Hardball

46

I MADE UP A STORYBOARD OUT OF A SELECTION OF PICTURES: Sister Frankie with Harmony Newsome, Harmony with her hand over the ball after it struck her in the temple, Peter with the man who might have been Harvey Krumas, the close-up of the ball, the cop pocketing the ball, the close-up of his badge. Theo let me use a computer to type captions for the pictures and a letter to Bobby Mallory. I addressed him formally by his title, not just because he’d pissed me off believing Hazel Alito’s wild accusation against me but because I didn’t know what he’d been doing in Marquette Park all those years ago. He’d been a nineteen-year-old rookie getting baptized by fire under the protective arm of veteran officer Tony Warshawski.

What had any of them done in the park that day?

Dear Captain Mallory:

These pictures were taken by Lamont Gadsden in Marquette Park on August 6, 1966. I found the negatives this morning, and they are now in a secure location. I believe the people who broke into my home and office this past week were looking for these negatives.

As you perhaps recall, in January 1967 Steve Sawyer was arrested and convicted for the 1966 murder of Harmony Newsome (photograph 4). No murder weapon was ever produced. Sawyer’s conviction was based solely on an uncorroborated confession that was extorted under torture by George Dornick and Larry Alito.

At his trial, Mr. Sawyer tried to insist that Lamont Gadsden had pictures which proved his innocence. The photographs attached to this letter raise serious questions, at minimum, about the chain of custody of evidence at his trial.

Before you ask the State’s Attorney’s Office to file charges against me in Larry Alito’s death, I suggest you revisit this 1966 murder, the 1967 trial of Steve Sawyer, and, in particular, that you discover the identity of the officer wearing badge number 8396.

For my protection, I am sending a copy of this letter to my lawyer. I am notifying Judge Arnold Coleman, who served as Steve Sawyer’s public defender during his trial, and Steve Sawyer. I am also notifying Greg Yeoman, who is John Merton’s current counsel.

You may leave a message with my attorney about what next steps you wish to take in resolving both the 1966 murder and your baseless accusations against me in the death of Larry Alito.

While Theo made up a dozen copies of my storyboard, I called Freeman Carter, my lawyer, and told him I had evidence so hot that it needed to be in a vault.

“I wondered when I would hear from you, Warshawski. The cops have been to my office already demanding that I produce your body, so I knew it was only a matter of time before you remembered you had a right to counsel.”

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that, Freeman. But let me give you a quick thumbnail of what’s happening.”

I explained as much as I knew, about Lamont and Steve-Kimathi and Dornick, Krumas and my uncle. I even reported finding the Nellie Fox baseball in the trunk of my family’s possessions.

“So what do you want me to do with all this?” Freeman asked.

“Hold on to the pictures and the baseball. Hold off the cops. I need to find Petra now if I can, and then I’ll worry about everything else.”

Theo, who’d heard my end of the conversation, said Cheviot could store the negatives and the extra prints for me, but I explained that the state could compel Cheviot to produce them. My lawyer had certain privileges that could keep the government at bay, at least for a few days. I did ask Theo to use their messenger service to deliver my storyboards to Bobby, Judge Coleman, and Greg Yeoman. I would drop a copy off at Fit for Your Hoof myself, if I could do so without a tail, but I wanted to watch Freeman Carter put my originals and the hundred prints Theo had produced in his office safe.

By the time Karen and I got back on the tollway, we were in the middle of the oozing Chicago rush hour. Slow hour, it should be called. While we drove, Karen reported on the repairs to Sister Frankie’s apartment at the Freedom Center.

“The men doing the work are doing a terrible job. After tearing the place apart, all they’ve done is put up some studs. They started to work on the wiring and blew the circuits for the whole building. And the sisters couldn’t even get the building management to restore power until they offered to send pickets to the owner’s home.”

“Yes, I think those are phantom builders, sent by Harvey Krumas to make sure any evidence of the fire bombing got destroyed.” It was one of my nagging worries about Petra. Had she really texted Dornick or Alito or Harvey himself to come get the bag of bottle fragments I’d collected from the fire bombing?

Karen moved on to a piece of encouraging news: Miss Claudia was a little stronger today. Karen had sent a pastoral intern to check on her and other high-needs patients, and she’d heard from the intern while we were waiting for Theo to develop the pictures.

“It’s as if turning over the Bible to you took enough of a load off her spirit that she had some strength left for her own life,” Karen said. “It makes me wonder if she knew all along that those pictures were in there.”

“Don’t you think if Miss Claudia knew about the pictures, she would have pulled them out and had prints made?” I objected. “What I imagine happened is that Lamont went to consult Johnny about what to do with the pictures, whether he should risk trying to testify at Sawyer’s trial.

