In the middle of the media push, a cop came to my office, one of Bobby Mallory’s personal staff. The captain would like a word; could I ride with him to Thirty-fifth and Michigan.
Bobby had Conrad and a forensic tech with him. “I need to know about these documents, Vicki.”
Bobby was getting old; his jowly face had deeper lines around the mouth and eyes. At least he was no longer so red in the face—Eileen and his doctor had finally persuaded him to change his diet, take some blood pressure meds.
“I don’t know anything about them, other than what’s up on the Herald-Star website. They came to me in an anonymous envelope, and I don’t know if they’re real or fake. And they are in a vault right now until Stella Guzzo produces hers for comparison. Or you produce a subpoena.”
“The envelope?” Bobby held out a hand.
I took it from my briefcase: a plain manila 10x14, available at every office supply store in America. Postmarked three days ago, date-time stamped “Received” by me yesterday.
“What proof do you have that this is the envelope that held the so-called diary?” Bobby asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t open my mail expecting to have to prove I got it. When I saw what was in the envelope, I drove up to Cheviot Labs with it. They checked for fingerprints, and for DNA on the gummed label, but whoever sent it used tap water, not saliva, and apparently handled it with gloves.”
I held out the notarized report from Cheviot’s fingerprint specialist. Bobby grunted and handed it, with the envelope, to his forensic tech.
“A written receipt, please,” I said. “Or I can photograph your expropriation.”
I switched on my phone camera, but Bobby, with an exaggerated scowl, called to his secretary to bring me a receipt. I was supposed to feel guilty for making them do extra work while seizing my property.
Conrad and Bobby exchanged glances; Bobby nodded at Conrad.
“Vic, whether what you’ve put out is really Annie Guzzo’s diary or if it’s a forgery, you could be lighting a fuse on a powerful piece of dynamite,” Conrad said.
Meaning, I was in serious danger. “You think it’s a forgery?” I asked.
“With you, I think anything is possible,” Bobby said. “You and the law know each other well, but you don’t always respect the acquaintance.”
“Unlike people with money and with access to the Illinois Speaker,” I said. “They are sans reproche. That’s comforting.”
“I’m not going to argue that with you,” Bobby said. “You know Illinois politics better than you know the law. Rawlings and I are just saying, it would have been better to bring those pages to us, instead of publishing them first.”
“Got it.” I stood to leave, but Bobby asked Conrad and the tech to step outside.
“Vicki, Rawlings told me about the letter the old Fourth District watch commander wrote, saying he’d sent someone off to the Seventh District. He said you assume that was Tony, right?”
“Right.”
Bobby fingered the fold of skin above his necktie, as if the knot were too tight. “It might have been. Say it was, say Brattigan did send your dad off to face the danger of—well, the dangers he did face in the Seventh. Say it was Rory Scanlon who put him up to it. This diary you’ve conjured wouldn’t be payback for that, would it?”
“Conjure. That is a very loaded word. No one used it when Stella burst forth with a diary of Annie’s that mysteriously appeared in a drawer twenty-five years after her sister-in-law had been pawing through the same place looking for cash.”
“Tap-dance around, clown around, but did you hire someone to create a forgery so you could try to get at Rory Scanlon? If you’re framing him as punishment for upending Tony’s life, you are playing a dangerous game.”
“Tap-dancing, clowning and playing a dangerous game? Way more energetic than I’m up to after getting my nose broken and a whole lot of other injuries.” I leaned forward and kissed Bobby’s cheek. “You know my parents’ memories are sacred to me, Bobby, so anything is possible, but I’m more concerned about someone getting a green light for murder just because he put a new piece of stained glass over a church altar.”
Bobby’s staff officer drove me back to my office. It wasn’t until he dropped me off that I started to feel that prickle along the back of the neck, that fear you get when someone is following you or is training a sniper’s rifle on your neck.
