Read Online Brush Back by Sara Paretsky - Free Book Online Page B

ever been a fan.”
    What Stella had said was that Gabriella used the secret sexual arts of Jewish women to seduce her husband, Mateo. We got chapter and verse on this from my aunt Marie, Boom-Boom’s mother, who was one of Stella’s cronies. Marie loved conflict, and she was at perpetual loggerheads with my mother. Gabriella, Italian, Jewish, a singer, was way too exotic for the sulfurous air of South Chicago. Marie was happy to report Stella’s insults to us when she and Uncle Bernard came over for Sunday dinner.
    “Mateo never would have thought about music for the girl if the Jewish whore hadn’t gone to work on him. Me, I’ve worn the same dress to Mass for six years running, but the Jew bats those big eyes and he shells out money we don’t have so the girl can pretend to study music. He doesn’t think about me, his own wife, let alone Frankie, who’s the one with the future in this house. Frankie could play in the big leagues, that’s what Mr. Scanlon told us. No, it’s what the whore wants; Mateo takes bread from my mouth so she can buy those fancy Italian shoes.”
    “My mama doesn’t buy fancy shoes,” I started to say at one meal, but Gabriella hushed me in Italian.
    “ Carissima , your aunt is a pipe carrying water in two directions. Don’t pour into it at this end; it will only bring satisfaction to Signora Guzzo if she thinks her spiteful words bother us.”
    What really enraged Stella Guzzo wasn’t the waste of money on something as frivolous as music, but the way Annie began quoting my mother on every conceivable subject.
    “ Mrs. Warshawski says the sky is bigger than what we see in South Chicago and we girls should go where we can see the stars at night. Mrs. Warshawski tells Victoria if she gets a bad grade from laziness that’s more of a sin than saying a lie, because being lazy is acting a lie. Mrs. Warshawski says smoking hurts the heart but dishonesty kills it, she says—” until Stella smacked her and said if she heard Gabriella Warshawski’s name one more time, she wasn’t going to be responsible for what happened next.
    “We all knew Ms. Guzzo’s temper,” I said to Ira and Eunice. “The fact that you remember her, remember the case after all this time, makes me wonder if something special went on at the trial.”
    Ira and Eunice looked at each other again: Should we trust her?
    Ira made an impatient gesture, but he said, “We didn’t want Joel to take the case. We didn’t think he had enough experience, certainly not for criminal law. It was hard on him, it took a toll.”
    “Why did you let him do it, then, instead of handling it yourself?” I asked.
    Eunice shook her head. “Joel wasn’t working here—we thought he should have wider experience, and if he’d been here, he’d have always been in Ira’s shadow. Joel started with Mandel & McClelland, doing general law. The girl, Anne Guzzo, worked as a file clerk there part-time. Making money to help pay for college, if I remember correctly. When she was killed, Mr. Mandel felt responsible, felt they should do something.”
    “And that something included providing her mother with a defense attorney?” I was puzzled, not to say incredulous, but I tried to keep my tone one of polite inquiry.
    “It’s a tight-knit neighborhood, or it was. You should know that, having grown up there.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “Mr. McClelland went to the same church as the Guzzo family,” Eunice said. “He thought, at least I believe he thought, that the murder, including the mother’s defense, was the community’s business. Ms. Guzzo couldn’t afford an attorney, and he probably believed that even someone as inexperienced as Joel would be better for her than an overworked, underprepared public defender.”
    There was a scrabbling at the lock as she was speaking. Joel Previn came in before she finished.
    “And of course, we all know how wrong he was,” Joel said. “Why are we rehashing my earliest failure? There are so many