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I quickly scanned Bagby’s personal history. He’d married young, been divorced five years. Delphina was his only child, apparently named for his mother, Delphina Theodora Burzle.
Burzle. I’d heard that name recently, but where? I put a query to my computer, and it came back with the file from the Guzzo case. Nina Quarles’s mother had been Felicia Burzle.
I stared at the screen and then slowly put my pen down, as if it were a heavy, fragile object. I went back to Genealogy Plus for Rory Scanlon’s full family tree—the first time round I’d only gone back to 1920.
I find genealogy tables hard to follow, but I painstakingly wrote down all the names and dates of births and marriages of the Burzles, the Scanlons and the Bagbys. The enormous families people had before World War I made it a tedious project, but in the end, I could see that Vince Bagby and Nina Quarles were first cousins. Vince’s mother and Rory Scanlon were cousins as well. Vince, twenty years younger than Rory, had grown up within two blocks of the Scanlon house.
I sat back, picturing Vince at eight or nine, trotting around after his big cousin. Rory, who liked to look after the neighborhood, would have paid special attention to a young cousin. Taken him to ball games, to the beach, to the bank, whatever the magnificent big cousin wanted, the little cousin would sign on for as well.
I checked the Sturlese, Previn and Guzzo genealogies as well, but no Burzles or Bagbys or Scanlons appeared. I’d expected Stella Guzzo to show a connection to one or the other families—it might explain why Mandel & McClelland had agreed to represent her—but the Irish family she’d grown up in didn’t connect to Scanlon, Burzle or Bagby, even when I traced them back to their first generation in America.
I couldn’t find a connection for Sebastian and Viola Mesaline, either, nor for their Uncle Jerry’s adoptive family. As for Boris Nabiyev, I dug up a meager file on him in a Homeland Security database. He had arrived in Chicago from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, eleven years ago. He had a green card. That was all the computer could tell me about him—not his address, or even his age.
On the other hand, when I looked up Spike Hurlihey, he turned out to be a cousin of Rory Scanlon’s. Hurlihey, Scanlon, Nina Quarles and Vince Bagby all grew up in the same pack. One for all, all for one. Maybe they hadn’t deliberately kept the relationship a secret from me, but I could feel them giving each other a nod and a wink on their side of the fence: we’re keeping her chasing her tail, while we write the script.
A cold anger began to build in me. I could rewrite this story. Maybe not tonight, but soon. I had learned one of their secrets and I would uncover others.
I’d lost track of the time and of my cold. It was midnight when Bernie bounced into my apartment, Mitch at her heels, announcing that the Blackhawks had lost the first game of the Stanley Cup playoffs in triple overtime.
“The Canadiens won their first game, so it’s not so bad. Papa will be here the day after tomorrow, but you have to tell him I’m not going back to Canada, not until we’ve cleared Uncle Boom-Boom’s name, and anyway, I have summer camp at Northwestern, so what’s the point? I’ll just be coming back in July.”
“Bernie, if it were up to your mother and me, I’d be packing you in a box to ship to Quebec tonight. I’ll be happier seeing your father walk off that plane than I would be looking at Stanley Cup celebrations in Grant Park. And I want you back down with Mr. Contreras tonight. It’s safer than it is up here.”
Her lips twitched—she wanted to argue back but realized in time she was out on an unsupported limb. She gave a rueful smile, an endearing Gallic shrug. We rounded up the stuffed animals she slept with, I found her cell phone charger under the sofa, retrieved her retainer from its burial ground in the sofa cushions, and loaded everything into a backpack with a change of clothes for the morning.
I got dressed myself to escort her back down the stairs to Mr. Contreras’s place. The old man was standing in the doorway, keeping a watch over the street door.
“We thought you’d be back down for dinner, doll, but then I thought maybe you’d gone to sleep. You should, with that cold and everything, but we have a plate of spaghetti for you if you’re hungry.”
