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

by Sara Paretsky

  I came at the coke mound from the back. A police van for the forensic techs was parked on the lip and a crew in hazmat suits seemed to be taking the top of the mountain apart. I moved around to the water side of the mountain. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to find, since the techs were going over the area, but I was trying to imagine how Fugher’s body got to where it had ended up.

  I peered over the edge of the dock. Besides the usual waterfront garbage—bottles and cans, remains of McDonald’s and Popeye’s, tampons and Pampers—pieces of drywall, two-by-fours, a car fender, Styrofoam cups, swirled around. The Cubs would be in the World Series before anyone sorted through this muck for clues about Fugher’s death.

  I edged my way along the narrow strip between the coke mound and the water, pulling my knit top up to cover my nose and mouth. Even so, the dust made my eyes water. I was sneezing violently when a hand grabbed me roughly by the shoulder.

  “Who the hell are you and how did you get out here? You some goddam reporter?” A man in a hard hat and orange safety vest, his skin like tanned leather from life in the great outdoors, had appeared behind me.

  “Nope. I’m a goddam detective. You with the police?”

  “I’m with Guisar and I’m tired of strangers on my slip. I want to see your badge.”

  I pulled out the laminated copy of my license. “I’m private.”

  “Then you sure as hell have no business out here. How’d you get past the front gate without a pass or a hard hat?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  He frog-marched me around to the front of the mound, where his crew were sitting on overturned barrels or leaning against their earthmoving machines, watching the forensic teams at work.

  A silver Jeep Patriot pulled up, splashing mud on my jeans. The driver, a guy around fifty with a marine haircut, lowered his window.

  “Jarvis, what the hell you doing sticking dead bodies out here on the dock? You let a game of hide-and-seek get out of hand?”

  He was grinning widely and the Guisar man smiled in turn, but perfunctorily. “Bagby—you saw the news?—it was—”

  “Awful. I know,” Bagby cut him off. “Shouldn’t make a joke out of it. Did you find out who the dead man was?”

  “The cops just learned. Guy named Jerry Fugher. They say he did odd jobs around the neighborhood, but what he was doing here on the docks, no one knows.”

  “Who’s the talent?” Bagby asked, jerking his head at me.

  “I’m trying to find out. The lady got in here without a pass. I don’t know how she got past Kipple at the main gate, but I’ll have a talk—”

  “You look like you walked up the tracks,” Bagby said to me, taking in my mud-spattered clothes. “Whatever you want must be pretty important. What can we do for you, Ms.— Uh?”

  “Warshawski,” I said.

  “The hockey player?” Bagby asked.

  “I’m retired. These days I’m an investigator.”

  Bagby looked startled, then threw back his head and guffawed. “I earned that. You’re related to Boom-Boom Warshawski?”

  “Cousin.” I smiled: two can play nice. “I’m the person who ID’d Jerry Fugher for the police. I understand he worked for you?”

  Bagby shook his head. “If you told the cops that, they knew before I did. Never heard of the guy.”

  I pulled out my cell phone and showed him the picture of Fugher getting into one of his trucks with Gravel.

  Bagby took the phone from me and frowned over the picture. “The shot’s too blurry to make out their faces that well, but the short fat guy looks a hell of a lot like Danny DeVito. I recognize the truck, though, damn it. Some SOB is going to be collecting unemployment before the day is over, letting a stranger drive one of our trucks. Huge legal exposure to that. Forward that photo to me, okay? I can read the plate; that’ll tell me who was supposed to be driving that morning.”

  “I gave the photo to your daughter on Friday. I’m surprised she hasn’t shown it to you.”

  He shook his head, mock sadness. “Delphina! If the guy had looked like Johnny Depp instead of Danny DeVito, she’d have tracked him down by now instead of letting it go completely out of her head.”

  I smiled, mock understanding. “She must have your dispatcher wrapped around her finger for him to forget, as well.”

