I need to lock her to the seat, and she can’t ride with her arms behind her.”

Lemour ignored him and climbed behind the unmarked car’s wheel. The sheriff’s deputy looked at me uncertainly, but as Lemour started the engine he quickly shut the door on me and got into the passenger seat. Lemour took off so fast that my head banged into the metal cage.

Rage was building in me. I knew I had to keep it down. I was helpless—physically and in the situation—and if I let my fury ride me I’d give Lemour the opening he wanted to pound me into the ground. When he stopped at the light on Addison, I maneuvered my body so that I was sitting sideways in the narrow space with my legs stretched out across the width of the backseat. My shoulders were beginning to ache horribly.

The day had started so well, too. When I got back from swimming with the dogs, young Robbie was up and willing to make timid overtures to Peppy. Mr. Contreras prepared his breakfast specialty, French toast, and Robbie relaxed visibly as the old man urged seconds on him: perhaps it was the first time in his life his every mouthful hadn’t been monitored and criticized.

I drove north to Morrell’s place in Evanston. In the theme of Spy–Counterspy, I wrote out a note explaining my visit to Coolis yesterday and how imperative it was that I talk to Señora Mercedes. Morrell frowned over my message, then finally decided—whether because of my dogged determination, my impeccable logic, or my nice–looking legs—to take me to see Nicola Aguinaldo’s mother. We rode the L, since that was the easiest way to check for tails, first in and out of the Loop and then over to Pilsen on the city’s near southwest side.

When I met Abuelita Mercedes I realized I’d been carrying the unconscious stereotype of her title of “granny”—I’d been expecting an old woman in a kerchief, with round red cheeks. Of course, a woman whose daughter was only twenty–seven was still young herself, in fact only a few years older than I. She was short, stocky, with black hair curling softly around her ears and forehead and a permanent worry crease worked between her brows.

Tagalog was her first language, but she could get by in Spanish, which Morrell spoke fluently—although his was the Central American version, not always in sync with Filipino Spanish, he explained. Abuelita Mercedes’s English was limited to a few social phrases, which she used upon his introducing us:
Señora Mercedes, le presento a la Señora Victoria.
He assured her that I was a friend worried about Nicola’s death, as well as a lawyer committed to justice for the poor.

Sherree, Nicola’s surviving child, greeted Morrell with an eager cry of
“Tío!”
but she chattered away in English to him. After a formal reception, with strong black coffee and little fried donuts, we began to broach the subject of Nicola’s death.

With Morrell translating Señora Mercedes’s Spanish and Sherree reluctantly assisting with a Tagalog phrase or two, Nicola’s mother made her halting way through Nicola’s story. She explained that she knew very little of what had happened to her daughter in prison. Señora Mercedes couldn’t afford a phone, so it wasn’t possible for her to talk to her daughter except at very wide intervals: she would get permission from a neighbor, often Señora Attar, to use her phone, so that Nicola could call collect on a prearranged day. But then it depended on whether she was able to get a letter in to Nicola or whether Nicola could get phone privileges on that day.

She had to write in Spanish, which neither she nor Nicola wrote well, since anything she wrote in Tagalog was automatically turned back. Even so, the Spanish letters were often sent back. Coolis, out in the rural white countryside, had only one or two Spanish–speaking guards, despite the large number of Hispanic inmates. They often refused to let Spanish–language mail in or out, with the excuse that Señora Mercedes could be providing gang information to her daughter.

Now that Sherree was in third grade she wrote English—very good in English—but Nicola hadn’t written English well enough to send out detailed news.

When the baby died, oh, that was terrible. Señora Mercedes couldn’t go to Coolis: she didn’t have a green card, she didn’t know what papers you had to show, and what if they arrested her when she was visiting her daughter? Then, too, everything cost money, the bus fare to Coolis, it was all too much. So she sent a letter in Spanish, Sherree sent a letter—the priest helped her write it in English, this was before Señor Morrell became a friend or he would surely have helped—but she never heard from her daughter again, she didn’t even know if Nicola learned the news about the baby’s death before she died herself, and now here was poor Sherree, no mother, no sister, father dead in the Philippines.

Sherree seemed to have heard this lament before. She frowned over the dolls she was playing with and turned her back on her grandmother as Señora Mercedes went into detail about the baby’s death. The poor baby, the cause of so much misery, needing money for the hospital, causing Nicola to steal, but then, those employers, so mean, not letting her get away to be with her own baby in the hospital, not lending her money, it was wrong of Nicola to steal, but Señora Mercedes could understand why she did it. And then, five years in prison? When men who did far worse crimes were there for much less time? Here in America it was all terrible. If not for the money, for the chance to have Sherree get a good education, they would never stay.

