Regarding Anna (7 page)

It took a while for everyone to calm down. By the end of the day, it still wasn’t clear to me how Beth’s parents truly felt about the baby—I knew they weren’t crazy about Beth’s husband. But I was happy for her, even if it did feel like it diminished our “best friends” status a little more. After all, it was natural for people to go on with their lives I kept telling myself.

* * *

Thanksgiving Day came and went, and I was left having to face the rest of the holiday weekend alone. I would have jumped in my car and gone somewhere, done something, but money was too tight. I would have visited a relative if I’d had one. Would have reorganized my only closet, but then what would I do seven minutes later when that was done?

On Saturday, I took the “L” downtown to watch the Christmas parade, something I’d never done as a child, even though Christmas had been my mother’s favorite holiday. We would start decorating the house weeks in advance. She’d always insisted on having a live Christmas tree, which my father grudgingly brought home at the last minute when they were cheaper. I hated when the Christmas season was over—that was when Mom always seemed the saddest.

The train was crowded, and I had to stand the whole way to Jackson Street. I went with the crowd—I had no other choice—toward State Street. I had heard on the radio that they expected more than 500,000 people downtown watching the parade. I believed it because at least half that many had stepped on my toes trying to get a good viewing spot.

The parade lasted two hours, about an hour longer than the younger children’s attention spans. I recognized a few people—Mayor Daley of course, Ray Rayner and Bob Bell from Bozo’s Circus, radio DJ Jerry G. Bishop, and Hugh Hefner. I wasn’t sure why Hugh Hefner would be in a Christmas parade, but there he was. I rode home on another crammed “L” car and somehow made it through the rest of the weekend.

I spent the following week working on my cases. I was unexpectedly busy: besides the Green Teen and Shady Lane cases and several skip traces, I was hired to conduct an asset check for someone who thought he might be the beneficiary of a large inheritance, and I had to pick up three subpoenas at the courthouse for process serving. Though I’d resolved to put my own case on hold until after the first of the year, I at least had Flora hot on the trail of Anna’s death certificate.

Flora called me the week before Christmas but not to talk about Anna.

“Erma called me,” she said.

“From Detroit?”

“Yes. She said she needed money to come home.”

“She called you and not her mom?”

“She sounded scared. Maybe she was afraid to face Louise.”

“So what did you do?”

“Nothing. She hung up before I could do anything.”

“Do you know why she hung up?”

“All she said was, ‘Forget it. I have to go.’ Louise and I are thinking about going there.”

“Well, I’m having no luck trying to find her with phone calls. Do be careful if you go.”

It occurred to me that maybe it should have my place to go to Detroit as soon as I had heard Erma had gone there. The more I thought about it, the more I knew that was what I should have done, and now I felt bad about it.

* * *

I was in the back room of my office in search of another box of file folders when something on the evidence table caught my eye. I was very organized and had all the documents for my case separated into nice neat piles. But one of the photographs—the one of the woman sitting in a rocking chair holding a baby—was out of place. And it wasn’t as though I might have brushed up against the table or something and it had moved a few inches. Someone had tampered with it.

I examined all the other evidence, and nothing else seemed out of place.

On the way back to my office, I heard the door tinkle and found a young boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, standing in front of the reception desk.

“May I help you?”

“I’m here to see Mr. Berghorn.”

“Here’s not here at the moment. Was he expecting you?”

“No. We just took a chance he’d be here.”

“May I take a message for him?”

“No. Well, yes. We live next door to him, and my parents sent me in here to tell him there was a...a thing that happened in his backyard today.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Uh, this mean old dog was loose, and he bit three kids, and Animal Control came out and shot it. In Mr. Berghorn’s backyard. Close to his back porch. And my parents didn’t want him to go ape or anything when he came home and saw a mess of blood.”

“How awful.” I had been curious about where Elmer lived but had never had an opportunity to ask him. “Where do you live?”

“In the Austin neighborhood. Across from Levin Park.”

That’s where I grew up. “Really? What street are you on?”

“Ferdinand. On the corner. I gotta go. My parents are waitin’ in the car. Thanks, lady.”

I pictured my old house, the second one from the corner of Ferdinand and Long Avenue, directly across the street from Levin Park. I wished I could have talked to that boy longer.

I went back to working on Shady Lane. An hour later, Elmer returned and poked his head in my office. I told him about the conversation I’d had with his neighbor. Then I mentioned that I used to live in his neighborhood. His demeanor puzzled me—the longer I talked, the paler he got.

“Are you all right?” I asked him. “That wasn’t your dog, was it?”

“No,” he said. He turned and headed for his office. I got up and followed him.

“The boy said you live across from Levin Park.”

“It’s not really across from the park. It’s down a ways.”

“Really? What’s your address? I grew up on that street.”

He was sitting in his chair now, reaching for the pack of Marlboros on his desk. “I’m in the...5600 block.”

“No kidding. I lived at 5405.”

“Small world. Anything else?” he asked.

“No, that was—”

“Good. Could you close my door on your way out?”

