Hardball

10

I HAD HOPED THAT WHEN I LEFT THE PUBLIC DEFENDER’S Office, I had also left Johnny Merton behind. I just didn’t know who else to talk to about Lamont Gadsden or Steve Sawyer. I searched some legal databases and was relieved to find Merton easily. I was beginning to think I didn’t know how to find people anymore. The Hammer was in Stateville, doing twenty-five to life, for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and other crimes too heinous to mention in a family paper.

I tracked down Johnny Merton’s lawyer. If I could persuade Merton and his attorney to let me in as part of Johnny’s legal team, it would be my best shot at seeing him soon. Getting on the visitors’ list at Stateville can take six weeks or longer.

The lawyer’s name was Greg Yeoman, with an office on Fifty-fifth Street. So Johnny had left the big downtown firms behind and returned to home base in his current round of troubles. That probably said more about his income than his politics.

I drafted a letter to Johnny, with a copy to Yeoman, and returned to more pressing, or at least more lucrative, searches. Even though I was exhausted after my short night and long day, I kept going until almost seven, trying to catch up on paper.

I was finally packing up for the day when the outer bell rang. I saw my cousin on the video monitor and walked outside to meet her. Elton Grainger was there, too, offering Petra a copy of Streetwise.

“Vic, you saved my life.” He gave an elaborate bow and kissed my fingertips. He was graceful on his feet but smelled of sweet wine.

“You did?” Petra’s face lit up. Perhaps she pictured me stepping in front of a sniper, or some other exciting scene from Burn Notice.

“I didn’t haul him from a burning building or a sinking ship,” I said drily. “He passed out in front of me, and I got him to a hospital.”

“I lost consciousness,” Elton corrected me. “It’s my heart. The doctors said I could have died without medical attention.”

“The doctors also said you could die if you don’t stop drinking, Elton. And I saw Pastor Lennon this afternoon. She mentioned she’d found housing for you.”

“But I already got my own crib. It’s private, and it’s a damned sight safer and cleaner than those shelters. And after lying in a tunnel in Vietnam with fifteen other guys, I like being by myself, where I know no one’s gonna piss on me in the dark.”

He turned to Petra. “You ever been in a shelter? ’Course not. Young girl like you, you got your parents to look after you, like I shoulda done with my own girl, but what with one thing and another, I let her down.”

He squeezed his eyes shut briefly, hiding a drunken tear, while Petra shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. Elton offered Streetwise to a couple of passing joggers, then looked at Petra again.

“Trouble with shelters, they rob you blind. You go to sleep for one second, and they steal the shoes off your feet. When you’re homeless, your shoes are your best friend. You walk an awful lot and you need good soles under your soles, if you get my drift.”

“Where’s your crib, Elton?” I asked.

“It’s private. I start telling the world, and it won’t be private anymore.”

“I’m not going to give it away to anyone, not even the pastor. But if I don’t see you for a number of days, then I’ll want to know where to look for you, see if you need a doctor again.”

He looked up and down the street. “It ain’t that easy to find, which is why it’s such a good place, but it’s over by the river. You get off Honore, and then there’s a path. And then there’s this shack, hidden way out of the way under the train embankment. Now, don’t you go telling no one, Vic. Not your daughter, neither.”

Petra giggled. “She’s not my mother; we’re just cousins. But, Scout’s honor, I won’t say anything.”

I gave Elton a dollar and took a paper. “I’m coming back in ten minutes with a sandwich for you.”

“Ham on rye, mayo, mustard, no tomatoes, and I’d be real grateful, Vic.” He danced across the street on his light feet to a coffee shop, where people were sitting at outdoor tables.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Petra. “Lock yourself out again?”

“I saw your car was still in the lot when I was driving home and I hoped you’d let me use your computer for a little bit. Just, like, half an hour, maybe, while you get him his sandwich.”

“They shut down the Net at the Krumas campaign?”

“No, but I want to catch up on my own stuff, and the wireless signal I’ve been using in my building disappeared today.”

“You’ve been stealing someone else’s signal?”

“It’s not stealing when it’s just out there,” she said hotly.

I was too tired to argue the point, and, anyway, I didn’t really care. I showed her the code to get into the building and made sure I hadn’t left any confidential papers lying on my desk.

“Try to remember to turn out the lights when you leave, okay? The outer door will lock automatically behind you, so don’t worry about that.”

She gave me her biggest, brightest smile and a warm thank-you. “Did you really save that guy, Elton, is it? Did you really save his life?”

I felt embarrassed. “Maybe-I don’t know-I got him to a hospital, but he might have recovered on his own. The alcohol doesn’t help. He’s a Vietnam vet, which I only learned when I picked him off the sidewalk last week. War sure messes with people’s minds.”

“I know. PTSD: we studied it in psych.”

“Brian got a plan for them?”

Petra nodded solemnly, feeling responsible for her candidate. “Of course he does. He ought to be president-after Barack Obama finishes, I mean-but if we get him into the Senate, he’ll do everything he can for people like Elton.”

Something about her youth, her solemnity, her faith in Brian Krumas, made me nostalgic for my own youth. I gave her a quick hug and went off to buy Elton’s sandwich.

The next morning I started my dance with Johnny Merton’s lawyer. Nothing in Greg Yeoman’s manner inspired my confidence, but I tried to tread softly around him: he was my ticket to seeing the Anaconda chief. When I met Yeoman at his South Side office, he put on the act of someone who knew the gang world inside out and would run interference for a price.

