Brush Back (V.I. Warshawski Novels Book 17) Page 4

  Cardenal made a face. “I wish you’d asked me when I still was covered with plaster dust, but yes, we can find them, I guess.”

  The records were in yet another chilly room with a cracked ceiling and dirty windows. Cardenal left me alone with the cartons. They weren’t stacked in any particular order, and the parish had celebrated its 125th anniversary five years back. Twenty-seven of the forty-two years Gielczowski had been the priest had been among the most active in St. Eloy’s history. I read about baptisms and weddings until my eyes glazed over. The only thing that was remotely relevant was the report of the bingo game for the Wednesday night Annie died: 192 people had taken part, the top prize of $250 had gone to Lyudmila Wojcek, and the income net of prizes and refreshments had been $318.50.

  I put the registers back where I’d found them, and brushed as much of the dust from my shirt and jeans as I could. Father Cardenal wasn’t in his office when I went to say good-bye, so I left a short thank-you note. I added a twenty, with a message to put it into the building fund.

  WHIFFING THE CURVE

  Back in my office, back in my present life, I put on Mozart’s Requiem, with Emma Kirkby singing the soprano line—almost with Gabriella’s purity. The music suited my bleak, elegiac mood.

  I had given Frank his free hour and then some, but I couldn’t quite let the matter go. He wouldn’t have come to me if he hadn’t been feeling desperate, or at least worried, by what was going on with his mother.

  I wrote down everything I could remember, both from his conversation and from hers. The choir had finished their plea for eternal light before I finished comparing what Frank and Stella had each said. I studied the chart I’d made before calling Frank’s cell.

  I could hear traffic noise in the background when he answered. Don’t talk while driving, I thought of admonishing him, but really, I wanted to get the conversation out of the way as fast as possible.

  “Frank, I went to see your mother this morning, and I don’t know who is more confused, her, me or you.”

  “You went to see her?” he repeated, indignant. “Why did you do that? I thought you were going to investigate Annie’s death.”

  “I had to start someplace, and she’s the person with the most intimate knowledge of your sister’s death. You can’t have thought I wouldn’t go to her.”

  “Why didn’t you start with the cops?”

  “I did: those files went into cold storage a long time ago.” Clients are always thinking they have a better action plan than the investigator they hired—even clients who tried to comfort you when their mothers had disrupted your own mother’s funeral.

  “Ma let you in? How did she—what did she say?”

  “A lot of stuff: the same old, same old about my mother and your dad, and then newer stuff about Boom-Boom and Annie, and then stuff I never knew about you. Your tryout with the Cubs.”

  “She talked about that?”

  “Yes. When did that happen?”

  I heard honking and braking in the background. Frank swore at some other driver and hung up. When I reached him again, traffic sounds had been replaced by Muzak and people shouting out orders.

  “I had to get off the road. Taking my break, which means I’ve got fifteen minutes.”

  “Tell me about the Cubs,” I said.

  “It was a long time ago. Old dead news.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “It was the fall before Annie died.” He sounded tired, as if dredging up the story took more energy than he had, but he plowed ahead. “I was already driving for Bagby, but I played in a league, the real deal, not sixteen-inch, and we got this call, our team did, saying the Cubs were having an open tryout day and some of our guys had been picked to play a couple of innings. Their scouts would be there, and so on.”

  “Pretty exciting. Who set it up?”

  “I don’t know. Someone at Saint Eloy’s, I think was what the guys said, someone who knew someone in the Cubs organization. You know how that goes.”

  I knew how that went. You always need someone who knows someone. Even Boom-Boom might not be in the Hockey Hall of Fame if the Tenth Ward committeeman hadn’t known someone who dated a woman who knew a man in the Blackhawks organization.

  “What was it like?”

  “Sitting in the dugout at Wrigley Field? Running across that grass? When I get to heaven, it better be exactly like that.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “I hope it is, Frank, but what I really wondered was what the tryout was like.”

  “I’m driving a truck, aren’t I?” he said roughly. “Not admiring my statue in Cooperstown.”

