Hardball

I reached across the table and pressed her free hand. “You didn’t kill her by being jealous of her, you know.”

She looked up briefly, her face contorted in pain. “All the boys followed her around, even the ones who went to our church, which is why I never could believe Lamont really cared about me. I figured he thought I’d be an easy mark, big old ugly girl like me no one else wanted. If he couldn’t have Harmony, he’d make do with me. But I don’t think any of the boys would have killed her, not out of jealousy like they claimed Steve did. She never went out with him, never went out with any local boys. Far as I knew, she was in love with the movement, not with any boy, not even some college boy in Atlanta with her same background.”

“Were Steve and Lamont at the Marquette Park march?”

“Daddy ordered everyone in our church to stay away, but Lamont and Steve, they ignored him. Joh

She sucked in a breath, remembering, and continued very softly. “Oh, Daddy was angry. He hated having his authority crossed. When Steve and Lamont did what Joh

This morning, George Dornick told me Lamont had been the person who fingered Steve Sawyer for him and Alito. I remembered the fu

“How angry was your father with Steve and Lamont?” I asked Rose abruptly. “Could he have turned them in to the police?”

“What a terrible suggestion! How dare you even think a thing like that!” She pushed her chair away from the table. “Daddy is the holiest man on the South Side!”

Like Tony had been the best cop on the South Side? Were we daughters always like this, always ready to leap to our fathers’ defense even against the evidence?

I looked into her flushed face. “Ms. Hebert, I apologize for speaking so bluntly. I shouldn’t have said the first thought that came into my mind. You say you don’t believe Lamont was a police informant, and certainly not your father. Who, then?”

She twisted her fingers together. “Does it have to be one or the other?”

“No. It could be someone I haven’t even heard of, some two-bit player in the Anacondas. But I went over to Stateville to see Joh

“You think Joh

“Oh, that Joh

She gave an unhappy bark of laughter. “My daddy would have looked at me and said, ‘Joy departs,’ so why am I standing up for him?”

“Where was your mother when you were growing up?” I asked.

“Mama died when I was eight. My gra

I paid for the pie and the coffee and drove Rose back to her home. During the short ride, she tried cleaning her face with a tissue. She couldn’t face her father looking distressed.

“He’ll think it’s about sex. At my age, with my life, he’s still sure I’m off having sex with strange men.”

“Go for it,” I said mischievously, pulling up in front of her house. “It’s not too late, you know.”

She looked at me, startled, almost afraid. “You are a very strange woman. Where would I even find a man who’d look twice at me?”

As she got out of the car, I remembered a final question. “Do you know where Steve Sawyer is now? I think Curtis Rivers and Merton both do, and they won’t say.”

She shook her head slowly. “He was in prison a long time. I know Curtis, he visited Steve. But I heard, maybe he even died there. Don’t be thinking Curtis would tell me. He doesn’t like me any more than, well, he seems to like you. He thinks I was always carrying tales back to Daddy when we were in high school. He can’t forgive that.”

She hesitated, then leaned back into the car. “You’re a good listener, and I appreciate that. I’m grateful.”

“That’s good. I’m glad.” I was a good listener because I needed her to tell me things, a thought which embarrassed me enough that I added, “You can always give me a call, you know, and talk to me again.”

She walked heavily up the steps, her shoulders stooped. No one would look at you with love, or even lust, if you were so bowed over, but she didn’t need me to tell her that.

I turned around and headed back to the expressway. By now, it was the height of the afternoon rush, and the Ryan was about as express as a turtle with corns. I was stalled on the overpass above the Sanitary Canal when my cellphone rang. I figured the risks of talking while driving didn’t extend to talking while parking, but I did almost hit the car in front of me when the woman at the other end said she was Judge Coleman’s secretary and could I hold for him.

“Judge! Thanks for returning my call. I’d like to stop by to ask you about one of your old clients.”

“We can do this by phone. I told you the other night to leave Joh

I ground my teeth. “Not the Hammer. One of your first clients, Judge, when you were a new-minted PD. Remember the Steve Sawyer trial?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Harmony Newsome’s murder. Do you remember her?”

He turned so quiet that I thought at first the co

The judge suddenly spoke again. “Why this interest in ancient history, Warshawski?”

I thought my answer over carefully. If I’d been able to meet with Coleman in person, transcript in hand, I would have tried to ask about all the gaps in the record-why he didn’t try to find out the name of the snitch, why he let the obvious collusion between the cops and the state’s attorney go by unchallenged-but, on the phone, I didn’t have any way of pressuring him.

“Steve Sawyer’s name keeps coming up in a missing-persons search I’m doing, but he’s disappeared as well. In fact, there’s no record of him at all after his trial. I’m hoping you have your old notes. I’m trying to find which prison he was sent to.”

“That trial was forty years ago, Warshawski. I remember it, my first high-profile case.” He laughed thinly across the airwaves. “I learned a lot from that trial, but I couldn’t possibly keep track of all the lowlifes who went through Twenty-sixth and California during my time there.”

I was finally on the farside of the canal. “Of course not, Judge, but the transcript did raise a number of interesting procedural questions.”