Deadlock

1 A Hero’s Death

More than a thousand people attended Boom Boom’s funeral. Many of them were children, fans from the suburbs and the Gold Coast. A handful came from Chicago’s depressed South Side where Boom Boom had learned to fight and skate. He was a wing with the Black Hawks until he shattered his left ankle hang-gliding three years earlier. And before Wayne Gretzky came along, he’d been the game’s biggest hero since Bobby Hull.

He underwent surgery for the ankle three times, refusing to admit he couldn’t skate anymore. His doctors hadn’t even wanted to attempt the third operation, but Boom Boom bowed to reality only when he could find no one to perform a fourth. After that he drifted through a series of jobs. A lot of people were willing to pay him to generate customers and goodwill, but Boom Boom was the kind of person who had to be doing, had to sink his teeth into-whatever it was.

He finally ended up with the Eudora Grain Company, where his father had been a stevedore during the thirties and forties. It was their regional vice-president, Clayton Phillips, who found Boom Boom’s body floating close to the wharf last Tuesday. Phillips tried calling me since Boom Boom’s employment forms listed me as his nearest relative. However, I was out of town on a case that took me to Peoria for three weeks. By the time the police located me one of Boom Boom’s mother’s numerous sisters had identified the body and begun arranging a big Polish funeral.

Boom Boom’s father and mine were brothers, and we’d grown up together in South Chicago. We were both only children and were closer than many brothers and sisters. My Aunt Marie, a good Polish Catholic, had produced endless babies, dying in her twelfth attempt. Boom Boom was the fourth, and the only one who lived more than three days.

He grew up playing hockey. I don’t know where he got the craze or the skill but, despite Marie’s frenzy over the danger, he spent most of his childhood thinking up ways to play without her knowing. A lot of them involved me-I lived six blocks away, and a visit to Cousin Vic was often a cover for a few precious hours with the puck. In those days all the hockey-mad kids adulated Boom-Boom Geoffrion. My cousin copied his slap shot slavishly; to please him the other boys took to calling him “Boom Boom” and the nickname stuck. In fact when the Chicago police found me at my Peoria hotel and asked if I was Bernard Warshawski’s cousin it took me a few seconds to realize who they meant.

Now I sat in the front pew of St. Wenceslas Church with Boom Boom’s moist, indistinguishable aunts and cousins. All in black, they were offended by my navy wool suit. Several took the trouble to tell me so in loud whispers during the prelude.

I fixed my eyes on the imitation Tiffany windows, depicting in garish colors highlights in the life of St. Wenceslas, as well as the Crucifixion and the wedding at Cana. Whoever designed the windows had combined Chinese perspective with a kind of pseudocubism. As a result, jugs of water spouted from people’s heads and long arms stretched menacingly from behind the cross. Attaching people to their own limbs and sorting out who was doing what to whom kept me fully occupied during the service and gave me-I hope-a convincing air of pious absorption.

Neither of my parents had been religious. My Italian mother was half Jewish, my father Polish, from a long line of skeptics. They’d decided not to inflict any faith on me, although my mother always baked me little orecchi d’Aman at Purim. The violent religiosity of Boom Boom’s mother and the cheap plaster icons in her house always terrified me as a child.

My own taste would have been for a quiet service at a nondenominational chapel, with a chance for Boom Boom’s old teammates to make a short speech-they’d asked to, but the aunts had turned them down. I certainly would not have picked this vulgar church in the old neighborhood, presided over by a priest who had never met my cousin and talked about him now with hypocritical fulsomeness.

However, I left the funeral arrangements to his aunts. My cousin named me his executor, a duty that was bound to absorb a lot of energy. I knew he would not care how he was buried, whereas the little excitement in his aunts’ lives came from weddings and funerals. They made sure we spent several hours over a full-blown mass for the dead, followed by an interminable procession to the Sacred Heart cemetery on the far South Side.

After the interment Bobby Mallory fought through the crowd to me in his lieutenant’s dress uniform. I was on my way to Boom Boom’s Aunt Helen, or maybe his Aunt Sarah, for an afternoon of piroshkis and meatballs. I was glad Bobby had come: he was an old friend of my father’s from the Chicago Police Department, and the first person from the old neighborhood I really wanted to see.

“I was real sorry about Boom Boom, Vicki. I know how close you two were.”

Bobby’s the only person I allow to call me Vicki. “Thanks, Bobby. It’s been tough. I appreciate your coming.”

A chilly April wind ruffled my hair and made me shiver in my wool suit. I wished I’d worn a coat. Mallory walked with me toward the limousines carrying the fifty-three members of the immediate family. The funeral would probably eat fifteen thousand out of the estate, but I didn’t care.

“Are you going to the party? May I ride with you? They’ll never miss me in that crowd.”

Mallory agreed good-naturedly and helped me into the back seat of the police limo he’d commandeered. He introduced me to the driver. “Vicki, Officer Cuthbert was one of Boom Boom’s many fans.”

“Yes, miss. I was real sorry when Boom… sorry, when your cousin had to stop playing. I figure he could’ve beat Gretzky’s record easy.”

