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realized Boom-Boom Warshawski was there. He was signing autographs, even the Cubs brass wanted them.”
    Anger and grief—he was still feeling them. His one chance at the big time and Boom-Boom had stood in his sunlight.
    “I’m sorry,” I said inadequately.
    “Yeah, not as sorry as me.” He gave a bark of laughter. “I probably couldn’t have hit the curve if Boom-Boom had gone to Edmonton—he skipped a game against Wayne Gretzky to come to Wrigley with me! But it wouldn’t have felt so—so bad. Boom-Boom watching me whiff, it was worse than when old Gielczowski used to make me lower my pants. And Ma took it like that. To her, it was more proof that the Warshawskis had it in for us. Even later, when I’d visit her in prison, she’d go on about it.”
    “I hope you didn’t believe her, Frank,” I said. “No one in my family wished anyone in your family ill. My mother loved Annie, your dad was a wonderful man, and you know, there were a couple of months where I was in love with you.”
    “Just as well we split when we did,” he jeered. “Ma would have put arsenic in your wedding champagne.”
    It was a gallant effort at humor and I laughed obligingly. “She may manage yet. She gave me a good belt in the shoulder, and if she gets hold of poison or a gun I’m definitely toast.”
    “She hit you? I thought you were tougher than that.”
    “Not tough enough, not quick enough.” I took a breath. “Did you know she’s saying Boom-Boom killed Annie when you asked me to investigate?”
    There was a long pause. I could hear people ordering sandwiches and muffins, room for cream in that thing, hon.
    “She’s saying all kinds of wild things,” he finally said. “Not just that, other crazy stuff. I don’t know what she wants to say or do to get her name cleared, but if she goes completely off the skids, Frankie, Frank Junior—my boy, you know—I want him to have the chance I never had.”
    “And you think Stella could derail him? No, Frank. She’s old, she’s still got a temper”—I rubbed the place on my shoulder where her punch had landed—“but she doesn’t have power, except the power you let her have in your life.”
    “You of all people, I’d think you’d know that when she gets a head of steam she can do anything.”
    “Yes, and that’s what’s telling me there’s nothing for me to find out about your sister’s death. Your mother is angrier than ever after all those years inside, and she’s looking for targets, not evidence.”
    Frank tried to get me to say I’d get the police to dig his sister’s file out of the warehouse, but his arguments lacked punch. The sadness in his voice made me brusque: I didn’t like the feeling that I had to pity him. I told him to send me the St. Eloy’s schedule so I could watch his kid play when the scouts were there and hung up.
    I started to write down the conversation, but it was hard. If it hadn’t been me talking to him, he probably would have cursed my cousin. Maybe he would have gotten a piece of a ball if Boom-Boom hadn’t been there, who knows? The star taking all the attention, that probably made Frank try too hard, tense up at the wrong moment.
    “Oh, Boom-Boom,” I said out loud. “You meant well, you were doing a good deed. I bet the Hawks fined you for skipping the Oilers game, too. No one got anything good out of that tryout.”
    The throwaway line about Gielczowski making Frank lower his pants, that was sickening, the whole story was sad and painful and sick. I’d never heard allegations about Gielczowski. Maybe he’d been caning boys, beating immorality out of them. When I think of immorality I think of the payday loans and hidden bank fees, the failure to pay a living wage, the preference for crappy schools in poor neighborhoods. I don’t think about sex.
    My morning with Stella, and now this—I felt dirty, so dirty that I went into the shower room behind my lease-mate’s studio. Her steelwork means she needs a place to