Brush Back (V.I. Warshawski Novels Book 17)

by Sara Paretsky

  “Were they dating?”

  “I don’t know! Why does it matter? Maybe she wheedled him into taking her to the park and then charmed him into going to bed. Why do you care?”

  “I’m trying to find out what your real reason for coming to see me was. What did you or Stella hope to gain by involving me in your problems—was this some revenge Stella fantasized about all those years in prison—bring the only living member of the Warshawski family back down here so she could humiliate me in public?”

  Frank turned on the engine but didn’t put the truck into gear. “Believe me or not, my mother didn’t know I was coming to see you. She had a shit-fit when you showed up the next day. I hadn’t had time to tell her, and afterwards, the fury she was in! It took me back to all those times—she tried to slug me one last time, but she wasn’t strong enough to, anymore.”

  “But what did you think I could do? Why involve me at all?”

  Frank pounded the steering wheel with his right fist. “The exoneration claim. Scanlon, he’s taking an interest in Frankie’s future. He told me, baseball isn’t like the old days, they look at the family, not just the kid, and if Ma involved the press in this exoneration claim, then Annie’s murder would be on everyone’s minds, and it could hurt Frankie’s chances. I was hoping you could stop Ma, but it’s like so much in my so-called life, nothing works out the way I want it. I call you, Ma goes postal, Scanlon’s annoyed because the press is all over us.”

  He covered his face, his voice dropping so low I had to lean over the steering wheel to hear him above the engine. “I—if all this derails Frankie—I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  The driver behind us leaned on her horn. Frank saw he’d done the unpardonable—left a big gap in front of him. He drove up to the mike and ordered a double cheeseburger with extra-large fries and a super-sized shake.

  “Scanlon told you to stop your mother?” I asked.

  “Not like that. He said no one cared about a crime that old anymore, unless she made them care, don’t you see? He came up to me at Saint Eloy’s when I was watching Frankie and said he’d heard through the grapevine what Ma was doing. He was going to get one of his lawyer pals to look after her interests so she wouldn’t feel like we were giving her the brush-off, but if I could talk her into letting it lie it would be better for Frankie. And then, everything got out of control. Like it always does in my life.”

  He pulled over to the curb with his order and started eating moodily, shoving a great handful of fries into his mouth.

  “What did Scanlon say after all the press brouhaha began?”

  “I was sweating bullets. I talked to Vince and asked him what I should do, but he spoke to Scanlon for me, and he told me Scanlon saw I wasn’t to blame; he still is willing to sponsor Frankie.”

  I turned sideways in the seat to look at him squarely. “Frank: someone sicced a trio of Insane Dragons on me when I left Scanlon’s office the other night. Do you know anything about that?”

  “What the fuck are you trying to say?”

  “Bagby or Scanlon or Thelma Kalvin, they were all there when I went up to visit his youth program, and so was Father Cardenal. Did any of them talk to you, tell you that I was bringing too much attention to your family?”

  “Crap, Tori.” He set his box of food on top of the dashboard so violently the fries jumped out of the box onto the gearshift. “You cannot go around accusing people of stuff like that. There are so many gangbangers in South Chicago I bet every person you pass on the street has at least one in their family. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Don’t go accusing Scanlon of this: everyone knows your old man couldn’t get along with him, but he’s the person who—”

  “I know,” I cut him off. “Believe me, I hear that script every time I cross the border.”

  He gaped at me.

  “Only making a feeble joke. So many people have told me I don’t know anything about the South Side that it’s starting to seem like you guys think you live in a different country than the rest of the city.”

  “We do,” Frank said. “We live in the land of the dead.”

  That shut me up for a moment: it was poignant, but also an unexpected image to hear on his lips. I couldn’t let his previous comment rest, though.

  “What do you mean, everyone knew Tony couldn’t get along with Scanlon? When I saw Scanlon last week, he passed a comment about my dad—what does the whole neighborhood know that I don’t? Did Rory get Tony shipped off to Englewood?”

