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“If Vivian wasn’t living with Mom right now,” he informed his sister, “I wouldn’t let you near this business, either.”
His sister raised her dark eyebrows nearly up to her ridiculous turquoise hair. “When is she moving back in with you?”
Karl sipped his wine, but the alcohol didn’t make the track of this conversation any easier to bear.
“You think you can out-silence me, and you’re probably right. But I’ve got something to say and you need to hear it.”
“Advice from my baby sister?”
“Your baby sister has figured out how to be in a happy relationship—something you never seemed to manage.”
Karl put down his glass of wine and looked at his sister. He might as well listen to what Tilly had to say. Vivian wasn’t coming to live with him; a lecture from his baby sister couldn’t hurt his pride any worse.
“The interesting thing about watching you trying to woo Vivian—”
“She’s my wife. I don’t have to woo her.”
Tilly ignored him. “Is learning that your pontifications about justice and stopping corruption and all that is a bunch of B.S.”
“What do you know?” Anger built in his body until he had no choice but to stand before fury ejected him clean out of his bar stool. “You were eight when Dad died.”
“Sit down, Karl,” she said in a no-nonsense voice he hadn’t even known she possessed.
He obeyed, shocked that his sunny, joking baby sister was talking to him this way.
“And don’t look so surprised. Anyway, I’m not belittling your devotion to your job, just questioning the reasons you always give for it. All of us assumed your life was motivated by justice, when it’s actually motivated by duty.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how we were all fooled for so long. It’s never been justice that made you come to Mom’s for family dinners or go to Mass every Sunday. You think it’s your duty to come to family dinners because Leon can’t and to go to Mass because Dad can’t. You come to Babka for dinner out of a sense of responsibility for me. And worst of all, you didn’t marry Jessica because you loved her, but because you thought you had a duty to marry a Polish Catholic girl.”
Karl sipped his wine, though it could have been vinegar for as much as he tasted it. “Everything you’ve said may be true, but you didn’t say anything about why I go to work every day. I do that because I believe bribery, waste and corruption hurts everyone in Chicago. If Bauer had done his job, the Willis children might still be alive.”
“You’ve made a compelling argument for your duty to the memory of the Willis children.” He blinked and she smiled in response. “I’ll even prove I’m right.”
“I’ll admit you’ve articulated your point neatly, but I don’t know how you intend to prove it.”
She smiled brightly. “I bribed two health inspectors so that I could keep Babka open.”
He blinked again. “You shouldn’t lie just to prove your point. I’ll think about what you said.”
“Oh, I’m not lying.” That gaping smile was still on her face. “Exaggerating maybe, but not lying. You can ask Dan. Steve hid a rat in my kitchen and called the health inspectors on me. Dan took the rat to his house and I bargained with the health inspectors to keep Babka open.”
Paulie the rat. Karl sipped his expensive, tasteless wine and processed what Tilly was telling him. He’d always assumed that pet was some joke of Dan’s, but if what Tilly was saying was true, a city worker had let a health code violation slide for his sister. A small infraction—it wasn’t as though Tilly ran a dirty restaurant—and she’d had an employee trying to get her restaurant closed, but he had stated on record that no infraction should slide. But, small or not, what she’d done was unethical, if not illegal.
“Why are you telling me this?” He’d have preferred not to know any of this. If he ever investigated the health inspectors’ office, this information was too juicy not to come out in some exaggerated form and then he’d have to think about Tilly’s restaurant and the legacy she’d given their grandmother and how intertwined it was with his public stance on corruption, no matter how small.
