Job or death in Philadelphia. An American crime novel. Lilia Shumkova

Kids saw him in the woods behind the school, trying to set trees on fire. I have to get there before the police. I know how to stop him.»

      I got in her van, expecting to sit in filth. A single working mom with three kids doesn’t have time for vacuuming the car. However, the van was spotless and even smelled good inside.

      «Debbie, what exactly were they looking for when they hired you at NOSE?» I asked.

      «Well, first they needed a native English speaker to teach ESL. I have some experience teaching English, since as a student I took a two-month trip to Mexico, where I volunteered as a teacher. It was a fun thing to do. After I agreed to take the job and had an interview with a human resources person, they gave me a new job description. It turned out that my position was called ESL Teacher/Job Developer, and that four days a week I was supposed to search for jobs for immigrants who are the clients of the company. In my mind, before I even started working, helping people to get decent jobs was like charity. If you know what I mean?»

      I nodded.

      She took a sip from her water bottle. «On May 4th, my first day of work, I received a fresh job description that ran on for two pages. Honestly, I worked for a couple of huge corporations in New York, and in other places, and I never saw a job description running through two pages. Besides teaching daily, consulting with students and developing new instruction materials, I’m supposed to hunt for jobs for immigrants, contact businesses and government agencies, and also recruit immigrants and refugees to become clients of this program. Also, I need to locate agencies and organizations, public and private, traditional and nontraditional, and pursue them in collaboration with this company. Besides, I have to perform case-working duty and to do clients’ intake, to maintain voluminous case documentation.»

      «Sounds like an awful lot of jobs and responsibilities to me,» I mumbled, impressed by her list.

      «That’s what I thought. I agree, it is a far cry from the teaching position I accepted.» Debbie shrugged her shoulders angrily.

      «Why would they trick you with a job description?»

      «At first, I didn’t know. Now, I understand that the people who work there, at the core of the program, are immigrants. They came to the country years ago, and they stayed with this company for ten to twenty years. They don’t have an American education, and they have a bizarre view of the ways American business operates. Until now, they had no problems dealing with the authorities and the job market. But now that the government has cut down on immigration, they desperately need somebody with perfect English and knowledge of business. You know, before the 9/11 attack, the government accepted hundreds of thousands of new immigrants every year. The job market always needed more low-paid workers, and NOSE flourished. Somehow, they received a non-profit status that gave them significant privileges in conducting business. This surprised me at the very least, because they were making a hefty profit with their headhunt.»

      «How do they make their money?» I went from another end. Ultimately, I wanted to understand what information Debbie knew that would damage Gamma.

      «This is the most interesting part,» Debbie said, smiling. «I’m a Certified Public Accountant, so I always ask myself this question: How does the company make its money? And most of the time I would get no answer at all! At NOSE, I came across a very bizarre arrangement. I was helping Gamma to pack her documents, and… Oh, my God, it is a fire!» She screamed, parked the van, and ran out.

      I followed her across the school parking lot into the woods that spread just three hundred feet away. Clouds of gray smoke were rising among the trees, without visible flames. Suddenly, a succession of sounds broke the silence. Either gunshots or burning evergreen branches.

      «Matthew!» Debbie screamed and ran through the bushes, following her parental or maternal instinct. I tailgated her, breathing lungs full of bitter smoke. The cracking sounds were getting louder, and the next moment we stopped on the edge of a clear spot in the wood. Every tree and every bush around were burning like a torch. Fire, red and smoky, ran along the tree trunks like silk. I stopped in fascination and noticed a boy standing still in the midst of it all. Debbie grabbed her son from behind and tried to pull him out of the burning circle, but the fourteen-year-old just tossed her to the ground, with super strength, as if the fire gave him this creepy power.

      «Matthew, let’s go!» Debbie howled at the top of her lungs. She quickly rebounded back on her feet and grabbed her son again with both hands. The boy didn’t look at her even once, just kept staring at the fire surrounding them. Suddenly, behind my back, the fire engine siren cut through the thick smoky air, and two shiny red fire trucks showed themselves among the trees.

      I ran after Debbie, and together we pulled her son away from the fire and out of the way of the fire crew. Matthew was taller and heavier than me, and in his stupor, his body felt like stone. Two firefighters were running toward us when Matthew saw them. He pushed his mother down again and hit me in my face with his elbow. For a second, I saw sparks flying, and my nose bled. The boy threw me off his back like a young mustang and ran towards the burning trees. Debbie got on her feet and ran after him, limping. Two heavily equipped firefighters ran behind her.

      Without a sound or hesitation, Matthew ran into the burning bush. Debbie screamed hysterically, but couldn’t make herself go into the fire after her child. Considering the splitting pain in my eyes and nose, I didn’t blame her. Two running firefighters passed her and entered the fire, looking like immortal creatures from outer space.

      With a terrible noise, the fire engines finally opened their water supplies, and flooded the ground and my expensive shoes. I ran to Debbie, grabbed her hand, and pulled her away from the clouds of smoke and steam and water. The police officer sent us to the ambulance, saying that the guys from the fire department got her son. «He’s getting medical help,» the cop added. «He got burned.»

      We found an ambulance parked in the school parking lot, and Debbie asked to look at her son. He was unconscious and heavily burned. His hair was gone; black cracks in his cheeks and hands oozed with a tear-like substance.

      Debbie didn’t even cry. Somebody gave her a bottle of water, she got into the ambulance, and they took off. A moment later, I realized I had an hour before the lie detector appointment.

      CHAPTER 7

      Water ran down on the floor mat the moment I pressed the gas pedal. It’s amazing how much water gets on you when you try to put out a fire. I congratulated myself on my shoe choice. In the morning, I had picked up some reliable and simple-looking moccasins from Dolce & Gabbana. It is still unclear to me what one would be expected to wear, if, during working hours, one has to extinguish a fire and then show up at a high-end Center City security firm, accompanying a client, and representing Joe Madnick’s law firm.

      Joe didn’t give me a security company phone number, so I couldn’t just call and cancel the appointment. I had to drive there myself. During the next thirty minutes, driving to the city, I thought of getting organized by writing phone numbers, addresses and important dates. After all, the work of a detective is all about collecting data and synthesizing it.

      I parked on the corner of 5th and Arch Street, which was just a block away from the hole in the wall we had rented with Iris after my third divorce. I got out of my Jaguar. Common wisdom says to wait for four years after a divorce. Don’t wait, just do it, I say. I got divorced because something right and true waited for me and couldn’t come to me, because my dysfunctional marriage was in the way. I recalled a black guy without a name. The police called him Joe Smith, who attacked me then. If it wasn’t for him, Alexander would have walked right past me, looking through me without seeing me, and we would never be together. Call it destiny. I say, when something bad happens, look for something good around the next corner. (By the way, I never pressed charges against my attacker, and Alexander helped him to get legal aid. A year ago, he was out of prison and on his way to recovery from amnesia. I didn’t know where the guy was at that