Indemnity Only
Page 25
Behind us an insanely grinning woman on TV was urging the room to buy some kind of shampoo. Anita stared at her father. “It can never be the same, you know. Our life, you know, the foundation’s broken.”
“Look at me, Annie,” he said hoarsely. “I haven’t slept for ten days, I haven’t eaten. I keep watching television, expecting to hear that they’ve found your dead body someplace… I asked Warshawski here to find you when I thought I could keep a step ahead of Masters. But when they made it clear you’d be dead if you showed up, I had to call her off.”
He looked at me. “You were right-about almost everything. I used Thayer’s card because I wanted to plant the idea of him in your mind. It was stupid. Everything I’ve done this last week’s been stupid. Once I realized Annie was in trouble, I just lost my head and acted on crazy impulses. I wasn’t mad at you, you know. I was just hoping to God you’d stop before you found Annie. I knew if Earl was watching you you’d lead him straight to her.”
I nodded.
“Maybe I should never have known any gangsters,” he said to Anita. “But that started so long ago. Before you were born. Once you get in bed with those boys, you don’t get out again. The Knifegrinders were a pretty rough bunch in those days-you think we’re tough now, you should have seen us then. And the big manufacturers, they all hired hooligans to kill us and keep the union out. We hired muscle to get the union in. Only once we were in, we couldn’t get rid of the muscle. If I’d wanted to get away, the only way I could have done it was to leave the Knifegrinders. And I couldn’t do that. I was a shop steward when I was fifteen. I met your mother when I was picketing Western Springs Cutlery and she was a kid herself screwing scissors together. The union was my life. And guys like Smeissen were the dirty part that came along with it.”
“ But you betrayed the union. You betrayed it when you started dealing with Masters on those phony claims.” Anita was close to tears.
“Yeah, you’re right.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Probably the dumbest thing I ever did. He came up to me at Comiskey Park one day. Someone pointed me out to him. He’d been looking for years, I guess-he’d figured out the deal, you see, but he needed someone on the outside to send the claims into him.
“All I saw was the money. I just didn’t want to look down that road. If I had… It’s like some story I heard once. Some guy, Greek I think, was so greedy he begged the gods to give him a gift-everything he touched would turn to gold. Only thing is, these gods, they zap you: they always give you what you ask for but it turns out not to be what you want. Well, this guy was like me: he had a daughter that he loved more than life. But he forgot to look down the road. And when he touched her, she turned to gold, too. That’s what I’ve done, haven’t I?”
“King Midas,” I said. “But he repented, and the gods forgave him and brought his daughter back to life.”
Anita looked uncertainly at her father; he looked back, his harsh face stripped and pleading. Murray was waiting for his story. I didn’t say good-bye.
Sara Paretsky
***
[1] The Dial Press was indeed revived in 1993, and flourishes. -Ed.
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