don’t understand. They’re lucky they got a little extra money.”
“Extra money?” I blurted. “Nadia never mentioned that.”
“Oh, everyone knows it’s why she fought with her mother. They got some money, I think from Ernest’s accident, and Nadia, she thought her mother shouldn’t take it. Although, why not? What are you supposed to do, live on air and water?”
“What, the person who caused the accident paid them something?”
The settlement hadn’t shown up in any of my databases, but if it had been done through mediation it wouldn’t be part of the public record.
The neighbor shrugged-the money was old news, not interesting anymore. “Wherever it came from, they need every penny of it. His therapy, all the extra care. Why couldn’t Nadia stay at home and help instead of fighting with her mother and leaving?”
“It must be hard on Clara,” I suggested. “Two sisters dead, her brother seriously injured.”
“Everyone’s life is hard.” The woman settled Fausto into the wagon and started down the street. “My husband, he left me when I was pregnant with Fausto. But I keep going, and the Guamans do, too. And maybe the therapy will help Ernest. Two days a week, off he goes with his
It was far too cold to stand around talking. I walked with her, pausing at the Guaman home.
My acquaintance shook her head. “I’m sure it’s hard on Cristina, seeing her son like he is. He used to be such a great boy, wonderful brother, good son. Shoveled the walks in the winter, took his sisters shopping. Whatever you wanted, he would do. And to see him like this-” She shook her head again, pitying.
“And they’re safe living here even though they have more money now?”
“Everyone knows them. No one wants to bring them any more sorrow. Punks did try to break in twice-we have gangs here, same as everywhere-but Lazar, he put in all this new security-wires, new glass, everything. One of the punks cut himself so badly, he lost the use of his right hand. And then, a few days later, someone shot another of the gangbangers, killed him as he was going into a drug house over on Nineteenth Street. We were all just as happy.”
We’d reached the Laundromat. I held the door for my acquaintance while she wrestled the wagon inside. The child had been chewing on the cocked hat, and it was pretty much a pulpy mess now, but the woman didn’t seem to mind.
I returned to my car and backed into the intersection so I could drive east, past the Guaman house. I don’t know what I was hoping to see, but just as I was about to turn north, the front door opened. I stopped at the corner and watched in my wing mirror while Ernest and his grandmother came down the stairs. She had a firm grip on his left arm, but his right arm gesticulated wildly.
They walked down the street away from me. A couple of left turns caught me up with them. I drove past them and turned again. After a number of similar maneuvers, I watched them turn north on Western Avenue. The grandmother’s head only reached Ernest’s shoulder, but she was definitely in charge of the expedition, propelling him along whenever he wanted to stop.
One storefront completely engaged him, and she had a hard time moving him on. When I passed a few minutes later, I saw it was a pet store. Puppies in cages-the kind of thing that makes you want to join an animal liberation army to set them free-but utterly entrancing for children. Propped in the window was a glossy picture of a puppy licking the face of an ecstatic child. On impulse, I went inside and got a flyer.
After a few blocks, the grandmother stopped and seemed to be forcing Ernest to decide where to go. He turned right, and she shook her head. He waved his arms and shouted, loudly enough that I caught the echo down in my own car, but finally he turned around and headed west.
Lotty’s hospital, Beth Israel, runs a rehab place down here, one of the ten or fifteen health-care centers that fill up Chicago’s near South Side. I figured my quarry was heading there. I drove past them and found street parking where I could keep an eye on the entrance. Sure enough, in another few minutes Ernest and his grandmother turned up the walk and went through the revolving doors.
I followed them in, not sure what I was hoping to accomplish. Women with infants, women with boyfriends on crutches or in wheelchairs, women looking after aging parents, old women like Senora Guaman taking care of grandchildren, filled the lobby. One television was blaring in Spanish, another in English. Children were crying, mothers stared ahead in stolid resignation.
Ernest and his grandmother were standing in line to check in. The grandmother had found someone she knew sitting nearby; the two women were talking in Spanish. I bent over, pretending to pick up something from the floor, and held out the flyer with the puppy’s picture to Ernest.
“Did you drop this?”
He looked at me, not understanding what I was saying, but then his eye fell on the picture of the puppy, and he snatched it from me.
“My dog! Nana, my dog!”
His grandmother turned. She sighed with fatigue when she saw the picture, and I felt ashamed for exciting him-looking after her grandson must be a hard enough job without a private eye rousing him.
“Your dog, Ernest?” she said. “You don’t have a dog. This is a picture of a dog.” Her English was fluent but heavily accented.
“I’m sorry,” I smiled at her. “I found this next to him on the floor and thought maybe he’d dropped it.”
“He wants a dog, and maybe we should get him one, but I don’t want to care for a dog as well as for Ernest. Anyway, his sister is allergic.”
“He’s here for therapy?” I asked.
“I don’t know how much they can do for him, but we come two times every week. After all, if you give up hope, you have nothing left.”
“It’s hard,” I said. “One of my cousins was shot in the head. He can still walk and talk, but he’s lost his impulse control. He behaves so wildly in public we don’t know if he can ever live on his own again.”
Lies. The detective’s stock-in-trade was really making me squirm today.
“With Ernie, it was a motorcycle,” she said. “We kept him out of the gangs. He was a good boy, always, but not a scholar like his sisters, They all are brilliant students.
“I’m so sorry! Was it in the same accident where he was injured?”
It seemed disrespectful to talk about Ernest as if he wasn’t there, but, in a way, he wasn’t. He was crooning over the picture of the puppy. My guilt mounted.
“The oldest, she died in Iraq. These two were close. Her death hit him in the heart. I think that’s why he was careless with his motorcycle. Six months after Allie’s death, he ran off the expressway. Somehow, the motorcycle climbed over the railing. I don’t understand how, I wasn’t here. And my son couldn’t explain it to me.”
“Allie!” Ernest heard his sister’s name and dropped the picture. “Allie is a dove. She flies around with Jesus! Now Nadia is a dove. Men are shooting my sisters. They’ll get Clara next! Bam, bam! Poor Clara.”
“What, Allie was shot in battle?” I asked the grandmother.
“They shot Allie, bam, bam!”
“No, Ernesto, poor Allie was killed by a bomb.”
“They shot her, Nana, bam, bam! They shot Nadia, bam! Next, Clara, bam, bam!”
He was getting more and more agitated. I picked up the picture of the puppy.
“The puppy will kiss Clara and make her all better,” I suggested, holding it out to him.
“Yes! Nana, we need to get Clara a puppy. No one can shoot her if she has a puppy.”
In another minute, he was crooning happily over the picture again. I apologized to his grandmother for stirring him up.
“How could you know?” she said. “The death of his sister, he still can’t understand what really happened to her. And his mother, she won’t allow us to mention Alexandra’s name. So he never has a chance to talk. Maybe one day his poor brain will clear, and he will understand what happened to her.”
“The third sister isn’t really in danger, is she?”
The grandmother’s eyes clouded. “I pray night and day for her safety. When you have lost two-three, really”- she nodded toward her grandson-“you are frightened all the time.”
The clerk called her by name. “Daydreaming, Mrs. Guaman? It’s your turn! Ernie, your friends are waiting for
