“But you expect me to pay you even if you don’t find him.”
I smiled brightly. “Just as your pastor expects to be paid even if she can’t save your soul.”
She eyed me narrowly. “And how will I know you’re not cheating her? My sister, I mean? And me?”
I nodded. She had a right to know. “I’ll give you a written report. You, or Pastor Karen, can do some spot-checking to see if I’ve done what I claim I did. But until you give me the names of your son’s friends, there’s very little I can do.”
When I left a minute later, I heard all the bolts on the door snap shut in reverse order. I stood in the hallway, already depressed by the inquiry.
IN THE DETECTIVE’S ABSENCE I
“HI, MISS ELLA. YOUR SISTER SPENT AN HOUR IN HER chair today. We’re going to see if she can get to her feet tomorrow,” the nurse’s aide said brightly. “Have you come to give her her supper? She’s tired after working so hard on her therapies today.”
Miss Ella nodded but didn’t answer. Claudia, the family beauty: it was harsh to see her like this. Was it a judgment on them, Claudia lying in bed, hardly able to move or talk, wearing diapers like a great big baby? Pastor Hebert would have said so, but Pastor Karen didn’t agree. Pastor Karen said God wasn’t an angry old man handing out punishments like an overseer or a prison warden.
“But it feels like it, Lord,” Miss Ella murmured, not realizing she had spoken aloud until the aide said, “What was that, Miss Ella?”
It seemed to happen more and more these days, that she spoke out loud without realizing it. Not a crime, or even a sin, just a nuisance, one of the many of growing old.
The aide carried a tray of mushy food into Claudia’s room. The television was on, as if grown women needed to have babble shouted at them twenty-four hours a day. The woman who shared the room with Claudia was rubbing the end of her blanket between her fingers, staring vacantly ahead. Claudia herself was asleep, her breath coming out in fast little snorts. Her hair hadn’t been washed, Miss Ella noted grimly, preparing her list of complaints for the head of the ward. That black hair, how it bounced and flipped when Claudia was young, all the way into middle age, really, before it started to go gray and she’d cut it short. She’d let it turn into an Afro, a crown of soft gray curls, while Ella adhered to a life of iron discipline, giving her head over to chemicals and hot irons every month.
Ella sat on her sister’s left side, where she still had feeling and movement. Claudia’s right hand looked soft, young, the hand of the beautiful girl Ella had been so jealous of all those years back, but her left hand was as knotted and gnarled with age as Ella’s own.
“The detective came today,” Ella said. “She took a picture of Lamont away with her, she’ll talk to people, she’ll ask questions. Does that make you happy?”
Claudia squeezed Ella’s hand: yes, thank you, that makes me happy.
“Maybe she’ll even find our boy. And then what?”
“ ’ Ate ’n’ ’ear,” Claudia spoke with difficulty. “ ’ Ate ’n’ ’ear al’ays wron’, Ellie. ’Ill e-d-estroy ’ou.”
She had trouble making her lips move to form consonants. The speech therapist made her work on them during the day, but alone with her sister at night she relaxed and did what came easiest.
Hate and fear. Always wrong, will destroy you. Ella knew she was saying that because she’d said it so many times in the eighty-five years of their life together. Pastor Karen thought some special gift of empathy lay between Ella and Claudia that helped Ella understand her sister, but it was only habit. She cranked Claudia up in bed and helped her eat a little meatloaf, a few spoonfuls of mashed potatoes, a bite of garish Jell-O.
“ ’ Ank ’ou, Ellie.” Claudia lay down, and Ella sat with her until her sister slid away from her into sleep.
5
IT’S A BIRD… IT’S A PLANE… NO! IT’S SUPERCOUSIN!
TRAFFIC’S BECOME LIKE MARK TWAIN’S OLD BROMIDE: WE all whine about it, but no one tries to fix it. Even me: I complain about the congestion and then keep driving myself everywhere. Trouble is, Chicago’s public transportation is so abysmal, I’d never have time to sleep if I tried to cover my client base by bus and El. As it was, my trip home took over forty minutes, not counting a stop for groceries, and I only had to go seven miles.
When I’d squeezed my car in between a shiny Nissan Pathfinder and a boxy Toyota Scion, I couldn’t summon the energy to get out. As soon as I went inside, my downstairs neighbor and the two dogs would leap on me, all eager for company and two of them eager for exercise.
“A run will do me good.” I repeated the mantra, but couldn’t persuade myself to move. Instead, I stared at the trees through the Mustang’s open sunroof.
In June, summer comes even to the heart of a great city. Even to the world of the steel mills, where I grew up. The light and warmth of spring always fill me with nostalgia, perhaps more this year because I’d been immersed so recently in my mother’s childhood.
After seeing the rich green hills in Umbria, I understood why my mother kept trying to create a Mediterranean garden under the grit of the mills. By July, the leaves, including her camellia, would be dead-looking, coated with sulfur and smoke, but each spring the trees put out hopeful tendrils. This year, it will be different. Maybe the same would be true of my forebodings about my new client. This time, events would prove my pessimism false.
When I’d left Miss Ella’s apartment, I stopped at Karen Lennon’s office. Miss Ella had signed a contract agreeing to a thousand dollars’ worth of investigation-essentially, two full days at half price-to be paid in installments, with seventy-five dollars in cash in advance as a retainer.
A passing nurse’s aide told me Karen was making pastoral calls in New Manor’s skilled-nursing wing. I sat on a scarred plastic chair in her office for almost an hour; my other choice was an armchair whose springs sank almost to the floor. I wasn’t idle: I studied Pastor Karen’s books: Pastoral Theology in African-American Context, Feminist & Womanist Pastoral Theology. I read a few pages, but when Karen still hadn’t shown up I answered phone calls and did an Internet search for a different client, a high-paying law firm. I hate cruising the Net on a handheld-the screen’s too small, and it takes forever to load text-but Karen Lennon’s computer needed a password to get online.
When Karen finally returned, she was in a hurry, ready to pack up and get out of the building. She tried to give me a welcoming pastoral smile, but she clearly wasn’t ecstatic at my demands for time and information, so I said I’d follow her to the parking garage.
“Did you know that Lamont Gadsden hasn’t been seen for forty years when you asked me out here?” I asked as she locked her office door. “Was that why you were so cagey with me?”
Karen Lennon was still very young. Her soft cheeks flushed, and she bit her lips. “I was afraid you’d say no outright. It’s so long ago. My own mother was only a teenager then.”
It rattled me to realize her mother and I were almost the same age. “Why did Miss Ella wait so long to make inquiries?”
“She didn’t!” Karen stopped in the middle of the building’s lobby, her hazel eyes large and earnest. “They asked questions of Lamont’s friends at the time, they went to the police, who treated them with total racist contempt. They figured there was nothing else they could do.”
“They?” I said. “That was Miss Ella and her sister Claudia, right? I told Miss Ella I needed to see her sister and she refused. She grudged every sentence she spoke to me. What is she trying to hide?”
“Oh, Vic, I don’t know why Miss Ella didn’t tell you, but Miss Claudia had a stroke right at Easter. It’s hard for her to talk, and, when she does get some words out, her speech is terribly slurry. Miss Ella’s the only person who can understand her completely, although I’m getting better at it. It’s been since her stroke that Miss Claudia’s become obsessed with this search. Miss Ella tried to talk her out of it because of how long it’s been and how little hope there is of learning anything, but Miss Claudia wouldn’t rest until her sister promised to find Lamont. Try to find him, anyway. Are you going to look for him?”