A cold anger began to build in me. I could rewrite this story. Maybe not tonight, but soon. I had learned one of their secrets and I would uncover others.
I’d lost track of the time and of my cold. It was midnight when Bernie bounced into my apartment, Mitch at her heels, announcing that the Blackhawks had lost the first game of the Stanley Cup playoffs in triple overtime.
“The Canadiens won their first game, so it’s not so bad. Papa will be here the day after tomorrow, but you have to tell him I’m not going back to Canada, not until we’ve cleared Uncle Boom-Boom’s name, and anyway, I have summer camp at Northwestern, so what’s the point? I’ll just be coming back in July.”
“Bernie, if it were up to your mother and me, I’d be packing you in a box to ship to Quebec tonight. I’ll be happier seeing your father walk off that plane than I would be looking at Stanley Cup celebrations in Grant Park. And I want you back down with Mr. Contreras tonight. It’s safer than it is up here.”
Her lips twitched—she wanted to argue back but realized in time she was out on an unsupported limb. She gave a rueful smile, an endearing Gallic shrug. We rounded up the stuffed animals she slept with, I found her cell phone charger under the sofa, retrieved her retainer from its burial ground in the sofa cushions, and loaded everything into a backpack with a change of clothes for the morning.
I got dressed myself to escort her back down the stairs to Mr. Contreras’s place. The old man was standing in the doorway, keeping a watch over the street door.
“We thought you’d be back down for dinner, doll, but then I thought maybe you’d gone to sleep. You should, with that cold and everything, but we have a plate of spaghetti for you if you’re hungry.”
“Sorry.” I kissed his cheek. “I lay too long in the bath, but I should have called.”
I wrapped up in one of his old coats to take the dogs out back for a last time. Jake was coming in the front door when I got back. I walked upstairs with him, but repeated what I’d said to Bernie.
“I don’t want to huddle alone in my place, but these people scare me. I don’t want anyone I love caught in their crossfire.”
He looked at me quizzically. “You think if they firebomb your apartment the rest of the building will escape unscathed? I’m more afraid of catching your cold than I am of Uzbeki hit men or Insane Dragons.”
“That’s because you never saw the hitman.”
“I never saw a germ, either.” He put his free arm around me for a moment before going into his own place to park the bass. “But I know what they can do to my sense of hearing.”
When I went back inside my own place, I saw a coaster from Weeghman’s Whales on the floor. I frowned over it—it’s a Wrigleyville bar that I never go to. It must have fallen out of the sofa when we were collecting Bernie’s animals, but what had Bernie been doing there? Another problem for another day. I went into my closet safe to take out my gun storage box.
Jake came in behind me, unfortunately: he hates guns, he hates to know I even own one. The sight of the weapon made him back away from me.
“Call me when you’ve put that thing away, V.I. I can overcome my terror of the rhinovirus, but a gun is a total antiaphrodisiac.”
CHANGEUP
When I finally woke up, a little after nine, my clogged sinuses were putting painful pressure on my sore eye—not to mention my broken nose. I wanted to take enough sleeping pills to put me under until at least my cold had passed, if not until every member of the Guzzo family died, but I forced myself to my feet.
My face in the bathroom mirror would have done Picasso proud: the left side held a creative mix of yellows, purples and greens. Just as well the Smith & Wesson had driven Jake away last night: Romeo would have vanished without a single metaphor if Juliet had appeared on her balcony looking like this.
While my espresso machine heated up, I huddled over a ginger steam pot. After fifteen minutes of that, and a few shots of caffeine, I didn’t look any more beautiful, but my left eye was working; I would make it through the day.
I went down to the ground floor where Mr. Contreras was feeding Bernie his staple comfort breakfast of French toast. She agreed to a walk over to the lake with me and the dogs. She chatted about Northwestern’s hockey camp, wondering if it had been a mistake to commit to their program without seeing Syracuse and Ithaca.
