Sara Paretsky - Hardball

I wish I could say there’s nothing in my life I regret, but I’ve made some choices, too, that I have to live with. You’re starting out now with everything clean and shiny and waiting for you. I want it always to be that way for you.

After a time, I walked down to Armitage and gave the letter to a framing shop. We picked out a frame in green, my mother’s favorite color, with a gay pattern around the edge. I could read it and feel well loved. And know what he regretted, and mourn that. And try to realize that you never fully know anyone, that we, most of us, live with our contradictions. I, too, have my flaws, the hot temper he’d also warned me about in the letter, the temper that had frightened my cousin so much it almost cost her her life. Could I learn from that terrible mistake?

Of course, I wasn’t the only daughter trying to come to terms with a flawed father. My cousin had more serious issues to face than I did. At least Petra had her mother and sisters to help her try to cope with the shocks they’d all suffered during the last month. The day after our marathon night at police headquarters, Petra flew down to Kansas City to be with them.

My aunt Rachel was bewildered and unsure of what she wanted to do, whether to support Peter through his upcoming legal travails or take her girls and start over without him. Peter was staying in Chicago for the time being, renting a studio apartment on the Northwest Side. Petra wouldn’t talk to him, and he and Rachel weren’t talking often.

When Petra decided at the end of a week that she wanted to return to Chicago, Rachel flew back with her to spend a few days with her at her loft. My aunt made me take them to see Kimathi at Curtis Rivers’s shop. Rachel wanted to see for herself the person who had suffered on Harvey Krumas’s behalf. Kimathi was in agony in our presence, and Rivers ushered him out after a few minutes.

“I’m so sorry,” my aunt kept whispering. “I’m so sorry.”

Rivers nodded with his usual grim expression and didn’t say anything. Rachel blinked at him helplessly. She finally asked if Kimathi needed any financial help… would they send him to a good therapist or find him an apartment if she footed the bill?

“We’re looking after him. He doesn’t need your help.”

Rachel turned to leave, her legs unsteady as mine when I’d been with Kimathi and Rivers. I followed her, and was startled when Rivers touched my arm just before I triggered the train whistle.

“That red bag, Ms. Detective. It’s working well for you, is it?”

I nodded warily. I had brought the bag with me, and a check for five hundred and thirty dollars, which I’d laid on the counter while Rivers was taking Kimathi into the back of the shop.

“You earned it, I figure. Use the money to help some other poor bastard.” He stuck the check into one of the bag’s outer pockets and pushed me through the ropes before I could say anything.

My aunt was silent while we drove back north, but when I stopped in front of Petra’s place she said, “It’s so hard to know what to do. You think you’ve married one man and it turns out to be like one of those bad movies where Goldie Hawn learns the man she thought she married was someone completely different. I’m so… so derailed in my life, I hired a detective to make sure Peter and I were legally married. Peter’d concealed so much from me, I thought he was capable of hiding another wife and family.”

“What will you do?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s such a cliché, all these wronged women who stand by their men, like the New York governor’s wife. I’m furious with Peter! I don’t want to stand by him. And then there’s the money. We make so much money, we have so much, and it all came to us because a man was tortured. Peter got rewarded for that poor man spending his life in prison, and turning into that… that pathetic-” Her voice gave way, but she controlled herself and then went on with an effort. “Petra… She’s always been so much Peter’s child. He wanted a boy, he was sure she’d be a boy, so he’s always called her Petey, and taken her hunting and so on. She was always bolder than her other sisters, the four that followed her, until I told him he had to cherish his girls, he couldn’t be imagining they were less than a boy would be. And now Petra is having as much trouble as I am trying to figure out who she is, what she thinks about him.”

She gave me a painful smile. “You did so much for Petra, and you got badly hurt yourself. Your body, that is. But I know you’re suffering inside over what your father did. I think all Peter’s and my money is dirty, but I want to pay you for your, oh, your time and trouble. I know you’re not getting a fee for all the hours and days you lost because of us. And while I’m still married and have that joint account, you should have some of it.”

She handed me an envelope. Later, when I opened it and found a check for twenty-five thousand, I almost threw it out. The money was tainted, I told Lotty. I couldn’t possibly accept it.

“Victoria, all money is tainted.” Lotty smiled faintly. “Especially reparations money. Take it. Pay your bills. Go back to Italy, do something for yourself or something for Mr. Kimathi. It won’t change his life if you have to file for bankruptcy. And cashing the check doesn’t put you under any obligation to your uncle.”

I cashed the check and gave part of it to the Mighty Waters Freedom Center. But the rest I was thankful to use on my bills. Rachel returned to Kansas City and her other daughters, but Petra stayed on. She couldn’t go back to the campaign, and not just because she didn’t want to be around the Krumas family. Brian Krumas shut down the campaign once all the charges and countercharges began coming to light.

His Bobbyesque hair in his eyes, Brian stood in front of a bank of cameras and said he couldn’t possibly be a good public servant when his family had colluded in torture to save themselves from the consequences of their own role in killing a civil rights worker. Of course, he looked heroic on television, and those of us cynics watching felt sure he’d be back on the campaign trail sometime soon. Still, it made me think well of him.

Meanwhile, Petra was at loose ends. She spent hours every day running with the dogs and watching horse races with Mr. Contreras. One afternoon, she tentatively broached her earlier suggestion that she work in my agency for a time, but I didn’t think either of us was ready for that. I needed a vacation from my family. Finally, I sent Petra over to Sister Carolyn at the Freedom Center. Petra owed Elton a new home, and Sister Carolyn was able to recruit some people from Habitat for Humanity, who showed Petra how to construct a simple place on the river where his old shack had stood.

Carolyn had wanted to give Elton Sister Frankie’s apartment as soon as it was fixed up, but Elton’s brief moment of heroism hadn’t worked any miracles in his ability to be around other people. He wanted to be alone, away from the sounds and smells of others at night. Still, we capitalized on the desire of every public official in Chicago to show what good guys they were-we got the city to donate a piece of land, the equivalent of a quarter of a city lot, down by the river where Elton’s shack had stood. And when Petra and Habitat had finished his little house, we even got Elton hooked up to city water.

Petra still didn’t feel comfortable talking to her father, although he was cooperating fully with both state and federal authorities in the numerous investigations that were taking place. Some were looking at the cover-up of Harmony Newsome’s murder. Others were looking into the allegations of torture at the Racine Avenue station. And, of course, there was Larry Alito’s murder. And Sister Frances’s.