Sara Paretsky - Hardball

I looked up his phone number and called the house up in Lake Catherine. When Hazel answered, I asked for her husband.

“Larry doesn’t want to talk to you,” she said in her gravelly South Side voice.

“I don’t want to talk to him, either,” I said, “but there’s something he needs to know. I figure I owe him a tiny favor, since he used to work with my dad. He’s been identified as one of the men who forced my cousin Petra to break into my office two days ago.”

She was silent.

“I’m going to call Bobby Mallory, but I’ll wait four hours before I do. You be sure to let Larry know, okay, Ms. Alito? Larry is one of the guys who-”

“I heard you the first time!”

The connection went, and I stared at the phone. I’d promised to wait four hours to call Bobby, but I hadn’t mentioned the press. I called Murray Ryerson’s cellphone and gave him the same message. Unlike Hazel Alito, Murray had a bucketful of questions, starting with who had made the identification.

“Murray, there’s a good possibility that every call I make is monitored, either by Homeland Security’s Chicago office or by Mountain Hawk Security, or both, so I’m not giving away confidential information over the airwaves. Anyway, it’s not a rock-solid ID. I’d double-check with Les Strangwell at the Krumas campaign-”

“Strangwell?” Murray’s normal baritone rose an octave. “What were you sitting on that the Krumas campaign cares about? Why would they hire-”

“Murray, darling, I’m spreading rumors right now. I don’t have any facts. I don’t think I have anything that the Krumas campaign cares about. All I can tell you for sure is that Strangwell did meet with Alito last week. And he asked Alito to do something for him.”

“Where are you? In your office? I’ll be there in twenty-”

“I can’t set up meeting times and places. I’m going to be on the move for the next few days. So, that’s all for now.”

I hung up on a barrage of questions. The phone rang again, as I checked that I had my wallet, keys, and gun. I pulled my Cubs hat low on my head. No moisturizers or unguents to protect my healing skin today. The Cubs, those frail reeds, would have to look after me.

My phone was still ringing as I locked my office door behind me. If anyone was monitoring my calls, I had only a few minutes to get out of the area before they had a watcher in place. I didn’t run up the street, but I walked fast, and I turned left at the first intersection.

As soon as I left Oakley, I was on a quiet residential street where it was easy to see whether anyone was with me. I moved north and west in a random way until I reached Armitage.

I needed to find a car that couldn’t be traced to me. I couldn’t rent one, I didn’t have my driver’s license. Even if I did, Homeland Security, if they were paying attention to me, they’d know the minute I rented a car or bought a plane ticket. While I was talking to Murray, I had suddenly thought of not only where I could get a car but also a bolt hole, assuming I could cover my tracks coming and going.

I walked to the El stop, not bothering to look around, and rode the train into the Loop. I got off at Washington Street and walked through the underground tunnel into the basement of the Daley Center, where traffic court and a bunch of other civil courts sit. Since I had my gun on me, I couldn’t do the safest thing, go through security and watch who came in after me, so I followed the maze of corridors and came on the underground entrance to a trendy Loop restaurant.

The staff were just gathering for the day, the Hispanic stockmakers and cleaning crew. They looked at me narrowly but didn’t try to stop me. I went through the doors into the kitchen and found an exit that took me into a parking garage. I walked up the ramp and out onto the street and made my way back to the El, where I rode the red line north to Howard Street.

It was a long ride, and I could watch all the changing characters who got on and off. By the time we reached the Evanston border, I was reasonably confident that I was clear. I changed to the Evanston train and rode it three stops. No one was with me when I got off. No bicycles circled around me, no cars passed and then repassed me.

Morrell and I had broken up in Italy, but I still had the keys to his condo. And I knew where he had hung the spare key to his Honda Civic. I couldn’t afford to use the phone to call anyone I knew, but I could spend the night, drive the city, even change my underwear. When I let myself in, I found my favorite rose-stenciled bra still hanging in his bathroom. I thought I’d lost it in Italy.

THE SHOEMAKER’S TALE

MORRELL’S HONDA STARTED ON THE FIRST TRY, WHICH was a relief. I’d worried that the battery might have run down after sitting in the garage for three months.

Going to Morrell’s place had left me melancholy. Little traces of my life surfaced wherever I looked-a pot of my moisturizer in the bathroom; Sleeping Arrangements, which I’d read aloud to him when he was recuperating from his bullet wounds, next to the bed. When I put away the juice I’d bought, I found a container of Mr. Contreras’s homemade tomato sauce in the freezer.

Morrell and I had spent two years together. He had put me back together when I’d been tortured and left for dead on the Kennedy Expressway, I’d helped him when he’d been left for dead in Afghanistan. Maybe that was the only time we could really help each other, when we were near death. When we were near life, we couldn’t sustain the relationship.

The tomato sauce made me realize I needed to notify Mr. Contreras, as well as Lotty and Max, about where I’d vanished to. The easiest person to tell would be Max because I could slip into Beth Israel through a side door and get to his office. If anyone was tracking me, they’d be keeping an eye on Lotty’s clinic, on Damen Avenue, as well as her condo on Lake Shore Drive. Since Max lived in Evanston, if my friends wanted to reach me Max could slip a note under Morrell’s door on his way home.

It felt queer to be alone in an apartment and to know I couldn’t use the phone. It was like being in an isolation tank. I quickly wrote a note to Max, telling him where I was, how to reach me in this age of the Internet, and asking him to get word to Lotty and Mr. Contreras.

I picked Morrell’s car keys from the top dresser drawer in his bedroom. Morrell’s extreme tidiness, which had been a source of friction between us-or maybe it was my extreme messiness that bothered him-was useful when it came to finding anything in a hurry. In my apartment, a team of skilled searchers had torn the place apart without finding what they wanted.

As soon as I pulled out of Morrell’s garage, I felt nervous and exposed. Morrell had been out of my life all summer. I didn’t think anyone hunting me would know about him, but I could be wrong. When all this was over and I had found Petra safe and sound, I would have to invest in a GPS jammer. That would force anyone tracking me to follow me physically instead of doing it the lazy electronic way.

Situations like this usually key me up. I get just nervous enough to be sharp while remaining confident about my ability to deal with whatever comes along. It was Petra’s disappearance, coupled with Sister Frankie’s death, that made me so skittish.

Deep breaths, V.I., I admonished myself, deep yoga/singer breaths. You and the breath are one. After a near miss with a Herald-Star delivery van, I decided meditation and driving weren’t an ideal mix and returned to skittishness. I forced myself to believe I was in the clear, got off the side streets and took the main ones to Beth Israel. When I got there, I circled until I found street parking. At the emergency-room entrance, I went in, head up, a confident walk; security didn’t try to stop me even though I didn’t have a badge on.