Hardball

16

“IS THIS YOUR IDEA OF A JOKE, VICKI?”

I’d waited an hour for a word with Bobby Mallory. Dropping in unannounced on a senior police officer is never a really brilliant idea, but at least he was actually in the building. The sergeant guarding access to those shiny new offices in Bronzeville didn’t know me, but Terry Finchley, one of Bobby’s aides, was nearby. He isn’t exactly a fan of mine, but he did grunt at the sergeant that it was okay to send me upstairs to wait for a break in Bobby’s schedule.

I’d brought a stack of work with me. As the wait dragged on, I managed to answer a bunch of e-mails and finish a report, on the fraud burdening a small tool-and-die company, before Bobby came out of his office to see me.

He’d greeted me with a mix of affection and wariness. He knew I wouldn’t have come to police headquarters unless I had a favor to beg. Still, he put an arm around me, called to his secretary to bring in a cup of coffee for me, and started with family news. He’d become a grandfather for the seventh time, but he was as pleased as he’d been the first time round. I made suitable noises, and wrote a note in my PDA to remember a christening present.

“That boy you’re dating, I hear he’s back in Afghanistan. He didn’t go halfway round the world to get away from you, did he?”

“That boy is a fifty-year-old man, and we both realized he finds Afghanistan way more exciting than he does me.”

I startled myself as well as Bobby with the bitterness in my voice. Before Bobby could probe, or, worse, comment that my lack of domestic virtues was what drove men from my side, I quickly started to explain my story: the trail I was trying to follow, how Ella Gadsden’s inquiry had led me to the old Harmony Newsome murder trial.

Bobby shook his head. “If it was one of mine, I’ve forgotten it.”

“It was high-profile at the time. Civil rights worker, killed in Marquette Park. Her family brought a lot of pressure on the department until they made an arrest.”

“I still don’t remember.” He smiled bleakly. “Families are always pressuring us to make arrests. This time, we made an arrest, right? And got a conviction? So where’s your beef? You saying now that the verdict was tainted? You’re Madame Zelda who sees all, knows all?”

I pressed my lips together. “I wasn’t planning on overturning the verdict, although maybe I should try. Reading the trial transcript was like reading Mistrial, Malfeasance, and Nonfeasance 101. The state couldn’t produce a murder weapon, and the public defender didn’t call any witnesses. The detectives, the state’s attorney, and the judge had a good old time laughing over language and customs on the black South Side, except they used far-less-polite words.”

“So the justice system in 1967 had its flaws. I can’t fix the past. Tell me one of my cops is using filthy language today, and I’ll do something about it.”

“My dad was the arresting officer.” I got the words out with difficulty. “I’m trying to find out what happened. People are hinting that Tony crossed a line-”

“I don’t believe this!” Bobby thundered. “I don’t believe even you would have the nerve to come in here and smear Tony’s name. Two things mattered to him: Gabriella and you… you for what reason I’ve never understood. The best officer, the kindest man, the closest friend, and you… you… you have the damned gall to-”

“Bobby!” I stood and leaned over the desk into his angry face. “Shut up and listen to me! I don’t want to think any bad thing about my father, ever. I know better than you what kind of person he was. He trained a gazillion cops. A lot of them did like you, went on to big careers, but he wouldn’t put in for promotion himself because he didn’t want to make compromises in his… his code of honor.

“Something happened to Steve Sawyer after my dad picked him up. The men who know Sawyer won’t tell me, but they keep passing hints, and I need to know.”

“If I knew, which I don’t, I wouldn’t tell you. You’d put it out in the Daily Worker or some other left-wing pile of crap and smear-”

“Enough!” I sat down wearily. “It is not easy to be a cop’s kid and date cops and have cop friends, all the time knowing what some people do with that badge in front of them. But if Tony didn’t talk to you about the Sawyer arrest, he didn’t. Maybe that means it went by the book. I guess I’ll see if George Dornick will talk to me. Or Larry Alito.”

“Dornick? Alito?” Bobby leaned back in his chair, suddenly quiet, even wary. “Why… Oh, were they the detectives in charge? Well, well, well. Dornick is a big SOB now out in the private sector. I’d love to be a fly on the wall listening to how you figure out a way to talk to him.”

“And Alito?”

