Brush Back (20 page)

“Warshawski, the only thing you know how to write is a case report. You’re clueless about narrative, story arc, building suspense. You got a ghost writer?”

“Don’t start by insulting me, or I’ll make you read my senior thesis, which won top honors in the Social Sciences Division the year I graduated.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Murray said hastily. “I know you’re mad at me, Warshawski, but honestly, it’s hard to learn about something like this in my own paper when everyone knows how tight you and I are.”

I sighed. “Murray, if I tell you something off the record, you had better keep it off the record, or I will post candid pictures of you on your Facebook page.”

He promised, but when I told him, he was enthusiastic. “Let me do it, V.I.—it’s the perfect refutation for the diary story, and anyway, the city still loves him.”

“Maybe, Murray, maybe. Let me get out from under the Guzzos first.”

When I hung up, my eye caught the engraving of the Uffizi on the wall to my right. It had been my mother’s. I could feel the sternness of her disapproval as I dialed Fort Dearborn’s Internet help line.

I was afraid scam artists had helped themselves to my mother-in-law’s debit card, I said. She was eighty-eight and so rattled that she couldn’t remember her account number; could they help me? No, I didn’t have her Social Security number, but I could verify her current address on Buffalo, the street she grew up on and her mother’s date of birth.

Three clicks later and I was looking at Stella’s bank account. I couldn’t get statements from twenty-five years ago, which might have shown whether or not she had enough cash to bribe Judge Grigsby, but I could go back two years. The house must have been owned free and clear some time before that, because every month showed automatic debits to the utility companies, and twice a year the property tax of $546.50 had been paid, along with the homeowners insurance.

Once a quarter, enough money had come in to cover those bills via wire transfer from an account at Global American Bank. The transfers had stopped the quarter before Stella’s release. Once she’d been released, she started collecting Social Security survivor benefits, slightly more than what her benefactor had been putting into the account.

I printed out the screen, but didn’t know how to dig any deeper than that, not without a professional hacker, a bigger budget and even fewer scruples than I’d already demonstrated.

“But we’ve learned something,” I said to the dogs. “We know that someone was paying Stella’s bills. She didn’t have any money—Mateo Guzzo’s pension disappeared in the big meltdown of the steel industry and none of those Garretty brothers had two nickels to rub together. Who paid her bills?”

Mitch flattened his ears. “She threatened someone, is your theory? Could be. Or did a big favor for someone. They stopped paying when she got out. Is that why she decided to look for exoneration? Because her invisible angel stopped pouring gold coins on her?”

As I shut down my computer, Freeman called. “Vic, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you cannot go near the Guzzo family, or Stella’s house, or her grandchildren.”

“Freeman, I stopped to watch the kids play baseball. That’s a crime?”

“It is if you attack one of the mothers.”

“This is beyond outrageous. She tried to slug me.”

“It doesn’t matter.
Stay away from that family if you want me to continue to represent you.
”

He hung up, sending me home in a thoroughly unpleasant mood.

DOG DAYS

The dogs woke me,
barking in the upper landing. I bolted out of bed, pulling on jeans and a T-shirt. Jake mumbled something, turned over.

When I cracked open his front door, I saw Mr. Contreras struggling to hold Mitch, who was lunging at a couple of uniformed cops outside my own apartment. Peppy stood sentinel, barking short urgent warnings. One of the cops had his gun drawn, and maybe he would have used it, except that Rochelle, who lives in the unit underneath mine, was also in the upper hall.

“Go ahead and shoot them!” she was screaming. “They’re a menace. It’s only fucking seven in the morning and they’ve woken the whole building.”

“Watch your language,” Mr. Contreras panted, trying to hold the bucking Mitch.

The police were shouting warnings, the Soong baby started crying on the floor below and the two men who lived across from Mr. Contreras on the ground floor were yelling up the stairwell to make the damned dogs be quiet.

I took the sash from Mr. Contreras’s magenta dressing gown and used it as a leash to tie Mitch to a baluster. Once Mitch was sitting, Peppy stopped barking, although the hair at the back of her head stood up and she kept growling in the back of her throat.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?” I asked the cops.

“Are you Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski?” He pronounced it “Ipp-jin,” but close enough.

On the other side of the door I heard Bernie call my name, her voice pitched high with fear. “Are you out there, Vic? Someone’s trying to break in! I called nine-one-one.”

“Yeah, I’m out here, honey. Good job. I’ll hold the fort until the police get here.”

“We are the police,” one of the uniforms said.

“My houseguest couldn’t possibly know that.” I peered at his badge. “Officer Burstyn. She assumed you were housebreakers. You can explain it to your friends when they get here.”

“Lieutenant Rawlings wants to talk to you.”

“Now I feel really special,” I said, “but he has my phone number, no need to send an armed escort all the way across the city to find me.”

“Are you arresting her?” Rochelle demanded.

“We don’t have a warrant,” the second man said. “But—”

“She’s dangerous,” Rochelle said. “I want her out of this building. Those dogs aren’t safe, and—”

“You need to talk to your local district, miss,” Officer Burstyn said. “If the dogs are running wild, or biting—”

“They never bit anyone,” Mr. Contreras said, indignant. “This gal has her undies in a bundle over the dogs, but I hear your music playing at all hours, young lady, and if you want to bring the cops here, well, what are those boys doing when they’re leaving your place at three in the morning? Bet these cops could find all kinds of drugs if I asked them to take a look.”

Rochelle’s face flamed fuchsia. “You dirty old man, how dare you—”

Mr. Soong appeared, barefoot, in jeans and a T-shirt. “Please. Please, everyone, be quiet, so the baby can become quiet again. The stairwell is not the place for an argument.”

