Текст книги "Brush Back"
Автор книги: Sara Paretsky
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 28 страниц)
“Remember what I said, Ms. Know-it-all. Remember what happened to Annie, she thought she was better than the rest of us, too.”
Betty turned to walk away, but I caught her arm and turned her around. “Betty, that sounds like a cross between a death threat and a confession. Did you kill Annie? Is that why Stella is looking for exoneration now? She wore the jacket to protect Frank and her grandchildren, but—”
Betty drew back her arm to slug me, but I ducked at the last second. Her momentum toppled her.
Father Cardenal helped her to her feet, dusted off her St. Eloy’s warm-up jacket. “Let’s get you back to the stands, Betty. Frankie’s playing a beautiful game. Don’t spoil his day by getting involved in a fight.”
He put an arm around her and propelled her toward the stands. I left: I didn’t care if I ever saw young Frankie play. I was walking back to my car when Cardenal jogged up behind me.
“That was a very serious accusation you made to her. I don’t blame her for being angry.”
“She tried to punch me. After making a most sinister comment about her sister-in-law’s death. I am not the aggressor here.”
Cardenal said, “You’re right, but only in a way. I’m trying to protect my flock and you’re getting everyone perturbed in a way I’ve never seen them.”
“Look, padre: I came here reluctantly after Frank Guzzo fed me a line about his mother. I have no idea what he hoped I would do, but I’m quite sure it isn’t what he asked me to do. The fact that people are getting perturbed by my presence has to do with the volcano of secrets they’re afraid will erupt if they get off the crater that’s opening below them, not with my climbing up the mountainside. I have no idea who Jerry Fugher is or why he’s so rattled at the thought of a detective on his trail, but I’m getting a nasty feeling about the secrets the Guzzo family is hiding.”
I could hear the crowd noise swell in the background. Someone had scored, but I couldn’t tell if it was St. Eloy’s or the visitors.
“The Guzzos have suffered a great deal. Maybe they’re protecting themselves from more pain,” Cardenal suggested.
“I don’t know about you, but my life hasn’t been a crystal stair, either. That doesn’t give me license to punch people or make death threats. And do you honestly believe—without flapping your wings in flights of rhetoric—if Betty Guzzo killed Annie and her mother-in-law took the rap, do you think that’s a secret they all should protect?”
“You’re speculating,” he protested. “That’s why you make people unhappy. You make up stories about them that you have no way of proving.”
“It’s the way I work as a detective: I make up stories to see which ones cover the most facts. These are the facts I’m looking at—Frank Guzzo afraid of what his mother will uncover, Stella scrambling to blame my cousin for the murder as soon as I start asking questions, Stella and Betty both obsessed by Annie’s sex life. If Stella spent twenty-five years in the joint to protect her son’s marriage, she sure wouldn’t welcome my uncovering that crater. So she quickly invented a diary that casts blame on a high-profile third party. I like it as a story, or at least a hypothesis.”
I continued to my car. Cardenal followed me, expostulating. I ignored him and in another moment, a crowd of children raced over to surround him.
“Father, you should have seen it, Frank stole home, he won the game, we beat them.”
The excited cries echoed up the street as I drove away.
KEEP ON TRUCKIN’
I drove over to Buffalo Avenue and stared broodingly at the Guzzo house. Some kids, those bored, undermotivated boys with no future, were eyeing me, perhaps trying to decide if a strange white woman in an old Mustang was an undercover cop, or a worthwhile target. I grinned at them ferociously: undercover cop, they seemed to agree, and moved several doors away, swaggering, so I’d know I hadn’t frightened them.
My rage from two nights ago started to rise in me again, but if I forced my way into Stella’s house, all I’d get out of it would be jail time. And maybe the loss of my detective license.
I took those deep breaths they’re always recommending as protection against stress. There’s almost always a second way if you calm down and think. I was about to put the car into gear when Frank phoned me. Sometimes the second way comes to you.
“What the hell are you up to, Warshawski?”
“Frank, just the man I was hoping to talk to. I stopped to watch your son: he looks impressive.”
“Don’t try smearing butter on me. Betty told me you want to jinx Frankie’s shot at baseball camp.”
“Why is everyone in your family always on the brink of hysteria?” I demanded. “I think it’s fantastic that Frankie has a chance at a first-class camp where college scouts can see him.”
“Crap. Betty says you threatened to start a smear campaign against Rory Scanlon just to screw us.”
