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

by Sara Paretsky

  Eventually, of course, I did talk to the cops. According to Conrad’s off-the-record report, Spike had been using his many connections in Chicago to short-circuit any indictments, but the media storm for once was bigger than the Speaker’s power. The state’s attorney wasn’t able to indict Rory or Vince for Jerry Fugher’s murder, but he had enough from Jake’s recording and my own testimony to charge them not just with attempting to kill me, but framing Stella Guzzo for Annie’s murder.

  When the SA subpoenaed the diary extracts that Murray had posted online, I handed them over without a murmur. Even if a lab decided they were forgeries, there wasn’t any way to trace them: they had indeed come to me in the mail, with no return address, postmarked from the Loop postal station that saw so much traffic no one could remember one manila envelope. And I had never claimed they were Annie’s, simply that I had them and was willing to submit them to tests.

  The diary Frank had helped Scanlon or Bagby or Spike plant in Stella’s house was also subpoenaed. It turned out as Bernie had been insisting—Stella had given it to Father Cardenal. Having to guard Stella’s secret was probably why Cardenal’s attitude toward me underwent such a major shift.

  When I finally got to see the document, I felt a certain satisfaction: Scanlon hadn’t made any effort to get old paper or to disguise the handwriting; the diary was declared fraudulent.

  Kenji Aroyawa was ecstatic when two labs—my private one and the State of Illinois’s crime lab—decided my pages were authentic. He and I shared a bottle of champagne while Rafe Zukos sulked downstairs in front of his geese-in-flight painting. Zukos had bitterly opposed Ken “prostituting his art” to help anyone in South Chicago, but Ken had loved creating Annie’s diary.

  “It’s an art project, Rafe, it’s what art students do—they copy the masters to learn their craft. It takes me back to my own sensei’s studio, copying someone else’s calligraphy—not that poor little Annie’s handwriting would have been allowed in Sensei Yamamoto’s atelier.”

  I’d found paper for the project by going to garage sales until I came on an empty journal of about the right vintage for Annie to have kept. Ken took three days over the writing. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Mr. Contreras or Jake, about the project. It’s the kind of story people like to repeat, and it wasn’t one I wanted to hear in a courtroom.

  There was some positive fallout. Ira and Eunice Previn’s chauffeur drove them to my office one morning to give me a backhanded thanks for making Joel’s role in Stella’s trial look less inept, or at least more explicable.

  “I let my ties to Sol and the temple blind me to all the holes in the case. You were better than us on this one, young lady,” was all Ira said.

  “It was more than that,” Eunice said. “We didn’t know—we didn’t want to know. Sol was one of the only people at the temple who took me—took our family—for what it was. Not me being the stereotypical black sexual animal ensnaring Ira, but a man and a woman who respected each other. And Joel—my only child—we wanted so much for him and—”

  She broke off, squeezed her eyes shut as if she could blot out the pictures from the past. Ira tried to take her hand but she shook him away.

  “I had three miscarriages, and then Joel, and—I wasn’t ready for such a sensitive boy. I—his music, I wish I’d let him follow his music.”

  She stood, head erect, spine straight, marched to the door with Ira following more slowly in her wake. I wished I could believe the resolution of the story would send Joel into rehab, but his drinking was such an entrenched part of his life now that I wasn’t optimistic.

  There was another, better outcome to the story: Murray decided it was high time someone actually wrote my cousin’s biography. He got a nice advance from Gaudy Press—with Boom-Boom back in the headlines, they thought it was a worthwhile project, assuming Murray could give them a quick turnaround.

  As the cold spring turned into summer, I found myself taking refuge in singing. I would play a recording Jake made of counterpoint to Vittoria Aleotti’s madrigals, trying to match my voice to the intervals, sometimes succeeding. Even when I failed, the music, the muscles, the voice brought me a kind of connection to my mother that made the night in the coal dust seem like one more bad dream, nothing more.

  In June, Jake came with me to Wrigley Field to see St. Eloy’s play in the Catholic League championship game. Stella, who was there with Betty, Frank and their daughters, looked at me with loathing, but the lithium seemed to be holding—at least she didn’t try to punch me.

  Mr. Villard sat on the first-base side so that he could watch Frankie at short. Adelaide was with him, helping him in and out of his seat. At the end of the game, he beamed enthusiastically at Frank and Betty: no promises for the future, a lot can change in a boy’s life, a talented kid at fifteen may have developed as far as he ever will, but he liked what he’d seen; he’d make sure Frankie Junior got a spot in one of the league’s premier talent camps this summer.

  A few days later, Mr. Villard came to High Plainsong’s last concert—High Plainsong’s Swan Song, they’d billed it, with medieval songs and music about swans dominating the second half, and me performing a duet with Jake from Vittoria Aleotti’s “Garland of Madrigals,” to end the first.

  A few days later, I got a letter from Mr. Villard.

  Dear Ms. Warshawski,

  I’ve always liked players with guts and determination. They dig deeper, often outlast flashier players. You did a major service to baseball and to the Cubs by exposing Gil Brineruck; you saved my life, and now, your visits bring me a lot of pleasure.

  I heard through the grapevine that you lost your car and lost a lot of income this spring. This check is from me, no strings attached, but maybe you can get yourself a nice little car. The other check is for your friend. The only song I can sing is “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” but he and his musician friends are major leaguers, I can see that, and they deserve to keep their own playing field green.

  Two checks fluttered out. Mine would buy me a very nice little car indeed. I wrote Mr. Villard a thank-you note, then sat daydreaming in front of car websites. Muscle car or getting-around-town car?

  The front bell roused me. I looked at my security camera monitor: it was Frank. I almost didn’t let him in, but he looked so uncomfortable that I finally released the lock.

  Just as it had been when he first showed up in April, it was hard for him to find a way to talk. I sat quietly until he blurted, “Tori, I’m so sorry. You saved Ma. You saved Frankie. I know you almost died because of me, and I can’t even pay your bill.”

  “It’s okay, Frank.” I couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “I made a big mistake, letting you go.”

  “You did the right thing, letting me go. You brought me great comfort when I needed it most, but we weren’t right for each other.”

  “Yeah, but—” He broke off, but I could see all the unsaid words on his face: if he’d stayed with me, it all would have turned out differently, he wouldn’t have whiffed the curve, it would be him in Cooperstown, just as Boom-Boom was in Toronto.

  “No, Frank,” I said, my voice gentle. “I would have made you a lot unhappier down the road than you ever made me. My dad never cared much for men who rated success by how much money or power they had. To him, a successful man was honest in his public and private affairs. You have four beautiful children, and that’s something I will never have. You’re a good dad to all of them. You go home and remember to feel proud of that.”

  “Yeah, okay, yeah.”

  I walked him to the door and stood on the sidewalk until he climbed into his truck.

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