ALSO BY SARA PARETSKY

Critical Mass

Breakdown

Body Work

Hardball

Bleeding Kansas

Fire Sale

Blacklist

Total Recall

Hard Time

Ghost Country

Windy City Blues

Tunnel Vision

Guardian Angel

Burn Marks

Blood Shot

Bitter Medicine

Killing Orders

Deadlock

Indemnity Only

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

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New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2015 by Sara Paretsky

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Paretsky, Sara.

Brush back / Sara Paretsky.

p. cm.—(A V.I. Warshawski ; 17)

ISBN 978-0-698-19683-4

1. Warshawski, V. I. (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women private investigators—Illinois—Chicago—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3566.A647B78 2015 2015005018

813'.54—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

For Jeremy

He had but little gold within his suitcase;

But all that he might borrow from a friend

On books and learning he would swiftly spend,

. . . And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.

—CHAUCER

THANKS

Bill and Eleanor Revelle showed me V.I.’s route into the Villard mansion in Chapter 44. Fay Clayton gave generous advice on payday loan companies. Cheryl Corley and Elizabeth Brackett’s coverage of the pet coke in South Chicago, for Public Radio and PBS, respectively, first alerted me to the existence of these dust mountains in Chicago. Tricia Rumbolz drove me as close as we could get to them as ordinary tourists. Kathryn Lyndes stepped into the breach to help me finish the final rewrites.

This book is a bit of an anachronism: part of the action takes place under the stands at Wrigley Field, but starting in the fall of 2014, the field has been undergoing major demolition and reconstruction. I first heard about Wrigley’s underground spaces from Brian Bernardoni and thought they would be a perfect setting for a crime novel. Although I tried for over a year to see these spaces firsthand, I was never able to get calls or e-mails to the Cubs answered, and so I relied on my unfettered imagination to describe them.

As for climbing up the bleachers into the stands, as V.I. says she and her cousin Boom-Boom used to do, when I worked in advertising many years ago, one of my clients told me about doing this as a young man during the Great Depression, when he couldn’t afford the price of a ticket. He also used to shinny up the L girders so he could ride the trains to Wrigley Field for free.

I’ve also taken a few liberties with how Bernadine Fouchard handles the college admissions process.

Thanks to Karl Fogel for explaining how easy it is to hack into someone’s bank account online.

Aimee LaBerge gave correct Québécois idioms for the French in the novel, in particular the insult “ostie de folle.” Heather Watkins confirmed this phrase.

Readers interested in how Boom-Boom ended his life under the screw of the Bertha Krupnik can find out by reading Deadlock.

CONTENTS

Also by Sara Paretsky

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Thanks

1. Shortstop

2. Home Base

3. Slugger

4. Out at the Plate

5. Whiffing the Curve

6. Force Play

7. Crowd Noise

8. Calling Time

9. Minor League

10. Balk

11. Fleeing the Lions

12. Brush Work

13. Buy Me Some Peanuts

14. Ejected

15. Into the Gap

16. Brush Back

17. Keep on Truckin’

18. Ballpark Chatter

19. My Last Duchess

20. Dog Days

21. The Umpire Strikes Back

22. The Too-Real Thing

23. The Play’s the Thing

24. Short Relief

25. High and Outside

26. Roach Motel

27. Dead Ball

28. Blood Sport

29. It Ain’t Beanbag

30. Gamer Gate

31. Road Test

32. Chin Music

33. Floral Offering

34. Mixing It Up

35. Family Ties

36. Changeup

37. High Spirits

38. Suicide Squeeze

39. Pinch Hitter

40. Sound Check

41. Land of the Dead

42. Stickball

43. Dinner Party

44. High and Inside

45. Behind in the Count

46. In the Madhouse

47. Olympic Tryouts

48. Rundown

49. Beanball

50. Wild Pitch

51. Rigging the Game

52. Swinging for the Fences

53. Fifteen-Day DL

54. Loading the Bases

55. Money Pitch

56. Clutch Hitter

57. Stealing Home

SHORTSTOP

I didn’t recognize him at first. He came into my office unannounced, a jowly man whose hairline had receded to a fringe of dark curls. Too much sun had baked his skin the color of brick, although maybe it had been too much beer, judging by those ill-named love handles poking over the sides of his jeans. The seams in the faded corduroy jacket strained when he moved his arms; he must not often dress for business.

“Hey, girl, you doing okay for yourself up here, aren’t you?”

I stared at him, astonished and annoyed by the familiarity.

“Tori Warshawski, don’t you know me? I guess Red U turned you into a snob after all.”

Tori. The only people who called me that had been my father and my cousin Boom-Boom, both of them dead a lot of years now. And Boom-Boom’s boyhood friends—who were also the only people who still thought the University of Chicago was a leftist hideout.

“It’s not Frank Guzzo, is it?” I finally said. When I’d known him thirty years and forty pounds ago, he’d had a full head of red-gold hair, but I could still see something of him around the eyes and mouth.

“All of him.” He patted his abdomen. “You look good, Tori, I’ll give you that. You didn’t turn into some yoga nut or a vegan or something?”