V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 6

"Do you know why she stole the necklace to begin with?"

"Her little girl had asthma and it got real bad, she had to go to the hospital, only Nicola couldn't pay the bill, I guess. I heard her asking Mom for a loan, and, well, it was thousands of dollars, I guess Mom couldn't possibly loan her that much money, it would be years before Nicola could pay it off. I gave her five hundred dollars-the money I've saved from my grandparents' birthday checks-only then somehow Dad found out, he stopped the checks, that was when he and Mom made me-"

He pulled at his Tshirt, so that the s.p.a.ce Berets stern faces distorted into sneers; when he spoke again it was in such a rapid monotone I could barely make out the words. "They made me go to this camp for fat kids where you had to run all day and only eat carrots for dinner, and by the time that was over, Nicola was arrested and on trial and everything. I never saw her again. I thought if she ran away from jai . . . only now she's dead. Who killed her? Did you tell Mom she got kicked to death?"

If I'd known this sensitive boy was listening I wouldn't have been so graphic with Eleanor. "The doctor who tried to save her life at the hospital said he thought she'd been punched or kicked, but no one knows who did it. I'm hoping I can find that out. Did she ever talk to you about any of the people in her life, anyone she was afraid of, or owed money to?"

"It's only that she was-she wasn't very big and she was afraid of people hitting her; once she thought Mom was mad enough to throw something at her, she-it was horrible, she was begging her not to hurt her. I wish-" His face crumpled and he began to cry. "Oh, s.h.i.t, oh, s.h.i.t, only crybabies cry, oh, stop."

Before I could offer any words of comfort he vanished into the shrubbery. I got back in my car, then, wondering if he might be lurking within earshot, got out again.

"I'm going to leave one of my business cards behind this post," I said loudly.

"If anyone finds it who wants to call me, my number's on it."

The grounds were so carefully groomed there were no pebbles or branches to weight the card. I finally tore a twig from the shrubbery and placed it behind the gaterelease post with my card. As I released the gate I heard a motor revving behind me. The Mercedes Gelaendewagen appeared, going fast. It overtook me before I finished turning onto Gateway Terrace. Mrs. Trant was at the wheel.

She and Mrs. Poilevy still had on their heavy gla.s.ses, which made them look like the menacing action toys at the pool's edge.

The Skylark huffed after them but couldn't keep pace. Before I reached the first intersection the Mercedes had disappeared.

In a few minutes I was back on the main roads, where strip malls and office towers made the Baladine home seem a remote Eden. Buildings of unrelated size and design are plunked haphazardly on the prairie out here, as if their haste to fill the vast s.p.a.ce makes developers dig it up at random. It reminded me of a giant box of chocolates, where someone had eaten bits off dozens of pieces in a greedy desire to consume the whole thing at once.

In the distance the orderly Chicago skyline appeared. I swung onto the expresswayArthur seeing Avalon through the mists and eagerly returning. Not that the pockmarked apartments and burnedout lots lining the inbound Eisenhower were any more delightful than the western suburbs.

A roar in the Skylark's exhaust made it hard for me to think about the Baladines. I hadn't gotten what I'd gone out there for: the name of anyone who might have hurt Nicola Aguinaldo. And what had I learned? That the very rich are different from you and me?

Certainly they're different from me. The neighborhood where I grew up was a lot more like Uptown than Oak Brook. Every kid on my block knew what a p.a.w.nshop was: we were often the ones our parents sent with the radio or coat or whatever was going up the spout to pay the rent.

By the same token I didn't know what life with a fulltime nanny was like. Did they talk about their private lives to their young charges? You couldn't live intimately with people for two years without sharing many intimacies, I suppose, if you found a language in common.

Had Nicola preyed on young Robbie's sympathies? A sensitive overweight boy would be an easy mark in this house of obsessed athletes. Maybe Nicola got tired of Mom-I certainly had after twenty minutes-and decided to steal both her son's affections and her jewelry. Not that I was investigating this longgone burglary, but I wondered if Nicola Aguinaldo really had an asthmatic daughter.

And what about Dad? Robbie had been awfully quick to get the implication of Eleanor Baladine making an excuse to fire Nicola. And those friends of the Baladines knew something-there was a whiff of concealed knowledge in the stiffening, the glances. Had Robert started playing with the help on those days off when he drove her to Chicago? When she ran away from prison did she think he would come to her rescue-leave Eleanor for a Filipina immigrant? Could he perhaps have killed her to keep her from messing with his happy home?

