I told them what I’d learned from Joel, from Frank Guzzo, from Mr. Villard and from the photographs themselves.
Conrad rubbed his forehead. I could see past my anger to the fatigue lines gouged in his face.
“I am not a fan of Stella Guzzo,” I added, “but the night Annie Guzzo was murdered, two other people came to the house while Stella was off playing bingo: first, Joel Previn, and after he left, Sol Mandel.”
Conrad sat upright. “What? What crystal ball spat that detail out twenty-five years after the fact?”
Derek interrupted to ask who we were talking about.
“Joel told me he was there,” I said after Conrad and I had explained the Guzzo murder story. “I never could understand why Mandel & McClelland took the case, or why poor Joel, who had a crush on Annie, agreed to represent Stella, but he told me Mandel saw his car outside the Guzzo house and threatened to turn him over to the cops if he didn’t defend Stella. It had never occurred to him that Mandel could have been Annie’s killer.”
“Maybe because Joel had already killed her himself,” Conrad snarled.
“Yeah, right, that’s a possibility. I don’t believe it after spending a lot of time with Joel.”
“Convenient to blame it on the dead partner.” Derek chipped in his two cents.
“Yes, but there’s a living person who had a stake in what Annie had uncovered,” I said. “I’m betting he came along for the ride, if not for the deed.”
Conrad stared at me. “You’re back on Scanlon’s ass. God damn it, Warshawski—”
I bared my teeth in a ferocious grin. “I have a handwritten note to my dad, rubbing his face in the fact of his transfer to West Englewood. Whoever wrote it implied that he put word out that Tony snitched on his brother officers—in order to make sure Tony was in maximum danger on the street. My father was almost killed, not once but many times, because the boys at the Seventh didn’t get him backup. The stress—he might still be part of my life today if it weren’t for whoever made sure he got put there!”
Conrad said, “And you think it was Scanlon? What proof, Ms. W.? What proof?”
“The letter! I’ve sent it to my lawyer for safekeeping, but—”
“We could run forensics on it,” Derek offered.
“I don’t want to risk it evaporating while it’s out of my custody,” I said coldly. “But I’m betting Conrad can at least ID who wrote it, even if not the taunting message to my dad. A facsimile is up on the Annie Guzzo’s Murder website.”
Conrad’s copper skin darkened to mahogany. “You did what? You set up a murder site on your own without talking to the police? And you complain when I say you take the law into your own hands?”
“We were working against the clock. I was keeping in touch with you, but the police apparatus, you couldn’t move on this as fast as I could.”
Conrad gave me a withering look, but buried himself in his smartphone, looking up the URL. I gave him and Derek the password Mr. Contreras and I had created.
Conrad looked up after reading the letter, anguish in his eyes. “I know that handwriting: Oswald Brattigan. He was my watch commander at the Fourth when I was first transferred in there. If that sentence to your father was written by Scanlon—” He broke off, his chin collapsing against his chest.
“I don’t want to believe this, or deal with it,” he mumbled after a moment. “Rory Scanlon—if he’s been using the kids in Say, Yes! to extort or intimidate—my God—it’s going to be an unholy war down there. He’s so connected, Vic: he’s got the Speaker in his pocket, the local parish—”
“But if Joel’s report on what he overheard Scanlon and Mandel talk about is correct, they were using both client accounts and foundation money to fuel political campaigns. Spike Hurlihey owes his Speaker’s gavel to illegal money.”
Conrad smacked his thigh. “That doesn’t mean he knew the money was illegal. Assuming it was illegal, which is a big ‘if.’ An overheard conversation twenty-five years ago by an alkie who couldn’t cut it at the firm? I don’t believe it and neither will a jury.”
“The prosecutor for the Northern District is going to want to take a look,” Derek said. “If the paper trail is there—we can subpoena records from Continental Illinois. Do a handwriting check on this ‘FYI, Law and Order Man’ scrawl. Maybe we can roll on one of the Say, Yes! kids to wear a wire.”
“They’re used to prison,” Conrad said. “It doesn’t frighten them. They build new gang networks there, they learn new street skills.”
“Okay, someone in the law office, or someone in Hurlihey’s office,” Derek said. He looked sympathetically at Conrad. “I don’t have to work there every day, it won’t bother me any.”