Brush Back (15 page)

I was like someone trying to get over a video game addiction: just one more hand and I’ll give it up for good. One more conversation and I would let the Guzzos pickle in their own brine. I’d spoken to Stella’s current priest, to her trial lawyer, to the manager at the firm that had taken over Mandel’s practice. And I’d spoken to her son. I hadn’t talked to Betty, the woman Frank left me for when we were back in high school. I hadn’t seen the restraining order yet, but I didn’t think it included Stella’s daughter-in-law.

My route to the East Side, where Frank and Betty lived with her father, took me past the west side of St. Eloy’s, the side where the school and the playing fields stood. Boys were playing baseball. I stopped to look. These were high school teams, St. Eloy in silver, the visitors from St. Jerome in scarlet.

The bleachers were full of kids and parents from the two schools. It was the parents who were engaged by the action on the field; the kids were mostly listening to their devices rather than watching the action. Father Cardenal was in the front row, clapping enthusiastically.

St. Jerome’s was batting in the top of the third. The first batter reached on a routine single, the second hit a sacrifice fly to right field, but when the third kid hit a line drive headed to left field, the St. Eloy’s shortstop leapt into the gap, lay almost horizontal in midair to make the catch, and turned to double up the kid on second.

As St. Eloy’s trotted off the field, his teammates pounded the shortstop’s back, knocking his cap off. I didn’t need to see the crown of red-gold hair to know this was Frank’s son. It wasn’t just the grin, like his father’s at the same age, but those fluid moves.

Frank had covered the gap like that at sixteen. My stomach twisted. No wonder he was bitter, and wistful, seeking vindication through his son. It might happen, too, if young Frank got the right coaching, if he caught the eye of the right scouts, if he didn’t injure himself, if he continued to mature—if all the imponderables of luck and talent came together in him, Frank was right, his son had a ticket out of South Chicago, to college for sure, maybe even to the show.

The priest got up from his seat to fist-bump the kids, then started climbing the stands. I picked up the sweet-acrid smell of weed a second after he had, and saw the users bunched together on the top row. I watched the comedy play out, the desperate extinguishing of roaches, the taking of names, the promises of detention. Cardenal stayed up on the top of the stands, rummaging in the boys’ backpacks, while St. Eloy’s took the field. As he looked around he caught sight of me.

“
Hola
, Detective, come on up and sit down.”

He was messing with his dopers by calling me a detective, but I threaded my way up through the rows of students and parents.

“What should I do with these children smoking on my school yard?” the priest asked, jovially grabbing one of them by his shirt collar. “Set up a trace on their bank accounts, find out who they’re buying from and selling to?”

“You’re confusing me with the FBI, padre. I can’t do magic tricks with people’s money.”

“Ah, but you could follow them, right?” He slapped their shoulders. “Keep an eye behind you, this is one crafty detective. We never know whether she’s going to be on the North Side or the South Side, so you have to look in both directions.”

I didn’t say anything: I didn’t want to be part of his intimidation scheme. He let the boys sweat for a beat or two, then said, “So, Detective, come with me, tell me about your North Side investigations.”

I followed him back to the ground, looking at the action on the field while he stopped to talk to parents and children. I was hoping young Frankie would come to the plate while I was there, but St. Eloy’s already had an out and Frankie was still in the dugout.

When Cardenal finished glad-handing, he took me a short way away from the stands. “What is it you really want down here, Detective?”

I looked at him steadily. “Some slice of the truth, padre.”

“But which slice? And what do you plan to do with it?”

“Certainly not intimidate a bunch of high school kids. If they are drug-dealing gangbangers, they belong to the cops. If they’re bored, undermotivated kids with no future, you can do more for them than I can.”

“Oh—those boys up there. Yes, they’re a worrying problem all right. If they’re bored and undermotivated then they will inevitably become gangbangers. That’s why I don’t expel them for smoking dope in the ballpark—I don’t want to move them faster into gangland than they’re already going. I don’t expect you to take them on. I’m more interested in why you are looking at people in my church and then up at Wrigley Field.”

