Brush Back (5 page)

“Uncle Jerry, please! We just can’t do it anymore.”

He shoved her roughly away. “You should have thought of that when—” He caught sight of me. “Who are you and what do you want?” Even his husky voice sounded like DeVito’s.

“Utility closet, the one where this ladder belongs.”

“In case you didn’t notice, this is the church, not a closet.” He turned back to the woman. “Get out of here before you get me in trouble.”

“Are you okay?” I asked the niece.

“She’s fine. She’s leaving because she’s on her lunch hour and she can’t afford to get fired.”

The niece wiped her eyes with her sleeve and started down the aisle to the front entrance.

I followed her. “Do you need help?”

She turned to look at her uncle, shook her head at me and kept going. I put the ladder down and went after her, but she pushed me away.

“Don’t bother me. I can’t afford—it was a mistake—I just thought—never mind.”

I pulled out a card. “If you change your mind, give me a call. If he’s hurting you, I can get you to a safe place.”

She shook her head again, but at least she pocketed the card. When I turned back up the aisle for the ladder, Uncle Jerry had disappeared through one of the many side doors that littered the building. He’d left behind his old voltmeter, the pre-digital kind. In a spirit of malice, I carried it with me. When I finally stumbled on the utility room, I put the meter on a shelf behind the ladder. Let him spend an hour or two hunting for it.

When I got back to the church office, Cardenal was at his desk, wearing a clean T-shirt, his face scrubbed shiny. He was working at his computer, but he stopped when I carried the visitor’s chair to its original spot.

“What is it you need so badly that you are willing to lug around building equipment?” he asked.

I couldn’t help smiling. “Help with one of your parishioners.”

“And you are not one of them. I recognize most people who come to Mass more than twice a year, but you I don’t remember seeing.”

“You wouldn’t: I moved away from this neighborhood a long time ago.” I explained who I was.

“Frank Guzzo asked me to make some inquiries on his mother’s behalf,” I added. “She’s always been volatile, and now she seems even more so, but—you know she was in prison for a good long stretch, right? For the murder of her daughter?”

“The gossip has been here, ever since Mrs. Guzzo showed up at Mass two months ago,” Cardenal admitted.

“I just spent half an hour with her, and I am worn out and confused. She says she’s looking for an exoneration, but it sounded as though what she really wants is to pin her daughter’s murder on my family.”

Cardenal raised an eyebrow. “Does your family have a vendetta against her?”

I smiled sadly. “Stella used to spread the word around the neighborhood that my mother was seducing her husband. And then, when Mateo Guzzo sent Annie to my mother for piano lessons, Stella became furious with envy, thinking my mother was undermining her with her own child. I was startled when I saw her just now to find out she still is obsessed with the idea. Only she’s added my cousin Boom-Boom to the mix—Boom-Boom Warshawski; he’s dead now, but he used to play with the Blackhawks. Stella ranted at me that Boom-Boom had destroyed Frank’s chance to have a baseball career, that he seduced Annie, then killed her.”

Cardenal thought it over. “I don’t know your family or hers, so I can’t evaluate who is right or wrong or if there even is a right or a wrong. What is it you think I can help you with?”

I hesitated. “Being in prison is hard, and Stella was in for a long time. I don’t know if she really thinks there’s some missing evidence that might exonerate her, or if she spent her time in Logan twisting events to make them my family’s fault. Do you have any idea what is actually going on with her?”

Cardenal pulled at the flesh under his chin. “I’ve been here two years and some of the old Eastern European women still don’t trust me: Can a Mexican really administer the Sacrament? Some even take a bus all the way to Saint Florian’s to hear the Mass in Polish. Mrs. Guzzo, she at least comes to Mass here, but she hasn’t wanted to confide in me. Not that I could repeat a confidential statement, of course,” he added hastily.

