Fire Sale (19 page)

I picked my way through the thicket of electric cords to the choir. The children who’d been marching for Jesus when I arrived were kicking bored heels against their chairs; two boys were surreptitiously pinching each other. The harmonium player frowned at me; the man with the acoustic guitar put his instrument down to come over to me.

“You can’t be back here, miss,” he said.

“Sorry. Just leaving.” I flashed a smile and walked behind the Marching Troop for Jesus, past the massive woman in front of Billy, to the Kid himself.

He was staring at his grandfather, but when I touched his sleeve, he turned to me. “Why did you bring him here?” he demanded. “I thought I could trust you!”

“I didn’t bring him. It wasn’t too hard to figure out that you might be here—you’ve been worshiping at Mt. Ararat, you admire Andrés, you sing in the choir. And then Grobian told someone he’d seen you on Ninety-second Street with a girl.”

“Oh, why can’t people just mind their own business? Boys walk down the street with girls all over the world, every day! Does it have to go up on the By-Smart Web site because
I
do it?”

We’d both been hissing at each other to be heard above the electronic music, but his voice rose to a wail now. Josie was eyeing us along with the rest of the choir, but while they were frankly curious she looked nervous.

“And now what’s he doing?” Billy demanded.

I looked behind me. Buffalo Bill was trying to get to his grandson, but the five men who’d been helping with the service were blocking his path. Bysen actually tried to strike one of them with his walking stick, but the men made a circle around him and moved him from the dais—even the old one with the bobbing head and quavering voice was shuffling along, one hand on Bysen’s coat.

Mrs. Bysen struggled out the far side of the pew, her arms stretched out toward her grandson. I noticed Jacqui stayed in her seat, wearing the catlike smile of malicious pleasure she put on for Bysen family discomfiture. Mr. William and Uncle Gary knew their duty, though, and joined the bodyguard in the aisle. For a moment, it looked as though there was going to be a pitched battle between the Bysen men and the Mt. Ararat ministers. Mrs. Bysen was being buffeted dangerously in the melee; she wanted to reach her grandson, but the ministers and her sons were squeezing her between them.

Billy watched his family, white-faced. He made a helpless gesture toward his grandmother, then jumped down from the riser and disappeared behind a partition. I clambered over the riser to follow him.

The partition blocked the body of the church from a narrow space that led to a robing room. I ran through the room as its second door was swinging shut. When I pushed it open, I found myself in a big hall where women were fussing around with coffeepots and Kool-Aid pitchers. Toddlers crawled unsupervised at their feet, sucking on cookies or plastic toys.

“Where’s Billy?” I demanded, and then saw a flash of red and a door closing at the far end of the room.

I sprinted across the room and out the door. I was just in time to see Billy climb into a midnight blue Miata and roar south on Houston Street.

22

Poverty’s Whirlpool

“B
illy’s been sleeping here.” I made it a statement, not a question.

Josie Dorrado was sitting on the couch with her sister and the baby, María Inés. The television was on. I had muted the sound when I came in, but, for once, Julia seemed more interested in the drama of her family’s life than in what was happening on the screen.

Josie bit her lips nervously, pulling off a piece of skin. “He wasn’t here. Our ma don’t let no boys sleep over.”

I had driven straight to the Dorrado apartment from the church, waiting outside in my car until Rose walked up the street with her children, and then following her to their front door.

“You,” Rose said dully when she saw me. “I might have guessed. What devil was in me the day I asked Josie to bring you home? Ever since that day it’s been nothing but bad luck, bad luck.”

It’s always good to have an outsider to blame your troubles on. “Yes, Rose, that’s a terrible blow, the destruction of the factory. I wish either you or Frank Zamar had talked to me frankly about what was going on there. Do you know who burned down the plant?”

“Why do you care? Will it bring my job back, or return Frank to life, if you find out?”

I pulled the soap dish out of my shoulder bag. I’d sealed it in a plastic bag, but I handed it to Rose and asked if she recognized it.

She barely gave it a glance before shaking her head.

“It wasn’t in the employee bathroom at the factory?”

“What? Something like that? We had a dispenser on the wall.”

I turned to Josie, who had peered over her mother’s shoulder at the little frog.

“You recognize this, Josie?”

She shifted from foot to foot, looking nervously behind her into the living room, where Julia was sitting on the couch. “No, Coach.”

One of the little boys was jumping up and down. “Don’t you ’member, Josie, we seen them, they was at the store, and—”

“Quiet, Betto, don’t be butting in when Coach is talking to me. We seen them—saw them—around, they had them at By-Smart around Christmas last year.”

“You buy one?” I prodded, puzzled by her nervousness.

“No, Coach, I never.”

“Julia did,” Betto burst out. “Julia bought it. She wanted to give it—”

“She bought it for Sancia,” Josie put in quickly. “Her and Sancia used to hang out, before María Inés came.”

“Is that right?” I asked the boy.

He hunched a shoulder. “I dunno. I guess so.”

“Betto?” I knelt so my head was at his level. “You thought Julia bought it for a different person, not for Sancia, didn’t you?”

“I don’t remember,” he said, his head down.

