The smile turned into regret; Will wasn’t in, but she was Natalie Clements, his assistant. Could she help?
“I’m on a wild-goose chase. I’m writing a biography of Boom-Boom Warshawski.”
“I’m new to the organization,” Natalie said apologetically. “I don’t know all the old players’ names yet.”
I shook my head. “Boom-Boom played for the Blackhawks, tied Gretzky for most goals in 1990. And right about that time, he spent an afternoon here at Wrigley, during one of the amateur tryouts. I know it’s a long shot, but I’d love to find someone who was at the tryouts that year. If there was a photo, that would be a plus, but mostly I want background and color on how the day went. He could be a bit of a hot dog—I’m wondering if he tried to hit a ball or field or anything.”
Natalie held up a finger while she answered her phone; two more calls came in and I wandered to the window to look out. Frank was right: that perfect grass under a spring sky, you did think heaven might look like this.
Natalie finished her calls and apologized again. She took down a detailed message for Mr. Drechen, who was in a meeting, and noticed my last name. Yes, I was related—I pulled out my iPad and showed her the photo of Boom-Boom and me with the Stanley Cup the day it was his turn to have it. He and I had rented a convertible and driven the length of the city, me at the wheel and Boom-Boom sitting on the trunk, holding the Cup.
“Gosh, wish I’d been the press officer that day,” Natalie said. “Great photo op. Anytime your cousin wants to bring the Cup to Wrigley Field—”
He was dead, I said, but added that the Blackhawks were always game for publicity opportunities. Maybe when I’d finished the project we could work something out.
I wondered if I’d ever hear back from the Cubs, wondered, too, what had made me go up there. Maybe I wanted reassurance that Boom-Boom hadn’t jinxed Frank’s tryout.
Bernie was still in the bath when I got home. It was only mid-afternoon—still time to do some actual paying work. I drove to my office, where I put my Guzzo notes into a hanging file before turning to the fires my regular clients needed help extinguishing. That night, Jake took me dancing at Hot Rococo, where friends of his were playing. Maybe he couldn’t sucker punch a punk in an alleyway, but no one else had ever made me feel lighter than air on a dance floor.
Jake was having his own problems—congressional failure to act on a federal budget had set cuts for everything from roads to military equipment. Arts budgets had been slashed to the bone. Below the bone—funding had already been chopped many times over. His High Plainsong group might have to dissolve: they’d laid off their administrator and were scrambling for free rehearsal space.
When his friends’ gig at Hot Rococo ended, we all went out for pizza. The musicians grumbled, then imagined the opera they could write about starving artists.
“It would be like La Bohème, except Congress would be watching Mimi and Rodolfo and laughing their heads off,” the drummer explained. “As Mimi dies of malnutrition in the last act, a chorus of Congress members sings the spirited finale, ‘She got what she deserved for not being born rich.’”
We all laughed, but there was a bitter undercurrent to it. They worked hard, they took multiple gigs, but the music that lay at the core of their beings kept getting shoved to the sidelines.
Over the next week, the Guzzos disappeared nicely into the tar pits where they belonged. And then came the afternoon I was preparing sea bass alla veneziana for Max, Lotty and Jake. Bernie was going out with a couple of young women she’d met through her peewee hockey coaching, Mr. Contreras had a regular poker date with his retired machinist buddies.
I whipped the egg whites and coated the fish and was laying them in their salt bed when my phone barked at me, the signal that a preferred contact had sent me a text.
I peered at the screen. The Boom-Boom story is going out on our six o’clock local news. Any comment? M.R.
Murray Ryerson. Murray had been a great investigative journalist until Global Entertainment bought the Herald-Star, slashed the number of reporters by two-thirds, and left him doing odd jobs on their cable news network.
I washed my hands and called him. “What Boom-Boom story?”
“Ah, V.I., you’re restoring my faith. Can she have been sitting on this all these years and not shared it with her closest comrade in the fight for truth and justice? No, I thought, but then I remembered the time you left me at a party to cover a homicide and didn’t bother to call. I remembered when you were outing the Xerxes Chemical CEO for malicious misconduct and didn’t call, and I thought, the Girl Detective is two-timing you again, Ryerson, but I’ll give her the benefit—”
“Murray, do you have a point, or has TV made you think everyone around you is a captive audience?”