The air changed overhead. A closed space. Hands dragged me from the back of the truck, thumped me down onto a chair. Tied me to it.
When the hood was unbuckled and pulled off, the light blinded me. I blinked and a wall of metal filing cabinets came into focus. Metal desks. A locked grate with a pay window and a safe behind it. The office for Bagby & Family Haulage. Vince Bagby was leaning against one desk, Rory Scanlon was seated in the chair where Delphina Bagby had been playing solitaire. Three solid-looking youths in the green T-shirts of Say, Yes! lounged by the door, faces blank.
“So those flowers and dinner invitations and stuff, they weren’t because of my beautiful eyes,” I said.
Bagby squirmed, shrugged, gave a fake-hearty laugh.
“One last Warshawski,” Scanlon said. “One last person thinking they don’t have to play by the rules.”
“Depends on the rules,” I said. “I guess Tony’s mistake was thinking the law meant something besides pay to play.”
Scanlon nodded at one of the Say, Yes! youths, who walked over and hit me in the face. I was able to move my head away from the blow, but it still hurt.
“Where did you get that diary you put out?” Scanlon asked.
“Funny,” I said, “Captain Mallory asked me the same question only twelve hours ago. You probably have your own stooges inside the CPD, although I hope they don’t include Conrad Rawlings. But in case the information is slow drifting south, I’ll tell you the same thing I told the captain: someone mailed it to me. No return address, no prints, no DNA.”
“I don’t believe it’s real,” Scanlon said flatly.
“It’s on the Global Entertainment website,” I said. “It looks pretty real.”
“I want to see it,” Scanlon said. “I think you hired someone to forge it.”
“If it is a forgery, I bet it’s way better than the one you had Frank put in his sister’s underwear drawer. It actually looks like Annie’s handwriting, at least like the one letter of hers that I still have.”
“Pretty convenient, how it showed up,” Scanlon said, his lips a flat, ugly line.
“Yeah, that’s how I felt when Stella’s version showed up. It will be fun to get both diaries vetted by experts.”
“Not any kind of fun you’ll ever have,” Scanlon barked. “You could have died in your bed if you’d kept your goddam nose out of my business. But no, just like your parents, all of you thinking you were too good for this neighborhood. I do a lot for people down here, I did a lot for your family, but I never got any gratitude.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for getting my dad transferred to the Seventh, for putting a bad rap out on him so that he was sent without backup into gang shootings. Does that help?”
Scanlon nodded again at his pet, who smacked me again. I didn’t move as fast this time; my nose started to bleed. Bagby winced. He didn’t like seeing me beaten? Maybe my beautiful eyes had played a small role.
“Your precious cousin.” Scanlon was panting. “I got him his chance, but Tony, high-and-mighty Tony Warshawski, bad-mouthed me in the precinct.”
“My cousin’s talent and drive got him where he needed to be,” I snapped.
“I made the connections that brought him to the attention of the Blackhawks organization. Otherwise he’d have been like Frank Guzzo, another loser wannabe driving a truck.”
“Is that the only kind of employee Bagby has?” I asked, looked at Vince. “Frank Guzzo works hard, he keeps his family going. That isn’t a loser’s behavior. A loser is someone who can’t operate without a lot of people in his pocket to do his dirty work for him.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve cost Frankie Junior his chance to go to ball camp,” Scanlon said. “I warned Guzzo to keep you away from here, but he’s such a useless piece of quivering jelly he couldn’t even manage that. His ma is twice the man he is. Twice the man old Mateo was, too.”
“You’ve been watching too many Clint Eastwood movies,” I said. “Mateo was like Frank: honest, quiet, hardworking. Twice—no—ten times the man you and your cousin are. Although ten times zero is still zero.”
Another blow. My mouth started to fill with blood and I spoke with difficulty. “On the night she died, Annie wrote in her diary that she saw your car outside the Guzzo house. Was it you who killed her? Or did you already have enough thugs on your team twenty-five years ago that one of them gave her the last blow?”
“I need to know where you got the diary,” Scanlon said. “I need to know if there’s more out there.”