“Right you are, Mr. Soong,” I said. “Officer, I can take the dogs inside and reassure my houseguest, but only if you promise not to follow me into my home.”

“Our orders were—”

“Yep, I know. I’ll come with you to talk to Conrad, but I need time to put on more clothes, calm a teenager and get these dogs where no one can bite them.”

This last phrase pushed Rochelle into another stream of invective: the police could see that I treated her fears as a joke, the dogs should be shot or impounded.

The cops, who’d lost control of the situation as soon as Mr. Contreras appeared with Mitch and Peppy, had started to order me to come right now, with the clothes I had on, but Rochelle made them decide to give me the benefit of the doubt. To show he wasn’t soft on PI’s or dogs, Burstyn phoned the Fourth District for instructions. Conrad, or some henchperson, agreed I could be trusted to get dressed and not to emerge firing a weapon.

“Bernie, you decent?” I called through the door. “I’m bringing your uncle Sal in.”

I didn’t exactly trust the cops to keep their promise, so I stood in the doorway with Mitch and Peppy until Mr. Contreras was inside, then backed in, shutting the door as soon as Peppy’s long plume of a tail had cleared the opening.

The local district’s response team was ringing the downstairs bell as I slid the dead bolts home. I buzzed them into the building, but left them for Officer Burstyn and his pal to sort out.

Bernie was sitting on the sofa bed, her legs tucked under her, her dark eyes black with fear. “What’s going on, Vic?”

“No idea, honey. The cops are from South Chicago, though. Turn on the news, see if there’s anything about Stella Guzzo.”

Mr. Contreras put an arm around Bernie and gave her a reassuring slap on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry about nothing, young Bernie. The dogs and me, we’ll walk down to your job with you and we’ll come get you when the day is over. No one can hurt you with Mitch and me looking after you, okay?”

Bernie nodded, smiling tremulously, and scooted over to make room for him on the end of the bed. While the two of them flipped through channels looking for local news, I went to the back to get ready. I took my time, heating up my espresso machine, taking a shower, dressing for comfort in case I had a long day in cop-land in front of me. I made a cheese sandwich with cucumbers and spinach, something I could eat in the back of the squad car without worrying about spills or stains.

Jake came in through the back door in the middle of my routine.

“You’re up,” I said.

“They’re probably up and about in Milwaukee with that racket.” He put an arm around me and drank my espresso. “You in trouble?”

“The police don’t have a warrant, so I don’t think so. Someone I talked to yesterday must have complained—I won’t know until I get to South Chicago if it was Judge Grigsby or Betty Guzzo.”

“I think we got something, doll,” Mr. Contreras called. “That Ryerson guy is on.”

Jake came with me into the living room in time to see Murray in front of a mountain of coal dust at the Port of Chicago.

“Are the pet coke mountains in South Chicago toxic? That question has been hotly debated lately between the residents of the city’s southeast side, who claim that breathing the dust particles is a health hazard, and the state’s Pollution Control Board, which says there’s no proof. However, this mountain of pet coke was definitely a hazard to the health of a man whose body was found here early this morning by tugboat pilot Gino Smerdlow.”

The cops were pounding on my door again, demanding that I get going.

“Police have not yet released the identity of the dead man, but we were able to catch up with Gino Smerdlow near the Guisar slip at the Port of Chicago.”

Murray’s interview of the tugboat pilot was uninteresting and predictable: Murray looking nautical in the wheelhouse, wind whipping a navy scarf around his red hair, getting the grisly details from Smerdlow. Early morning on the Cal, returning from towing the
Lucella Wieser
out onto the open water, spotting the arm sticking out of the coal mountain.

“We see float fish here from time to time,” Smerdlow said, “but a body in the coal? I couldn’t believe it,” and so on.

Jake, Bernie, Mr. Contreras and the dogs all came to the door to see me off, which made me feel as if I were on my way to the guillotine. Mr. Contreras told the police that he had their badge numbers if anything went wrong. Even so, Burstyn and his pal, a man named Dubcek, didn’t treat me roughly—no grabbing of the arms or snatching away my briefcase.

When I asked them how they’d handled the officers from the Town Hall District who’d responded to Bernie’s SOS, Dubcek grunted. “We didn’t have to tell them anything. That woman downstairs from you, she stepped up all hot and bothered, demanding they do something about your dogs, so they thought she had called in the complaint. You better be careful there, miss. Make sure they have licenses, don’t let them run through the halls like they did this morning. It’s dangerous, especially with little children living in the building.”

They were less forthcoming about why I was being dragged to the South Side, even after I said the dead body in the Guisar company’s pet coke mountain had been on the morning news: the lieutenant would explain why he wanted to see me.

The back of a squad car is an uncomfortable place to sit, especially if you’re taller than about five-three. Your knees are up against a grille and the seat feels like cement blocks. The smell isn’t too appetizing, either—too many bodies covered in who knows what effluvia have been there before you. I lost interest in my sandwich.

Instead, I looked up news on my phone. Everyone was very excited about the body in the coke, but no one had a name.

I hated making nice with Murray, but I finally texted him.

You looked at home on the tugboat. Career change imminent? -
VIW

The Queen is speaking to the commoner? You must want something.
-MRyerson

Love and recognition, as we all do. Wondering if you knew the vic. -
VIW

They had him covered and carted before the 5th Estate arrived. If you can ID him and don’t tell me, our relationship really is over. -
MRyerson

I debated for a minute—I was still feeling pretty stiff toward Murray—but finally texted that I’d been summoned to the Fourth District and was looking for a heads-up. That excited Murray into a frenzy of texting, the upshot of which was he’d take me to dinner at Trefoil if I got him a name ahead of the pack.