Brush Back (24 page)

“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 finished 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?”

“When Sebastian was in school, we didn’t have any money.” Viola spoke to the floor in a whisper. “He worked in the bursar’s office and—and he borrowed money from the accounts to pay his bills.”

“Was he expelled?” I asked when she came to a complete halt.

“They found out right away. I guess Sebastian didn’t really know what he was doing, so he didn’t know how to cover his trail.”

“Embezzling is hard to conceal,” I agreed, “especially for a beginner.”

“It wasn’t embezzling,” she said reproachfully. “It was
borrowing.
He was going to pay them back, only they found out about it too soon.”

“How was he going to pay them back?” I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice. “By borrowing from someone else?”

“No, he thought—he knew someone who’d made a huge amount of money playing online poker and Sebastian got him to show him the system he used. Only he lost, it was like thirty thousand dollars in twenty minutes. I was watching, it was terrifying—he kept thinking he’d start winning. He only stopped because I turned off his computer. We didn’t know what to do, so I went to Uncle Jerry.”

“Jerry had money?”

“He said he could get the money but we’d have to pay him back and of course we agreed, but we didn’t know—it was so expensive! The interest, we could barely keep up, even with us both working. I can’t really date anyone, seriously, I mean—if some guy gets interested in me I break it off so I won’t have to explain about the money. I can’t even take a real vacation: all our money goes to Uncle Jerry!”

I wondered if she had any idea how good a motive for murder she was giving herself, but I didn’t suggest it. “How long has this been going on?”

“Seven years now. It’s like—the thirty thousand Sebastian lost, plus the twelve thousand he borrowed from the school accounts, we’ve paid that much three times already but we still keep owing Uncle Jerry.”

So Jerry had juice connections. “Your brother got to graduate from IIT?”

“Yes, thank goodness, at least the school let him pay back what he borrowed. He was on probation for his last two years, but they didn’t put anything bad on his transcript. Only that’s how the money to Uncle Jerry got so huge, because we could only make small payments when Sebastian was still in school and Uncle Jerry said the interest was like really expensive because none of us could get credit from a regular bank. I started working full-time as soon as I saw how much it was. I take classes at night, like my mom, but I’ve never been able to finish my degree. As soon as Sebastian gets full-time work, I’ll quit my job and go back to school, but construction these days, it’s hard.”

“You’re a good sister,” I said.

She flushed. “We’re all each other has.”

“You couldn’t persuade your uncle to let you off the hook? If you’ve already paid him, what? A hundred and twenty grand? That should have been enough.”

“That’s what Sebastian and I kept telling him. That’s what we were arguing about in church the day you saw me there. Sebastian—he’s afraid they’re going to let him go at the place he’s working and we can’t keep those payments up. You saw how Uncle Jerry acted. But then a few days later he said he could make it all go away if Sebastian would do him a favor.”

“And the favor was what?”

Viola looked at me with large unhappy eyes. “I don’t know. Sebastian wouldn’t tell me, but I know he didn’t want to do it, he and Uncle Jerry fought over it, I heard them, Sebastian saying if he got caught he’d never be able to work as an engineer again, and Uncle Jerry saying did he want to get out from under a rock or not. When they saw I’d come in, they stopped talking. After Uncle Jerry left, I begged Sebastian to tell me, but he said it was better if I didn’t know, he caused the problem, he’d solve the problem. And then
he
left, and it was the last time I saw him.”

“Do you live together?”

Viola nodded. “It was how we could save a little money, not having to pay rent separately, you know.”

“Why are you here?”

Viola twisted the tissue so tightly that it tore, shedding confetti onto her jeans and the floor. “On TV they said you were one of Chicago’s best investigators. Not with the police. I thought you could find Sebastian.”

“It would be better if you went to the police,” I said. “They have the resources—”

“No, no, no! I keep telling you, no police. If I had to tell them what I told you, they’d think Sebastian was a criminal, and they’d arrest him.”

“The statute of limitations on his embezzling has expired,” I said. “They won’t arrest him, unless what he was doing for Jerry was criminal. Are you sure you don’t know what your uncle asked him to do?”

“I don’t,” she wailed, “but, you know, the way Sebastian said I was better off not knowing . . .”

“Who did your uncle work for? Did you meet the people who gave him the money for Sebastian’s rescue?”

