Fire Sale Read online

  The end of the sentence came out under his breath: Mr. Contreras and the two dogs I share with him had apparently been watching for me, because all three came bounding down the front walk as soon as I got out of the car. Mr. Contreras checked his step when he saw Conrad. Although he had never approved of my dating a black man, he had helped me nurse my broken heart when Conrad left me, and was clearly staggered to see us arrive together. The dogs showed no such restraint. Whether they remembered Conrad or not I didn’t know: Peppy is a golden retriever and her son Mitch is half Lab-they give everyone from the meter reader to the Grim Reaper the same high-energy salute.

  Mr. Contreras followed them slowly down the walk, but when he realized I’d been injured he became both solicitous and annoyed because I hadn’t told him at once. “I would’ve come got you, Cookie, if you’d a only let me know, no need for a police escort.”

  “It was late at night when it all happened and they released me first thing this morning,” I said gently. “Conrad’s a commander now, anyway, at the Fourth District. This factory that burned last night is in his territory, so he wants to find out what I know about it-he won’t believe it’s sweet nothing at all.”

  In the end, we all went up to my apartment together, the dogs, the old man, Conrad. My neighbor bustled around in my kitchen and produced a bowl of yogurt with sliced apples and brown sugar. He even coaxed a double espresso out of my battered stove-top machine.

  I stretched out on the couch, the dogs on the floor next to me. Mr. Contreras took the armchair, while Conrad pulled up the piano bench so he could watch my face while I talked. He pulled a cassette recorder from his pocket and recorded the date and place we were talking.

  “Okay, Ms. W., this is on the record. You tell me the whole story of what you were doing in South Chicago.”

  “It’s my home,” I said. “I belong there more than you do.”

  “Forget that: you haven’t lived there for twenty-five years or more.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You know as well as me that in this town, your childhood home dogs you your whole life.”

  1 Remembrances of Things Past

  Going back to South Chicago has always felt to me like a return to death. The people I loved most, those fierce first attachments of childhood, had all died in this abandoned neighborhood on the city’s southeast edge. It’s true my mother’s body, my father’s ashes, lie elsewhere, but I had tended both through painful illnesses down here. My cousin Boom-Boom, close as a brother-closer than a brother-had been murdered here fifteen years ago. In my nightmares, yellow smoke from the steel mills still clouds my eyes, but the giant smokestacks that towered over my childhood landscape are now only ghosts themselves.

  After Boom-Boom’s funeral, I’d vowed never to return, but such vows are grandiose; you can’t keep them. Still, I try. When my old basketball coach called to beg, or maybe command me to fill in for her while she dealt with cancer surgery, I said “No,” reflexively.

  “ Victoria, basketball got you out of this neighborhood. You owe something to the girls who’ve come behind you to give them the chance you had.”

  It wasn’t basketball but my mother’s determination I would have a university education that got me out of South Chicago, I said. And my ACTs were pretty darn good. But as Coach McFarlane pointed out, the athletic scholarship to the University of Chicago didn’t hurt.

  “Even so, why doesn’t the school hire a substitute for you?” I asked petulantly.

  “You think they pay me to coach?” Her voice rose in indignation. “It’s Bertha Palmer High, Victoria. It’s South Chicago. They don’t have any resources and now they’re on intervention, which means every available dime goes to preparing kids for standardized tests. It’s only because I volunteer that they keep the girls’ program alive, and it’s on life support as it is: I have to scrounge for money to pay for uniforms and equipment.”

  Mary Ann McFarlane had taught me Latin as well as basketball; she’d retooled herself to teach geometry when the school stopped offering all languages except Spanish and English. Through all the changes, she’d kept coaching basketball. I hadn’t realized any of that until the afternoon she called.

  “It’s only two hours, two afternoons a week,” she added.

  “Plus up to an hour’s commute each way,” I said. “I can’t take this on: I have an active detective agency, I’m working without an assistant, I’m taking care of my lover who got shot to bits in Afghanistan. And I still have to look after my own place and my two dogs.”

