Sara Paretsky - Hardball

“And Tony was sent to Lawndale and Larry got a promotion,” I said softly. “And Peter got a big job with Ashland Meats. And then, a month before the big snow, Larry Alito brought the baseball over to our house. I don’t understand why Alito didn’t hang on to it himself, but he gave it to Tony. He said Tony should keep it because he, Larry, had kept Peter out of prison.”

There was another silence around the table, until Bobby asked, “Where’s the baseball, Vicki?”

“In the trunk of my car. I think. Unless George here broke in and swiped it.”

Dornick made a gesture, a man who can’t believe he let the big one get away, but he didn’t say anything.

“But what happened to Lamont?” I asked. “Lamont Gadsden? He had the pictures and he disappeared.”

“Merton must’ve killed him,” Dornick said. “Another useless gangbanger whose ma cries that her little boy never did anything wrong in his life. Oh no, it was his auntie, you say?”

“Lamont Gadsden came into the Racine Avenue station early in the morning of January twenty-sixth,” Detective Finchley read from the bulky file in front of him. “The desk sergeant logged him in, with a note that he had evidence in the Newsome case. The sergeant paged detectives Dornick and Alito, who took him away with them. There is no record of him leaving the station.”

The night wore on from there endlessly. Peter and Harvey and George seemed to be fighting over who had done what, and I knew, in a detached way, that that was a good thing because one of them would be forced to admit something pretty soon. I wondered what little world Elton was inhabiting right now and if it was possible to join him there rather than continue at the table with these men.

Around two in the morning, Freeman said he didn’t think I could be of any further assistance. He assumed Bobby was dropping the notion that I had anything to do with Larry Alito’s death.

“Karen Lennon…” I said. “Before I go, I need to know that she’s all right. She dropped me downtown a hundred hours ago when I saw George’s team closing in on us.”

Finchley gave me one of his rare smiles. “She a pastor? About as big as a minute? She’s okay. She’s been on the phone to the captain all night.”

I felt myself smiling in relief and turned to Dornick as I got to my feet. “You just can’t kill everyone, Georgie. There’s always going to be someone left behind who lets the truth creep in.”

Petra rose to join me. She looked small and frail despite her height. The two of us roused Elton, who was murmuring something only he could understand. Freeman then drove us to my place, where we woke Mr. Contreras and the dogs.

Mr. Contreras had a fine time fussing around us. He even let Elton use his shower and a razor while Petra and I cleaned up in my place.

When we came back down, we found that Elton had drifted off into the night. Mr. Contreras said, “He thanked me for the razor and the clean clothes, but he said to tell you two gals that he needed to be by himself for a while, said you’d understand. Now, you come in here, I been frying eggs and bacon. Peewee here, she ain’t nothing but a walking bone right now. And V. I. Warshawski, you don’t look much better.”

I helped Mr. Contreras make up his spare bed for my cousin. She was asleep within seconds of lying down, with Mitch curled up alongside her. I took Peppy up to the third floor, and didn’t even remember locking my door.

MISS CLAUDIA WENT HOME TO JESUS IN SPLENDID STYLE. The women wore the kind of hats you used to see at Easter, heavy with birds and flowers and ribbons, so that the weather-beaten room looked like a gaudy garden. The music shook the rafters, and the people spilled out of the small church onto Sixty-second Place. Pastor Karen officiated, which sent a buzz through a congregation that thought women should be silent in church, but Sister Rose was firm. This was what Miss Claudia had wanted.

Curtis Rivers came to the funeral, along with his two chess-playing pals. The three men wore suits, and I didn’t recognize them at first. Sister Carolyn and her other sisters from the Freedom Center were there, singing gospel as energetically as any of the regular members of the congregation. Even Lotty and Max came, to show their support for me.

Miss Claudia lingered for almost two weeks after I had found the negatives in Lamont’s Bible. I tried to visit her most days, just to sit with her, talk to her quietly, sometimes about my ongoing search for Lamont, sometimes about nothing much at all.

Harmony Newsome’s murder had become page-one news once again. It seemed as though the whole country was glad to feast on Chicago’s notorious corruption. We were a welcome break from the grim economic news and the predictable disappearance of the Cubs.

Bobby Mallory was at his bleakest during those weeks. He was taking part in a special housekeeping task force, and, from everything I was hearing, he was unsparing in his investigation. But it was painful for him to have to recognize the history of corruption and abuse among the men he’d spent his life with.

Dornick and Alito were by no means the only culprits. They could never have treated suspects so vilely without active collusion up and down the chain of command. Sixteen other officers who’d served at the Racine Avenue station came under federal investigation for allegations of brutality. It was shocking to see that the torture of suspects had continued at least into the nineties. Given the climate of torture cultivated by the U.S. Department of Justice in recent years, some cops apparently felt they had no reason to hold back on their own forays into “extreme rendition.”

Bobby wouldn’t talk to me about it directly, but Eileen Mallory came over to my apartment one afternoon for coffee and told me how betrayed he felt by the relentless revelations of abuse. “The department’s been his whole life. He’s feeling that he dedicated himself to, I don’t know, you could say to a false god. And besides that, he always measured himself against your father, and he feels it deeply that Tony was willing to write a letter protesting the torture and that he, Bobby, did nothing but request a transfer so he wouldn’t have to work with Dornick or Alito. That letter ended your father’s career, you know. He never got another promotion after that.”

“But Tony didn’t stop it!” I burst out. “He watched it! He went into the room and told them to stop, but Alito said, ‘We’re doing it for your brother. For Peter,’ and Tony walked out again.”

Eileen reached across my coffee table to put a hand on my knee. “Vicki, sweetheart, maybe you would have gone in and made them stop. You’re courageous enough, reckless enough. You’re truly your mother’s child that way. But you don’t have a family to support. Families are terrible hostages for men like your father. What other work could he get to support you and Gabriella where he knew your health and welfare would be taken care of? Your mother, God rest her soul, she wore herself out giving piano lessons to little girls for fifty cents a week. You couldn’t live on that. Tony did the best he could under very painful circumstances. He spoke up. Do you know how much courage that took?”

After she left, I took a long walk with the dogs, trying to digest Eileen’s words, trying to reconcile the idea of the father I loved so intensely with the man who’d been a cop, done a job, knowing he was working with men who committed torture.

I remembered the letter he wrote me when I graduated from the University of Chicago. It was still in my briefcase all these weeks later, waiting for me to get it framed. Back home, I pulled it out and reread it.