  “What happened?”

  The sigh came across the phone like the hiss of air leaving a balloon. “You lose those muscles. I mean, I was strong, I was driving a truck, all that stuff. But my baseball muscles, my eye, my timing, all those were gone.

  “Boom-Boom, he coached me. Not the baseball, he couldn’t play baseball for shit, but he was a professional athlete, he knew what it took to get in shape. Bagby gave me a leave. Not Vince, who’s in charge now, but his old man. Hell, they were rooting for us, five of us going for the tryout worked there, and Boom-Boom and me, we worked out together every morning. If he was in town—the hockey preseason had started, but I worked out on my own, two hours every morning. I followed his training diet, everything.”

  I hadn’t known about this. Guy things that Boom-Boom didn’t think were worth sharing.

  “So I was in great shape. I could run a hundred yards in fifteen seconds.”

  “Impressive,” I agreed.

  “I should have tried out with the Bears,” he said bitterly. “They could have used a guy with fast legs and a truck driver’s muscles.”

  I waited: this was a painful memory. Any words from me might shut him up completely. When he spoke again, it was quickly, in a mumble that I could barely understand.

  “I couldn’t hit major league pitching.”

  I still didn’t speak. Who can hit major league pitching? Even the best pros only do it once every three tries, but that wouldn’t be a consolation to the guy driving a truck instead of playing in the show.

  “Ma—Ma blamed Boom-Boom. I shouldn’t have said anything to her, but, you know, I had to talk to her about something, so I told her when we heard we were going to get the chance to try out. She was excited, never seen her like that, she kept saying she’d been waiting for this, waiting for me to get my big chance, prove to the world that Guzzos counted as much as—as Warshawskis. And then, of course, I had to tell her how it came out.”

  I looked at the dialogue boxes I’d created of Stella’s invective. “She said Boom-Boom made you fail.”

  “That’s not fair, she shouldn’t say that kind of thing, but at the time I was hurt, you know, the way you are when things don’t pan out.”

  I sat up straight. “What did you tell her about Boom-Boom?”

  “Oh, Tori, you know what it was like when Boom-Boom showed up anywhere, at least anywhere that people cared about sports. He sat in the dugout, he was cheering me on. Only everyone in the place went nuts when they realized Boom-Boom Warshawski was there. He was signing autographs, even the Cubs brass wanted them.”

  Anger and grief—he was still feeling them. His one chance at the big time and Boom-Boom had stood in his sunlight.

  “I’m sorry,” I said inadequately.

  “Yeah, not as sorry as me.” He gave a bark of laughter. “I probably couldn’t have hit the curve if Boom-Boom had gone to Edmonton—he skipped a game against Wayne Gretzky to come to Wrigley with me! But it wouldn’t have felt so—so bad. Boom-Boom watching me whiff, it was worse than when old Gielczowski used to make me lower my pants. And Ma took it like that. To her, it was more proof that the Warshawskis had it in for us. Even later, when I’d visit her in prison, she’d go on about it.”

  “I hope y
ou didn’t believe her, Frank,” I said. “No one in my family wished anyone in your family ill. My mother loved Annie, your dad was a wonderful man, and you know, there were a couple of months where I was in love with you.”

  “Just as well we split when we did,” he jeered. “Ma would have put arsenic in your wedding champagne.”

  It was a gallant effort at humor and I laughed obligingly. “She may manage yet. She gave me a good belt in the shoulder, and if she gets hold of poison or a gun I’m definitely toast.”

  “She hit you? I thought you were tougher than that.”

  “Not tough enough, not quick enough.” I took a breath. “Did you know she’s saying Boom-Boom killed Annie when you asked me to investigate?”

  There was a long pause. I could hear people ordering sandwiches and muffins, room for cream in that thing, hon.

  “She’s saying all kinds of wild things,” he finally said. “Not just that, other crazy stuff. I don’t know what she wants to say or do to get her name cleared, but if she goes completely off the skids, Frankie, Frank Junior—my boy, you know—I want him to have the chance I never had.”