  Coach McFarlane wasn’t impressed-all this was just so much excuse making. “Quotidie damnatur qui semper timet,” she said sharply.

  I had to recite the words several times before I could translate them: The person who is always afraid is condemned every day. “Yeah, maybe, but I haven’t played competitive basketball for two decades. The younger women who join our pickup games at the Y on Saturdays play a faster, meaner game than I ever did. Maybe one of those twenty-somethings has two afternoons a week to give you-I’ll talk to them this weekend.”

  “There’s nothing to make one of those young gals come down to Ninetieth and Houston,” she snapped. “This is your neighborhood, these are your neighbors, not that tony Lakeview where you think you’re hiding out.”

  That annoyed me enough that I was ready to end the conversation, until she added, “Just until the school finds someone else, Victoria. Or maybe a miracle will happen and I’ll get back there.”

  That’s how I knew she was dying. That’s how I knew I was going to have to return once more to South Chicago, to make another journey into pain.

  2 Homie

  The noise was overwhelming. Balls pounded on the old yellow floor. They ricocheted from backboards and off the bleachers that crowded the court perimeter, creating a syncopated drumming as loud as a gale-force wind. The girls on the floor were practicing layups and free throws, rebounding, dribbling between their legs and behind their backs. They didn’t all have balls-the school budget didn’t run to that-but even ten balls make a stunning racket.

  The room itself looked as though no one had painted, or even washed it, since I last played here. It smelled of old sweat, and two of the overhead lights were broken, so it seemed as though it was always February inside. The floor was scarred and warped; every now and then one of the girls would forget to watch her step at the three-second lane or the left corner-the two worst spots-and take a spill. Last week, one of our promising guards had sprained an ankle.

  I tried not to let the daunting atmosphere get me down. After all, Bertha Palmer had sixteen girls who wanted to play, some even playing their hearts out. It was my job to help them until the school found a permanent coach. And to keep their spirits up after the season started, and they went against teams with better facilities, better depth-and much better coaches.

  Those waiting a turn under the baskets were supposed to be running laps or stretching, but they tended to hover over the girls with balls, grabbing for them, or shouting hotly that April Czernin or Celine Jackman was hogging shooting time.

  “Your mama didn’t spread her legs to pay for that ball-give it over here,” was a frequent taunt. I had to stay alert to squabbles that might erupt into full-scale war while correcting faults in shooting form. And not be bothered by the howling of the infant and toddler in the bleachers. The babies belonged to my center, Sancia, a gawky sixteen-year-old who-despite her six-foot-two body-looked practically like a baby herself. The kids were nominally under the care of her boyfriend, but he sat sullenly next to them, Discman in his ears, looking neither at his children nor at the action on the floor.

  I was also trying not to let Marcena Love disturb me, although her presence was winding my team up, intensifying the pace of insults as well as of the workout. Not that Marcena was a scout or a coach or even knew very much about the game, but the team was ferociously aware of her.

  When she’d arrived with me, impossibly soignée in her black Prada spandex, carrying an outsize leather
bag, I’d introduced her briefly: she was English, she was a reporter, she wanted to take some notes, and possibly talk to some of them during the breaks.

  The girls would have swooned over her anyway, but when they found she had covered Usher at Wembley Stadium, they’d screamed with excitement.

  “Talk to me, miss, talk to me!”

  “Don’t listen to her, she’s the biggest liar on the South Side.”

  “You wanna photograph me doing my jump shot? I’m gonna be all-state this year.”

  I’d had to use a crowbar to get them away from Love and onto the court. Even as they fought over equipment and shooting rights, they kept an eye on her.

  I shook my head: I was paying too much attention to Love myself. I took a ball from April Czernin, another promising guard, and tried to show her how to back into the three-second lane, turning at the last instant to do that fadeaway jumper Michael Jordan made famous. At least my ball went in, always a plus when you’re trying to show off a move. April repeated the shot a few times while another player complained, “How come you let her keep the ball and I don’t get no time, Coach?”