“Go ahead and call him Boom Boom,” I said. “He loved the name and everyone used it… Bobby, I couldn’t get any information out of the guy at the grain company when I phoned him. How did Boom Boom die?”

He looked at me sternly. “Do you really need to know that, Vicki? I know you think you’re tough, but you’ll be happier remembering Boom Boom the way he was on the ice.”

I pressed my lips together; I wasn’t going to lose my temper at Boom Boom’s funeral. “I’m not indulging an appetite for gore, Bobby. I want to know what happened to my cousin. He was an athlete; it’s hard for me to picture him slipping and falling like that.”

Bobby’s expression softened a bit. “You’re not thinking he drowned himself, are you?”

I moved my hands indecisively. “He left an urgent message for me with my answering service-I’ve been out of town, you know. I wondered if he might’ve been feeling desperate.”

Bobby shook his head. “Your cousin wasn’t the kind of man to throw himself under a ship. You should know that as well as I do.”

I didn’t want a lecture on the cowardice of suicide. “Is that what happened?”

“If the grain company didn’t let you know, they had a reason. But you can’t accept that, can you?” He sighed. “You’ll probably just go butting your head in down there if I don’t tell you. A ship was tied up at the dock and Boom Boom went under the screw as she pulled away. He was chewed up pretty badly.”

“I see.” I turned my head to look at the Eisenhower Expressway and the unpainted homes lining it.

“It was a wet day, Vicki. That’s an old wooden dock-they get very slippery in the rain. I read the M.E.’s report myself. I think he slipped and fell in. I don’t think he jumped.”

I nodded and patted his head. Hockey had been Boom Boom’s life and he hadn’t taken easily to forced retirement. I agreed with Bobby that my cousin wasn’t a quitter, but he’d been apathetic the last year or so. Apathetic enough to fall under the propeller of a ship?

I tried to push the thought out of my mind as we pulled up in front of the tidy brick ranch house where Boom Boom’s Aunt Helen lived. She had followed a flock of other South Chicago Poles to Elmwood Park. I believe she had a husband around someplace, a retired steel-worker, but, like all the Wojcik men, he stayed far in the background.

Cuthbert let us out in front of the house, then went off to park the limo behind a long string of Cadillacs. Bobby accompanied me to the door, but I quickly lost sight of him in the crowd.

The next two hours put a formidable strain on my frayed temper. Various relatives said it was a pity Bernard insisted on playing hockey when poor dear Marie hated it so much. Others said it was a pity I had divorced Dick and didn’t have a family to keep me busy-just look at Cheryl’s and Martha’s and Betty’s babies. The house was swarming with children: all the Wojciks were appallingly prolific.

It was a pity Boom Boom’s marriage had only lasted three weeks-but then, he shouldn’t have been playing hockey. Why was he working at Eudora Grain, though? Breathing grain dust all his life had killed his father. Still, those Warshawskis never had much stamina anyway.

The small house filled with cigarette smoke, with the heavy smell of Polish cooking, with the squeals of children. I edged my way past one aunt who said she expected me to help wash up since I hadn’t handled any of the preparation. I had vowed that I would not say anything over the baked meats beyond “Yes,” “No,” and “I don’t know,” but it was getting harder.

Then Grandma Wojcik, eighty-two, fat, dressed in shiny black, grabbed my arm in a policeman’s grip. She looked at me with a rheumy blue eye. Breathing onions, she said, “The girls are talking about Bernard.”

The girls were the aunts, of course.

“They’re saying he was in trouble down at the elevator. They’re saying he threw himself under the ship so he wouldn’t be arrested.”

“Who’s telling you that?” I demanded.

“Helen. And Sarah. Cheryl says Pete says he just jumped in the water when no one was looking. No Wojcik ever killed himself. But the Warshawskis… Those Jews. I warned Marie over and over.”

I pried her fingers from my arm. The smoke and noise and the sour cabbage smell were filling my brain. I put my head down to look her in the eyes, started to say something rude, then thought better of it. I fought my way through the smog, tripping over babies, and found the men hovering around a table filled with sausages and sauerkraut in one corner. If their minds had been as full as their stomachs they could have saved America.

“Who are you telling that Boom Boom jumped off the wharf? And how the hell do you know, anyway?”

Cheryl’s husband Pete looked at me with stupid blue eyes. “Hey, don’t lose your pants, Vic. I heard it down at the dock.”

“What trouble was he in at the elevator? Grandma Wojcik says you’re telling everyone he was in trouble down there.”

Pete shifted a glass of beer from one hand to the other. “It’s just talk, Vic. He didn’t get along with his boss. Someone said he stole some papers. I don’t believe it. Boom Boom didn’t need to steal.”

My eyes fogged and I felt my head buzzing. “It’s not true, goddamn you! Boom Boom never did anything cheap in his life, even when he was poor.”

The others stared at me uneasily. “Take it easy, Vic,” one said. “We all liked Boom Boom. Pete said he didn’t believe it. Don’t get so wild over it.”

