DORNICK LUNGED FOR THE BAG, BUT ONE OF THE UNIFORMED men put a hand on his shoulder. Another picked up the bag and handed it to Bobby.
“Let the record show that these negatives, which had been in Claudia Ardenne’s Bible and came into my possession last night, are being given to Captain Robert Mallory. There are two dozen negatives, in two strips of twelve each, from film Lamont Gadsden shot in Marquette Park on August 6, 1966.” Nothing in my voice betrayed my overwhelming relief or surprise that Petra had saved the negatives.
Bobby sent for an evidence technician. While we waited, the black trash bag sat next to him on the table. A pool of brackish water spread around it. Dornick couldn’t take his eyes off the water or the bag.
When the tech arrived, Bobby told her that there was valuable evidence in the bag, that he wanted to see the negatives after they’d been saved and logged in. She put the trash bag in a bigger bag, saluted, and left.
There was a commotion in the hall about then, and Harvey Krumas came into the room, trailing lawyers, like a peacock spreading his tail feathers. Freeman arrived at the same time. He was impeccable in black tie, his white-blond hair trimmed within an inch of its life. Les Strangwell was at Harvey’s side.
Freeman inserted a chair next to mine. “Vic, why is it that when you’re in extremis, you stink from mud wrestling? Why can’t you ever call me when you’ve had a shower and are wearing that red thing?”
“I want to be sure you love me for myself, not for the outer trappings of frilly femininity. There are a couple of waifs at the table who need help… Elton Grainger”-I gestured toward Elton, who’d shrunk deep inside himself while we had been talking-“and my cousin, Petra Warshawski.”
“Petra doesn’t need your help!” Peter said. “She’s got me here.”
“You’re a suspect in a murder case, Peter. And your shenanigans put her life in danger. So I think it would be best if you let Freeman represent her for the time being.”
“Peter, George, Bobby,” Harvey interrupted, “this is shocking. Let’s get it all sorted out fast so we can go home to bed.” Harvey, the big man, very much in charge.
“In a moment, Mr. Krumas,” Bobby said. “Let’s just finish with these pictures. I think you’ll recognize them.”
He nodded at a uniformed cop, who took the photo book from the table in front of Peter and opened it at the page that showed a young Harvey doing a victory dance while Peter pointed a finger at him.
“That’s you in Marquette Park in 1966, Mr. Krumas,” I said helpfully, “seconds after you threw the nail-studded baseball that killed Harmony Newsome.”
Krumas stared at the photo. One of his lawyers kept a firm grip on his shoulder.
“Just before you got here, Captain Mallory was explaining that Larry Alito picked up the baseball,” I added. “Why did he do that?”
“George…” Peter said hoarsely. “George told him to do it.”
“Goddamn it, Peter, I can sue you for slander if you say one more word,” Dornick said.
“You threatened my daughter, you threatened my wife and little girls, you want me to watch your back now?” Peter said. “Jesus! It was a riot, we were young, we were hotheads. Harve and I, we went over to the park to see what was happening. We wanted to see the famous Dr. King who all the hoopla was about. Harvey brought his Nellie Fox ball. He showed it to me, it was packed full of nails. ‘If I get a shot at King Nigger, I’ll take it.’ That’s what he said.”
“Warshawski, after all we did for you, for you to turn on me like this, it’s really hard,” Harvey said, more in sorrow than anger.
“Yes, your father gave me a job, he got me my big start in life. But did that give you the right to try to kill my girl?”
“Don’t get so emotional, Pete,” Dornick said. “No one wanted to kill your girl. We just were getting her to help us with Harve’s boy’s Senate campaign.”
I stared at him, rocked, the way one always is at such monumental lies. Freeman shook his head warningly: Don’t attack him in here. Leave that to me.
“So Harvey had a shot at Dr. King,” I went back to the main story. “He threw the ball. Only Johnny Merton, standing next to King, pushed King’s head out of the way.”
I reached for the photo book and flipped through it to show the Hammer’s arm pushing King’s head out of the way. “Your ball hit Harmony Newsome and killed her, Mr. Krumas. And George helped you out… because you all grew up together on Fifty-sixth Place.”
“George had to put on his riot gear and be Mr. Cop, turn against his own, but he knew where his loyalties lay,” Peter said. “With us, with the neighborhood we were fighting to preserve. Have you been down there? Have you seen what those people did to our house? Ma looked after that place-”
“It’s very hard, Mr. Warshawski,” Detective Finchley said smoothly. “Very hard for everyone who lived through that time.”
It hadn’t even registered with Peter that there were black police officers in the room-not just Terry Finchley but three uniformed officers as well. My uncle’s face turned the dull mahogany of embarrassment, and Petra’s pale skin blazed crimson under its caking of mud. I felt pretty shame-filled myself.
“And George knew where his true loyalties lay,” I prompted. “Not with the city he’d sworn to serve and protect but with his homeys, with Harvey, whose daddy owned Ashland Meats, and with you, Peter. His high school buddies. George wasn’t far away when Harvey threw that baseball. He saw what happened.”
Bobby was still looking at a place over my head, but he nodded in my direction. So I went on.
“George sent Larry Alito into the middle of the marchers to pick up the ball. Alito turned himself inside out with excitement, a rookie getting to play with the big boys. He did what he was told, and George saw he got a promotion right away. Rookie to junior detective, no questions asked. Alito took to the job like the proverbial duck.
“When the heat came down from the Mayor’s Office to arrest someone for Ms. Newsome’s murder and George decided one of the Anacondas could carry the can for Harvey, Larry was the eager boy who attached electrodes to the suspect’s testicles and ran a current through them until he fell apart and confessed to anything the detectives wanted him to say.”
Petra gasped in shock and turned to stare at Peter. Peter looked at the table in front of him. Detective Finchley was making an effort to control himself. I saw the pulse throbbing in his left temple.
“You’re making that up.” Dornick broke the silence. “There’s no evidence, no nothing, except a conviction in a court of law of one Anaconda scumbag who was guilty of murder three times over in other cases where we couldn’t make it stick. He was the Hammer’s go-to boy. And the Hammer, he was too slick for us. But we nailed that bastard for the Newsome murder.”
Bobby looked at Finchley, who opened the bulky folder in front of him. “Officer Warshawski filed a protest after your interrogation, Mr. Dornick. Warshawski put a written statement in the case file saying he had witnessed the suspect being subjected to extreme interrogation measures and that he believed the conviction was tainted.”
“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.