“Are you rearranging your office? I know decorating is one of your favorite things, but aren’t you in the middle of a couple of stories? Or is this your new way to wipe the slate clean on a Monday?”
Brynn stood in the doorway to my office, running her eyes over the stacks of documents, books, and framed art that now sat in piles on the floor.
“I needed a wall.”
“And these aren’t?” she said, casting her eyes around the room.
“A blank wall, smartass.”
“I don’t know.” She laughed. “I thought maybe you were about to come in here with a sledgehammer and freshen up the place. After all that work on your apartment, you might be inspired to keep going. I don’t know how this redecorating bug works. I’m just a lowly twenty-something single girl in a cheap Ukrainian Village rental. What do I know?”
“Help me out. Move this painting over to the other side of the room so I don’t trip on it.” Brynn’s snark was one of my favorite things about her. It also served as a cover for her intelligence. And in my opinion, being underestimated was a useful quality for women in journalism. It made people more likely to talk often enough to be an important tool in the toolbox.
She set her twenty-four-ounce coffee mug on my desk and lifted the art.
“You wanna fill me in?” she said, once standing next to me again in front of my now bare wall. “Or should I just stay out of your way while you search for inspiration?”
“Here.” I handed her a stack of photos and a roll of tape. “Just tape them on the wall. It’s not an art project.”
I’d printed out all the photos I had taken at Abbiocco while I sat in my home office over the weekend, sorting and organizing and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Images, words, names. Visuals helped me see the story. The small bits were too hard for me to put together if they were just words on a screen. It was my version of an investigation board seen in nearly every movie scene where the detective comes up with one important unnoticed clue he hadn’t seen until just the crucial moment.
We covered the wall with the photos of the men at Abbiocco, arranging, moving, placing them into associations as my instincts dictated. I added Post-its with names and question marks for those people I hadn’t identified. Added photos of the two judges. Photos of locations. Then I moved to the data points. Panici’s comment about Reynolds. Rae’s threats. Judge Reynolds’s debt to Selciatto. Note by note, I fleshed out the puzzle, leaving blank cards and wild guesses when I knew there was more information to be obtained.
An hour later, I stepped back, staring at the diagram in front of me.
“What do you see?” Brynn asked. Her instincts were still developing, needing the confidence time and setting aside doubt could bring.
“To start, that we should have laid these out in a circle, like a wagon wheel. I just don’t know who to put in the center. These guys are so connected it’s like they’re family. Rae even used similar language when I spoke to her on Saturday. ‘Keeping it in the family,’ to be precise.”
Brynn stepped closer to the wall, looking at the faces. “They’re all Italians, right? Sorry to be stereotypical, but that close-knit family thing is big, like it is in the Hispanic community, and in the African American community. I can barely go get a coffee without one of my aunties or cousins tagging along. And dating, well, I rarely mention my dates to my mother because at least six family members would expect to weigh in before, during, and after.” I cringed in sympathy. “Or did Rae mean ‘the family’ as in the mob?” she added.
“I wondered about that too, but there wasn’t enough to the conversation to be sure. I may be adding importance to something that isn’t. She could have just meant that’s how her own family operated. She was commenting on her dad and her husband at the time.”
I took a sip of tea and tried to isolate where my eyes were drawn most. What my own instincts were whispering.
“Speaking of the mob, did you know Baby Face Nelson is buried in Elmwood Cemetery?” Brynn said.
I laughed, amused by her ability to pull out obscure facts at the drop of a hat. “Did you go on the Gangster Tour or something? How do you always pull out these tidbits of trivia?”
“I believe I just told you that dating is challenging in my family.” She laughed. “A girl has to have hobbies. Of course I went on the Gangster Tour. That’s the best one. And I did a tour of the cemetery after because it was so fascinating. You know they do that at Graceland Cemetery all the time, since there are so many famous dead people there.”
“And you’ve done that too, I’m sure.” I shook my head. I was amused, but not surprised. And learning a few new details about Brynn’s personal life in the process. She’d been slow to share her private life, so each new data point helped me see the complexity hidden underneath her youth.
“Is any work going on in here, or are you two spending your day…scrapbooking?” Borkowski was in my doorway staring at my office-wall-turned-pinboard with annoyance. His tortoise-shell reading glasses were perched on top of his head, white shirtsleeves rolled, boring tie worn loose. In other words, he was in his work uniform. The only time I’d seen him in anything else was at our quarterly board meetings when he added the one sport coat I suspected he owned to the ensemble.
“Good morning, Art,” I said, ignoring his dig. Brynn kept her smirk contained, but I knew it was there underneath her half-smile. It wasn’t that the two disliked each other; Borkowski simply didn’t understand her, and she thought of him as a silly grandpa well past his journalistic prime. And I occasionally needed to play translator for both of them.
“What do you have on that chicken story you were so hot on? Is the inspector on the take with half the city or what? How about dead judges? Anything? I need content.”
I opened my mouth to tell him about construction companies and pizza joints and a connection I suspected between the dead judges. Not yet. I didn’t even have a solid theory. If I went down that path now, he’d be cutting me off after two sentences and I’d have poisoned the well. I’d made the mistake of making an early call on a story still in concept stage once before and learned the hard way. Waiting until I had a clean, well-formed hypothesis to share was the better tactic.
“I sent you a decent story on Saturday about the Atkinson murder. And you cut the hell out of it,” I said.
“It was a good start, but there was nothing in there that every other reporter in Chicago hadn’t already covered.”
“Excuse me? Who else had the shoe repair guy's account? And you axed all of that copy.”
“Some guy talking about how a van drove by and a woman was screaming. So what? Where’s your premise?”