He was right. What was I doing, anyway, starting a scene at the funeral? I shook my head, like a dog coming out of water, and pushed back through the crowd to the living room. I made my way past a Bleeding Heart of Mary tastefully adorning the front door and went out into the chilly spring air.

I opened my jacket to let the cool air flow through me and cleanse me. I wanted to go home, but my car was at my apartment on Chicago’s North Side. I scanned the street: as I’d feared, Cuthbert and Mallory had long since disappeared. While I looked doubtfully around me, wondering whether I could find a cab or possibly walk to a train station in high heels, a young woman joined me. She was small and tidy, with dark hair falling straight just below her ears, and honey-colored eyes. She wore a pale gray silk shantung suit with a full skirt and a bolero jacket fastened by large mother-of-pearl buttons. She looked elegant, perfect, and vaguely familiar.

“Wherever Boom Boom is, I’m sure he’d rather be there than here.” She jerked her head toward the house and gave a quick, sardonic smile.

“Me too.”

“You’re his cousin, aren’t you… I’m Paige Carrington.”

“I thought I recognized you. I’ve seen you a few times, but only onstage.” Carrington was a dancer who had created a comic one-woman show with the Windy City Balletworks.

She gave the triangular smile audiences loved. “I’ve been seeing a lot of your cousin the last few months. We kept it quiet because we didn’t want Herguth or Greta splashing it around the gossip columns-your cousin was news even when he stopped skating.”

She was right. I was always seeing my cousin’s name in print. It’s funny being close to someone famous. You read a lot about them, but the person in print’s never the one you know.

“I think Boom Boom cared more for you than anyone.” She frowned, thinking about the statement. Even her frown was perfect, giving her an absorbed, considering look. Then she smiled, a bit wistfully. “I think we were in love, but I don’t know. I’ll never be sure now.”

I mumbled something soothing.

“I wanted to meet you. Boom Boom talked about you all the time. He loved you very much. I’m sorry he never introduced us.”

“Yes. I hadn’t seen him for several months… Are you driving back to the city? Can I beg a ride? I had to come out with the procession and my car is on the North Side.”

She pushed the white silk cuff emerging from her jacket sleeve and looked at her watch. “I have to be at a rehearsal in an hour. Okay if I drop you downtown?”

“That’d be great. I feel like Br’er Rabbit out here in suburbia-I need to get back to my brier patch.”

She laughed at that. “I know what you mean. I grew up in Lake Bluff myself. But now when I go out there to visit I feel like my oxygen’s been cut off.”

I looked at the house, wondering if I should make a formal farewell. Good manners certainly dictated it, but I didn’t want a fifteen-minute lecture on why I should clean up both the dishes and my life. I shrugged and followed Paige Carrington down the street.

She drove a silver Audi 5000. Either the Windy City Balletworks paid better than the average struggling theater or the Lake Bluff connection supplied money for shantung suits and foreign sports cars.

Paige drove with the quick, precise grace that characterized her dancing. Since neither of us knew the area, she made a few wrong turns in the rows of identical houses before finding an access ramp to the Eisenhower.

She didn’t say much on the ride back to town. I was quiet too, thinking about my cousin and feeling melancholy-and guilty. That was why I’d had a temper tantrum with those stupid, hulking cousins, I realized. I hadn’t kept up with Boom Boom. I knew he was depressed but I hadn’t kept in touch. If only I’d left my Peoria number with my answering service. Was he sick with despair? Maybe he’d thought love would cure him and it hadn’t. Or maybe it was the talk on the docks that he’d stolen some papers-he thought I could help him combat it, like the thousand other battles we’d fought together. Only I wasn’t there.

With his death, I’d lost my whole family. It’s true my mother had an aunt in Melrose Park. But I’d rarely met her, and neither she nor her fat, self-important son seemed like real relations to me. But Boom Boom and I had played, fought, protected each other. If we hadn’t spent much time together in the last ten years, we’d always counted on the other being around to help us out. And I hadn’t helped him out.

As we neared the I-90/94 interchange rain started spattering the windshield, breaking into my fruitless reverie. I realized Paige was glancing at me speculatively. I turned to face her, eyebrows raised.

“You’re Boom Boom’s executor, aren’t you?”

I assented. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “Boom Boom and I-never got to the stage of exchanging keys.” She gave me a quick, embarrassed smile. “I’d like to go to his place and get some things I left there.”

“Sure. I was planning on being there tomorrow afternoon for a preliminary look at his papers. Want to meet me there at two?”

“Thanks. You’re sweet… Do you mind if I call you Vic? Boom Boom talked about you so much I feel as though I know you.”

We were going under the post office, where six lanes had been carved out the building’s foundations, Paige gave a satisfied nod. “And you must call me Paige.” She changed lanes, nosed the Audi around a garbage truck, and turned left on Wabash. She dropped me at my office-the Pulteney Building on the corner of Wabash and Monroe.

Overhead an el train thundered. “Good-bye,” I yelled above the din. “See you tomorrow at two.”