What had Stella said, when I called on her last week? Something about Annie rotting in hell if she’d died with her last words to her mother on her lips. Maybe Sol Mandel had also seen something malicious in Annie that made him silently sympathize with Stella.
I tried to picture it, but that image wouldn’t come into focus. The Annie I’d known was hardworking, but not malicious. I’d been jealous of her sometimes when I was young because of the way she attached herself to my mother—I wanted Gabriella’s love all to myself and when Annie practiced her music harder than I ever did, I felt she was showing off. I had a couple of embarrassing memories of my own malicious acts, but not of Annie’s. Even so, it wouldn’t surprise me to know she’d fought with Stella. When you grow up in a violent household, you tend to lash back.
If Annie had kept a diary, I wanted to see it. “Sorry, Freeman,” I muttered, “I know you told me to keep away from the Guzzos, but I’m calling Frank.”
He wasn’t ecstatic at hearing from me, so I spoke with extra heartiness to make up for it.
“Frank! Your mom’s all over the news, so is Boom-Boom, and I’m even getting a shout-out. This is so cool—is this why you came to me? To help me with publicity?”
“I’m driving. What do you want?”
“Annie’s diary. It’s so amazing that it showed up like this out of the blue. Where was it all these years?”
“How should I know? I only know Ma said she found it while she was cleaning out the dresser in Annie’s bedroom. No one did that after Annie died, and all those old clothes, they’d been sitting in there for twenty-five years.”
“You and Betty never went in there?”
He didn’t say anything. Betty hadn’t seemed like the kind of person to sit idly by while someone else’s possessions were waiting for a home, and Frank’s long silence confirmed it.
“So after Stella went to prison, Betty went through Annie’s things, took what she wanted and left the rest,” I said, ignoring the indignant sputter from the other end of the phone. “Did she remember seeing this alleged diary?”
“Come on, Tori, it’s been a long time ago. Betty doesn’t remember one way or the other.”
“Of course not.” I made my tone soothing. “But you—when you looked at the diary they flashed on TV, did you recognize the handwriting? Did your heart turn over in your chest as you saw Annie’s last words on the page? Did you curse Boom-Boom for terrifying your baby sister?”
Again he was quiet, so I nudged him. “Your mother did show it to you, didn’t she, Frank?”
He cut the connection without saying anything. I studied my tostada. Either Frank hadn’t seen the diary, or he had seen it and knew it wasn’t Annie’s. This wasn’t evidence, nothing I could take to court, but it worked for me.
While I sat there, Melba and Harold came out of Scanlon’s. I watched their slow progress down the street toward the train station, Melba clutching her handbag tightly to her side, Harold bent over his cane.
Rafael Zukos, the rabbi’s son. Melba had told me to talk to him.
I finished the tostada, noticing to my annoyance that the wheat-colored jacket I’d put on for my visit to Ira Previn’s office now sported a glob of green.
I patted it off with a napkin dipped in fizzy water, which left a damp patch and pilling on the lapel. Nuts.
I wiped off my fingers and looked up Rafael Zukos on my iPad. There wasn’t much about him, except that he collected Japanese art, specializing in work from the middle Edo period. An article in the Herald-Star described an eighteenth-century painting of a geisha crossing a street that Zukos had presented to the Japanese consul.
The article also mentioned Zukos’s father, Rabbi Larry Zukos, who’d led Temple Har HaShem for forty years, first on the South Side and then for eight years when they moved to Highland Park. Rafael apparently had not been called to the spiritual life, at least not to the conventionally religious life. He didn’t have a listed number, but a subscription search engine gave me an address in Rogers Park on Chicago’s northeast edge. There was no sign that he worked for a living. Maybe I could just drop in.
As I followed the twists of the northbound road, I’d been trying to decide what story might get Zukos to let me in. The truth was simplest. I found a parking space on Sheridan Road and left my jacket in the car. Nothing makes you look less professional than food on your clothes.
When I got to the tiny street—a mere half-block leading to Lake Michigan—I saw that Zukos had gutted the building, replacing most of the brick in the upper two stories with glass. The third floor was recessed, with glass panels leading to a wide balcony, where Zukos could stand and stare at the lake.
The building was secluded, good for privacy, good, too, for thieves, but all the right security devices were in place: cameras, laser gates, manual locks to override the electronic ones. Very sensible if Zukos’s Japanese art collection was valuable.
“Yes? What do you want?”
A man was calling down from the balcony. I squinted at him but couldn’t make out his face against the sun.