I stared. “Who— Oh. Uncle Jerry? He complained to you?”

“‘Uncle Jerry’?” Cardenal repeated. “He didn’t tell me you were a relative.”

“I don’t know his real name,” I said. “The first time I saw him, he was expostulating with a young woman; she called him ‘Uncle Jerry.’ I bumped into him this morning, quite literally. It was only five or six hours ago, but it’s fascinating that he came running to you. What did he say?”

“He says you taunted him about being in church.”

“Taunted?” I gaped. “I reminded him that we’d seen each other at Saint Eloy’s. I couldn’t find the utility closet when I was trying to stow your ladder; I lugged it all over the place and ended up in the church, where Jerry was arguing with a young woman. This morning, Jerry claimed he’d never been in church. He seemed terrified of the guy he was with, so when he denied all knowledge of Saint Eloy’s, I let it go.”

I pulled out my phone and opened the photo I’d taken of Jerry and Gravel. “This Uncle Jerry?”

Cardenal peered over the screen. “Yes, that’s Jerry. The other guy I don’t know. Who is he?”

I shook my head. “No idea. Who is Jerry?”

Cardenal paused before answering, as if trying to decide whether I wanted him to violate the confessional. “Jerry Fugher. He sometimes works on the electrics for us. He’s a kind of handyman, I guess. I don’t think he has a regular job, although his work for us is always good enough. Not creative, but functional, if you know what I mean. Maybe Bagby hires him to take care of wiring on the trucks.”

“What was he doing at Wrigley?”

“I didn’t ask,” Cardenal said, his tone reproving. “When I told him you were a detective, he became quite angry, wanting to know who hired you to stalk him. So you can see why I want to know your real business. Did you come to this church last week looking for him?”

“I didn’t think paranoia was an infectious condition, but you seem to have caught it from him. I have no interest in Jerry Fugher. My business down here is just that:
my
business. My cousin, remember? Stella Guzzo slandered him all over Chicago. Which brings me to a question for you: Did she give you this infamous diary for safekeeping?”

“If she did, that would not be any business of yours.”

“Have you seen this diary?” I said, impatient. “I’d like to know if it looks convincingly like a twenty-five-year-old document.”

“What does that mean?”

“A forensic expert would have to test the age of the paper, but there are a few simple things. Like, if it’s in a ‘Princess Fiona’ book, it’s definitely a forgery.”

A teacher came over to claim Cardenal’s attention: a fight had broken out behind the stands between a couple of boys from St. Eloy’s and a group from St. Jerome’s. I stopped at the home plate fence for a last look at the field. St. Eloy’s was still batting with one on and two out. Frankie was on deck. The batter ahead of him dribbled a ball back toward the mound, which should have been a routine out, but this was high school; the pitcher bobbled the throw and both runners were safe.

Frankie stepped up to the plate and the St. Eloy students and parents came to life, shrieking, stomping, yelling encouragement. The loudest cheers came from a heavy woman in the front row wearing a St. Eloy’s cap and warm-up jacket.

She screamed at me to get out of the way. “Do you own this ballpark? No one can see over your fat head.”

I backed away to the side of the stands. Frankie took strike one and a collective groan rose from the spectators.

The woman kept yelling. “Keep steady, Frankie, make him throw your pitch, he doesn’t have an arm, he has an old sock sewn to his shoulder.”

The women on either side of her were laughing and encouraging her. “You tell him, Betty! Frankie, listen to your ma, get us a hit!”

Betty Pokorny? I gaped at her. She’d put on thirty or forty pounds since high school, but it was her face that had changed. When I’d known her, she’d had soft round cheeks framed by light brown curls. Somewhere along the way she’d started bleaching her hair until now it hung in pale ropes to her shoulders. She had deep grooves along her mouth and in her forehead. Too much worry, too many cigarettes, maybe a few too many beers, too.