The rush hour was building. The drive home took almost twice as long as the one out, and the exhaust got louder in the long backup off the Eisenhower to the northbound Kennedy. By the time I pulled up in front of my apartment, my bones were vibrating from it. Definitely not a car I wanted to spend the rest of my life in.

Mr. Contreras was out back with the dogs, working over his tomatoes. I called from my back porch and Peppy came up to see me. Mitch was gnawing on a tree branch and barely lifted his head.

As I changed into jeans Peppy followed me around the apartment, making it clear she expected to come with me. "I'm going to Uptown, girl. What if someone a.s.saults me and you're left in the car for days? Not that a car on that block gets left for long. And I'd have to leave the windows open-anyone could come by and steal you or hurt you." I couldn't withstand the longing in her amber eyes.

After taking my gun from the safe and checking the clip and the safety, I leashed her up and called down to my neighbor that I was taking her with me on an errand.

As I parked between a rusted Chevy and an empty pickle jar, I wondered what went through Nicola Aguinaldo's mind when she made that long trip home on Sundays.

Suburban bus to train, train to Union Station, walk to State Street, L to Bryn Mawr, the six blocks over to her apartment on Wayne. Over two hours, even if all connections went smoothly. And when she got home, instead of a pool and manicured grounds for her children, she'd find a tiny gla.s.sstrewn square of hardpacked dirt in front of her building. If she had fallen in with some scheme of Baladine's, maybe it was in the hopes of buying her children's way out of Wayne Street.

The girls who'd helped me canva.s.s the street last night were jumping doubledutch when I pulled up. I picked the pickle jar out of the gutter before someone could run over or throw it. I didn't see a garbage can so I tossed it into the open rear window of the Skylark. Peppy stuck her head out, hoping that meant I wanted her. The girls caught sight of her and stopped jumping.

"Is that your police dog, miss?" "Does he bite, miss?" "Can I pet him?" "Will he stay in the car?"

"It's a girl dog who is very gentle; she'd love to say hi to you. Shall I let her out?"

They giggled nervously but approached the car. Peppy has perfect manners. When I let her out of the back, after dancing for a minute to show her pleasure at being released, she sat and extended a paw to the girls. They were enchanted. I showed them how she would take a dog biscuit from my mouth, our noses brushing gently.

"Can I do that, miss?" "Did you raise her from a baby?" "Ooh, Derwa, she likes you, she licked your hand!" "Mina, that police dog going to bite you!"

"Do any of you remember Nicola Aguinaldo?" I asked as casually as I could. "I'd like to talk to her mother."

"Did she steal that gold thing we found?"

"Don't be stupid," another girl with thick braids and a head scarf snorted. "How could she steal something when she was already in jail?"

"That's right, the missus didn't like the way the mister looked at Sherree's mother, that's right, so she pretended Sherree's mom stole something," a third put in.

Someone objected that Sherree's mom really had stolen a necklace and she was a thief, but one girl said, "That's dirty talk, about Sherree's mom and the mister; you shouldn't be saying stuff like that."

"Well, it's only the truth! It's not saying that Sherree's mom did something dirty, not like Mina's mom, you know-"

A hand reached across and slapped the speaker. Before the fight could escalate, I snapped at them to be quiet.

"I'm not interested in what anyone's mother thinks, says, or does-that's her private business. I need to talk to Sherree's grandmother. Will one of you show me where to find her?"

"They moved," Sarina, the oldest, said.

"Where?" I asked.

They looked at each other, suddenly wary. In the world of illegal immigrants, detectives who ask questions about the family are never benign. Not even Peppy or the beatup Skylark could make me seem less than an educated Anglo-and hence attached to authority.

After some d.i.c.kering they agreed that I could talk to one of their mothers. Mina was nominated: she'd lived across the hall, and her mom had looked after Sherree when the baby died.

"What baby?"

"Sherree's little sister," a small girl who'd been silent before spoke up. "She coughed and coughed, and Seora Mercedes took her to the hospital; that was when-"

"Shut up!" The big girl with the long braid smacked her. "I told you you could play with us if you kept quiet-well, here you are blabbing your big mouth off, same as always."

"I am not!" The little one howled. "And Mommy says you have to look after me anyway."

