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

by Sara Paretsky

  “Don’t you see? If it was Mandel who gave Annie the money, then he was the older man in her life, not Boom-Boom.”

  “She was so promiscuous, who knows how many people she took her pants off for,” Betty spat.

  Her rage and her obsession with Annie’s sex life seemed to swirl around like a cloud of gnats, annoying but impossible for me to come to grips with.

  “Who told you Annie slapped Stella?” I asked instead.

  “Stella, of course. Annie would never admit she did one wrong thing in her life. And then of course the night she died she actually came at Stella with a kitchen knife.”

  “Or so Stella claimed,” I said dryly. “If Stella went through Annie’s things hunting for her pills, why didn’t she find the diary when she found the two thousand dollars? Did you see the diary when you were searching Annie’s clothes after the trial?”

  “What do you mean, searching?” Betty’s face quivered.

  I meant she probably hoped there was another envelope full of cash. “Looking for mementos,” I suggested hastily. “Even if you had your differences, she was your husband’s sister, you must have wanted a keepsake.”

  Betty still looked suspicious, but she said, “I wasn’t looking for the diary, for anything special, I mean, just what clothes could go off to the church rummage sale. She must have spent half her paycheck at Victoria’s Secret. Only a girl like Annie would own underclothes like those. I threw out the pills—I didn’t think Stella needed to stumble on those again when she got home—but I didn’t take the drawers apart, why would I?”

  “So you didn’t see the diary,” I prodded.

  “Stella told me when she found it last week, it was on its spine, wedged against the back of the drawer. You had to take the whole drawer out to see it, and I didn’t do that when I was clearing things out.”

  “Did Stella show you the diary?” I asked.

  “She’s given it to someone to keep safe, so you can’t get your dirty Warshawski fingers on it. She knows you want it.”

  I inspected my Warshawski fingers. They didn’t look that dirty.

  “Father Cardenal?” I asked.

  “Never mind who she gave it to, it’s none of your business.”

  “Why did you leave the house standing empty all that time that Stella was away?” I asked. “Frank could have sold it, used the money to buy Stella an apartment when she got out.”

  “We didn’t expect her to be gone so long, you know, the lawyers, Mr. Scanlon, they all told us a good woman like Stella, never in trouble with the law—Mass every Sunday, First Friday devotions almost every year—they told us she’d be home within three years.”

  “Mr. Mandel told you?” I asked.

  “That’s what everyone said.” Betty scowled.

  “Who in particular said she’d be out in three years?” I repeated.

  “It was just the talk, Father Gielczowski, Mr. Scanlon, everyone who knew her, they all knew she didn’t mean to kill Annie, it was an accident, she shouldn’t have been in prison so long, that’s all I meant. They all said the judge would reduce the sentence, but then he didn’t.”

  “What did Scanlon have to do with Stella’s trial?” I asked.

  “Mr. Scanlon pays attention to everyone in this neighborhood. He’s in church every Sunday, pays for the prizes at the bingo. When Ferrite Workers S&L wanted to foreclose on Daddy, who do you think made them refinance us instead? If Frankie keeps his grades up, Mr. Scanlon’s going to get him into a good baseball camp this summer, one where the real scouts come and see the boys play.”

  “Sounds like Santa Claus,” I said dryly, wondering what Scanlon got out of it. Frank’s offhand revelations about Father Gielczowski made me think about the horror stories that had come out of Penn State University. How many sports programs, sports camps existed as a cover for grown men to abuse boys?

  I should have kept the thought to myself, but I made the mistake of asking Betty if she’d had the talk with Frankie Junior, the one where you remind your children that they don’t have to let people touch them, no matter how many promises they give about baseball careers.

  “How dare you?” Betty’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Are you going to start making up smut about Mr. Scanlon so you can screw up Frankie’s chances? If you hurt him the way Boom-Boom did Big Frank, I swear on my mother’s grave that you will be sorry you ever were born.”