“Leave him alone,” Rose said. “You went and bothered Frank Zamar and he got burned to death, now you want to bother my children so you can see what bad things happen to them?”

She grabbed his hand and dragged him into the apartment. The other boy followed, casting me a terrified glance. Great. Now the boys would think of me as the bogey-woman, able to get them murdered in a fire if they spoke to me.

I pushed Josie into the apartment. “You and I need to talk.”

She sat on the couch, the baby between her and her sister. Julia had clearly been paying attention to our exchange at the door: she sat tense and alert, her eyes on Josie.

In the dining room beyond, I could see the two boys sitting under the table, quietly crying. Rose had disappeared, either into the bedroom or the kitchen. It occurred to me that the couch had to be her bed: when I was here before, I’d seen the twin beds where Josie and Julia slept, and the air mattresses for the boys in the dining room. There wasn’t any other place in the apartment for Rose.

“So where did Billy sleep?” I asked. “Out here?”

“He wasn’t here,” Josie said quickly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “When he left Pastor Andrés’s house he had to go somewhere. He drove you to the hospital yesterday. I know you and he are seeing each other. Where did he sleep?”

Julia tossed her long mane of hair. “Me and Josie shared one bed, Billy slept in the other.”

“Why you have to go shooting off your mouth?” Josie demanded.

“Why you have to let that rich gringo stay here in your bed when he could buy a whole house if he want a place to sleep?” Julia shot back.

Little María Inés began to fuss on the couch, but neither sister paid any attention to her.

“And your mother was okay with this arrangement?” I was incredulous.

“She don’t know, you can’t tell her.” Josie looked nervously at the dining room, where her brothers were still staring at us. “The first time, she was at work, she was at her second job, and she never even got home until one in the morning, and then, last night and Friday, Billy, he come in—came in through the kitchen door after she was in bed.”

“And Betto and your other brother won’t tell her, and she won’t notice? You two are nuts. How long have you and Billy been dating?”

“We’re not dating. Ma won’t let me date anyone because of Julia having a baby.” Josie scowled at her sister.

“Well, anyway, the Bysens don’t want Billy dating no spic girl,” Julia flashed at her.

“Billy never called me a spic. You’re just jealous because a nice Anglo boy is interested in me, not some
chavo
like you picked up!”

“Yeah, but his grandpapa, he called Pastor Andrés, he told him he’d report Pastor to the Immigration if he hear Billy going around with any Mexican girls in the church,” Julia shot back. “Wetbacks, he called us, you just ask anyone, you can ask Freddy, he was there when Billy’s grandfather called. And after that, how long was it before he called you?”

“He don’t need to call me; he sees me every Wednesday at choir rehearsal.”

The baby began crying more loudly. When her mother and her aunt still ignored her, I picked her up and started patting her back.

“How about now?” I asked, “Now that he’s not living at home. Does Billy call you now?”

“Yes, once, to say, can he come over here, but then, he give away, gave away, his cell phone, on account of he said there’s something in the phone, a detective could find him,” Josie muttered, staring at her knees.

So he’d paid attention to my warning about the GSM signal. “Why doesn’t he want to go home?”

Julia gave a syrupy smile. “He’s in l-o-v-e with the little wetback here.”

Josie slapped her sister; Julia started pulling her hair. I put the baby down and yanked the sisters apart. They glared at each other, but when I let them go, they didn’t lunge for each other. I picked the baby up again and sat cross-legged on the floor.

“Billy’s family, they were rude to Pastor Andrés,” Josie added. “Billy, he really cares about this neighborhood, do people have jobs, do they have enough to eat, like that, and his family, they just want to exploit us.”

Billy had definitely been preaching to his little wetback, and she was an attentive student. The baby grabbed at my earrings. I unclutched her tiny fist and pulled out my car keys for her to play with. She threw them on the floor with an excited crow of laughter.

“Who’s Freddy?” I asked.

The sisters looked at each other, but Julia said, “Just a guy who goes to Mt. Ararat, it’s a small church, we all been knowing each other since we was little.”

“Since we
were
little,” Josie corrected.

“You want to talk Anglo, be my guest. Me, I’m just a teenage mom, I don’t have to know anything.”

“Your mom and your aunt are such bad liars. I know, that makes you cry to hear it, but it’s true,” I spoke to the baby and blew bubbles on her stomach. “Now, who is Freddy really?”

“He’s really just a guy who goes to Mount Ararat.” Julia stared at me defiantly. “You ask Pastor Andrés, he’ll tell you.”

I sighed. “Okay, maybe, maybe. There’s something about him you don’t want me to know, though. It wouldn’t be his DNA, would it?”

“His what?” Julia said.

“DNA,” Josie said. “We covered that in biology, which you’d know if you ever went to school, it’s like how people identify—oh.” She looked at me. “Like you think he’s María Inés’s father or something.”

“Or something,” I said.

Julia spoke through clenched teeth. “He’s just a guy at church, I hardly know him except to talk at church.”

“But this casual acquaintance told you he heard old Mr. Bysen call the church and threaten the pastor with deportation?”

