“Yep,” I agreed.
The two men laughed easily and told me to look after myself, the yard was full of spikes and wires that were hard on a passenger car. They were a jolly lot at Bagby, laughing and chatting with the boss’s daughter and random private eyes. Maybe I’d imagined that moment of suspicion.
I bounced and jolted my poor old car back to 103rd Street. If I’d been a TV character I’d have planted a bug in the room, and then my trusty electronic devices would have broadcast the conversation between Toby, Delphina and the other guy. I’d have learned Mr. Gravel’s name, and what was going on with Uncle Jerry that was so secret they had to pretend they’d never heard of him. I, alas, didn’t have that kind of equipment.
I reminded myself that I didn’t have a need to know what was going on with Uncle Jerry. I’d only become curious because he’d run complaining to his priest about me. He was doing something so illegal or so dangerous, or so both, that a PI on his perimeter had terrified him. I would love to know if it was PI’s in general, or me specifically that had him rattled.
BALLPARK CHATTER
I stopped at the Pot of Gold on my way north, hoping to ask Joel whether he had known that someone promised Stella an early release. Joel wasn’t there. Good bartenders don’t give up their most loyal customers’ whereabouts; the man working the counter tonight stared at me blankly and disclaimed all knowledge of Joel Previn.
The owner of my own regular bar, the Golden Glow in the South Loop, guards my privacy with the same care, a thought that made me get off Lake Shore Drive at Balbo and head to the financial district. I didn’t want to be like Joel Previn, turning to alcohol whenever the going got tough, but I was definitely in the mood for whisky.
At six-thirty, only a clutch of hard-core drinkers was still at Sal Barthele’s famous horseshoe bar. Sal’s head was visible in the middle of the group—she’s five-eleven in her stockinged feet, and is the only woman I know who not only likes to put on four-inch heels, but can actually walk in them without falling over. She saw me come in—another trait good bartenders share, eyes always covering the room, making sure the regulars feel welcome, and that troublemakers are eased out before they reach the boiling point.
I chatted with Erica, Sal’s head bartender, for the five minutes it took Sal to leave her traders and keep them all feeling special. We talked about ships and shoes and sealing wax while I sipped a Johnnie Walker. Sal sailed back and forth among her regulars, but kept returning to me at the open end of the great mahogany bar. By the time Erica poured me a second drink, the bar was almost empty.
“There’s sex all over this story,” Sal said when I told her how I’d been spending my week. “Joel and the man he briefly slept with, Joel and the crush he had on the murdered woman, the old law partner and the money he gave her. And then that mother! It sounds as though all she’s thought about for sixty years is sex. I know that kind of woman—sex is so vile that she can’t get enough of talking about it. There was a woman like her in my building growing up—not that she murdered her daughter, but whenever you saw her, her eyes and lips were glistening with whatever deviance she was going to reveal. You’re going to get very dirty if you climb any further into that mud pit.”
I nodded gloomily. “It sounds as though Stella beat Annie to death for bragging about being on the Pill. But something Betty said to me today seems very odd.”
“Everything about Miss Betty sounds odd to me, but what in particular?” Sal nodded at Erica, and then at the corner. A couple who’d been holding hands under one of her Tiffany lamps had been trying to get a bill for thirty seconds—take it up to forty-five and they’d think they were having a bad night out.
“It sounds as though someone cut a deal with Stella, some kind of deal. Betty said no one thought she’d do all that time. She said, ‘They told us she’d be out in three years.’ When I pushed her to tell me who, she uttered what sounded very much like a death threat.”
“You seriously think this Betty murdered her husband’s sister?” Sal raised one beautifully sculpted eyebrow. “She sounds more like a whiner than a doer.”
“Yeah, it was probably just babble. I’m thinking more along the lines of bribery gone wrong. The first Greylord indictments were coming in when Stella was being tried. Maybe she or Frank made a down payment but the judge got cold feet.”