  He gave me another appraising look, but dropped the subject, saying he’d give me a ride out to the road. “Save you schlepping all the way back on foot.”

  “I’ll stay out here, see what the cops turn up.”

  “She can’t stay here,” the Guisar man said to Bagby. “She doesn’t have a pass or a hard hat, she’s not with the city. Drive her out.”

  Drive me out. It sounded as though I was a demon possessing a pig.

  “Yeah, sorry about that, Ms. Warshawski, but Jarvis is right. No pass, no hard hat, no visit.”

  I gave in with as much grace as I could muster, stopping at the squad cars to see if I knew anyone on duty. No luck. Jarvis, who’d followed me, lecturing me on how I was trespassing, started sneezing mid-sentence. I kept my top pulled over my nose.

  Bagby honked. “Warshawski! Train’s leaving the station.”

  I climbed into his front seat and looked mournfully at my clothes. My running shoes were caked with mud, my socks were soaked through, and my almost-new jeans had a long tear up one leg—I must have caught it on a piece of wire when I was sliding through the fence.

  “This guy Fugher must be something special if you wrecked your wardrobe to look at his burial plot. How’d you know him? He part of one of your private investigations?” Bagby asked.

  “And that would be your business because . . . ?”

  Bagby grinned, but he kept his eyes on the road, swerving around the biggest potholes. “Just making conversation. Although if he was driving one of my trucks, I guess I’d better find out what he was up to. Every now and then a cargo does go missing.”

  “You know Frank Guzzo?” I asked.

  “Is this a trick question? Of course I know Guzzo. He’s been with the company forever. Don’t tell me you thought he’d be on Guisar’s dock back there.”

  “Just making conversation,” I said primly. “When Frank tried out for the Cubs, Bagby’s gave him time off to get in shape.”

  “That was my old man, may he rest in peace. Heart attack seven years ago.” We were at the outer gate, which swung open for the Patriot. Bagby stuck his head out the window to hallo at the guard.

  “Kipple, this lady got lost out here, found her way to the Guisar slip. Ask Security to check the fences, make sure you don’t have any holes. You don’t want anyone else wandering in here after dark and dying in the coal dust.”

  “You know he died in the pet coke?” I asked. “I didn’t think the ME had even started an autopsy.”

  “Figure of speech,” Bagby said sharply. “Are you always this literal-minded?”

  “Usually. People say what they actually mean more often than not. Lieutenant Rawlings at the Fourth District—you know him, right?—only told me a couple of hours ago that they thought Fugher was alive when he went into the coke.”

  Bagby grinned again, his mask of good nature back in place. “In that case, I’ll check with Rawlings. You know how to get home from here?”

  I thought about making a smart remark, something Chandler-like or Bunyanesque, like “I am home here,” or “Here I have no earthly home,” but I only said, “Oh, yeah,” and started the long trek back.

  THE PLAY’S THE THING

  Yet another train had gone when I got back to the station. I was hungry and thirsty and cranky and sneezy. I also was sweaty and grimy, I realized, looking at myself in the dimly lit station bathroom.

  After a day of hard slogging, on foot as well as with Conrad, the priest and the guys on the dock, I sought refuge in comfort food, a BLT with frie
s. While I ate, I looked up Fugher in a subscription database.

  He hadn’t left much of a trail, which wasn’t surprising for a guy in the cash economy. He’d grown up on the East Side, son of Wilma and Norman Fugher, both now dead. He’d attended St. Francis de Sales High School, then done a degree in business at one of the local community colleges.

  As far as I could tell, he’d never married and didn’t seem to be supporting children. He also didn’t seem to have any siblings, so he must have been a courtesy uncle to the woman with honey-colored hair. Which meant tracking her down would be difficult. Not that I had any real reason to look for her, except to validate my story with Conrad.

  It wasn’t clear where Fugher had picked up enough electrical know-how to fix St. Eloy’s wiring. He didn’t seem to have been filing taxes, so it wasn’t possible to follow his work history.

