No one bothered me when I cautiously looked out my front door. The media vultures, who’d still been hovering last night outside my building, had finally gotten bored.
When I got to Wrigley Field, crews were hard at work getting ready for an upcoming home stand. They were doing everything from bringing in supplies to testing the PA system. Food vendors were lined up along Clark, unloading through the big doors. Behind them was a fleet of beer trucks. I’m not much of a beer drinker at the best of times; the sight of so much of it, so early in the morning, made me queasy.
Bagby Haulage, the outfit Frank Guzzo drove for, had a truck there, too, parked along Addison. I’d thought they were local to the far South Side, but they clearly were bigger than I’d imagined if they had a contract with someone who served the Cubs. It would be a cruel punishment for Frank, if he had to ferry peanuts or Cracker Jacks to the ballpark where he’d hoped to play. I craned my neck to see who was in the cab, but the truck was empty.
Natalie Clements had left a pass for me with the security staff at the main gate. As I hiked up the ramps to the floor with the press offices, I passed the crews moving their loads of food and souvenirs into the storage caves behind the vending booths.
The belly of Wrigley wasn’t pretty. Work lamps were hooked under low-sloping ceilings. There were small cracks in the concrete, and the massive cables that fed the stadium’s power were attached to the outside of the weight-bearing columns, snaking along floors and walls—it would have cost too much to break into the concrete and install them out of sight.
Before going into Natalie Clements’s office, I went to the doorway leading to the stands. A team was hosing down the seats, collecting trash they’d missed after the last home game. The grounds crew would have been out already at first light, but they were finicking around the pitcher’s mound, getting the slope the way tomorrow’s starter liked it.
The grass was greener than it had been a week ago. The thick vines along the outfield wall were starting to turn green. I was facing the bleachers, where Boom-Boom and I used to climb the back wall and scramble into the seats—after sneaking onto the L by shinnying up the girders. We didn’t have any pocket money, but I guess that’s no excuse for a life of crime. I was still committing cons and crimes, I suppose, since I was letting Natalie Clements think I was writing my cousin’s biography.
I followed the ramps to the section where the press offices lay. They were cubbyholes, really, since every cubic inch in a ballpark needs to generate revenue. Natalie Clements introduced me to her boss, Will Drechen, who told me he hadn’t thought at first that they’d kept any of the pictures from that particular day.
“I happened to mention your project to my old boss when I went to see him last night. He’s been retired a long time, but he was a big fan of your cousin,” Drechen added. “He’d found these when he was going through old files.”
Drechen had the photos laid out on a tabletop. One showed Boom-Boom on the field, clowning around with Mitch Williams, who’d been a wild man on the mound, equally terrifying to fans and opponents. Boom-Boom’s face was alive with the excitement I’d seen a thousand times, whenever he was doing something high-risk. It was such a vivid photo I thought if I turned around my cousin might be standing behind me.
Natalie said, “Mr. Villard, he’s the gentleman who had the photos, he used to handle community relations, he said when Boom-Boom couldn’t come close to hitting Mitch Williams, Boom-Boom said it was because he was used to being in the penalty box for having his stick up that high.”
“Sounds like him,” I agreed.
I busied myself with the rest of the array to hide an unexpected spasm of grief. Seeing Boom-Boom’s face so filled with vitality, hearing my cousin’s words, the loss suddenly felt recent, not a decade old.
The pictures included three shots from inside the dugout. Frank was seated halfway down the bench, his face just visible behind Andre Dawson: the great right-fielder was leaning over to talk to my cousin, who was sitting at the end farthest from the field. Poor Frank. No wonder he felt bitter. No wonder he’d whiffed the curve.
I said, “It must have been hard on the guys who came to try out to have Boom-Boom in the spotlight there. Do you know if any of them actually got picked up by the franchise?”