  “And you think Stella could derail him? No, Frank. She’s old, she’s still got a temper”—I rubbed the place on my shoulder where her punch had landed—“but she doesn’t have power, except the power you let her have in your life.”

  “You of all people, I’d think you’d know that when she gets a head of steam she can do anything.”

  “Yes, and that’s what’s telling me there’s nothing for me to find out about your sister’s death. Your mother is angrier than ever after all those years inside, and she’s looking for targets, not evidence.”

  Frank tried to get me to say I’d get the police to dig his sister’s file out of the warehouse, but his arguments lacked punch. The sadness in his voice made me brusque: I didn’t like the feeling that I had to pity him. I told him to send me the St. Eloy’s schedule so I could watch his kid play when the scouts were there and hung up.

  I started to write down the conversation, but it was hard. If it hadn’t been me talking to him, he probably would have cursed my cousin. Maybe he would have gotten a piece of a ball if Boom-Boom hadn’t been there, who knows? The star taking all the attention, that probably made Frank try too hard, tense up at the wrong moment.

  “Oh, Boom-Boom,” I said out loud. “You meant well, you were doing a good deed. I bet the Hawks fined you for skipping the Oilers game, too. No one got anything good out of that tryout.”

  The throwaway line about Gielczowski making Frank lower his pants, that was sickening, the whole story was sad and painful and sick. I’d never heard allegations about Gielczowski. Maybe he’d been caning boys, beating immorality out of them. When I think of immorality I think of the payday loans and hidden bank fees, the failure to pay a living wage, the preference for crappy schools in poor neighborhoods. I don’t think about sex.

  My morning with Stella, and now this—I felt dirty, so dirty that I went into the shower room behind my lease-mate’s studio. Her steelwork means she needs a place to clean up at the end of a long day. She’d put in a shower with those multi-head scrubbers, and I stood under them for a good ten minutes, wishing the needles of water could get inside my head and clean it out. Even scrubbed and in a clean T-shirt, I still felt rumpled.

  FORCE PLAY

  It was the second week of the regular season, that brief window when Cubs fans forget the eleven-month winter of their discontent and imagine that the glories of New York or St. Louis will become ours. The team was away, playing in Cincinnati, but the front offices would be well staffed.

  The ballpark is walking distance from my apartment. I parked at home so I could change into presentable clothes, including my Lario boots, which always make me feel important. Bernie arrived as I was coming back down the front walk.

  “You look tough, Vic, where are you going?”

  “Wrigley Field—want to come with me?”

  “Oh, baseball. Merci, non, trop ennuyant. Since you won’t be home, I can take a proper bath.” We’d had a bit of a tussle over whether an hour in the bathroom was really essential for proper hygiene. “And, no worries, I will take my hair out of the tub when I’m done.” Another discussion.

  Even when the team is away, even when the baseball season is over, the doors at Clark and Addison are open for guided tours. I paid twenty-five dollars to join a group. While they were admiring the spot where Harry Caray used to lead fans in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” I slipped away, until I found a door labeled Media Relations.

  A woman was on the phone, a bright smile on her face as she answered questions about rumors of an injury to Enrique Velasquez’s left knee. When she hung up, she flashed another smile in my direction.

  “I’m V. I. Warshawski. I was looking for Will Drechen.” I’d looked up the front office staff before leaving my apartment; Drechen was assistant director of media relations.

  The smile turned into regret; Will wasn’t in, but she was Natalie Clements, his assistant. Could she help?

  “I’m on a wild-goose chase. I’m writing a biography of Boom-Boom Warshawski.”

  “I’m new to the organization,” Natalie said apologetically. “I don’t know all the old players’ names yet.”

  I shook my head. “Boom-Boom played for the Blackhawks, tied Gretzky for most goals in 1990. And right about that time, he spent an afternoon here at Wrigley, during one of the amateur tryouts. I know it’s a long shot, but I’d love to find someone who was at the tryouts that year. If there was a photo, that would be a plus, but mostly I want background and color on how the day went. He could be a bit of a hot dog—I’m wondering if he tried to hit a ball or field or anything.”