“Of course,” I agreed. “What about a nonconfidential statement? I’m wondering what she said when she arrived at the bingo game the night she killed her daughter. Or why Father Gielczowski thought he should testify for her at her trial. Do you know if he’s still in the Chicago area?”

Cardenal shook his head. “He has advanced dementia, from what I’ve heard. The Polish ladies visit him sometimes and come back sad because he doesn’t know them.”

Gielczowski with dementia. What a horrible punishment, even for someone as hurtful as he had been. “Would he have written something down? Notes for his testimony at her trial, something like that?”

“If he made notes for trial testimony they’d be in his private journals, not here.” He held up a hand as I started to ask. “No, I don’t know if he even kept a personal diary, or who has it if he did. Parish records are about money and meetings.”

“Can I look at the meetings the night that Annie Guzzo died?”

Cardenal made a face. “I wish you’d asked me when I still was covered with plaster dust, but yes, we can find them, I guess.”

The records were in yet another chilly room with a cracked ceiling and dirty windows. Cardenal left me alone with the cartons. They weren’t stacked in any particular order, and the parish had celebrated its 125th anniversary five years back. Twenty-seven of the forty-two years Gielczowski had been the priest had been among the most active in St. Eloy’s history. I read about baptisms and weddings until my eyes glazed over. The only thing that was remotely relevant was the report of the bingo game for the Wednesday night Annie died: 192 people had taken part, the top prize of $250 had gone to Lyudmila Wojcek, and the income net of prizes and refreshments had been $318.50.

I put the registers back where I’d found them, and brushed as much of the dust from my shirt and jeans as I could. Father Cardenal wasn’t in his office when I went to say good-bye, so I left a short thank-you note. I added a twenty, with a message to put it into the building fund.

WHIFFING THE CURVE

Back in my office,
back in my present life, I put on Mozart’s
Requiem
, with Emma Kirkby singing the soprano line—almost with Gabriella’s purity. The music suited my bleak, elegiac mood.

I had given Frank his free hour and then some, but I couldn’t quite let the matter go. He wouldn’t have come to me if he hadn’t been feeling desperate, or at least worried, by what was going on with his mother.

I wrote down everything I could remember, both from his conversation and from hers. The choir had finished their plea for eternal light before I finished comparing what Frank and Stella had each said. I studied the chart I’d made before calling Frank’s cell.

I could hear traffic noise in the background when he answered. Don’t talk while driving, I thought of admonishing him, but really, I wanted to get the conversation out of the way as fast as possible.

“Frank, I went to see your mother this morning, and I don’t know who is more confused, her, me or you.”

“You went to see her?” he repeated, indignant. “Why did you do that? I thought you were going to investigate Annie’s death.”

“I had to start someplace, and she’s the person with the most intimate knowledge of your sister’s death. You can’t have thought I wouldn’t go to her.”

“Why didn’t you start with the cops?”

“I did: those files went into cold storage a long time ago.” Clients are always thinking they have a better action plan than the investigator they hired—even clients who tried to comfort you when their mothers had disrupted your own mother’s funeral.

“Ma let you in? How did she—what did she say?”

“A lot of stuff: the same old, same old about my mother and your dad, and then newer stuff about Boom-Boom and Annie, and then stuff I never knew about you. Your tryout with the Cubs.”

“She talked about that?”

“Yes. When did that happen?”

I heard honking and braking in the background. Frank swore at some other driver and hung up. When I reached him again, traffic sounds had been replaced by Muzak and people shouting out orders.

“I had to get off the road. Taking my break, which means I’ve got fifteen minutes.”

“Tell me about the Cubs,” I said.

“It was a long time ago. Old dead news.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“It was the fall before Annie died.” He sounded tired, as if dredging up the story took more energy than he had, but he plowed ahead. “I was already driving for Bagby, but I played in a league, the real deal, not sixteen-inch, and we got this call, our team did, saying the Cubs were having an open tryout day and some of our guys had been picked to play a couple of innings. Their scouts would be there, and so on.”