  Being called “coach” still disconcerted me. I didn’t want to get used to it-this was a temporary gig. In fact, I was hoping to line up a corporate sponsor this afternoon, someone willing to pay good money to bring in a pro, or at least semipro, to take over the team.

  When I blew my whistle to call an end to free-form warm-ups, Theresa Díaz popped up in front of me.

  “Coach, I got my period.”

  “Great,” I said. “You’re not pregnant.”

  She blushed and scowled: despite the fact that at any one time at least fifteen percent of their classmates were pregnant, the girls were skittish and easily embarrassed by talk about their bodies. “Coach, I gotta use the bathroom.”

  “One at a time-you know the rule. When Celine gets back, you can go.”

  “But, Coach, my shorts, they’ll, you know.”

  “You can wait on the bench until Celine returns,” I said. “The rest of you: get into two lines-we’re going to practice layups and rebounds.”

  Theresa gave an exaggerated sigh and made a show of mincing over to the bench.

  “What’s the point of that kind of use of power? Will humiliating the girl turn her into a better player?” Marcena Love’s high, clear voice was loud enough for the two girls nearest her to stop fighting over a ball to listen.

  Josie Dorrado and April Czernin looked from Love to me to see what I would do. I couldn’t-mustn’t-lose my temper. After all, I might only be imagining that Love was going out of her way to get my goat.

  “If I wanted to humiliate her, I’d follow her to the bathroom to see if she really had her period.” I also spoke just loudly enough for the team to overhear. “I’m pretending to believe her because it might really be true.”

  “You suspect she just wants a cigarette?”

  I lowered my voice. “Celine, the kid who disappeared for a break five minutes ago, is challenging me. She’s a leader in the South Side Pentas, and Theresa’s one of her followers. If Celine can get a little gang meeting going in the stalls during practice, she’s taken over the team.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Of course, you could go in with Theresa, take notes of all her and Celine’s girlish thoughts and wishes. It would raise their spirits no end, and you could report on how public school toilets on Chicago ’s South Side compare with what you’ve seen in Baghdad and Brixton.”

  Love widened her eyes, then smiled disarmingly. “Sorry. You know your team. But I thought sports were meant to keep girls out of gangs.”

  “Josie! April! Two lines, one shoots, one rebounds, you know the drill.” I watched until the girls formed up and began shooting.

  “Basketball is supposed to keep them out of pregnancy, too.” I gestured to the bleachers. “We have one teen mom out of sixteen in a school where almost half the girls have babies before they’re seniors, so it’s working for most of them. And we only have three gang members-that I know of-on the team. The South Side is the city’s dumping ground. It’s why the gym’s a wreck, half the girls don’t have uniforms, and we have to beg to get enough basketballs to run a decent drill. It’s going to take way more than basketball to keep these kids off drugs, out of childbirth, and in school.”

  I turned away from Love and set the girls in one line to running into the basket and shooting from underneath, with the ones in the second line following to rebound. We practiced from inside the three-second lane, outside the three-point perimeter, hook shots, jump shots, layups. Halfway through the drill, Celine sauntered back into the gym. I didn’t talk to her about her ten minutes out of the room, just put her at the back of one of the lines.

  “Your turn, Theresa,” I called.

  She started toward the door, then muttered, “I think I can make it to the end of practice, Coach.”

  “Don’t take any chances,” I said. “Better to miss another five minutes of practice than to risk embarrassment.”

  She blushed again and insisted she was fine. I put her in the lane where Celine wasn’t and looked at Marcena Love, to see if she’d heard; the journalist turned her head and seemed intent on the play under the basket in front of her.

  I smiled to myself: point to the South Side street fighter. Although street fighting wasn’t the most useful tool with Marcena Love: she had too much in her armory that went beyond me. Like the skinny-oh, all right, slim-muscular body her black Prada clung to. Or the fact that she’d known my lover since his Peace Corps days. And had been with Morrell last winter in Afghanistan. And had shown up at his Evanston condo three days ago, when I’d been in South Shore with Coach McFarlane.