  Natalie held up a finger while she answered her phone; two more calls came in and I wandered to the window to look out. Frank was right: that perfect grass under a spring sky, you did think heaven might look like this.

  Natalie finished her calls and apologized again. She took down a detailed message for Mr. Drechen, who was in a meeting, and noticed my last name. Yes, I was related—I pulled out my iPad and showed her the photo of Boom-Boom and me with the Stanley Cup the day it was his turn to have it. He and I had rented a convertible and driven the length of the city, me at the wheel and Boom-Boom sitting on the trunk, holding the Cup.

  “Gosh, wish I’d been the press officer that day,” Natalie said. “Great photo op. Anytime your cousin wants to bring the Cup to Wrigley Field—”

  He was dead, I said, but added that the Blackhawks were always game for publicity opportunities. Maybe when I’d finished the project we could work something out.

  I wondered if I’d ever hear back from the Cubs, wondered, too, what had made me go up there. Maybe I wanted reassurance that Boom-Boom hadn’t jinxed Frank’s tryout.

  Bernie was still in the bath when I got home. It was only mid-afternoon—still time to do some actual paying work. I drove to my office, where I put my Guzzo notes into a hanging file before turning to the fires my regular clients needed help extinguishing. That night, Jake took me dancing at Hot Rococo, where friends of his were playing. Maybe he couldn’t sucker punch a punk in an alleyway, but no one else had ever made me feel lighter than air on a dance floor.

  Jake was having his own problems—congressional failure to act on a federal budget had set cuts for everything from roads to military equipment. Arts budgets had been slashed to the bone. Below the bone—funding had already been chopped many times over. His High Plainsong group might have to dissolve: they’d laid off their administrator and were scrambling for free rehearsal space.

  When his friends’ gig at Hot Rococo ended, we all went out for pizza. The musicians grumbled, then imagined the opera they could write about starving artists.

  “It would be like La Bohème, except Congress would be watching Mimi and Rodolfo and laughing their heads off,” the
drummer explained. “As Mimi dies of malnutrition in the last act, a chorus of Congress members sings the spirited finale, ‘She got what she deserved for not being born rich.’”

  We all laughed, but there was a bitter undercurrent to it. They worked hard, they took multiple gigs, but the music that lay at the core of their beings kept getting shoved to the sidelines.

  Over the next week, the Guzzos disappeared nicely into the tar pits where they belonged. And then came the afternoon I was preparing sea bass alla veneziana for Max, Lotty and Jake. Bernie was going out with a couple of young women she’d met through her peewee hockey coaching, Mr. Contreras had a regular poker date with his retired machinist buddies.

  I whipped the egg whites and coated the fish and was laying them in their salt bed when my phone barked at me, the signal that a preferred contact had sent me a text.

  I peered at the screen. The Boom-Boom story is going out on our six o’clock local news. Any comment? M.R.

  Murray Ryerson. Murray had been a great investigative journalist until Global Entertainment bought the Herald-Star, slashed the number of reporters by two-thirds, and left him doing odd jobs on their cable news network.

  I washed my hands and called him. “What Boom-Boom story?”

  “Ah, V.I., you’re restoring my faith. Can she have been sitting on this all these years and not shared it with her closest comrade in the fight for truth and justice? No, I thought, but then I remembered the time you left me at a party to cover a homicide and didn’t bother to call. I remembered when you were outing the Xerxes Chemical CEO for malicious misconduct and didn’t call, and I thought, the Girl Detective is two-timing you again, Ryerson, but I’ll give her the benefit—”

  “Murray, do you have a point, or has TV made you think everyone around you is a captive audience?”

  “I was just trying to lighten your mood,” he complained. “Did Boom-Boom kill Annie Guzzo and let her mother spend twenty-five years in the Big House for said murder?”