Sara Paretsky - Hardball

I pulled off the expressway, got out of the car, and tried to take some deep breaths, tried to regain some kind of center, but all I could see was my dad, the face I loved and trusted, looking through a one-way window into an interrogation room.

“You all right, there?” A police car had pulled up behind me without my noticing.

I felt the blood drain into my legs, but I clutched the car door and managed a smile. “Thanks. I had a cramp in my foot and thought I’d better get off to work it out.”

The officer tipped a wave but waited until I got into the car and slowly merged onto the Ryan. He followed me, as I studied traffic in my side mirrors, kept to the speed limit, signaled my lane changes. A bubble of hysteria kept threatening to overwhelm me. We serve and protect: the Chicago police motto. Was he protecting me? Was he making sure I hadn’t pulled over for a drug deal? Was he bored? What did he do in the station when he brought in a suspect?

I left the Ryan again at the main downtown exit and put the car in the underground garage near Millennium Park. I locked the red bag in the trunk. If I got to a point where I had to run, a bag like that would slow me down. It would also be easy for some tracker to follow.

Out on the street, the late August sun was blistering, and all that I had in the way of protection was my Cubs cap. No jacket, no lotions to protect my skin. I felt such a surge of self-loathing, anyway, that it seemed to me it would be good if the sun peeled the skin off my arms.

I was in too much of a hurry for public transportation and hailed a cab to take me to the top of Michigan Avenue. There’s a vertical shopping mall across the street from the Drake Hotel, where my uncle was staying. I went into the mall and found a stationer, where I picked up a pad of paper, an envelope, and a pen.

The Four Seasons Hotel was attached to the mall at the sixth floor. I walked through the connecting door into the subdued colors and calm of wealth, smiled at a concierge, and found an alcove where I could do some writing. I chewed on the capped end of the pen, trying to figure out what I wanted to say.

Dear Peter

Your big brother Tony covered your ass all those years ago, but I know now that you killed Harmony Newsome. There is no statute of limitations on murder, and I don’t feel Tony’s protective attachment to you, I won’t try to save you. What I’m wondering, though, is why you would sacrifice Petra. I thought at least you had a father’s normal love for his children.

If you want to talk to me, I will be in the gazebo across from the Drake for ten minutes. If you don’t show, I’ll be on my way. Will Bobby Mallory sit on the truth for you?

V.I.

I sealed up my note in the envelope and addressed it to my uncle. Across the street, I entered the lower lobby of the Drake, where there’s an arcade of shops. A bellman was standing near the stairs leading to the Drake’s main lobby. I gave him a five and asked him to deliver the envelope at once. Then I walked quickly through the arcade to the hotel’s north entrance.

It was 1:23 when I handed the letter to the bellman. Assume Peter was in his room. Assume the bellman delivered the envelope right away. Peter would call Dornick… or Alito… or Les Strangwell. Something should happen within twenty minutes.

Just across the street from the Drake is a little park, a triangle made by the hotel, Michigan Avenue on the left, and Lake Shore Drive as the hypotenuse. Beyond the drive lie some of the city’s most beautiful sand beaches. This time of year, the Oak Street Beach was packed with tourists, tanners, swimmers, and volleyballers, but the triangular park was essentially empty. A homeless man was asleep on a patch of grass outside its gazebo.

I walked along the row of cars parked on the south side of the triangle. Only one had someone sitting inside. There was a service van in front of one of the condos, and it could have held a surveillance team, but I didn’t think Dornick or Strangwell would feel the need to keep that sophisticated of a watch on Peter.

I walked back to Michigan Avenue, which was filled with shoppers and tourists. A trio of black youths banged homemade drums on the corner.

A tunnel goes under the avenue, but I crossed at street level. I was in the company of a woman who had a leash with a dog at the end of it in one hand and a cellphone in the other that was glued to her ear. A nanny with a baby buggy, also on a cellphone, was behind me. I felt reassuringly anonymous, just one more person in a ball cap enjoying the end of summer.

I sat on a bench in a bus stop on the far corner and watched the park. An elderly man with a toy poodle shuffled over from one of the condos near the hotel. The dog sniffed at late-blooming orange flowers while the man stared vacantly into the distance. A hard-muscled young woman jogged past the gazebo, down a ramp leading under Lake Shore Drive and to the beach. A few bicyclists emerged on the return route.

Seventeen minutes after I’d handed the envelope to the bellman, my uncle appeared. His hair was uncombed, his shirttails hung half out of his trousers. He certainly wasn’t resting easily these days. While he looked in and around the gazebo, I checked the opposite side of the street. No one was lingering on the sidewalks. No new cars hovered in the area. I climbed down the stairs to the tunnel under Michigan Avenue and emerged on the path to the beach.

“Peter!” I called sharply. “Over here!”

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU UP TO?” CLOSE UP, MY UNCLE looked worse than I’d thought. His eyes were bloodshot, he was unshaven, and he smelled of stale alcohol.

“What the hell are you up to, Peter, letting Petra take the fall so that you don’t have to face the-”

“Goddamn you, you ignorant bitch, I am protecting my daughter.” For a moment, we both thought he was going to hit me.

My mouth creased in a sour smile. “Sending her out to find police evidence that Tony squirreled away for you? Involving her in arson and criminal trespass at my old South Chicago house and at my current house and office?”

“You don’t know anything!” His roar brought the cyclists and joggers around us to a brief halt: Did I need help?

I smiled and waved at the concerned citizens, who were happy to leave us to our quarrel. I kept the smile on my lips and my voice light, conversational. We didn’t need to draw a crowd.

“I know that in 1967 Steve Sawyer was brutally tortured into confessing to a murder he never committed. I know he served forty years, doing very hard time, in your stead. And I know he thought there were some photographs proving who really killed Harmony Newsome in Marquette Park during that 1966 riot. I know that Larry Alito brought evidence of the murder over to our South Chicago house back around Christmas 1967 and that Tony took it to keep your sorry ass out of prison.”

“I didn’t kill Harmony Newsome,” Peter hissed.

“Then who did?”

Peter looked around, wondering who was listening. “I don’t know.”

“Brilliant,” I said. “ It wasn’t me, I wasn’t there, I didn’t do it. Every cop and every criminal lawyer hears that line a hundred times their first week on the job. You weren’t in Marquette Park, Tony didn’t take evidence, Larry Alito-”

“Shut up! I was in Marquette Park, okay? Is that a crime? It was my neighborhood park, my friends were all there.”

“What, you guys went there to play ball, and then suddenly, in the third inning, this huge riot broke out? And then what? You got lost in the crowd and started throwing bricks and rocks and stuff in the hopes they’d point you to your way home?”

“You’re just like your tight-assed bitch of a mother, acting like she was the Madonna and all the saints poured into one-”