"Mina!" I cut in, not sure which one I was addressing. "Let's go talk to your mother and leave these two to sort out their problem."

A girl with short curly hair looked at me. During the discussion she had hovered on the edge of the group, an outsider with the in crowd.

"I guess you can come up." She wasn't enthusiastic. "But my mom's afraid of dogs; you can't bring your dog inside."

Half a dozen shrill voices promised to look after Peppy, but I thought it would be more prudent to return her to the car. Even a beautifully mannered dog can turn fractious with strangers, and childish strangers also couldn't control her if she decided to follow me-or chase a cat across the street.

10.

Found in Translation "My mom doesn't speak much English," Mina warned me as she took me inside.

"Neither did mine." I followed her up the narrow stairs, where the smell of old grease and mold vividly brought back the tenements of my own childhood. "We spoke Italian together."

"My mom only speaks Arabic. And a little English. So you'll have to talk to me unless you know Arabic." As we climbed the stairs she took a fringed scarf out of her jeans pocket and tied it around her curls.

Mina's mother-Mrs. Attar to me-received me in a living room that I also knew from my childhood. I used to sit in places like this when my mother took me with her on social calls in the neighborhood: overstuffed furniture encased in plastic, a large television draped in a piece of weaving from the Old Country, a thicket of family photos on top.

Mrs. Attar was a plump, worried woman who kept her daughter planted firmly next to her. Even so, she insisted on offering me hospitality, in this case a cup of thick sweet tea. Hers might be a seat of poverty, but her manners sure beat those in Oak Brook.

I drank the tea gratefully: the heat outside became overwhelming in the overstuffed room. After thanking her for the tea, and admiring the weaving on the television, I broached my subject. I hoped Mina would do an accurate job with the translation.

"I have some bad news about Nicola Aguinaldo. She ran away from prison last week. Did you know that? She died yesterday. Someone hurt her very badly when she was on her way to this apartment building, and I would like to learn who did that."

"What? What you are saying?" Mrs. Attar demanded.

Mina snapped off a string of Arabic. Mrs. Attar dropped her hold on the girl and demanded information. Mina turned back to me to translate. That role was familiar to me as well. My mother's English became fluent with time, but I could still remember those humiliating meetings with teachers or shopkeepers where I had to act as interpreter.

"The girls say you looked after Sherree when the baby was in the hospital. Was that after Nicola was sent to jail? I know the baby was sick before."

When Mina translated, first for me and then for her mother, she said, "My mother doesn't remember Sherree staying here."

"But you remember, don't you?" I said. "You agreed with your playmates when they brought it up."

She looked at me slyly, pleased to be in control. "There are so many kids in this building they probably got confused. Sherree wasn't here."

Mrs. Attar ripped off a question to her daughter, probably wanting to know what our side conversation was about. While they talked I sat back on the crinkling plastic and pondered how to get Mrs. Attar to talk to me. I didn't care whether she'd ever looked after Sherree Aguinaldo. What I needed was the address where the grandmother had moved with Sherree, or the names of any men Mrs. Attar might have seen with Nicola Aguinaldo.

I looked Mrs. Attar in the eye, adult to adult, and spoke slowly. "I'm not with the government. I'm not with Children and Family Services. I'm not with INS."

I opened my handbag and spread the contents on the cluttered coffee table. I laid out my credit cards and my privateeye license. Mrs. Attar looked puzzled for a moment, then seemed to understand what I was showing her. She scrutinized my driver's license and the PI license, spelling out my name from card to card.

She showed it to her daughter and demanded an explanation.

"You see?" I said. "There is no badge in here."

When Mrs. Attar finally spoke to me, she said in halting English, "Today is?"

"Thursday," I said.

"One ago, two ago, three ago is?"

"It'd be Monday, Ma," Mina cut in in exasperation, adding something in Arabic.

Her mother put a light hand over her daughter's mouth. "I tell. Men comes. Early early, first prayers. Is-is-"

She looked around the room for inspiration, then showed me her watch. She turned the dial back to fivethirty.

"I wake husband, I wake Mina, I wake sons. First wash. Look outside, see men. I afraid. Woman here, have green card, I find."

"Derwa's mom," Mina put in, sulking because she wasn't controlling the drama any longer. "She's legal; Mama got her to ask the men what they wanted. They were looking for Abuelita Mercedes, so Mama went and woke her-they're not Islam, they don't have to get up at fivethirty like we do."

