Sara Paretsky - Fire Sale

His face lit up. “I don’t think he’d come, but I could, that is, if I could take off from here, maybe if I came in early. Aren’t Mondays and Thursdays your practice days?”

I was surprised and asked how he knew.

He flushed. “I’m in the choir and the youth group at my church, our church, I mean, the one my family goes to, and we do these exchanges with inner-city churches sometimes, like, where we trade ministers, and our choirs sing together and stuff, and my youth group has adopted Mount Ararat down on Ninety-first Street, and some of the kids at the church, they go to Bertha Palmer. Two of them play on the basketball team. Josie Dorrado and Sancia Valdéz. Do you know them?”

“Oh, yes: there are only sixteen girls on the team, I know them all. So how come you’re working here at the warehouse? Shouldn’t you be in college or high school or something yourself?”

“I wanted to do a year of service, something like the Peace Corps, after I finished high school, but Grandpa persuaded me to spend a year on the South Side. It’s not like he’s sick or dying or anything, but he wanted me to work for a year in the company while he was still around to, like, answer my questions, and meantime I can do service through the church and stuff. That’s why I know Aunt Jacqui is just being, well, cynical. She is sometimes. A lot of the time. Sometimes I think she only married Uncle Gary because she wanted-” He broke off, blushing even more darkly.

“I forgot what I was going to say. She is really committed to the company. Grandpa, he doesn’t really like the ladies in the family to work in the store, not even my sister Candace, when she was running-but, anyway, Aunt Jacqui, she has a degree in design, I think it is, or fabric, something like that, and she persuaded Grandpa that she would go crazy staying at home. We beat Wal-Mart in towels and sheets every quarter since she took over the buying for those things, and even Grandpa is impressed with how thorough she is.”

Aunt Jacqui only married Uncle Gary because she wanted a piece of the Bysen family fortune. I could hear the accusations flying around the Bysen dinner table: Buffalo Bill was a tightwad, Aunt Jacqui was a gold digger. But the kid was a hardworking idealist. As I followed him along the corridors to the loading bays, I hoped I could get him to blurt out more indiscretions, like where or what Candace had been running, but he only explained how he came to have his nickname. His father was the oldest son-William the Second.

“It’s sort of a family joke, not that I’m crazy about it. Everyone calls Dad ‘Young Mister William,’ even though he’s fifty-two now. So I got nicknamed Billy the Kid. They think I shoot from the hip, see, and I know that’s what Pat is going to tell Dad about me bringing you in here, but don’t give up, Ms. War-sha-sky, I think it would be really great to help the basketball program. I promise you I’ll talk to Grandpa about it.”

As nearly as I could figure it out, the fight Monday afternoon began over religion and spread to sex, although it might have been the other way around. When I reached the gym, Josie Dorrado and Sancia Valdéz, the center, were sitting on the bleachers with their Bibles. Sancia’s two babies were on the bench, along with a kid of ten or so-Sancia’s younger sister, who was babysitting today. April Czernin stood in front of them, bouncing a ball that some gym teacher had left on the floor. April was a Catholic, but Josie was her best friend; she usually hovered around while Josie did Bible study.

Celine Jackman came in a minute after me and cast a scornful look at her teammates. “You two be praying for a new baby in your families, or what?”

“At least we praying,” Sancia said. “All that Catholic mumbo jumbo ain’t going to save you none after you been hanging with the Pentas. The truth is in the Bible.” She thumped the book for emphasis.

Celine put her hands on her hips. “You think Catholic girls like me are too ignorant to know the Bible, because we go to mass, but you still hang out with April, and last I saw, she was in the same church as me, Saint Michael and All Angels.”

April bounced the ball hard and told Celine to shut up.

Celine went on unchecked. “It’s you good girls who read your Bibles every day, you the ones who know right from wrong, like you with your two babies. So me, I’m too damned to know stuff in the Bible, like do it say anything about adultery, for instance.”

“Ten Commandments,” Josie said. “And if you don’t know that, Celine, you are dumber than you’re trying to pretend.”

Celine swung her long auburn braid over her shoulder. “You learned that at Mount Ararat on Ninety-first, huh, Josie? You should take April with you some Sunday.”

I grabbed Celine by the shoulders and pointed her toward the locker room. “Drills start in four minutes. Hustle your heinie straight in there and change. Sancia, Josie, April, you start loosening your hamstrings, not your lips.”

I made sure Celine had left the gym floor before going into the equipment room to unlock the rest of the balls. When I started the warm-up a little later, I was shy only four players, a sign we were all getting to know each other: my first day, over half the team arrived late. But my rule was that you kept doing floor exercises for the number of minutes you’d missed, even when the rest of the team was running drills with balls. That brought most of the team in on time.

“Where’s that English lady, the one who’s writing us up?” Laetisha Vettel asked as the girls lay on the floor stretching their hamstrings.

“Ask April.” Celine snickered.

“Ask me,” I said at once, but April, who was bending over her left leg, had already sat up straight.

“Ask me what?” she demanded.

“Where the English lady be at,” Celine said. “Or you don’t know, ask your daddy.”

“Least I got a daddy to ask,” April fired back. “Ask your mama does she even know who your daddy is.”

I blew my whistle. “Only one question you two girls need to answer: how many push-ups will I be doing if I don’t shut up right now and start stretching.”

I spoke with enough menace in my tone to send the two back to pulling their toes toward their chins, left leg, hold eight, right leg, hold eight. I was tired, and not interested in thinking of empathic ways to reach the adolescent psyche. The ride from South Chicago to Morrell’s home in Evanston was about thirty miles, an hour on those rare days when the traffic gods were kind, ninety minutes when they more frequently weren’t. My own office and apartment lay somewhere near the middle. Keeping on top of my detective agency, running the dogs I share with my downstairs neighbor, doing a little caretaking for Coach McFarlane were all taking a toll on me.

I’d been handling everything okay until Marcena Love arrived; until then, Morrell’s place had been a haven where I could unwind at day’s end. Even though he was still weak, he was an alert and nurturing presence in my life. Now, though, I felt so jolted by Marcena’s presence there that going to see him had turned into the final tension of the day.

Morrell keeps open house in Chicago most of the time-in any given month, everyone from fellow journalists to refugees to artists passes through his spare room. Usually, I enjoy meeting his friends-I get a view of the larger world I don’t normally see-but last Friday I’d told him bluntly that I found Marcena Love hard to take.

“It’s only for another week or two,” he’d said. “I know you two rub each other the wrong way, but honestly, Vic, you shouldn’t worry about her. I’m in love with you. But Marcena and I have known each other twenty years, we’ve been in tight holes together, and when she’s in my city she stays with me.”