Brush Back

For once, I slept dreamlessly, no nightmares about tar pits or Stella Guzzo. It was only when I woke the next night, feeling Lotty’s fingers on my wrist, that the fears came tumbling back in on me. Bernie, Mr. Contreras—I’d watched him collapse—but I’d passed out instead of helping him. The dogs, the thugs.

Lotty looked at me with wry sadness. “I’m tempted to put you under again, Liebchen, if you’re only going to wake up to frenzy. Your neighbor is recovering. He was dehydrated and exhausted—he went through a heavy workout for a man his age. For anyone of any age, even for you. As for Bernadine, she, too, is on the mend. She isn’t my patient, but the doctors at the University of Chicago who have been treating her tell me she is tormenting herself with guilt over putting you and your neighbor in peril.”

Lotty sat on the edge of the bed, brushing my hair back from my face, her black eyes glittering with unshed tears. “When you come to me like this, wounded, my heart stops: I don’t want to be the one to outlive you. But if you hadn’t torn yourself apart, Bernadine would be dead. I’ll never be able to balance what you do to yourself to save others with my own need for you to save yourself, but I promise to stop adding to your torment by chastising you for it.” She stopped, smiled wryly and added, “I will try to stop.”

I squeezed her fingers. “What happened to my dogs?”

“The dockworkers who saved you before the police arrived seemed to have taken charge of the dogs, as well. Your neighbor wouldn’t let me hospitalize him until he knew they were safe. Jake went to South Chicago to collect them. He’s boarding them in the place he says you always use.” She made a face. “He said it’s called doggie day care—because you are convalescing, I will spare you my opinion of that.”

I laughed weakly and fell back into sleep while she sat next to me. When I woke again, Lotty was gone; a nurse had roused me to warn me that the police and an FBI agent were on their way up to my room.

I felt at a disadvantage in my hospital gown, grubby and unkempt. I made them wait while I wobbled into the bathroom and rinsed my face and hair. Jake had brought over some clean clothes, a pair of his own jeans, since I’d trashed all three of mine, and a rose cotton top, which made me look almost soft, graceful—a useful piece of misdirection in speaking to the law.

Conrad looked ostentatiously at his watch when I emerged. “You can spare a few minutes now? Must be nice to take off for R and R when you feel like it, instead of sleeping standing up the way I’ve been doing.”

“Like an elephant.” I sat cross-legged on the bed.

Derek Hatfield, from the FBI, looked startled. “Elephant?”

“They sleep standing up. I expect if you’d been shot in the head and kept going so you could rescue a kidnap victim, the department would let you take a break. At least twenty minutes. Take it up with Captain Mallory. What can you tell me?”

“Wonder Woman saves the city again.” Conrad was only half jeering. “You got some major bad boys way out on a limb they can’t climb back from. The Sturlese brothers and Boris Nabiyev, they were the goons who tried killing you and the Fouchard girl. Their alibis—the flu, being on job sites—unraveled like my mother’s knitting, once we flashed some warrants around. They didn’t really have any interest in any ancient papers, just wanted to get a couple of meddling women out of the way.”

“Did they reveal who paid them?” I asked.

“The Sturlese boys say it was all about the muscle they tried to put on the facilities VP at Wrigley. They were deep in debt after the downturn, Nabiyev got money for them from the Grozny Mob, but they had to earn it out. The Grozny goons wanted to pour all the new concrete in the Wrigley reno, and when the Cubs wouldn’t talk to them, the Uzbekis sent Fugher in to try to bribe or batter a guy named Brineruck in the Cubs organization. He was the person talking to Fugher in the recording you turned up.”

“How’d you smoke him out?” I asked.

Conrad yawned. “Your friend Villard, the guy who was shot up in Evanston, he made it through surgery. He ID’d the punk speaking to Fugher. Villard called him after you played the recording and the creep panicked, called Brian Sturlese for advice. Sturlese and Nabiyev weren’t going to take any chance on being named in a potential bribery case; they drove up to the Villard mansion with Brineruck, used him as their stalking horse, and shot Villard. The Cubs fired Brineruck on the spot, of course, but we arrested him for conspiracy to commit murder. Bribery, too, but attempted murder always plays well with a jury.”

“What about Sebastian Mesaline?” I asked. “Did he ever show up?”

Conrad made a face. “Punk was hiding in his uncle Jerry’s garage down in Lansing. He dissolved like the soggy piece of Kleenex he is. Sniveled about the loan he’d been forced to take out to cover his embezzlement. His sister, who must have ‘Born to be a Martyr’ tattooed on her someplace, is insisting that he didn’t do anything wrong—even though he locked the Fouchard girl behind a steel barricade and left her to die there. Sis is putting aside money for his legal defense. She tried hiring your mouthpiece, but Freeman Carter apparently told her there’d be a conflict of interest.”

“Was there any sign that Vince Bagby was involved in the Fugher murder?”

“You have a hard-on—”

“Disgusting expression, especially when talking to me,” I said. “The Sturlese brothers didn’t have an interest in anything A

“I’m not digging into Bagby on your say-so,” Conrad said coldly.

“He was at Say, Yes! the night that Bernadine and I were beaten up, and he’s been popping up every time something dramatic happens. I don’t know if it’s coincidence, or because he’s keeping an eye on me for Scanlon.”

“I can’t help you there. Maybe he knows you’re an unguided missile and he’s trying to make sure you don’t land on his trucks.”

Derek swallowed a grin.

I curled my lip. “I suppose mocking me is the easiest way to assuage your guilt over not getting to the Sturlese brothers before they dragged Bernadine Fouchard to South Chicago. Thank goodness Mr. Contreras and I rescued her before she died.”

Conrad shifted in his chair. “Sorry. Out of line. But I’m still not going after Scanlon, or Bagby, because you have an itch you want to scratch.”

I sucked in a breath, held it for a count of ten, waited for the red to fade from in front of my eyes. “There’s the business of A

“There’s no co

“Bagby and Scanlon are cousins, and Bagby is the younger one. He wanted the big boys to let him play with them when he was little, so he’d do whatever they said. It got to be ingrained. Now that they’re all grown, Bagby still does what the older boys want so he can be part of the gang.”

“What, now you’re a family therapist? They’re cousins, they do things together, so Bagby helps support Say, Yes! I’ll admit you were a big help two days ago in South Chicago, but I’ve got enough real crime in the Fourth to keep me going until my granddaughter’s in college—and I don’t have a kid of my own yet. I’m not going to start inventing crimes where the system is ru

“The system is exactly what runs smoothly only for the people ru