Brush Back (16 page)

Betty picked up a twig and dangled it between her thumb and forefinger. “I wanted to smack her, she was so smug and smirky. ‘Don’t you know it’s a mortal sin to take those pills?’ I said. I tried to grab them from her but she laughed, stuck them in her purse.

“‘I’m going to Philadelphia to college,’ she says. ‘No one’s going to tie me down with a baby and a husband. Mortal sins and coal dust, they’re both about as useful as Daddy’s pension.’ Mateo Guzzo’s pension disappeared along with everyone else’s when the steel company went bankrupt,” Betty added.

“Did Annie say who she was sleeping with?” I held my breath, hoping Betty would say Joel or Sol Mandel or even Spike Hurlihey.

“I asked who the lucky boy was and she got this look on her face, you know, like she’s
Cosmo
’s sex adviser. ‘No boys for me. They’re too young, they don’t know how to treat women.’ That’s how I knew it was Boom-Boom, because he was the only older man she was close to.”

I opened and shut my mouth without speaking. Annie had been close to my dad, and to Sol Mandel, and maybe to the other partner at the law firm, but I didn’t want to add to the muck Betty was carrying in her head.

Betty was still ranting. “Of course I told Frank about it and we agreed Stella should know. I mean, Annie wasn’t even going to be eighteen for another month!”

The field and stands seemed to shimmer behind me. Frank, coming to me, not telling me about that conversation? What a total fuckup, him, Stella, the whole situation.

“You told Stella. Is that why she had her final big blowup with Annie? Is that why Annie had to die?”

Betty’s chin jutted out in a major-league scowl. “You can’t say things like that! It’s not my fault if Stella went off the deep end. I thought she had a right to know, a right as a mother. She went through Annie’s dresser. Besides the pills, she found an envelope with two thousand dollars in it!”

“I hope neither of you is imagining Boom-Boom paid Annie to sleep with him. He was pushing women away with his hockey stick in hotel lobbies all over North America.”

Betty bunched up her lips. “Stella took the money. When Mr. Guzzo’s pension disappeared it was hard for her to keep up the mortgage payments, and for Annie just to sit on that cash! Me and Frank had to live with my folks, trying to save something extra for a house, which you don’t do when you’ve got a baby and another one coming. Annie thought she was so much better than us, going off to some East Coast college. Just like you she was, sleeping with anyone and everyone, flaunting her education.”

I couldn’t tell which the real grievance was—sex or education. Maybe both. “Did Annie reveal where the money came from?”

“Stella demanded, she had a right to know, and Annie said Mr. Mandel gave it to her, a present to help with college. And Stella asked what special favors Mr. Mandel asked for to help send Annie away. Annie slapped her, can you believe that? Hitting her own mother? So Stella had to fight back. It went on and on, night after night, the fighting, the shouting—the Jokiches even called the police—until the night, well, the night Annie died.”

“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.

“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.