The blinds twitched in Stella’s front window. She was watching the street, I guess, but she must have recognized my car because she pushed two slats apart and stared for twenty or thirty seconds. I drove a few doors away, outside the fifty yard perimeter of the restraining order.
“No, Frank. I asked if Betty and you were sure that Scanlon wasn’t another Jerry Sandusky.”
“Based on what, Warshawski? What makes you think a good, decent guy like Scanlon—”
“Nothing,” I said. “But nobody thought a committed priest like Father Gielczowski—”
“Who told you about him?” Frank said fiercely.
“You did. You let it slip last week. It’s made me think, that’s all. But if I’m letting my imagination run away with me—if he doesn’t have boys sleep over at his house, or take them on those special one-on-one camping trips—”
I let my voice trail off.
Frank breathed heavily into the phone. “He only does things with the boys to help them use sports to stay out of gangs. Sometimes if a kid is troubled, he takes him off on his own. Is that a crime?”
“Depends on what he’s doing on those solo trips. Sexual abuse is a high price to pay for a shot at a sports career.”
“Damn you, Warshawski, get your mind out of the gutter. Why is it always about sex with you?”
“With me?” I sputtered. “Your mother and your wife both are obsessed with Annie’s sex life. Betty seemed to think that murdering Annie was the right way to handle her being sexually active.”
“That’s not true, that’s not what Betty said.”
“Betty said your mother took the moral high ground by beating Annie for using the Pill. She also said that you and she felt honor-bound to tell your mother that Annie was sleeping with Boom-Boom, for which you had zero evidence. Or did Boom-Boom sidle up to you at Rafters and confide all over a boilermaker?”
Frank didn’t speak for a beat, trying to collect his thoughts. “It wasn’t like that. We just thought—it was how Annie said it—but anyway, it turned out we were right. Annie wrote it in her diary that she was afraid of Boom-Boom.”
“Ah, yes, that diary. One of those wonderful mythical books one is always hearing about but never seeing.”
“My mother found Annie’s diary. She did not make that up.”
The kids who’d moved up the street were drifting back toward me. “Frank, from the day you showed up at my office I’ve been trying to figure out what you really wanted from me. Your story about needing me to help your mother with her exoneration claim was so bogus I’m embarrassed I responded to you. But now, I’m thinking you used me as a smokescreen to protect your wife.”
“From what?”
“From the secrets that will spill out if a group like the Innocence Project takes on Stella’s exoneration. If there’s something there to show that Betty played a role in Annie’s death—”
Frank swore at me and cut the connection.
I stared blankly at the street. Until Betty blurted out that Annie got what was coming to her, I’d never doubted for one second that Stella was her killer, but what if Betty had played a role, too? Stella had admitted that she beat her daughter the night Annie died, but maybe she sincerely believed she hadn’t killed her. Maybe she really did believe someone had come to the house and finished Annie off while she was playing bingo.
If Stella had thought Boom-Boom was involved in Annie’s death twenty-five years ago, she would have trumpeted the claim at the top of her lungs back then. And I doubted she would have protected her daughter-in-law. The milk of motherly love didn’t exactly course through Stella Guzzo’s veins, but maybe she would have taken the full rap if she thought it would help Frank.
More likely, Stella was guilty as charged but had thought she’d weasel out of the worst consequence of her acts. Betty said Stella had been promised a shorter sentence. Had someone offered to dig up evidence of another assailant, and dropped the ball? Or had the obligingly helpful Rory Scanlon paid a bribe for Stella that hadn’t worked, or she’d pissed off Scanlon and he hadn’t paid the bribe?
If Rory Scanlon had been involved in paying for Stella’s defense, or trying to get her sentence reduced, what would induce him to talk to me? Nothing I could think of off the top of my head. I couldn’t get access to the mythical diary. But if money had changed hands . . .
I took out my tablet to see whether the trial judge had been pulled into the FBI’s old undercover operation in Chicago and Cook County’s courts, famous forever to us locals as Operation Greylord. However, showing the iPad was like waving a raw T-bone at a Rottweiler—the drifting kids swarmed around the car. I flashed my smile of death and gunned the car into reverse. The kids jumped out of the way. I made a U and roared up Buffalo. In my rearview mirror I saw one of them pull out a gun, but mercifully, he didn’t fire it—gangbangers are notoriously lousy shots. I didn’t want a crossfire victim on my conscience.