Drechen bent over a group photo. All the men were in the uniforms of the amateur teams they played for. I could see the “Ba” from Bagby on the front of Frank’s warm-up jacket. Frank’s head was up, shoulders back, but his expression was fierce—a man holding back tears. The picture must have been taken after the guys had their chance.
Drechen said, “This guy back here”—he tapped the face of a man in the second row—“he played a season for us in Nashville, but he couldn’t adjust to the pros. We sent him to a development squad the next year, but he quit before the season was over. The rest of them, sadly, no. Open tryouts are like that. Every now and then you find that diamond in the rough, but we chiefly hold them because it’s good community relations. Fans give their heart and soul to this franchise and we want it to be a welcoming place for them.”
“Ever get any women at your open tryouts?” I asked.
“Every now and then,” Drechen said. “You want a shot?”
“If my cousin couldn’t hit major league pitching when he was at his peak, no way do I have a fantasy about doing it myself. Although a chance to stand on that turf—let me know the next time you’re holding them.”
Drechen laughed, said he understood I was writing a biography of Boom-Boom; they’d be glad to get me permission to use the pictures.
“The one of Boom-Boom with Mitch Williams, I’d like a copy of that for myself if it’s possible. The rest, I’ll let you know when I get that far.”
I left, offering a shower of thanks, before Drechen or Natalie could ask me for the name of a publisher or a publication date. On my way out, I stopped to study the pictures along the walls. Great moments in Cubs history covered everything from the time they brought elephants onto the field to Wrigley’s “League of Their Own” team in the 1940s.
I slowly followed the ramp back down to the ground, sidling past a forklift hoisting a crew up to do something with an overhead pipe, almost getting run over by a motorized cart hauling beer kegs. When I got outside, it was a relief to be in the open air, away from the dank pipes and the smell of beer.
I was at the corner of Clark and Addison when I heard my name called; it was Natalie Clements from the press office, breathless from running down the stairs.
She held out a folder to me. “I was hoping I’d catch you—I made a print of your cousin for you. And Will wanted to give you a pass to next week’s game against New York.”
She darted back inside on my thanks, running in high heels without tripping, which ought to be an Olympic event. I walked along, bent over my cousin’s face, and ran into someone.
“Sorry!” I looked up, smiling my apologies.
The man I’d bumped scowled and growled at me in a thick Slavic accent. “Watch where you put your feet.”
It wasn’t his hard-lined, cold-eyed face that wiped the smile from my mouth, but his companion: a short wide man who bore an amazing resemblance to Danny DeVito.
“Uncle Jerry,” I exclaimed.
“Who told you my name?” Uncle Jerry glanced involuntarily at the hard-faced man.
“No one. That’s what the woman you were with called you when I saw you in the church.”
“I wasn’t in church.” He looked again at the other man, whose eyes seemed even colder.
I don’t like to see people in fear, even rude angry men. “I must be confusing you with someone else,” I agreed.
“What church Jerry was in?” the hard-faced man asked. His syntax was Slavic but his accent was gravel in any language.
“I said I mistook him for someone else,” I said. “Let’s all just get on with our day, okay?�
�
“What woman he was talking to?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know you, I don’t know him, I don’t need this interrogation for the simple misdemeanor of not looking where I was going.”
“You know his name is Jerry. Where are you meeting him?”
“Tell you what,” I suggested. “You give me your name and tell me why you want to know, and I’ll answer the question.”
“When I ask question, I expect answer, no smart broads making funny. Got that?”
He bent over me, breathing garlic down my shirt. Beads of sweat stood out on Uncle Jerry’s forehead and my own throat felt tight, as if I were being strangled. I started to cross Clark, but the man grabbed my shoulder in a steel grip. I kicked hard against his exposed shin and twisted away, running into Clark Street.
Cars honked and swerved around me. Mr. Gravel-voice was trying to get at me but the street was lively with cabs; one stopped when I pounded on the door.
“Drive around the ballpark,” I said. “I want to see which way those two creeps are going.”