Frankie popped up while I was staring at her. One of her neighbors nudged her and pointed at me.

“What are you looking at?” she called. “You think your boy can outhit my boy?”

I shook my head, held up my hands, universal sign of peace, I don’t want any trouble, but the two women next to her were egging her on. Don’t let a St. Jerome’s mother dis your boy, and so on.

Betty started to her feet, fists clenched.

I went over to her. “Betty: it’s V. I. Warshawski. I stopped to watch Frankie—he’s an amazing—”

She slapped me before I could finish the sentence. “You?” she screeched. “I
knew
it, knew you’d never forgive me for stealing Big Frank from you. You’ve been up there on the North Side all these years, plotting—”

“No!” I roared.

She stopped shouting, but stood clenching and unclenching her fingers. Her two friends eyed her uneasily. They liked a shouting match but not a fight.

Other parents began yelling at us to shut up: “We didn’t come to watch two old broads fight.” “We’re here to watch our boys.” “Shut up!” “Get out of the way.”

I took Betty’s arm and hustled her away from the stands, to the back where Father Cardenal was dealing with the remnants of the fight he’d been summoned to break up.

BRUSH BACK

“You never did
forgive me for stealing Frank,” Betty repeated, but uncertainly, as if she didn’t really believe it.

“You two broke my heart,” I agreed, “but it mended. I only stopped here today to see your son play. Frank told me he thought he might go all the way and—”

“So you have been sneaking around with Frank behind my back!”

It was the tiredness in her face that kept me from losing my temper, the heavy lines that I’d seen on the faces of my classmates’ mothers when I was growing up. She wouldn’t have wanted my pity, but poverty is an unrelenting taskmaster.

“Didn’t Frank tell you? He hired me to try to help Stella with her exoneration claim. Which only led to her slandering Boom-Boom, and then slapping me with a restraining order. We have been having fun without you, I suppose.”

“He hired you without talking to me? And me, trying to pay the bills and raise the kids on what he brings home from Bagby? Where’s that money supposed to come from? Stella’s right—you and your mother, you live to ruin our lives.”

“I hadn’t thought about you in years, Betty, not until Frank came to me two weeks ago. Sounds as though you and Stella are pretty close, though. I’m surprised—I didn’t think you wanted her moving in with you when she came home from prison.”

“I’m looking after enough people with my dad, the kids, Frank, I don’t need Stella. But that doesn’t mean I don’t respect her for standing up for her beliefs.”

“What beliefs?” I asked. “She has some moral code I don’t know about?”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Betty said scornfully. “You’re the one who encouraged Annie to go on the Pill, to sleep around, all that stuff. If she hadn’t hung out around you and your mother, she never would have carried on the way she did.”

“Carried on how?”

“She was like you: she’d go after anything in pants. Maybe Stella reacted too hard, but if either of my girls goes on the Pill and I learn about it, I’ll be just as mad as Stella was.”

“You’ll kill your kids? It’s an interesting riff on safe sex. You think Stella was right to murder Annie?”

Betty reddened. “You’re twisting my words! Of course not. I’m just saying Annie wasn’t the little saint you and your mother thought.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Father Cardenal looking at us. I was afraid he might interrupt, but the mother of one of the kids he’d been dealing with started shouting at him and he turned back to the other fight.

“How did you know Annie was on the Pill? Did she tell you?”

“Goddam right she did. Frank and me, we were married, Lucy was two and I was pregnant with Kelly—Frank Junior, he was my third before the two youngest girls. Anyway, Annie came over to watch Lucy for me while I went to the store. You never were pregnant, were you? That’s how you kept your figure, but babies take a toll, so I mentioned my sore back. And little Miss Priss says, ‘You ever hear of birth control?’ showing off her packet. Like this.”