“I wish we could get attention like that for High Plainsong,” Jake said. “Maybe if I murdered someone we’d find a new revenue stream.”
“Don’t tempt me, caro: I could send you out with a gun and an address,” I said.
We made love, but Jake got up again to work on a tricky passage in a piece the group had commissioned. When Jake is nervous or depressed, he plays for hours. When I’m nervous or depressed, I want to shoot people. I fell asleep with his bass making deep soothing noises from the living room.
In my dreams, my mother and Stella were singing Cherubini’s Medea together, not on an opera stage, but on the hockey rink at the old Stadium. Boom-Boom was sitting next to me in the front row. Annie appeared from nowhere, in the manner of dreams, and my cousin and I watched, paralyzed, while Stella stabbed her. When Gabriella tried to pull her away, Annie’s arm came off. The crowd roared its approval; hockey fans love blood. Stella and my aunt Marie pointed accusatory fingers at Gabriella, while in front of them Annie bled to death.
I woke with my heart racing, sweat drenching my T-shirt. By the time I’d calmed down, I was thoroughly awake. Jake was sleeping soundly next to me. It was five-fifteen; dawn was coming. I might as well get back to my own place and face the day.
While I waited for the espresso machine to heat, I turned on my laptop to look at the messages from my answering service. Forty-seven media queries had come in overnight, including four from Murray. I sent my service an e-mail, saying to tell everyone I had no comment and that I would not be returning press calls.
When I checked my e-mail, I found hundreds of messages. Seven from Murray, ranging from belligerent to begging (Come on, Warshawski, you know the rules of the game, don’t pull this kind of stunt on me . . . Please, Vic, we’ve been friends for so many years, don’t shoot the messenger). He was right, but I wasn’t feeling very forgiving yet.
I recognized some names from local news shows, but many of the addresses included country codes: Serbia, Russia, Kazakhstan—Boom-Boom would be pleased to know his fame lived on in the hockey world.
Pierre Fouchard had also left an e-mail. I see you’ve turned your phone over to the lawyers, but what is this filth they are spreading about Boom-Boom? I talked to Bernadine, but she can tell me nothing. Call me, Victoria: I can be in Chicago in two hours. Those of us who played with Boom-Boom know this is the worst of lies, so tell me what you need. Muscle? Love? Money? All at your disposal.
I reached him at the Canadiens front office.
“Victoria! These crapules, what are they trying to accomplish?”
“I don’t know. The mother did major prison time for the crime, so I can’t understand why she’s trying to accuse Boom-Boom now. Did Boom-Boom talk about the murder when it happened?”
“This I am trying to remember since last night, when I am first seeing the news. He was very shocked, of course, because she was a girl from his childhood, and I am thinking there was a brother, is that right, that they were friends. I am not remembering much, but, Victoria, if he had said to me, Pierre, I have murdered this girl, that I would not have forgotten.”
“Likely not,” I agreed dryly. “The mother, Stella, is claiming she found a diary that her daughter kept, and that Annie was writing about how jealous Boom-Boom was, and how she was afraid of him.”
Pierre laughed. “That is impossible to picture. If you are imagining Boom-Boom as Bluebeard, no, you know him better than that. Yes, if you were against him in a game, then you should defend yourself against attacks from all sides, but Boom-Boom and women—there were so many, and they all had a good time with him, no one ever walked away from Boom-Boom weeping because he had frightened her, surely you don’t need me to tell you that. As for a girl and a diary, how can I know about that? But if she wrote it, it came out of her own imaginations. This mother, this salope, she has maybe made her daughter to be afraid of every man in the world.”
That was a shrewd insight, plausible, given Stella’s obsession with sex, but not something I had any way to prove. I led the conversation around to Bernie, how well she was doing, how much I enjoyed her company.
“Yes, she’s loving Chicago,” Pierre agreed. “When she comes back to us next month, you must come with her. A week in the Laurentians, that will put all this tracasserie out of your mind.”
When we hung up, I felt better than I had since Murray’s text came in yesterday afternoon. I took an espresso out to the back porch. I had promised Freeman not to go near Stella or her house or her current lawyer. But what about her old lawyer, the useless baby who didn’t bring up Boom-Boom’s relationship with Annie at Stella’s trial?
When I’d looked up Stella’s trial last week, they hadn’t given the baby’s name. For that I would have to go to the County building, to the more complete records that had been kept on microform.
I was heading to the bathroom to shower and change when my doorbell rang. Bernie was sleeping deeply. I walked behind the couch to peer out at the street. I swore under my breath: three TV vans were double-parked on Racine. The early birds waiting for their prey: vultures are birds, too.
I shook Bernie awake, no easy task. When I’d finally roused her, I explained we were under siege. “If you go out, use the back door. Otherwise the wolves from cable-land are going to jump you, okay?”
Her eyes lit up: at last, a chance to take action against Boom-Boom’s enemies. “This will be fun.”
“No, Bernie. It won’t be. They’ll make mincemeat out of you. Please believe I know what I’m talking about, or if you won’t believe me, please at least promise me that you will stay away from them. Okay?”
She gave a reluctant agreement, but she still tried to rehash last night’s argument: we needed to act, not bury ourselves in libraries, doing research.
“Bernie, if I discover that someone planted that diary, I’m not going to tell you, unless I can trust you not to run headfirst into trouble.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll do it your way for two days. If you don’t find out anything and start acting on it—”
“You will return to Canada so that you don’t get arrested and deported.” It took an effort not to shout at her. For the first time I began to see how hard it had been on my mother when Boom-Boom and I went roaring off without a thought of the consequences. “What would you do if I showed up at one of your games and started telling you how to play?”
“You don’t know enough about hockey to tell me anything.”
“Exactly. And you don’t know enough about the law, and evidence, and how to uncover secrets to tell me what to do.”
Her small vivid face bunched up into a gargoyle grimace, but she finally gave a reluctant nod, a reluctant promise to do as I’d asked.
I ran down the back stairs. Mr. Contreras’s kitchen light was on. I owed it to him to explain what was going on, even though conversations with him are never short. He’d seen the story, of course, and was appropriately indignant.
“Bernie is up in arms, and thinks we ought to be out shooting or at least whacking people. I don’t want her going to South Chicago. It’s gang territory and she has no street smarts, only ice smarts. Can you waylay her, get her involved with the dogs, the garden, keep her from doing something that will get her hurt?”
“I never been able to keep you from getting hurt, doll,” the old man said, truculent, “no matter what I say or do. Talking to my tomatoes gets me better results.”
I felt my cheeks flame, but meekly said he was right. “But she’s seventeen, she’s been left in my care.”
“And what are you going to get up to?” he demanded.
“Exactly what I said to Bernie, and what I promised both Lotty and my lawyer. Looking for information, nothing physical, I promise.”
I kissed his cheek, told the dogs they could swim when I got home tonight, and jogged down the alley so I could come to my car from behind. One of the reporters had been enterprising enough to find the Mustang. He was facing my apartment and I startled him when I unlocked the car and jumped in. He tried to hold on to the door, but I was maneuvering out of the parking space and he had to let go.