Hardball

by Sara Paretsky

  “Karen… Of course I know her. She’s on our Death Penalty committee, and we’ve done some work together on affordable health care. How did she find you?”

  “By chance. She was in a hospital ER when I came in with a homeless man who’d collapsed on my sidewalk.”

  “And Dr. Herschel-this is her apartment, I realized-I was surprised to learn you were staying with her.”

  I’ve known Lotty half my life now, ever since I was an undergraduate and she was advising an abortion underground. Sister Carolyn took that in without blinking. Some of her immigrant clients got medical care at Lotty’s storefront clinic, and Lotty had saved the life of one of their pregnant women when she was shot in the abdomen. It clearly made me a better citizen in Zabinska’s eyes that Lotty was my friend and that I was working with Karen Lennon.

  I finally brought the conversation back to my own inquiry. “Did Sister Frances ever talk about Steve Sawyer’s trial or the march in Marquette Park where Harmony Newsome died?”

  “I was a child when that happened, a middle schooler at Justin Martyr. Frankie came to speak to us as part of the cardinal’s outreach program. A lot of the children booed and called her names, but she made me see the world in a different way. I came to my vocation because of Frankie.”

  She shook her head, trying to shake tears away. “She wouldn’t have talked to me about the murder at the time because I was a child. And by the time I went through my novitiate, and ended up back in Chicago with her, it was twelve years later. So many other things started happening that we needed to tackle-the School of the Americas and the Guatemalan asylum seekers, and then the loss of jobs and health care-that we didn’t dwell much on that past. Did she think this Steve Sawyer was wrongly convicted?”

  “He may have been. All I can say, with any certainty, is that he was very badly represented in a trial that was a travesty, at least as far as I can tell from the transcript. Sister Frances said she wanted to testify at the trial but the defense wouldn’t call her.”

  I stopped, my throat was so dry I could hardly get the next words out. “A reporter suggested I was the real target, but he wouldn’t tell me who he’d heard that from.”

  “Killing a nun to keep her from talking to you or you from talking to her, these things have happened in Nicaragua or Liberia, but here? We think we’re so safe here, and yet my own government is spying on me. The government are the people who would have known she was talking to you.” Her eyes widened in horror, and she choked out, “You don’t think they… that they…”

  I grimaced. “What? That the Contras might kill a nun but not Homeland Security? I don’t think they did. But I can’t swear to anything right now, except that I feel pretty vulnerable.”

  Zabinska pleated Lotty’s linen tea napkin over and over in her fingers. “The work that you’re doing for Karen, for these two old women in Lionsgate Manor, how much are you charging them?”

  “My standard fee is a hundred fifty an hour plus expenses.”

  “We can’t afford that. Is there any chance you could work out an arrangement with us? I want you to find out why Frankie died. We’ll all feel better if we know why.”

  I could feel the request coming before she said it, but I didn’t try to fight it. I owed Sister Frances the effort of an investigation.

  “Yes,” I said quietly. “I’ll feel better, too.”

  We talked through the various issues the Freedom Center worked on that might have brought someone to the boiling point. We talked about people who might have harbored a personal resentment against Sister Frances. Even saints make enemies. It’s how they become martyrs.

  At the end, I said, “The best thing you can do is get back into that sealed apartment and bring me some bottle fragments.”

  “You suggested bolt cutters,” she said doubtfully.

  “Or a hammer. That door isn’t too sturdy. A few good whacks on the panel would take care of it. I’d do it myself, but I’m a bit out of action right now.” My padded hands would be unwrapped in two more days. If they’d healed sufficiently, Lotty would let me go home.

  Sister Carolyn got up to leave, but she took the tea things to the kitchen and washed them for me first. In the hall, as she waited for the elevator, she said, “You know, taking a hammer to that door would cheer me up. Some kind of fierce action, for a change. If we find any bits of bottle, one of us will bring them over tomorrow.”