  “You are like a goddam squirrel trying to get into a birdfeeder, Warshawski. I don’t know who did what to whom, but everyone knows that Tony wouldn’t ride to Boom-Boom’s first game in Scanlon’s buses. Everyone talked about it, back at the time, I mean. Don’t ask me what that was about because I fucking do not know.”

  “If Tony didn’t trust Rory Scanlon, then Scanlon was up to something. What was it?”

  “Why can’t you grow up? Everyone else learns their parents are human, that they make mistakes. Your father wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t a moral bloodhound, either, who could smell good and evil in people. He was wrong about Scanlon.”

  My left eye was starting to throb, fatigue and anger pushing too much blood to my face. I massaged the bruise with my fingertips. What would Scanlon have been up to that Tony didn’t trust? I kept coming back to the sex that swam around this history, Annie with Sol Mandel, the old priest from St. Eloy’s making Frank pull his pants down, no one wanting to rock Scanlon’s boat for fear he’d cut them loose.

  I let the atmosphere in the cab calm down for a minute, then went back to the day of the Wrigley Field tryouts.

  “Do you remember anything Annie said that day? Anything that might give me a hint about what she was carrying with her? At first I wondered if it was something to do with your baseball career, press clippings or something.”

  He curled his lip. “Annie never gave a rat’s ass about my baseball career. So-called. Your ma, music, her college life, that’s all she thought about. Sometimes you or your dad. Anyway, that day she was higher than ten kites—I couldn’t bear to be around her! She had no sympathy for the fact that I’d blown my shot at the big time. No interest. No wonder I blocked it out of my head that she was there.

  “I’m doing my best not to burst into tears in front of Warshawski—Boom-Boom, I mean—and Annie keeps saying, ‘No one can touch me now, no one can touch me now.’ It’s a horrible thing to say, knowing what Ma did to her, but I came close to whacking her myself. Only good thing out of it is that I remember that afternoon every time I come close to hitting one of my own kids. Remember where that led with Annie and Ma. Remind myself to act more like my dad, keep it calm.”

  “And Boom-Boom? How did he react, to you or your sister?”

  “I don’t know! I couldn’t bear to be near him! I didn’t want his fucking sympathy—Chicago’s golden boy, can’t you understand that? He wanted to drive me home, go out for a beer in that damned ’Vette he was hotdogging in at the time. I couldn’t fucking bear it.

  “Bagby’s had the car waiting to take all us losers home, but I didn’t want to be with them, either. I snuck off to the L and got myself back to the South Side. Back to the slime where I belonged.”

  “Sounds like a day in hell, Frank. Sorry to make you revisit it . . . On a completely different subject, I’d like to play a recording for you. Tell me if you know either of these voices.”

  While he ate his way through three thousand calories, I took out my cell phone and downloaded the recording from the Cloud.

  “God, who is that scuzzball?” Frank said at the end. “Who’s he trying to threaten?”

  “I don’t know. I hoped you would recognize one of the voices.”

  “Wish I could help you, Tori, because then maybe you’d let go of that goddam bill your lawyer put through my mailbox.”

  I was feeling sorry for Fr
ank, but not sorry enough to say I’d forgive the bill. I jumped down from the cab and walked back to the Subaru.

  STICKBALL

  I drove north in a melancholy mood. Nothing in my so-called life, Frank had said. Nothing worked out the way he wanted it to.

  That might be true, but how much else of what he said could I believe? His forgetting that Annie had been at the ballpark for the open tryouts, that sounded credible. He’d needed support and sympathy, but he didn’t want them from Boom-Boom, and his sister was so wrapped up in her own affairs that she didn’t have room for her brother.

