“It’s that old trial,” I said. “But now—I can hardly say what I do want. If you’ve seen the news reports, you know that Stella Guzzo is saying she found a diary her daughter kept, implicating my cousin in her murder.”

“Rafe doesn’t watch the news; he thinks it’s vulgar,” said Ken, “but I do, I know what you’re talking about. Your cousin was the hockey star?”

Ken’s English was accentless and idiomatic. Perhaps the result of his childhood in Japanese consulates.

“Right.” I took a sip of the tea and decided I wasn’t crazy about it, either. “Stella Guzzo has a long history with my family and I let her rattle me. I don’t know why she’s trying to prove her innocence now, instead of twenty-five years ago when she was in court, and I got obsessed with finding a copy of the trial transcript, to see if she or Joel had tried to suggest my cousin could have come to the house and—and assaulted Annie while Stella was out playing bingo.”

“Someone must have a record of the trial,” Rafe said impatiently.

I explained that most trials didn’t have complete transcripts unless someone paid for them. “I hoped Joel’s old firm had kept one, but they don’t exist anymore. You talked to him while the trial was going on. Do you remember what he said—besides whining, I mean.”

Rafe grimaced at my repetition of his word. “It was a long time ago and I wasn’t paying attention. I kept asking Joel why he’d gone into law when he didn’t like it, but he didn’t have a métier of his own and it was too easy to do what Ira and Eunice wanted.”

He steepled his hands, put his chin on his fingertips. “He was scared. Not of what his parents thought or wanted. Someone had frightened him. I didn’t want to know about it at the time, because I thought— He and I had sex together when we were teenagers, sixteen, seventeen. It didn’t last, but I thought someone was threatening to expose him, and that it could land on me. It’s hard to remember now, but twenty-five years ago, public outing could kill a career. Mine, I mean. That’s why I stopped listening to him. I told you I was a coward.”

“No,” I said, “when you’re struggling to survive, no one gets to label you a coward, not even you yourself in your private thoughts.”

Ken clapped my shoulder. “I like this Jehovah’s Witness.”

I smiled absently but spoke to Rafe. “You were afraid of exposure, so if Joel said anything that showed he feared something else, you didn’t register it at the time. Think back now. What did he say, why did you realize he was afraid?”

Rafe thought for a long moment, but shook his head. “Sorry. I can’t remember nuances or words from back then. Just the feeling.”

“And the possibility that Annie was sleeping with Mr. Mandel? Stella says Annie told her terrible things and that’s why she beat her to death. It—I—” I shook my head, trying to clear it.

“Annie was one of my mother’s pupils, she was ambitious, but young and inexperienced. Maybe Joel was right, maybe Mandel was preying on her—it’s a commonplace, older man in a position of power, vulnerable young woman. But what if it was the other way around? What if Stella was right about this one thing?”

“That justifies her killing her own child?” Ken was scornful.

“Of course not,” I said impatiently. “Nothing justifies that, not even Stella’s claim that Annie attacked her. I can’t explain it—it’s twisted up in my childhood, my memories of my mother, my cousin—”

I broke off, unable to put it into words, and even a bit embarrassed at blurting it out in front of these two strangers.

“I want to see the diary Stella claims she found,” I finally said. “It seems too pat that it showed up right after I went to see her. If she knew about it during the trial, why didn’t Joel use it in her defense?”

“Yes, Vic, but what if Annie wrote about Joel in it?” Ken suggested shrewdly. “He wouldn’t want his bosses or the judge and so on to read it.”

“You’re right. He enters it into evidence and it’s a public record, everyone in Chicago gets to know that he—what? Is harassing Annie? That she’s making fun of him? If it painted him in any kind of unflattering light, he was so morbidly sensitive he couldn’t bear the humiliation of it being made public. Maybe that’s what he was afraid of—does that ring a bell with you, Rafe?”

Zukos flung up his hands, annoyed. “You mean, did anything he said back then make me think he knew about a diary? I can’t possibly remember. But was he so sensitive he wouldn’t use a document that betrayed his private feelings? Yes, I can believe that.”

So if Stella had found the diary before the trial, Joel might have persuaded her to keep it quiet on the grounds that laundering Guzzo family business in public would harm her. It made a certain sense.

“Also, I can’t picture the way my cousin is being painted in this lurid picture. He was reckless and attractive and a lot of women went for him, but I can’t see him threatening a woman the way Stella’s claiming is in Annie’s diary.”

“You think it’s a fraud?” Ken asked.

“Yes, even though your argument makes good sense. However, I don’t understand one thing about the trial, about Mandel & McClelland involving Joel, about Stella doing her time and now trying to get exonerated. Maybe Rafe’s right: I’ve been like Ahab chasing a great white whale of paper, and it’s time to let it go.”

When I got up to leave, Ken went back to his easel. He added a few more strokes, which made it look as though a leaflet was in the waves, the pages blowing so that you could imagine they formed the wide-open mouth of a whale.

I laughed, but I knew that in the morning I would be going back to Jeffery Avenue to talk to Joel Previn again. Early, before he fell into the Pot of Gold.

BUY ME SOME PEANUTS

As it turned out, Joel was able to get quite a long lead on his vodka the next day. After leaving Rafe and Ken, I drove to my office, where I learned that the media obsession with Boom-Boom’s alleged involvement with Annie Guzzo hadn’t abated. A car was parked in my space in the lot by my building, meaning I had to pay to use a meter on the street. When I walked over to confront the driver, he jumped out with a handheld mike and a video cam. Another crew emerged from the coffee bar across the street.

The guy in my parking space shoved his mike into my nose. “Les Fioro with Global, Vic. How do you feel about these accusations?”

I backed away. “Sorry, what accusations?”

Another mike appeared—the people from the coffee bar were piggybacking onto Les’s interview.

“Your cousin, wasn’t he?” the second mike said.

“My cousin? What cousin?”

“Haven’t you seen the news? Stella Guzzo is claiming your cousin killed her daughter,” Les said.

I shook my head. “My cousin has been dead for a good decade now. I doubt he’s come back as a zombie to murder anyone.”

Les was getting exasperated. “This happened before he died.”

“Ah, that would explain it,” I said.

“So how do you feel about it?” the second mike demanded.

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I went to the front door to type in the code, but Les wasn’t so easily put off. He came up behind me, telling me about Annie’s murder, and Stella’s claims. I dropped my briefcase and when I stood up with it, knocked the mike out of his hands.

“I’m sorry,” I said, smiling. “I didn’t realize you were standing so close to me. I hope it still works.”

The second mike retreated to the street: I was too unstable to waste more time with. I retyped the code and went inside while Les was chasing the mike, which had rolled to the curb.

I stood with the door open a few inches. “Mr. Fioro, my first phone call is going to be to a towing service: you are in a space that is clearly marked as reserved for tenants. Unless you want to pay towing fees, move your car.”