Brush Back by Sara Paretsky Page B

given the baby’s name. For that I would have to go to the County building, to the more complete records that had been kept on microform.
    I was heading to the bathroom to shower and change when my doorbell rang. Bernie was sleeping deeply. I walked behind the couch to peer out at the street. I swore under my breath: three TV vans were double-parked on Racine. The early birds waiting for their prey: vultures are birds, too.
    I shook Bernie awake, no easy task. When I’d finally roused her, I explained we were under siege. “If you go out, use the back door. Otherwise the wolves from cable-land are going to jump you, okay?”
    Her eyes lit up: at last, a chance to take action against Boom-Boom’s enemies. “This will be fun.”
    “No, Bernie. It won’t be. They’ll make mincemeat out of you. Please believe I know what I’m talking about, or if you won’t believe me, please at least promise me that you will stay away from them. Okay?”
    She gave a reluctant agreement, but she still tried to rehash last night’s argument: we needed to act, not bury ourselves in libraries, doing research.
    “Bernie, if I discover that someone planted that diary, I’m not going to tell you, unless I can trust you not to run headfirst into trouble.”
    “Okay, okay, I’ll do it your way for two days. If you don’t find out anything and start acting on it—”
    “You will return to Canada so that you don’t get arrested and deported.” It took an effort not to shout at her. For the first time I began to see how hard it had been on my mother when Boom-Boom and I went roaring off without a thought of the consequences. “What would you do if I showed up at one of your games and started telling you how to play?”
    “You don’t know enough about hockey to tell me anything.”
    “Exactly. And you don’t know enough about the law, and evidence, and how to uncover secrets to tell me what to do.”
    Her small vivid face bunched up into a gargoyle grimace, but she finally gave a reluctant nod, a reluctant promise to do as I’d asked.
    I ran down the back stairs. Mr. Contreras’s kitchen light was on. I owed it to him to explain what was going on, even though conversations with him are never short. He’d seen the story, of course, and was appropriately indignant.
    “Bernie is up in arms, and thinks we ought to be out shooting or at least whacking people. I don’t want her going to South Chicago. It’s gang territory and she has no street smarts, only ice smarts. Can you waylay her, get her involved with the dogs, the garden, keep her from doing something that will get her hurt?”
    “I never been able to keep you from getting hurt, doll,” the old man said, truculent, “no matter what I say or do. Talking to my tomatoes gets me better results.”
    I felt my cheeks flame, but meekly said he was right. “But she’s seventeen, she’s been left in my care.”
    “And what are you going to get up to?” he demanded.
    “Exactly what I said to Bernie, and what I promised both Lotty and my lawyer. Looking for information, nothing physical, I promise.”
    I kissed his cheek, told the dogs they could swim when I got home tonight, and jogged down the alley so I could come to my car from behind. One of the reporters had been enterprising enough to find the Mustang. He was facing my apartment and I startled him when I unlocked the car and jumped in. He tried to hold on to the door, but I was maneuvering out of the parking space and he had to let go.
    I might have been a worm slithering away from the early birds, but my reward was the morning rush hour. Lake Shore Drive at this hour is pretty much a parking lot. It may be the most beautiful parking lot in the world, with the waves on nearby Lake Michigan dancing and preening in the sunlight, but it was still slow and tedious going.
    I was early enough to find street parking three blocks from the County building and took the stairs up to the records room, where I paid twenty dollars for