“You okay, big mon?” Yogi called.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” I swung around to find him back on the sidewalk. “I was just about to take the bastard down, though, until you got in the way. Now he’s gone.”
His mouth gaped open for just an instant, then he broke into a grin. “You jokin’, hey?”
“Right,” I said. “So that was you? Following me all the way from Marshall Field’s?”
“Sure.” He smiled a wide happy smile and tapped his temple with his finger. “Good tinkin’, huh?”
“Good for me, maybe,” I said. “But for you? Guys like that don’t like to be interfered with.”
“I be okay. I run away … quick an’ easy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s how you got busted in the eye yesterday.”
“Shoot, mon. That be a surprise.” He stared down at his feet, then looked up again and grinned. “Like tonight, mon. You forget you should be watchin’ out and then … wham! … and you—”
“Anyway, thanks.”
“Tink nothin’. Gotta go now.”
“Hold on. We need to—”
“Gotta go, big mon.” And he was gone … quick an’ easy.
It was dark and still raining, but I crawled around on my hands and knees until I found the wadded ball of paper the man had jammed into my mouth. I got into the car and smoothed out the crumpled-up paper. It was one sheet.
It was a copy of page one of my petition for reinstatement.
CHAPTER
10
I TOOK LAKE SHORE DRIVE HOME. The rain had slowed up and traffic was light. I drove slowly, staying in the lane closest to the lake, and with too many ideas tumbling through my mind. I finally picked just one to concentrate on: Maura Flanagan’s order to Clark Woolford that his office not object to my reinstatement. It made no sense.
To begin with, just about everyone who had any reason to care—and there couldn’t be many—was against my getting my license back. I myself didn’t even want the damn thing that bad, for God’s sake, so why should Maura Flanagan take up my cause? And Woolford? According to Barney Green, the guy seemed like a straight arrow. He’d spent twenty-five years as a partner in a successful little downtown law firm, and had run once for judge, unsuccessfully. Six months ago the supreme court tapped him to head the disciplinary commission. It was to be a temporary assignment until a divided court could agree on someone permanent.
Now Flanagan was saying she’d make him a judge, and she probably could. Judges were elected officials, but when one of them died or retired, the supreme court appointed someone to finish up the term. These appointed judges could run for election at the end of the terms they’d served out, and were generally thought to have a head start on their opponents. So being appointed a judge was a good deal.
And if Woolford wanted that, so what? Lots of lawyers did. Of course, lots of lawyers weren’t making strange deals to secretly influence legal proceedings in exchange for what they wanted. Not that the deal was a sure thing, but Stefanie had the impression Woolford was giving in to Flanagan, even though she hadn’t heard him say yes.
* * *
I TURNED IN AT THE LADY’S DRIVE about eight-thirty. Happily, no more shit had been smeared on my front door. I circled around and went up the rear stairway. On the landing at the top, I peered through the window in the kitchen door. The door was locked and the light was on and everything looked just as I’d left it. Except I hadn’t left the light on.
Gun in hand, I went inside and headed straight for the room where the old Steinway upright rules the space. Nothing unusual there, thank God. Then back into the kitchen, still holding the Beretta—with a .22 LR cartridge in the chamber—but down beside my leg now. It was unlikely I’d find anyone still there. I knew I’d find a message somewhere, though, and not on the answering machine.
What I noticed first was the water. It stood in large, shallow puddles on the hardwood floor in the hallway. Then more water, trapped by the marble threshold and forming a half-inch deep lake on the tile floor in the bathroom, along with thousands of pieces—large and small—of the porcelain that had once been the toilet bowl. And lying flat under the water, stuck to the floor and too soggy to be picked up in one piece, was another copy of page one of my petition.
I grabbed all the towels I owned and mopped up the wood floor in the hallway. The bathroom could wait till morning, when maybe some of the water in there would have dried up.
