“Hey, V.I.” It was Kimball Streeter, the brother I almost never saw, who answered the phone. “I see you got your face in the news again.”

I gritted my teeth for another conversation about my cousin and Annie’s murder.

“No, not that. They say you’re writing the story of his life. About time someone did that, but I didn’t know you could write.”

“I didn’t, either,” I agreed feebly. “I’m not sure I can make it happen.”

While we spoke, I looked up my name in the daily news. Natalie Clements, the woman in the Cubs media office, had been so enthusiastic about my project that she’d put out a press release, including the photo of Boom-Boom on the mound with Mitch Williams.

Local Detective Takes on a New Case: Investigating a Sports Legend’s Life, was how the Herald-Star pitched it. They quoted Mr. Villard, the retired media relations man who’d dug up the photos, on what a great sports town Chicago was, and how he knew the Cubs would be delighted to cooperate with me and the Blackhawks on writing Boom-Boom’s life story.

The Star had dug up their own old story of the day of the open tryouts. Boom-Boom had apparently led both the press and the official Cubs photographer on a merry chase around the ballpark, trying to get into all the parts of the stadium that were normally closed to the public.

Warshawski loved to play pranks, on the press and on his teammates, but the Cubs asked us not to publish the photos at the time—they didn’t want kids or other fans to get ideas about how to get into closed-off sections of Wrigley. The paper got rid of a lot of print archives in the transition to new media. Those tryout shots were never digitized, so we can’t show you what he was up to, but the book itself should help fans remember what Boom-Boom Warshawski did for this city besides his practical jokes: three Stanley Cups, and endless goodwill with local charities.

My cheeks turned hot: with this kind of publicity, I would have to write the book.

I realized I’d been carrying on some kind of conversation with Kimball Streeter, but not paying attention to the words. I had to drag my mind back to the reason I’d called: I wanted to hack into Stella Guzzo’s bank account—but I didn’t tell Kimball that.

Kimball agreed to be a researcher for the Hibernian Genealogical Society and to try to get answers to the questions I e-mailed him.

He called back forty minutes later to report that Stella had hung up on him, but that Betty had been very chatty. She didn’t know her mother-in-law’s first-grade teacher, but she knew Stella’s mother’s date of birth: March 29, when the family had to go to Grace O’Rourke Garretty’s grave and pray the rosary.

“Betty was peevish because now that Stella is out of prison, they had to go to Resurrection Cemetery again this year, when there was still snow on the ground, and kneel there doing the decades. Oh, and Stella grew up on Oglesby.”

No sooner had Kimball Streeter hung up than Murray called. He was fuming that I’d started a book project without consulting him.

“Warshawski, the only thing you know how to write is a case report. You’re clueless about narrative, story arc, building suspense. You got a ghost writer?”

“Don’t start by insulting me, or I’ll make you read my senior thesis, which won top honors in the Social Sciences Division the year I graduated.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Murray said hastily. “I know you’re mad at me, Warshawski, but honestly, it’s hard to learn about something like this in my own paper when everyone knows how tight you and I are.”

I sighed. “Murray, if I tell you something off the record, you had better keep it off the record, or I will post candid pictures of you on your Facebook page.”

He promised, but when I told him, he was enthusiastic. “Let me do it, V.I.—it’s the perfect refutation for the diary story, and anyway, the city still loves him.”

“Maybe, Murray, maybe. Let me get out from under the Guzzos first.”

When I hung up, my eye caught the engraving of the Uffizi on the wall to my right. It had been my mother’s. I could feel the sternness of her disapproval as I dialed Fort Dearborn’s Internet help line.

I was afraid scam artists had helped themselves to my mother-in-law’s debit card, I said. She was eighty-eight and so rattled that she couldn’t remember her account number; could they help me? No, I didn’t have her Social Security number, but I could verify her current address on Buffalo, the street she grew up on and her mother’s date of birth.

Three clicks later and I was looking at Stella’s bank account. I couldn’t get statements from twenty-five years ago, which might have shown whether or not she had enough cash to bribe Judge Grigsby, but I could go back two years. The house must have been owned free and clear some time before that, because every month showed automatic debits to the utility companies, and twice a year the property tax of $546.50 had been paid, along with the homeowners insurance.

Once a quarter, enough money had come in to cover those bills via wire transfer from an account at Global American Bank. The transfers had stopped the quarter before Stella’s release. Once she’d been released, she started collecting Social Security survivor benefits, slightly more than what her benefactor had been putting into the account.

I printed out the screen, but didn’t know how to dig any deeper than that, not without a professional hacker, a bigger budget and even fewer scruples than I’d already demonstrated.

“But we’ve learned something,” I said to the dogs. “We know that someone was paying Stella’s bills. She didn’t have any money—Mateo Guzzo’s pension disappeared in the big meltdown of the steel industry and none of those Garretty brothers had two nickels to rub together. Who paid her bills?”

Mitch flattened his ears. “She threatened someone, is your theory? Could be. Or did a big favor for someone. They stopped paying when she got out. Is that why she decided to look for exoneration? Because her invisible angel stopped pouring gold coins on her?”

As I shut down my computer, Freeman called. “Vic, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you cannot go near the Guzzo family, or Stella’s house, or her grandchildren.”

“Freeman, I stopped to watch the kids play baseball. That’s a crime?”

“It is if you attack one of the mothers.”

“This is beyond outrageous. She tried to slug me.”

“It doesn’t matter. Stay away from that family if you want me to continue to represent you.”

He hung up, sending me home in a thoroughly unpleasant mood.

DOG DAYS

The dogs woke me, barking in the upper landing. I bolted out of bed, pulling on jeans and a T-shirt. Jake mumbled something, turned over.

When I cracked open his front door, I saw Mr. Contreras struggling to hold Mitch, who was lunging at a couple of uniformed cops outside my own apartment. Peppy stood sentinel, barking short urgent warnings. One of the cops had his gun drawn, and maybe he would have used it, except that Rochelle, who lives in the unit underneath mine, was also in the upper hall.

“Go ahead and shoot them!” she was screaming. “They’re a menace. It’s only fucking seven in the morning and they’ve woken the whole building.”

“Watch your language,” Mr. Contreras panted, trying to hold the bucking Mitch.

The police were shouting warnings, the Soong baby started crying on the floor below and the two men who lived across from Mr. Contreras on the ground floor were yelling up the stairwell to make the damned dogs be quiet.

I took the sash from Mr. Contreras’s magenta dressing gown and used it as a leash to tie Mitch to a baluster. Once Mitch was sitting, Peppy stopped barking, although the hair at the back of her head stood up and she kept growling in the back of her throat.