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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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Fire Sale
by Sara Paretsky |
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Rating:
••• (Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Questions Private
investigator, V.I. Warshawski returns in Sara Paretsky’s latest novel, Fire Sale,
most of which is set in V.I.’s childhood
neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. While still recommending Fire Sale,
I found that both V.I. and Paretsky seemed more
tired on the pages of this book than in prior offerings. Even while tired,
this duo will appeal to most readers looking to be entertained. Here’s an
excerpt, all of Chapter 5, “Imperial Relations,” pp.
36-43: Offices in industrial
spaces aren’t designed for the comfort or prestige of the inhabitant. Grobian got a bigger space than the tiny rooms I’d poked
into earlier—it even included a closet in the far corner—but it was painted the same dirty
yellow, held the same metal desk and chairs as the others, and, like them,
even had a video cam in the ceiling. Buffalo Bill didn’t trust anyone, apparently. Grobian himself was an energetic young man,
thirty-something, shirt-sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular arms, with a big
marine anchor tattooed on the left bicep. He looked like the kind of guy
truckers would respect, with a square quarterback jaw jutting beneath a buzz
haircut. He frowned when he saw me
behind the men. “You new on the job? You don’t belong in here—check in with
Edgar Diaz in—“ “I’m V. I. Warshawski. We had an appointment at five-fifteen.” I
tried to sound upbeat, professional, not annoyed that it was almost six now. “Oh, yeah. Billy set that
up. You’ll have to wait. These men are already late getting on the road.” “Of course.” Women are
supposed to wait on men; it’s our appointed role. But I kept the thought to
myself: beggars have to have a sunny disposition. I hate being a beggar. When I looked around for a
place to sit, I saw a woman behind me. She was definitely not a typical
By-Smart employee, not with a face whose makeup had been as carefully applied
as if her skin were a Vermeer canvas. Her clothes, too—a body-hugging jersey
top over a lavender kilt artfully arranged to show black lace inserts—hadn’t
been bought on a By-Smart paycheck, let alone off a By-Smart rack, and none
of the exhausted workers I’d seen in the canteen could have the energy to
create that toned supple body. The woman smiled when she
saw me staring: she liked attention, or perhaps envy. She was in the only
chair, so I went to lean against a metal filing cabinet next to her. She held
a binder in her lap, open to an array of numbers that meant nothing to me,
but when she realized I was staring down at them she shut the book and
crossed her legs. She was wearing knee-high lavender boots with three-inch
heels. I wondered if she had a pair of flip-flops to put on before going to
her car. Two more men joined the
four lined up at Grobian’s desk. When he’d finished
with them, another three came in. They were all truckers, getting their
loads approved, either for what they’d delivered or what they were getting
ready to drive off with. I was growing bored and
even a bit angry, but I’d be even more upset if I blew a chance to get out
from under the girls’ basketball team. I sucked in a deep breath: keep it
perky Warshawski, and turned to ask the Woman if
she was part of the warehouse’s management team. She shook her head and
smiled a little condescendingly. I would have to play twenty questions to get
anything out of her. I didn’t care that much, but I needed to do something to
pass the time. I remembered the trucker’s remark about the bedsheet queen. She either bought them or lay in
them—maybe both. “You the linen expert?” I
asked. She preened slightly: she
had a reputation, people talked about her. She ordered all the towels and
sheets for By-Smart nationwide, she said. Before I could continue
the game, Billy came back into the room with a thick sheaf of papers. “Oh,
Aunt Jacqui, there are faxes for you in this bunch. I don’t know why they’ve
sent them here instead of up to Aunt Jacqui stood up, but
dropped her binder in the process. Some of the papers fell out and fluttered
to the floor, three landing under Grobian’s desk.
