Hardball

30

EVEN THOUGH I’D WALKED AWAY TRIUMPHANT FROM THAT skirmish, there was no way I could win a larger battle with the law. The real question, if I could get my tired brain to return to duty, was why they cared so much. Their questions, their whole attitude, seemed more about Sister Frances’s and my conversation than her murder.

I had to be honest enough to admit my arrival at the murder scene two days later warranted investigation. But why did they have such an elaborate stakeout on the building in the first place?

The interrogation had worn me out. I tried to make some notes, in big block capitals with a felt-tipped marker, but the effort put me to sleep. When I woke, it was because the doorman was calling on the house phone: Sister Carolyn Zabinska had arrived.

“You don’t look well. Are you up to talking?” she greeted me.

Her own face was pinched and gray with grief. She was tall and sturdily built, but her shoulders were bent forward with pain.

“It’s just my hair,” I said, steering myself away from self-pity. “I tried to trim it with sewing shears and was singularly inept. The FBI was ruder. They said I looked like the losing end of a catfight.”

“Yes, the FBI. That’s what I want to talk about… One of the things, anyway.”

She followed me onto the balcony off the living room, where Lotty has a little table and chairs in the summer. I offered refreshments, and left her standing there, looking out over Lake Michigan, while I burrowed in Lotty’s kitchen. She practically survives on Viennese coffee, but I found some German herbal infusions in the back of a drawer. When I returned to the balcony with a tray, precariously balanced between my bandaged palms, Sister Carolyn sat down and asked how I knew the FBI was watching the Freedom Center building.

“I don’t know if the FBI is involved. Homeland Security took the pictures.” I explained what I’d learned from today’s interview, including the news that the feds photographed everyone entering and leaving.

“That’s so outrageous. Why on earth?”

“I don’t know. When they questioned me in the hospital, they were dancing like rhinos around the subject. They implied it could be because of your tenants. You’re the one who knows if you’re treading on their toes.”

“Treading on their toes? It’s true we protest at the School of the Americas. We work with poor immigrants, with refugees, with people on death row. We’re involved in affordable housing. And peace. But we don’t do anything clandestine or immoral. We don’t sell drugs or weapons or spy on people.”

“You know darned well you’re rocking the whole aircraft carrier with those issues. America as armed camp is the status quo. Peace, letting in immigrants, ending torture, ending the death penalty: no wonder they think you’re a threat. There must be a whole floor of that building on the Potomac dedicated to your Freedom Center.”

“But that means we’re endangering the other tenants,” Zabinska said, worried. “We don’t own the building, but the management company that does has been pretty generous. They let us run the Freedom Center out of the ground-floor apartments. Five of us sisters attached to the center rent there, and we’ve ended up working with a lot of the other tenants because so many are either refugees or are trying to figure out how to get health care or housing vouchers. Maybe we should see about moving the ones who’re most at risk for deportation. Everyone’s pretty scared as it is because of the fire bombs.”

“You’d better be very careful where and how you talk about it,” I warned her. “They probably are listening to all your conversations, not just your phones.”

She was outraged, of course, especially when I explained how hard it is to detect or block a sophisticated eavesdropper, which the feds certainly are. We talked over her options. Technological solutions were outside her budget, and playing cloak-and-dagger, with codes and meetings off premises, was too time-consuming.

“Besides, that kind of secretiveness would drive us mad. It’s so counter to our vows and our mission. But maybe we should start leaving through the alley when we want to be private.”

I made a face. “It would be easy to mount tiny surveillance cameras on the light poles in the alley. It depends on how much they care about you.”

Sister Carolyn pushed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I know these are important matters, but it’s hard to pay attention to them right now. We’re all still in shock at losing Frankie. The violence of the attack, that’s very hard to absorb. But losing her… I wasn’t ready for that. I’m the head of the Freedom Center, but she was our real leader, spiritually, psychologically, in all the ways that count most. I need to understand why she was killed.”

I bit my lower lip. “I wish I knew, but I don’t.”

“When I looked in your wallet and saw your PI license, I thought maybe you’d come to spy on her. I didn’t realize then that the government was already spying on us. I thought maybe an anti-immigrant group had hired you.”

I went through my tired story about hunting for Lamont Gadsden and Steve Sawyer. When I mentioned Karen Lennon’s name, Sister Carolyn’s heavy expression lightened for a moment.

“Karen… Of course I know her. She’s on our Death Penalty committee, and we’ve done some work together on affordable health care. How did she find you?”