“He going to shoot me?” the cabbie asked, watching Gravel stick a hand inside his jacket.
“He’s going to realize he’s in the middle of a busy street with a thousand cops around him.”
The cabbie accelerated and turned left across the northbound traffic. As we turned, I saw a cop blowing a furious whistle at Gravel, forcing him back to the sidewalk. Hands on his hips, Gravel swiveled to keep an eye on the cab I was in.
I lost sight of him when we turned up Sheffield. The cabbie made the next left onto Waveland. I stopped him at the corner, handed him a ten for the three-dollar fare, stopped a cab from a different company and got him to drive me back down to the corner I’d just left. We were in time to see Gravel and Uncle Jerry climb into the Bagby truck. I took pictures as best I could from the moving taxi, but photos couldn’t begin to convey the menace in Gravel’s face or the fear in Uncle Jerry’s.
EJECTED
Joel was actually at his desk when I got to Ira’s office, typing on an old-model Dell. One thing about habitual heavy drinkers, they can stay upright and even function when the rest of us would be comatose. Ira wasn’t there, but Eunice was talking with an African-American woman around her own age. They were going through a thick stack of documents, checking them against an old calendar.
Eunice had buzzed me in, but her face was stiff with disapproval. Joel wasn’t ecstatic at seeing me, either.
“Are you here to nag some more about Stella? I told you yesterday that I know I fucked up her defense. There’s nothing else to say.”
He spoke loudly, belligerently, and Eunice froze in the middle of her own conversation.
“Joel, please take Ms. Warshawski into the office. Mrs. Eldridge’s affairs are complicated and we need quiet to focus on them.”
Joel muttered under his breath that he wasn’t a baby, he was tired of being bossed around, but he got to his feet and clumped his way to a small room at the back, not bothering to see if I was following.
“Well?” He stood just inside the door, arms folded across his chest, the edges of his full cheeks stained red.
“I talked to Melba Minsky yesterday and she sent me to Rafael Zukos.”
The red spread across his face. “Melba Minsky, she always was a goddam buttinsky. Minsky Buttinsky. She tell you the boy wonder’s amazing success stories, or did she fill your head with smutty gossip?”
“Neither.” Joel was blocking the visitor’s chair. I went around and sat behind the desk, facing him as his father must often have done. “All she said was that you and Rafe were in the same bar mitzvah class. Rafe told me—other things.”
Joel looked behind him at his mother, who couldn’t help turning around to send him an anguished glance. He closed the door and plopped heavily onto the visitor’s chair.
“Did you come here to threaten to tell Eunice and Ira those things?”
I shook my head. “Mr. Previn, your private business is no concern of mine, your parents or any other soul on the planet. Not unless your private business involved concealing evidence in Stella’s murder trial.”
A glaze of sweat covered his face, as if glass had been poured over it. The vodka, the fear, they were hammering his heart; he would be dead before Ira if he didn’t change soon.
When he didn’t speak, I said, “This diary of Annie Guzzo’s—when did you first learn about it?”
“On the news two nights ago.” His voice was thick—another sign of fear, or of lying? On the TV shows, the FBI or the con artist always can tell by body language, or the way the eyes are moving, when someone is lying, but it actually isn’t that simple.
“Stella didn’t bring it up when you were prepping her for her trial?”
“What are you getting at?”
“This diary. Is it real?”
“How should I know?” he said sullenly. “You think she’s smart enough to invent a diary? She never seemed that bright to me, the way she carried on in court no matter how many times I or Mr. Mandel or the judge told her it made her look out of control.”
“She’s angry and volatile, but not stupid. You were in love with Annie Guzzo.”
“That’s a goddam lie! Who told you that? Minsky Buttinsky?”
“I learned it from you. From the way you talked about her yesterday. What no one can understand is why you agreed to defend her killer. I know you were pushed into it by Sol Mandel, but he must have had quite a substantial club to hold over your head. Rafe told me he knew you were afraid, but he didn’t know of what—he assumed you were afraid someone was going to reveal that you and he had a few boyhood liaisons. But it wasn’t that, was it?”
