“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.”
“Just as well we split when we did,” he jeered. “Ma would have put arsenic in your wedding champagne.”
It was a gallant effort at humor and I laughed obligingly. “She may manage yet. She gave me a good belt in the shoulder, and if she gets hold of poison or a gun I’m definitely toast.”
“She hit you? I thought you were tougher than that.”
“Not tough enough, not quick enough.” I took a breath. “Did you know she’s saying Boom-Boom killed Annie when you asked me to investigate?”
There was a long pause. I could hear people ordering sandwiches and muffins, room for cream in that thing, hon.
“She’s saying all kinds of wild things,” he finally said. “Not just that, other crazy stuff. I don’t know what she wants to say or do to get her name cleared, but if she goes completely off the skids, Frankie, Frank Junior—my boy, you know—I want him to have the chance I never had.”
“And you think Stella could derail him? No, Frank. She’s old, she’s still got a temper”—I rubbed the place on my shoulder where her punch had landed—“but she doesn’t have power, except the power you let her have in your life.”
“You of all people, I’d think you’d know that when she gets a head of steam she can do anything.”
“Yes, and that’s what’s telling me there’s nothing for me to find out about your sister’s death. Your mother is angrier than ever after all those years inside, and she’s looking for targets, not evidence.”
Frank tried to get me to say I’d get the police to dig his sister’s file out of the warehouse, but his arguments lacked punch. The sadness in his voice made me brusque: I didn’t like the feeling that I had to pity him. I told him to send me the St. Eloy’s schedule so I could watch his kid play when the scouts were there and hung up.
I started to write down the conversation, but it was hard. If it hadn’t been me talking to him, he probably would have cursed my cousin. Maybe he would have gotten a piece of a ball if Boom-Boom hadn’t been there, who knows? The star taking all the attention, that probably made Frank try too hard, tense up at the wrong moment.
“Oh, Boom-Boom,” I said out loud. “You meant well, you were doing a good deed. I bet the Hawks fined you for skipping the Oilers game, too. No one got anything good out of that tryout.”
The throwaway line about Gielczowski making Frank lower his pants, that was sickening, the whole story was sad and painful and sick. I’d never heard allegations about Gielczowski. Maybe he’d been caning boys, beating immorality out of them. When I think of immorality I think of the payday loans and hidden bank fees, the failure to pay a living wage, the preference for crappy schools in poor neighborhoods. I don’t think about sex.
My morning with Stella, and now this—I felt dirty, so dirty that I went into the shower room behind my lease-mate’s studio. Her steelwork means she needs a place to clean up at the end of a long day. She’d put in a shower with those multi-head scrubbers, and I stood under them for a good ten minutes, wishing the needles of water could get inside my head and clean it out. Even scrubbed and in a clean T-shirt, I still felt rumpled.
FORCE PLAY
It was the second week of the regular season, that brief window when Cubs fans forget the eleven-month winter of their discontent and imagine that the glories of New York or St. Louis will become ours. The team was away, playing in Cincinnati, but the front offices would be well staffed.
The ballpark is walking distance from my apartment. I parked at home so I could change into presentable clothes, including my Lario boots, which always make me feel important. Bernie arrived as I was coming back down the front walk.
“You look tough, Vic, where are you going?”
“Wrigley Field—want to come with me?”
“Oh, baseball. Merci, non, trop ennuyant. Since you won’t be home, I can take a proper bath.” We’d had a bit of a tussle over whether an hour in the bathroom was really essential for proper hygiene. “And, no worries, I will take my hair out of the tub when I’m done.” Another discussion.
Even when the team is away, even when the baseball season is over, the doors at Clark and Addison are open for guided tours. I paid twenty-five dollars to join a group. While they were admiring the spot where Harry Caray used to lead fans in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” I slipped away, until I found a door labeled Media Relations.
A woman was on the phone, a bright smile on her face as she answered questions about rumors of an injury to Enrique Velasquez’s left knee. When she hung up, she flashed another smile in my direction.
“I’m V. I. Warshawski. I was looking for Will Drechen.” I’d looked up the front office staff before leaving my apartment; Drechen was assistant director of media relations.