Brush Back by Sara Paretsky
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.
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.