“Pretty exciting. Who set it up?”

“I don’t know. Someone at Saint Eloy’s, I think was what the guys said, someone who knew someone in the Cubs organization. You know how that goes.”

I knew how that went. You always need someone who knows someone. Even Boom-Boom might not be in the Hockey Hall of Fame if the Tenth Ward committeeman hadn’t known someone who dated a woman who knew a man in the Blackhawks organization.

“What was it like?”

“Sitting in the dugout at Wrigley Field? Running across that grass? When I get to heaven, it better be exactly like that.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “I hope it is, Frank, but what I really wondered was what the tryout was like.”

“I’m driving a truck, aren’t I?” he said roughly. “Not admiring my statue in Cooperstown.”

“What happened?”

The sigh came across the phone like the hiss of air leaving a balloon. “You lose those muscles. I mean, I was strong, I was driving a truck, all that stuff. But my baseball muscles, my eye, my timing, all those were gone.

“Boom-Boom, he coached me. Not the baseball, he couldn’t play baseball for shit, but he was a professional athlete, he knew what it took to get in shape. Bagby gave me a leave. Not Vince, who’s in charge now, but his old man. Hell, they were rooting for us, five of us going for the tryout worked there, and Boom-Boom and me, we worked out together every morning. If he was in town—the hockey preseason had started, but I worked out on my own, two hours every morning. I followed his training diet, everything.”

I hadn’t known about this. Guy things that Boom-Boom didn’t think were worth sharing.

“So I was in great shape. I could run a hundred yards in fifteen seconds.”

“Impressive,” I agreed.

“I should have tried out with the Bears,” he said bitterly. “They could have used a guy with fast legs and a truck driver’s muscles.”

I waited: this was a painful memory. Any words from me might shut him up completely. When he spoke again, it was quickly, in a mumble that I could barely understand.

“I couldn’t hit major league pitching.”

I still didn’t speak. Who can hit major league pitching? Even the best pros only do it once every three tries, but that wouldn’t be a consolation to the guy driving a truck instead of playing in the show.

“Ma—Ma blamed Boom-Boom. I shouldn’t have said anything to her, but, you know, I had to talk to her about something, so I told her when we heard we were going to get the chance to try out. She was excited, never seen her like that, she kept saying she’d been waiting for this, waiting for me to get my big chance, prove to the world that Guzzos counted as much as—as Warshawskis. And then, of course, I had to tell her how it came out.”

I looked at the dialogue boxes I’d created of Stella’s invective. “She said Boom-Boom made you fail.”

“That’s not fair, she shouldn’t say that kind of thing, but at the time I was hurt, you know, the way you are when things don’t pan out.”

I sat up straight. “What did you tell her about Boom-Boom?”

“Oh, Tori, you know what it was like when Boom-Boom showed up anywhere, at least anywhere that people cared about sports. He sat in the dugout, he was cheering me on. Only everyone in the place went nuts when they realized Boom-Boom Warshawski was there. He was signing autographs, even the Cubs brass wanted them.”

Anger and grief—he was still feeling them. His one chance at the big time and Boom-Boom had stood in his sunlight.

“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately.

“Yeah, not as sorry as me.” He gave a bark of laughter. “I probably couldn’t have hit the curve if Boom-Boom had gone to Edmonton—he skipped a game against Wayne Gretzky to come to Wrigley with me! But it wouldn’t have felt so—so bad. Boom-Boom watching me whiff, it was worse than when old Gielczowski used to make me lower my pants. And Ma took it like that. To her, it was more proof that the Warshawskis had it in for us. Even later, when I’d visit her in prison, she’d go on about it.”

“I hope you didn’t believe her, Frank,” I said. “No one in my family wished anyone in your family ill. My mother loved Annie, your dad was a wonderful man, and you know, there were a couple of months where I was in love with you.”