Hardball

by Sara Paretsky

  Everything in the meeting I’d just left was setting off warning bells. When Peter should have been with his wife, or talking to cops, or even talking to me, why was he huddled with Harvey Krumas and George Dornick in a meeting in the office of Chicago’s most feared political op? And then there were the repeated injunctions for me to stay away from Petra, as if they knew where she was or maybe had received some kind of threat or even a ransom note.

  It wasn’t until I sat at the foot of a statue on a shallow flight of stairs that I realized how tired I was. Using the red sweatshirt from my briefcase as a pillow, I leaned back against the crumbling concrete steps and shut my eyes.

  The Nellie Fox baseball meant something important, even devastating, to Peter. Harvey Krumas and Dornick both knew about the ball; that was clear from their reactions. Petra had been ordered to get it from me. That was why she had behaved so oddly about it, with her clumsy story about wanting it for a surprise present for her father. Dornick or Krumas, or even Les Strangwell, had learned that I had the ball probably because Petra had burbled away about it at the office.

  I could almost hear her gusty laugh as she informed her pod mates in the NetSquad: “Can you believe I thought the White Sox had played a woman at second? Daddy would disown me if he learned I didn’t know about Nellie Fox! My cousin says he was, like, a big star a hundred years ago.”

  All the Millen Gen interns texted or Twittered constantly. Nellie Fox, transgender ballplayer, would become part of Twitter that day. That part was easy to imagine. Word filtered up to… Whom? The candidate? The Chicago Strangler? The candidate’s father? One of them told Petra she had to get the baseball from me.

  That much I could believe, but I wasn’t sure that the ball was what the thugs who’d torn apart my house and office had been hunting for. Why had they taken the picture of the slow-pitch team if all they wanted was the ball?

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said, so lost in thought I spoke out loud.

  “That’s what I be saying all along. It don’t make no sense. Those rockets they send up, they messing with the weather. Then they use their cellphones to watch you, see if you know what they up to.”

  The speaker had been around the corner of the statue’s plinth from me, on another short flight of steps. When he realized I was actually listening to him, he asked for a donation so he could get something to eat. I stared at him without seeing him. They use their cellphones to watch you.

  They were watching me. They’d tailed me this morning. Were they watching Petra as well? “Damn it, little cousin, who are you working for?” Not Dornick, or he’d know where she was. Maybe he did know where she was. Maybe that was why he didn’t want me looking for her. I thought about flipping a coin. Heads, he doesn’t know where Petra is. Tails, he does.

  Was that what they were all talking about in Strangwell’s office? How will it play out for Brian Krumas’s campaign if we produce Petra versus us leaving her in hiding? Was that why my aunt had gone back to Overland Park, because Dornick assured her he knew where the kid was and would produce her safe and sound? But that really made no sense, Petra helping thugs break into my office and then they put her on ice. Well, maybe I could see it. They didn’t want their thugs ID’d, so they wanted to keep Petra away from the cops.

  On an impulse, I tried Rachel’s cellphone. It rolled over to her voice mail. I tried her home number in Overland Park. The phone was answered by a man, who refused to say who he was or where Rachel was, only that he would take a message for Rachel.

  I couldn’t tell a complete stranger to ask Rachel whether Dornick knew where Petra was hiding. The man answering the phone could be anywhere in the world intercepting Rachel’s and Peter’s calls, and he could be working for anyone.

  I gave him my name and number, but no other details, then demanded to know who he was.

  “Someone who’s answering the phone.” He hung up.

  I hugged my knees to my chest. After the Navy Pier fundraiser, Les Strangwell had pulled Petra onto his personal staff. It was then that she’d suddenly announced an interest in my childhood home and the house in Back of the Yards. And in my dad’s possessions in the trunk. She knew I had the baseball. So there was something else that Strangwell wanted her to find. A photograph, since intruders had stolen the picture of my dad’s team? Something involving baseballs or baseball teams? What did I have that could matter to Les Strangwell and George Dornick? Nothing. Nothing at all, except obviously the Nellie Fox ball, which brought me back to where I started, spinning like a globe. No, nothing as grand as a globe. Spinning like water spiraling down the drain.

