“I remember that language directed at civil rights workers,” I said.
“No one’s confusing you with Ella Baker, so don’t get a swelled head. What are you really doing down here? Don’t ask me to believe crap about your family. You don’t have relatives here anymore.”
“Where families are concerned, it doesn’t matter if they’re alive or dead, you’re always carrying them with you. Frank Guzzo brought me down here to talk to his mother. Who responded by digging up this alleged diary. You followed the story, I assume.”
“I called up the old case files on Anne Guzzo’s murder after I saw your cousin’s name in the papers. The crime scene photos were eye-popping. Stella must have gone completely off the rails. I don’t know what you think you’re doing digging through it after all this time.”
I made a face. “Me either, but after watching the kaleidoscope spin for a while, I’m beginning to think Frank was trying to divert my attention. Something about him or his wife or even his mother is going to come to light because of Stella’s determination to get an exoneration. He’s afraid I’ll get wind of it, so he was trying to preempt me.”
“What was going to come to light?” Conrad asked.
“I don’t know. Betty, Frank’s wife, said something odd when I was down here on Friday to watch her kid play—it almost sounded as though she was admitting she played a role in Annie Guzzo’s death.”
“I’ve got enough active gang murders down here to keep me busy until I retire and even then I won’t have made a dent. I can’t care much about an old woman who’s done her dime. I talked to a guy I know at Logan, and Stella Guzzo was one of the wilder inmates. She’s not a noble soul. Highly unlikely she covered for a daughter-in-law. Unless you think they were lovers?”
I stared at him, astounded. “With your imagination, you should be writing lurid romances, Conrad.”
“You tried to smear Rory Scanlon with a pedophile rap just now, and you’re offended? You can dish it out, but you sure can’t take it.” He put the car in gear and drove four blocks to the Metra Electric train station. “End of the ride for you, Warshawski. I’m sorry Stella Guzzo is trying to offload her guilt onto your cousin, but why don’t you let that dog sleep in the dirt with her own fleas instead of dragging a priest and a good community figure into the mess?”
“Oh, to hell with you, Conrad. I’m not dragging anyone anywhere. You’re the one who dragged me down here without a car, so you can drive me to the Loop.”
“You can find your way, Warshawski, you’re a big girl.”
I tried not to keep replaying the conversation as I slogged along—anger is a terrible way to make decisions. On the other hand, anger kept me moving around the mud holes and broken bottles at a good clip.
At one point I remembered Murray. I was still annoyed with him over Boom-Boom, but we have been colleagues of a sort over the years and it’s better to have a friend than an enemy in the media. While I was texting him Fugher’s name, I stumbled over a piece of rebar and grazed my forearms in the gravel. I put my phone in my hip pocket—definitely not the place to walk distracted.
I started coughing and sneezing before I actually saw the pet coke mound. When I turned at the next bend, I found myself at the locked gates leading to the Guisar slip. A guard station was at the entrance but the guard wouldn’t talk to me, just waved a hand at me to go away.
I backed away from his sight lines and followed the fence where it skirted the river and the train tracks. Signs along the fence warned that the area was under high security, but not all the slips had guardhouses. I found a set of gates with just enough leeway in the chains that I could wriggle through. I now had rust stains on my red knit shirt, but there is no gain without some pain, at least not in my life.
The potholes were filled with water from last night’s rain. The surface was that purple-greeny color you get when your transmission fluid leaks all over the street. As I squelched through the oily mud, I cursed my impulsiveness. I could have watched this on Murray’s cable show. I also could be downtown by now—the next train to the Loop had taken off while I was being waved away from the Guisar slip’s gate.
I came at the coke mound from the back. A police van for the forensic techs was parked on the lip and a crew in hazmat suits seemed to be taking the top of the mountain apart. I moved around to the water side of the mountain. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to find, since the techs were going over the area, but I was trying to imagine how Fugher’s body got to where it had ended up.
I peered over the edge of the dock. Besides the usual waterfront garbage—bottles and cans, remains of McDonald’s and Popeye’s, tampons and Pampers—pieces of drywall, two-by-fours, a car fender, Styrofoam cups, swirled around. The Cubs would be in the World Series before anyone sorted through this muck for clues about Fugher’s death.
I edged my way along the narrow strip between the coke mound and the water, pulling my knit top up to cover my nose and mouth. Even so, the dust made my eyes water. I was sneezing violently when a hand grabbed me roughly by the shoulder.
“Who the hell are you and how did you get out here? You some goddam reporter?” A man in a hard hat and orange safety vest, his skin like tanned leather from life in the great outdoors, had appeared behind me.
“Nope. I’m a goddam detective. You with the police?”
“I’m with Guisar and I’m tired of strangers on my slip. I want to see your badge.”
I pulled out the laminated copy of my license. “I’m private.”
“Then you sure as hell have no business out here. How’d you get past the front gate without a pass or a hard hat?”
“Just lucky, I guess.”
He frog-marched me around to the front of the mound, where his crew were sitting on overturned barrels or leaning against their earthmoving machines, watching the forensic teams at work.
A silver Jeep Patriot pulled up, splashing mud on my jeans. The driver, a guy around fifty with a marine haircut, lowered his window.
“Jarvis, what the hell you doing sticking dead bodies out here on the dock? You let a game of hide-and-seek get out of hand?”
He was grinning widely and the Guisar man smiled in turn, but perfunctorily. “Bagby—you saw the news?—it was—”
“Awful. I know,” Bagby cut him off. “Shouldn’t make a joke out of it. Did you find out who the dead man was?”
“The cops just learned. Guy named Jerry Fugher. They say he did odd jobs around the neighborhood, but what he was doing here on the docks, no one knows.”
“Who’s the talent?” Bagby asked, jerking his head at me.
“I’m trying to find out. The lady got in here without a pass. I don’t know how she got past Kipple at the main gate, but I’ll have a talk—”
“You look like you walked up the tracks,” Bagby said to me, taking in my mud-spattered clothes. “Whatever you want must be pretty important. What can we do for you, Ms.— Uh?”
“Warshawski,” I said.
“The hockey player?” Bagby asked.
“I’m retired. These days I’m an investigator.”
Bagby looked startled, then threw back his head and guffawed. “I earned that. You’re related to Boom-Boom Warshawski?”
“Cousin.” I smiled: two can play nice. “I’m the person who ID’d Jerry Fugher for the police. I understand he worked for you?”
Bagby shook his head. “If you told the cops that, they knew before I did. Never heard of the guy.”
I pulled out my cell phone and showed him the picture of Fugher getting into one of his trucks with Gravel.
Bagby took the phone from me and frowned over the picture. “The shot’s too blurry to make out their faces that well, but the short fat guy looks a hell of a lot like Danny DeVito. I recognize the truck, though, damn it. Some SOB is going to be collecting unemployment before the day is over, letting a stranger drive one of our trucks. Huge legal exposure to that. Forward that photo to me, okay? I can read the plate; that’ll tell me who was supposed to be driving that morning.”