Brush Back

He covered his face, his voice dropping so low I had to lean over the steering wheel to hear him above the engine. “I—if all this derails Frankie—I don’t know what I’ll do.”

The driver behind us leaned on her horn. Frank saw he’d done the unpardonable—left a big gap in front of him. He drove up to the mike and ordered a double cheeseburger with extra-large fries and a super-sized shake.

“Scanlon told you to stop your mother?” I asked.

“Not like that. He said no one cared about a crime that old anymore, unless she made them care, don’t you see? He came up to me at Saint Eloy’s when I was watching Frankie and said he’d heard through the grapevine what Ma was doing. He was going to get one of his lawyer pals to look after her interests so she wouldn’t feel like we were giving her the brush-off, but if I could talk her into letting it lie it would be better for Frankie. And then, everything got out of control. Like it always does in my life.”

He pulled over to the curb with his order and started eating moodily, shoving a great handful of fries into his mouth.

“What did Scanlon say after all the press brouhaha began?”

“I was sweating bullets. I talked to Vince and asked him what I should do, but he spoke to Scanlon for me, and he told me Scanlon saw I wasn’t to blame; he still is willing to sponsor Frankie.”

I turned sideways in the seat to look at him squarely. “Frank: someone sicced a trio of Insane Dragons on me when I left Scanlon’s office the other night. Do you know anything about that?”

“What the fuck are you trying to say?”

“Bagby or Scanlon or Thelma Kalvin, they were all there when I went up to visit his youth program, and so was Father Cardenal. Did any of them talk to you, tell you that I was bringing too much attention to your family?”

“Crap, Tori.” He set his box of food on top of the dashboard so violently the fries jumped out of the box onto the gearshift. “You ca

“I know,” I cut him off. “Believe me, I hear that script every time I cross the border.”

He gaped at me.

“Only making a feeble joke. So many people have told me I don’t know anything about the South Side that it’s starting to seem like you guys think you live in a different country than the rest of the city.”

“We do,” Frank said. “We live in the land of the dead.”

That shut me up for a moment: it was poignant, but also an unexpected image to hear on his lips. I couldn’t let his previous comment rest, though.

“What do you mean, everyone knew Tony couldn’t get along with Scanlon? When I saw Scanlon last week, he passed a comment about my dad—what does the whole neighborhood know that I don’t? Did Rory get Tony shipped off to Englewood?”

“You are like a goddam squirrel trying to get into a birdfeeder, Warshawski. I don’t know who did what to whom, but everyone knows that Tony wouldn’t ride to Boom-Boom’s first game in Scanlon’s buses. Everyone talked about it, back at the time, I mean. Don’t ask me what that was about because I fucking do not know.”

“If Tony didn’t trust Rory Scanlon, then Scanlon was up to something. What was it?”

“Why can’t you grow up? Everyone else learns their parents are human, that they make mistakes. Your father wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t a moral bloodhound, either, who could smell good and evil in people. He was wrong about Scanlon.”

My left eye was starting to throb, fatigue and anger pushing too much blood to my face. I massaged the bruise with my fingertips. What would Scanlon have been up to that Tony didn’t trust? I kept coming back to the sex that swam around this history, A

I let the atmosphere in the cab calm down for a minute, then went back to the day of the Wrigley Field tryouts.

“Do you remember anything A

He curled his lip. “A

“I’m doing my best not to burst into tears in front of Warshawski—Boom-Boom, I mean—and A

“And Boom-Boom? How did he react, to you or your sister?”

“I don’t know! I couldn’t bear to be near him! I didn’t want his fucking sympathy—Chicago’s golden boy, can’t you understand that? He wanted to drive me home, go out for a beer in that damned ’Vette he was hotdogging in at the time. I couldn’t fucking bear it.

“Bagby’s had the car waiting to take all us losers home, but I didn’t want to be with them, either. I snuck off to the L and got myself back to the South Side. Back to the slime where I belonged.”

“Sounds like a day in hell, Frank. Sorry to make you revisit it . . . On a completely different subject, I’d like to play a recording for you. Tell me if you know either of these voices.”

While he ate his way through three thousand calories, I took out my cell phone and downloaded the recording from the Cloud.

“God, who is that scuzzball?” Frank said at the end. “Who’s he trying to threaten?”

“I don’t know. I hoped you would recognize one of the voices.”

“Wish I could help you, Tori, because then maybe you’d let go of that goddam bill your lawyer put through my mailbox.”

I was feeling sorry for Frank, but not sorry enough to say I’d forgive the bill. I jumped down from the cab and walked back to the Subaru.

STICKBALL

I drove north in a melancholy mood. Nothing in my so-called life, Frank had said. Nothing worked out the way he wanted it to.

That might be true, but how much else of what he said could I believe? His forgetting that A

Growing up, like so many only children I’d fantasized about siblings, someone to confide in, play with. Boom-Boom had been a kind of surrogate brother, but we saw each other only once or twice a week. It seemed painful that Frank and A

While I waited at the long light at Damen and Milwaukee, I dictated a summary of the conversation for my files. As an afterthought, I sent a copy to Freeman.

Sorry to violate the r-o, but I had to ask him about the pix.

You did not have to ask him about the pix, Freeman typed back sharply. You don’t need to know about the damned pictures. Unless you want to spend 30 days in County, you will respect the order.