"Fire Sale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Paretsky Sara)

2 Homie

The noise was overwhelming. Balls pounded on the old yellow floor. They ricocheted from backboards and off the bleachers that crowded the court perimeter, creating a syncopated drumming as loud as a gale-force wind. The girls on the floor were practicing layups and free throws, rebounding, dribbling between their legs and behind their backs. They didn’t all have balls-the school budget didn’t run to that-but even ten balls make a stunning racket.

The room itself looked as though no one had painted, or even washed it, since I last played here. It smelled of old sweat, and two of the overhead lights were broken, so it seemed as though it was always February inside. The floor was scarred and warped; every now and then one of the girls would forget to watch her step at the three-second lane or the left corner-the two worst spots-and take a spill. Last week, one of our promising guards had sprained an ankle.

I tried not to let the daunting atmosphere get me down. After all, Bertha Palmer had sixteen girls who wanted to play, some even playing their hearts out. It was my job to help them until the school found a permanent coach. And to keep their spirits up after the season started, and they went against teams with better facilities, better depth-and much better coaches.

Those waiting a turn under the baskets were supposed to be running laps or stretching, but they tended to hover over the girls with balls, grabbing for them, or shouting hotly that April Czernin or Celine Jackman was hogging shooting time.

“Your mama didn’t spread her legs to pay for that ball-give it over here,” was a frequent taunt. I had to stay alert to squabbles that might erupt into full-scale war while correcting faults in shooting form. And not be bothered by the howling of the infant and toddler in the bleachers. The babies belonged to my center, Sancia, a gawky sixteen-year-old who-despite her six-foot-two body-looked practically like a baby herself. The kids were nominally under the care of her boyfriend, but he sat sullenly next to them, Discman in his ears, looking neither at his children nor at the action on the floor.

I was also trying not to let Marcena Love disturb me, although her presence was winding my team up, intensifying the pace of insults as well as of the workout. Not that Marcena was a scout or a coach or even knew very much about the game, but the team was ferociously aware of her.

When she’d arrived with me, impossibly soignée in her black Prada spandex, carrying an outsize leather bag, I’d introduced her briefly: she was English, she was a reporter, she wanted to take some notes, and possibly talk to some of them during the breaks.

The girls would have swooned over her anyway, but when they found she had covered Usher at Wembley Stadium, they’d screamed with excitement.

“Talk to me, miss, talk to me!”

“Don’t listen to her, she’s the biggest liar on the South Side.”

“You wanna photograph me doing my jump shot? I’m gonna be all-state this year.”

I’d had to use a crowbar to get them away from Love and onto the court. Even as they fought over equipment and shooting rights, they kept an eye on her.

I shook my head: I was paying too much attention to Love myself. I took a ball from April Czernin, another promising guard, and tried to show her how to back into the three-second lane, turning at the last instant to do that fadeaway jumper Michael Jordan made famous. At least my ball went in, always a plus when you’re trying to show off a move. April repeated the shot a few times while another player complained, “How come you let her keep the ball and I don’t get no time, Coach?”

Being called “coach” still disconcerted me. I didn’t want to get used to it-this was a temporary gig. In fact, I was hoping to line up a corporate sponsor this afternoon, someone willing to pay good money to bring in a pro, or at least semipro, to take over the team.

When I blew my whistle to call an end to free-form warm-ups, Theresa Díaz popped up in front of me.

“Coach, I got my period.”

“Great,” I said. “You’re not pregnant.”

She blushed and scowled: despite the fact that at any one time at least fifteen percent of their classmates were pregnant, the girls were skittish and easily embarrassed by talk about their bodies. “Coach, I gotta use the bathroom.”

“One at a time-you know the rule. When Celine gets back, you can go.”

“But, Coach, my shorts, they’ll, you know.”

“You can wait on the bench until Celine returns,” I said. “The rest of you: get into two lines-we’re going to practice layups and rebounds.”

Theresa gave an exaggerated sigh and made a show of mincing over to the bench.

“What’s the point of that kind of use of power? Will humiliating the girl turn her into a better player?” Marcena Love’s high, clear voice was loud enough for the two girls nearest her to stop fighting over a ball to listen.

Josie Dorrado and April Czernin looked from Love to me to see what I would do. I couldn’t-mustn’t-lose my temper. After all, I might only be imagining that Love was going out of her way to get my goat.

“If I wanted to humiliate her, I’d follow her to the bathroom to see if she really had her period.” I also spoke just loudly enough for the team to overhear. “I’m pretending to believe her because it might really be true.”

“You suspect she just wants a cigarette?”

I lowered my voice. “Celine, the kid who disappeared for a break five minutes ago, is challenging me. She’s a leader in the South Side Pentas, and Theresa’s one of her followers. If Celine can get a little gang meeting going in the stalls during practice, she’s taken over the team.”

