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

by Sara Paretsky

  I left through the doors in the outfield wall while the grounds crew were waiting for the cops to pick me up. The crew hadn’t been able to follow my story, or at least they didn’t believe my story—how could someone have been living inside the ballpark without the security detail noticing? They didn’t want to go into the tunnel to see the squalid nest Sebastian had built behind the steel panel, they didn’t have time for this kind of BS. No, the best thing was to have me picked up for trespassing and shooting a weapon inside the park.

  I didn’t try to argue, just said I needed to use the washroom. While they stood guard at the entrance they’d unlocked, I picked the lock at the far end and slipped out, back hugging the wall, until I’d rounded a bend in the stadium wall. I went out through the first open aisle door, staggered down the seats and shuffled along the perimeter of the field to the exit. At least it was still so dark that they didn’t see me until I actually opened the door beneath the ivy. I heard them shout, but I hobbled over to Clark without stopping to look.

  I didn’t contact Conrad until I was clear of the park, but as soon as I was sure I wasn’t being followed I texted a full report of my night. Terrified, I finished. They have Bernie and I don’t know where they’re taking her. Check Sturlese Cement, check Virejas Tower and Bagby’s truck yard.

  Conrad wrote back at once: he’d sent a team into Wrigley as soon as he got my first message—he’d taken an hour off for sleep—but they hadn’t checked the locked doors. And now where was I and what evidence did I have that would allow him to apply for a warrant to any of the three places I’d mentioned?

  My phone died as I was dictating a response. Squad cars were passing me, lights flashing, presumably on their way to Wrigley to arrest me. I turned down Racine, my legs quivering, waves of nausea overtaking me. My body wanted to go to bed.

  “Permission denied,” I said out loud in my sternest voice. “They have Bernie and you must find her.”

  A woman out walking her dog in the early dawn turned to stare, called the dog to heel and scuttled into her building. I sounded as crazy as I smelled and looked.

  My legs were two numb trees plodding down the street, untethered from my mind, which floated between Racine Avenue and the tunnel. We’ll get little missy to tell us where she lives. The thug’s words floated back into my memory.

  Don’t hold out, Bernie, don’t hold back. I prayed that she had blurted out my address as fast as possible, but what they might be doing to her—I would not think about it. Could not. I couldn’t fix it by taking time for fear. Focus on what you can do, move your damned legs.

  The building floated up in front of me, no one casing the front, good or not good? How could I tell? No one in the back, don’t be holding out on them, Bernie.

  My front door didn’t show any signs of forcible entry. Maybe I should have checked the back as well, but the thought of going down all those stairs and coming up to the kitchen entrance was more than I could bear.

  Once again I stripped before going inside, once again left a heap of foul-smelling clothes outside my door, took just enough time in the bathroom to scrub sewage and asbestos from my hair and skin. Hurry, hurry. Two pairs of jeans destroyed, I had one left, not quite clean, but it would do. I’d sacrificed both pairs of running shoes, time to move on to my work boots. I plugged my phone into the charger. Reloaded the clip for my gun, stuck two spares in my fanny pack. While the coffee machine heated, I went downstairs to rouse my neighbor.

  Once Mr. Contreras grasped the crisis, he stopped fussing over my own corpse-like appearance. He sent me out back with the dogs while he dressed, and was huffing up the stairs to my place in pretty quick order. I typed up some talking points for him, which he studied and practiced a few times.

  When Mr. Contreras thought he was ready, I dialed Vincent Bagby: I’d captured his number when he’d called yesterday morning to ask me to dinner. Bagby answered his cell phone on the fourth ring.

  “You missed me so much you had to get me out of bed, Warshawski?” My ID showed up on his screen as well.

  “This ain’t Warshawski,” Mr. Contreras said. “I’m her neighbor and a good friend. Vic’s been in an accident, they ain’t sure she’ll make it.”

  “Where is she?” Bagby demanded. “Was she shot?”

  I grimaced: Lucky guess or did he know?

