Hardball

by Sara Paretsky

  “You’re making that up.” Dornick broke the silence. “There’s no evidence, no nothing, except a conviction in a court of law of one Anaconda scumbag who was guilty of murder three times over in other cases where we couldn’t make it stick. He was the Hammer’s go-to boy. And the Hammer, he was too slick for us. But we nailed that bastard for the Newsome murder.”

  Bobby looked at Finchley, who opened the bulky folder in front of him. “Officer Warshawski filed a protest after your interrogation, Mr. Dornick. Warshawski put a written statement in the case file saying he had witnessed the suspect being subjected to extreme interrogation measures and that he believed the conviction was tainted.”

  “And Tony was sent to Lawndale and Larry got a promotion,” I said softly. “And Peter got a big job with Ashland Meats. And then, a month before the big snow, Larry Alito brought the baseball over to our house. I don’t understand why Alito didn’t hang on to it himself, but he gave it to Tony. He said Tony should keep it because he, Larry, had kept Peter out of prison.”

  There was another silence around the table, until Bobby asked, “Where’s the baseball, Vicki?”

  “In the trunk of my car. I think. Unless George here broke in and swiped it.”

  Dornick made a gesture, a man who can’t believe he let the big one get away, but he didn’t say anything.

  “But what happened to Lamont?” I asked. “Lamont Gadsden? He had the pictures and he disappeared.”

  “Merton must’ve killed him,” Dornick said. “Another useless gangbanger whose ma cries that her little boy never did anything wrong in his life. Oh no, it was his auntie, you say?”

  “Lamont Gadsden came into the Racine Avenue station early in the morning of January twenty-sixth,” Detective Finchley read from the bulky file in front of him. “The desk sergeant logged him in, with a note that he had evidence in the Newsome case. The sergeant paged detectives Dornick and Alito, who took him away with them. There is no record of him leaving the station.”

  The night wore on from there endlessly. Peter and Harvey and George seemed to be fighting over who had done what, and I knew, in a detached way, that that was a good thing because one of them would be forced to admit something pretty soon. I wondered what little world Elton was inhabiting right now and if it was possible to join him there rather than continue at the table with these men.

  Around two in the morning, Freeman said he didn’t think I could be of any further assistance. He assumed Bobby was dropping the notion that I had anything to do with Larry Alito’s death.

  “Karen Lennon…” I said. “Before I go, I need to know that she’s all right. She dropped me downtown a hundred hours ago when I saw George’s team closing in on us.”

  Finchley gave me one of his rare smiles. “She a pastor? About as big as a minute? She’s okay. She’s been on the phone to the captain all night.”

  I felt myself smiling in relief and turned to Dornick as I got to my feet. “You just can’t kill everyone, Georgie. There’s always going to be someone left behind who lets the truth creep in.”

  Petra rose to join me. She looked small and frail despite her height. The two of us roused Elton, who was murmuring something only he could understand. Freeman then drove us to my place, where we woke Mr. Contreras and the dogs.

  Mr. Contreras had a fine time fussing around us. He even let Elton use his shower and a razor while Petra and I cleaned up in my place.

  When we came back down, we found that Elton had drifted off into the night. Mr. Contreras said, “He thanked me for the razor and the clean clothes, but he said to tell you two gals that he needed to be by himself for a while, said you’d understand. Now, you come in here, I been frying eggs and bacon. Peewee here, she ain’t nothing but a walking bone right now. And V. I. Warshawski, you don’t look much better.”

  I helped Mr. Contreras make up his spare bed for my cousin. She was asleep within seconds of lying down, with Mitch curled up alongside her. I took Peppy up to the third floor, and didn’t even remember locking my door.

  50

  THE RATS ATTACK… EACH OTHER

  MISS CLAUDIA WENT HOME TO JESUS IN SPLENDID STYLE. The women wore the kind of hats you used to see at Easter, heavy with birds and flowers and ribbons, so that the weather-beaten room looked like a gaudy garden. The music shook the rafters, and the people spilled out of the small church onto Sixty-second Place. Pastor Karen officiated, which sent a buzz through a congregation that thought women should be silent in church, but Sister Rose was firm. This was what Miss Claudia had wanted.