I’d gone a couple of blocks when I realized there was one person I still hadn’t spoken to down here and that was the current owner of Bagby Haulage. What had Frank called him? Vince. I pulled over and took out my iPad again. Bagby & Family Haulage had their headquarters on 103rd Street, in the bleak landscape around the old CID landfill. I followed one of Bagby’s panel trucks down a deeply rutted track to the yard, where a dozen or so trucks were parked. Bagby headquarters consisted of a large hangar for mechanical work and a permanent trailer that housed the offices.
I parked as close to the office entrance as possible, but still had to cross several mud wallows. At least I’d worn sensible shoes to my meeting at Wrigley Field this morning.
The trailer door opened onto a single room. It was utilitarian space: a wall of filing cabinets, four metal desks, a barred area with a safe and a desk inside—presumably for payday. Two men about my own age were lounging over one of the desks, chatting in a desultory way. A young woman with a cascade of Botticelli curls hastily switched screens on her computer when I came in and busied herself with a stack of papers. She relaxed when she saw it was me—not whatever authority figure she’d been fearing.
“You lost?” one of the men asked.
“Not if this is Bagby Haulage. I had a question for Vince Bagby.”
“He’s not here, but this is Delphina Bagby. Don’t let all the hair fool you—she can handle an eighteen-wheeler if you need a load hauled this afternoon.”
Delphina blushed but sat up straight and offered to help.
“I’m V. I. Warshawski. I met Jerry Fugher outside Wrigley Field this morning.”
“He must have had a delivery up there,” she said, just as one of the men said, “Fugher, we don’t have a Fugher on our books.”
Delphina’s blush deepened. “I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t hear you right.”
I pretended not to notice the slip. “Maybe I’m confused. He was getting into a Bagby truck up there.” I pulled out my phone and showed her the photo I’d taken.
Delphina looked at the screen, then at the two men. The man who’d said they didn’t have a Fugher on their books picked up my phone.
“That’s one of our trucks all right. What did you say the guy’s name was? Jerry? He looks like Danny DeVito.”
“Since you know the DeVito clone is Jerry, what about the guy who’s with him?” I asked.
The two men froze for a millisecond, before the spokesman gave an easy smile. “Lucky guess. I don’t know either guy, but the tall one doesn’t look like anyone I’d want to mess with. Toby, you’d better check into this, see if one of our guys let someone borrow a truck.”
The second man grunted. “Forward the photo to Delphina here and I’ll check around. License plate shows up clearly, should be easy to sort out. Whoever did this better have a savings account—Vince doesn’t stand for this kind of nonsense. He’ll fire the driver who let a truck out of his possession. You don’t get a second chance if you lend out a truck.”
It wasn’t until Delphina and I had taken care of the photo that it occurred to Toby to ask why I’d traipsed all the way down here after this man Jerry whoever he was.
“Since he doesn’t work here, I don’t need to trouble you,” I said vaguely.
“No trouble,” the first man said. “Vince will find him, or Toby will—Toby’s our dispatcher—so we can pass on a message—besides ‘Don’t borrow Bagby trucks,’ of course.”
I smiled. “It’s not that important. He seemed frightened by the other guy and I hoped to see him when he could talk more easily, that’s all. Sorry to bother you.”
I stopped at Delphina’s desk on my way out. “Your computer screen is reflected on your lampshade. If you don’t want your dad to catch you playing solitaire, move your lamp back.”
The two men looked at each other. “You’re a sharp observer. What’d you say your name was? Sherlock Holmes?”
“V. I. Warshawski. Same line of work, though.”
Again a fractional pause, as if an electric current were briefly switched off, before the spokesman said, “Meaning you’re a detective?”
“Yep,” I agreed.
The two men laughed easily and told me to look after myself, the yard was full of spikes and wires that were hard on a passenger car. They were a jolly lot at Bagby, laughing and chatting with the boss’s daughter and random private eyes. Maybe I’d imagined that moment of suspicion.
I bounced and jolted my poor old car back to 103rd Street. If I’d been a TV character I’d have planted a bug in the room, and then my trusty electronic devices would have broadcast the conversation between Toby, Delphina and the other guy. I’d have learned Mr. Gravel’s name, and what was going on with Uncle Jerry that was so secret they had to pretend they’d never heard of him. I, alas, didn’t have that kind of equipment.
I reminded myself that I didn’t have a need to know what was going on with Uncle Jerry. I’d only become curious because he’d run complaining to his priest about me. He was doing something so illegal or so dangerous, or so both, that a PI on his perimeter had terrified him. I would love to know if it was PI’s in general, or me specifically that had him rattled.