  Father Cardenal had been hovering uneasily in the background. “Problem here, ladies?”

  “Ms. Guzzo and I went to high school together,” I said. “We were catching up.”

  “Remember what I said, Ms. Know-it-all. Remember what happened to Annie, she thought she was better than the rest of us, too.”

  Betty turned to walk away, but I caught her arm and turned her around. “Betty, that sounds like a cross between a death threat and a confession. Did you kill Annie? Is that why Stella is looking for exoneration now? She wore the jacket to protect Frank and her grandchildren, but—”

  Betty drew back her arm to slug me, but I ducked at the last second. Her momentum toppled her.

  Father Cardenal helped her to her feet, dusted off her St. Eloy’s warm-up jacket. “Let’s get you back to the stands, Betty. Frankie’s playing a beautiful game. Don’t spoil his day by getting involved in a fight.”

  He put an arm around her and propelled her toward the stands. I left: I didn’t care if I ever saw young Frankie play. I was walking back to my car when Cardenal jogged up behind me.

  “That was a very serious accusation you made to her. I don’t blame her for being angry.”

  “She tried to punch me. After making a most sinister comment about her sister-in-law’s death. I am not the aggressor here.”

  Cardenal said, “You’re right, but only in a way. I’m trying to protect my flock and you’re getting everyone perturbed in a way I’ve never seen them.”

  “Look, padre: I came here reluctantly after Frank Guzzo fed me a line about his mother. I have no idea what he hoped I would do, but I’m quite sure it isn’t what he asked me to do. The fact that people are getting perturbed by my presence has to do with the volcano of secrets they’re afraid will erupt if they get off the crater that’s opening below them, not with my climbing up the mountainside. I have no idea who Jerry Fugher is or why he’s so rattled at the thought of a detective on his trail, but I’m getting a nasty feeling about the secrets the Guzzo family is hiding.”

  I could hear the crowd noise swell in the background. Someone had scored, but I couldn’t tell if it was St. Eloy’s or the visitors.

  “The Guzzos have suffered a great deal. Maybe they’re protecting themselves from more pain,” Cardenal suggested.

  “I don’t know about you, but my life hasn’t been a crystal stair, either. That doesn’t give me license to punch people or make death threats. And do you honestly believe—without flapping your wings in flights of rhetoric—if Betty Guzzo killed Annie and her mother-in-law took the rap, do you think that’s a secret they all should protect?”

  “You’re speculating,” he protested. “That’s why you make people unhappy. You make up stories about them that you have no way of proving.”

  “It’s the way I work as a detective: I make up stories to see which ones cover the most facts. These are the facts I’m looking at—Frank Guzzo afraid of what his mother will uncover, Stella scrambling to blame my cousin for the murder as soon as I start asking questions, Stella and Betty both obsessed by Annie’s sex life. If Stella spent twenty-five years in the joint to protect her son’s marriage, she sure wouldn’t welcome my uncovering that crater. So she quickly invented a diary that casts blame on a high-profile third party. I like it as a story, or at least a hypothesis.”

  I continued to my car. Cardenal followed me, expostulating. I ignored him and in another moment, a crowd of children raced over to surround him.

&nbs
p; “Father, you should have seen it, Frank stole home, he won the game, we beat them.”

  The excited cries echoed up the street as I drove away.

  KEEP ON TRUCKIN’

  I drove over to Buffalo Avenue and stared broodingly at the Guzzo house. Some kids, those bored, undermotivated boys with no future, were eyeing me, perhaps trying to decide if a strange white woman in an old Mustang was an undercover cop, or a worthwhile target. I grinned at them ferociously: undercover cop, they seemed to agree, and moved several doors away, swaggering, so I’d know I hadn’t frightened them.

  My rage from two nights ago started to rise in me again, but if I forced my way into Stella’s house, all I’d get out of it would be jail time. And maybe the loss of my detective license.

  I took those deep breaths they’re always recommending as protection against stress. There’s almost always a second way if you calm down and think. I was about to put the car into gear when Frank phoned me. Sometimes the second way comes to you.