We took a break to let Señora Mercedes recover her poise before I asked what I most wanted to know: about Nicola’s work in the prison shop. That was good, her mother said, because she got paid two dollars and fifty cents an hour. It was for sewing, sewing shirts, and Nicola was very fast, her little fingers so—so nimble, yes, that was the word, the best on the floor, the bosses at the prison said. It was piecework, but Nicola was so fast she made the top rate.

What kind of shirts? I asked, but Señora Mercedes had no idea. Of course she’d never seen her daughter’s work. Even if she had visited her daughter, she would not have seen her work. Shirts, that was all she knew. She pulled out a letter from Nicola to show me.

With Morrell leaning over my shoulder to help translate, I stumbled my way through the text, which had been heavily censored:

My dear Mama,

I am well, I hope you and Sherree and Anna are well and happy. I am working now in the sewing shop, where I can make very good money. We sew (
crossed out
), I make more than anyone else in an hour, the other girls are jealous. For a higher rate you can work the (
crossed out
), but it is too heavy for me.

You must not worry about me, even though I am small (
two lines heavily crossed out
). Señora Ruby is a sweet old lady who takes care of me, and now that people see she looks after me the big women (
crossed out
). The food is good, I eat well, I say my prayers every day. Please give many many kisses to Sherree and to Anna.

Nicola

Anna had been the baby’s name. There were six letters in all, all Nicola had been able to send in fifteen months, and most of them with large sections excised.

When we moved onto more delicate ground—namely, Nicola’s love life—Señora Mercedes either knew nothing, or there was nothing to know. When did Nicola have time to meet a man? her mother demanded. She worked six days a week for those cruel people. She came home on Sundays and spent the day with her own children. Nicola worked, Señora Mercedes worked on the night shift at a box factory, all so that Sherree and Anna could have a good life. A man named Lemour? No, Señora Mercedes never heard Nicola mention him. And Mr. Baladine, Nicola’s employer? Nicola didn’t like him but the money was good and she tried not to complain. Sherree, busy on the floor with her dolls, didn’t seem to have anything to add to the story.

We had been talking for two hours. Morrell took us down the street to a tacqueria for lunch. Over burritos and fried plantain Señora Mercedes told me about the day that Nicola died.

“I didn’t know she was dead until the next day. My own daughter. Because on Monday the marshals came and Señora Attar, a good woman even if a different religion and a different language, woke up and saw them before they could arrest me and Sherree. She told these officers I was her own mother. What a good woman! But of course I had to move away at once.”

I interrupted Morrell’s translation to ask for a detailed description of the men. There were two. And how were they dressed? In suits. Not in uniforms?

“What’s the point?” Morrell asked, when I pushed for as accurate a description as possible.

“If they were state marshals, they would have been in uniform. INS, who knows, but these men sound expensively dressed. I don’t think they were with the law, except the one unto themselves.”

“Qué?”
Señora Mercedes demanded of Sherree.
“Qué dicen?”

Sherree refused to look up from the dolls, who she’d brought to the tacqueria and were now climbing on top of each other in a fearful tangle of arms.

“The lady thinks they were not with the law, but perhaps men who had an evil intention toward Nicola and her family,” Morrell said in Spanish.

That was as far as we could take matters. Señora Mercedes had seen Señor Baladine drive her daughter home, perhaps four times during the years she worked for him, but he always stayed in the car, she had no way of recognizing his face. If he had been at her home the day before Nicola died, she didn’t know. I would have to dig up photos of Baladine and Trant to see if Señora Mercedes recognized either of them.

We left the tacqueria with copious thanks for the señora’s time. Morrell bought Sherree a frozen mango on a stick from one of the pushcarts we passed on the way back to their apartment. On the L north, Morrell and I went over the conversation from as many angles as we could but couldn’t squeeze any more out of it.

As for Nicola’s body, that, too, remained a mystery. Morrell said he’d talked to Vishnikov, who hadn’t been able to track it down. Vishnikov had also reported on Frenada’s autopsy: the man had died by drowning—the water in his lungs made that clear.

“Frenada was out at the Baladine estate the night before he died,” I said. “Robbie Baladine saw him there. I’d love to know whether the water in his lungs came from a swimming pool or Lake Michigan.”

Morrell pursed his mouth in a soundless whistle. “I’ll ask Vishnikov. I don’t know if it’s too late or not—the morgue released the body to Frenada’s sister yesterday afternoon. Now, since I’ve been a good collaborator, taken you where you wanted to go, found out what news there was to learn about Lucian Frenada, will you do something for me?”

“If it’s in my power, sure.”

“Join me for a Fourth of July picnic tomorrow. I’ll supply the food. We can use the private beach up the street from me—I know one of the families who lives there.”