  Fugher’s last listed address was in Lansing, a small town sandwiched between Chicago’s southeast edge and the Indiana border. My map app showed his home as a garage behind a bungalow. A visit there would have to wait until I had a car. Which would never happen if I didn’t get back to the train station in time for the 12:21 train downtown. I wiped the mayonnaise from my iPad screen and scurried back to the station.

  From the Loop, after three guys wouldn’t let me in their cars, I found a cabbie who was willing to drive me home. The cabbie had a news station turned on: police were not confirming the identity of the man who’d died in the coke until they’d located any relatives, so they weren’t confirming Global Entertainment’s report that his name had been Jerry Fugher. I smiled to myself: Murray hadn’t been able to sit on the ID. Good that Conrad was getting goosed.

  Jake had left for a day of teaching, but I let Mr. Contreras know I’d returned without handcuffs and only minimal bruising. Bernie was presumably pulling shots for yuppies right now, which meant I had the luxury of a long bath.

  My clothes were so crusted with mud and coke dust that I stripped on the landing and left everything there. I wasn’t sure the running shoes or jeans could be salvaged, they were so soaked with industrial oils, but I might be able to get the knit pullover clean.

  I had to run water in the tub three times before I got all the pet coke out of my hair and pores. For the next day, every time I sneezed or coughed I left a gray residue on the Kleenex. Thank goodness the Pollution Control Board had assured us there was no known individual health risk to coal dust. Like black lung or epithelial cancer.

  My plan had been to go to my office, get caught up on client reports, and map out a strategy for talking to Rory Scanlon, but I had gotten as far as putting on clean underwear when I couldn’t keep moving one minute longer. All those sleep experts tell you not to nap during the day, that your sleep urge will become so strong that you will get eight hours the next night, no problem. Those sleep experts, of course, aren’t wakened early by the police or tormented by thoughts of the Guzzos. I was out to the world within a second of lying down.

  Jerry Fugher was covering the Stadium ice with soot. Boom-Boom skated in from the side and knocked him down. The buzzer sounded, the game was over, but Boom-Boom was rolling Fugher in the soot, and the buzzer kept sounding and I stuck an arm out to shut off the alarm, but it was my phone.

  “Vic? Are you in there alone?” It was Bernie.

  I pulled myself blearily upright. “Where are you? You okay?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine, but there is a person here to talk to you. Can we come in?”

  “No. Who is it?”

  Bernie opened my bedroom door, still talking to me on her phone. “I don’t know who it is, some lady who wants to talk to you. When I saw all your clothes out front, I thought maybe you and Jake—”

  “Right. Now get out and let me get dressed.”

  When I’d pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, Bernie was waiting outside my bedroom door, anxious about my visitor. I was in that groggy state you get from heavy sleep in the middle of the day. I shook my head at her and went into the kitchen to make an espresso. While the machine heated, I ran cold water from the kitchen tap over my head.

  Bernie followed me in. “What if she is another policeman? Or a killer? You should come see her now.”

  “Don’t let strangers into the building, Bernie, in case they are police or killers. What did she say that made you let her in?”

  Bernie shifted uncomfortably. “When I was unlocking the front door, coming back from work, she appeared next to me. She asked for you, asked if I knew you, and when I said, yes, of course, because I am living with you, she followed me.”

  I let out a moan. “Bernie—after I get rid of her, we’ll have a little class on how to respond when people accost you. For now, go down the back stairs to your uncle Sal, in case she’s an ax murderer.”

  When I’d scooted her out the kitchen door, I pulled two double shots. The first I drank in one breath, the second I carried with me—I could fling it in my visitor’s face if she turned violent.

  Far from threatening violence, she was hovering in the hallway, looking nervously around as if fearing an ambush herself. Her honey-colored hair was swept back from her face as it had been when I saw, or claimed I saw her at St. Eloy’s two weeks earlier.