“Last I heard, he retired up to Chain of Lakes. You let me know how you make out with him and Dornick. If you end up with your nose broken, I’ll send them a personal commendation on department stationery.”

I stood up to leave. In the doorway I turned to look at Bobby, who was still breathing hard.

“Guess who Steve Sawyer’s PD was, Bobby. Arnie Coleman!”

“So?”

“So, when I worked for him in the criminal PD’s Office, he cut so many deals with the State’s Attorney’s Office, he looked like the SA’s chief assistant. You know he got his reward: a state appellate judgeship. Judge Coleman was hanging around Harvey Krumas at the big shindig on Navy Pier the other night.” When Bobby didn’t say anything, I added, “And George Dornick is young Krumas’s adviser on Homeland Security and terrorism.”

“What’s your point, Vicki? That Krumas knows a lot of people?” Bobby smacked his forehead in mock comprehension. “Oh, I get it. Harvey Krumas fixed the Steve Sawyer trial forty years ago, even though he was just a twenty-something guy from the South Side without any power?”

“His father owned Ashland Meats,” I said.

“Yeah, that was a two-bit outfit before Harvey took over and turned it into the operation he’s got today. When I joined the force, Dornick used to razz Harvey about having the bulls with the smallest… Never mind that. But in-”

“Dornick used to razz Harvey?” I asked. “Harvey was never a cop. Or was he?”

“No, no. He and Dornick grew up in Gage Park together. Ran around with Tony’s brother, your uncle Peter. Are you trying to say that somehow Harvey got Arnie Coleman to turn on his own client while Dornick got the perp to make a phony confession and now Harvey’s rewarding them by letting them lick his son’s ass, if you’ll pardon my French? Do you imagine if Tony was still alive he’d be part of that inner circle, too, because he tortured Sawyer for Krumas?”

It was my turn to be discomfited. I left without trying to say anything else, but when I returned to my office I looked up Dornick and Alito. Bobby had made me feel defensive, but when I first said their names he’d grown quiet. At full strength, the CPD includes some thirteen thousand officers. It’s true Bobby’s been with the force a long time and he knows a lot of people, but he doesn’t know all thirteen thousand. Yet those two names had stood out for him.

Of course, Bobby would have met Harvey Krumas and my uncle Peter through my dad. If Peter and Harvey had grown up with George Dornick, I guess it wasn’t surprising Bobby would have met Dornick, too. And since Alito and Dornick worked together, Bobby would have known Alito as well.

Maybe I was reading too much into Bobby’s reaction to their names. But that didn’t stop me from digging around on the Web.

There were hundreds of hits for George Dornick. Dornick had started Mountain Hawk Security when he retired from the force. His website told me that the firm specialized in training police officers around the world in how to do everything from recognizing and combating terrorists to identifying clandestine drug labs. Mountain Hawk provided tactical training for officers needing help with close quarters combat, use of Tasers and other “restraining devices,” wilderness survival for desert- and mountain-based forces, and how to use cars as offensive weapons in urban environments.

“Our clients expect total confidentiality, and we provide that, along with world-class training, so we regret that we can’t supply you with a client list. We have worked with police forces throughout the Americas, in cities, in jungles, and in the punishing Sonoran Desert. We have also sent our experienced personnel into combat zones to provide support for American troops. With offices and equipment in nine strategic locations around the globe, we can be at your next training meeting within hours.”

I found pictures of Dornick, looking alert and combat ready, with everyone from Chicago’s mayor to the president of Colombia. I saw Dornick demonstrate the use of Tasers to women at a domestic-violence shelter and read articles about contracts he’d received from San Diego, Waco, and Phoenix to conduct special border-patrol training sessions. I couldn’t find information about his life as a policeman, but he’d left the force some fifteen years ago.

Alito looked more like the average cop. Forty years on the force, retired to a small lake in northern Illinois. The little bit of press he’d gathered showed a mixed picture. He’d been cited for bravery during a hostage crisis involving armed robbers at a strip mall on Roosevelt Road. Then, six months later, he was accused of using excessive force at the same incident, for killing both robbers, as the situation unraveled. He’d injured one of the hostages, which was why he’d been cen sured, and an unnamed coworker quoted him as saying, “She’s lucky to be alive, and they’re better off dead, so what’s the beef?”

