Brush Back

They were all taken either at Wrigley Field, or were candid shots at players’ homes or on trips to away games.

“My girl found these in the attic yesterday. I don’t really want to leave this house, so I’m having trouble concentrating on the job. My wife and I, we lived here together for forty-seven years. We raised our family here. We used to have magnificent Christmas parties—you can see here—this was the year before she died—it was so sudden, cancer of the pancreas, it came like a grand piano crashing down from the sky onto our heads—this was her last healthy year and she was in magnificent form.”

I admired the pictures of his wife, a handsome woman in her older age, who was laughing joyously with Andre Dawson and another man—a neighbor, Villard said.

Adelaide brought ginger tea for me, gin and tonic for Villard. We went through Christmas photos, and grandchildren photos, and finally came to the spring day that Boom-Boom and Frank had gone to Wrigley Field. The pictures I’d seen at the ballpark had all been with the would-be prospects, either in the dugout or on the field, but these were more candid shots, some in the stands or the locker room. Boom-Boom was in many of them.

The official photos in the dugout had been in color, but this set was in black-and-white. It wasn’t my cousin’s face that made me stop and carry one to the window for more light, but the young woman in the frame. A

I had forgotten what she looked like, and anyway, I’d never seen her like this, face alive with high spirits, with sexuality. I’d never seen her with my cousin, either, not like this, I mean. Maybe Boom-Boom had been in love with her. Maybe she’d been in love with him.

She’d been seventeen the day they were at the park together. Seven months later she would be dead. I wanted to be able to go inside that picture, that day, and warn her—stop, don’t look so carefree, your mother (your sister-in-law?) is about to murder you.

Villard saw my face. “That young lady—she’s someone you know?”

My mouth twisted involuntarily. “Her older brother was one of the guys who came to try out that day. I didn’t realize she’d been there, too—no one ever mentioned it to me. She’s been dead a long time; it’s wrenching to see her looking so vital. She wasn’t in the dugout shots.”

“No,” Villard said. “Family weren’t allowed in the dugout or on the field. She’d have been watching from the stands. The photographer took a liking to her, or maybe he was a fan of your cousin, because he seemed to follow the two of them around the park.”

There were nine shots that included A

“I don’t know why I never noticed these before. Maybe because that was the spring my wife . . . I thought I was so tough, unbeatable, coming in to work every day, but I couldn’t pay attention to much of anything, I see now.

“You can tell from the overhead pipes that those two kids got into one of the restricted sections of the ballpark. The bowels of Wrigley Field are unbeautiful space. You can see in this shot—too many dangling wires, unsealed conduits—it’s worse now because they’ve added more wiring for the electronics the media folks have to have, but it was bad enough back then. Maybe your cousin . . . But the photographer worked for us, he should have had enough sense to stop them.”

“When Boom-Boom had a full head of steam he was hard to stop,” I said. “But from the looks of these, it was A

She’d been playing hide-and-seek, I guessed, from that daredevil grin she’d been flashing at Boom-Boom. Find me if you can, follow me if you dare. Seventeen years old, feeling her powers start to unfold. Whether she’d cared for my cousin or just been enjoying being alive didn’t matter.

I sat back in my chair, wishing my head weren’t quite so clogged. For a week I’d been arguing with Bernie that the putative diary didn’t matter, but now it started to feel important to me again.

A

Not Boom-Boom: my cousin would not threaten any woman for having multiple strings to her bow. Or for any other reason. Even on the ice, where he was fast and cu

Mr. Villard was studying the prints, trying to figure out where A

“Would you let me take these home with me?” I asked. “I can scan them and get them back to you.”

Villard laughed. “Take them, keep them. My girls want to sell all my memorabilia for charity, so if you bring them back, chances are they’ll sell these, too.”

Adelaide brought me more tea, and a second gin for Villard, although a moment later I heard his daughter in the hall upbraiding her for encouraging his drinking—a no-no with diabetes. I lingered with him, watching the lake while Villard talked to me about his wife, his son who died in Vietnam, the baseball players he’d known and loved. I left him regretfully so that I could make my appointment with Murray.

“When you get that book about your cousin finished, you be sure to come back and give me a copy. Get Adelaide to tell you the address where I’ll be moving.”

I definitely had to write the wretched biography, I thought, bidding Villard a reluctant farewell. He was an attractive guy, and for a brief time I’d forgotten my wounds and my worries. I wasn’t eager to get back to them, but once in my car, my uneasiness about Bernie, myself, the whole situation returned.

I had a text from Tim Streeter, saying that he’d co

I stopped at my office before heading to the Golden Glow to meet Murray, since I’d left all my papers there. I had half an hour, too short for a nap, but instead of returning e-mails and phone calls, I spread the photos of A

In the second of the pictures of my cousin in the hidden passageway, I thought I could make out the shadow of A

I held the glass over each of the pictures and saw one where her shirt was smudged with dirt. So, taken after she’d been in the tu

In the next one she was facing the camera full on, apparently talking to the photographer. She had a black oblong in her left hand that I’d originally assumed was a clutch purse, but under the glass it turned out to be a notebook bound in leather or plastic.

The room seemed to heave around me. I clutched the edge of the table, waiting for the dizziness to pass. A