“Maybe Lamont had prints made, prints that disappeared when he did, but he was smart enough to stash the negatives with the one person who really believed in him: his auntie. He couldn’t count on Rose Hebert. She was too much under her angry father’s control. And he couldn’t count on Johnny, who might barter them to save his own skin in some plea bargain down the road. But Claudia adored him and stood by him. So he peeled open the endpaper, inserted the negatives, and gave the Bible to Claudia. She must have noticed the cover was lumpy. And, at some level, she might have suspected he had something hidden in there. But she probably was afraid to find out what it was.”

“Why?” Karen inched forward toward the Deerfield Toll Plaza. I fished in my wallet for exact change.

“She didn’t know about the pictures, but Ella kept claiming Lamont sold drugs. Claudia might have thought she was holding a packet of heroin or some acid or something.”

We were both quiet for a few car lengths, but Karen kept glancing at me, biting her lips. She finally blurted out, “There’s something you need to know, but I’ve been worrying about how to tell you. When I talked to my intern, she said some men had been around looking for me. They heard from the head nurse that you and I were both visiting Miss Claudia last night, and they thought I would know where you were.”

“Cops?” I demanded.

Karen shook her head. “My intern wouldn’t know something like that. She assumed they were, but she didn’t think to ask for any ID. And, after everything you’ve said today, I do wonder if they could be with George Dornick’s company.”

I rubbed my forehead. “That means they could be at your home. After we go to my lawyer’s, you’d better let me come back with you to check for an ambush. If it was Dornick’s people, he may also have dug up your cellphone number, which means they could be tracking us.”

I smiled bleakly. “No one is safe if they are around me. Dornick is doing an excellent job of driving that point home. Perhaps you and Bernardo could move into an empty room at Lionsgate Manor until this mess gets cleaned up.”

“I’ll be okay, Vic. They’ll believe me when I explain I’m just the pastor who’s been too naïve to see through you.” She made a soft O of surprise with her rosebud lips, and I laughed.

“It’s my Victorian face,” she added. “No one ever thinks I understand the big bad world. It’s you who’s in trouble and in danger.”

The traffic began moving marginally faster. I kept checking the road, using the makeup mirror in the sun visor and peering into the right wing mirror. The same cars crawled around us. I couldn’t tell if any of them were paying us special attention. It was when we oozed off the Kennedy into the Loop that I began to wonder about a certain gray BMW. It had an impressive collection of antennas, and for the last few miles on the expressway it had seemed to be trading places with a black Ford Expedition. Karen’s turquoise Corolla was easy to pick out in a crowd, and they hadn’t needed to stay close to us until we exited. But then the BMW swooped around two cabs and a bus and landed in front of us. The Expedition was moving in from the side.

“We have company,” I said. “I’m jumping out before they pin us. I’ll try to send a cop your way.”

Before Karen could react or speak or even slow the car down, I had stuffed the envelope of negatives and prints into the back of my jeans and opened the passenger door. I held on to it tightly, got my feet and myself out and running alongside the car, then slammed the door and tore off down LaSalle Street toward Freeman’s office. I heard whistles, screams, the screech of tires, and then a messenger bike was on the sidewalk, doing wheelies around me, while another one came at me from the south.

I pushed through the first revolving doors I came to and sprinted through the arcade. I heard steps behind me, shouts of outrage as my pursuer collided with someone, but I didn’t waste time looking back.

The envelope was digging into my rear as I ran, but the pain reassured me that I still had my precious cargo. I should have left it at Cheviot. Regrets, save them for later, I panted to myself, and sprinted around a trio of slow-moving women to the building’s rear revolving door.

Wells Street seemed to be full of messenger bikes. Real messengers? Pursuers? Impossible to tell the difference. A bike jumped the curb and headed straight at me, another was approaching from the side. I could see the glint of a pistol in the first man’s hand. As he lifted it, I pulled off my Cubs cap and rolled on the ground. When he reached me, pointing the pistol at me, I stuffed the cap into the spokes of his bike. The bike wobbled, toppled. The pistol went off. The crowd screamed and scattered, and I sprinted up the stairs to the El.

A train was rumbling into the station. I shoved past a line of commuters sliding their cards through turnstile slots. They yelled at me angrily, and the stationmaster hollered in his microphone, but I jumped over the turnstile and ran up the final flight of stairs. I managed to squeeze through the train’s doors just as they were closing.

The car was packed. I collapsed, standing against the doors, sobbing for air, while the mass of commuters pressed into me. My gun was cutting into my side, the envelope into my back. My legs were trembling from my run and from my fear. I thought of Karen back on Monroe Street. I hoped that when they saw I’d gone, they’d left her alone. Please, please don’t let her be one more person injured in my wake.