  Later that evening, Petra arrived, bubbling with so much energetic goodwill that I felt exhausted almost from the moment she got off the elevator. When Lotty let her in, Petra danced down the hall to the guest room, where I was dictating notes to send to Marilyn.

  Petra had remembered the charger to my phone, amazingly enough, and also brought my mail, which she dumped on the bureau before settling in a wing chair by the window. “Shall I open it and read it to you? There must be a hundred letters here!”

  “No, most of them are bills. They’ll keep another day. How are the dogs? What’s happening with the campaign? You still the golden-haired girl?”

  She laughed. “I don’t take any of it too seriously. I think that’s why I’m so popular. Everyone else is, like, totally ambitious, you know, hoping for big jobs when Brian gets to the Senate so that they can have really big jobs when he’s president.”

  “And what are you hoping for?” I asked idly.

  “Just to get through the summer without making a mistake that’ll get everyone else in trouble.”

  She spoke with such unexpected seriousness that I took off my heavy dark glasses to look at her. “What’s going on, Petra? Is someone suggesting you’ve done something wrong?”

  “No, no. I don’t want to think about it tonight. You know that baseball you said you found in Uncle Tony’s trunk, the one signed by someone in the White Sox?”

  “Nellie Fox, you mean? Yeah, what about it?”

  “I mentioned it to Daddy, and he’d love to have it. Did you keep it? I mean, you said it would be worth something if you auctioned it on eBay.”

  She was floundering, and I stared at her with even more surprise. “Petra, what is the matter with you tonight? I kept the baseball, but I don’t know what I want to do with it. It meant something to my dad or he wouldn’t have kept it with his Good Conduct citation. I’ll think about it.”

  “Where is it?” she persisted. “Could I take a picture and send it to Daddy?”

  “Petra, you are up to something. I don’t know what, but…”

  She flushed, and played with her array of rubber bracelets. “Oh, he’s turning seventy next year, and Mom and I were trying to think of something really special to do. I thought of the baseball, and-”

  “I thought you just said you’d talked to him about it and that he’d love to have it.”

  “Why are you biting on me like I was some steak bone? I’m just making conversation!” She nearly tilted the wing chair over in her agitation.

  “Then let’s make some more conversation. What really brought you to Sister Frances’s apartment the other night? And who came with you?”

  “I told you-”

  “Baby, I’ve been listening to line spinners since I was six, and you are not in the majors. Not even double A.”

  She scowled at me. “If I tell you now, you’ll make even more fun of me.”

  “Try me.”

  “I thought, it’s not like you have an assistant or anything. And when we went to South Chicago, I loved how you dealt with those gangbangers. I thought if I went in and found something-a clue or something-maybe you’d take me on as an apprentice when the campaign winds down. But if you’re just going to laugh at me…”

  Her face was so red that it almost glowed in the soft light of the guest room. I slid off the bed and knelt next to her, patting her shoulder.

  “You want to be a detective? You know the ‘fun stuff ’ you said I got to do, after I tangled with that gangbanger on Houston Street? Your folks would eat me for lunch if you were working for me and got your eyes burned.
Not to mention that you could have gone through the floor in that apartment.”

  I sat back on the daybed as another thought occurred to me. “Petra, someone threw a smoke bomb into my old house on Houston last Sunday. Señora Andarra said she saw one of us watching from across the street. That wasn’t you, was it?”

  “Vic! You told me not to go down there alone.”

  “Does that mean no?” I asked. “You weren’t trying to play detective and get into that house?”

  “I wasn’t playing detective at your old house, okay?” Her face turned red again in her agitation. “Now I’m sorry I ever said anything to you about it. Daddy says your mom spoiled you something rotten, so you never learned how to let anyone else be in the limelight.”

  “That a fact? Is that what you were doing at the Freedom Center the other night? Showing me how to let you be in the limelight?”