My gun was in my tuck holster inside my jeans waistband. As we walked along Belmont, I wondered how much of the rest of the city was armed. I didn’t blame Jake for hating guns; they make you twitchy, make you see the world around you as dangerous, as if you wanted an excuse to pull your weapon and fire.
Every half block or so, I’d pull Bernie and the dogs into an alley or doorway to see whether the same people were around us, and if they, too, were halting. Bernie made a few scornful remarks about imaginary Uzbeks, but when we returned home, she assured me she would spend the day pulling her things together for her return to Canada.
“Is this one of your things?” I held out the coaster from Weeghman’s Whales.
“Oh!” She turned red and stuffed it into her backpack. “I went there with friends the other night. I am eighteen, you know, or at least, I will be in five weeks!”
“Darling, the legal drinking age may be eighteen in Quebec, but here in Illinois it’s twenty-one. Don’t tempt the fates again, okay?”
She accepted the reprimand without argument, to my surprise, just gave me a puckish smile and announced she was going to use my bathroom before she went back to Mr. Contreras. “Your tub is so big, I love lying in it.”
I hoped she couldn’t get in trouble in a midday bath, because I needed to go to my office. Although it was Saturday, I was too far behind in my work to stay home with her.
I resolutely put the Guzzo-Bagby-Scanlon world out of my mind while I caught up on client business. Murray called as I was crossing Milwaukee for a coffee. He was exuberant, taking the e-mail I’d sent him yesterday about Hurlihey’s involvement in Virejas Tower as a sign that we were once again best friends forever.
“What do you have on Spike that you’re keeping to yourself, Warshawski? You know this environmental exception only looks serious if you live in Vermont or Oregon.”
“Nothing, Murray, just fishing in very murky waters.”
“Come on, Warshawski, something’s going on: I read the police reports, and I know you tangled with Insane Dragons the other night. I know Spike comes from the same slagheap you do, so if you’ve been digging up skeletons in the land of your youth, tell me now, while I still feel I owe you one. If you sit on the story too long, I’m going to be peevish and make you look bad on air.”
“Spike didn’t come from my slagheap—he was across the Calumet on the East Side, back when that was the tony part of Steel City,” I objected.
I put him on hold while I ordered a cortado. My frustrations with Murray, for letting himself look ridiculous on cable TV, or for trying to pretend he wasn’t fifty by dating women half his age, were outweighed by our long years of working together.
He was still on the line when I came back. “There’s no novel, Murray, at least not yet, but there are a whole lot of unconnected chapters.”
I gave him a thumbnail. The number of names and relationships were so complicated Murray decided he needed to see my reports firsthand. As a further sign of renewed friendship, we agreed to meet at the Golden Glow around seven.
Thinking about the control Spike had over the legislature made my head ache again. In my own lifetime, four Illinois governors have gone to prison for fraud. As has the mayor of Cicero, numerous Cook County judges, Chicago aldermen, and state and federal representatives. What a place. Maybe I should move to Vermont or Oregon, where people are still shocked by violations of the public trust, and are willing to take action to stop them. Moving would also get me far away from the Cubs. I couldn’t see a downside.
Back in m
y office, I had an alert on my computer, reminding me that I owed one of my regular clients a report on an internal auditor suspected of skimming. Senior staff were meeting on Saturday so they could get together without alerting the suspected auditor. The company had let me insert keystroke software into the suspected skimmer’s computer, which showed him sending a penny on every hundred dollars to an account in Liechtenstein. I took a heavy-duty decongestant and was pulling together the final report—with ten minutes to get it to the client—when Stella Guzzo phoned.
I stared at the caller ID in disbelief, but let the call go to voice mail while I did a final proofread and e-mailed the report to the client. We were handling the meeting via videoconferencing, so I got myself hooked up to the meeting room before playing Stella’s message.
“You need to come to South Chicago this afternoon to see me.” The recording accentuated the harshness in her deep voice.
My impulse was to phone her back, but I thought of all the changes she and Frank—and Betty—had been putting me through. She could summon me, and then have me arrested for violating the restraining order. I copied the message and e-mailed it to my lawyer’s office.
