Sara Paretsky - Hardball

So the State’s Attorney’s Office organized a frame: get one of the Anacondas; they’re all guilty of something. Who knows why they picked on Sawyer or who put his name in play. Larry Alito? My mind flinched at the idea of naming my father. Arnie Coleman played along as the public defender conveniently assigned to the case. You choose the guy most eager for favors, most likely to play your game.

In Cook County, it didn’t take a genius, or even very much money, to persuade the head of the criminal defenders unit to give you a weak link. After all, by the time I was with the PD, and Coleman had moved into the number one chair, I saw him do it over and over. My coworkers and I knew money was changing hands. We just never knew how much.

I took a shuddering breath and looked at the four men. I needed to be a professional in this situation, which meant I had to pull myself together. I might not have another chance to talk to Kimathi.

“Mr. Kimathi… If I can, I’ll find the person who really did kill Harmony Newsome. But I’m afraid that means I need to ask you a few more questions.”

Kimathi swallowed convulsively and edged behind Curtis.

“At the trial, Mr. Kimathi, what did you mean when you said Lumumba had your picture?”

“That’s right, Lumumba has my picture.”

“But what picture?” I asked.

“He told Johnny. Johnny promised, and then no one came, they all left me. They all afraid the demons coming for them. I covered with demons.” He suddenly thrust his head under my face, bending over and skewing his body so that he looked at me sideways, his tongue sticking out like a Mayan mask. “See my demons? See how they crawling on me?”

I willed myself not to back away. “Those aren’t your demons, Mr. Kimathi. They belong to the detectives who tortured you. You tell those demons to go away, to go home where they belong.”

“Oh, they mine, they been living with me a long time. Pastor Hebert, he told me… he told me I’m bound for hell, hanging out with Johnny and Lumumba instead of coming to church. The demons, Pastor sent them to remind me every day.”

It was close to unbearable, talking to him, but I managed to keep my voice from cracking. “What about the pictures? What pictures did Lumumba have?”

Kimathi pulled his head upright and looked at Curtis, his brow wrinkled in worry. “Lumumba said he had a picture of who killed Harmony, but did I kill her? Did he have my picture?”

“You never killed her, Kimathi,” the machinist said. “And the white girl is right about the demons. They’re not yours. Send them to the person who owns them.”

As Kimathi spoke, I realized that was what my house-and-office wreckers had been hunting: the picture that showed who killed Harmony Newsome. That’s why Petra wanted to see my childhood homes, to see if Tony had taken that vital piece of evidence away, a picture that proved who killed Harmony. Would it be his brother in the frame? Would Tony go that far, out of loyalty to his family, and steal evidence and hide it at home?

“What happened to Lumumba?” I felt as though I were splitting in two, between the emotions pounding inside me and my calm investigator’s voice asking questions.

Curtis shook his head. “Johnny knows. It happened during the blizzard, that much I can tell you.”

“You were at the Waltz Right Inn the night before the storm,” I said.

Rivers nodded fractionally. “Lamont came in with Johnny, like Sister Rose said. They went off into the back room, talked between themselves, then came out, joined the party. Lamont took off about two a.m. And that was the last time we saw him.”

“Johnny went with him?”

“No. And they weren’t fighting. Believe me, if Johnny had wanted to put a hit out on Lamont, we all would have known. But we were scared about what was happening to Steve… to Kimathi. I think Johnny and Lamont were talking about that, talking about whatever pictures Lamont said he had.”

“You think Lamont is dead?”

“I’m sure Lamont is dead,” Curtis said. “Brother didn’t have anyplace to hide that we didn’t know about. Miss Ella, she had family in Louisiana. They would have taken him. But we still would have heard. If anyone knows what happened to Lamont, it’s Johnny. I thought Johnny had seen a demon himself, when the snow cleared and we all crawled out again. After that storm, he would never let anyone mention Lamont’s name on the street around him.”

I squeezed my forehead with my hand. “What can I possibly offer Johnny Merton that would get him to talk to me? He wants the Innocence Project working for him, but frankly-”

“He’s not innocent of what they sent him down for, but he never killed Lamont Gadsden.”

I fished in the handbag, looking for a tissue, before remembering the bag belonged to the shop. The machinist chess player pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and let me wipe my face and hands. All four of us knew what I could offer Johnny Merton: proof of who really killed Harmony, proof of who killed Lamont and where his body rested.

Kimathi telling his story, me collapsing in the face of it, that had shifted the relationships in the room. Rivers and his friends weren’t on my side, exactly, but I was no longer an enemy. I guess you could say I was on probation.

I looked at the soiled handkerchief. “I’ll wash this and get it back to you, but I have a lot to do first. A lot of ground to cover and not much time. You need to get Kimathi out of here. George Dornick knows where he is, and it would be pathetically easy for them to break in here. Kimathi has to go someplace where no one would think to look. And you have to make double and triple sure that no one is on your back when you move him. They’re sophisticated, and they have a lot of money to throw around.”

Rivers said, “I have a shotgun, and I was in Vietnam. I can look after-”

“No, you can’t. Dornick has firepower that makes Hamburger Hill look like a pie-throwing contest.”

“Listen to her, Curtis,” the lumberjack said softly. “She’s telling you for Kimathi’s sake. No time for ego-tripping here, brother.”

The machinist nodded. “We’ll take him away right now. You want him, Ms. Detective, you ask Curtis. Less you know, the better.”

He turned to Kimathi and began talking to him, cajoling him. Kimathi didn’t want to leave without Curtis. I thought I might start screaming. I wanted him out-now!-before Dornick or anyone else showed up here.

I parted the ropes to leave and realized I was still holding the red handbag. I returned and put it on the counter. “This bag has attached itself to me, Mr. Rivers… And I see, anyway, that I’ve stained it… I lost all my cards and whatnot in the fire, but, if you put it away for me, I’ll pay for it when I get the cash together.”

Rivers studied me up and down with somber eyes, then handed the bag to me. “I’m going to take a chance on you, Ms. Detective. You’ve extended yourself here today. And if you don’t come through with the money, heck, I can leave your body in George Dornick’s office, claim he was responsible.”

It was a feeble joke, but we had all been so tense that we burst out laughing. All but Kimathi, who jerked away when he saw me laugh. “They say I the song-and-dance man… They laugh.” That sobered me up in a hurry.

I asked Rivers to let me out through the back, into the alley, just to give myself a little comfort zone. On my way out, I again urged the chess players to follow with Kimathi as fast as possible.

Once I reached Morrell’s car, I moved quickly, pushed by a nervous energy so frantic that I found myself flooring the accelerator and taking terrible risks in the traffic on the Ryan. At least I wasn’t texting, or playing the tuba, at the same time.