The coach house had only one bathroom, but there was a working sink and toilet downstairs in the garage, where forty or fifty years ago someone had turned one of the parking bays into a workshop. The inconvenience would be a pain in the ass, but what bothered me more was that the shattered fixture had been an antique, a pre-1920s beauty of a toilet with the manufacturer’s trademark and the model name—Expulso—embedded in blue Victorian script in the porcelain at the rear of the bowl. I’m not an antiques buff, but hell, that thing was probably irreplaceable.
* * *
HALF AN HOUR LATER I was at the Lady’s house. I’d been clearing God knows how many years of dirt and debris out of my new bathroom in the garage, and had gone over just to borrow her vacuum cleaner. I ended up telling her what had happened since the night before, right up to how someone had gotten into the coach house.
“They left the kitchen light on,” I said. “Deliberately, I’m sure. Wanted me to be nervous about going in. I checked the piano first, but it was fine.”
“I’m glad of that,” the Lady said.
“I’m glad, too,” I said. “But dammit, I’ll never find another Expulso.”
“No, quite probably you won’t.” The Lady poured herself another cup of some tea I’d given her. It was a foul-tasting Japanese tea I’d gotten from Dr. Sato, a martial arts sensei who took my money every week so he could throw me around his dojo and teach me about pain and humility. “Tea?” she asked.
I took a cup, knowing I wouldn’t drink it. “I don’t like people coming right into my house, trying to intimidate me. I’m gonna find out what’s going on.”
“I’m sure you are.” She seemed preoccupied, as though trying to figure something out, but all she said was, “I take it the facilities in the garage are adequate?”
“Fine,” I said, “but that spider guy was right. I replaced the burned-out bulbs and found those things crawling all over the place in there. You have any bug spray?”
She sipped her tea. She seemed actually to like the stuff. “Have you ever read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard?” When I shook my head she went on. “Dillard used to hang a towel over the side of her bathtub so the spiders could get out, since they can’t get a grip on the smooth surface. She said any predator who sits in a corner and waits for food to come along needs all the help it can get.” She sipped more tea. “That struck me as so … compassionate.”
I took that to mean she didn’t have any bug spray. “Anyway, Helene, you need to be careful. These creeps might get the idea to do something to your place.”
“I thought of that after we spoke last night, and this morning I called several of my graduates. One arrived an hour ago. The others will be here tomorrow. They’ll watch the coach house, too. They … well, they’re not easily frightened.”
“I can imagine.” The women the Lady took in were fresh off the street. Malnourished, strung out, many of them prostitutes and still terrified of the pimps they’d been hustling for. She had a group of “graduates” who’d take turns staying with them. “Not a pimp in the world who wouldn’t back off from one of your graduates,” I said. “Even a sewer rat values its own stinking skin.”
“The pimps are victims, too, Malachy. Abused and beaten as children, they—”
“Fine, okay.” She had a point, but sometimes I didn’t want to hear it. I stood up. “Let’s find that vacuum cleaner and I’ll get out of here.” She didn’t move, though, so I sat back down.
“It is a bit puzzling, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean, that conversation between
Justice Flanagan and Mr. Woolford.”
“Well, I sure don’t know why she wants me to get my license back.”
“She said there were ‘others’ involved, so perhaps it’s not she who cares, but those others. What interests me, though, is why she—or whoever—should care whether someone objects or not. May not the court grant your request, even despite there being objections?”
“Sure, if I’m still alive. Anyway, maybe she thinks they won’t, not if—”
“She claims she can control the other justices, so…” She sipped her tea. “Does whether there are objections make a difference in how they handle your petition?”
“Objections or not, there’ll be a hearing—like a trial—and I’ll have to prove that I’ve been … rehabilitated.” I hadn’t done anything wrong in the first place, so rehabilitated had a bad taste to it.
“And who’ll testify at the trial?”
“If the commission doesn’t file any objections it’ll just be me, and some character witnesses to say that I’m a better person now than I used to be. If I can come up with anyone.”
“And if there are objections?”
