“You’ve been away from the ’hood so long you don’t remember your old pals, huh, Warshawski?”
“Romeo Czernin!” I blurted out his own nickname in a jolt of astonished recognition: he’d been in Boom-Boom’s class, a year ahead of me, and the girls in my clique had all snickered about him as we watched him put the moves on our classmates.
This afternoon, it was Celine and her sidekicks who laughed raucously, hoping to goad April. They succeeded: April aimed a ball at Celine. I jumped between them, scooping up the ball, trying unsuccessfully to remember Romeo’s real name.
Czernin was pleased, perhaps by the juvenile title, or by grabbing the team’s attention in front of Marcena. “The one and only.” He put an arm around me and bent me backward to kiss me. I turned inside his arm and hooked my left foot around his ankle, sliding away as he stumbled. It wasn’t the kind of juke move I wanted to encourage in the team, but unfortunately they all had been watching closely; I had a feeling I’d see Celine using it at the next practice. Marcena Love had also been watching, with an amused smile that made me feel as immature as my own gangbangers.
Romeo dusted himself off. “Same standoffish bitch you always were, huh, Tori? You always were one of McFarlane’s pets, weren’t you? When I found out she was still coaching basketball, I came over to have a talk with her-I figured she’d dump the same crap on my kid she did on me, and now I suppose I have to make sure you treat April right, too.”
“Wrong,” I said. “It’s a pleasure coaching April; she’s shaping into a serious little player.”
“I hear any reports that you playing favorites, you letting some of these Mexican scum beat up on her, you answer to me, just remember that.”
April was turning red with embarrassment, so I just smiled and said I’d keep it in mind. “Next time, come early enough to watch her scrimmage. You’ll be impressed.”
He nodded at me, as if to reinforce my acknowledgment of his power, then switched on another smile for Marcena. “Would if I could: it’s my hours. I got off early today and thought I’d take my little girl out for a pizza-how about it, sweetheart?”
April, who’d retreated to the background with Josie Dorrado, looked up with the kind of scowl that teenagers use to conceal eagerness.
“And this English lady who’s writing about your team and the South Side, she’d like to join us. Met me in the parking lot when I was pulling up in the rig. What do you say? We’ll go to Zambrano’s, show her the real neighborhood.”
April hunched a shoulder. “I guess. If Josie can come, too. And Laetisha.”
Romeo agreed with an expansive clap on his daughter’s shoulder and told her to hustle; he had to do some driving after pizza.
Zambrano’s was just about the only place on the South Side that I remembered from my own youth. Most of the other little joints have been boarded over. Even Sonny’s, where you could get a shot and a beer for a dollar-all under the life-sized portrait of the original Richard Daley-isn’t open anymore.
I sent the girls off to shower, in a locker room whose dank, moldy smell usually kept me in my own sweaty clothes until I got to Morrell’s. Marcena followed the team, saying she wanted the whole picture of their experience, and, anyway, she needed to pee. The girls gave gasps of excited shock at hearing her use the word in front of a man, and they clustered around her with renewed eagerness.
I looked up to the stands to see whether Sancia’s kids had anyone with them while she showered. Sancia’s sister had come in at the end of practice-she and Sancia’s mother seemed to alternate in helping out with the babies. Sancia’s boyfriend was lounging in the hallway with a couple of other guys who had girlfriends or sisters on the team, waiting for them to finish. After my first practice, when the guys had tested my authority with too much bumping and ball playing, I’d forced them to wait outside the gym until the girls were changed.
Romeo picked up one of the balls and began banging it off the backboard. He was wearing work boots, but I decided we’d had enough friction without me chewing him out for not wearing soft soles on the scarred court.
My cousin Boom-Boom, who’d been a high school star, already recruited by the Black Hawks when he was seventeen, used to make fun of Romeo for trailing after the jocks. I’d joined in, since I wanted my cousin and his cool friends to like me, but I had to admit that even in work boots, Czernin’s form was pretty good. He sank five balls in a row from the free throw line, then began moving around the court, trying different, flashier shots, with less success.
He saw me watching him and gave a cocky smile: all was forgiven if I was going to admire him. “Watcha been up to, Tori? Is it true what they say, that you followed your old man into the police?”
“Not really: I’m a private investigator. I do stuff that the cops aren’t interested in. You driving a rig like your dad?”
“Not really,” he mimicked me. “He worked solo, I work for By-Smart. They’re about the only company hiring down here these days.”
“They need an eighteen-wheeler down here?”
“Yeah. You know, in and out of their big distribution warehouse, and then over to the stores, not just the one on Ninety-fifth, they’ve got eleven in my territory-South Side, northwest Indiana, you know.”
I passed the giant discount store at Ninety-fifth and Commercial every time I rode the expressway down. As big as the Ford Assembly Plant farther south, the store and parking lot filled in almost half a mile of old swamp.
“I’m going over to the warehouse myself this afternoon,” I said. “You know Patrick Grobian?”
Romeo gave the knowing smirk that was starting to get on my nerves. “Oh, yeah. I do a lot with Grobian. He likes to stay on top of dispatch, even though he is the district manager.”
“So you going to show Marcena the northwest Indiana stores after you take the girls to Zambrano’s?”
“That’s the idea. On the outside she looks as stuck up as you, but that’s just her accent and her getup; she’s a real person, and she’s pretty interested in how I do my work.”
“She drove down with me. Can you take her as far as the Loop when you’re done? She shouldn’t ride the train late at night.”
He grinned salaciously. “I’ll see she gets a good ride, Tori, don’t you worry your uptight ass about that.”
Resisting an impulse to smack him, I started collecting balls from around the floor. I let him hang on to the one he was playing with, but I put the rest in the equipment room. If I didn’t lock them up at once they evaporated, as I’d learned to my cost: we’d lost two when friends and family were milling around the gym after my first practice. I’d scrounged four new ones from friends who belong to tony downtown gyms. Now I keep all ten balls in a padlocked bin, although I’ve had to share keys with the boys’ coach and the PE teachers.
While the girls finished changing, I sat at a tiny table in the equipment room to fill out attendance forms and progress reports for the benefit of the mythical permanent coach. After a moment, a shadow in the doorway made me look up. Josie Dorrado, April’s particular friend on the team, was hovering there, twisting her long braid around her fingers, shifting from one skinny leg to the other. A quiet, hardworking kid, she was another of my strong players. I smiled, hoping she wasn’t going to bring up a time-consuming problem: I couldn’t be late to my meeting with the By-Smart manager.
“Coach, uh, people say, uh, is it true you’re with the police?”
“I’m a detective, Josie, but I’m private. I work for myself, not the city. Do you need the police for some reason?” I seemed to have a version of this conversation with someone at every practice, even though I’d told the team when I started coaching what I did for a living.
She shook her head, eyes widening a bit in alarm at the idea that she herself might need a cop. “Ma, my ma, she told me to ask you.”