  When I’d reached his place that night myself, Marcena had been perched on the side of his bed, tawny head bent down as they looked at photographs together. Morrell was recovering from gunshot wounds that still required him to lie down much of the time, so it wasn’t surprising he was in bed. But the sight of a strange woman, and one with Marcena’s poise and ease, leaning over him-at ten o’clock-had caused hackles to rise from my crown to my toes.

  Morrell reached out a hand to pull me down for a kiss before introducing us: Marcena, an old journalist friend, in town to do a series for the Guardian, called from the airport, staying in the spare room for a week or so while she gets her bearings. Victoria, private investigator, basketball locum, Chicago native who can show you around. I’d smiled with as much goodwill as I could summon, and had tried not to spend the next three days wondering what they were doing while I was running around town.

  Not that I was jealous of Marcena. Certainly not. I was a modern woman, after all, and a feminist, and I didn’t compete with other women for any man’s affection. But Morrell and Love had the intimacy that comes from a long-shared past. When they started laughing and talking I felt excluded. And, well, okay, jealous.

  A fight under one of the baskets reminded me to keep my attention on the court. As usual, it was between April Czernin and Celine Jackman, my gangbanger forward. They were the two best players on the team, but figuring out how to get them to play together was only one of the exhausting challenges the girls presented. At times like this it was just as well I was a street fighter. I separated them and organized squads for scrimmage.

  We took a break at three-thirty, by which time everyone was sweating freely, including me. During the break, I was able to serve the team Gatorade, thanks to a donation from one of my corporate clients. While the other girls drank theirs, Sancia Valdéz, my center, climbed up the bleachers to make sure her baby got its bottle and to have some kind of conversation with its father-so far I hadn’t heard him do more than mumble incomprehensibly.

  Marcena began interviewing a couple of the girls, choosing them at random, or maybe by color-one blonde, one Latina, one African-American. The rest clamored around her, jealous for attention.

  I saw that Marcena was recording them, using a neat little red device, about the size and shape of a fo
untain pen. I’d admired it the first time I saw it-it was a digital gizmo, of course, and could hold eight hours of talk in its tiny head. And unless Marcena told people, they didn’t know they were being recorded. She hadn’t told the girls she was taping them, but I decided not to make an issue of it-chances were, they’d be flattered, not offended.

  I let it go on for fifteen minutes, then brought over the board and began drawing play routes on it. Marcena was a good sport-when she saw the team would rather talk to her than listen to me she put her recorder away and said she’d finish after practice.

  I sent two squads to the floor for an actual scrimmage. Marcena watched for a few minutes, then climbed up the rickety bleachers to my center’s boyfriend. He sat up straighter and at one point actually seemed to speak with real animation. This distracted Sancia so much that she muffed a routine pass and let the second team get an easy score.

  “Head in the game, Sancia,” I barked in my best Coach McFarlane imitation, but I was still relieved when the reporter climbed down from the bleachers and ambled out of the gym: everyone got more focused on what was happening on the court.

  Last night at dinner, when Marcena proposed coming with me this afternoon, I’d tried to talk her out of it. South Chicago is a long way from anywhere, and I warned her I couldn’t take a break to drive her downtown if she got bored.

  Love had laughed. “I have a high boredom threshold. You know the series I’m doing for the Guardian on the America that Europeans don’t see? I have to start somewhere, and who could be more invisible than the girls you’re coaching? By your account, they’re never going to be Olympic stars or Nobel Prize winners, they come from rough neighborhoods, they have babies-”

  “In other words, just like the girls in South London,” Morrell had interrupted. “I don’t think you’ve got a world-beating story there, Love.”

  “But going down there might suggest a story,” she said. “Maybe a profile of an American detective returning to her roots. Everyone likes detective stories.”