I snapped my fingers. “Of course, you could go in with Theresa, take notes of all her and Celine’s girlish thoughts and wishes. It would raise their spirits no end, and you could report on how public school toilets on Chicago ’s South Side compare with what you’ve seen in Baghdad and Brixton.”

Love widened her eyes, then smiled disarmingly. “Sorry. You know your team. But I thought sports were meant to keep girls out of gangs.”

“Josie! April! Two lines, one shoots, one rebounds, you know the drill.” I watched until the girls formed up and began shooting.

“Basketball is supposed to keep them out of pregnancy, too.” I gestured to the bleachers. “We have one teen mom out of sixteen in a school where almost half the girls have babies before they’re seniors, so it’s working for most of them. And we only have three gang members-that I know of-on the team. The South Side is the city’s dumping ground. It’s why the gym’s a wreck, half the girls don’t have uniforms, and we have to beg to get enough basketballs to run a decent drill. It’s going to take way more than basketball to keep these kids off drugs, out of childbirth, and in school.”

I turned away from Love and set the girls in one line to running into the basket and shooting from underneath, with the ones in the second line following to rebound. We practiced from inside the three-second lane, outside the three-point perimeter, hook shots, jump shots, layups. Halfway through the drill, Celine sauntered back into the gym. I didn’t talk to her about her ten minutes out of the room, just put her at the back of one of the lines.

“Your turn, Theresa,” I called.

She started toward the door, then muttered, “I think I can make it to the end of practice, Coach.”

“Don’t take any chances,” I said. “Better to miss another five minutes of practice than to risk embarrassment.”

She blushed again and insisted she was fine. I put her in the lane where Celine wasn’t and looked at Marcena Love, to see if she’d heard; the journalist turned her head and seemed intent on the play under the basket in front of her.

I smiled to myself: point to the South Side street fighter. Although street fighting wasn’t the most useful tool with Marcena Love: she had too much in her armory that went beyond me. Like the skinny-oh, all right, slim-muscular body her black Prada clung to. Or the fact that she’d known my lover since his Peace Corps days. And had been with Morrell last winter in Afghanistan. And had shown up at his Evanston condo three days ago, when I’d been in South Shore with Coach McFarlane.

When I’d reached his place that night myself, Marcena had been perched on the side of his bed, tawny head bent down as they looked at photographs together. Morrell was recovering from gunshot wounds that still required him to lie down much of the time, so it wasn’t surprising he was in bed. But the sight of a strange woman, and one with Marcena’s poise and ease, leaning over him-at ten o’clock-had caused hackles to rise from my crown to my toes.

Morrell reached out a hand to pull me down for a kiss before introducing us: Marcena, an old journalist friend, in town to do a series for the Guardian, called from the airport, staying in the spare room for a week or so while she gets her bearings. Victoria, private investigator, basketball locum, Chicago native who can show you around. I’d smiled with as much goodwill as I could summon, and had tried not to spend the next three days wondering what they were doing while I was running around town.

Not that I was jealous of Marcena. Certainly not. I was a modern woman, after all, and a feminist, and I didn’t compete with other women for any man’s affection. But Morrell and Love had the intimacy that comes from a long-shared past. When they started laughing and talking I felt excluded. And, well, okay, jealous.

A fight under one of the baskets reminded me to keep my attention on the court. As usual, it was between April Czernin and Celine Jackman, my gangbanger forward. They were the two best players on the team, but figuring out how to get them to play together was only one of the exhausting challenges the girls presented. At times like this it was just as well I was a street fighter. I separated them and organized squads for scrimmage.

We took a break at three-thirty, by which time everyone was sweating freely, including me. During the break, I was able to serve the team Gatorade, thanks to a donation from one of my corporate clients. While the other girls drank theirs, Sancia Valdéz, my center, climbed up the bleachers to make sure her baby got its bottle and to have some kind of conversation with its father-so far I hadn’t heard him do more than mumble incomprehensibly.

Marcena began interviewing a couple of the girls, choosing them at random, or maybe by color-one blonde, one Latina, one African-American. The rest clamored around her, jealous for attention.

I saw that Marcena was recording them, using a neat little red device, about the size and shape of a fountain pen. I’d admired it the first time I saw it-it was a digital gizmo, of course, and could hold eight hours of talk in its tiny head. And unless Marcena told people, they didn’t know they were being recorded. She hadn’t told the girls she was taping them, but I decided not to make an issue of it-chances were, they’d be flattered, not offended.

I let it go on for fifteen minutes, then brought over the board and began drawing play routes on it. Marcena was a good sport-when she saw the team would rather talk to her than listen to me she put her recorder away and said she’d finish after practice.