  Curtis Rivers came to the funeral, along with his two chess-playing pals. The three men wore suits, and I didn’t recognize them at first. Sister Carolyn and her other sisters from the Freedom Center were there, singing gospel as energetically as any of the regular members of the congregation. Even Lotty and Max came, to show their support for me.

  Miss Claudia lingered for almost two weeks after I had found the negatives in Lamont’s Bible. I tried to visit her most days, just to sit with her, talk to her quietly, sometimes about my ongoing search for Lamont, sometimes about nothing much at all.

  Harmony Newsome’s murder had become page-one news once again. It seemed as though the whole country was glad to feast on Chicago’s notorious corruption. We were a welcome break from the grim economic news and the predictable disappearance of the Cubs.

  Bobby Mallory was at his bleakest during those weeks. He was taking part in a special housekeeping task force, and, from everything I was hearing, he was unsparing in his investigation. But it was painful for him to have to recognize the history of corruption and abuse among the men he’d spent his life with.

  Dornick and Alito were by no means the only culprits. They could never have treated suspects so vilely without active collusion up and down the chain of command. Sixteen other officers who’d served at the Racine Avenue station came under federal investigation for allegations of brutality. It was shocking to see that the torture of suspects had continued at least into the nineties. Given the climate of torture cultivated by the U.S. Department of Justice in recent years, some cops apparently felt they had no reason to hold back on their own forays into “extreme rendition.”

  Bobby wouldn’t talk to me about it directly, but Eileen Mallory came over to my apartment one afternoon for coffee and told me how betrayed he felt by the relentless revelations of abuse. “The department’s been his whole life. He’s feeling that he dedicated himself to, I don’t know, you could say to a false god. And besides that, he always measured himself against your father, and he feels it deeply that Tony was willing to write a letter protesting the torture and that he, Bobby, did nothing but request a transfer so he wouldn’t have to work with Dornick or Alito. That letter ended your father’s career, you know. He never got another promotion after that.”

  “But Tony didn’t stop it!” I burst out. “He watched it! He went into the room and told them to stop, but Alito said, ‘We’re doing it for your brother. For Peter,’ and Tony walked out again.”

  Eileen reached across my coffee table to put a hand on my knee. “Vicki, sweetheart, maybe you would have gone in and made them stop. You’re courageous enough, reckless enough. You’re truly your mother’s child that way. But you don’t have a family to support. Families are terrible hostages for men like your father. What other work could he get to support you and Gabriella where he knew your health and welfare would be taken care of? Your mother, God rest her soul, she wore herself out giving piano lessons to little girls for fifty cents a week. You couldn’t live on that. Tony did the best he could under very painful circumstances. He spoke up. Do you know how much courage that took?”

  After she left, I took a long walk with the dogs, trying to digest Eileen’s words, trying to reconcile the idea of the father I loved so intensely with the man who’d been a cop, done a job, knowing he was working with men who committed torture.

  I remembered the letter he wrote me when I graduated from the University of Chicago. It was st
ill in my briefcase all these weeks later, waiting for me to get it framed. Back home, I pulled it out and reread it.

  I wish I could say there’s nothing in my life I regret, but I’ve made some choices, too, that I have to live with. You’re starting out now with everything clean and shiny and waiting for you. I want it always to be that way for you.

  After a time, I walked down to Armitage and gave the letter to a framing shop. We picked out a frame in green, my mother’s favorite color, with a gay pattern around the edge. I could read it and feel well loved. And know what he regretted, and mourn that. And try to realize that you never fully know anyone, that we, most of us, live with our contradictions. I, too, have my flaws, the hot temper he’d also warned me about in the letter, the temper that had frightened my cousin so much it almost cost her her life. Could I learn from that terrible mistake?

  Of course, I wasn’t the only daughter trying to come to terms with a flawed father. My cousin had more serious issues to face than I did. At least Petra had her mother and sisters to help her try to cope with the shocks they’d all suffered during the last month. The day after our marathon night at police headquarters, Petra flew down to Kansas City to be with them.