  “What the hell are you up to, Warshawski?”

  “Frank, just the man I was hoping to talk to. I stopped to watch your son: he looks impressive.”

  “Don’t try smearing butter on me. Betty told me you want to jinx Frankie’s shot at baseball camp.”

  “Why is everyone in your family always on the brink of hysteria?” I demanded. “I think it’s fantastic that Frankie has a chance at a first-class camp where college scouts can see him.”

  “Crap. Betty says you threatened to start a smear campaign against Rory Scanlon just to screw us.”

  The blinds twitched in Stella’s front window. She was watching the street, I guess, but she must have recognized my car because she pushed two slats apart and stared for twenty or thirty seconds. I drove a few doors away, outside the fifty yard perimeter of the restraining order.

  “No, Frank. I asked if Betty and you were sure that Scanlon wasn’t another Jerry Sandusky.”

  “Based on what, Warshawski? What makes you think a good, decent guy like Scanlon—”

  “Nothing,” I said. “But nobody thought a committed priest like Father Gielczowski—”

  “Who told you about him?” Frank said fiercely.

  “You did. You let it slip last week. It’s made me think, that’s all. But if I’m letting my imagination run away with me—if he doesn’t have boys sleep over at his house, or take them on those special one-on-one camping trips—”

  I let my voice trail off.

  Frank breathed heavily into the phone. “He only does things with the boys to help them use sports to stay out of gangs. Sometimes if a kid is troubled, he takes him off on his own. Is that a crime?”

  “Depends on what he’s doing on those solo trips. Sexual abuse is a high price to pay for a shot at a sports career.”

  “Damn you, Warshawski, get your mind out of the gutter. Why is it always about sex with you?”

  “With me?” I sputtered. “Your mother and your wife both are obsessed with Annie’s sex life. Betty seemed to think that murdering Annie was the right way to handle her being sexually active.”

  “That’s not true, that’s not what Betty said.”

  “Betty said your mother took the moral high ground by beating Annie for using the Pill. She also said that you and she felt honor-bound to tell your mother that Annie was sleeping with Boom-Boom, for which you had zero evidence. Or did Boom-Boom sidle up to you at Rafters and confide all over a boilermaker?”

  Frank didn’t speak for a beat, trying to collect his thoughts. “It wasn’t like that. We just thought—it was how Annie said it—but anyway, it turned out we were right. Annie wrote it in her diary that she was afraid of Boom-Boom.”

  “Ah, yes, that diary. One of those wonderful mythical books one is always hearing about but never seeing.”

  “My mother found Annie’s diary. She did not make that up.”

  The kids who’d moved up the street were drifting back toward me. “Frank, from the day you showed up at my office I’ve been trying to figure out what you really wanted from me. Your story about needing me to help your mother with her exoneration claim was so bogus I’m embarrassed I responded to you. But now, I’m thinking you used me as a smokescreen to protect your wife.”

  “From what?”

  “From the secrets that will spill out if a group like the Innocence Project takes on Stella’s exoneration. If there’s something there to show that Betty played a role in Annie’s death—”

  Frank swore at me and cut the connection.

  I stared blankly at the street. Until Betty blurted out that Annie got what was coming to her, I’d never doubted for one second that Stella was her killer, but what if Betty had played a role, too? Stella had admitted that she beat her daughter the night Annie died, but maybe she sincerely believed she hadn’t killed her. Maybe she really did believe someone had come to the house and finished Annie off while she was playing bingo.

  If Stella had thought Boom-Boom was involved in Annie’s death twenty-five years ago, she would have trumpeted the claim at the top of her lungs back then. And I doubted she would have protected her daughter-in-law. The milk of motherly love didn’t exactly course through Stella Guzzo’s veins, but maybe she would have taken the full rap if she thought it would help Frank.