  “You—you’re a detective, right?” she said.

  “I am. And you are Jerry Fugher’s niece?”

  “I—are we alone? Who was that girl?”

  “The young woman you talked into letting you into the apartment lives here, she has a right to be here, so forget about her and focus on who you are and what you want.” I moved past her into the front room and sat cross-legged in my armchair, rubbing my calves, sore from this morning’s hike.

  She perched on the edge of the piano bench. “How did you know he was my uncle?”

  “I don’t, actually. I heard you call him that in church, the day I gave you my card. But Jerry Fugher didn’t have any siblings, so tell me who you are, and why you’re here.”

  “He did have siblings.”

  I was having trouble following her, even with the aid of espresso. “Have the police talked to you?”

  “No! They don’t know about me, they can’t know about me.”

  Murray would buy me dinner at Filigree for a month if he knew I had Fugher’s niece with me.

  “Okay. Let’s go back to your uncle. Why did he keep his siblings a secret?”

  “He didn’t do it on purpose, he never knew about us. My mother, she was his sister, but their mom, my grandma, she gave him away to this other family when he was born, so they adopted him. Then when my brother and I were sixteen, she was dying, our mother, I mean, and she told us about him, so we looked him up. He wasn’t very friendly, he wouldn’t even come to Mom’s funeral, but we didn’t have any other family, so we tried to stay in touch, sort of.”

  She was winding a tissue around her fingers.

  “And your name is?”

  “You have to promise not to tell anyone, anyone at all, not the police or reporters or anyone!”

  I looked at her curiously. “If you’ve committed a crime, I’m not going to hide you from the police.”

  “I haven’t committed any crimes, but look what happened to Uncle Jerry!”

  “I won’t tell anyone your name, but I can’t go on with this conversation until you reveal it.”

  She looked around again. “Viola. Viola Mesaline. Where did you see Uncle Jerry? Is he really dead?”

  “He’s in the morgue but the police showed me photos taken of him in the coal dust at the Guisar dock. If you want to see his body, or claim him for burial, you’ll have to talk to the police, let them know you’re his next of kin.”

  Viola sprang from the piano bench. “I can’t! I—please! You mustn’t tell them about me.”

  “Ms. Mesaline, please. If you want to talk to me, sit down, talk to me, but if you can’t trust me, then leave.” I finish
ed my second coffee, wishing it was doing a better job of clearing my wits.

  Viola sat again, about an inch of her body touching the bench. She’d made up her mind to talk to me when she decided to look me up, but the story was slow in starting. She stopped frequently to demand my silence while she listened to footsteps on the stairs.

  She’d come about her brother, her twin brother, Sebastian.

  “Mom, she was an LPN, a practical nurse, but she was always taking these night school classes to improve herself. She was taking a Shakespeare class when she got pregnant with us, so she named us like that, after Shakespeare. Of course, no one in our school knew about Shakespeare, or they would have made fun of us for being stuck-up, but even so I got called ‘violin,’ or even ‘violence,’ all the time.”

  She edged farther onto the bench. “Mom always wanted us to go to college, and I started at DePaul, but Sebastian, he made good grades and he got himself a scholarship to IIT to study engineering.”

  “What kind? Electrical?” I wondered if that was where Uncle Jerry picked up his wiring skills.

  “Electrical? Why would you think that? He’s in construction engineering, but he hasn’t been able to find a full-time job. He does contract work with Brentback.”

  Brentback was one of those contractors whose name always pops up on the siding around the city’s big construction sites. “Sounds as though your brother has his foot in a good door,” I said.

  “Yes, I suppose. But he’s disappeared, that’s the problem, and Uncle Jerry, I’m sure he knows, knew, what happened, but he won’t say. Wouldn’t say.”

  I sucked in a breath. “How long has Sebastian been gone?”

  “Almost a week now.”

  “And why did Uncle Jerry know about it?”