“Then, after me and my witnesses, the commission’s lawyer—that’s Stefanie—would put on some witnesses. Probably people who are angry that I won’t tell what that kid told me, because the cops are still looking for a guy that got away.” I swished the tea around in my cup. “You know, Helene, you’ve never once asked me what the kid said, or whether it would have helped catch anyone.”
“You gave your word you’d tell no one. Why would I ask?”
“I might tell you anyway, someday.” She didn’t say anything, so I went on. “So, the commission’s witnesses will say I shouldn’t get my license back because I’m still standing in the way of justice being done.”
“And they’ll testify about the shooting? The effects on the police officers and their families?”
“Stefanie already said—back when she first talked to Renata about my petition—that she intended to call the three surviving cops to testify. Then everyone could compare those heroes to me—a guy who doesn’t care about justice, who still refuses to help identify a cop killer.”
“Ah, that’s it.” She smiled, finally, and drank some tea. “That’s probably it.”
“What’s probably what?”
“Well, it seems Justice Flanagan, or whomever she’s speaking for, doesn’t care whether you get your license back or not. Don’t you see?”
“Maybe I’m slow, because…” I stared at her. “You know,” I said, “I oughta drink as much of that tea as you do. It’s not about my license, is it? What they’re worried about is a hearing, or one where the commission puts on witnesses, anyway.”
“And why would that be?”
“It could only be because somebody doesn’t want those cops testifying about what happened.”
“Well then, that’s solved.” The Lady stood up. “The Hoover’s in the hall closet.” She always called vacuum cleaners Hoovers. Maybe it was a British thing.
“Solved?” I said. “But why is Maura Flanagan, a supreme court justice, involved in the first place? And those cops will say what they said before about that shooting, whether it’s true or not, so what’s the big deal about them testifying? When you think about it, Helene, nothing’s actually been solved.”
“But it’s a start, Malachy.” She smiled. “And I have to leave something for you to do.” That was the Lady’s idea of a joke, so I smiled, too.
One of her “graduates” showed up to escort us to the front door. Her name was Layla, the Lady said, and she seemed to be some mix of Asian and African-American, with skin the color of dark gold, and long, straight hair dyed auburn. She was very pretty, despite the scars—two thin parallel tracks, a quarter-inch apart—that ran from her left ear to her chin. She didn’t smile, though, and the look in her eyes said she didn’t take shit from pimps or anyone else.
Careful not to make her mad, I went out the door and down the stone driveway, dragging the Lady’s Hoover with me.
CHAPTER
11
I SPENT HALF THE NEXT MORNING suffering through a workout with Dr. Sato, the sensei. The other half I spent at the Steinway, working on “Moon River,” a tune I hate, but one the drinkers can’t get enough of.
Just before two o’clock, I parked the Cavalier beside a No Parking sign outside the Ralph Ellison Community Center, a tired-looking brick building on the corner of an old, neglected block in Englewood, on the south side. Rain had been predicted all day, and now an ominous wind had risen up and thunder rumbled in the distance. Inside the center, just beyond a small lobby, was a gymnasium barely large enough for one basketball court. It was warm and damp in there, smelling like perspiration and mildew, and the white paint on the old metal backboards had long ago turned yellow.
The players racing up and down the floor looked to be in their teens and early twenties—all of them African-American, two of them females. They whirled this way and that—sometimes haphazardly, it seemed—yelling, waving their arms. They were drenched in sweat, most of them panting as though they’d been at it too long. I stood there for several minutes and didn’t see the ball go through either hoop. Then a skinny kid wearing goggles lofted a desperate one-hander from the top of the key. The ball caught the rim, bounced high in the air, then dropped through with a swish of the net.
Everyone clapped and cheered. Everyone. Both teams.
“Way to go, Randy!” Jimmy Coletta was clapping too. “Okay, everyone, it’s late. Go home and shower up. See you Tuesday!”
The players, all of them in wheelchairs, whooped and exchanged high fives, then propelled themselves toward the far end of the gym, where family members and friends were waiting. A smiling Randy was still pumping one fist high in the air. His other hand was strapped down, with the fingers spread over the buttons of his chair’s control box.