“Sorry.” I kissed his cheek. “I lay too long in the bath, but I should have called.”
I wrapped up in one of his old coats to take the dogs out back for a last time. Jake was coming in the front door when I got back. I walked upstairs with him, but repeated what I’d said to Bernie.
“I don’t want to huddle alone in my place, but these people scare me. I don’t want anyone I love caught in their crossfire.”
He looked at me quizzically. “You think if they firebomb your apartment the rest of the building will escape unscathed? I’m more afraid of catching your cold than I am of Uzbeki hit men or Insane Dragons.”
“That’s because you never saw the hitman.”
“I never saw a germ, either.” He put his free arm around me for a moment before going into his own place to park the bass. “But I know what they can do to my sense of hearing.”
When I went back inside my own place, I saw a coaster from Weeghman’s Whales on the floor. I frowned over it—it’s a Wrigleyville bar that I never go to. It must have fallen out of the sofa when we were collecting Bernie’s animals, but what had Bernie been doing there? Another problem for another day. I went into my closet safe to take out my gun storage box.
Jake came in behind me, unfortunately: he hates guns, he hates to know I even own one. The sight of the weapon made him back away from me.
“Call me when you’ve put that thing away, V.I. I can overcome my terror of the rhinovirus, but a gun is a total antiaphrodisiac.”
CHANGEUP
When I finally woke up,
a little after nine, my clogged sinuses were putting painful pressure on my sore eye—not to mention my broken nose. I wanted to take enough sleeping pills to put me under until at least my cold had passed, if not until every member of the Guzzo family died, but I forced myself to my feet.
My face in the bathroom mirror would have done Picasso proud: the left side held a creative mix of yellows, purples and greens. Just as well the Smith & Wesson had driven Jake away last night: Romeo would have vanished without a single metaphor if Juliet had appeared on her balcony looking like this.
While my espresso machine heated up, I huddled over a ginger steam pot. After fifteen minutes of that, and a few shots of caffeine, I didn’t look any more beautiful, but my left eye was working; I would make it through the day.
I went down to the ground floor where Mr. Contreras was feeding Bernie his staple comfort breakfast of French toast. She agreed to a walk over to the lake with me and the dogs. She chatted about Northwestern’s hockey camp, wondering if it had been a mistake to commit to their program without seeing Syracuse and Ithaca.
My gun was in my tuck holster inside my jeans waistband. As we walked along Belmont, I wondered how much of the rest of the city was armed. I didn’t blame Jake for hating guns; they make you twitchy, make you see the world around you as dangerous, as if you wanted an excuse to pull your weapon and fire.
Every half block or so, I’d pull Bernie and the dogs into an alley or doorway to see whether the same people were around us, and if they, too, were halting. Bernie made a few scornful remarks about imaginary Uzbeks, but when we returned home, she assured me she would spend the day pulling her things together for her return to Canada.
“Is this one of your things?” I held out the coaster from Weeghman’s Whales.
“Oh!” She turned red and stuffed it into her backpack. “I went there with friends the other night. I
am
eighteen, you know, or at least, I will be in five weeks!”
“Darling, the legal drinking age may be eighteen in Quebec, but here in Illinois it’s twenty-one. Don’t tempt the fates again, okay?”
She accepted the reprimand without argument, to my surprise, just gave me a puckish smile and announced she was going to use my bathroom before she went back to Mr. Contreras. “Your tub is so big, I love lying in it.”
I hoped she couldn’t get in trouble in a midday bath, because I needed to go to my office. Although it was Saturday, I was too far behind in my work to stay home with her.
I resolutely put the Guzzo-Bagby-Scanlon world out of my mind while I caught up on client business. Murray called as I was crossing Milwaukee for a coffee. He was exuberant, taking the e-mail I’d sent him yesterday about Hurlihey’s involvement in Virejas Tower as a sign that we were once again best friends forever.
“What do you have on Spike that you’re keeping to yourself, Warshawski? You know this environmental exception only looks serious if you live in Vermont or Oregon.”