  “Cops don’t want nobody knowing where she is, case they try to finish her off. But she talked to me before they put her under. Said you was looking for some special papers Annie Guzzo hid underneath Wrigley Field all those years back. I’ll give ’em to you once I see the girl Bernie is safe.”

  “I don’t know what papers you’re talking about, or who the girl Bernie is.”

  He knows, I quickly wrote. He gave us a ride after we were attacked by the Dragons.

  “You got Alzheimer’s already at your age?” Mr. Contreras said. “You forgot you give her a ride when her and Vic was beat up last week? I see Bernie walk into her pa’s arms and I give you the papers.”

  “Was that her name? I didn’t know, and I don’t know about the papers. Don’t play games with me, old man; I’m not even sure I believe Vic was hurt last night.”

  “Maybe you know what I’m talking about, maybe you don’t. You tell your friend Rory Scanlon what I said, maybe he’ll take it more serious. You know the Coast Guard station out by Calumet Park? You, or him, or the Sturlese boys, they bring Bernadine Fouchard out there in two hours and I’ll get them the papers they’re so hot after.”

  “How come you have Warshawski’s phone?” Bagby demanded.

  “She gave it to me.”

  I made the kill sign and Mr. Contreras hung up.

  “Sure hope this works, doll.”

  “Sure hope it does, too,” I agreed grimly.

  I went into my subscription databases and found a cell phone number for Brian Sturlese, but not for Rory Scanlon or Nabiyev. Mr. Contreras repeated the conversation with Brian Sturlese.

  Sturlese was surlier than Bagby, and not as smooth: he paused too long between his lines. “I don’t believe you. Warshawski went on the warpath because she said there never was a diary.”

  “Yeah, what she said, and what she knew, they’re two different things,” Mr. Contreras growled. “I’m giving you a chance, but I’m gonna let the cops take over if you don’t show up with Bernie. And if she has so much as a scratch on her, I got the whole machinists’ local gonna make you sorry you ever left your ma’s womb.”

  “Now what?” the old man fretted when he’d hung up.

  “Now we need to get you out of here in case they think they can break in and beat you up.”

  He didn’t like it: he was more than a match for a cement mixer half his age and twice his bulk, he knew tricks that the Sturlese boys never heard of. I let him rattle on, bravado, while we went back down to his place to pack an overnight bag. I also took a large bottle of Coke from his fridge. I don’t normally like sugary drinks, but the Coke would settle my stomach and the sugar might give me an illusion of energy.

  Before we left the building, I gathered up copies of Mr. Villard’s Wrigley Field photos, then went to check on Jake. He was deeply asleep, his wide, humorous mouth slack. I wanted to get into bed with him, I wanted to move into the safe world of music and walk away from kidnappers, crimes, fraud, assault, but I went to the kitchen to change the note I’d left him:

  Bernie’s been kidnapped. I don’t know when or how I’ll be back and won’t be easily reached, but I’ll try to get you a message before the end of the day. Conrad Rawlings will know where I am if you get worried. I love you.

  I wanted to ask him to play the CD of my mother’s singing at my funeral, but he would know to do that. I jotted down Conrad’s cell phone and lumbered back down to collect my neighbor. The Subaru had become a liability; too many of the wrong people knew my Mustang was a total loss and it would have been easy to spot Lu
ke’s car in the parking lot by my office. My neighbor and I took a cab to the nearest rental place, where he got us a beige Taurus, one of a hundred thousand on the roads at any given moment. We got them to supply an in-car charger for my phone—my own car charger had vanished with the Mustang’s wheels last week.

  We stopped at the apartment to pick up the dogs and headed south. We were passing the Jackson Park boat harbor when my cell phone rang. Caller ID blocked. I pulled over to the curb and handed the phone to Mr. Contreras.

  “How do we know you’re telling the truth?” the caller demanded without preamble. “We need to see a sample before we do a deal.”

  Want me to post it on Facebook? I quickly wrote. My neighbor nodded and repeated the question.

