WE RODE THE EXPRESSWAY SOUTH IN SILENCE. PETRA KEPT her head studiously turned to the window, looking at the old slag heaps and collapsing bungalows without comment.
This had always been a rough part of town. But when the mills were filling the landscape with clouds of toxic dust, most people had good jobs. Now those mills are as dead and gone as the cattle that used to pour through the stockyards. Most people in South Chicago lucky enough to find work are pulling minimum wage at the fast-food joints or the big By-Smart warehouse on 103rd Street.
Unemployment rates have stood at over twenty-five percent for more than two decades down here, and street crime usually involves more than one gun. Skirting potholes big enough to swallow a flatbed truck, I pulled up in front of the house on Houston where I’d grown up.
“This is it.” I tried to sound jaunty.
I couldn’t carry it off: The leaded-glass transom above the front door was still there, but two of the little glass diamond prisms were missing. The prisms had made Gabriella feel she wasn’t living in just another shabby bungalow but a house with some distinction to it. She and I polished the glass every month and scrubbed the iron dust from the frame around it.
I pointed to the porthole window in the attic. “That was my room. I used to watch the street from up there, when I wasn’t driving my mother crazy being out in the middle of the action.”
Petra looked at me doubtfully. “What did you do?”
“My cousin Boom-Boom… Actually, he’s your cousin, too. Your dad talk about him? Boom-Boom was a hockey star, but he was murdered a dozen years or so ago. He and I used to jump off the barrier into Lake Calumet to swim in the summer or we skated on it in the winter. It’s where he practiced his slap shot. I fell through a hole in the ice one winter, and the main thing we were both scared of was that Gabriella would find out. We used to climb the girders on the El to ride up to Wrigley Field if we didn’t have money for carfare. Then we’d shinny up the ivy behind the bleachers and sneak into the park for nothing.”
“Gosh! Daddy’s always said you were too wild, but I always thought it was because you were such a feminist. He hates libbers. I didn’t know you were a street punk when you were little.”
I smiled at her. “Why do you think I’m a PI? I couldn’t take all the rules and regs in the Public Defender’s Office. And they couldn’t take me, either. Arnie Coleman, the judge who was hanging around Harvey Krumas at your fundraiser, he was the head of the criminal PD unit when I worked there. He gave me one bad performance review after another, mostly because I wouldn’t play the county game.”
She’d started to open her door but she paused when I said that. “What county game?”
“It’s all politics over there at Twenty-sixth and California. It’s not about justice or trying to get the best deal for your client, not if your client is an ordinary street criminal. As soon as there’s a whiff of politics about a case-whether it’s police brutality or a connected guy’s kid who’s been arrested or someone trying to move up the ladder-cases get decided to help careers. Arnie was probably the most skilled mover in that cesspool I ever saw and he got his reward: he’s an appellate judge now and hanging with your candidate’s daddy. If Brian gets into the Senate, Arnie will get a federal judgeship.”
“Vic!” Her face flushed. “Brian isn’t like that! Why do you have to be so negative and cynical?”
“I’m not,” I said. “Just when I think about Arnie and some of his cuter tricks… Mind your step, we’ve got company.”
I’d been watching a cluster of young men in my rearview mirror. They’d been milling around the north end of the block, trading insults and cat-calling passing women while they ostensibly worked on a rusted-out Dodge pickup. A boom-box belting out rap was on the sidewalk. I shouldn’t have spent so much time reminiscing. They’d started our way while I was lost in memories of my childhood.
The gang looked in the Mustang’s windows, saw that we were both women and that Petra was young, and began rocking the car. “Wha choo doing here?” the one nearest me shouted.
I put all my weight on my right side, shifted, and flung open my door so fast that it caught him in the chin. I got out quickly. Blood was oozing from his lower lip.
“Bitch!” he screamed. “Why you do that?”
I ignored him and looked at his friends. “Hello, boys. Why don’t you go back to your own car. I think those little kids up there are messing with your stereo.”
They looked up the street, where two small boys were darting glances between the gang and the boom-box. Two of the gang took off to deal with the kids, but the one I’d injured and his other two friends stayed near me. Petra was still inside the Mustang, but when her door was clear she uncoiled herself from the passenger’s seat and hopped out to the pavement. They turned to look at her, even the one whose lip was bleeding.
“Any of you boys know Señora Andarra?” I’d done a Lexis search last night for the names of the current occupants.
“Who wants to know?” one of them, who sported Latin Kings tattoos, asked.