“I’m not paying for the privilege of talking to Johnny. I only want to know if he’ll talk to me. And given how crappy Stateville is, it will be easier if he’ll let me come in as part of his legal team. That way, we can meet more easily and talk with a pretense of privacy.”

“Yes, Ms. Detective, but that kind of work costs money. If you want to see Johnny in a hurry, it will help you if you and I become friends.”

Ah yes, becoming friends. A Chicago euphemism for bribe.

“After all, the Anacondas still have a street presence, and you wouldn’t want word to get out that you were threatening Merton,” Yeoman added.

“But if it does, I’ll know where to come for help, is that it?” I smiled sweetly.

He gave the satisfied smile of a man who sees that the little woman understands how powerless she is. “If Johnny knows we’re friends, I don’t think it will come to that. But I can’t look out for you for nothing.”

“Then we’ll hope it doesn’t come to that. Of course, Lamont Gadsden was close to Johnny all those years back when they were protecting Dr. King. Johnny won’t be happy if he thinks his own lawyer was keeping him from helping Lamont’s mama look for her missing son.” I got up to leave. “I’m writing Johnny, you understand, writing to ask him to put me on his meeting list. It’ll just be easier if he’s willing to give me legal credentials-I’m still a member of the bar, after all. But I don’t want you to have to do any work that you don’t want to, so don’t you worry, I’ll put it all in writing.”

Yeoman gave me a look that made me glad I was standing near the exit, but he said there was no need to be so very literal-minded, he’d talk to Johnny when he went out to Stateville on Monday.

“In that case, I can send this letter without making changes to it.” I handed Yeoman a copy of the letter I’d written his client. Of course, I didn’t say Johnny was the last known person to see Lamont Gadsden alive. I merely wrote that I was making inquiries on behalf of Ella Gadsden and her sister, Claudia, and, since Johnny knew everyone in West Englewood, I was hoping he could give me some names of more people to talk to.

On my way back to my office I stopped at Fit for Your Hoof. The man who’d been there on my first visit was sweeping the sidewalk again, singing to himself, but when he saw me his eyes widened in fear and he bolted into the shop.

When I followed him in, he was clutching Curtis Rivers’s leather apron. “She gonna hurt me. She gonna take away my manhood.”

“No, she’s not, Kimathi, because I won’t let her.” Curtis folded his newspaper under his arm and led the frightened man into some inner part of the shop behind the repair equipment.

When Rivers came back, he glared at me. “What did you say to Kimathi to frighten him so badly?”

“Nothing.” I was bewildered. “He saw me and ran for cover. What’s he afraid of?”

“If you don’t already know, it’s none of your damned business to find it out. What is it you’re really after, Ms. Detective Warshawski? Who you protecting or hurting or covering up for?”

No one else was in the shop. I sat on one of the stools next to the tiny chess table. “What’s that supposed to mean? I told you what I wanted and why. Who’s suggesting it’s something else?”

“That’s well done, all innocent indignation. I’m impressed.”

I clasped my fingers under my chin, studying him. “You’re protecting this guy who’s hanging around your shop. I don’t know how to persuade you I’m not here to hurt anyone-”

He slapped his paper onto the small space between us. “You can’t.”

“But I’m starting to think you know where Lamont Gadsden went all those years ago. Is it his mother who’s got you so angry? She is a difficult woman, I know. Is there some secret from the old days that I don’t know about?”

“I think I already said more than you needed to hear.” He got up and went behind his counter.

“Rose Hebert saw you enter the Waltz Right Inn right after Lamont went in there with Johnny Merton the night before the big snow. That was the last time anyone knew him to be alive.”

“Now I know you’re lying!” He crashed a fistful of tools onto the counter. “Rose Hebert in the Waltz Right Inn? You overplayed your hand right there, lady.”

I smiled through thin lips. “You might not jump to conclusions if you listened more closely. I didn’t say Ms. Hebert was in the bar. I said she saw you enter it. Just as she’d watched Lamont and the Hammer a few minutes earlier. Wishing she could be part of everyone else’s good time.”

Rivers shifted a pair of shears from hand to hand, measuring me. At least he was thinking over what I said. “I wouldn’t dispute a lady’s word, especially not a lady as sanctified as Miss Rose. But I went to the Waltz Right Inn a lot in those days, and I saw Lamont there more nights than not. The night before the big snow doesn’t stand out in my mind, Ms. Investigator.”

“Is it Johnny Merton you’re afraid of? I don’t blame you. He scares me, too. Between him and Ella Gadsden, I don’t know which makes me more nervous.”

“Maybe you scare easier than me, and maybe there’s a reason for that.”

“What about Steve Sawyer? I know now he was convicted of murder, but he’s disappeared, too. There’s no record of him in the Department of Corrections. Is he the person you’re trying to protect?”

“How dare you! How dare you, bitch, come in here and flaunt him at me!”

My jaw dropped. “All I know about him is that he’s vanished as completely as Lamont Gadsden.”

“You wish. You wish, don’t you? Get out of here before I land these scissors inside you.”

The rage in his face was heart-stopping. I parted the handbag-laden ropes, trying to walk naturally, trying not to let the shaking in my legs show. I’d forgotten the train whistle. Its blast made me stumble as I opened the outer door.

A woman passed me at the door, holding a scuffed pair of pumps. “Noise always gets to me, too.”

I tried to smile, but Rivers’s fury made my mouth wobble. I drove slowly to my office, staying off the Ryan: I wasn’t steady enough to deal with semis roaring around me.