  “Salvatore Contreras, right?” the caller said. “You’re Warshawski’s neighbor, right? You get a sample up in ten minutes.”

  Mr. Contreras looked at me in alarm. I jotted a couple of suggestions.

  “Screw that,” my neighbor sputtered. “I gotta dig up the paper and get me to a copy shop to scan it and everything. It’ll take me pretty darn near all day.”

  The caller said he’d have two hours and cut Mr. Contreras off mid-protest.

  I texted Conrad, told him I was pretty sure the Sturlese brothers were the ones who’d been in the tunnel last night. He wrote back,

  The SA doesn’t think your hunches are enough to base a warrant on. Get me something concrete.

  Put a trace on my cell, I wrote, they’re calling me with threats.

  Where are you right now??

  South Shore but I’m on the move.

  RIGGING THE GAME

  The Previns lived in one of South Shore’s elegant old condos on Sixty-seventh Street, right on the corner. We found a space on the street without any trouble—the hard part was keeping the dogs in the car: they smelled the lake and were desperate for exercise.

  Ira and Eunice owned the penthouse, with Joel on the sixth floor. At least he’d been able to put eleven stories between himself and his parents.

  It was seven in the morning now, but I didn’t imagine Joel was an early riser. In fact, I had to lean on the buzzer to his apartment for three minutes before I roused him.

  “V. I. Warshawski,” I said into the security phone. “We have to talk.”

  “Go to hell.” He hung up.

  Other residents were walking their dogs or leaving for work; we had a very short wait before someone came out and obligingly held the door for us. Elderly man, white woman, we might not live in the building but we must be harmless.

  I put a finger on Joel’s front doorbell and held it down until he opened the door, his face the color and texture of putty. He was wearing silk pajama bottoms and a T-shirt.

  “I’m calling the cops. You can’t harass me in my own home.”

  “While we wait for the police, I need some answers.” I pushed past him into his apartment, Mr. Contreras on my heels.

  The space was unexpectedly clean and tidy, its severe white walls hung with what looked like important art. An antique cabinet clock chimed the quarter hour as we came in. A grand piano stood in a corner.

  I pulled the stool out and sat down. “You’ll never guess where I was between one and four this morning.”

  Joel swayed on his bare feet. “I’ve always hated playing games with the wiseasses of the planet, and I’m not going to play yours.”

  I pulled a photograph from my bag, Annie at the mouth of the tunnel, and held it out. “I spent a chunk of time right inside this tunnel.”

  Joel’s skin changed from putty to ash. “Where did you get this?”

  “From a man who used to work with the Cubs. Annie hid something in this tunnel, but she’d been so clever, she had to brag about it to someone. Maybe she told Boom-Boom, but I’m betting not. I’m betting she chose you, the person in the office who was in love with her, the one who could appreciate her cleverness. When did you go to Wrigley to take the pages out of the album? Before or after she was killed?”

  Joel grabbed the edge of the piano. His forehead was beaded with sweat. He looked around, from me to Mr. Contreras, from me to the door. He couldn’t flee, not in his pajamas and no shoes.

  “Before,” I said with certainty. “Annie was crowing at the end of that day in the park, ‘No one can touch me now, no one can touch me now.’ She told you where she’d stashed the book, and you were itching with curiosity. You had to know what she’d hidden at the ballpark.”

  Joel didn’t say anything, but his shoulders slumped farther.

  “Must have taken a certain amount of courage to go into that tunnel, broad daylight,” I said.

  “Don’t patronize me,” he panted. “I’m not the man Ira was, I’m afraid of my own shadow, you can’t believe I could actually go to Wrigley Field and sneak into a tunnel the way you did, or—or Annie.”

  Mr. Contreras cleared his throat, but I shook my head at him: waiting was the only useful strategy here. I tried not to listen to the ticking of the clock. Tick, Bernie, tock, grievous bodily—no.