  Growing up, like so many only children I’d fantasized about siblings, someone to confide in, play with. Boom-Boom had been a kind of surrogate brother, but we saw each other only once or twice a week. It seemed painful that Frank and Annie had squandered their relationship in the short time they’d had together, but perhaps that had been the inevitable outcome of growing up with a mother as turbulent as Stella.

  While I waited at the long light at Damen and Milwaukee, I dictated a summary of the conversation for my files. As an afterthought, I sent a copy to Freeman.

  Sorry to violate the r-o, but I had to ask him about the pix.

  You did not have to ask him about the pix, Freeman typed back sharply. You don’t need to know about the damned pictures. Unless you want to spend 30 days in County, you will respect the order.

  I made a face: he was right, but I was tired of having to admit everyone around me was right.

  The grease from Frank’s lunch had gotten in my hair and skin; I could wash off under Tessa’s shower and start on a project for Darraugh Graham. Like Frank, sometimes nothing in my life worked as planned: when I reached my office, Viola Mesaline appeared in the doorway of Tessa’s studio.

  “What happened to you?” she wailed. “As soon as I heard that recording, I told my supervisor I was sick and ran over to see you, but you’d disappeared. I went to your apartment and they didn’t know where you were, so I came back here.”

  I was losing my grip: I’d forgotten that I’d been on the phone to her about her brother’s recording. “You hung up on me. If you’d let me know you were coming, I’d have waited for you.”

  “They’re going to fire me, I can’t keep running away from work pretending to be sick. Why did you call me and then disappear?” She was going to blame me for her troubles no matter what.

  Tessa appeared in the doorway behind Viola and beckoned to me, leading me to the cubbyhole where she handled the business end of her work. “She’s scared of her own shadow. I couldn’t leave her out on the street, but I didn’t know what to do with her—you weren’t answering your phone.”

  I’d turned off the ringer when I was talking to Frank and had forgotten to turn it back on; I looked down at the screen and saw I’d missed nine calls, most from clients. One from Vince Bagby. Great way to run a detective agency.

  “And what did you do to your hair?” Tessa wrinkled her nose. “Can’t say I like your new shampoo.”

  “It’s called Grasso de Sud-Chicago and only Yuppie snobs are put off by it,” I said with dignity. “I was planning to wash it, but I guess I’d better deal with this poor little kitten. I sprang a thunderbolt on her this morning.”

  I ushered Viola into my own office, moving the bouquet Vince Bagby had sent me so I could watch her face. She looked genuinely distressed as she rehashed her fears. I made her sit still, take some deep breaths, drink a glass of water.

  “Viola, who was that on the recording? Your brother?”

  “No, no, it was Uncle Jerry, it must have been what he wanted Sebastian to do, but—”

  “Which one was Uncle Jerry?”

  “The man who was speaking first.”

  I played the file again for her. It was Uncle Jerry who said he wanted a chance to bid, that everyone has to pay to play. Viola had no idea who the second speaker was.

  “And what does this have to do with Sebastian?” she sobbed.

  “He recorded the conversation, then, the day he disappeared, he went in early to work and loaded it onto a computer there. Think, Viola: Where could this have been taking place?”

  “I don’t know, how can I possibly know? How can you be sure Sebastian was involved?”

  I repeated what I’d just said, about his loading the file onto his work computer. “Does your brother have some kind of secret recorder?”

  “I don’t know, why would he? He isn’t—he doesn’t listen in on people if that’s what you’re trying to say. You’re making him sound like some kind of pervert, but he’s a sweet boy who doesn’t want to hurt people.”

  I changed the subject. “Have you heard from anyone about your loan since Sebastian disappeared?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like anything. Like, you still owe Sleep-EZ money, or threats about your loan, or promises to forgive it.”

  She shook her head, the fear lines around her eyes and mouth deepening: I’d handed her another thing to worry about.

  “Do you know if the company Sebastian worked for was trying to get access to a big project, something where they thought they hadn’t been given a chance to bid?” I asked.