  “Oh, you twist everything I say the wrong way.” She strode from the room, her rubber bracelets bobbing up and down on her arms.

  Her exit was a little anticlimactic: one of her bracelets flew off as she reached Lotty’s front door. I bent to pick it up; it was white and labeled ONE. It was supposed to make us want to get together as one planet to solve AIDS and poverty.

  I shut my eyes. I was supposed to be the grown-up in this situation. I handed her the bracelet, and said, “If I try to learn how to share the limelight, will you try to learn how to listen to directions?”

  Her flush faded. “You mean you would let me study detecting with you?”

  “Most of what I do is truly tedious, like all those bills on the bureau there,” I warned her. “But if you want to work for me for six months, see how you like it… Sure, we can give it a try when you’re through with Brian’s campaign.”

  She flung her arms around me, pressing into the raw new skin on my chest, then ran into the waiting elevator. I stopped in the living room to say good night to Lotty. I was puzzling over Petra’s words, and her behavior, with Lotty-Could Petra be serious about trying to emulate me? Could she be lying about being in South Chicago last Sunday?-when Lotty’s phone rang.

  It was Carolyn Zabinska for me. “Vic, we went to Frankie’s place as soon as we got in tonight,” she said without preamble. “A demolition team had come in from nowhere and stripped the room. The building manager said it was an anonymous benefactor who wanted to do something good for the church and that builders would be arriving tomorrow.”

  31

  HOME IN TATTERS

  A FEW DAYS LATER, I LEFT LOTTY’S FOR HOME. MY GAUZE had come off, revealing puckered red skin underneath. I was to wear special gloves day and night, a kind of lacy mitt. There was to be no swimming for now, and no sun for some months to come. I graduated from my special plastic-lensed dark glasses to ordinary dark glasses. I was cleared for viewing television and computer screens and for driving a car.

  I spoke with the doorman several times during my stay with Lotty. He hadn’t seen anyone lurking around, waiting for an injured private eye to emerge. No strangers had come calling for me except the law, my first day there. I was beginning to believe the attack on Sister Frances had been connected to her work at the Freedom Center. The thought didn’t stop my wanting to find her killers, but it eased my nightmares. I hadn’t killed her. I’d only been the helpless witness to her death.

  While I was recuperating at Lotty’s, I wasn’t idle. I returned all the calls from the media that had piled up. Sad but true, part of being a successful PI is for people to see your name on the Web.

  This was especially important because my temporary agency phoned to say that Marilyn Klimpton was quitting. “She didn’t expect to be there on her own with so many angry clients and all the reporters and so on trying to reach you. Also, you being attacked in that bombing, she’s afraid for her safety, being alone in your office. We don’t think we can send anyone to replace her right now.”

  “Then I don’t think you and I will be working together again in the future, either,” I said grandly.

  This was just great. Not only was I out of commission but the backlog waiting for me would be growing to Himalayan proportions again. I called my answering service to tell them to handle the phone during normal business hours, and then I started phoning my clients to see what business I could subcontract out and what could wait a few more days for me to get to it personally.

  Some people had already moved their inquiries to bigger firms with more detectives. Prudent. If your lead investigator is singed, go where you know there’s backup. I thought of my bills and tried not to panic. I thought of George Dornick’s Mountain Hawk Security and his offer to hire “Tony’s daughter.” I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  And I worried, too, about my cousin. Something wasn’t right with her story about why she’d shown up at the Freedom Center the night I’d gone back there. It was flattering to think she wanted to emulate me, but I was having a hard time believing it. And the smoke bomb at my old home on Houston… Señora Andarra had told the cops she saw the woman who grew up in the house watching from across the street. Conrad thought that had to be me because he associated only me with growing up in the house. But Señora Andarra probably thought of Petra and me as a family unit… It had been Petra who spoke to her in Spanish.