“He didn’t like us to be around him,” Viola said. “Like, we knew he lived in Lansing, but we were never supposed to visit him. We’d meet him once a month at Saint Eloy’s to pay him; he volunteers there. Volunteered.”

I didn’t try to tell her Jerry got paid for his church work, but pulled out my cell phone and showed her the picture I’d taken.

Viola didn’t recognize the gravel-faced man. “I keep telling you, we hardly ever saw Uncle Jerry. He said he didn’t want to talk to me in public, he didn’t want people tracking him, but I’m so desperate about Sebastian, I kept trying to phone Uncle Jerry, but he wouldn’t answer—I guess he saw my name on the caller ID. And now he’s dead, and what if the same people are after Sebastian? I have to find him. Can you do it? If he gets—if someone—I’ll never be able to go on without him.”

I didn’t like this, not one little bit. If Fugher had arranged a juice loan for his nephew, he had ties to some of the scariest people in Chicago. The way he’d been killed meant he for sure had the wrong kind of enemies. As for Sebastian, missing for almost a week after signing on to one of Uncle Jerry’s projects, he was almost certainly dead, as well. Remember Nancy Reagan:
Just Say No.

“I charge one hundred dollars an hour,” I heard myself saying instead.

Viola looked at me in astonishment. “I told you, we don’t have any money.”

“You’ll have more money now that your uncle is dead,” I said bracingly. “Anyway, either you sign a contract and agree to my fee, or we shake hands forever.”

SHORT RELIEF

We both froze
at what sounded like a cavalry regiment on the stairs—Viola because she was afraid of who might be coming, me because I knew who was coming. Viola scuttled down the hall toward the kitchen. I stayed in my chair. Bernie burst into the apartment, the dogs pushing past her to run over to me. We’d been separated for ten hours and the reunion was noisy and heartfelt. Mr. Contreras, who is ninety, trudged slowly up behind them.

“Doll, we was worrying about you. Bernie said she let some strange lady in and when we didn’t hear anything—and then your clothes in the front hall—”

Bernie was seventeen. She imagined disrobing as the result of uncontrolled passion. Mr. Contreras thought it meant I’d been abducted.

“She’s a potential client. Viola,” I called, “come on back. These are my neighbors.”

Viola returned to the living room, looking suspiciously at Mr. Contreras, the dogs, and even at Bernie, who had let her into the apartment in the first place.

“If you want me to work for you, come to my office, not my home, and we’ll sign a contract and you can give me an advance against expenses. You have to go now; I’m out of time.”

Viola didn’t want to leave by the front way, in case the people who’d killed Uncle Jerry had tracked her down here. That made me think she knew Fugher’s killers, but she denied it vigorously, starting to cry again. I’d run out of patience with her; I got Bernie to take her down the back stairs and out through the gate in the alley.

“What’s she want you to do?” Mr. Contreras asked.

When I told him, he expostulated that I didn’t need the Mob on my case.

“No quarrel here,” I agreed. “Hopefully, finding her brother won’t mean tangling with the Mob.”

“You turn it over to Captain Mallory,” Mr. Contreras said. “This is police business.”

“What’s police business?” Jake came in through the open front door. “V.I., have you been mud wrestling, and you didn’t get me a ticket?”

“I’m going to make my filthy clothes an art installation,” I announced. “People will fill out a survey on what the clothes mean to them and I’ll guess their age, sex and sexual fantasies. Like, who thinks mud wrestling first instead of, I don’t know—”

“Alligator wrestling,” Jake suggested.

“Way sexier,” I agreed.

“Can you be ready to leave in twenty minutes? In something not covered with mud or alligator skin?”

One of Jake’s students was playing a concert in a small venue off the Loop. Bernie, back from escorting Viola, followed me into my bedroom while I changed into going-out clothes. Living with a teenager means kissing any privacy farewell.

“What have you found out about this Stella woman’s attack on Uncle Boom-Boom?”

I was pulling a silver top over my head, which gave me time to organize my thoughts: I didn’t want to expose myself to a barrage of Bernie’s urgent questions by saying I’d gotten bogged down in all the family relations involved and couldn’t make sense of any of them.

“I think the diary is a cover-up for something else,” I said, when I’d adjusted the sleeves and draped a scarf across my shoulders. “What I don’t understand is why the Guzzos tried to drag me into their drama in the first place.”