  Peter and George Dornick wouldn’t care about Brian’s campaign, only Les Strangwell and the candidate’s father would put that first. But when I showed up unannounced, they kept on talking behind closed doors for half an hour. They were deciding on how to handle me. But what were they deciding to do about Petra? And why had my aunt gone home?

  “Was it a game to you, little cousin? Or did they utter those mystic, magic words, ‘national security,’ and get you to believe them? They told you under no circumstances to confide in me. What about your Uncle Sal?”

  “Not Uncle Sal, Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam be watching you. He know when you be sleeping, / He know when you awake, / He say it all be for national security’s sake.”

  My partner on the other side of the statue’s plinth was still in full throttle on the people he said were watching him. Since I myself kept talking out loud, it was hard for me to feel that I was a more stable girder on the bridge than him. When was it paranoia and when were they really watching you?

  I got up and pulled a five from my pocket for my companion. One thing about our outbursts: they’d driven everyone else away from us. Although, these days, with so many people spouting their secrets into the ether, it was hard to know who had real friends and who had invisible ones.

  I crossed Lake Shore Drive at Roosevelt Road and waited for a northbound bus at the natural history museum. My cousin was queen of the texters. When we were riding back from South Chicago together and I mentioned I hadn’t heard her on her phone, she’d confessed she’d been texting. Had she sent a message to Strangwell, telling him we hadn’t been able to get into the Houston Street house? Did he send a team down then to throw a smoke bomb into my old house so they could search for… what?

  Petra texting. She’d been texting at the Freedom Center. Petra leaning in the doorway to Caroline Zabinska’s apartment, her hands busy in front of her. I’d been ninety percent unconscious, and she hadn’t thought I’d notice, but maybe she’d summoned the person who collected the bag of evidence I’d been gathering, those pieces of the Molotov cocktail bottles I wanted to send to the Cheviot Labs to test what kind of accelerant had been used.

  The FBI and Homeland Security had both been watching the Freedom Center building, but they’d claimed they didn’t have any record of the person who’d broken in to get my evidence bag. So they knew who’d gone in and didn’t care. Or someone who had very big clout persuaded the feds to look the other way. They had photographed me going in that night, but not Petra. And not the person who’d stolen the evidence bag. And then, the very next day, the apartment was taken apart by some tame construction company, paid for by a man who wanted to make a donation to the sisters for the Freedom Center. Very cute.

  Brian Krumas had said something critical during the meeting. It had only registered at the time as a faint puzzler, and now, playing back what I could remember of the conversation, I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was something about his relationship with my uncle, something that connected my uncle to Sister Frankie, but the more I pushed on it, the further it retreated from my mind.

  Petra wasn’t a drug user, I was sure of that despite putting the question to Peter. As for gambling or some other expensive vice, I couldn’t picture it. But I wouldn’t have pictured her breaking into my office, either.

  I was tangling myself up like a bowl of cold spaghetti. Assume, for sanity’s sake, th
at Petra was an unwitting or unwilling partner in Strangwell’s machinations. She was an overgrown puppy, not a malicious schemer. If she was in over her head, I needed to help her out. If she was trying to hide out in this big, bad city, or if she was hitchhik ing to her friend Kelsey’s, Homeland Security, or even George Dornick’s Mountain Hawk Security team, could track her easily. I needed to warn her. They know when you’re sleeping, they know when you’re awake, and, if you’re texting, they can find you so fast it will take you completely by surprise.

  I pulled out my phone. I didn’t have the nimble thumbs of a twenty-year-old, but I tapped out:

  Petra: wherever u r, stop texting, calling. Take battery out of phone: disconnect. U can b traced by GPS. Lay low until I send all clear.

  Trust me. Vic.

  Please trust me, little cousin, I begged in my head. I promise if you are in the hands of baddies, I will not jeopardize your safety. But if you are hiding and scared, let me clear this up. I’m putting my best person on it.