BALLPARK CHATTER
I stopped at the Pot of Gold on my way north, hoping to ask Joel whether he had known that someone promised Stella an early release. Joel wasn’t there. Good bartenders don’t give up their most loyal customers’ whereabouts; the man working the counter tonight stared at me blankly and disclaimed all knowledge of Joel Previn.
The owner of my own regular bar, the Golden Glow in the South Loop, guards my privacy with the same care, a thought that made me get off Lake Shore Drive at Balbo and head to the financial district. I didn’t want to be like Joel Previn, turning to alcohol whenever the going got tough, but I was definitely in the mood for whisky.
At six-thirty, only a clutch of hard-core drinkers was still at Sal Barthele’s famous horseshoe bar. Sal’s head was visible in the middle of the group—she’s five-eleven in her stockinged feet, and is the only woman I know who not only likes to put on four-inch heels, but can actually walk in them without falling over. She saw me come in—another trait good bartenders share, eyes always covering the room, making sure the regulars feel welcome, and that troublemakers are eased out before they reach the boiling point.
I chatted with Erica, Sal’s head bartender, for the five minutes it took Sal to leave her traders and keep them all feeling special. We talked about ships and shoes and sealing wax while I sipped a Johnnie Walker. Sal sailed back and forth among her regulars, but kept returning to me at the open end of the great mahogany bar. By the time Erica poured me a second drink, the bar was almost empty.
“There’s sex all over this story,” Sal said when I told her how I’d been spending my week. “Joel and the man he briefly slept with, Joel and the crush he had on the murdered woman, the old law partner and the money he gave her. And then that mother! It sounds as though all she’s thought about for sixty years is sex. I know that kind of woman—sex is so vile that she can’t get enough of talking about it. There was a woman like her in my building growing up—not that she murdered her daughter, but whenever you saw her, her eyes and lips were glistening with whatever deviance she was going to reveal. You’re going to get very dirty if you climb any further into that mud pit.”
I nodded gloomily. “It sounds as though Stella beat Annie to death for bragging about being on the Pill. But something Betty said to me today seems very odd.”
“Everything about Miss Betty sounds odd to me, but what in particular?” Sal nodded at Erica, and then at the corner. A couple who’d been holding hands under one of her Tiffany lamps had been trying to get a bill for thirty seconds—take it up to forty-five and they’d think they were having a bad night out.
“It sounds as though someone cut a deal with Stella, some kind of deal. Betty said no one thought she’d do all that time. She said, ‘They told us she’d be out in three years.’ When I pushed her to tell me who, she uttered what sounded very much like a death threat.”
“You seriously think this Betty murdered her husband’s sister?” Sal raised one beautifully sculpted eyebrow. “She sounds more like a whiner than a doer.”
“Yeah, it was probably just babble. I’m thinking more along the lines of bribery gone wrong. The first Greylord indictments were coming in when Stella was being tried. Maybe she or Frank made a down payment but the judge got cold feet.”
It used to be that a big enough bribe in Cook County could get almost anyone off any hook, including murder, but Operation Greylord netted about fifty judges, another fifty attorneys, deputies and assorted small fry. I knew of one guy who’d appealed a murder conviction, arguing that he’d paid the judge twenty thousand to have it overturned and the judge hadn’t delivered. The justices on the Seventh Circuit had a good long belly laugh over that.
“If she has enough money to bribe a Cook County judge, why is she still in South Chicago?” Sal asked.
“There’s that,” I agreed. “The money is a big question mark in the middle of this. Stella kept up payments on the house while she was in Logan. Frank told me she used his dad’s insurance to cover the mortgage—Mateo Guzzo’s pension disappeared when the mill went bankrupt. Mandel or McClelland, or Rory Scanlon, are the folks who would have known how to bribe a judge.”
“Maybe Annie had more than two thousand in her bra drawer,” Sal suggested. Her mind was on the room: the pre-theater crowd was starting to build, people who can’t get through the first act without a double something. “I don’t really see what it has to do with you, girlfriend.”
She swept off, her long feather earrings bobbing in rhythm with her stride. I put the rest of my second drink back on the bar—I’d breathalyze myself if I had any more whisky, as tired as I was.
Jake said something similar when I got home, not about the whisky, but the investigation: even if Betty had murdered Annie and blackmailed or bullied Stella into taking the rap, why was it my business? We were on my back porch with a bottle of Torgiano, watching Mr. Contreras and the dogs down in the garden.