  Although Petra had sworn angrily she hadn’t been playing detective in South Chicago, she hadn’t categorically denied being there last Sunday night. But why would she have been down there? I couldn’t begin to imagine a reason.

  I finally put the idea aside and called the management company that handled the Freedom Center building, hoping they could tell me who had sent over a demolition team to gut Sister Frankie’s apartment and prepare it for the builders. They couldn’t or they wouldn’t tell me.

  I left a message on Sister Carolyn’s cellphone to see if she could get any information out of the contractors. She was in a meeting with an INS attorney, but she called back several hours later to say she’d talked to someone from both the wrecking crew and the builder. Both contractors insisted they didn’t know who hired them. They had been promised cash, almost double their usual fees, if they would drop everything and take care of the building.

  “They didn’t want to tell me even that much, I guess because they were afraid I might report them to the IRS, but I put on my costume and assured them that all I wanted was information.”

  Her costume. Oh, the veil, right. I asked who had given them the money, but she said they claimed it was a middle-aged white man, someone they had never seen before.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said drily. “He was wearing a trench coat and a felt fedora.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Would it make a difference?”

  “Yeah. It would be a giveaway that they were lying instead of just a probability.”

  “You think they really know who sent them?”

  I was sitting at Lotty’s kitchen table, my frustration at my inaction just about at the boiling point. “I don’t know, of course, but my best guess is that they owe someone important a favor or they’re gofers for someone important. Maybe they’re a minority-contracting front, I don’t know. But to drop everything like that, they have to have a pretty good idea who sent them. And then your place being under surveillance, and that police seal on Sister Frankie’s door, didn’t stop them for five seconds.”

  When we hung up, I called the detectives from the Bomb and Arson squad who had been over to interrogate me. The Latino cop was in.

  “You know your crime scene doesn’t exist anymore?” I said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I just got off the phone with one of the nuns who lives there. A building crew showed up, not anyone the sisters hired, and took down the door, stripped the room. I hope you secured any samples you took. Someone’s going to a lot of trouble to keep that fire from being investigated.”

  He didn’t exactly thank me. It was more of a snarl, a demand for Sister Carolyn’s phone number, and a warning that I’d bet
ter not be behind any destruction of evidence.

  I missed Amy Blount badly. I could have sicced her on the contractors, gotten her to track down the ownership trail. I wondered if I could turn it over to my cousin, see how she would handle a routine search through incorporation records. If she failed, I was no worse off than I was when I started.

  I tried Petra on her cellphone. She was at the campaign office, and we were interrupted several times by people who came by to see her. Each time, she announced that she was on the phone with “my cousin, you know, the one who got burned in that fire last week? So I’ll get back to you right away, but she needs my help.”

  When I finally got her full attention, she was enthusiastic and bubbled over with questions. I gave her the URLs of a couple of websites I subscribe to, and told her I’d e-mail her the passwords so she didn’t have to try to write them down in midconversation.

  “If the subcontractors haven’t made it into the database, you’ll have to go to the State of Illinois Building to check their incorporation filings.”

  “But what if they incorporated in some other state? Don’t they usually do it in Delaware?”

  “If they’re big enough to incorporate in Delaware, you should find them online, but good catch. If you find them, please, little cousin, do not go tracking them down by yourself. Contractors have short fuses and big hammers.”

  “Oh, Vic, so do meatpackers. I grew up around them. I know how to talk to people without getting their undies in a bundle. Anyway, I can outrun a guy who’s weighed down by a big hammer. You’ll see.”

  I would see. I frowned at the phone, wishing I understood what was really on Petra’s mind, and hoping I hadn’t started her on a quest where she’d get in over her head.

  Lotty took the afternoon off to drive me around, first to the hospital, where her presence let me jump to the front of the line.

  From the hospital, we drove to the bank. Until I got all my plastic replaced, I didn’t have a way of getting cash, so I brought my passport and cashed a check for a thousand dollars, hoping that would see me through until a new ATM card arrived.