Billy picked up the binder and put it on her chair. “Oh, dear,” she murmured,
her voice languid, almost liquid. “I don’t think I can crawl under the desk
in these clothes, Billy.” Billy set the faxes on top
of her binder and got down on his hands and knees to fetch the scattered
pages. Aunt Jacqui picked up the faxes, riffled through them, and extracted a
dozen or so pages. Billy scrambled back to
his feet and handed her the sheets from her binder. “Pat, you ought to make
sure that floor gets washed more often. It’s filthy under there.” Grobian rolled his eyes. “Billy, this ain’t your mother’s kitchen, it’s a working warehouse. As
long as the floor doesn’t catch on fire I can’t be bothered about how dirty
it is or isn’t.” One of the truckers laughed and cuffed
Billy on the shoulder on his way out the door. “Time you went on the road,
son. Let you see real dirt and you’ll come back and eat off Grobian’s linoleum.” “Or let him wash it,” the remaining
driver suggested. “That always makes dirt look good.” Billy blushed but laughed along with
the men. Pat chatted briefly with the last driver about a load he was taking
to the “Oh, yeah. Community service,
we already do plenty of that.” Grobian’s
frown returned. Busy man, no time for social workers, nuns, and other
do-gooders. “Yes, I’ve studied your
numbers, at least the ones you make public.” I pulled a sheaf of papers out
of my briefcase, spilling the flip-flops in their plastic bag onto the floor. I handed business cards to
Grobian, Billy, and Aunt Jacqui. “I grew up in Grobian looked ostentatiously at his watch,
but young Billy said, “I know some of the girls there, Pat, through our
church exchange. They sing in the choir at—” “I know you want money
from us,” Jacqui interrupted in her languid voice. “How much and for what?” I flashed an upbeat,
professional smile and handed her a copy of a report I’d created on By-Smart’s community actions. I gave another set to Grobian and a third to Billy. “I know that By-Smart
encourages grassroots giving at its local stores, but only for small
projects. The “That’s right: I manage
the warehouse, and I’m the South Chicago— “Which is great,” I said
enthusiastically. “Profits for the Grobian shoved my report aside. “Who talked to
you? Who gave out confidential store information?” I shook my head. “It’s all
on the Web, Mr. Grobian. You just have to know how
to look. For fifty-five thousand, the store could cover the cost of uniforms,
weight equipment, balls, and a part-time coach. You’d be real heroes on the
South Side, and, of course, you’d get a substantial tax benefit from it as
well. Heck, you might even be able to supply weight equipment out of old
inventory.” All I really wanted from
By-Smart was a coach, and I figured for about twelve thousand they could get
someone to commit to the job. She (or he) wouldn’t have to be a teacher, just
someone who understood the game and knew how to work with young people. A
graduate student who had played college ball would be good; someone who was
doing a degree in sports management and training even better. I was hoping if
I started with four or five times what I wanted, I might at least get a
coach. Grobian was still mad, though. He tossed my
proposal into his wastebasket. Jacqui, with another of her languid
movements, slid her papers toward the trash. They fell about a yard short. “We never give that kind
of money to an individual store,” Grobian said. “Not to the store, Pat,”
Billy objected, bending over to retrieve Aunt Jacqui’s papers. “To the
school. It’s just the kind of thing Grandpa loves, helping kids who show
enthusiasm for improving their lives.” Ah: he was a Bysen. That was why he could set up meetings with beggars
even though he was inexperienced and had a boss who didn’t want to hear about
the matter. That meant Aunt Jacqui was a Bysen,
too, so I didn’t have to keep playing twenty questions with her. I smiled warmly at Billy. “Your
grandfather went to this high school seventy years ago. Five of the girls on
the team have parents who work for By-Smart, so it would be great synergy for
the store and the community.” I winced at hearing corpu-speak
fall so effortlessly from my lips. “Your grandfather doesn’t
believe in giving that kind of money to charity, Billy. If you don’t know
that by now, you haven’t been listening to him very hard,” Jacqui said. “That’s not fair, Aunt Jacqui. What
about the wing he and Grandma built on the hospital in “Those were big buildings that have his
name on them,” Jacqui said. “A little program down here that he won’t get any
glory for—” “I’ll talk to him myself,”
Billy said hotly. “I’ve met some of these girls, like I said, and when he
hears their stories—” “Large tears will fill his
eyes,” Jacqui interrupted. “He’ll go, ‘Hnnh, hnnh, if they want to succeed they need to work hard,
like I did. No one gave me any handouts, and I started out the same place
they did, hnnh, hnnh.” Patrick Grobian laughed, but Billy looked flushed and hurt. He believed
in his grandfather. To cover his confusion, Billy started sorting out the
papers that Aunt Jacqui had dropped, separating my proposal from several
sheets of fax paper. “Here’s something from Adolpho in Matagalpa,” he said.