  “All right, I was in love with her,” Joel burst out. “Who wouldn’t be, such a beautiful bright girl. And then I heard she was hanging around with Warshawski. I knew I didn’t have a prayer. They laughed at me, Spike and his buddies, telling me she’d been seen with him. ‘Why would she care about an overweight nerd like you? And one who usually likes boys better than girls, anyway.’ Spike. That was his line, but all the others copied him.”

  His lips were flecked with white and his breath stank.

  “Get him a glass of water,” I said to Mr. Contreras, keeping my eyes on Joel.

  “I don’t want water. Get me the hair of the dog. You’ll see it easily enough,” Joel said.

  “So you went up to Wrigley,” I prodded.

  “Yes, I went up there, she’d told me where she’d put it, inside some loose asbestos tape around one of the pipes, and I found it.”

  “What was it?” I asked sharply.

  “A photo album that she’d stored papers in. I couldn’t make sense of them: canceled checks, an accounting statement for the Scanlon Agency, a statement for the law firm and also one for Scanlon’s youth club—his obnoxious Say, Yes! program that everyone who worked at Mandel & McClelland had to donate to.”

  “What did you do with the documents?” I asked.

  “I was flipping through the pages, so bewildered I didn’t leave the damned tunnel, and then I heard somebody coming in, so I taped the book back up against the pipe, only I was so rattled all the pages fell out onto the muddy floor. Ira or Spike or Sol Mandel, any of them could tell you that’s my normative state.”

  “Never mind that. Did you take them with you?”

  “I was trying to pick them up when this maintenance man came in, wanting to know what the fuck I was doing in there. I said I got lost looking for the men’s room and he marched me out. I only managed to save part of a bank statement. When I got home, I saw another page had stuck to it—someone had torn it in two and taped it back together and the tape stuck to the bank statement.”

  He licked his dry lips. “Where’s the old man with my drink?”

  Mr. Contreras came out with a glass of water. “You don’t need alcohol to get you through the day, young man. You drink this and start pulling yourself together.”

  Joel knocked Mr. Contreras’s hand away. “What, are you another goddam friend of Ira and Eunice’s sent to make me take the pledge?”

  Joel left the room. I got up to follow him but collapsed as a wave of dizziness swept through me. I half fell onto the piano. By the time I’d steadied myself, Joel had returned with a half gallon of Grey Goose and a glass.

  “The papers,” I said sharply. “What about the torn-up note?”

  “It said—never mind, I have it someplace.”

  He put the vodka and glass on a side t
able and went into another room, where we heard him opening drawers and rustling through papers. He came back with a tattered, yellowed page. At the top, someone had written in a tidy hand: FYI, Law and Order Man. The text was also handwritten, by a different person:

  Thanks for the $7500 to our Widows & Orphans Fund. You know by now that your boys have been released—the SA agrees that youthful high spirits aren’t grounds for arrest. Our overzealous officer will be moving to the Seventh, where you can count on the unit’s hostility to snitches to keep him from bothering you again.

  “Whose writing is this?” My voice came out in a croak: I was sure I knew who the overzealous officer had been.

  “Don’t know. Someone in the police, I guess. I asked Annie and she said some of the boys from Say, Yes! had been picked up on assault or extortion. She said she was working late and overheard Scanlon talking to Sol Mandel about how to get the charges dropped. She wasn’t sure what the boys had done, but she guessed it had to do with ‘persuading’ local businesses to buy their insurance from Scanlon.”

  “When did you talk to her about this?” I demanded.

  “The night she died.” He poured vodka into the glass, but stared at it, not drinking, seeing a past that made him twist his mouth into a grimace of self-loathing.

  “I tried figuring out what was so important about the things she’d hidden up at Wrigley. All I had was that one page of a bank statement, but it was from Continental Illinois, not Ferrite, where Mandel and Scanlon’s insurance agency and all of us banked—neighborhood solidarity, you know. It showed the balance from Say, Yes! but it was before the Internet, back when you still got your canceled checks sent to you in the mail. The page I found showed the closing balance, which was big for such a small neighborhood organization, I think it was ninety-three thousand.”

  “You didn’t keep it?” I asked.