“But this is good news,” Bernie objected. She’d come home from her first day of work so filled with caffeine that I’d sent her out for a run with the dogs. When she brought them back forty minutes later, she still had energy to burn. “I thought you were doing nothing, but I see you are working hard. Now this man, this Uncle Jerry, he is so scared of you he goes running to his priest.”
After another minute of energetic speculating on what Stella would do next and how we could retaliate, Bernie ran down the back stairs to rejoin Mr. Contreras and the dogs.
“You scare me, too, V.I.,” Jake grumbled. “If I thought running to a priest would do me any good I’d be on my way to church right now. I wish you’d give up on these Guzzos. You’re not getting paid, and when these people get into your dreams, I’m the one who gets punched.”
“I’ll put Mitch into bed between us,” I offered. “He’s tough enough to wrassle with me.”
Mitch seemed to know I was talking about him—he lifted his great black head and grinned up the stairs at me.
“Do that, Warshawski, and you will be startled by how fast I can wrap a bass string around your neck.”
“Those strings set you back six hundred dollars,” I said. “You sure you can afford to strangle me?”
“Yep, you’re right, best use my hands.”
We put the matter behind us and went out to catch a show with a friend of his who played oboe. One thing led to another and we ended up dancing at Hot Rococo until after midnight.
The Guzzos got into my sleep, not enough that I started punching Jake, but enough that I woke around six the next morning. When I realized I wasn’t going back to sleep I stared enviously at Jake. He was beautiful in sleep, his black hair falling over his forehead, his long fingers curled around the corner of his pillow. I stroked his shoulder and his muscles rippled, but he didn’t wake up.
I gave it up and went next door into my own place, where Bernie, of course, was heavily asleep in the living room. She also didn’t stir, not even when I rummaged noisily in my bag for my laptop.
While my espresso machine heated, I looked up Stella’s trial again. The street kids had interrupted me yesterday and I’d forgotten to go back to look for the judge’s name. It had been a guy named Elgin Grigsby, not one I’d ever encountered, but there are some five hundred judges in Cook County.
Grigsby had survived the Greylord scandal and had taken an honorable retirement from the bench four years ago. He was “of counsel” at the downtown firm where he’d started his career before joining the bench. Grigsby wintered in Arizona, but had returned to his Chicago condo a few weeks ago. I did a double take when I saw the address: the judge was living in the Pulteney building on Wabash where I used to have my office.
When I rented at the Pulteney, the elevator worked about half the time, the wiring was so old that you needed special battery interfaces to run a computer, and I could have retired if I’d been able to charge union scale for repairing the women’s toilet.
After the owners forced out me and the other hardy renters—by cutting off utilities while still holding on to our rent money—they’d gutted the place and turned it into high-end condos.
It was Saturday, not a day for business cold calls. I put work behind me for the weekend, but Monday morning, I took the L to the Loop. Maybe because of the iron girders down the middle of the block, this stretch of Wabash still looked tawdry. Arnie’s Steak Joynt was still flashing its neon on one corner, and the bar that used to make me think I was catching some bad disease was still in business across the street from it.
This made the rehabbed lobby of the Pulteney all the more striking when I went inside. I’d always wondered what lay under the decades of grime that crusted the mosaic floor. Pharaohs, elongated cats, boats on the Nile. The Pulteney apparently went up in the 1920s, at the height of the Egyptian craze that followed the discovery of King Tut’s tomb.
In addition to legal odd jobs, Judge Grigsby worked as a docent for the Chicago Architecture Foundation; his shift started at ten, his wife had told me when I’d called earlier. He could give me forty-five minutes before strolling over to Michigan Avenue to start his tour.
The doorman, in white gloves so as not to smudge the Art Deco figurines when he held the brass elevator doors open for me, phoned upstairs to confirm the appointment. White gloves, polished brass, even an indie coffee bar in the lobby, while management had sucked up my rent money for fifteen years without bringing the electrics up to code. I rode to the seventeenth floor, trying not to let sour grapes make me sour-faced.
I had done as much research on Grigsby as I could without talking to anyone. I didn’t want him to know I was asking questions, since even a retired judge in Cook County has a lot of people owing him favors. Grigsby had been elected—over and over—with a “Qualified” rating from the Illinois Bar Association. Sort of like being a reliable C or B student. He and his wife, Marjorie, had been married forty-seven years next month; they had five children and seven grandchildren. Besides his judge’s pension, he had a nice little portfolio that brought in almost four hundred thousand a year, letting him maintain condos in Scottsdale and Chicago.