“Because I want to talk to her. And I’d hate to have to tell her someone in her family was acting like a punk out on the street in broad daylight.”
They started muttering among themselves, and finally backed a few steps away from us. “We watch you. You bother her, we take care of you.” It was the Latin King again.
“You her grandson? That’s good. We grannies like to know the little ones are looking out for us.” I put my arm around Petra’s shoulder and pushed her onto the sidewalk and up the short walk to the front door.
It felt queer to ring a bell at a place I’d gone in and out of freely for twenty-six years. We listened to the sound die away in the house. After a time, while the Latin King moved up the walk behind us, the door opened the length of a short thick chain and a short old woman peered through the crack at us.
“Your turn,” I said to Petra.
My cousin explained in Spanish what our mission was, but Señora Andarra was adamant. We could not come in, no. Perhaps we meant well, but how could she tell? And with only Geraldo out there on the walk… no. If her son were home, it would be another story. But too many people wanted to rob you, and told you stories. Petra pleaded and wheedled as best she could in her classroom Spanish, but we couldn’t budge the woman.
We turned around.
“Keep your head up, look confident. You own this sidewalk.”
“What do we do if they attack us?” Petra whispered.
“Say our prayers,” I said, then called out, “Geraldo! Your abuelita is worried about you. She doesn’t like to see you just hanging around, nothing to do with your time. She wants to see you with a good job, not ending up in the morgue like your buddies!”
Geraldo looked from the house to us. I’d been talking to his granny, we knew his name. Of course I was just guessing about what she might have said, but it wasn’t hard to imagine what she might say about a kid like him. Geraldo bit his lip, backed away from us. We got into the Mustang without any other trouble from the gang, although they struck a defiant pose until we turned the corner at the end of the street and were out of sight.
“Gosh, Vic! I was so scared I thought I was going to pee back there. When you hurt that one guy, I was sure the others were going to attack us.”
“Yeah, I wondered about that, too. But in broad daylight… And once a bully’s taken a hit, he’s more uncertain of his ground. At night, in an unlit alley, I’d be rat’s meat by now.”
“Could you have beaten them if they’d jumped us?”
“Nope. I could have done some serious damage, but me against five young men, not great odds-not unless you’re a street fighter yourself?”
“Are you kidding? I can use my elbows in beach volleyball, but that’s about it. Could you teach me some moves? If we get in a jam again, I don’t want to be the helpless damsel while you do all the fun stuff.”
I laughed a little ruefully. “I’ve spent my share of time in the hospital after doing the ‘fun stuff,’ but I’d be glad to show you some moves. Every woman needs to know what to do in a tight spot. Eighty percent of it’s mental, not physical. Like just now. I was betting that Geraldo was too afraid of his granny to attack us right in front of her house.”
We drove north in a peaceful silence. I suddenly realized I hadn’t heard my cousin’s phone ring all day.
“I switched it off because I figured it would annoy you if I kept talking, but I’ve been texting here while you drive.” She paused, and then said, “Not to piss you off about something else, but did you ever look at your dad’s stuff?”
“All I found were rubies, his false teeth, and the secret plans for the invasion of Canada.”
“Canada? Why would he want to invade Canada? Why not Mexico, so we could be warm in the winter? Seriously, Vic, did you find, like, diaries or anything?”
“No, darling. Just his old softballs and a White Sox baseball. That might be worth something. It was signed by Nellie Fox.”
“Nellie? A woman played for the White Sox? Daddy never-”
“Alas, sweet P., Nellie was short for ‘Nelson,’ not ‘Eleanor.’ He was a Gold Glove second baseman for the White Sox. Anyway, the ball is so beat-up, it’s full of holes. I have no idea why Tony even had it. Maybe he picked it up for your dad and forgot to give it to him. Peter’s a White Sox fan, isn’t he?”
“We live in KC, so it’s the Royals for us. Poor us. But Daddy keeps a soft spot for the Sox.”
We talked baseball the rest of the way north. As I was dropping Petra off, she reverted to our little encounter with the punks outside my South Chicago home.
“Please don’t tell Daddy about it, okay? He already thinks I’m, like, six years old, without enough sense to keep out of harm’s way. And he thinks you’re this mega-feminist trouble-maker. If he knew I’d waltzed right into danger at your side, he’d skin you for supper and put me in a convent.”
“He’d have to catch me first. And, fear not, you’re safe from the convents: your dad and I never talk.”