  “I told you before, Sebastian wouldn’t say anything about what Uncle Jerry wanted him to do. I don’t know, I don’t know!”

  I looked at the wall clock; time was running short and my brain wasn’t functioning. “What else did your brother work on before the Virejas project?”

  Viola was having a hard time focusing as well, but she made a valiant effort. Sebastian had helped with part of the city’s sewer restoration, he’d done work on a couple of playgrounds for the park district.

  “Any of this in South Chicago?” I wondered if he’d been on Scanlon’s turf, but Viola couldn’t remember.

  “I think he did something for a cement company. Would it be stress tests? Something like that. I only remember because Sebastian is afraid he may have to go work for them—he’s afraid he’ll get fired by Brentback, and the cement people kind of promised him a job if he needs one. He doesn’t want it, he says he’ll never get to do design work, just stick probes into batches of cement, and how boring is that? He did his degree, he loves engineering, he’s good at it.”

  This wasn’t the time to tell her that her brother was barred from the Virejas site. “Would this be Sturlese Cement?”

  “That’s right. How did you know?”

  “Your uncle had a connection to a guy named Boris Nabiyev, who’s involved with Sturlese Cement. Did your uncle ever mention Nabiyev?”

  “No. What does he have to do with Sebastian?”

  “I’m trying to figure out who Sebastian made the recording for,” I said with as much patience as I could summon. “In fact, the second time I saw your uncle—”

  I broke off, mid-sentence. The second and final time I’d seen Jerry Fugher had been outside Wrigley Field, where Boris Nabiyev was terrifying him.

  If you wanted to name a big project that the Illinois legislature had a say in, it was the rebuilding of Wrigley Field. There were endless proposals for state and city aid to make the five-hundred-million-dollar price tag less onerous for the owners—tax breaks, state-sponsored bonds, a special levy. If Sturlese wanted a piece of the Cubs action, and had been cut out of the bidding, they might have sent someone to try to threaten the team.

  But why send Uncle Jerry to try to shake down the Cubs? Why not let Nabiyev do it? He was the pro at threats and enforcement.

  For that matter, why would Spike care whether Sturlese got a contract or not? Unless he, or his pal Rory, was the mysterious angel who’d bailed out the cement maker.

  “In fact, what?” Viola wrung her hands. “What’s wrong, your face, you know something, you know what happened to my brother, don’t you?”

  “No, Viola, but I may finally have a starting place for my search. You’re going to ha
ve to leave now; I don’t have any more time today. Go to your doctor and get a medical form to take to your supervisor, and then try not to worry if you don’t hear from me for a day or two.”

  Her nervousness about being seen at my office returned, exacerbated by her realization that she’d run here without taking any precautions: the people her brother was involved with could have been following her.

  I didn’t argue with her, just forcibly led her out the back way and into a cab.

  I’d only talked to one man at the Cubs, Will Drechen in media relations. I didn’t think he was the other speaker, but I couldn’t be sure. I needed expert help.

  I took the time to go back into the warehouse to shower the French fry grease from my hair and skin. I had a clean T-shirt in the back; it would have to do. I didn’t want to stop at home for a change of clothes.

  I knew I should call ahead, but I had a superstition that doing so would bring me bad luck. When I got to the Villard mansion in Evanston, I breathed more easily: old Mr. Villard was still there, and Adelaide, the empathetic caregiver, answered the door, not the brisk, brusque daughter.

  Oh, yes, she remembered me; my visit had brought Mr. Villard a lot of pleasure; she’d see if he felt strong enough to see me. She left me in the foyer, which was stacked high now with packed boxes, some labeled for his new home, others for charities or to what I assumed were his daughters’ addresses in Seattle and Tucson. It felt sad, a full and happy life reduced to cartons.

  Before I descended too far into melancholy, Adelaide returned to take me to the room overlooking Lake Michigan where I’d seen Villard on Saturday. He was in his easy chair, the custom table that fitted into the arms holding a book and a glass.