I sent two squads to the floor for an actual scrimmage. Marcena watched for a few minutes, then climbed up the rickety bleachers to my center’s boyfriend. He sat up straighter and at one point actually seemed to speak with real animation. This distracted Sancia so much that she muffed a routine pass and let the second team get an easy score.

“Head in the game, Sancia,” I barked in my best Coach McFarlane imitation, but I was still relieved when the reporter climbed down from the bleachers and ambled out of the gym: everyone got more focused on what was happening on the court.

Last night at dinner, when Marcena proposed coming with me this afternoon, I’d tried to talk her out of it. South Chicago is a long way from anywhere, and I warned her I couldn’t take a break to drive her downtown if she got bored.

Love had laughed. “I have a high boredom threshold. You know the series I’m doing for the Guardian on the America that Europeans don’t see? I have to start somewhere, and who could be more invisible than the girls you’re coaching? By your account, they’re never going to be Olympic stars or Nobel Prize winners, they come from rough neighborhoods, they have babies-”

“In other words, just like the girls in South London,” Morrell had interrupted. “I don’t think you’ve got a world-beating story there, Love.”

“But going down there might suggest a story,” she said. “Maybe a profile of an American detective returning to her roots. Everyone likes detective stories.”

“You could follow the team,” I agreed with fake enthusiasm. “It could be one of those tearjerkers where this bunch of girls who don’t have enough balls or uniforms comes together under my inspired leadership to be state champs. But, you know, practice goes on for two hours, and I have an appointment with a local business leader afterward. We’ll be in the armpit of the city-if you do get bored, there won’t be a lot for you to do.”

“I can always leave,” Love said.

“Onto the street with the highest murder rate in the city.”

She laughed again. “I’ve just come from Baghdad. I’ve covered Sarajevo, Rwanda, and Ramallah. I can’t imagine Chicago is more terrifying than any of those places.”

I’d agreed, of course: I had to. It was only because Love rubbed me the wrong way-because I was jealous, or insecure, or just a South Side street fighter with a chip on her shoulder-that I hadn’t wanted to bring her. If the team could get some print space, even overseas, maybe someone would pay attention to them and help in my quest to find a corporate sponsor.

Despite her airy assurance that she had taken care of herself in Kabul and the West Bank, Love had wilted a little when we reached the school. The neighborhood itself is enough to make anyone weep-at least, it makes me want to weep. When I first drove past my old home two weeks ago, I really did break down in tears. The windows were boarded over, and weeds choked the yard where my mother had patiently tended a bocca di leone gigante and a Japanese camellia.

The school building, with its garbage and graffiti, broken windows, and two-inch case-hardened chains shutting all but one entrance, daunts everyone. Even when you get used to the chains and garbage and think you’re not noticing them, they weigh on you. Kids and staff alike get depressed and pugnacious after enough time in such a setting.

Marcena had been unusually quiet while we produced our IDs for the guard, only murmuring that this was what she was used to from Iraq and the West Bank, but she hadn’t realized Americans knew how it felt to have an occupying power in their midst.

“The cops aren’t an occupying power,” I snapped. “That role belongs to the relentless poverty around here.”

“Cops are on power trips no matter what force places them in charge of a community,” she responded, but she’d still been subdued until she met the team.

After she left the gym, I stepped up the tempo of the practice, even though several of the players were sullenly refusing to respond, complaining they were worn out and Coach McFarlane didn’t make them do this.

“Forget about it,” I barked. “I trained with Coach McFarlane: that’s how I learned these drills.”

I had them working on passes and rebounds, their biggest weaknesses. I forced the laggards under the boards, letting balls bounce off them because they wouldn’t go through the motions of trying to grab them. Celine, my gangbanger, knocked over one straggler. Even though I secretly wanted to do it myself, I had to bench Celine and threaten her with suspension from the team if she kept on fighting. I hated doing it, since she and April, along with Josie Dorrado, were our only hope for building a team that could win a few games. If they picked up their skills. If enough of the others started working harder. If they all kept coming, didn’t get pregnant or shot, got the high-tops and weight equipment they needed. And if Celine and April didn’t come to blows before the season even got under way.

The energy level in the room suddenly went up, and I knew without looking at the clock that we had fifteen minutes left in practice. This was the time that friends and family showed up to wait for the team. Even though most of the girls went home by themselves, everyone played better with an audience.

Tonight, to my surprise, it was April Czernin who picked up the pace the most-she started knocking down rebounds with the ferocity of Teresa Weatherspoon. I turned to see who she was showing off for, and saw that Marcena Love had returned, along with a man around my own age. His dark good looks were starting to fray a bit around the edges, but he definitely merited a second glance. He and Love were laughing together, and his right hand was about a millimeter from her hip. When April saw his attention was on Marcena, she bounced her ball off the backboard with such savagery that the rebound hit Sancia in the head.