I’d found photos of Grigsby online at all sorts of regular Democratic Party functions. He’d been at fund-raisers with Illinois House Speaker Spike Hurlihey, with ward committeemen, the head of Streets & San—crucial for getting out the vote, even in these supposedly post-patronage years—and various senators, representatives, corporate leaders. Even Darraugh Graham, my own most important client, had been in one shot. I was pretty sure Darraugh voted Republican, but in Cook County, anyone trying to do business shows up at Democratic political functions.
Grigsby’s apartment was in the southeast corner of the building. The judge, in an open-necked shirt and soft sports jacket, had the door open and called to me to come to the front room. He was looking out across the Art Institute at the fringe of trees along Lake Michigan. The south view showed the L tracks that used to run past my office window—I’d been on the fourth floor, where I could look into commuters’ faces as the trains rattled by.
“Ms. Warshawski? A good Chicago name. I never get tired of watching the city from up here. I grew up in Back of the Yards and Gage Park and I never imagined back then that I would be living among the chardonnay drinkers downtown. How about you?”
“South Chicago,” I obliged. “And I still don’t live among the chardonnay drinkers.”
We picked our way through each other’s career highlights—me, University of Chicago Law Review, clerking for a judge in the Seventh Circuit, my time with the criminal public defender (“Step down for a Law Review student, wasn’t it?” the judge commented). Him, DePaul University law, assistant state’s attorney, partner at a big downtown firm, followed by thirty-three years on the bench. Prosecutors move up, defenders move down, law of the jungle.
I told Grigsby about the decade I’d spent in this building, and my envy of the space as it looked now. He threw back his head, laughing, as if delighted that he had something I couldn’t afford. It didn’t surprise me: growing up behind the old stockyards, you competed for every beam of sunlight that filtered through the haze of blood and smoke.
He was drinking coffee but didn’t offer me any. Power play, assertion of status, obliviousness, maybe all three.
“Judge, I know you’re busy, and this is a long shot, but an old South Chicago murder has been rattling cages lately. The case was tried in your court.”
He nodded over the rim of the cup. “Stella Guzzo. I looked her up when I saw the news—Boom-Boom War– Oh. Your family? Cousin? That explains why you’re nosing around the story.”
I eyed him thoughtfully. “I wonder who told you I was ‘nosing around’?”
“It’s not a secret. You’ve been talking to some of the lawyers that I’ve known for decades.”
“I haven’t been talking to Nina Quarles, because she’s in France. Sol Mandel is dead, his partner’s retired. Ira Previn come to you?”
“He didn’t come to me, but we eat breakfast at the same restaurant when he has an early court date. He’s worried you digging up old dirt might hurt his son.”
I watched the Dan Ryan L chug down Wabash, the Ravenswood passing it in the opposite direction. The double glazing shut out street noise; it was like watching toy trains in a paperweight.
“No questions of mine could give Joel more pain than he’s already feeling. People who knew him back then tell me that he was afraid, not of what would happen at the trial, but what would happen to him if he refused to defend Stella Guzzo. How did that play out in your courtroom?”
“Who told you Joel was afraid?” Grigsby asked.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people this week, Judge; it seems to be the consensus.”
“Ira never said anything about that.” Grigsby’s voice took on an edge.
“He may not have realized it. He worried more about the mistakes Joel was making in the trial. How bad did Joel look?”
“You’re asking me to remember details from a case more than two decades old.” Grigsby’s voice was sharp—objection sustained.
“That was your reputation on the bench.” I smiled winningly, using the soothing tone that had worked for me when I was a PD. Judges then hadn’t liked women attorneys who challenged their rulings. It had been an ongoing effort to curb my pit-dog instincts, but it often paid off. “When I was with the PD they used to call you ‘Wolf Trap Grigsby’ because facts stuck in your mind like a wolf in a trap.”
Grigsby looked startled, as well he might, since I’d made that up on the spot, but he preened a bit, asked if I’d ever appeared in front of him. Since he seemed well oiled, I repeated my question about Joel’s performance at Stella’s trial.
“She was a difficult client, unsympathetic. I knew dozens like her from growing up at Forty-seventh and Ashland—rock-hard women who had to fight for every piece of bread their children ate. My own mother, God rest her soul, was one of them. But Joel couldn’t make Guzzo look good to the jury, and he couldn’t control her in court. I had to reprimand him more than once. If he was afraid, it was of her—she’s probably haunted his nightmares ever since.”
