Sara Paretsky - Hardball

“ ’ Ible,” Miss Claudia cried. “Fall… no.”

I bent to pick it all up for her, and I tucked the markers into the front of the Bible. The covers were thick and lumpy, as if the book had suffered from the damp.

“You’re always dropping that big thing,” Miss Ella said roughly. “Why don’t you leave it in the apartment and keep a small one with you that you can hang on to.”

“No.” Tears oozed out of Miss Claudia’s left eye. “Keep with me always.”

I pulled a chair up next to her left side and placed the Bible in her lap, where she could touch it. “Miss Claudia, I’m V. I. Warshawski…Vic. I’m the detective who’s looking for Lamont.”

“ ’ Tive?” she said, turning her head to me and getting the syllable out with difficulty.

“Yes, she’s the detective,” Miss Ella said loudly. “She’s the lady that’s taking our money and not finding Lamont for us. So maybe if she tells you why she can’t find him, you’ll let go of this idea.”

I took Claudia’s left hand and held it lightly between my own two. As slowly and clearly as I could, I explained who I’d talked to and what I’d learned, or hadn’t learned, about her nephew. She seemed to be following me, at least following some of it, interjecting a syllable here and there that sounded like the names I was reciting.

“I’ve been looking for Steve Sawyer,” I said. “He was Lamont’s friend. They were together the night Lamont left your home.”

Miss Claudia frowned. “Not ’Teve.”

“You don’t want a detective? You’d like me to stop looking?”

She shook her head. “No, no! You look, find ’Mont. Talk bad. ’Teve… S-s-s-t-uh-eve… not name.”

Miss Ella smiled grimly at my confusion. “She thinks his name isn’t Steve. But of course it is.”

“What is it?” I asked Miss Claudia.

“No ’member. Not ’Teve.”

The aide brought over a glass of apple juice, and I held it for Miss Claudia to drink. “Will Rose know his name?”

Miss Claudia smiled gratefully on the left side of her face. “As’ ’Ose. Love ’Mont.”

Yes, Rose Hebert had loved Lamont. “Do you know any of Lamont’s other friends?”

Claudia slowly shook her head.

I let her rest for a minute or two, then asked if she remembered Harmony Newsome. Claudia’s good eye brightened, and she struggled to tell me about Harmony and the neighborhood. I couldn’t make out much of her garbled syllables except that Harmony’s father had been a lawyer. I think Miss Claudia was telling me he had money, he could afford to send Harmony to college, but I wasn’t sure.

When I got to Harmony’s death and reminded Miss Claudia that Steve Sawyer had been convicted of her murder, I brought up what George Dornick had said. “Do you think Lamont told the police that Steve Sawyer killed Harmony Newsome?”

“Not ’Mont, no. ’Teve friend, baby, school, friend. ’Mont good boy. Not hell, good boy.” Tears leaked from her good eye again.

“See what you’ve done?” Miss Ella said with a kind of grim satisfaction. “My sister can’t help you. You need to leave, Miss Detective, and stop bothering us.”

Before I could voice my anger-she hired me, it wasn’t my idea to ride out to Stateville or get insulted by Curtis Rivers in the last few weeks-Miss Claudia said, “No, Ella. Find ’Mont, you.” She tapped my hand with her own good one. “’Mont ’Conda not. Friend Johnny, yes, ’Conda not. Leave, give-” She stumbled over the word and finally picked up the Bible and showed it to me. The markers fell out again.

“ ’ Mont… Ella give ’Mont ’Ible, he give me. Leave, see Johnny, he say, ‘Keep, keep safe, keep safe.’” She squeezed her eyes shut and struggled to speak. “I keep. ’Mont come, I give.”

“The night he left home, he told you he was going to see Johnny?”

“ ’ Es,” she managed to say.

“Then he gave you his Bible and told you to keep it safe for him, that he would take it back from you when he came home again,” I translated.

She smiled in relief that I had understood her but didn’t try to speak again. I picked up the markers and tucked them into the Bible. Before I gave it back, I turned the well-worn pages, looking to see if Lamont had left anything.

“I’ll do my best for you, Miss Claudia,” I promised.

She squeezed my fingers again with her weak left hand. When she smiled, I could see what a beautiful woman she’d been before her stroke. Miss Ella was frowning more deeply than ever, but I felt better about the case when I left. Not because I had any better ideas, but because I understood now how much it meant to Miss Claudia that I find her nephew.

I felt a little less optimistic after talking to Rose Hebert that night. She didn’t know what Miss Claudia meant, that Steve Sawyer wasn’t Lamont’s friend’s name. “Of course his name was Steve. Maybe he called himself Steven to be formal, but I don’t know what else Miss Claudia had in mind.”

AT SIX MONDAY EVENING, I RANG THE BELL TO SISTER Frankie’s apartment on the fringes of Uptown. She lived in a square box, the kind of characterless building that went up in the sixties, with metal-framed windows set level against the tan brick walls so that you didn’t even have a ledge to hold a window box. The Mighty Waters Freedom Center had offices on the ground floor. The rest of the building seemed to be private apartments, some with nuns; F. Kerrigan, OP, and C. Zabinska, BVM, for instance. From the other names, and the discarded toys I could see in the entryway, it seemed that a number of families lived here, too.

The building sat flush with the walk, without even a token patch of grass in front. No one looking at the cracks in the bricks or the open windows where fans tried to stir an evening breeze to life would accuse the sisters of violating any vows of poverty.

After a minute, I rang the bell again. The lock would have been easy to undo with a credit card, but I leaned against the door and watched the street while I waited. Someone had opened a hydrant on the far corner, and kids, mostly boys, were racing in and out of the jet of water. Couples embraced, at bus stops or in alcoves. A woman whose matchstick legs stuck out in front of her like Raggedy Ann’s was sitting on the bus stop bench beating her thigh with a shaky fist, muttering, “You can’t tell me that, you can’t tell me that.” In the alley, kids were lighting firecrackers: the Fourth was only a week away.

It had been a full day, and if I hadn’t been so impatient to hear what Sister Frances could remember of her day in Marquette Park forty years ago I would have gone home for an early supper and bed.

Karen Lennon had called around noon to thank me for visiting Miss Claudia. “Miss Ella is angry, but I’m glad you didn’t wait for me to give the green light. Miss Claudia feels much more at peace now. I think she’s ready to die, knowing that you are committed to finding her nephew.”

That statement had alarmed me: I realized Miss Claudia was frail when I saw her, but I hadn’t been imagining her as close to death.

Lennon tried to reassure me. “The doctor says she’s stable, but, with strokes, that can change rapidly, too. But after meeting you, and feeling reassured that you’re taking her seriously, that could make her feel less stress, so it could help her get stronger.”

When we hung up, I felt a renewed stab of urgency in the search for Lamont, but I didn’t know what I could be doing. With a sort of helplessness, I put in a second request to see Johnny Merton out in Stateville. Perhaps by the time the visit came through, I could think of some quid pro quo that would make the head snake speak to me. “Parseltongue, that’s what I need,” I murmured out loud as I brushed my teeth. A language for communicating with snakes.