Fire Sale (43 page)

During the winter, I also kept having to make depositions to the various lawyers involved in the legal battles over By-Smart’s operations. They were following a predictable course of discovery, investigation, motions, continuances—I didn’t know if a judge would set a trial date in my lifetime.

I was outraged to learn that Grobian had actually gone back to work at the warehouse: Billy, flushing painfully, said his grandfather admired Grobian for his forcefulness. William, on the other hand, was taking an extended leave of absence: Buffalo Bill couldn’t forgive his son’s wish that he have a stroke and die. And Gary had begun divorce proceedings against Aunt Jacqui—another legal battle that was likely to go on for a few decades. She wasn’t going to relinquish those Bysen billions at all easily.

The only good thing, really, to come out of the By-Smart carnage was a thaw in my relationship with Conrad. After basketball practice, we’d meet sometimes for a cup of coffee or a whiskey. I never told Morrell about it—Conrad and I were old friends—we could have a drink now and then. After all, it wasn’t like he was staying with me the way Marcena was staying at Morrell’s while she recovered her strength. Even if Morrell preferred my conscientious spirit to her insouciance, I didn’t much like finding her propped up in the living room every time I went over.

If this were Disney, if this were that kind of fairy tale, I’d end by saying that the Lady Tigers went on to win the sectional and the state. I’d say they played their hearts out for me, their battered coach, and for Mary Ann, whose funeral we attended together late in February.

But in my world, things like that don’t happen. My girls won five games during the whole season, where last year they had won two. That was all the victory I was going to get.

I had dinner with Lotty the day after the Lady Tigers’ season ended, and told her how discouraged I felt. She frowned in disapproval, or disagreement.

“Victoria, you know my grandfather, my father’s father, was a very observant Jew.”

I nodded, surprised: she rarely talked about her dead family.

“During the terrible winter we spent together in 1938, the fifteen of us crowded into two rooms in the Vienna ghetto, he gathered all his grandchildren together and told us that the rabbis say when you die and present yourself before the Divine Justice, you will be asked four questions: Were you fair and honest in your business dealings? Did you spend loving time with your family? Did you study Torah? And last, but most important, did you live in hope for the coming of the Messiah? We were living then without food, let alone hope, but he refused to live hopelessly, my Zeyde Radbuka.

“Me, I don’t believe in God, let alone the coming of the Messiah. But I did learn from my zeyde that you must live in hope, the hope that your work can make a difference in the world. Yours does, Victoria. You cannot wave a wand and clear away the rubble of the dead steel mills, or the broken lives in South Chicago. But you went back to your old home, you took three girls who never thought about the future and made them want to have a future, made them want to get a college education. You got Rose Dorrado a job so she can support her children. If a Messiah ever does come, it will only be because of people like you, doing these small, hard jobs, making small changes in this hard world.”

It was a small comfort, and that night at dinner it felt like a cold one. But as the Chicago winter lingered, I found myself warmed by her grandfather’s hope.

The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sara Paretsky
is the author of thirteen previous books, including eleven V. I. Warshawski novels. The winner of many awards, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers’ Association, she lives in Chicago.
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Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a G. P. Putnam’s Sons edition.

Signet International Edition, June 2006

ISBN: 1-4295-1994-0

Copyright © Sara Paretsky, 2005
All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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For Rachel, Phoebe, Eva, Samantha, and Maia—
my own hope for change in the world