He glared at me, the same look he gave his mother: angry, impotent.
“You’d seen the diary, and Annie had made fun of you. You were terrified that Stella would—”
“That’s not true! I never saw a diary, Annie never made fun of me, she knew I admired her, she knew I wasn’t out to hurt her. Not like some of the others.”
“Who in the office was hurting her?” I asked. “Mr. Mandel?”
“Oh, Mandel!” Joel made a dismissive gesture. “She knew he was an old goat wanting to act like he was still a young stud, she let him kiss her, he gave her money to help with her college fund, it was a game to her.”
“She blackmail him?”
“Annie wasn’t a criminal,” Joel cried. “Don’t make it sound dirty when it wasn’t.”
“Of course she wasn’t a criminal. She was a young woman with a big dream and no resources. She was getting help where she could find it. How much money did he give her?”
“I don’t know. I saw him one night when I was working late, she was in his office and I saw him kissing her, and then I went to the john and he was slipping something into the photocopier. I looked on my way back—it was a hundred dollars, and then Annie came out to copy something a minute later, and she stuffed the money into her purse. I never said anything to her, but I could see it was like a game to her.”
That meant that if anyone had been afraid of a possible diary becoming public knowledge, it should have been Mandel, not Joel. But Joel had been afraid during the trial, at least according to Rafe.
I thought back to yesterday’s conversation. “Spike Hurlihey? Is he the person you were afraid of during the trial? What did he know about you that you wanted kept a secret?”
“Nothing,” Joel said thickly. “Nothing, because there was nothing to know.”
“Were you afraid he was going to talk about you and Rafe?”
“Spike didn’t know about me and Rafe because we were at University High and he was down at Saint Eloy’s. I represented Stella because Mandel and Mr. McClelland told me to.”
“Didn’t that make you wonder?”
Joel’s sullen expression deepened. “I f
igured Mandel felt ashamed of giving Annie money. I thought he was afraid Stella would start asking questions, or bring up Annie’s—Annie’s behavior. Stella cared more about sex than anything, she couldn’t stop being angry about the way Annie attracted men. I couldn’t get her to shut up about it, it was why she was so hard to defend.”
“Everything you’re saying explains why Mandel might have been nervous during Stella’s trial. Not why you were, or why you agreed to take the case.”
“Everything you’re saying explains why you and Melba Minsky hit it off. You don’t have any grounds for asking me questions and I do not have to answer them.”
The words were brave but the tone was querulous, not confident. He looked around involuntarily, not at his mother but as if he feared an eavesdropper.
“Of course you don’t. But whatever happened to you at the Mandel & McClelland offices has been haunting you for a long time. If you told me about it, it’s possible that I could make it go away. Assuming you aren’t hiding a crime.”
His cheeks turned red again and he stumbled to his feet. “Whatever you think you’re implying, you are way out of line. Get out. Get away from Ira’s desk and go mind your own fucking business.”
I got away from Ira’s desk. Eunice was wrapping up her appointment with Mrs. Eldridge as I passed back through the main room. She gestured at me to wait. She helped the client into her coat, escorted her to the door, assured her that they were always happy to help, she knew Mrs. Eldridge was carrying a load too heavy for one woman and that’s what she and Ira were there for, to share the load.
She wasn’t nearly as gracious when she came back to me. “I don’t approve of Joel’s language, but I do share his sentiment. Annie Guzzo died a long time ago. So did your cousin. Let them all rest in peace, let Stella Guzzo alone. She can’t do you any harm. There’s no reason for you to keep coming around here.”
“You’re probably right,” I agreed. “But do you know what Joel was so afraid of that he agreed to represent Stella?”
“Leave now, Ms. Warshawski.”
Brush Back (V.I. Warshawski Novels Book 17) Page 10