“I was just trying to lighten your mood,” he complained. “Did Boom-Boom kill Annie Guzzo and let her mother spend twenty-five years in the Big House for said murder?”
“What?” Fury was rising in me. I struggled to keep it at bay, to make sense of what Murray was saying. “Is this some creepy made-for-TV movie that Global is confusing with reality?”
“You really didn’t know?” Murray said. “It’s about to be all over the airwaves. And the Internet.”
“Global is putting that out, with no digging, no verification?”
“Of course they’re not,” Murray said. “They’re asking me to do some fact-checking. Which is why I’ve called you for a comment. In the meantime, though, people have been tweeting about it all day. It went viral this afternoon, so Global has to look as though we’re ahead of the story. Boom-Boom may have been dead a lot of years, but his name is still news in this town. What can you tell me?”
“That your involvement in this cesspool means you will never get another break from me again. Ever.” I hung up.
Max and Lotty arrived as I was bent over my laptop, following Global’s Twitter feed. I hugged them both, mechanically, explaining what was happening. Jake wasn’t home yet; he’d sent a text that his rehearsal was running late.
I left the fish lying in their salt bed to turn on the TV for Global’s breaking news. Boom-Boom was the top story. They led with him at the Blues net, stick up after scoring a game-winning goal, and moved from there to Annie Guzzo’s murder. They’d dug up her high school yearbook photo. She wasn’t smiling, but she conveyed an eager intensity: she’d been a girl with a sense of mission.
The camera switched back to Beth Blacksin at the news desk. “Speaking through her lawyer, Ms. Guzzo says she came on a diary that her daughter kept in the months before her death. In it, Anne Guzzo supposedly reported that Bernard ‘Boom-Boom’ Warshawski was increasingly jealous of her wishes to leave Chicago and have an independent life. Channel Thirteen has not been able to see the actual diary, but Ms. Guzzo’s lawyer gave us a typescript of the relevant page.”
Blacksin held up a piece of paper, meaningless, since we weren’t seeing the actual diary. “Stella Guzzo is making a case that Boom-Boom Warshawski murdered Anne in a fit of jealous rage and framed her for the murder, with the assistance of Warshawski’s uncle, police officer Tony Warshawski. Ms. Guzzo says that the Warshawski family has feuded with her ever since her husband, the late Mateo Guzzo, spurned sexual advances from Officer Warshawski’s wife, Gabriella.”
They flashed my father’s picture on the screen in his dress uniform, my mother at his side. Blacksin further identified Tony as father of Chicago private eye V. I. Warshawski.
A rage so huge it blinded me filled my head. I was at the safe in my bedroom closet, getting the gun out, checking the clip, without knowing how I got there.
“Victoria. No!” Lotty appeared behind me.
“She’s attacked my mother for the last time.” The hoarse voice wasn’t mine.
Lotty slapped me. “You will not act like this, Victoria!”
I gasped, glared at her, but put the gun down. I’d been clenching the clip so tightly it had sliced my palm. Blood welled around the cut.
“Vic, have you seen—they are telling horrible lies about Uncle Boom-Boom.”
It was Bernie, pushing her way past Lotty to get to me. “I was out with the girls from the hockey club and they had a television on. This is terrible. I called my papa, and he says he can get a leave of absence from the Canadiens, we’ll do what— Ah, you’ve got a gun. This is good, Papa told me you wouldn’t take it lying down!”
“She is not going to shoot anyone,” Lotty said, her face set in hard lines.
“But—Dr. Lotty—have you heard what they’re saying? That Uncle Boom-Boom murdered some girl all those years ago because of reasons so ridiculous no one could believe them?”
“Yes, I’m almost beside myself with fury,” I said. “But that clouds the mind, and—and I think I need to sit down.”
Lotty put an arm around me, leading me from the bedroom into the living room, into the big armchair. She brought a damp cloth from the kitchen, bathed the blood from my palm, but held on to my hand when she was done.
“Victoria, you love your cousin, you love your parents, these lies against them are hard to stomach, but believe me, when you have lost everyone, the people left to you are more precious. I can’t lose you and that’s what will happen if you give way to that kind of fury. I—please, my dear one, don’t let me see that in your face again.”
“Right.” I tried to smile, but my face felt as though it were made out of putty, not able to form a shape. “My mother would hate it, too.”
Bernie hovered a little way from us, frowning. “But you must stop those lies!”
“Yep, I agree. But I’m not up to figuring out how to do it tonight. We’ll make a plan in the morning.”