“I thought we agreed not to work with him, but he’s quoting you—” Jacqui took the papers
back from him. “I wrote him last week, Billy, but maybe he didn’t get the
letter. You’re right to point it out.” “But it looks like he has
a whole production schedule.” Jacqui produced another
dazzling smile. “I think you misread it, Billy, but I’ll make extra sure
we’re all clear on this.” Pat pulled my report out
of his trash. “I moved too fast on this one, Billy; I’ll take a closer look
at my numbers and get back to your friend. In the meantime, why don’t you go
out to the loading bays, make sure that Bron at bay
thirty-two has taken off—he has a tendency to linger, wasting time with the
girls on the shift. And you, Ms.—uh, we’ll call you in a couple of days.” Billy looked again at Aunt
Jacqui, a troubled frown creasing his smooth young face, but he obediently
got up to go. I followed him from the room. “I’d be glad to get you
any other information you want that might help your grandfather make a
decision about the team. Maybe you’d like to bring him to one of our
practices.” His face lit up. “I don’t
think he’d come, but I could, that is, if I could take off from here, maybe
if I came in early, aren’t Mondays and Thursdays your practice days?” I was surprised and asked
how he knew. He flushed. “I’m in the
choir and the youth group at my church, our church, I mean, the one my family
goes to, and we do these exchanges with inner-city churches sometimes, like,
where we trade ministers, and our choirs sing together and stuff, and my
youth group has adopted Mount Ararat down on Ninety-first Street, and some of
the kids at the church, they go to Bertha Palmer. Two of them play on the
basketball team. Josie Dorrado and Sancia Valdéz. Do you know
them?” “Oh, yes: there are only
sixteen girls on the team, I know them all. So how come you’re working here
at the warehouse? Shouldn’t you be in college or high school or something
yourself?” “I wanted to do a year of
service, something like the Peace Corps, after I finished high school, but
Grandpa persuaded me to spend a year on the South Side. It’s not like he’s
sick or dying or anything, but he wanted me to work for a year in the company
while he was still around to, like, answer my questions, and meantime I can
do service through the church and stuff. That’s why I know Aunt Jacqui is
just being, well, cynical. She is sometimes. A lot of the time. Sometimes I
think she only married Uncle Gary because she wanted—” He broke off, blushing
even more darkly. “I forgot what I was going
to say. She is really committed to the company. Grandpa, he doesn’t really
like the ladies in the family to work in the store, not even my sister
Candace, when she was running—but anyway, Aunt Jacqui, she has a degree in
design, I think it is, or fabric, something like that, and she persuaded
Grandpa that she would go crazy staying at home. We beat Wal-Mart in towels
and sheets every quarter since she took over the buying for those things, and
even Grandpa is impressed with how thorough she is.” Aunt Jacqui only married
Uncle Gary because she wanted a piece of the Bysen
family fortune. I could hear the accusations flying around the Bysen dinner table: Buffalo Bill was a tightwad,
Aunt Jacqui was a gold digger. But the kid was a hardworking idealist. As I
followed him along the corridors to the loading bays, I hoped I could get him
to blurt out more
indiscretions, like where or what Candace had been running, but he only
explained how he came to have his nickname. His father was the oldest
son—William the Second. “It’s sort of a family
joke, not that I’m crazy about it. Everyone calls Dad ‘Young Mister William,’
even though he’s fifty-two now. So I got nicknamed Billy the Kid. They think
I shoot from the hip, see, and I know that’s what Pat is going to tell Dad
about me bringing you in here, but don’t give up, Ms. War-sha-sky,
I think it would be really great to help the basketball program. I promise
you I’ll talk to Grandpa about it.” Fire Sale
touches on money, power, class, race, corporate responsibility and
recklessness, and the complicated relationships that make life fascinating.
Through it all, V.I. can be counted on to get the bad guys after asking
hundreds of questions trying to get the facts. Steve Hopkins,
August 25, 2005 |
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ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the September
2005 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Fire
Sale.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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