"Yes, yes. Abuelita Mercedes, much good woman, much good for Mina, for Derwa, take with Sherree when I working, when Derwa mother working. All childrens call her "Abuelita,' meaning "Grandmother,' not only own childrens. I take him-"

"Her, Mama; if it's a woman it's her, not him."

"Her. I take her, I take Sherree. Men coming here"- she stabbed at her chair, to indicate this very room-"I say, she my mother, these my childs all."

"And then?"

"Leave. No good stay here. Men go, more men come, no good."

I a.s.sumed she meant Abuelita Mercedes had to move before more INS agents showed up looking for her. "Do you know where she went?"

A sigh and a shrug. "Better not know. Not want problem."

I asked Mrs. Attar if she knew of any men Nicola had dated. Mrs. Attar only shrugged again-she couldn't help. When I asked about Mr. Baladine-the boss who sometimes drove her home-Mrs. Attar lifted her palms in incomprehension. Nicola was a good mother-it was the only reason she went out to work among rich strangers, to make money for her two little girls. She came home every week to see them; she was never late, she never had time for men. Mina smirked a little at this, which made me wonder if the kids would tell a different story.

"America no good place. Baby sick, mother no money, mother go jail. Why? Why peoples no help?"

She turned to Mina to put her ideas more completely. In Egypt a mother could take her sick baby to a clinic where the government would care for it, then there was no need for the mother to steal to pay the bills.

"Now mother dead, and why? Only want help baby. America very no good."

I couldn't think of a convincing reb.u.t.tal. I thanked her for her time and tea and let Mina take me back outside. Her friends had vanished. I tried to ask her about Nicola Aguinaldo, whether Mina had ever noticed any men visiting her or knew of talk on the streets about her, but the child was hurt at her friends' defection. She hunched her shoulder angrily and told me to mind my own business.

There didn't seem to be much else I could do, so I got into the rattling Skylark and drove off.

I stopped in the park at Foster to give Peppy a walk. The police were sweeping the area in their threewheeled buggies, slowing when they pa.s.sed anyone with a dog, so I kept her on her leash. She didn't like it-especially since the squirrels weren't similarly constrained-but unlike her son she doesn't yank my arm off when she's tied up.

Aguinaldo had run away from Coolis without knowing that her mother had fled their apartment. And then? Had she come home, found her mother gone, and called Baladine for help, only to be beaten up? Or met up with some old boyfriend in the neighborhood with the same disastrous results?

"Those women around the pool knew something, but what? About Aguinaldo's escape, or her injuries, or her relations with Robert Baladine? We're no closer to having anything on Aguinaldo's private life than we did this morning," I said, so severely that Peppy flattened her ears in worry.

"And that smirk Mina Attar gave, when her mother said Nicola had no time for men, it could have concealed anything-the other kids implied Mrs. Attar had plenty of time for men, so Mina might have been smirking at her mom. Or maybe Mina knew something about Nicola that she wasn't saying. It was the look of someone who felt she knew someone else's guilty secret, that's for sure."

And what about this guy Morrell whom the kids had mentioned, the one interviewing people who had escaped from prison? Could he have played some role in Aguinaldo's escape, or in her death?

Who had claimed Aguinaldo's body? Abuelita Mercedes, the neighborhood grandmother? If so, how had she learned that Nicola was dead? From Morrell? Who was he-a social worker? A journalist? I didn't think he could be from INS. And I didn't think he was a cop-he'd been coming around before Nicola's death.

I jerked Peppy away from a dead gull. I wished Vishnikov had done the autopsy when Nicola's body arrived on Wednesday. If she'd gone to the hospital in Coolis for an ovarian cyst, maybe that had caused her internal problems, although the Beth Israel surgeon thought she'd been hit or kicked. The external injuries had been fresh when I found her, and that broken arm looked as though it had just occurred, as if she'd been struck by a car. If so, was there a boyfriend who beat her up? My mind circled back to Robert and Eleanor Baladine.

I could imagine a lot of scenarios where a man might have s.e.x with the livein nanny, from unregulated desire through hostility toward his wife or rivalry with his son. But would he have prosecuted Nicola for theft as a way to protect himself? Would she have turned to him for help when she escaped from prison? And then-and then what?