I went through the day with as much focus as I could manage, met with Darraugh Graham and a couple of other Loop clients, took the dogs to the lake, borrowed Jake’s Fiat to go grocery shopping—Luke Edwards had reclaimed the Subaru after our shoot-out near Dead Stick Pond—he’d seen the damage to the rental Taurus on YouTube and hadn’t wanted to risk the Subaru in my hands a day longer.
They struck in the middle of the night. Fast, ruthless, jimmying open the building door, hydraulic ram on my apartment’s steel front door, thugs at the kitchen exit when I tried to escape through the back. The dogs were barking ferociously from Mr. Contreras’s place, but the goons had me bound, gagged, a hood on my head, and flung into a pickup bed before the old man could get them outside. I’d gone to sleep in my clothes, just in case, but they’d moved so fast I didn’t have time to put on shoes.
Three in the morning, couldn’t tell where we were going. Expressway, maybe. South, maybe. Wind whipped underneath the hood, rubbing against my face. After a time I smelled the lake through the sack, and then my eyes were tearing, I was coughing and choking behind the gag. Pet coke dust. We were close to the Guisar slip.
The air changed overhead. A closed space. Hands dragged me from the back of the truck, thumped me down onto a chair. Tied me to it.
When the hood was unbuckled and pulled off, the light blinded me. I blinked and a wall of metal filing cabinets came into focus. Metal desks. A locked grate with a pay window and a safe behind it. The office for Bagby & Family Haulage. Vince Bagby was leaning against one desk, Rory Scanlon was seated in the chair where Delphina Bagby had been playing solitaire. Three solid-looking youths in the green T-shirts of Say, Yes! lounged by the door, faces blank.
“So those flowers and dinner invitations and stuff, they weren’t because of my beautiful eyes,” I said.
Bagby squirmed, shrugged, gave a fake-hearty laugh.
“One last Warshawski,” Scanlon said. “One last person thinking they don’t have to play by the rules.”
“Depends on the rules,” I said. “I guess Tony’s mistake was thinking the law meant something besides pay to play.”
Scanlon nodded at one of the Say, Yes! youths, who walked over and hit me in the face. I was able to move my head away from the blow, but it still hurt.
“Where did you get that diary you put out?” Scanlon asked.
“Funny,” I said, “Captain Mallory asked me the same question only twelve hours ago. You probably have your own stooges inside the CPD, although I hope they don’t include Conrad Rawlings. But in case the information is slow drifting south, I’ll tell you the same thing I told the captain: someone mailed it to me. No return address, no prints, no DNA.”
“I don’t believe it’s real,” Scanlon said flatly.
“It’s on the Global Entertainment website,” I said. “It looks pretty real.”
“I want to see it,” Scanlon said. “I think you hired someone to forge it.”
“If it is a forgery, I bet it’s way better than the one you had Frank put in his sister’s underwear drawer. It actually looks like Annie’s handwriting, at least like the one letter of hers that I still have.”
“Pretty convenient, how it showed up,” Scanlon said, his lips a flat, ugly line.
“Yeah, that’s how I felt when Stella’s version showed up. It will be fun to get both diaries vetted by experts.”
“Not any kind of fun you’ll ever have,” Scanlon barked. “You could have died in your bed if
you’d kept your goddam nose out of my business. But no, just like your parents, all of you thinking you were too good for this neighborhood. I do a lot for people down here, I did a lot for your family, but I never got any gratitude.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for getting my dad transferred to the Seventh, for putting a bad rap out on him so that he was sent without backup into gang shootings. Does that help?”
Scanlon nodded again at his pet, who smacked me again. I didn’t move as fast this time; my nose started to bleed. Bagby winced. He didn’t like seeing me beaten? Maybe my beautiful eyes had played a small role.
“Your precious cousin.” Scanlon was panting. “I got him his chance, but Tony, high-and-mighty Tony Warshawski, bad-mouthed me in the precinct.”
“My cousin’s talent and drive got him where he needed to be,” I snapped.
“I made the connections that brought him to the attention of the Blackhawks organization. Otherwise he’d have been like Frank Guzzo, another loser wannabe driving a truck.”
