Brush Back
ALSO BY SARA PARETSKY
Critical Mass
Breakdown
Body Work
Hardball
Bleeding Kansas
Fire Sale
Blacklist
Total Recall
Hard Time
Ghost Country
Windy City Blues
Tunnel Vision
Guardian Angel
Burn Marks
Blood Shot
Bitter Medicine
Killing Orders
Deadlock
Indemnity Only
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
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New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2015 by Sara Paretsky
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Paretsky, Sara.
Brush back / Sara Paretsky.
p. cm.—(A V.I. Warshawski ; 17)
ISBN 978-0-698-19683-4
1. Warshawski, V. I. (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women private investigators—Illinois—Chicago—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.A647B78 2015 2015005018
813'.54—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Jeremy
He had but little gold within his suitcase;
But all that he might borrow from a friend
On books and learning he would swiftly spend,
. . . And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.
—CHAUCER
THANKS
Bill and Eleanor Revelle showed me V.I.’s route into the Villard mansion in Chapter 44. Fay Clayton gave generous advice on payday loan companies. Cheryl Corley and Elizabeth Brackett’s coverage of the pet coke in South Chicago, for Public Radio and PBS, respectively, first alerted me to the existence of these dust mountains in Chicago. Tricia Rumbolz drove me as close as we could get to them as ordinary tourists. Kathryn Lyndes stepped into the breach to help me finish the final rewrites.
This book is a bit of an anachronism: part of the action takes place under the stands at Wrigley Field, but starting in the fall of 2014, the field has been undergoing major demolition and reconstruction. I first heard about Wrigley’s underground spaces from Brian Bernardoni and thought they would be a perfect setting for a crime novel. Although I tried for over a year to see these spaces firsthand, I was never able to get calls or e-mails to the Cubs answered, and so I relied on my unfettered imagination to describe them.
As for climbing up the bleachers into the stands, as V.I. says she and her cousin Boom-Boom used to do, when I worked in advertising many years ago, one of my clients told me about doing this as a young man during the Great Depression, when he couldn’t afford the price of a ticket. He also used to shinny up the L girders so he could ride the trains to Wrigley Field for free.
I’ve also taken a few liberties with how Bernadine Fouchard handles the college admissions process.
Thanks to Karl Fogel for explaining how easy it is to hack into someone’s bank account online.
Aimee LaBerge gave correct Québécois idioms for the French in the novel, in particular the insult “
ostie de folle
.” Heather Watkins confirmed this phrase.
Readers interested in how Boom-Boom ended his life under the screw of the
Bertha Krupnik
can find out by reading
Deadlock
.
CONTENTS
Also by Sara Paretsky
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Thanks
1. Shortstop
2. Home Base
3. Slugger
4. Out at the Plate
5. Whiffing the Curve
6. Force Play
7. Crowd Noise
8. Calling Time
9. Minor League
10. Balk
11. Fleeing the Lions
12. Brush Work
13. Buy Me Some Peanuts
14. Ejected
15. Into the Gap
16. Brush Back
17. Keep on Truckin’
18. Ballpark Chatter
19. My Last Duchess
20. Dog Days
21. The Umpire Strikes Back
22. The Too-Real Thing
23. The Play’s the Thing
24. Short Relief
25. High and Outside
26. Roach Motel
27. Dead Ball
28. Blood Sport
29. It Ain’t Beanbag
30. Gamer Gate
31. Road Test
32. Chin Music
33. Floral Offering
34. Mixing It Up
35. Family Ties
36. Changeup
37. High Spirits
38. Suicide Squeeze
39. Pinch Hitter
40. Sound Check
41. Land of the Dead
42. Stickball
43. Dinner Party
44. High and Inside
45. Behind in the Count
46. In the Madhouse
47. Olympic Tryouts
48. Rundown
49. Beanball
50. Wild Pitch
51. Rigging the Game
52. Swinging for the Fences
53. Fifteen-Day DL
54. Loading the Bases
55. Money Pitch
56. Clutch Hitter
57. Stealing Home
SHORTSTOP
I didn’t recognize
him at first. He came into my office unannounced, a jowly man whose hairline had receded to a fringe of dark curls. Too much sun had baked his skin the color of brick, although maybe it had been too much beer, judging by those ill-named love handles poking over the sides of his jeans. The seams in the faded corduroy jacket strained when he moved his arms; he must not often dress for business.
“Hey, girl, you doing okay for yourself up here, aren’t you?”
I stared at him, astonished and annoyed by the familiarity.
“Tori Warshawski, don’t you know me? I guess Red U turned you into a snob after all.”
Tori. The only people who called me that had been my father and my cousin Boom-Boom, both of them dead a lot of years now. And Boom-Boom’s boyhood friends—who were also the only people who still thought the University of Chicago was a leftist hideout.
“It’s not Frank Guzzo, is it?” I finally said. When I’d known him thirty years and forty pounds ago, he’d had a full head of red-gold hair, but I could still see something of him around the eyes and mouth.
“All of him.” He patted his abdomen. “You look good, Tori, I’ll give you that. You didn’t turn into some yoga nut or a vegan or something?”
“Nope. I play a little basketball, but mostly I run the lakefront. You still playing baseball?”
“With this body? Slow-pitch sometimes with the geriatric league. But my boy, Frankie Junior, Tori, I got my fingers crossed, but I think he’s the real deal.”
“How old is he?” I asked, more out of politeness than interest: Frank always thought someone or something was going to be the real deal that made his fortune for him.
“He’s fifteen now, made varsity at Saint Eloy’s, even though he’s only a freshman. He’s got a real arm. Maybe he’ll be another Boom-Boom.”
Meaning, he could be the next person to make it out of the ’hood into some version of the American dream. There were so few of us who escaped South Chicago’s gravitational pull that the neighborhood could recite our names.
I’d managed, by dint of my mother’s wishes, and my scholarships to the University of Chicago. My cousin Boom-Boom had done it through sports. He’d had seven brilliant seasons with the Blackhawks until he injured his ankle too badly for the surgeons to glue him back in any shape to skate. And then he’d been murdered, shoved off a pier in the Port of Chicago, right under the screw of the
Bertha Krupnik.