Fire Sale

“I didn’t do nothing, man, I ain’t saying one word more without my lawyer.”

He eyed my gun uneasily, but I couldn’t bring myself to brandish it again, even to get him to choke out a few more words. I was beside myself, though, at the mayhem he’d caused, all out of his colossal stupidity.

“So what are you doing in here?” I demanded. “What did you break in for? To get the drawing?”

He shook his head but wouldn’t speak.

I looked around the worktable. “The leftover tubing? Leftover acid?”

“Acid? What are you talking about?” Sandra said sharply behind me.

“A little trick Freddy learned from Pastor Andrés,” I said without turning around. “How to use nitric acid to short out a wire. Bron made a device for Freddy and Freddy burned down Fly the Flag. Although he says he didn’t mean to. Are the cops on the way?”

Sandra grasped only one part of my statement. “How-dare-you! How dare you come in here to my house of mourning and say Bron was setting fires? Get out of my house! Get out now!”

“Sandra, you want to be alone with Freddy, you and April?”

“If he’s going to tell lies to the police about Bron, I don’t want them arresting him.” She started kicking at my calves.

“Sandra, stop! Stop! This guy broke in, he’s dangerous, we need to give him to the police. Please! Do you want him to hurt April?”

She didn’t hear me, just kept kicking me, pulling at my hair, her face red and swollen. All of her furies and griefs of the last week-the last thirty years-were spilling out of her onto me.

I moved into the corner of the workshop, trying to get away from her. She came after me, unaware of Freddy, of the broken glass, of everything but me, her old enemy. “You knew Boom-Boom slept with me,” she spat. “You couldn’t stand it. You thought he belonged to you, you-you man-woman!”

The insult pricked me in a remote way, a place that would be sore later, but not now, now when I had to focus my energy on Freddy. She was jumping around too much, and the space was too small for me to stay between her and Freddy. She whirled past me and he grabbed her, pi

“You get out of here, now, bitch, or I’m killing this woman,” he said to me.

If I shot at him, I had a good chance of hitting her. I backed out of the room. April was in the kitchen. Her swollen face was ashen, and she was having trouble breathing.

“Baby, you and I are going to go outside. You are going to take nice deep breaths. Come on.” I put on my stern coach’s voice. “Breathe in. Hold it for four. Now let it go, slowly, slowly, I’m going to count and you let it out a little bit on each count.”

“But, Ma, is he-will he-”

“April, start breathing. He’s not going to hurt her, and, anyway, the cops will be here soon.”

I hustled April down the sidewalk and into my car. I got the passenger seat back as far as it would go, to ease the pressure on her lungs. I took the door key off my ring, turned on the engine, and set the heater going full blast.

“You lock the doors when I get out. You don’t open them for anyone. I’m going around to the back to try to help your mom, okay?”

Her lips trembled and she was gasping for air, but she nodded a little.

“And keep breathing. It’s the most important thing you can do right now. Breathe in, count four, breathe out, count four. Got it?”

“Y-yes, Coach,” she whispered.

I looked at my watch: it had been over ten minutes since Sandra called the cops. On my way around the house, I called 911 again on my cell, which didn’t automatically register on the emergency room screen. I explained where I was and said we had called over ten minutes ago. The dispatcher spent several agonizing minutes looking for Sandra’s call. She finally found it and said they were sending someone.

“When?” I said. “Now or with the Messiah? I have a kid going into cardiac arrest. Get an ambulance here on the double!”

“You don’t have the only emergency in this city, ma’am.”

“Look, you and I both know the story of the far South Side. I have a home invasion, I have the invader here and a very sick child. Pretend this is Lincoln Park and get me a team NOW!”

The dispatcher said huffily that every emergency was treated alike and she couldn’t manufacture an ambulance for me.

“I probably could build one in the time I’ve been waiting. If this kid dies, it will be front-page news, and tapes of these calls will be played coast to coast. Your kids and grandkids will know them by heart.” I snapped my phone shut and ran around to the back of the house.

Light streamed through the broken window leading into Bron’s workshop, but the back door had been opened and slammed shut with a lot of violence-it hung unevenly in the frame now. I had my gun out, and grabbed a lid from a garbage can to use as a shield. At the door, I squatted down on my haunches, using the lid to pull the door all the way open. No sound. I duckwalked into the kitchen, caricature of a cop. My feet skidded on ball bearings that Freddy had dumped onto the floor, and I fell onto my knees. The noise brought a muffled scream from the room beyond.

I stood upright and hurried into the dining room. Sandra wasn’t there or in the living room. I looked in the bedroom and saw the dresser had been knocked over to block the closet door. I yanked it out of the way. Sandra was lying on the floor, huddled in a little ball, whimpering.

I knelt next to her. “Are you hurt, Sandra? Did he cut you?”

She didn’t say anything, just lay crying like a hurt dog, little squeaks of misery. I felt for her throat, but didn’t find blood, and I couldn’t see any on the floor under her. Freddy had dumped all the bedding onto the floor; I grabbed a blanket and wrapped her up.

In the few minutes I’d been outside with April, Freddy had gone through the house like locusts through Egypt. He’d dumped out the drawers in the bedroom and the medicine cabinet; he’d run upstairs to April’s dormer, overturned her bureau, and pulled the mattress from her bed. And then he’d kicked open the back door and fled. Probably Diego had been waiting in the alley in the pickup.

I went slowly back downstairs to Sandra. “I have April safe outside in my car. If the ambulance doesn’t get here soon, do you want me to drive her to the hospital?”

Her teeth were chattering, but she clenched them together and hissed, “You don’t take my girl away from me, Tori.”

“No, Sandra, I won’t. You can ride along. What made that punk break your house up like that?”

“He s-s-said-he wanted the rec-c-c-cording,” she burst out. “L-l-like I was-was-a radio st-st-station. Give me the rec-c-cording, he k-kept saying.”

“The recording?” I echoed. “What recording?”

She was shaking and miserable; she didn’t want to answer stupid questions from me. I got her to the couch, put on water for tea, and went out to my car. To my relief, when I unlocked the door April was still breathing. I was just explaining the situation to her when the blue-and-whites finally came screaming around the corner.