“It—he thought we should know,” Julia stammered.

Josie was crimson. “Billy been—Billy has been—singing in the church, like, since August, and him and me, we went out for a Coke after rehearsal once, I guess maybe in September, and Mr. Grobian, he’s at the warehouse, he’s Billy’s boss, like, he saw us and he told on us, like, it was a crime, Billy taking me for a Coke, and then Ma, she heard, she said no way can I see him ’less Betto and Sammy are with me. So it’s like I have to babysit if I want to see him, which would be horrible if you was on a date, to have your brothers with you, but, see, his ma, his mom, she don’t—she doesn’t want him going out with me, so we never really was dating. Were dating. Except yesterday, he took me up to the hospital to see April.”

So Billy had fallen in love with Josie, so much in love he was teaching her English grammar. And she loved him right back, which is why she was changing her speech. And that was also why Billy was fighting the idea of going back to Barrington. Maybe his ideals played a role, too, but mostly it was those pesky stars, crossing lovers once again. I thought of my own jealous worries about Morrell and Marcena Love—you don’t have to be fifteen to live in a soap opera.

“You won’t tell Ma, will you, Coach?” Josie said.

“I can’t believe your ma doesn’t already know,” I said. “You’d have to be brain-dead not to know when there was an extra person in this apartment. She’s probably just too depressed about the fire at Fly the Flag to deal with you and Billy right now. And about that fire—what’s the story on this soap dish? Which one of you bought it?”

“I got it at By-Smart,” Julia said quickly. “Like Josie said, I bought it for Sancia last Christmas. They’re real cute, these frogs, and they don’t cost hardly anything. But they had like a hundred of them, so how can I know if it’s the one I bought or not? Where you find this, anyway?”

“Outside Fly the Flag. In all the rubble from the building.”

“Outside Ma’s job? What was it doing there?” Julia’s bewilderment seemed genuine—she and her sister looked at each other, as if seeing whether the other knew something she wasn’t saying.

“I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t mean a thing, but it’s my only clue. By the way, Betto thought you got it for someone else, Julia.”

“Yeah, well, he was like six years old last Christmas, so I don’t know how he knows who I bought presents for.” Julia stared at me in hauteur. “All he cared about was, did he get his new Power Ranger?”

“You two make it sound so plausible, but I have to say I don’t believe you. I’m going to take this to a forensic lab. They’ll test it for fingerprints, they’ll test it for chemicals, they’ll tell me what it was doing at the plant, and who was doing it.”

“So?” The sisters stared at me sullenly, united on this one matter.

“So what?” I said. “So you know there won’t be fingerprints, or you don’t care who left them, or what?”

“So if Sancia gave it to someone else, I can’t help it,” Julia said.

“Coach McFarlane said you were the best player she had coached in decades, maybe ever,” I said to Julia. “Why don’t you go back to school, use your brains for your own future, instead of for spinning up lies for grown-ups like me. You could go back to the game; Sancia does, with her two little ones.”

“Yeah, well, her ma and her sisters help her out. Who’s going to help me? No one.”

“You are so unfair!” Josie cried. “I didn’t get you pregnant, but because you went and had a baby now I have to sneak around like a criminal if I want to see a boy! And I help you with María Inés all the time, so there!”

I handed María Inés to Julia. “Play with her, talk to her. Give her a chance, even if you don’t want one for yourself. And if you decide, either of you, to start telling the truth, give me a call.”

I gave them both business cards and stuck the frog back in my bag. When they stared at me, speechless, I got up and went through the dining room, looking for Rose. Betto and Sammy scuttled deeper under the table at my approach: I was the woman who could get them charcoal roasted if they talked to me.

Rose was lying on Josie’s bed in the girls’ bedroom. I ducked under the clothesline hung with María Inés’s wardrobe and watched her, wondering whether I had anything to ask that justified waking her. Her bright red hair clashed with the red in the American flag pillowcase; the Illinois women’s team smiled down at her.

“I know you’re standing there,” she said dully, without opening her eyes. “What is it you want?”

“I only went to Fly the Flag in the first place because you wanted me to look into the sabotage going on there. Then you told me to back off. What made you change your mind?” I kept my voice gentle.

“It’s all about the job,” she said. “I thought—what I thought, I can’t even remember now. Frank—he told me. He asked me to tell you to go away.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I only know he said it could ruin my job, a detective on the premises. But my job is ruined, anyway—I have no job. And Frank, he was a decent man, he paid good, he did what he could for people, he’s dead. And I wonder, was it because I brought a detective on the premises?”

“You don’t really believe that, do you, Rose? It wasn’t because I was there that someone put rats in the heating ducts or glued the doors shut.”

I went to sit on Julia’s bed. It smelled faintly of María Inés’s diapers. Despite the Dorrados’ Pentecostal religion, a little Virgin of Guadalupe stood on the pasteboard chest of drawers between the two beds. I suppose no matter what you think of God, everyone needs a mother to look after them.

Rose slowly turned her head on the pillow and looked at me. “But maybe they was scared, I mean, whoever did those things, maybe when they saw a detective asking questions they got scared and burned down the factory.”