Sara Paretsky - Hardball

“Our Chicago Negroes always knew their place before these Com munists came to stir them up,” Marie fumed.

Father Gribac read Cardinal Cody’s letter, since he was a good soldier in Christ’s Army, but he also preached a thundering sermon, telling his congregation that Christians had a duty to fight Commu nists and look after their families. We heard all about it from Aunt Marie when she dropped in on my mother a few days after my tenth birthday.

“If we don’t stop them in Marquette Park, they’ll be here in South Chicago next. Father Gribac says he’s tired of the cardinal sitting in his mansion like God on His throne, not caring about white people in this city. We’re the ones who built these churches. But Cardinal Cody wants to let those ni-”

“Not that word in my house, Marie,” my mother had said sharply.

“Oh, you can be as high and mighty as you like, Gabriella, but what about us? What about the lives we worked so hard to make?”

My mother had answered in her ungrammatical English. “Mama Warshawski, she tells me always the hard times Polish peoples have in this city in 1920. The Germans are here first, next the Irish, and they are not wanting for Polish peoples to work at their work. Mama Warshawski tells me how they are calling Papà Warshawski names when he looks for work, stupid Pollack and worse. And Tony, he must do many hard jobs at the police, they are Irish, they not liking Polish peoples. Is always the way, Marie, is sad, but is always the way, the ones coming first want to keep out the ones coming second.”

I hugged my knees, shivering as my sweat dried. It seemed as though everywhere I turned these days, I was being forced to think back forty years to those hot riot-filled days. Or to the January blizzard that followed. Johnny Merton, Lamont Gadsden, and now, tonight, Arnie Coleman, with his veiled racist comments: That’s when this city started going to hell… cops forced to turn on their own neighbors.

They had busted up the South Side, those riots. My father, coming home after four days on shift without a break, had been shaken by the hatred he’d experienced, directed at him and his fellow officers, and even at some nuns who were marching with Dr. King. “You can’t believe the insults these Catholic boys shouted at the sisters. People I went to Mass with when I was a boy,” I’d heard him tell my mother when he finally got off duty.

I pulled on a sweatshirt and shorts. Peppy followed me into the dining room, where I knelt in front of the built-in cupboards and pulled out the drawer where I keep a photo album of my parents.

I brooded over their wedding picture: City Hall, 1945. My mother, in a severely tailored suit, looking like Anna Magnani in Open City. My father, in his dress uniform, bursting with astonished pride to be marrying “the most extraordinary woman I ever met.”

Petra’s father, Peter, a late thought in my grandparents’ life, was a child in a sailor suit in the family photo. My grandfather, who died when I was small, was there, tall and big-boned like all the Warshawskis. Boom-Boom’s parents appeared in several photos, my aunt Marie characteristically looking sourly at her immigrant sister-in-law, my uncle Bernard giving Gabriella a most unbrotherly kiss. I looked more closely at that picture. Maybe that explained some of Aunt Marie’s sourness.

Pictures of me didn’t appear until much later. I was a late thought, too, in a way. My mother had three miscarriages before I was born, and two more after, a sign, or maybe a cause, of the cancer that grew inside her and silently overwhelmed her.

I found a family shot at the beach when I was three: my mother, in a rare moment of relaxation, looking more like Claudia Cardinale than Anna Magnani; me, grinning over my sand bucket; my dad, in swimming trunks, bending over her and me. His two pepperpots, he called us.

I flipped the pages. Softball in Grant Park. My dad played on one of the teams the department fielded. I used to know most of the men he played with. I frowned over the team picture now, reading the names printed underneath in my father’s curious boxy script. Bobby Mallory, in his rookie year on the force, playing shortstop. Two men who’d died in the last few years had been in the outfield.

My eyes widened in surprise as I looked at the man next to Bobby: George Dornick. He’d been part of Brian Krumas’s entourage last night. After the drumrolls and trumpets gave Krumas a royal fanfare, those of us lurking around his father’s table met the candidate and entourage. Dornick was running a big private security firm these days. He was advising the candidate on terrorism and Homeland Security issues.

It’s not strange to find ex-cops running private security firms. It was strange meeting him last night and now seeing him forty years younger, with his hair still brown and thick, grinning with my dad and Bobby and the other men I’d known. If Tony hadn’t died, maybe he’d have gotten rich doing private security, too.

I finally put the album away and went back to bed, but I couldn’t relax into sleep again. I found a bottle of blueberry juice in the cupboard and took a glass out to the back porch. Peppy, who’d wandered down into the yard, gave a short bark. I leaned over to see the back gate starting to open. Peppy stood stiff-legged, growling. I called to her, but she stayed at attention, growling more loudly as a luminous white shape appeared.

I started down the stairs in my bare feet but stopped on the second-floor landing when I realized it was my new neighbor returning home with his bass in its large white case. Peppy changed at once from warrior to cheerleader, circling around him as he came up the stairs.

“That’s a good feeling, someone to greet you at the end of a hard day. I was feeling sorry for myself just now, coming home to an empty apartment.” He was in black tie tonight, but he’d put the tie in a pocket and undone his shirt. “What are you doing up so late?”

“Indigestion. I ate too many politicians for dinner last night. What about you? Isn’t it three or something?”

“We finished at Ravinia, and one thing led to another,” he said vaguely, making me suppose he’d been with a lover. He leaned the bass against his kitchen door. “What politicians were you eating?”

“My cousin-the tall kid you may have seen around here-she has a bit part in the Krumas machine. She dragged me to a high-end event. At least my ex saw me looking my best, not the way my clients will in a few hours.”

“Oh, these exes! At least yours probably isn’t an oboe player. Their main relationship is with their reeds.”

“Mine was wound up most in his billable hours. But I brought my own faults to the table,” I added somberly, thinking again of Morrell and my failure to make that relationship work.

I left Jake Thibaut at the third-floor landing and went back inside. I tried to sleep the few hours that remained before I had to go downtown for my seven-thirty meeting. After I finished my presentation-more by luck than skill-I went to my office to check in with Marilyn Klimpton from the temporary agency. I tried to focus on reports and e-mail, but I was too sleep-deprived. I went back home to bed.

I WAS AWAKENED A LITTLE BEFORE THREE BY ANOTHER family drama: Mr. Contreras’s daughter, Ruthie, arriving from Rolling Meadows with her two sons, was shouting at her father from the doorstep. Mitch and Peppy were barking furiously.

Once again, I went to the street window to look down. The dogs were waving their tails as they barked to show they didn’t mean serious harm. Ruthie was standing on the cement slab in front of the door while her teenage sons lingered behind, looking as though they’d rather be anywhere than here. From above, I had a clear view of the black roots sprouting in Ruthie’s bleached hair.