“Is that the only kind of employee Bagby has?” I asked, looked at Vince. “Frank Guzzo works hard, he keeps his family going. That isn’t a loser’s behavior. A loser is someone who can’t operate without a lot of people in his pocket to do his dirty work for him.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve cost Frankie Junior his chance to go to ball camp,” Scanlon said. “I warned Guzzo to keep you away from here, but he’s such a useless piece of quivering jelly he couldn’t even manage that. His ma is twice the man he is. Twice the man old Mateo was, too.”
“You’ve been watching too many Clint Eastwood movies,” I said. “Mateo was like Frank: honest, quiet, hardworking. Twice—no—ten times the man you and your cousin are. Although ten times zero is still zero.”
Another blow. My mouth started to fill with blood and I spoke with difficulty. “On the night she died, Annie wrote in her diary that she saw your car outside the Guzzo house. Was it you who killed her? Or did you already have enough thugs on your team twenty-five years ago that one of them gave her the last blow?”
“I need to know where you got the diary,” Scanlon said. “I need to know if there’s more out there.”
“You mean, did Annie send a message through a medium to say you murdered her?” Blood dribbled down my chin and pooled on my neck. “I haven’t seen any ectoplasm shimmering through my office. If she wrote your or Sol Mandel’s name on the living room floor, the cops kept that detail private. Of course, Oswald Brattigan, watch commander at the Fourth, he was your boy, he could have disposed of any evidence you left, to make sure Stella Guzzo carried the can for you.”
The circulation was starting to go in my hands. I would have been worried about them, except I was more worried that I was going to die soon. I curled and uncurled my fingers. My wrists scraped against the rope.
“Mandel was soft,” Scanlon said. “He let that little bitch bleed him, instead of taking care of her from day one. As soon as he told me what she was up to, he agreed something had to be done, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. I made him go to the Guzzo’s front door, on the pretext of reasoning with the girl about her demands. We let Spike do the honors, since it was his career we were helping build.”
Vince made a restless gesture.
“You think I shouldn’t say anything, little cousin?” Scanlon jeered. “Don’t tell me you’re soft, too. Warshawski isn’t going anywhere, isn’t going to tell anyone anything. Mandel and McClelland both knew Spike was tough enough to do anything, and he’s proved that over and over again in Springfield.”
“Yes, all you cousins,” I said, proud that my voice was steady, despite my terror and my aching mouth. “You and Vince, and Nina Quarles, who owns that law firm. Did you have her buy it in case Mandel had left any loose bits of evidence lying around in his old files?”
“Never mind why we did what we did. You wouldn’t understand that kind of loyalty, to family and to shared values. I’m giving you one chance to let me have the original of any other papers that came into your possession.”
“And if I give them to you?”
“Then your friends will survive to say prayers over your grave. If not, all those people, the old man, the dogs, the doctor, the musician, we will eliminate them one by one, and they will die cursing you.”
“Then if I had any papers to give you, I would do so in an instant. I don’t.”
More questions, no answers. More blows, no defense. Time lost meaning, voice lost meaning, body lost feeling.
We ended where we all knew we would, back in the pickup, out onto the docks, the hood on my head, truck driving up an incline, someone tossing me over the side, a smear of dust coming under the hood, choking me. I was on the coal mountain where Jerry Fugher died.
“That’s over with,” the smooth white voice said. “The last of the Warshawskis. They all thought they were too good for this world, and by God, they were.”
“Hey, man, you ain’tcha gonna bury her?” one of the green shirts asked.
“No need,” Scanlon said. “She’ll choke to death soon enough.”
“You’re making a mistake.” It was Bagby, his voice urgent but somehow supplicating. “You don’t own Rawlings and he won’t let her death go.”
“There’s no evidence, at least not if you do a good scrub-down in your office.” A pause. “Oh, Vince, Vince, don’t tell me you had the hots for her? It wasn’t an act? You ever get inside her pants? Want the boys to bring her back to the loading bay for some action before she dies?”