  My aunt Rachel was bewildered and unsure of what she wanted to do, whether to support Peter through his upcoming legal travails or take her girls and start over without him. Peter was staying in Chicago for the time being, renting a studio apartment on the Northwest Side. Petra wouldn’t talk to him, and he and Rachel weren’t talking often.

  When Petra decided at the end of a week that she wanted to return to Chicago, Rachel flew back with her to spend a few days with her at her loft. My aunt made me take them to see Kimathi at Curtis Rivers’s shop. Rachel wanted to see for herself the person who had suffered on Harvey Krumas’s behalf. Kimathi was in agony in our presence, and Rivers ushered him out after a few minutes.

  “I’m so sorry,” my aunt kept whispering. “I’m so sorry.”

  Rivers nodded with his usual grim expression and didn’t say anything. Rachel blinked at him helplessly. She finally asked if Kimathi needed any financial help… would they send him to a good therapist or find him an apartment if she footed the bill?

  “We’re looking after him. He doesn’t need your help.”

  Rachel turned to leave, her legs unsteady as mine when I’d been with Kimathi and Rivers. I followed her, and was startled when Rivers touched my arm just before I triggered the train whistle.

  “That red bag, Ms. Detective. It’s working well for you, is it?”

  I nodded warily. I had brought the bag with me, and a check for five hundred and thirty dollars, which I’d laid on the counter while Rivers was taking Kimathi into the back of the shop.

  “You earned it, I figure. Use the money to help some other poor bastard.” He stuck the check into one of the bag’s outer pockets and pushed me through the ropes before I could say anything.

  My aunt was silent while we drove back north, but when I stopped in front of Petra’s place she said, “It’s so hard to know what to do. You think you’ve married one man and it turns out to be like one of those bad movies where Goldie Hawn learns the man she thought she married was someone completely different. I’m so… so derailed in my life, I hired a detective to make sure Peter and I were legally married. Peter’d concealed so much from me, I thought he was capable of hiding another wife and family.”

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s such a cliché, all these wronged women who stand by their men, like the New York governor’s wife. I’m furious with Peter! I don’t want to stand by him. And then there’s the money. We make so much money, we have so much, and it all came to us because a man was tortured. Peter got rewarded for that poor man spending his life in prison, and turning into that… that pathetic-” Her voice gave way, but she controlled herself and then went on with an effort. “Petra… She’s always been so much Peter’s child. He wanted a boy, he was sure she’d be a boy, so he’s always called her Petey, and taken her hunting and so on. She was always bolder than her other sisters, the four that followed her, until I told him he had to cherish his girls, he couldn’t be imagining they were less than a boy would be. And now Petra is having as much trouble as I am trying to figure out who she is, what she thinks about him.”

  She gave me a painful smile. “You did so much for Petra, and you got badly hurt yourself. Your body, that is. But I know you’re suffering inside over what your father did. I think all Peter’s and my money is dirty, but I want to pay you for your, oh, your time and trouble. I know you’re not getting a fee for all the hours and days you lost because of us. And while I’m still married and have that joint account, you should have some of it.”

  She handed me an envelope. Later, when I opened it and found a check for twenty-five thousand, I almost threw it out. The money was tainted, I told Lotty. I couldn’t possibly accept it.

  “Victoria, all money is tainted.” Lotty smiled faintly. “Especially reparations money. Take it. Pay your bills. Go back to Italy, do something for yourself or something for Mr. Kimathi. It won’t change his life if you have to file for bankruptcy. And cashing the check doesn’t put you under any obligation to your uncle.”

  I cashed the check and gave part of it to the Mighty Waters Freedom Center. But the rest I was thankful to use on my bills. Rachel returned to Kansas City and her other daughters, but Petra stayed on. She couldn’t go back to the campaign, and not just because she didn’t want to be around the Krumas family. Brian Krumas shut down the campaign once all the charges and countercharges began coming to light.

  His Bobbyesque hair in his eyes, Brian stood in front of a bank of cameras and said he couldn’t possibly be a good public servant when his family had colluded in torture to save themselves from the consequences of their own role in killing a civil rights worker. Of course, he looked heroic on television, and those of us cynics watching felt sure he’d be back on the campaign trail sometime soon. Still, it made me think well of him.