“By chance. She was in a hospital ER when I came in with a homeless man who’d collapsed on my sidewalk.”

“And Dr. Herschel-this is her apartment, I realized-I was surprised to learn you were staying with her.”

I’ve known Lotty half my life now, ever since I was an undergraduate and she was advising an abortion underground. Sister Carolyn took that in without blinking. Some of her immigrant clients got medical care at Lotty’s storefront clinic, and Lotty had saved the life of one of their pregnant women when she was shot in the abdomen. It clearly made me a better citizen in Zabinska’s eyes that Lotty was my friend and that I was working with Karen Lennon.

I finally brought the conversation back to my own inquiry. “Did Sister Frances ever talk about Steve Sawyer’s trial or the march in Marquette Park where Harmony Newsome died?”

“I was a child when that happened, a middle schooler at Justin Martyr. Frankie came to speak to us as part of the cardinal’s outreach program. A lot of the children booed and called her names, but she made me see the world in a different way. I came to my vocation because of Frankie.”

She shook her head, trying to shake tears away. “She wouldn’t have talked to me about the murder at the time because I was a child. And by the time I went through my novitiate, and ended up back in Chicago with her, it was twelve years later. So many other things started happening that we needed to tackle-the School of the Americas and the Guatemalan asylum seekers, and then the loss of jobs and health care-that we didn’t dwell much on that past. Did she think this Steve Sawyer was wrongly convicted?”

“He may have been. All I can say, with any certainty, is that he was very badly represented in a trial that was a travesty, at least as far as I can tell from the transcript. Sister Frances said she wanted to testify at the trial but the defense wouldn’t call her.”

I stopped, my throat was so dry I could hardly get the next words out. “A reporter suggested I was the real target, but he wouldn’t tell me who he’d heard that from.”

“Killing a nun to keep her from talking to you or you from talking to her, these things have happened in Nicaragua or Liberia, but here? We think we’re so safe here, and yet my own government is spying on me. The government are the people who would have known she was talking to you.” Her eyes widened in horror, and she choked out, “You don’t think they… that they…”

I grimaced. “What? That the Contras might kill a nun but not Homeland Security? I don’t think they did. But I can’t swear to anything right now, except that I feel pretty vulnerable.”

Zabinska pleated Lotty’s linen tea napkin over and over in her fingers. “The work that you’re doing for Karen, for these two old women in Lionsgate Manor, how much are you charging them?”

“My standard fee is a hundred fifty an hour plus expenses.”

“We can’t afford that. Is there any chance you could work out an arrangement with us? I want you to find out why Frankie died. We’ll all feel better if we know why.”

I could feel the request coming before she said it, but I didn’t try to fight it. I owed Sister Frances the effort of an investigation.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “I’ll feel better, too.”

We talked through the various issues the Freedom Center worked on that might have brought someone to the boiling point. We talked about people who might have harbored a personal resentment against Sister Frances. Even saints make enemies. It’s how they become martyrs.

At the end, I said, “The best thing you can do is get back into that sealed apartment and bring me some bottle fragments.”

“You suggested bolt cutters,” she said doubtfully.

“Or a hammer. That door isn’t too sturdy. A few good whacks on the panel would take care of it. I’d do it myself, but I’m a bit out of action right now.” My padded hands would be unwrapped in two more days. If they’d healed sufficiently, Lotty would let me go home.

Sister Carolyn got up to leave, but she took the tea things to the kitchen and washed them for me first. In the hall, as she waited for the elevator, she said, “You know, taking a hammer to that door would cheer me up. Some kind of fierce action, for a change. If we find any bits of bottle, one of us will bring them over tomorrow.”

Later that evening, Petra arrived, bubbling with so much energetic goodwill that I felt exhausted almost from the moment she got off the elevator. When Lotty let her in, Petra danced down the hall to the guest room, where I was dictating notes to send to Marilyn.

Petra had remembered the charger to my phone, amazingly enough, and also brought my mail, which she dumped on the bureau before settling in a wing chair by the window. “Shall I open it and read it to you? There must be a hundred letters here!”

“No, most of them are bills. They’ll keep another day. How are the dogs? What’s happening with the campaign? You still the golden-haired girl?”

She laughed. “I don’t take any of it too seriously. I think that’s why I’m so popular. Everyone else is, like, totally ambitious, you know, hoping for big jobs when Brian gets to the Senate so that they can have really big jobs when he’s president.”

