Sara Paretsky - Body Work

“Nadia told me she and her mother had quarreled. That must be hard, too, on Cristina, to know her daughter was killed while they were estranged.”

“They’re a strange family. Ever since the oldest girl died-”

“I know. In Iraq.”

“Alexandra’s death deranged them all,” the woman said. “Next thing you know, the boy turns into an idiot from a motorcycle accident, then Nadia fights with her mother and moves away!”

The toddler began to fuss. I pulled a sheet of paper from my case and folded it into a cocked hat while I spoke. The child stopped whining to watch me.

“Poor Nadia was angry and upset all the time,” I said. “She took Alexandra’s death very hard.”

“Cristina will never talk about Alexandra to anyone. Maybe to the priest, although he’s not a man who inspires confidences.”

I handed the cocked hat to the child. “I guess I’ll try to pay a condolence call, anyway.”

“Cristina works during the day. Only Ernest is there, with Lazar’s mother. They take him for therapy, they hope he’ll learn to live on his own one day. Of course, he can walk, he can dress himself, he can talk, but in many ways he acts like a child. Almost like Fausto.” She pointed at the toddler. “How they can bring back his memory, that I don’t understand. They’re lucky they got a little extra money.”

“Extra money?” I blurted. “Nadia never mentioned that.”

“Oh, everyone knows it’s why she fought with her mother. They got some money, I think from Ernest’s accident, and Nadia, she thought her mother shouldn’t take it. Although, why not? What are you supposed to do, live on air and water?”

“What, the person who caused the accident paid them something?”

The settlement hadn’t shown up in any of my databases, but if it had been done through mediation it wouldn’t be part of the public record.

The neighbor shrugged-the money was old news, not interesting anymore. “Wherever it came from, they need every penny of it. His therapy, all the extra care. Why couldn’t Nadia stay at home and help instead of fighting with her mother and leaving?”

“It must be hard on Clara,” I suggested. “Two sisters dead, her brother seriously injured.”

“Everyone’s life is hard.” The woman settled Fausto into the wagon and started down the street. “My husband, he left me when I was pregnant with Fausto. But I keep going, and the Guamans do, too. And maybe the therapy will help Ernest. Two days a week, off he goes with his abuela to see if he can learn to behave normally around others. He can’t work unless he knows how to control himself.”

It was far too cold to stand around talking. I walked with her, pausing at the Guaman home.

My acquaintance shook her head. “I’m sure it’s hard on Cristina, seeing her son like he is. He used to be such a great boy, wonderful brother, good son. Shoveled the walks in the winter, took his sisters shopping. Whatever you wanted, he would do. And to see him like this-” She shook her head again, pitying.

“And they’re safe living here even though they have more money now?”

“Everyone knows them. No one wants to bring them any more sorrow. Punks did try to break in twice-we have gangs here, same as everywhere-but Lazar, he put in all this new security-wires, new glass, everything. One of the punks cut himself so badly, he lost the use of his right hand. And then, a few days later, someone shot another of the gangbangers, killed him as he was going into a drug house over on Nineteenth Street. We were all just as happy.”

We’d reached the Laundromat. I held the door for my acquaintance while she wrestled the wagon inside. The child had been chewing on the cocked hat, and it was pretty much a pulpy mess now, but the woman didn’t seem to mind.

I returned to my car and backed into the intersection so I could drive east, past the Guaman house. I don’t know what I was hoping to see, but just as I was about to turn north, the front door opened. I stopped at the corner and watched in my wing mirror while Ernest and his grandmother came down the stairs. She had a firm grip on his left arm, but his right arm gesticulated wildly.

They walked down the street away from me. A couple of left turns caught me up with them. I drove past them and turned again. After a number of similar maneuvers, I watched them turn north on Western Avenue. The grandmother’s head only reached Ernest’s shoulder, but she was definitely in charge of the expedition, propelling him along whenever he wanted to stop.

One storefront completely engaged him, and she had a hard time moving him on. When I passed a few minutes later, I saw it was a pet store. Puppies in cages-the kind of thing that makes you want to join an animal liberation army to set them free-but utterly entrancing for children. Propped in the window was a glossy picture of a puppy licking the face of an ecstatic child. On impulse, I went inside and got a flyer.

After a few blocks, the grandmother stopped and seemed to be forcing Ernest to decide where to go. He turned right, and she shook her head. He waved his arms and shouted, loudly enough that I caught the echo down in my own car, but finally he turned around and headed west.

Lotty’s hospital, Beth Israel, runs a rehab place down here, one of the ten or fifteen health-care centers that fill up Chicago’s near South Side. I figured my quarry was heading there. I drove past them and found street parking where I could keep an eye on the entrance. Sure enough, in another few minutes Ernest and his grandmother turned up the walk and went through the revolving doors.

I followed them in, not sure what I was hoping to accomplish. Women with infants, women with boyfriends on crutches or in wheelchairs, women looking after aging parents, old women like Señora Guaman taking care of grandchildren, filled the lobby. One television was blaring in Spanish, another in English. Children were crying, mothers stared ahead in stolid resignation.

Ernest and his grandmother were standing in line to check in. The grandmother had found someone she knew sitting nearby; the two women were talking in Spanish. I bent over, pretending to pick up something from the floor, and held out the flyer with the puppy’s picture to Ernest.

“Did you drop this?”

He looked at me, not understanding what I was saying, but then his eye fell on the picture of the puppy, and he snatched it from me.

“My dog! Nana, my dog!”

His grandmother turned. She sighed with fatigue when she saw the picture, and I felt ashamed for exciting him-looking after her grandson must be a hard enough job without a private eye rousing him.

“Your dog, Ernest?” she said. “You don’t have a dog. This is a picture of a dog.” Her English was fluent but heavily accented.

“I’m sorry,” I smiled at her. “I found this next to him on the floor and thought maybe he’d dropped it.”

“He wants a dog, and maybe we should get him one, but I don’t want to care for a dog as well as for Ernest. Anyway, his sister is allergic.”

“He’s here for therapy?” I asked.

“I don’t know how much they can do for him, but we come two times every week. After all, if you give up hope, you have nothing left.”

“It’s hard,” I said. “One of my cousins was shot in the head. He can still walk and talk, but he’s lost his impulse control. He behaves so wildly in public we don’t know if he can ever live on his own again.”

Lies. The detective’s stock-in-trade was really making me squirm today.

“With Ernie, it was a motorcycle,” she said. “We kept him out of the gangs. He was a good boy, always, but not a scholar like his sisters, They all are brilliant students. Were brilliant students.” Her face creased in sorrow. “Two of them are dead now.”