  Of course, I, too, could be traced through my cellphone. Piece of cake, for a sophisticated crew. I called my voice mail and left a message that I would be off cellphone for a while and gave the number of my answering service for people to call. I took out the battery and stuck it in my briefcase.

  Five buses had stopped while I’d been churning over what I knew or didn’t know. I boarded the next one, a Number 6, that lumbered over to Michigan and slowly took me up to the hotel where I’d left my car this morning. When I handed my ticket through the cashier’s window, I was told someone had already paid for my parking. I asked to see the receipt, sure there was some mistake, but when the attendant found it it was for cash. No one could remember what the man looked like who paid the bill, but he’d described the car, told them the ticket number, even paid a lost-ticket premium.

  Strangwell, or Homeland Security, wanted me to know they could find me and deal with me whenever it suited them. I drove home slowly, meandering along the side streets, not because I wanted to check for the tail that was surely behind me but because I was too tired for speed. They could find me and stomp me out. Why hadn’t they done so already? Maybe because they thought I had whatever it was they were looking for. As soon as I produced whatever it was, they would dispose of me. Sister Frankie’s head, full of flames, appeared in front of me, and I shuddered so violently that I had to pull over to the curb until it passed.

  The hunt, with a full pack of hounds closing in on a lame and limping fox and her brash and ignorant cub, that was my cousin and me just now. I went back to my burrow because I didn’t know where else to go. But I didn’t feel safe, reaching home.

  I took my neighbor and the dogs into the backyard, away from any possible surveillance, and explained the situation as best I could, given how little I understood of it myself.

  “You don’t think Peewee’s pa is really in on this!” Mr. Contreras was horrified.

  “I think he knows what his pals are looking for, and he’s a frightened man indeed, but I don’t believe he knowingly put his kid in harm’s way.”

  “So where is she?” the old man fretted.

  I shook my head. “I’m too tired to think clearly. I’m hoping she’s run away, hoping they don’t know where she is. If she calls you, tell her to lay low. Then tell her to hang up at once before they can trace her. These guys have me totally off balance. If only I had the faintest idea what they want!”

  37

  A BASS RIDE… OR WAS IT VILE?

  THE OLD MAN AND THE DOGS HELPED ME SEARCH MY apartment for any obvious intruders or bombs. Mr. Contreras offered to feed me, but I was too tired to eat. As soon as they left, I went to bed and fell deeply asleep. I was so tired, none of my anxieties had the power to disturb me. But when my phone rang at one in the morning, I was instantly awake.

  “Petra?” I cried into the mouthpiece.

  “Ms. Warshawski, is that you?” The voice on the other end was diffident.

  “Who is this?” I choked out.

  “I woke you again. I’m sorry. It seems like it’s only in the middle of the night that I have the courage to talk to you.”

  I’d been so sure the call would be from Petra, or a ransom demand, that I couldn’t think of anyone else, any other context. I lay back in the bed, trying to calm my pounding heart enough that I could think.

  “I saw about your cousin on the news. It’s a terrible worry, when someone you love disappears on you.” The hesitant voice was flat.

  Behind the speaker came the sound of hospital pages. Rose Hebert! My skin crawled. She had snatched Petra so that I could understand how bereft she’d been at losing Lamont Gadsden.

  “Knowing how you must be suffering, I’ve been feeling guilty that I haven’t been wholly truthful with you.” She took a breath, the way she had the last time she called in the middle of the night, when she launched into the painful admission of her love for Lamont Gadsden.

  “When you asked if I knew another name Steve Sawyer might be using, I said no. But back in the sixties, the Anacondas, they all took African names. Lamont, his code name in the gang was Lumumba.”

  There was a long silence, during which I thought I might break into hysterical laughter. Petra had disappeared, perhaps been kidnapped, and the only thing Rose could think of was her long-vanished lover. It was hard to think of a response, but, in the end, I asked what Steve Sawyer’s gang name had been.