Is there some way to find out what she wants? Is she vacating the r.o.? Going into a meeting; will call back in an hour.
I sat through the meeting in profile, good eye to the camera, answering questions more or less on autopilot, trying to imagine what Stella wanted. When I’d finally fielded the last of the financial VP’s questions—he kept asking the same thing, hoping for a different answer—I checked my messages.
Freeman Carter had called to say that the restraining order was still in place. “Her lawyer is doing a very annoying dance. The short answer is don’t go near the Guzzo family until I tell you I’ve got a document signed by a judge lifting the order. Call or e-mail me to confirm that you will not go down there.”
The urge to drive to Stella’s house, to burst in on her and turn her house inside out, was strong, but even more than dismembering Stella, I wanted to sleep. I called Freeman to confirm that I was following his advice. Between the decongestant, the injuries and the pain meds, I could barely keep my eyes open. I staggered to the cot in my back room and was asleep almost before I was horizontal.
The phone dragged me awake an hour later. It was Natalie Clements, the young woman in the Cubs media relations department.
I felt drugged, but Natalie was bright and peppy and delivered a breathless monologue. “Your name came up last night when Mr. Drechen and I went to visit his old boss. Mr. Villard is the gentleman who had the pictures we showed you of your cousin. The day after our press release, his house was broken into and somebody stole a lot of his photographs. They took Billy Williams’s first home run ball, oh, a lot of treasures. It’s horrible—they’re his memories!
“Anyway, he’s cleaning out his house, or his daughter is—he has to move, which is really sad, but he has diabetes, same as Ron Santo, and it’s getting hard for him to walk or climb stairs. He asked if you were still interested in photos of the day your cousin came to Wrigley Field. I said I didn’t know how far along you were with your book, but I’d ask you.”
“Not very far,” I admitted.
My voice came out as a thick croak. I carried the phone with me to the bathroom and tried to gargle in a discreet and soundless way while Natalie went on.
“Well, his daughter came on a box of photos up in the attic, and some of them are from the day your cousin came to the open tryouts. Mr. Villard would love to show them to you.”
I told her I was a little under the weather but would be glad to visit Mr. Villard early next week.
“I’m sorry if you’re not feeling well, but it would be best if you could come today. His daughter is packing up his baseball collection, what the thieves didn’t steal—she’s going to auction it off to give to Cubs Care. He’s afraid if you wait, she’ll get rid of all those photos.”
That threat gave me enough of an adrenaline boost to say I’d be at Villard’s place within the hour. I held an ice cube over my eyes for a few minutes to make my sinuses retreat, washed my face, decided makeup would only make my green-and-purple eye more lurid, and headed north, to the Evanston address Natalie had given me.
Pierre Fouchard called while I was driving. “Bernadine called me. She seems well, but what do you think?”
“She’s very resilient but she’s showing some delayed shock,” I said. “Even though she’s saying she doesn’t want to go home, she’ll probably feel a lot better when she’s back in Quebec.”
“Oui, yes, I mean. But this is the story, Vic: the Canadiens, they are playing the Bruins tomorrow night in Boston. The Canadiens want me to go to the game. I have scouted many of these Bruins, you see, and the management, they think my opinion can help the team. Arlette says no, but—Bernadine will be all right for two more nights, do you think?”
My heart sank: until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I was counting on unshouldering my caretaking burden. “I hope so. I hope so, but maybe I’ll hire some extra protection, just to be on the safe side.”
“Bien. I will be in Chicago for sure by Monday afternoon.”
I pulled over to a side street when Pierre hung up. Between the gang attack, Stella’s message and the threat about my dad, I was unusually nervous about how to look after Bernie. I called Mr. Contreras to double-check on her. To my dismay, she’d gone off to meet with the girls from the peewee league she was coaching.
I bit back a sharp remonstrance: the old man was easily wounded, and I knew how hard Bernie was to keep in check. I hung up and called her cell. She was well, she was impatient with me, yes, her dad had phoned her, she was happy to stay in Chicago as long as possible.
