“No, ma’am. I thought if you hadn’t actually killed your daughter when you punched her in the head, there was only one person you might have taken the fall for, and that was Frank. If you thought his wife had killed your daughter, there was a sliver of possibility you wouldn’t have said anything so that his children’s mother stayed out of prison.”
“Listen, you. You know as well as me that you’re trying to cover up for your old man stealing evidence from the crime scene. You want this to be about my family, but you won’t admit that it’s really about yours.”
She hung up.
Every time I talked to Stella, I felt about a hundred years old. I leaned back in my chair, eyes shut. I was paying an awfully high price for the brief comfort Frank had brought me all those years ago.
I started to call him, then decided to go see him in person. Enough of this idiocy.
Using one of my burner phones, I called Bagby Haulage. Fortunately, not only did Delphina answer the phone, but Bagby’s dispatcher wasn’t at her elbow to guide her away from people like me. She accepted my spurious story, that we’d given the wrong package to the truck Frank Guzzo was driving, and even let me know that he was in the Midway Airport area.
“Great,” I said heartily. “We’re at 5236 Sixty-seventh Street. Sanjitsu Electronics.”
“You’re not in my system,” she said.
“We may be there under a different name; we recycle for a lot of different electronics companies. Tell Guzzo someone from shipping will meet him on the loading bay in thirty.”
I hung up before she could say anything else. As I closed the office door, the burner phone started ringing. At least she was calling back, a good double check. What a pity I hadn’t thought to record voice mail.
The address I’d given Delphina was almost sixteen miles southwest of my office. By pushing my luck with cops and speed limits, I got there within half an hour.
The short runways at Midway bring the planes in low and slow overhead. Driving down Cicero Avenue, I kept wincing as the Southwest wheels skimmed the treetops along the route. They’ve never actually taken out a building, but it’s an unnerving flight path.
The address I’d randomly chosen for its closeness to the airport belonged to a giant cardboard manufacturer. The parking lot was packed, but I found an open space in the middle and walked over to the loading bays.
There wasn’t any sign of a Bagby truck. Maybe Frank had come and gone, maybe Delphina decided the call was a prank and didn’t tell him about it. I walked across the lot to the road and waited twenty minutes. Just as I was deciding my luck was out, Frank turned into the parking lot.
I stood in front of his truck. He leaned on the horn, and then opened the cab door to swear at me.
I walked over. “Hey, Frank.”
“Tori!” He was so startled that his foot slid on the clutch and the truck shuddered. “What the—and what happened to your eye?”
“Vince didn’t tell you?” I said, smiling affably. “He was right there when it happened. You and I have so much catching up to do, and neither of us has much time. I’m going to follow you until you take a break.”
“The lawyer said—”
“Yes, we all know what the lawyer said. Stella violated the order herself this morning, calling to tell me to stay away from your family. Since I’m already hog-tied by the order, it’s hard to know what she’s referring to.”
His sunburnt face turned a richer shade of sienna. “Maybe it was Betty talking to her about you showing up at Frankie’s game. You have to stay away.”
“And I will. She’s not a pleasure to talk to, and nor, at the risk of hurting your feelings, is Betty. Both of them slug first and listen second. I hope Betty doesn’t beat you, but I can give you the number of a domestic—”
A short queue of trucks was trying to get into the lot. They honked loudly. Frank slammed his cab door shut and drove forward. I sprinted to where I’d left the Subaru and wove my way around the lines of parked cars. Frank had to drive all the way into the yard to find a space where he could turn around out of the way of the trucks that were pulling in. I caught up with him easily as he exited onto Lavergne Avenue.
Frank made another pickup at a warehouse a few blocks farther west, saw me in his rearview mirror when he left and pulled into a Wendy’s.
“Make it fast, Tori, I got fifteen minutes, and they monitor every leak we take.”
I climbed into the cab, over his protests—he wanted to shout down at me from his window.
“So your mother thinks I’m doing something to wreck Frankie’s chances?”
Frank’s shoulders slumped. “Nothing in my goddam life ever works out for me. My shot at the show, Frankie’s, whatever it is, it always falls apart.”
“Yes, your shot at the show, that’s something else I wanted to ask you about. The day of your tryout at Wrigley, when Boom-Boom was there and made you so angry you whiffed the curve, Annie was there as well. Why did she come along and why didn’t you tell me?”