Coletta spun his own wheelchair around, his eyes bright with tears. When he saw me he faked a sneeze and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Allergies,” he said. He wore running shoes that had no laces, and dark blue shorts, and his legs were in pretty good shape, considering the muscles weren’t able to function on their own. The slogan on his T-shirt said: YES, I CAN! ’CAUSE I GOT JESUS IN MY CORNER!
“Mal Foley,” I said, stepping toward him.
“Right.” He didn’t stretch out his hand to me.
“Seems like a great group of kids.”
“Yes.” He frowned, more to himself than at me. “Sometimes I think I push them too hard. Mostly, though, people don’t push them hard enough.”
The gym echoed with laughter and raucous talk, as the players struggled to get into jackets and get their legs covered up—the ones who had legs—for the trip home. Then, without warning, all the lights went out and it was very dark and suddenly silent … and then came the deafening crash of nearby thunder. The lights flickered on, then off, and finally on to stay, and the rain came—in a million tiny pellets, blasted by the wind against the frosted glass of the high windows. The players clapped and cheered like patriots at a fireworks display.
“Looks to me like they love it,” I said. The muscles in Coletta’s upper body, even through the T-shirt, were well-defined. “Looks like you work yourself pretty hard, too, officer.”
“I’m not a police officer,” he said, “although sometimes I let the kids call me that, so they can think of me as a cop who’s on their side. I’m on disability, not with the department anymore.” He stared down at his thighs, massaging them with his hands. “I get a lot of physical therapy, and I work out six days a week.” He looked up. “I’m gonna walk again, you know. It’s matter of the Lord’s help, progress in medical science, and … and determination.”
“From what I hear,” I said, “determination seems—”
“Fine, let’s get to it.” It was as though he’d suddenly remembered who I was. “I picked this place to meet because I wanted you to know that nobody’d be around
to listen in. No wires, either.” He grabbed the hem of his T-shirt. “See?” He yanked the shirt up and off over his head.
“Right,” I said, and if pride in his physique was part of his motivation I could give him that. I sat on the bleachers—the lowest bench, so I’d have to look up a little to meet his eyes. “I’ve given up worrying about eavesdropping, anyway.” For all I knew, he could have had a micro-mike poked up his left nostril. “So let’s just go ahead and talk.” When he nodded, I said, “I’ve filed a petition to get my law license back.”
“I know. That was inevitable.”
“Wrong.” He looked surprised, but said nothing. “Not inevitable at all,” I said. “In fact, it’s never really been that important to me. I filed because it seemed to mean a lot to a woman, and the woman meant a lot to me.”
He smiled. “That’ll do it.”
“Uh-huh.” His smile went away in a hurry, but to my surprise I started to like him. Damn. This was a guy whose family helped organize a campaign to convince the supreme court to keep me locked up in hell until I’d go back on my word to my client. The last thing I wanted was to like him. I didn’t want to find out, either, that he really was someone who’d used a terrible misfortune to turn himself into a true-life hero, or that his born-again-Christian reputation was based on more than talk, or that his dedication to helping kids with handicaps, mostly minorities, was the real thing. Damn. “Anyway,” I said, “the woman’s up and gone to Taos now … or somewhere.”
“Really?” The voice was casual enough, but I was paying attention. Because, as Dr. Sato loves to repeat, attention is quite most important secret weapon. Sometimes I do better than others, and this time I saw the muscles in Coletta’s face and neck relax a little. “So,” he added, “are you dropping it?”
“I might have.” The look of hope—and that’s what it was—disappeared. “Except I keep being followed around. By cops, I think. Coming right into my home, leaving what they think are very scary messages, telling me I better drop it.” A door slammed, and I noticed the gym was suddenly silent then, only the sound of the rain still slapping hard against the windows. “I’m like you, I guess. When something gets in my way it tends to increase my—what word did you use?—‘determination.’” I left medical science and the Lord out of it.
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