  “I don’t know, but it was probably African. Like I told you, Johnny Merton, he gave his girl an African name. Johnny was big on all those African independence movements. He made Lamont study up on Lumumba, and Lamont talked to me about Lumumba and the Congo that summer, the summer before he disappeared, when he was trying to persuade me to be liberated with him…”

  Her voice trailed off, into the confusion of memories of adolescence, where liberation meant sex as well as politics. I wondered why Rose hadn’t told me earlier; what about me would have made her think I would find African nationalism shocking.

  She answered in her half-dead voice, “I guess I was afraid if I told you about Lamont and Lumumba, you might be, well, like some folks, like my daddy even, who thought if you called yourself after an African national hero you were next door to being a Communist. And then you’d stop looking for Lamont.”

  I managed to thank her, and to tell her not to worry, that I’d see whether I could find Lamont under his nom de guerre. “Is there anything else it would be good for me to know? Something we could cover tonight? It may be hard to reach me for the next week or so.”

  She thought about it seriously but decided she didn’t have any more secrets to reveal, at least not this morning. After she hung up, I lay back down, but I couldn’t get back to sleep. My brain started jumping around again among all the confused ideas I’d had yesterday afternoon. Lumumba. I tried to think about Patrice Lumumba, but it wasn’t a good meditation. Instead, visions of his torture and death blended with my images of Sister Frankie’s death, my fears about Petra, my fears for my own safety.

  I sat up. I’d heard the name Lumumba recently. It was connected in my mind to my father, which didn’t make any sense at all. It was my mother, not my father, who cared about international politics. She would have talked about Lumumba’s murder. But I would have been too young at the time for the name to stay with me.

  I went into the living room and plugged in my laptop. Sitting cross-legged on the couch, I looked up Lumumba. He had died in 1961. I couldn’t possibly be remembering a conversation about him that went that far back into my childhood. Since I was awake and alert, I searched for Lumumba in the databases I use for background checks. I found a singer with the name and a doctor in New York, but deeper looks at them showed that both were too young to be Lamont Gadsden under a new name.

  It was two in the morning, the heart of darkness, the time of deepest loneliness. I thought of Morrell, in Mazär-i-Sharif and wondered if he, too, was awake and lonely or if his old friend Marcie Love was keeping him company. Or perhaps a
new friend more in tune with his mind than I had been.

  These were such strange times we were living through, the Age of Fear, with endless war around the world, never knowing who we could trust, with our bank accounts and our e-mails an open book to any garden-variety hacker. Even though I use the Web constantly, I’m an old-fashioned detective. I do better on foot and in person than through the ether.

  Someone had gone after Petra the old-fashioned way, breaking into her apartment. Had they made off with her laptop, or had she taken it with her? I looked again at the rudimentary surveillance footage from my office camera that I’d e-mailed myself. It didn’t look to me as though any of the office breakers-Petra or her two companions-were carrying a backpack or anything big enough to be holding her laptop. So someone had gone after that, looking for… her e-mails, I supposed… or to see whether she’d been looking up African national heroes.

  Spy software. Of course, Petra had used my office computer, my big Mac Pro, one night at the beginning of the summer. That was how she’d known my keypad code. I wasn’t a high-tech wizard, but I knew enough to see which websites she’d been looking at. They might tell me something. And it was better, anyway, than sitting in the dark, feeling the Age of Fear close in on me.

  I started to get dressed again, but I paused while zipping my jeans. I had to assume from now on that whatever I did, wherever I went, I’d have some shadow from Homeland Security, or Mountain Hawk, or maybe both, and I’d just as soon not be caught alone on the streets in the middle of the night. Even if I could sneak out to my car, it was possible-perhaps probable-that they’d installed some kind of GPS tracker in it, some little gizmo I wouldn’t be able to find easily. They wouldn’t have to stay with me on the streets to keep tabs on me. They could use their hotshot triangulation software to watch me online.

  A thump on the back stairs made my heart jump again. I took the Smith & Wesson and slipped into the kitchen, tiptoeing on the tile. I laid my head against the door and squinted out through the glass. And felt another bubble of hysteria rise in me. The sound was Jake Thibaut, hauling his double bass up the back stairs to the third floor.