“Elmer?”

“What is it?” The edge to his tone rubbed me the wrong way. Don’t take it out on me, fella. I’m not the one who got blood on your house.

“May I ask you a question?”

“Later.”

I closed his door, maybe a little too hard, and went back to my desk.

When Elmer came out two hours later, he stopped by my office.

“Sorry about before. I have a lot on my mind.” His apology sounded indifferent. “What did you want to ask me?”

“I keep the door to my back room locked. Do the cleaning people have keys to it?”

“Uh...I’m not sure. No one has ever locked it before. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing much. I just found something out of place this morning, and—”

“I’ll talk to them. You don’t want them to clean in there or anything?”

“No. I’ll do it myself.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

A few minutes after Elmer left, Flora called to tell me she had looked everywhere there was to look and couldn’t find a death certificate for Anna Vargas. We agreed that was odd, because I knew she was dead—it had been in the paper—and she had died in Cook County. Why wouldn’t there have been a death certificate?

I spent the next couple of hours tagging the evidence in my back room like I should have done from the beginning.

* * *

With nothing better to do, I worked on Christmas Eve, but even so my spirits were high. The previous day, I had received a check for the Shady Lane case, one that would keep my head above water for the next month. Turned out Jeff Porter’s son-in-law wasn’t who he said he was. The name and Social Security number Jeff had given to me for him had belonged to a man who was killed in an automobile accident two days before his thirty-second birthday. His son-in-law was really a jobless drug addict with a criminal record that included three counts of wire fraud, burglary, and drug possession. Nice guy. Jeff had been able to help his daughter out of a situation that could have destroyed her life.

I had learned something from the Shady Lane case—you can charge more for cases that have the outcome your client desires. Not that I would ever have padded a bill, but you can bet I didn’t cheat myself out of anything on that case like I sometimes did.

Flora Walsh turned out to be a wonderful contact in the Cook County Clerk’s Office. While she hadn’t managed to locate Anna’s death certificate, she had been able to tell me where Anna was buried. I had decided Christmas Eve would be a good day to visit her grave.

It was a twenty-five-mile drive down Cicero Avenue to the cemetery in Oak Forest, a small city southwest of downtown Chicago. Flora had told me to look for Oak Forest Hospital, as Cook County Cemetery was adjacent to it.

The more I thought about Anna on the drive to her gravesite, the more connected I felt with her. Or maybe it was that deep down I wanted someone to feel connected with her, and I was all she had. Or maybe it was the other way around.

I found the cemetery and paused a moment at the small sign by the side of the gravel road leading to the public graves.

The harsh reality of that place was heartbreaking. Couldn’t they have come up with a more sympathetic sign?

The grounds were expansive and modestly landscaped. The light freezing drizzle caused my windshield to ice up, making it difficult to read the signs. My budget constraints had forced me to choose between repairing the heater and repairing the windshield defroster. I had opted for the heater.

I found Section K and parked the car. Lot number 131 was right in the middle of the section. I walked through rows of graves until I found Anna’s. The twelve-by-four-inch flat stone marking her grave was no different from the thousands of others surrounding it. With the side of my foot, I pushed back the sod that had crept onto the marker.

“I wish I knew who you were, Anna,” I whispered. “What you were all about and how I fit in.” I let the tears run down my cheeks until the weight in my chest subsided. I took a photograph of the marker and quietly left.

I sat in my car for I didn’t know how long, and it was only when the depthless sorrow I felt over seeing her grave left my body that I felt the numbness of familial disconnect. Like I had been robbed of one of the most fundamental privileges in life—being raised by a loving mother. I told myself I shouldn’t feel that way—I had in fact been raised by a woman who loved me. But I felt deprived nonetheless.

Guilt overcame me on the drive home. My mother deserved better.

I had planned to go out that evening and eat in a decent restaurant—something I hadn’t done in ages—but after the visit to Anna’s grave, I didn’t feel much like it.

* * *

The holidays were behind me, and I had to admit I felt pretty good about my first year—well, partial year—in business. In addition to handling numerous subpoenas and background checks, I had managed thirty-one cases—six significant enough to be assigned a pet name—in addition to my own.

Lying in bed on New Year’s Eve thinking about everything that had happened during the past year and what was yet to come, I thought about making a new year’s resolution, but then decided against it when I realized the only promise I was going to make to myself in 1965 was to get a life.

SEVEN

“Arrest That Woman!”

On my way to visit Minnie, I drove to my old neighborhood because now I was really curious as to where Elmer lived. Once I was on Ferdinand Street and approaching my old address, I pulled over to the curb. To the right of my old house, on the corner, was another small bungalow that could have been the house where the young boy lived. But according to Elmer, he and the boy’s family lived two blocks down.

I drove to where Elmer said he lived. The boy had said they were on the corner and Elmer lived next door. One corner had a gas station on it. Another one was an empty lot. Either house on the remaining two corners could have been the boy’s house, but neither was across from Levin Park, unless in the boy’s mind a block and a half away qualified as “across from.”