Brush Back

Maybe Scanlon’s theory as to why Mandel had asked Joel Previn to defend Stella was correct: tough love. Make the boy grow a spine or balls or whatever. It was possible—there’d definitely been a culture of bullying in the Mandel & McClelland office, with Spike Hurlihey, now the House Speaker, leading the pack. Would the partners have participated in the bullying to such a degree that they’d taken on Stella’s defense just to humiliate Joel?

What had Stella said, when I called on her last week? Something about A

I tried to picture it, but that image wouldn’t come into focus. The A

If A

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?”

“A

“How should I know? I only know Ma said she found it while she was cleaning out the dresser in A

“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 A

“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 A

Again he was quiet, so I nudged him. “Your mother did show it to you, didn’t she, Frank?”

He cut the co

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 a

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.

“I’m V. I. Warshawski. Are you Rafael Zukos? Melba Minsky suggested I talk to you.”

“Rafe!” the man called, turning away.

A few minutes went by. I practiced my scales: I was terribly breathy still, but getting firmer through the diaphragm.

A man appeared around the corner of the building. He was short, stocky, balding, wearing a kind of Japanese jacket over khaki pants.

“I’m Rafe Zukos. Ken didn’t get your name.”

“V. I. Warshawski. Melba Minsky suggested I talk to you.”

“Melba,” he repeated softly. “I haven’t heard from her in years, didn’t know she was still alive. Harold?”

“Frail but mobile,” I said. “I don’t really know them—we met this morning in South Chicago.”

“So they stayed south when the rest of us fled to a new reservation. They were braver than their rabbi.”

“Your father was a coward, you think?” I asked.

“Jews stayed in Minsk and Slonim during pogroms, but a black family buying a house next door? You’d think a whole regiment of Cossacks was sweeping through the neighborhood. Rabbi Zukos wasn’t very brave, but then, neither was I. Why did Melba send you to me?”

I gave him my story, the truth. Not the whole truth, not Frank’s and my history, but A

“Melba thought you might know why Mr. Mandel assigned the case to Joel,” I finished. “She thought Joel might have talked to you about the trial.”

Rafe stepped back a few paces. “She did? She was wrong. I don’t know what either of you hoped to gain by her sending you here.”

Ken, the man who’d called down to me from the balcony. Joel. Rafe’s belief he’d been a coward. These old stories, these old dramas, they wore me out. I sat on a boulder and spoke tonelessly.

“You and Joel were lovers, or at least the people at your dad’s synagogue thought you were. You didn’t come out directly to your father, so you think you were a coward.”

“How do you know?” Rafe said fiercely.

“It’s what I do for a living, Mr. Zukos, put fragments of stories together into a narrative that makes sense. I’m not always right, but I need a narrative to work with. Lies, secrets and silence. Everyone’s clutching them to their chests as if there were some value in being tightly bound and fearful.”