  Meanwhile, Petra was at loose ends. She spent hours every day running with the dogs and watching horse races with Mr. Contreras. One afternoon, she tentatively broached her earlier suggestion that she work in my agency for a time, but I didn’t think either of us was ready for that. I needed a vacation from my family. Finally, I sent Petra over to Sister Carolyn at the Freedom Center. Petra owed Elton a new home, and Sister Carolyn was able to recruit some people from Habitat for Humanity, who showed Petra how to construct a simple place on the river where his old shack had stood.

  Carolyn had wanted to give Elton Sister Frankie’s apartment as soon as it was fixed up, but Elton’s brief moment of heroism hadn’t worked any miracles in his ability to be around other people. He wanted to be alone, away from the sounds and smells of others at night. Still, we capitalized on the desire of every public official in Chicago to show what good guys they were-we got the city to donate a piece of land, the equivalent of a quarter of a city lot, down by the river where Elton’s shack had stood. And when Petra and Habitat had finished his little house, we even got Elton hooked up to city water.

  Petra still didn’t feel comfortable talking to her father, although he was cooperating fully with both state and federal authorities in the numerous investigations that were taking place. Some were looking at the cover-up of Harmony Newsome’s murder. Others were looking into the allegations of torture at the Racine Avenue station. And, of course, there was Larry Alito’s murder. And Sister Frances’s.

  Later that fall, as Peter started telling his side of the story, he claimed it all started when Dornick found out that I was trying to find Steve Sawyer. When Harvey realized what Petra was saying at the Navy Pier fundraiser, he’d gone at once to Les Strangwell. Although Krumas was afraid his own role in murdering Harmony Newsome might come to light, Strangwell’s only concern was to keep everything buried until after Brian made it through the primaries and the general election. That meant trying
to keep the story under wraps for over a year. All summer long, while I had felt I was spinning my wheels in my search for Lamont and Sawyer, Strangwell and Krumas thought I was getting too close to Sawyer for comfort. And so they called on George Dornick.

  Dornick, with his sophisticated technology and a crew trained at the School of the Americas in every known form of combat, surveillance, and torture, was happy to come to Harvey’s rescue once again.

  At the end of the summer, as they were coercing Petra into helping them break into my home and office, Dornick had become more brazen and more violent. When Peter and Rachel came to Chicago after Petra disappeared, Dornick told them that their other four daughters were as good as dead if either parent told anyone anything about the Newsome murder, the Sawyer torture, the death of Sister Frances, the coercion of Petra. Rachel flew back to Kansas City and went into hiding with her girls.

  All this emerged slowly, of course, but Terry Finchley called me periodically to brief me. As the fall wore on, a prosecutorial dream came true: Harvey and Dornick began attacking each other. Harvey claimed it was Dornick’s idea to blow up Sister Frances before she could confide in me. Dornick claimed he knew nothing about it, that Harvey and Strangwell had employed Larry Alito, a loose cannon, an alkie-Dornick had warned them that Alito was unreliable-while Strangwell said Alito was Dornick’s go-to boy anytime he needed heavy lifting that he wanted to keep private.

  After a lot of hemming and hawing and horse trading, the State’s Attorney’s Office brought charges against Krumas for second-degree murder in connection with Harmony Newsome’s death. Krumas’s lawyer had been pressing for involuntary manslaughter and probation, but as the national spotlight started shining on Chicago’s finest, the state’s attorney realized he couldn’t afford to let Krumas off with nothing but a rap on the knuckles.

  Dornick’s situation was more complicated. He hadn’t helped kill Harmony Newsome, but everyone, including Bobby, believed Dornick had engineered the subsequent cover-up. Peter sang loud and long on that theme. Then there was Sister Frankie’s death. Detective Finchley’s team traced the Ford Expedition that the bomb throwers drove to one of Dornick’s personal crew. And Finchley was willing to believe that Dornick had shot Alito out of fear that his old buddy would crack and flip for the state if the heat got too intense.