Since a lot of the citizenry agreed that a dead armed robber saved the city the expense of a trial, the letters to the editor were predictably pro-Alito, with a segue into the importance of every American being fully armed at all times.

I stared blankly at the computer for a few minutes, then pulled up a map of Alito’s home. He lived just a mile south of the Wisconsin border, near one of the little lakes that dot the hills northwest of Chicago. A lot of Chicagoans have weekend homes up there. Some, like Alito, retire to live there year-round.

According to MapQuest, the sixty-mile trip from Western and North to Lake Catherine should take about eighty minutes, but they were assuming you were driving at three in the morning during a rare period when neither the Kennedy nor the Edens was under construction. I reached the north shore of Lake Catherine two and a half hours after leaving my office.

It’s true the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and the air was clearer than on Milwaukee Avenue, but my mood was much grumpier, and I was desperate for a bathroom. That involved back-tracking to the nearest service station, where I spent a little fortune filling my Mustang, used the mercifully clean washroom, and bought a chili dog to tide me over. I’d been so intent on my searches that I’d forgotten lunch, a major violation of the Warshawski family motto: “Never skip a meal.”

It was close to five o’clock when I finally pulled off the road at the top of Queen Anne’s Lace Lane and walked down to Alito’s house. He lived in a yellow split-level shoehorned onto a tiny lot, his neighbors as close as they would have been on the South Side of Chicago. But here, he was just a few steps from the water.

As I’d sat in the tollway traffic, I’d tried to come up with a strategy for getting Alito to talk to me. At one of my PI training seminars, we’d reviewed “techniques for conducting a successful interview.” Get your subject to think you’re on his side. Don’t be confrontational. Establish some common ground that he has to assent to. “So, Larry, did you torture Steve Sawyer?” would not be a good opening gambit. Instead, try, “So, Larry, let’s agree that it was a necessary and good thing to torture Steve Sawyer.”

Alito’s wife answered the door. She was about her husband’s age, somewhere in her sixties, in khaki cargo pants, with faded red curls that reminded me a little of the aging Gwen Verdon. She didn’t smile or greet me with any warmth, but she didn’t slam the door in my face, either. When I explained that I was the daughter of one of her husband’s old partners on the force and hoped Detective Alito and I could talk, her expression lightened minimally.

“Larry just got back from golf. He’s showering. He’ll be down in a minute or two. I’m making supper right now…”

The sentence trailed away vaguely, as if she were afraid I might want to be fed. I assured her that I didn’t need food, or even very much time. Should I wait in my car? That galvanized her into inviting me to come out back, where she was getting ready to put burgers on the grill.

The cramped family room made me think of Miss Ella. Like her home, this one was filled with small china figurines. Ms. Alito seemed to collect angels and kittens rather than African jungle creatures, but everything was clean and carefully arranged, down to little dishes of play milk in front of the kittens. I felt my scalp twitch. There was a sense of desperation in the displays. Still, as I trailed after her through the family room to the kitchen, I made appropriate noises about charm and so on.

“It’s small, of course, but it’s just Larry and me. We have the one son, but he lives in Michigan, and, when he comes to visit, we just put the grandkids in bunk beds on the sunporch. You sit out here on the deck, and I’ll go tell Larry you’re here.”

I walked to the railing and looked around. Lake Catherine was at the end of the road, about thirty yards south of the Alito place. You could just glimpse the gleam of sun on water through the willows and bushes that grew around the shore. The neighbors to the north were grilling; the lots here were so small that the hamburgers and chicken legs were practically under my nose. Despite the chili dog, I was still hungry. I wanted to jump over the fence and grab a drumstick.

A man’s voice came clearly through the open window above me. “You didn’t even get her name? Sheesh, Hazel, don’t you ever think?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Larry, you think every person you meet is going to scam you.”

“And you didn’t find out what she wants?”

“You gotta pay extra if you want me to be your secretary, Mr. Alito.” Hazel’s voice was part sarcasm, part seduction, a disturbing window into their relationship.

Alito grumbled, but the conversation faded, and, a moment or two later, he joined me on the deck. He was fresh from the shower, his thinning hair still dark with water, but his eyes were almost as red as his sunburned nose. He was carrying a can of beer. From the smell of his breath as he came up to me, it was his fifth or sixth of the afternoon.