“Nothing, Murray, just fishing in very murky waters.”
“Come on, Warshawski, something’s going on: I read the police reports, and I know you tangled with Insane Dragons the other night. I know Spike comes from the same slagheap you do, so if you’ve been digging up skeletons in the land of your youth, tell me now, while I still feel I owe you one. If you sit on the story too long, I’m going to be peevish and make you look bad on air.”
“Spike didn’t come from my slagheap—he was across the Calumet on the East Side, back when that was the tony part of Steel City,” I objected.
I put him on hold while I ordered a cortado. My frustrations with Murray, for letting himself look ridiculous on cable TV, or for trying to pretend he wasn’t fifty by dating women half his age, were outweighed by our long years of working together.
He was still on the line when I came back. “There’s no novel, Murray, at least not yet, but there are a whole lot of unconnected chapters.”
I gave him a thumbnail. The number of names and relationships were so complicated Murray decided he needed to see my reports firsthand. As a further sign of renewed friendship, we agreed to meet at the Golden Glow around seven.
Thinking about the control Spike had over the legislature made my head ache again. In my own lifetime, four Illinois governors have gone to prison for fraud. As has the mayor of Cicero, numerous Cook County judges, Chicago aldermen, and state and federal representatives. What a place. Maybe I should move to Vermont or Oregon, where people are still shocked by violations of the public trust, and are willing to take action to stop them. Moving would also get me far away from the Cubs. I couldn’t see a downside.
Back in my office, I had an alert on my computer, reminding me that I owed one of my regular clients a report on an internal auditor suspected of skimming. Senior staff were meeting on Saturday so they could get together without alerting the suspected auditor. The company had let me insert keystroke software into the suspected skimmer’s computer, which showed him sending a penny on every hundred dollars to an account in Liechtenstein. I took a heavy-duty decongestant and was pulling together the final report—with ten minutes to get it to the client—when Stella Guzzo phoned.
I stared at the caller ID in disbelief, but let the call go to voice mail while I did a final proofread and e-mailed the report to the client. We were handling the meeting via videoconferencing, so I got myself hooked up to the meeting room before playing Stella’s message.
“You need to come to South Chicago this afternoon to see me.” The recording accentuated the harshness in her deep voice.
My impulse was to phone her back, but I thought of all the changes she and Frank—and Betty—had been putting me through. She could summon me, and then have me arrested for violating the restraining order. I copied the message and e-mailed it to my lawyer’s office.
Is there some way to find out what she wants? Is she vacating the r.o.? Going into a meeting; will call back in an hour.
I sat through the meeting in profile, good eye to the camera, answering questions more or less on autopilot, trying to imagine what Stella wanted. When I’d finally fielded the last of the financial VP’s questions—he kept asking the same thing, hoping for a different answer—I checked my messages.
Freeman Carter had called to say that the restraining order was still in place. “Her lawyer is doing a very annoying dance. The short answer is don’t go near the Guzzo family until I tell you I’ve got a document signed by a judge lifting the order. Call or e-mail me to confirm that you will not go down there.”
The urge to drive to Stella’s house, to burst in on her and turn her house inside out, was strong, but even more than dismembering Stella, I wanted to sleep. I called Freeman to confirm that I was following his advice. Between the decongestant, the injuries and the pain meds, I could barely keep my eyes open. I staggered to the cot in my back room and was asleep almost before I was horizontal.
The phone dragged me awake an hour later. It was Natalie Clements, the young woman in the Cubs media relations department.
I felt drugged, but Natalie was bright and peppy and delivered a breathless monologue. “Your name came up last night when Mr. Drechen and I went to visit his old boss. Mr. Villard is the gentleman who had the pictures we showed you of your cousin. The day after our press release, his house was broken into and somebody stole a lot of his photographs. They took Billy Williams’s first home run ball, oh, a lot of treasures. It’s horrible—they’re his memories!
