“I’m going to try to persuade her mother to go to Arcadia House,” I said. “It’s a shelter for domestic-violence victims, and I’m on the board. If I can line up someone to act as a bodyguard to and from the shelter to the school, will Clara be safe here during the day or should I try to have someone sit with her?”
The principal thought it over. “How secure did you think we were when you got in just now?”
“It wasn’t bad, as far as it went-we came in through the main door, and we had to show some ID. I don’t know what the rest of your campus is like, how many open doors there are, and I don’t have time to look around this afternoon.”
Hausman nodded. “I’ll talk to my security staff and arrange for someone to be outside any classroom where Clara is for the next week. If it goes on longer than that, then you’ll have to hire guards. It’s not fair to the school as a whole to divert resources to one student. We had an Israeli diplomat’s child here for a semester, and he’d brought in his own guards. The kids took it in stride, once the initial excitement died down, so I don’t think they’ll overreact to anyone you bring in for Clara.”
She walked with me down to the counselor’s office, where we collected Clara and Mr. Contreras. As we walked through the high limestone gates separating the school from the street, I put my gun into my coat pocket and kept my hand on it, but the only people on the street were waiting at the bus stop at the corner, and none of them paid us any attention.
If our meeting at the school went more easily than I’d feared, our conversation with Clara’s mother was more difficult. When we got to Twenty-first Place, it was clear that someone was watching the house and not making any secret of it. A late-model black Lexus was parked in front, engine running, with either Konstantin or Ludwig at the wheel.
I didn’t slow, just went straight on to Ashland, where I parked near a busy coffee shop.
“That car in front of the house,” Clara said, “that was one of the men who hit me last night.” Her eyes were big in her Kabuki face.
“Yes,” I said, “I know who he is. I need you to call your mother, see if she’s home or at work, and get her to meet us here.” I put the battery in my cell phone and handed it to Clara.
After a moment’s hesitation, looking from me to Mr. Contreras, she typed in the number. “Ma, it’s me… I’m fine, just sore. Dr. Herschel, she did a great job fixing my nose. She says I shouldn’t even need surgery… No, I can’t come home!… No, he’s in front of the house, waiting for me… No, Ma, if I come home, he’ll kill me. You want all your children gone?… I’m sorry, I’m sorry… Please, Ma, come to me. I’m at Julia’s Cafe con Leche on Ashland… No, now. Please, Mama!”
The incipient hysteria in her voice was genuine and apparently got through to her mother. Clara handed me back the phone, saying Cristina was coming. I removed the battery again and hustled our little group into Julia’s to buy coffee and sandwiches. I insisted that we eat in the car. I didn’t want a row of sitting ducklings inside the coffee shop if someone trailed Clara’s mother here.
We had an agonizing half hour before Cristina appeared. As soon as Clara saw her mother, she jumped out of the car and ran to embrace her. I hurried after, anxious to get the Guamans off the streets.
Cristina Guaman’s face was as gray and puffy as her daughter’s. “Why are you torturing my family?”
I surveyed the street behind her. “Were you followed here?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. I went out the back door and crossed the neighbor’s yard to come out on Twenty- second Street. Why are you putting Clara in harm’s way? Why did you get my Nadia killed?”
Mr. Contreras said, “She ain’t the person killing your children. If you’d been a better ma to your girls, not blaming them for the lives they were leading, your oldest kid wouldn’t never have gone off to Iraq in the first place.”
“How dare you!” Cristina said to him. She turned to me, “Is this your husband?”
The question embarrassed me almost as much as it did the old man, but I didn’t bother to answer. We were starting to draw an audience, people wanting to know who was attacking who here-and it
“We need to get you and Clara and the rest of your family to a safe house,” I said. “I want to take you to Arcadia House. It’s a women’s shelter, and they are expert at keeping their residents free from harm, as long as we can think of a place for your husband to stay.”
“Papi could sleep with his cousin Rafi,” Clara offered. “He does, sometimes, if the weather is too bad for him to make it home. Rafi lives in Bensenville, up by the airport.”
“We can look after Clara,” Cristina Guaman said fiercely. “I will not have her stay with strangers, especially strangers who will judge us. I know the kind of shelter you mean, where they look down their noses at us for being Latinas.”
“I don’t think the staff at Arcadia House behaves that way,” I said, “but, even if they do, better to be in such an environment for a week than face those thugs in your house again tonight.”
Cristina Guaman looked at the group on the sidewalk, who continued to interject their own comments and queries-some of them knew her from the hardware store-and told them in Spanish that she was all right, just distracted with worry over Ernest’s health and Nadia’s death.
That marked the turning point in our confrontation, although it took another minute of cajoling before she and Clara got into the backseat of the Mustang. I drove to the house behind the Guamans’, to the neighbor whose yard Cristina had used when she left her own house. She crossed their yard to her boarded-over back door and returned in fairly short order with Ernest, her mother-in-law, and a couple of suitcases.
I drove a circuitous route to Arcadia House’s shelter, an anonymous building that lay just beyond the big medical complexes on the near West Side. It took some time to explain the Guamans’ situation to the staff. Arcadia House was bursting at the seams, and they weren’t happy about offering an adult male shelter, but after a prolonged conversation with him, and among themselves, they finally agreed to let the four Guamans stay for a few nights.
“If it’s any longer than that, Vic,” the executive director said, “you’re going to have to make other arrangements. In this economy, more and more families are breaking down into violence, and we’re overcrowded as it is.”
“If I can’t fix this situation within a week,” I said, “I’ll probably be dead, anyway. I’ll be in touch later today to tell you who will show up in the morning to escort Clara to school.”
49 Darraugh Gets Things Done
I was running out of time to make my meeting with Darraugh. I told Mr. Contreras I’d get out at Darraugh’s building on Wacker Drive.
“Can you take the car home?” I asked. “I’ll be checking into a hotel tonight, but I’ll get you word somehow about where I am and where to meet me. There’s a lot of work to do and not much time to do it in. Will you call Petra, too, and tell her to lie low for now? I don’t want her running around town, exposing herself to danger.”
Mr. Contreras was delighted to be part of the team. When we reached the building on Wacker where Darraugh had his headquarters, my neighbor gave me a rough hug and told me not to worry about Petra, he’d take good care of her.
I jogged inside, trying to comb my hair while I waited for the elevator. As I got off on the seventy-third floor, I thought it was a pity Arcadia House couldn’t lease Darraugh’s lobby. It seemed to be bigger than the entire shelter on Taylor Street.
Darraugh’s assistant ushered me into the conference room and sent a message to his office to let him know we were ready when he was. Darraugh ran through the meeting with his usual briskness. I managed to be focused enough to cover my part of the agenda, which seemed like a major achievement, given my ragged condition. While Darraugh’s vice president for overseas operations wrapped up-at such length that Darraugh cut him short with a pithy remark-I thought again about the building’s beautiful, well-guarded space.
Everyone got up to leave. The chief of operations started a private conversation with Darraugh, but I interrupted, asking if I could have five minutes alone.
Darraugh’s brows went up, but he took me into his own office and shut the door. “Well?”
