Sara Paretsky - Windy City Blues

“So you repaired it and got it thoroughly clean,” I said foolishly.

“Oh, yes. Of course, the sound will never be as good as it was originally, but it would still be a fine instrument for informal use. Only-I hate having to give him a clarinet he can no longer play.”

“Leave it with me,” I said gently. “I’ll take care of it.”

Mr. Fortieri seemed relieved to pass the responsibility on to me. He went to work on the piano and tuned it back to perfection without any of his usual criticisms on my failure to keep to my mother’s high musical standard.

As soon as he’d gone, I drove down to the University of Chicago Hospital. Chaim was being kept in the psychiatric wing for observation, but he was allowed visitors. I found him sitting in the lounge, staring into space while People’s Court blared meaninglessly on the screen overhead.

He gave his sad sweet smile when he saw me and croaked out my name in the hoarse parody of a voice.

“Can we go to your room, Chaim? I want to talk to you privately.”

He flicked a glance at the vacant faces around us but got up obediently and led me down the hall to a Spartan room with bars on the window.

“Mr. Fortieri was by this afternoon to tune my piano. He told me about your clarinet.”

Chaim said nothing, but he seemed to relax a little.

“How did you do it, Chaim? I mean, you left for California Monday morning. What did you do-come back on the red-eye?”

“Red-eye?” he croaked hoarsely.

Even in the small space I had to lean forward to hear him. “The night flight.”

“Oh. The red-eye. Yes. Yes, I got to O’Hare at six, came to Paul’s office on the el, and was back at the airport in time for the ten o’clock flight. No one even knew I’d left L.A. -we had a rehearsal at two and I was there easily.”

His voice was so strained it made my throat ache to listen to him.

“I thought I hated Paul. You know, all those remarks of his about responsibility. I thought he’d encouraged Greta to leave me.” He stopped to catch his breath. After a few gasping minutes he went on.

“I blamed him for her idea that she didn’t have to feel any obligation to our marriage. Then, after I got back, I saw Lotty had been right. Greta was just totally involved in herself. She should have been named Narcissus. She used Paul’s words without understanding them.”

“But Penelope,” I said. “Would you really have let Penelope go to jail for you?”

He gave a twisted smile. “I didn’t mean them to arrest Penelope. I just thought-I’ve always had trouble with cold weather, with Chicago winters. I’ve worn a long fur for years. Because I’m so small people often think I’m a woman when I’m wrapped up in it. I just thought, if anyone saw me they would think it was a woman. I never meant them to arrest Penelope.”

He sat panting for a few minutes. “What are you going to do now, Vic? Send for the police?”

I shook my head sadly. “You’ll never play again-you’d have been happier doing life in Joliet than you will now that you can’t play. I want you to write it all down, though, the name you used on your night flight and everything. I have the clarinet; even though Mr. Fortieri cleaned it, a good lab might still find blood traces. The clarinet and your statement will go to the papers after you die. Penelope deserves that much-to have the cloud of suspicion taken away from her. And I’ll have to tell her and Lotty.”

His eyes were shiny. “You don’t know how awful it’s been, Vic. I was so mad with rage that it was like nothing to break Paul’s neck. But then, after that, I couldn’t play anymore. So you are wrong: even if I had gone to Joliet I would still never have played.”

I couldn’t bear the naked anguish in his face. I left without saying anything, but it was weeks before I slept without seeing his black eyes weeping onto me.

THE WARNING BELL clangs angrily and the submarine dives sharply. Everyone to battle stations. The Nazis pursuing closely, the bell keeps up its insistent clamor, loud, urgent, filling my head. My hands are wet: I can’t remember what my job is in this cramped, tiny boat. If only someone would turn off the alarm bell. I fumble with some switches, pick up an intercom. The noise mercifully stops.

“Vic! Vic, is that you?”

“What?”

“I know it’s late. I’m sorry to call so late, but I just got home from work. It’s Sal, Sal Barthele.”

“Oh, Sal. Sure.” I looked at the orange clock readout. It was four-thirty. Sal owns the Golden Glow, a bar in the south Loop I patronize.

“It’s my sister, Vic. They’ve arrested her. She didn’t do it. I know she didn’t do it.”

“Of course not, Sal-Didn’t do what?”

“They’re trying to frame her. Maybe the manager… I don’t know.”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. “Where are you?”

She was at her mother’s house, 95th and Vincennes. Her sister had been arrested three hours earlier. They needed a lawyer, a good lawyer. And they needed a detective, a good detective. Whatever my fee was, she wanted me to know they could pay my fee.

“I’m sure you can pay the fee, but I don’t know what you want me to do,” I said as patiently as I could.

“She-they think she murdered that man. She didn’t even know him. She was just giving him a facial. And he dies on her.”

“Sal, give me your mother’s address. I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

The little house on Vincennes was filled with neighbors and relatives murmuring encouragement to Mrs. Barthele. Sal is very black, and statuesque. Close to six feet tall, with a majestic carriage, she can break up a crowd in her bar with a look and a gesture. Mrs. Barthele was slight, frail, and light-skinned. It was hard to picture her as Sal’s mother.

Sal dispersed the gathering with characteristic firmness, telling the group that I was here to save Evangeline and that I needed to see her mother alone.

Mrs. Barthele sniffed over every sentence. “Why did they do that to my baby?” she demanded of me. “You know the police, you know their ways. Why did they come and take my baby, who never did a wrong thing in her life?”

As a white woman, I could be expected to understand the machinations of the white man’s law. And to share responsibility for it. After more of this meandering, Sal took the narrative firmly in hand.

Evangeline worked at La Cygnette, a high-prestige beauty salon on North Michigan. In addition to providing facials and their own brand-name cosmetics at an exorbitant cost, they massaged the bodies and feet of their wealthy clients, stuffed them into steam cabinets, ran them through a Bataan-inspired exercise routine, and fed them herbal teas. Signor Giuseppe would style their hair for an additional charge.

Evangeline gave facials. The previous day she had one client booked after lunch, a Mr. Darnell.

“Men go there a lot?” I interrupted.

Sal made a face. “That’s what I asked Evangeline. I guess it’s part of being a yuppie-go spend a lot of money getting cream rubbed into your face.”

Anyway, Darnell was to have had his hair styled before his facial, but the hairdresser fell behind schedule and asked Evangeline to do the guy’s face first.

Sal struggled to describe how a La Cygnette facial worked-neither of us had ever checked out her sister’s job. You sit in something like a dentist’s chair, lean back, relax-you’re naked from the waist up, lying under a big down comforter. The facial expert-cosmetician was Evangeline’s official tide-puts cream on your hands and sticks them into little electrically heated mitts, so your hands are out of commission if you need to protect yourself. Then she puts stuff on your face, covers your eyes with heavy pads, and goes away for twenty minutes while the face goo sinks into your hidden pores.