“And what are you hoping for?” I asked idly.

“Just to get through the summer without making a mistake that’ll get everyone else in trouble.”

She spoke with such unexpected seriousness that I took off my heavy dark glasses to look at her. “What’s going on, Petra? Is someone suggesting you’ve done something wrong?”

“No, no. I don’t want to think about it tonight. You know that baseball you said you found in Uncle Tony’s trunk, the one signed by someone in the White Sox?”

“Nellie Fox, you mean? Yeah, what about it?”

“I mentioned it to Daddy, and he’d love to have it. Did you keep it? I mean, you said it would be worth something if you auctioned it on eBay.”

She was floundering, and I stared at her with even more surprise. “Petra, what is the matter with you tonight? I kept the baseball, but I don’t know what I want to do with it. It meant something to my dad or he wouldn’t have kept it with his Good Conduct citation. I’ll think about it.”

“Where is it?” she persisted. “Could I take a picture and send it to Daddy?”

“Petra, you are up to something. I don’t know what, but…”

She flushed, and played with her array of rubber bracelets. “Oh, he’s turning seventy next year, and Mom and I were trying to think of something really special to do. I thought of the baseball, and-”

“I thought you just said you’d talked to him about it and that he’d love to have it.”

“Why are you biting on me like I was some steak bone? I’m just making conversation!” She nearly tilted the wing chair over in her agitation.

“Then let’s make some more conversation. What really brought you to Sister Frances’s apartment the other night? And who came with you?”

“I told you-”

“Baby, I’ve been listening to line spinners since I was six, and you are not in the majors. Not even double A.”

She scowled at me. “If I tell you now, you’ll make even more fun of me.”

“Try me.”

“I thought, it’s not like you have an assistant or anything. And when we went to South Chicago, I loved how you dealt with those gangbangers. I thought if I went in and found something-a clue or something-maybe you’d take me on as an apprentice when the campaign winds down. But if you’re just going to laugh at me…”

Her face was so red that it almost glowed in the soft light of the guest room. I slid off the bed and knelt next to her, patting her shoulder.

“You want to be a detective? You know the ‘fun stuff ’ you said I got to do, after I tangled with that gangbanger on Houston Street? Your folks would eat me for lunch if you were working for me and got your eyes burned. Not to mention that you could have gone through the floor in that apartment.”

I sat back on the daybed as another thought occurred to me. “Petra, someone threw a smoke bomb into my old house on Houston last Sunday. Señora Andarra said she saw one of us watching from across the street. That wasn’t you, was it?”

“Vic! You told me not to go down there alone.”

“Does that mean no?” I asked. “You weren’t trying to play detective and get into that house?”

“I wasn’t playing detective at your old house, okay?” Her face turned red again in her agitation. “Now I’m sorry I ever said anything to you about it. Daddy says your mom spoiled you something rotten, so you never learned how to let anyone else be in the limelight.”

“That a fact? Is that what you were doing at the Freedom Center the other night? Showing me how to let you be in the limelight?”

“Oh, you twist everything I say the wrong way.” She strode from the room, her rubber bracelets bobbing up and down on her arms.

Her exit was a little anticlimactic: one of her bracelets flew off as she reached Lotty’s front door. I bent to pick it up; it was white and labeled ONE. It was supposed to make us want to get together as one planet to solve AIDS and poverty.

I shut my eyes. I was supposed to be the grown-up in this situation. I handed her the bracelet, and said, “If I try to learn how to share the limelight, will you try to learn how to listen to directions?”

Her flush faded. “You mean you would let me study detecting with you?”

“Most of what I do is truly tedious, like all those bills on the bureau there,” I warned her. “But if you want to work for me for six months, see how you like it… Sure, we can give it a try when you’re through with Brian’s campaign.”

She flung her arms around me, pressing into the raw new skin on my chest, then ran into the waiting elevator. I stopped in the living room to say good night to Lotty. I was puzzling over Petra’s words, and her behavior, with Lotty-Could Petra be serious about trying to emulate me? Could she be lying about being in South Chicago last Sunday?-when Lotty’s phone rang.

It was Carolyn Zabinska for me. “Vic, we went to Frankie’s place as soon as we got in tonight,” she said without preamble. “A demolition team had come in from nowhere and stripped the room. The building manager said it was an anonymous benefactor who wanted to do something good for the church and that builders would be arriving tomorrow.”