“Betty went through Annie’s things while Stella was in prison, looking for a secret stash. Stella had already taken two thousand dollars from Annie and Betty hoped there’d be more. She also took Annie’s lingerie, even though she thought it was the kind of underwear that sends you to hell.”
I could picture the greed on Betty’s face, the justification: she was a whore, I’m righteous, I should have these pretty things. They wouldn’t have fit—even twenty-five years ago, Betty wasn’t the elfin creature her sister-in-law had been. I had a skin-crawling fantasy of her hiding them, taking them out to play with, and started speaking to cover my discomfort.
“If there’d been a diary in Annie’s bra drawer, Betty would have seen it. No, the diary and the implication of Boom-Boom only appeared when Stella started talking about exoneration.”
Joel put the cup down halfway to his mouth. “You’re saying someone planted a made-up diary to shut Stella up?”
“No one can shut Stella up; you told me not even Judge Grigsby’s warnings kept her from outbursts in court. No, someone wanted to divert attention from Stella’s exoneration claim.”
“This Betty?” Bernie asked.
“Betty isn’t imaginative enough to make up a diary. Someone else is pulling those strings behind the scenes.” I eyed Joel thoughtfully: he was smart, even if he was drunk, smart enough to seem more belligerent than he was. “You’re sure Stella hasn’t been consulting you?”
“I keep telling you, her opinion of me was lower than, I don’t know, Ira’s and Sol Mandel’s put together. She wouldn’t come to me for a glass of water if she was dying in the desert.” The metaphor made him tilt his head back and drain the cup.
“Mr. Mandel went along with the bullying in his office, I gather—the way Spike Hurlihey taunted you, for instance. What about Mr. McClelland? No one ever mentions him.”
“McClelland? He wined and dined politicians and got them to throw a few alewives our way. He and Mandel figured out how to get rich in a poor neighborhood, but they needed bigger clients, downtown clients, the kind that can pull strings for you. McClelland worked that angle.”
“The Loop office.” I remembered Thelma Kalvin, the manager at Nina Quarles’s law office, mentioning it. “The downtown connections; they were something that Nina Quarles bought from Mandel & McClelland when she took over the South Chicago practice?”
Joel hunched a shoulder. “I suppose. I stopped paying attention to their business a long time ago. Anyway, McClelland wasn’t in the office very often, but when he was, he laughed and clapped along with the rest of the audience over how Hurlihey and his clique talked to me. Only Annie . . .”
“Only Annie didn’t laugh?”
“I helped her with her college applications,” Joel muttered. “She needed to stand out, going up against all those prep school graduates. I helped her write her essays, then I helped her write a song. Her piano playing, she was technically good, but she didn’t have the—the passion to stand out in a crowd, so we thought if she could be a composer . . .” His voice trailed away again.
My brows went up: Joel did have an interest beyond sports and drinking. “Do you still write music?” I asked.
His round cheeks bunched up so high his eyes disappeared. “I fail at everything I touch. My music was derivative, Ira knew enough to tell me that.”
I couldn’t think of any suitable response and even Bernie looked daunted. Joel took the plastic cover off his cup and dug out a handful of ice, which he crunched noisily.
“What about Rory Scanlon?” I finally asked. “The firm is in his building now and there’s a sort of revolving door between the insurance and the legal part of the operations. Was that true in your time, too?”
“Come on, you know the South Side, everyone’s got a finger in everyone’s business,” Joel said. “McClelland and Scanlon both worshipped at Saint Eloy’s. Sol Mandel and my parents belonged to Temple Har HaShem. They pray together, then they get out of the pews and do business with each other.”
“Ira does business with Scanlon and with Nina Quarles?” I asked.
“Quarles doesn’t practice, she just spends the profits. But why shouldn’t we buy our insurance from Scanlon? He’s loyal to the neighborhood, after all, and so is Ira. Scanlon sends Ira some legal business now and then.”
“Most of the people I talk to think Mr. Mandel got you to represent Stella to taunt you. Is that how you felt?”
Next to me, Bernie was quivering with impatience, wanting to leap in with advice about going for the ankles or whacking people under the chin. I put a restraining hand on her arm.
Joel took another handful of ice out of the cup. His eyes flickered to the door—this was painful, he wanted to get away from me to the Pot of Gold. I felt as though I were on Spike Hurlihey’s side, bullying him, and I didn’t like it.
“What about Mandel himself? Nothing anyone is saying makes it possible for me to understand why he would take on Stella’s defense. Annie was his pet, she was the office pet, for that matter—”
“Not everyone felt that way,” Joel said. “She teased Spike and he didn’t like it.”
“Teased him how?”
“Spike passed the bar, but that’s because his dad was the Tenth Ward committeeman, he was tight with the mayor’s family, they pulled a few strings in Springfield after Spike failed the first two times. Word processing was just starting when I worked there, and guys like Spike or Mandel couldn’t type—they’d dictate their mail, so Annie picked up legal ideas from typing everyone’s letters and briefs and so on. She’d give Spike back his letters with paragraphs circled in red and write next to them, ‘I don’t think this is what the statute says. Want me to change it before you send it out?’”
My eyes widened. Hurlihey’s temper was the stuff of legends down in the legislature. Annie must have been brave, or foolhardy, or convinced that Mandel would protect her. Maybe all three.
“You think Hurlihey pushed Mandel to defend Stella because Annie got under his skin?”
Joel reddened but didn’t say anything.
“Did you have a theory at the time?”
“It wasn’t my job to have theories. It isn’t my job to have them now. It’s my job to finish this motion before Ira gets back and shakes his head like a mournful cow over how I can’t get the least thing done in his absence!”
“Right. We’ll get out of your way.” I got to my feet. “Is there anyone who worked in that office, I mean besides Spike Hurlihey, who’s still around?”
“Besides Thelma, you mean?”
“Thelma Kalvin?” I echoed, incredulous.
“She was the full-time secretary. She was another one who didn’t like Annie because Annie muscled her out of the way of working personally for Mr. Mandel. Annie got twice as much done in the three hours a day she put in after school as Thelma did all week long, so of course the partners started giving Annie their dictation. Thelma ended up working for me and Spike and the other associates, and her nose was so out of joint she wouldn’t type for me because she knew I was close to Annie.”
“I talked to Thelma after I left here last week, and she claimed she didn’t remember ever hearing about the Guzzos,” I snapped.
“Don’t shout at me,” Joel said. “I don’t know why she’d lie, except no one in that office ever told the truth. It was the perfect place for Spike to start his illustrious career. He bullies everyone in Springfield, but he got his start right here on the South Side.”
I was heading to the door when another question occurred to me. “What about Boris Nabiyev? Was he a client when you worked at Mandel?”
Joel snarled that he’d never heard the name. “I have to work if you don’t.” He turned back to his computer, his wide back a wall of silence.
BLOOD SPORT
When we reached the street, Bernie made a face. “He’s a creep. Did you see his hands? Big soft paws, no muscles in them. Can you imagine him touching you? He was in love with that murdered girl, wasn’t he? Do I really look like her? Is that why you brought me down here, to see what it would make him do?”