When the music stopped, he put a finger on South Chicago and everyone saw the mills in full operation.
“V. I. Warshawski was born down here amid the fire and water where the country’s great steel mills used to stand. The life and death of the mills, the life and death of her parents, of her beloved cousin, Boom-Boom”—and the Black Hawks hero, grinning, appeared on screen, holding up the Stanley Cup while V.I. joined the team on the ice to pour champagne on his head—“above all, the life and death of communities, of justice, made her who she was. Boom-Boom helped shape her as a street fighter—a pit bull, some called her—but her demand for justice for the least of those among us brought her first to the law, and then to her life’s work as a private detective.
“Her successes were legendary. She and I first worked together twenty years ago; I was part of the famous, now defunct City News Bureau, which used to turn news wannabes into real reporters.”
The audience laughed, then murmured appreciation or gasped as Murray went on to recount some of V.I.’s death-defying escapades: the time she jumped from a crane into the Sanitary Canal, the time she crawled through a burning building to rescue her aunt Elena, the night she was slashed by street gangs, the day she was trapped in the tunnels underneath the Loop, where she’d gone to bring a homeless family to safety.
“Her last case began as so many of her others did, with a call for help from family and friends. It ended in Tampier Lake ten days ago. We may never know what caused a strong swimmer like Warshawski to drown in those waters, but after a break, we’ll uncover the events that led her to that suburban lake in the middle of the night.”
While the commercials ran, the audience noise rose, until Zhou once more called time.
“Brothers and sisters,” Murray said. “We love each other, hate each other, fight, but no one else understands our lives and our histories the way those people we grew up with do. And this is a story of brothers and sisters, of a sister whose mental illness led her from a brilliant legal career to a state mental hospital and the brother who thought she’d disgraced a famous family.”
The camera picked out Sewall Ashford, who frowned ferociously. Lotty recognized his wife sitting next to him—Victoria had introduced them at the opera one night. Lotty knew that Murray had invited them today but was surprised that they’d shown up.
“A different brother and sister were devoted to each other. Miles Wuchnik was a private eye in Chicago. Like V. I. Warshawski, he had a solo practice. Unlike V.I., he supplemented his income with a little blackmail on the side. People hired him to uncover dirty secrets, and then he ferreted out the secrets of his clients. And charged extra to keep those secrets to himself.
“An Illinois politician’s campaign hired Miles to dig up dirt on one of Chicago’s richest men. The candidate’s team hoped they could find some way to pressure Chaim Salanter into dropping his support for Sophy Durango’s Senate campaign.”
A shocked gasp went through the audience. Helen Kendrick looked as though she was going to get to her feet in protest, but Les Strangwell apparently cautioned her to silence. The studio camera left them alone—the crew knew Strangwell appeared on-screen rarely, and only when he had complete control over the situation.
Murray went on to explain how Miles tried to approach Salanter’s granddaughter, and how he started eavesdropping on her text messages by planting a bug in her cell phone.
“There is yet another brother and sister in this story: a lonely pair of suburban teens. The sister took care of a brother three years younger than herself, because their drunk single mother wasn’t up to the job of raising him. When the sister was seventeen, she was murdered, leaving her brother desolate. The killer, a man named Tommy Glover, was judged mentally incompetent and has been spending his days in the Ruhetal State Mental Hospital’s forensic wing.
“The brother went on to have a successful career, but he’s always been bitter that Glover wasn’t executed. He paid a handsome fee to the hospital’s security director to let him know if anyone ever approached Glover: the brother didn’t want a lawyer or a reporter trying to drum up sympathy for a mentally incompetent man who’d spent nearly thirty years behind bars.”
Murray nodded to Zhou, and the big TV screens showed Ruhetal Hospital, and then a stern-looking Vernon Mulliner, locking an Audi convertible and walking up to the front door of a mansion.