“I’m not the scaredy-cat,” she said.
“Yep, that’s me, meow, meow. Don’t leave the rink alone, okay? Seriously, Bernie, word of honor or I’m driving straight there to collect you.”
“Oh, very well. Word of honor.” She cut the connection.
I didn’t have the time or energy to bird-dog her. I needed backup. The Streeter brothers, whom I’d called on to help get access to Stella’s bank account, do body-guarding, furniture hauling, anything that takes a lot of muscle. They are quiet, they are smart, and fortunately Tim, whom I most often work with, was free. He’d go to the rink where Bernie was working, he’d make sure she got back safely to Mr. Contreras’s apartment. He’d keep an eye on the street until midnight; his brother Tom would cover the midnight to eight A.M. shift.
Mr. Contreras was huffy when I phoned with the details—maybe he was ninety-something, but he didn’t need some kid showing him how to look after Bernie. Bernie herself was even huffier: I was une lâche, beu platte, it was surprising I didn’t have spiders weaving webs in my hair I was so old.
“Yep, my precious one, and those spiders are attached to you until your dad gets here, so you’ll have to put up with the sticky webs for the duration.”
I texted Tim’s picture to her, texted hers to Tim. He’d let me know when he’d connected with her. I looked up beu platte and lâche in my online dictionary. I was not only an antique fuddy-duddy, but a coward. As I turned back onto Sheridan Road, I realized I was hurt by the accusation. I was the risk-taker, the person who skated close to the edge—how could she possibly think—until I had to laugh at my own absurdity. The next time Lotty got on my case, I’d put her in touch with Bernie Fouchard.
HIGH SPIRITS
When I saw Villard’s house—mansion—on a cul-de-sac overlooking Lake Michigan, I realized why a man having trouble walking needed to move. An old stone building with graceful lines, on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, it was three stories tall, with a high staircase to the front door. Even with the ramp he’d installed over the marble steps, just getting into the house would be a challenge.
Villard’s daughter, a brisk woman of sixty or so, let me into the house. “I ho
pe you’re going to take some of Daddy’s memorabilia with you—he’s an impossible packrat—he still has all of Mother’s clothes in their bedroom closet and she’s been gone over twenty years now! When he had the break-in, he finally realized how vulnerable he is out here. I don’t even know how the thieves had the patience to dig through his baseball memorabilia to steal anything of value!”
She flung these remarks over her shoulder as she led me to a sitting room on the Lake Michigan side of the building. Villard was in an easy chair facing the lake, but he struggled to his feet when he heard his daughter and limped over to greet me. Although he had bedroom slippers on his swollen feet, he was dressed as he must have been all the years he went to work, in trousers, a white shirt and a sports jacket with a large Cubs logo pin in the lapel.
He politely didn’t look at my face while shaking my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Warshawski. Like everyone else in this city, I was a big fan of your cousin’s.”
His daughter turned the chair around to face me and bundled him back into it. “Daddy, I’ll get Adelaide to bring you and your guest something to drink, but I have to get back to the papers in your den. I’ve left all the photographs you were interested in on the table here, and Adelaide will find me if you need anything else.”
“It’s a pity my daughter didn’t want to go into baseball,” Villard said. “She’s such a brilliant organizer, she’d have whipped the Cubs into a World Series or two by now.”
His daughter kissed his cheek. “Daddy, it’s enough I take flak for wearing my Cubs gear in Diamondback country. Anyway, someone has to stay on top of getting you packed and moved.” She looked at me. “I live in Tucson and I can’t stay away too long; I’m the associate dean of the nursing school down there. My sister’s flying in from Seattle next week to finish up.”
She was off, her jeans making a rustling sound that conjured an old-fashioned starched white uniform. A few minutes later another woman came in—Adelaide, who was Mr. Villard’s attendant, not, as I’d supposed, another daughter. She was as unhurried in her movements as the daughter had been brisk, but she managed to make Mr. Villard comfortable without taking anything from his dignity.
Brush Back (V.I. Warshawski Novels Book 17) Page 26