For several stops, I rode without being conscious of where I was, moving away from the doors as we pulled into a station, leaning back against them when they closed again. We were heading north on the Brown Line, I finally realized. And, wherever it dropped me, there might be watchers waiting for me. How big an operation could Dornick afford to mount against me? How many El stops could he stake out? Was I making him more powerful than he possibly could be?

I couldn’t ride the train forever. I got off at the next stop, Armitage Avenue. It’s in the heart of Yuppieville, and there was a good crowd to cover me leaving the station.

Because it was Yuppieville, it was filled with a million little boutiques. I longed for a wig, something that would really transform me, but the best I could come up with was another hat, a white golfing cap. The thousand dollars I’d cashed last week was dwindling, but I bought a new shirt, too, replacing Karen’s navy T-shirt with a white one that proclaimed G-R-R-L POWER. Maybe it would rub off on me. It had been days since I’d had dark glasses on, and my eyes were aching from the glare. I went into a drugstore and found a cheap pair. And lipstick. In a coffee shop, I picked up an extra-large herbal tea and went into their restroom to wash off and plan my next move.

When I was clean, and rehydrated, I felt marginally better. But I couldn’t imagine any course of action, no way to get out of the area, no useful destination that would help me find Petra, no way to get my photos to Freeman Carter. By now, Dornick might have scoped out Morrell’s Honda. I couldn’t take a chance on doubling back to Lionsgate for the car. I couldn’t go home or to my office, although I was halfway between the two.

Outside the store, a homeless man was hawking Streetwise. “As long as you have a roof over your head and a family that loves you,” the guy in Millennium Park had intoned yesterday. A roof that you can’t get to, a family that’s trying to gun you down. I gave the man a dollar. And thought of Elton Grainger.

He, too, was near here. When Elton wouldn’t give me a straight answer or look in me in the face, I’d been sure he’d seen Petra running from my office. Months ago, he had told me how to find his crib. I would find it. I would threaten to camp out there until he told me what I wanted to know about my cousin.

I’d been heading gradually west from the station while making my purchases. I waited at a bus stop and got on the westbound bus. I fished some singles out of my pocket for the fare, then watched through the back window as we trundled along. It was a tiresomely slow ride, but I was too spent to walk. And at least this way, I could see if anyone had spotted me.

At Damen Avenue, I got off the bus and set out on foot. Chicago streets are tangled here because of the way the river snakes through the Northwest Side. I needed to get under the Kennedy Expressway and then follow Honore to the river. A shack under the railway embankment, Elton had said.

Rush hour was over. People were beginning to fill up the restaurants that lined the streets. I felt overwhelmed with envy for the diners I could see through the windows, eating and laughing together. This was what it was like to be Elton, trudging back each night from his station outside the coffee bar on my street, a Vietnam veteran with no home and only the price of a bottle or a sandwich in his pocket.

On leaden feet, I walked under the expressway and turned east and then north again. The railway embankment was surrounded by razor wire, but there was a gap hidden by the Kennedy’s shadow. I slipped through it and crawled up the embankment. Decades of Chicagoans had tossed their garbage from their cars, and, in places along the embankment, it was waist high. I could see the path Elton had carved through the refuse and followed it up to the tracks and down the other side, where the embankment ended at the river’s edge.

I didn’t spot Elton’s shack at first, and wondered if in his paranoia he had misdirected me. However, a faint trail led through the underbrush and refuse, and I followed it to the river. The water here was a thick brownish green. Ducks bobbed in it, along with plastic bottles and sticks. There wasn’t a visible current, and mosquitoes rose in clouds from the thicket of shrubs that lined the bank.

From the river’s edge, I looked back and finally saw the shack, almost invisible against the underbrush and discarded tires. It had a faded logo from the C &NW railroad on it; I suppose they’d once used it for storage. As I got closer, I saw Elton had put a rain barrel on the roof and fixed up a showerhead. There weren’t any windows in the shack, and the boards it was built with were gray-black with damp, but he had covered any holes with a variety of metal, Styrofoam, and plastic sheeting.

I clambered up the embankment and made my way around to the side where the door was. “Elton? You home? It’s V. I. Warshawski. We need to talk.”

I rapped smartly on the panel and heard a movement from inside the shack, an intake of a sob. I pulled open the ramshackle door. My cousin Petra blinked at me from a nest of sleeping bags.

“Vic! How did you know? Who told you? Who’s with you?”

I couldn’t speak. I was so overcome with relief at the sight of Petra that I just stood there, shaking my head in wonder.