“He came up to my office yesterday. He says—”
“Oh, so we have an office now, do we, Miss Hoity-Toity. Frank drives a truck, but you have an office. Frank would have an office, too, if you hadn’t destroyed his chances.”
“Me? Please. You bullied Frank into breaking up with me thirty years ago. Don’t tell me that made him so depressed he stopped trying to make a success out of life.”
“No one ever got depressed when they got the Warshawskis out of their lives, but your family, they lived to bring mine down. Your whore of a mother broke up my marriage—”
“I thought Mr. Guzzo was still married to you when he died,” I objected. “Had he divorced you? Is that why USX tried to deny the comp claim?”
She swung an arm back, a reflexive urge to hit me. I took her wrist, not hard, just firm.
“Beating people up is what got you into trouble to begin with. You’re not going to hit me, Stella, so calm down.”
“Don’t you tell me what to do or not to do. I didn’t take shit from guards and wardens and bitches of drug dealers all those years to come home and take it from a Warshawski.”
She had a point. I perched on the arm of one of the easy chairs. “Let’s leave Gabriella and Mateo out of the discussion. They’ve both been dead a lot of years and can’t defend themselves. Tell me what I did to ruin Frank’s chances.”
“Not just you, your whole family.” Her lips were tight, but I didn’t like the way her eyes looked, too much white showing around the irises. “You Warshawskis always had to be number one, and when it looked like Frank had the same chance that Bernard got, you ruined it.”
“What?” I was genuinely baffled. “My uncle never had any special chances; he worked the docks his whole life. If Frank had wanted a job there instead of—”
“Shut up, numbskull,” Stella spat at me. “Young Bernard. You couldn’t stand—”
“Oh, you mean Boom-Boom. Frank didn’t play hockey, but if he had, Boom-Boom would have welcomed him like a brother.”
“Of course Frank didn’t play hockey.”
Stella’s exasperation was turning her skin a mottled red. She probably looked like this the night she killed Annie. I kept my weight forward, so that I could jump out of her way if her rage got the better of her—she might be close to eighty now but she still looked strong.
“Baseball. He was going to have his chance, they promised it, they promised he’d be at Wrigley Field where the top brass could see him, but it fell apart. That’s because you Warshawskis didn’t want it to happen. You’ve tormented us for as long as I’ve lived here. Your mother seduced my husband. Your cousin didn’t want Frank to have the same success as he got, your father”—she gave the word a horrible sarcastic inflection—“could have helped me, but he couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger. Little Annie was a saint or something to him and he figured he’d get his own back.”
“No, Stella. You’re making this up. There is no evidence, there’s no conspiracy, there’s only you, hating my mother and wanting to blame her for your troubles.”
She lunged at me so suddenly that I fell off the armchair to get out of her way. She tried to kick me but hit the chair instead. I scuttled backward on my butt and got to my feet as she lunged again.
I shoved the armchair into her path. “No, Stella, I told you no hitting. Frank said you want an exoneration. Are you going to tell the lawyer that Boom-Boom blocked Frank’s chances to play baseball and this made you so angry you killed Annie?”
“I didn’t kill my girl,” she panted. “It was an intruder. When I left the house to go to the bingo, Annie was alive. Everyone thought she was so sweet, they should have heard what she was saying. If she died with those words in her mouth she’s been burning in hell for it.”
Even across the armchair I could smell her sweat: bath soap and talcum mixed with the rankness of the hatred coursing through her.
“Why didn’t you bring that up at the trial?”
“I told that useless baby they gave me as a lawyer. I told him it was an intruder, but he didn’t know enough about the law to use it. Or maybe Boom-Boom bought him off. He had plenty of money, all those endorsements, all those girls going flat on their backs for him. Maybe Annie did, too. I told her she was going to turn out just like your mother, and she had the gall to say that was her prayer! No wonder I hit her! Anyone would have, but I didn’t kill her. That was someone else, maybe your cousin, that’s why your father buried the evidence. Your cousin came to the house and murdered Annie while I was at church, praying for her soul!”