Sara Paretsky - Body Work

We laid her on his couch, and he made an ice pack for her face. “You stay with her, doll. Make her lie still. I’m getting dressed, and then we’ll get her to the doc.”

Clara was clutching her French textbook, and she wouldn’t relinquish it. I wrapped her in a blanket and concentrated on cleaning the blood from her face. While Mr. Contreras changed out of his magenta-striped pajamas, I called Lotty from the phone in his living room to ask if she could cut through the red tape at Beth Israel’s emergency room for us.

She’d been sound asleep, but years of practicing medicine made her alert at once. She told me to bring Clara to her clinic. “If nothing is broken, we’ll put her together there more comfortably. And without worrying all those social workers and insurance companies about reports on injuries to a minor child.”

As soon as Mr. Contreras was dressed, I ran upstairs for jeans, a sweater, and a spare coat for Clara, who’d arrived wearing nothing over her jeans and St. Teresa sweatshirt. I drove the two miles from our place to the clinic with a Lotty-like disregard for traffic laws.

Once Lotty assured herself that Clara’s injuries were superficial-no broken jaw, no damaged eye sockets-she inserted codeine-laced swabs into Clara’s nose and then packed it with what looked like a mile of gauze. Lotty applauded Mr. Contreras for knowing to ice the swollen eye and broken nose, then turned a stern gaze on me, wanting to know what kind of scheme I was running that endangered children.

“It wasn’t Vic,” Clara said. She was sitting in a big reclining chair in the examination room, knees up, head back, another ice pack pressed to her face. Her voice was a little slurred from the drugs Lotty had given her, but she seemed anxious to tell us what had happened.

“I guess they had someone watching our house, Vic,” she said. “Like, you know, I told you how Prince Rainier thought we were talking to you. I guess someone told him you still were.”

I felt sick to my stomach, as if Rodney were standing over me, kicking me again. Maybe I should find him and let him do it a few more times. Lotty was right-I had been running a scheme that endangered children. I couldn’t wallow in guilt now-I needed to get Clara to tell me how bad the damage was before Lotty’s drugs put her to sleep. I prodded her to continue.

“They must have waited until Papi got home from work. He was on the three-to-eleven shift today, so it was almost midnight before he got back. He was eating supper in the kitchen, and they just battered down the back door and came in. It-the noise, the shouting, these men all in black-it was so terrifying I don’t even know how my abuelita didn’t have a heart attack.

“I was doing homework, and I ran to the kitchen. Mamá and Ernie and my grandma were all asleep, but the noise woke them up. The men, they made us all come into the living room. One of them had me, he was holding me. I tried kicking him, and that’s when he hit me the first time.”

She was trembling at the memory, but I spoke sharply, forcing her to focus on details. How many men? Four. How were they dressed? Like Ernest used to dress when he rode his motorcycle, all black leather and studs.

“That was almost the most awful part, because Ernie started shrieking, ‘We’re getting our bikes out! We’re going for a ride!’ So these men, they yelled at him to shut up, and when he wouldn’t, first one man punched him, and when he still kept yelling, this other man, he hit me. Papi and Mamá, they stood there like frozen statues.”

She let out a bark of laughter that turned into a sob. Lotty wrapped her in a blanket, and forced some hot sweet tea into her. After a few moments, when she seemed calmer, I asked why she had come to me.

“Vic, she’s had enough!” Lotty’s voice was a whip. “She needs to sleep, and in a safe place.”

“Clara’s been playing with fire for too long,” I said. “If she’s ready to tell me what she knows, I need to hear it now, before anyone else gets hurt or killed.”

“That’s why I came to you, Vic,” Clara said. “Because they said if we didn’t give them the report, they’d burn the house down.”

My stomach became a lump of ice. “What report?”

“The Army sent it to my parents after Alexandra died.”

Clara’s hands were shaking so badly that the tea slopped onto the blanket she was holding.

I took the cup from her and held it to her mouth. I waited while she gulped the tea down before pushing her to tell me more about the report.

“It’s what started all the trouble, only I didn’t know back then. I was a kid still, no one told me anything. But it’s why Nadia and my mom were fighting all the time.

“My mom tonight, first she told the gangbangers she didn’t know what they were talking about, only when they punched me again and my nose started to bleed, she went to get it. See, she’d hidden it inside the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe over Allie’s bed. She-I should have told her, but I thought-I don’t know what I thought. I was just praying and praying that the gangbangers would leave.

“When they couldn’t find it, they said we had twenty-four hours to give it to them or the house would be burned down, or blown up, I don’t remember which. They left, out the front door. I just grabbed my French book and went out the back door, down the alley. I ran all the way to Ashland with Papi chasing after me, begging me to stop. But I found a cab right away and came to Vic’s place.”

“Your French book?” Mr. Contreras said. “Why the heck would you even be thinking about your studies at a time like that? And what about-”

“Vic gave me a twenty for an emergency.”

She opened the book to the back and showed us where she’d glued a piece of notebook paper over the verb tables to make a kind of pocket.

“Yeah, but that don’t explain-”

“Also, I put this inside.” Clara reached into the pocket and pulled out a set of folded papers, which she handed to me.

When I opened them, I found a letter with an autopsy report attached. I began to read- Classic pugilistic attitude absent… lack of smoke stains around nostrils… questions about cause of death led to decision to perform autopsy… charring… made it difficult to extract femoral blood sample… anterior aspect of right wrist (which survived fire intact) shows a 1- × ¾-inch contusion.

I felt my blood congeal in my arms. Dynamite. Clara had been carrying dynamite to school with her every day as if it were her lunch.

“Did you read this?” I asked.

“I tried to,” Clara whispered. “I… They’re about Allie. How she died, I mean. The report came from some doctor in Iraq who saw her body after she died. That’s why Nadia and my mother fought. I think Nadia knew what was in the letter.”

“But-the journal was sent to Nadia as next of kin, and the doctor wrote to your mother?” I asked.

“Can’t you see the girl is worn out?” Mr. Contreras interrupted. “She don’t need you bullying her.”

“He’s right, you know,” Lotty said.

“I’m worn out, too, but we have to do this.” I pushed my fingers into my cheekbones as if to push back my own overwhelming fatigue. “If Clara, if her family, are going to be safe, I need to understand this tangled mess of documents. Who hid what. Why they hid them.”

“I think the Muslim lady sent the journal to Nadia because she was afraid if my mom knew about her and Allie she’d just burn everything. At least, Nadia said that was the reason.” Clara was still whispering as if it could keep the reality of her family’s torment at bay.

“Does your mother know you have these?” I asked.

Clara grimaced, bunching up her cheeks. “Maybe she guessed. See, Allie, Nadia, and me, we all shared a bedroom. After Allie died, Mamá, she created this whole shrine by Allie’s bed. In a way, it’s freaky to sleep in there, but it’s also comforting. I feel like Allie is there with me, you know.