  More likely, Stella was guilty as charged but had thought she’d weasel out of the worst consequence of her acts. Betty said Stella had been promised a shorter sentence. Had someone offered to dig up evidence of another assailant, and dropped the ball? Or had the obligingly helpful Rory Scanlon paid a bribe for Stella that hadn’t worked, or she’d pissed off Scanlon and he hadn’t paid the bribe?

  If Rory Scanlon had been involved in paying for Stella’s defense, or trying to get her sentence reduced, what would induce him to talk to me? Nothing I could think of off the top of my head. I couldn’t get access to the mythical diary. But if money had changed hands . . .

  I took out my tablet to see whether the trial judge had been pulled into the FBI’s old undercover operation in Chicago and Cook County’s courts, famous forever to us locals as Operation Greylord. However, showing the iPad was like waving a raw T-bone at a Rottweiler—the drifting kids swarmed around the car. I flashed my smile of death and gunned the car into reverse. The kids jumped out of the way. I made a U and roared up Buffalo. In my rearview mirror I saw one of them pull out a gun, but mercifully, he didn’t fire it—gangbangers are notoriously lousy shots. I didn’t want a crossfire victim on my conscience.

  I’d gone a couple of blocks when I realized there was one person I still hadn’t spoken to down here and that was the current owner of Bagby Haulage. What had Frank called him? Vince. I pulled over and took out my iPad again. Bagby & Family Haulage had their headquarters on 103rd Street, in the bleak landscape around the old CID landfill. I followed one of Bagby’s panel trucks down a deeply rutted track to the yard, where a dozen or so trucks were parked. Bagby headquarters consisted of a large hangar for mechanical work and a permanent trailer that housed the offices.

  I parked as close to the office entrance as possible, but still had to cross several mud wallows. At least I’d worn sensible shoes to my meeting at Wrigley Field this morning.

  The trailer door opened onto a single room. It was utilitarian space: a wall of filing cabinets, four metal desks, a barred area with a safe and a desk inside—presumably for payday. Two men about my own age were lounging over one of the desks, chatting in a desultory way. A young woman with a cascade of Botticelli curls hastily switched screens on her computer when I came in and busied herself with a stack of papers. She relaxed when she saw it was me—not whatever authority figure she’d been fearing.

  “You lost?” one of the men asked.

  “Not if this is Bagby Haulage. I had a question for Vince Bagby.”

  “He’s not here, but this is Delphina Bagby. Don’t let all the hair
fool you—she can handle an eighteen-wheeler if you need a load hauled this afternoon.”

  Delphina blushed but sat up straight and offered to help.

  “I’m V. I. Warshawski. I met Jerry Fugher outside Wrigley Field this morning.”

  “He must have had a delivery up there,” she said, just as one of the men said, “Fugher, we don’t have a Fugher on our books.”

  Delphina’s blush deepened. “I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t hear you right.”

  I pretended not to notice the slip. “Maybe I’m confused. He was getting into a Bagby truck up there.” I pulled out my phone and showed her the photo I’d taken.

  Delphina looked at the screen, then at the two men. The man who’d said they didn’t have a Fugher on their books picked up my phone.

  “That’s one of our trucks all right. What did you say the guy’s name was? Jerry? He looks like Danny DeVito.”

  “Since you know the DeVito clone is Jerry, what about the guy who’s with him?” I asked.

  The two men froze for a millisecond, before the spokesman gave an easy smile. “Lucky guess. I don’t know either guy, but the tall one doesn’t look like anyone I’d want to mess with. Toby, you’d better check into this, see if one of our guys let someone borrow a truck.”

  The second man grunted. “Forward the photo to Delphina here and I’ll check around. License plate shows up clearly, should be easy to sort out. Whoever did this better have a savings account—Vince doesn’t stand for this kind of nonsense. He’ll fire the driver who let a truck out of his possession. You don’t get a second chance if you lend out a truck.”

  It wasn’t until Delphina and I had taken care of the photo that it occurred to Toby to ask why I’d traipsed all the way down here after this man Jerry whoever he was.