None of the story made any sense. Maybe Mandel or McClelland was still alive and could recall what had gone through their heads at the time.
I remembered Mr. Mandel. When I was in middle school, he used to give our graduation speeches. Every year we heard the same rambling reminiscence about his arriving as a poor immigrant and making his way through law school while working the swing shift for Wisconsin Steel. Only in America. My mother sat next to me, making sure I at least looked at the stage, even if I wasn’t paying attention to the words.
I pulled out my iPad and looked up Mandel & McClelland. Their office had been in the Navral Building, which wasn’t standing any longer. There’d been an obituary for Mr. Mandel some seven years back. He was survived by one daughter, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. If any of them were lawyers, they did it someplace else—the firm of Mandel & McClelland had also vanished, although I didn’t see any stories about McClelland’s retirement or death. Where would the client files be if both building and practice were gone?
I made a face at myself and went back to Ira Previn’s office. Eunice and Ira were huddled over a document when she buzzed me in, but they put it down and looked at me expectantly. When I asked if Mandel had sold the practice they seemed disappointed—they must have watched me follow Joel to the Pot of Gold and hoped I would perform a miracle of some kind.
“I don’t know why you want to dig around in this, Ms. Warshawski,” Ira rumbled at me. “The Guzzo woman can’t harm your cousin, she can’t prove anything. And I don’t think she can harm Joel, either.”
“But you know who bought the firm?”
Eunice said, “Please, if you’re determined to get involved in this, promise me you won’t drag Joel in with you. He— Stella Guzzo’s trial destroyed him.”
I looked at her helplessly. “If something about Stella and the trial destroyed him, he’s already involved. I can only promise not to drag him in unless there’s a truly compelling reason for it.”
Eunice looked at Ira. He nodded slowly, his pouchy cheeks quivering with the movement.
“Very well, but—”
“Neesie, she can learn another way. Just tell her.”
“Nina Quarles.” The words were almost unintelligible, Eunice’s lips were so tightly compressed.
BALK
Nina Quarles, Attorney, had her office on Commercial Avenue, just a couple of miles from Ira’s. The building was a converted three-flat at the corner of Eighty-ninth Street, and looked like one of the few on the street to be fully occupied. The top story was home to the South Side Youth Empowerment Foundation: Say, Yes! while the ground level held the insurance office of Rory Scanlon, Auto, Homeowners, Life, Health, Pension. Sandwiched between was the office of Nina Quarles, Attorney, boasting three lawyers and a bail bondsman.
When you’re a child, all adults seem both old and fixed in time, so I didn’t know if Rory Scanlon was still alive, or if the torch had been passed. Either way, the business was clearly a success. Looking through the street windows, I saw that the computers were new, the desks in good shape. Five people were talking into their headsets, smiling the way you do so the person at the other end feels your energy and wants to buy from you.
My parents bought their insurance through the Patrolmen’s Union, so I’d never been to Scanlon’s office, but he was such a lively presence in the neighborhood that everyone knew him. He’d been a fixer, the kind of guy you went to if you were going to be evicted or had your gas turned off. He turned out for community events, underwrote the Little League team that Frank Guzzo used to play on. When Boom-Boom made his home-ice debut with the Hawks, Scanlon got the CTA to send buses to ferry the neighborhood from Ninetieth and Commercial to the old Stadium.
My dad had driven up in his own car. One of the few times he took police privilege, he brought me and my uncle Bernie through the streets with his lights flashing, parking right next to the main entrance. He hadn’t gone to the party Scanlon sponsored at Rafters afterward.
“Too old for drunken crowds, Tori. And don’t you need to be studying?”
I’d been surprised—his usual concern about my work was that I kept at it too hard. He was worried, too, about leaving me on my own, which he also never did—at least not out loud.
“Boom-Boom’s signed on for a rough life, but I don’t want that for you, and you know your mama didn’t want it, either.”
My mama wouldn’t have wanted a lot of the things I choose to do. Maybe if she’d lived, I wouldn’t keep tempting fate by skating so close to the edge. Perhaps my recklessness was what destroyed my brief marriage. Or perhaps it was because Richard Yarborough had been a money-obsessed bore.
I went into Scanlon’s building, and looked up a flight of steep stairs. A sign in Spanish and English said there was an elevator behind the stairs. A security camera, the tiny modern kind that is almost invisible to the thief in a hurry, had been installed high on the stairwell wall. Another was set in the lintel above Nina Quarles’s door. It glowed red when I approached, presumably taking my picture. I must have looked honest and sincere: the lock clicked open before I rang the bell.
The walls of the original apartment had been removed to create a long room that stretched from the windows overlooking Commercial Avenue to the alley behind. It wasn’t divided into cubicles, but the desks were far enough apart that people could have private conversations if they kept their voices down. Two doors stood open along the north wall, showing private offices beyond in what probably used to be bedrooms. A third door at the back provided the staff with a toilet.
As in Scanlon’s office, the staff here were hard at it on the phones. Most of them were middle-aged and solidly built, a few wrinkles, hair turning gray—not the lean, workout-obsessed youth that might repel people like the elderly couple conferring in the near corner with a man in a rumpled suit.
I looked around but didn’t see any sign of Nina Quarles. I was on my way to the offices, to see if that’s where she was, when a woman came up behind me and asked what I needed. She was about my age, tall, angular, wearing a shapeless cardigan over beige slacks and spiked heels, which put her about three inches over my head.
“V. I. Warshawski,” I said, putting out a hand.
The angular woman’s eyes widened. “Warshawski? There was something about Boom-Boom Warshawski on the news this morning.”
“Yes, I’m his cousin.”
She said the usual things: she’d grown up on the East Side, she adored Boom-Boom, his death had been a terrible tragedy. In the middle of the outpouring I was able to get her name, Thelma Kalvin.
“What can we do for you?” Kalvin asked.
“I don’t know if you paid attention to the whole story, but my cousin was in the news today because someone is trying to link him to Annie Guzzo’s death.”
Thelma shook her head. “If the name is supposed to mean something to me, it doesn’t. I’m sorry we can’t help you.”
“Stella Guzzo was convicted of killing her daughter Annie a number of years ago,” I said. “Nina Quarles bought this practice from Mandel & McClelland, the firm that handled Stella’s defense. If Ms. Quarles kept files of old Mandel cases, I’d like to read Stella’s trial transcript.”
Thelma shook her head. “Nina doesn’t actually practice here. Our lawyers mostly work on job or property issues—a lot of this community got slammed in the mortgage crisis. And we have a criminal defender. But there isn’t room to store old case files here—they’re in a facility down in Indiana. Anyway, I doubt Nina would let you look at confidential files.”
“It’s not a confidential document,” I said, trying to keep frustration out of my voice. “Just a rare one. I want to see if Stella Guzzo made any effort to blame my cousin for her daughter’s death during her trial. I also would love to know why Mandel & McClelland took on the defense—Annie Guzzo worked for them. Why would they defend her killer, even if the killer was her mother?”