“He saw the victim's bloody chest. Saw him fall. And you don’t think that adds to the story?”
“Only if you’re going for the shock factor,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “He didn’t see the shooter. He didn’t see anyone run off. He saw a car and blood. Get me more. And the chicken king? Where are you on that?”
Borkowski was only partially right. Blood alone wasn’t enough. The shoe guy’s account was important, and I could have added to the existing reporting, but the framework wasn’t yet broad enough to make the story what I suspected it was. But I didn’t want to say that.
“I’ve confirmed a personal relationship existed between the health inspector and the owner of The Chicken Shack, Orlando Gaetano. I have recent photos of them being chummy, and I have evidence of a hostile work environment, including an employee burned in retaliation, but I haven’t made any progress on connecting the inspector to other pay-to-play situations. We’re working on it.”
Was it a story? Yes, just not the story. The murder of two judges had shifted my priorities and the urgency of where and how I spent my time. I was scattered, moving back and forth between the two stories so much that I hadn’t cinched either. But unless I wanted to take on the managing editor roll, I needed to keep Borkowski happy, and the chicken story, as he called it, was further along, although lacking the sex appeal of a murder mystery that had played out before my eyes.
“How about you two stop with all the collage play, or whatever this is, and get me a story?” Borkowski said, giving both of us the stern father look that we knew well.
“We’re on it, Art,” I said.
He humphed and went off to slap someone else around for not developing a story faster.
“Changing your plans?” Brynn asked after he was out of earshot.
“Not yet. Let’s talk this case through for a bit.”
“Where’s your gut pulling you?” Brynn asked. “Yours has that knack. Mine just wants more Doritos.”
“Your gut instinct is better than you think. You just need confidence. However, I doubt the junk food helps.” I gave her a motherly raised eyebrow.
The food gulf between us was a source of constant amusement and good-natured ribbing, often leaving us both confused. She was a grown woman with her own food decisions to make, but for the first time in my life, I had a mommy urge to lecture when I saw her choices.
“First, I want to know who this guy is,” I said, pointing at the man with the widow's peak. “I’ve seen him with Panici, and I’m pretty certain I saw him deliver what sure looked like a bribe to Farnsworth. I suspect he was a messenger for Rastello. But I don’t have proof. Second, Panici is dirty. His wife as much as said so. He’s my focus. He hated Reynolds. Definitely has anger management problems. Willing to break the rules. Narcissist. I don’t think he has the impulse control to have pulled off the shootings himself, and he was not the guy I ran into in the Pedway. But he seems like the kind of man who has, shall we say, unusual friends? I don’t doubt he’s someone willing to hire out his dirty work.”
“And the wife isn’t talking? That seems odd. Wouldn’t that be all over their divorce? I thought that was one of the things you did. Expose the SOB and celebrate your settlement after.” She shrugged and looked at me for confirmation.
“Those are my thoughts exactly. I can’t figure out why she’s holding back. The only explanation I can come up with is that she must have something to lose by bringing it up. So she’s weighing the odds. He’s an ass and a creep, but I doubt she’s without some fault too.”
“Or maybe she’s worried about the retaliation.”
“That’s a good point,” I said, adding another note to the board. “Maybe there’s something or someone outside of the court process that she’s worried about. Rae’s father is the guy who founded Abbiocco, and a neighbor called him a crook. He’s in assisted living now, but that could be what’s holding her back. Or the cousin who now runs the restaurant could be exerting pressure.”
I stared at the board again as I contemplated Rae’s silence, then turned to Brynn.
“I’m going to stay on this story for now. And have you focus on The Chicken Shack. I’d like you to go a little harder on the food-inspector angle. Let’s see if we can find another hint of payoffs.”
“Will do. I’ve identified a couple of other restaurants Morales was responsible for through this gal in the Health Department, so I’ll start working those leads. Maybe I can find an employee who will talk. I’ll check in with you later.”
She returned to her desk, and I opened a browser window on my computer, pulling up The Hair Lounge website. The About tab brought me to what I hoped I’d find, another tab for Team. Small headshots of the staff ran down the left side of the page next to each stylist’s bio. The women were all done up in their best glamour looks. The hair was big, the jewelry and makeup bigger. I imagined the women all painting each other’s faces, showing their prowess with curling irons and hairspray, then sitting on a studio stool, waiting their turn for the photographer.
Six photos down, there she was. Viola Laskin. It took me a minute to connect the rather plain woman I’d seen in the shop with this dolled-up image, but her piercing green eyes gave her away. A fifteen-year veteran of the salon. Her job function was listed as manager.
Back to the browser. I typed in Selciatto + Laskin. Nothing on the Selciatto site identified staff, but five pages in, I got a hit. A suburban newspaper covering a Chamber of Commerce event. Clicking through, I found a photo of two men standing stiffly in dark suits. The parties were identified as Chamber President Milt Gresham and Gregori Laskin, CFO of Selciatto Holdings, LLC.
And even though the photo was a few years old, there was no mistaking Laskin’s dramatic hairline.
Panici. Rastello. Farnsworth. And now this guy, Laskin. They all had connections to each other and to Abbiocco. And somehow Abbiocco was part of the thread that connected both murders. But how were the judges connected? I still had no idea why Reynolds would have had a huge debt to Selciatto.
I stared at the photos on my wall. Wait. I grabbed my phone and scrolled through my photos. Rastello. How could I have not remembered? I’d been so focused on the dead judges that I hadn’t gone back to that night at The Chicken Shack.
Zooming in, I stared at Edmund Rastello’s face as he lifted a beer to his mouth while sitting in a booth with Orlando Gaetano. And Panici had joined them moments later. They were connected. They were all connected.