Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

Elena shook her head, lips pursed together. “That’s terrible, sweetie, terrible. I can’t take news like that sprung on me so suddenly. Why don’t you go away and let me digest it on my own? I’ll have to see Zerlina, and what I’ll ever say to her-you go on, now, Vicki. You were a good girl to come and tell me but I need to be alone.”

I kept the gentle smile on my face and looked up at her earnestly. “I will, Elena. I’ll go real soon. But first I need you to tell me what little scam you and Cerise had decided to run.”

She pulled herself up and gave me a look of outraged dignity. “Scam, Victoria? That’s a very ungenteel word.”

“But it describes the process to a tee. What money-making scheme had the two of you fixed on?”

“The poor girl isn’t even cold and you come here sullying her memory. I don’t know what Gabriella would say.” She plucked nervously at her gown.

The thought of my mother brought me a smile of pure amusement. “She’d say ‘Tell the truth, Elena-it will hurt coming up but then you’ll feel healthy again.’” Gabriella had held a firm belief in the value of purging.

“Well, irregardless, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I shook my head. “Not good enough, Auntie. You and Cerise showed up on my doorstep full of fear over the fate of poor Katterina. Somehow overnight that evaporated- Cerise pulled a disappearing act and you were playing mighty coy yourself. If either of you had been that worried, you would have figured out some way to get back in touch with me.”

“Cerise probably didn’t have your phone number. She probably couldn’t even remember your last name.”

I nodded. “That wouldn’t surprise me. But all she had to do was wait at Dr. Herschel’s clinic and there I’d be ready-loyal, conscientious, and industrious, or whatever the Scout motto says. No. The two of you had something in mind. Or else you wouldn’t have been so reluctant to tell me Zerlina’s last name.”

“I just didn’t think you should go badgering her-”

“Un-unh. You told Zerlina last Wednesday she couldn’t keep the baby at the Indiana Arms. What’d you do- blackmail her for the price of a bottle. Ugly stuff, Elena, but it saved the kid’s life. You knew when you saw me on Sunday that Zerlina had sent the baby away, I want to know what the hell you were doing, and why you dragged me into it.” The intensity of my feeling brought me to my feet; I glared down at my aunt.

The ready tears filled her eyes. “You get out of here, Victoria Iphigenia. You just leave. I’m sorry I ever even came to you after the fire. You’re just a damned snot-nosed buttinski who can’t show any respect to her elders. You may think you own Chicago but this is my room and I can call the police if you don’t leave.”

I looked around the room and my anger faded, replaced by shame and a wave of hopelessness. Elena couldn’t back up her threat-she didn’t even have a phone. All she had was her duffel bag and her sweaty filthy nightgown. I blinked back tears of my own and left. As I walked away under the empty light fixtures, I could hear her scrabble the key in the lock.

Out front the couple had stopped arguing and were making up over a bottle of Ripple. I walked slowly to my car and sat hunched over the steering wheel. Sometimes life seems so painful it hurts even to move my arms.

Not Donald Trump

What I wanted was to decamp for some remote corner of the globe where human misery didn’t take such naked forms. Lacking funds for that, I could retire to my bed for a month. But then my mortgage bill would come and go without payment and eventually the bank would kick me out and then I’d have some naked misery of my own, sitting in front of my building with a bottle of Ripple to keep it all out of my head. I started the engine and drove north to Saul Seligman’s office on Foster.

It was a shabby little storefront. The windows were boarded across the bottom; on the top right side “Seligman Property Management” was lettered on the pane in peeling gold scroll. Between the boarding and the grime on the glass, I couldn’t see inside, but I thought a light was on.

The door moved heavily under my hand; it had caught on a piece of loose linoleum that worked as an effective wedge. When I got inside I tried to tamp it down but it curled up as soon as I took my foot away. I gave up and moved to the high, scarred barricade separating Saul from the world beyond. If he was rolling in loot, he wasn’t putting any of it into the front office.

The back area held five desks, but only one was inhabited. A woman of about sixty was reading a library copy of Judith Krantz. Her faded blond hair was carefully sculpted in a series of waves. Her lips moved slightly as she slid one pudgy, ring-encrusted finger down the page. She didn’t look up, though she must have heard me working on the linoleum. Maybe the book was due today-she still had about half to read.

“I can tell you how it comes out,” I offered.

She put Judith down reluctantly. “Did you want something, honey?”

“Mr. Seligman,” I said in my brightest, most professional tone.

“He’s not in, dear.” Her hand strayed for the book.

“When do you expect him?”

“He’s not on a regular schedule now he’s retired.”

I found the latch on the inside of the gate in the barricade. “Maybe you can help me. Are you the office manager?”

She swelled a bit. “You can’t come barging in here, honey. This is private. Public out front.”

I shut the gate behind me. “I’m an investigator, ma’am. Ajax Insurance hired me to look into the fire that destroyed one of the Seligman properties last week. The Indiana Arms.”

“Oh.” She toyed with a wedding band that cut deep into her finger. “Is there some kind of problem?”

“Arson’s always a problem.” I perched on the corner of the desk adjacent to hers. “The company won’t pay the claim until they’re convinced Mr. Seligman didn’t have anything to do with setting the fire.”

She pulled herself up in her seat; her pale blue eyes darted fire at me behind her glasses. “That is an outrageous suggestion. The very idea! Mr. Seligman would no more… Do you have any proof to back this up?”

I shook my head. “I’m not accusing him of setting the fire. I just need to make sure that he didn’t.”

“He didn’t. I can promise you that.”

“Great. That means the inquiry will be short and sweet. How many properties does he own-besides the Indiana Arms, I mean.”

“Mr. Seligman is the sweetest, most honest-look, he’s a Jew, okay, and I’m a Catholic. Do you think that ever bothered him? When my husband left me and I had my two girls to look after, who paid their tuition bills so they could stay on at St. Inanna’s? And the Christmas presents he gave them, not to mention me, if I said it once I said it a hundred times, he’d better not let Fanny see the kinds of presents he gave me, not if he wanted to stay happily married, which he was until she died three years ago. He hasn’t been the same since, lost interest in the business, but if you think he would have burned down a building, you’re the one who’s crazy.”

When she finished she was flushed and panting a little. Only a beast would have persisted.

“Do you collect the rents in here, Mrs…”

“Donnelly,” she snapped. “The building managers do that. Look. You’d better show me some kind of authorization if you’re going to come barging in asking questions.”

I dug my license out of my billfold and handed it to her with one of my cards: V, I, Warshawski, Financial Investigations, She looked them over suspiciously, studying the photo, comparing it to me. For some reason my face had come out a kind of lobster hue in the picture. It always fools people.