Bile rose in my throat.
“You’re an asshole, Rory.”
“Hey, I look out for widows and orphans and helpless cousins.”
Feet thudding on concrete, getting more remote. I burrowed hard with my butt, made a ledge in the coke. Shifted buttock to buttock, worked my hands down behind my thighs, bunched forward in a ball, slid my hands up over my legs. I lifted my bound hands to my face and the blood pounded painfully in my fingers. I tried pushing the hood away from my head, but it was buckled behind me. I couldn’t budge it. I stood on quivering legs, fell heavily.
Hands grabbed mine. Some action before I die, you’ll see action before I die. I kicked hard.
“Hey, Vittoria, mio core. Easy does it: I play with these fingers.”
STEALING HOME
I sat on the ground, leaning against Jake’s legs while he unbuckled the hood. When he’d freed me, he helped me down the hill, our feet sliding and sinking to their ankles. I kept coughing up balls of black phlegm and at the bottom, I was hit by such a violent paroxysm that I fell again.
Jake squatted, pulling me to him, stroking my filthy hair. “I was so afraid, mio core, so afraid I wouldn’t be in time.”
The dogs had roused the whole building, he said. He’d run first to my apartment.
“I saw that the door had been broken open, but my brain wouldn’t work. And then I saw them carrying you through the gate, that foul thing on your head. I ran to the alley, but their truck was already rattling away.”
He pulled me closer. “I was afraid if I took time to call the cops, the truck would disappear. I didn’t have any phone numbers, anyway, just nine-one-one, which I called while I was driving.” He’d been frantic, trying to keep an eye on the Bagby truck, trying to explain what was happening to the emergency dispatcher.
“I hung up—I couldn’t talk and follow you, but I thought of Max. He knows everyone. He told me he’d locate your police pals. He tracked down Frank Guzzo, too, and got him to explain the likely places Bagby or Scanlon would take you. Max talked me through the route. He was way better than any GPS.” Jake gave a laugh that bordered on the hysterical.
He helped me back to my feet, waited out another coughing attack.
“So you got to the Bagby office?” I asked. “Where were you?”
“They’d left a window open. I stood unde
r that and recorded it all, but it was agony, listening to—never mind that. I—I wasn’t brave enough to go in after you. Forgive me, Vic, but I just couldn’t do it.”
It was my turn to squeeze his shoulder reassuringly. “You made the right choice. If you’d gone in, you’d have been a hostage; we’d both be dead.”
Conrad roared up just then, six squad cars flashing in his wake.
“Five men in a truck,” Jake said to Conrad when he bounded over, roaring commands through a loudspeaker. “Two first chairs and three pit members. I stood under a window at the Bagby office and recorded their words.”
“Scanlon,” I coughed at Conrad, spitting out a mouthful of coke. “Scanlon and Bagby.”
Conrad sent his squads out to find them. He tried to question me, there on the Guisar slip, under the searchlights he’d turned on, but I couldn’t speak. Wouldn’t speak. Too many questions, too many blows. No more.
“I’m taking the lady home, Rawlings. I’ll e-mail you the recording from my smartphone.”
Jake guided me off the Guisar slip, drove me to Lotty, who’d been warned by Max that I might need reconstructing. She tucked me into her own guest bed. Over the next few days, her doorman and a private nurse kept cops and reporters at bay, even Murray, who thought he was entitled to a front-row seat.
Jake stayed close by. Even later, when I was back on my feet, resuming my workload, there were times when he thought I might have disappeared on him and he’d race to my office to check on me. He started practicing in my big workroom. The acoustics were good, so good that his High Plainsong group began rehearsing there.
“Remember I told you I’d pull you out of the tar pits if you got stuck in them?” he said the day he drove me home from Lotty’s.
“You said you’d use your bass strings,” I reminded him.
“From now on I’ll keep a spare set in the glove compartment,” he promised.
Brush Back (V.I. Warshawski Novels Book 17) Page 40