“Detective Alito, I’m V. I. Warshawski, Tony Warshawski’s daughter.”

“That a fact.” He looked at me without enthusiasm.

“Fact,” I said brightly. “I found a picture of your old slow-pitch team the other night. My dad played first, I think… Is that right?”

“How should I remember? Tony Warshawski on first, what’s on second, that right?”

I laughed dutifully. “You know my dad’s been dead for some years now.”

“Yeah. Sorry I forgot to send flowers, but we didn’t stay in touch.”

“And I became a detective, but private. I’m not with the force.”

“Private dicks, they give me a pain in the whasis.” He swallowed deeply from his beer can and set it on the deck railing.

“I’m looking up an old case that my dad and you both worked.”

He didn’t say anything, but a pulse in his neck started to jump.

“Steve Sawyer.”

“Don’t ring a bell.” The tone was indifferent, but he grabbed the beer can and took another deep swallow. “Hazel! Bring me another!”

His wife had been standing at the grill with her plate of raw meat, waiting for me to finish so she could make dinner. She reached into a cooler by the grill and brought out another can. What a fun evening for her.

“You and Tony had been partners on patrol in ’sixty-six, and then you got moved to the detective branch at-”

“I can read my own history in the obituary pages. What’s your point?” He grabbed the can from his wife and popped the top.

“It was a high-profile case at the time. A young civil rights worker was murdered during a demonstration in Marquette Park, and months went by without an arrest. Then you picked up Steve Sawyer.”

“Tony picked up Sawyer,” Alito corrected me.

“I thought you didn’t remember Sawyer.”

“All those shines marching in the park, you saying that brought it all back to me.” He smirked.

“I didn’t say that,” I said sharply. “I said a civil rights demonstration.”

“Yeah, it was a demonstration full of shines.” He laughed, and, in the background, Hazel laughed tinnily, too.

I gritted my teeth but said, “So if it’s all come back to you, who was the snitch?”

“Snitch? What snitch?”

“At the trial, you said your snitch had pointed you to Sawyer. No one ever asked for your informant’s name. I’m asking you now.”

“Ah, jeez, what a dumb-ass question! Like, I remember every two-cent junkie who wanted a fix bad enough to finger his friends.”

“What about Lamont Gadsden? How well do you remember him from your old beat?”

The question took him off guard, and he slopped beer down the front of his Sox T-shirt. He hollered to Hazel to bring over a towel. When she’d mopped his shirt, he said, “What were we talking about?”

“Lamont Gadsden.”

“He another of your shine friends? Name doesn’t ring a bell. If that’s what you came for, you wasted a tankful of gas.” The words and tone were right, but his forehead was beaded in sweat.

I looked at him steadily. “When Sawyer came into court, he was badly disoriented, didn’t seem to know who he was or where he was, going by the trial transcript. What do you remember about that?”

“He tripped and fell against the bars of his cell. You could ask Tony, if he hadn’t croaked, and he’d tell you the same. Now, get the fuck off my property.”

“What do you mean, Tony’d tell me the same?” I felt as though someone had punched me in the gut.

“What I said. Everyone says your father was too good to be true, right? The level cop, not the cop who had community complaints or IAD smelling his shorts before he put them on? Well, I could tell you a thing or two about Saint Anthony.”

“Maybe the whole South Side had reason to hate your guts, but Tony Warshawski was the best damned cop in Chicago. You were lucky you had the chance to work with him. But you got hincty, like you claim Steve Sawyer did, didn’t you, and bought yourself a-”

I saw his fist coming a half second too late. I swerved, and he missed my jaw, but the blow socked my right shoulder. I kicked him on the shin and went for his solar plexus, but water suddenly poured over my head, my eyes, my mouth, and I was choking: Hazel had turned the hose on us, spraying her husband as thoroughly as she was me. Alito and I backed away from each other, breathing hard. I stared at him for a long second, then turned abruptly and opened the door to the kitchen.

“You can’t go through the house, you’re all wet,” Hazel observed in her unemotional nasal voice.

I followed her off the deck without looking again at her husband. She pointed me toward a narrow path that separated her house from the one next door. As I walked up the lane to my car, I could see curtains twitch at windows along the way. If I had to live with Larry Alito, I wouldn’t fill the house with china kittens. I’d have a large collection of axes.