Hardball

They were watching me. They’d tailed me this morning. Were they watching Petra as well? “Damn it, little cousin, who are you working for?” Not Dornick, or he’d know where she was. Maybe he did know where she was. Maybe that was why he didn’t want me looking for her. I thought about flipping a coin. Heads, he doesn’t know where Petra is. Tails, he does.

Was that what they were all talking about in Strangwell’s office? How will it play out for Brian Krumas’s campaign if we produce Petra versus us leaving her in hiding? Was that why my aunt had gone back to Overland Park, because Dornick assured her he knew where the kid was and would produce her safe and sound? But that really made no sense, Petra helping thugs break into my office and then they put her on ice. Well, maybe I could see it. They didn’t want their thugs ID’d, so they wanted to keep Petra away from the cops.

On an impulse, I tried Rachel’s cellphone. It rolled over to her voice mail. I tried her home number in Overland Park. The phone was answered by a man, who refused to say who he was or where Rachel was, only that he would take a message for Rachel.

I couldn’t tell a complete stranger to ask Rachel whether Dornick knew where Petra was hiding. The man answering the phone could be anywhere in the world intercepting Rachel’s and Peter’s calls, and he could be working for anyone.

I gave him my name and number, but no other details, then demanded to know who he was.

“Someone who’s answering the phone.” He hung up.

I hugged my knees to my chest. After the Navy Pier fundraiser, Les Strangwell had pulled Petra onto his personal staff. It was then that she’d suddenly a

Peter and George Dornick wouldn’t care about Brian’s campaign, only Les Strangwell and the candidate’s father would put that first. But when I showed up una

“Was it a game to you, little cousin? Or did they utter those mystic, magic words, ‘national security,’ and get you to believe them? They told you under no circumstances to confide in me. What about your Uncle Sal?”

“Not Uncle Sal, Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam be watching you. He know when you be sleeping, / He know when you awake, / He say it all be for national security’s sake.”

My partner on the other side of the statue’s plinth was still in full throttle on the people he said were watching him. Since I myself kept talking out loud, it was hard for me to feel that I was a more stable girder on the bridge than him. When was it paranoia and when were they really watching you?

I got up and pulled a five from my pocket for my companion. One thing about our outbursts: they’d driven everyone else away from us. Although, these days, with so many people spouting their secrets into the ether, it was hard to know who had real friends and who had invisible ones.

I crossed Lake Shore Drive at Roosevelt Road and waited for a northbound bus at the natural history museum. My cousin was queen of the texters. When we were riding back from South Chicago together and I mentioned I hadn’t heard her on her phone, she’d confessed she’d been texting. Had she sent a message to Strangwell, telling him we hadn’t been able to get into the Houston Street house? Did he send a team down then to throw a smoke bomb into my old house so they could search for… what?

Petra texting. She’d been texting at the Freedom Center. Petra leaning in the doorway to Caroline Zabinska’s apartment, her hands busy in front of her. I’d been ninety percent unconscious, and she hadn’t thought I’d notice, but maybe she’d summoned the person who collected the bag of evidence I’d been gathering, those pieces of the Molotov cocktail bottles I wanted to send to the Cheviot Labs to test what kind of accelerant had been used.

The FBI and Homeland Security had both been watching the Freedom Center building, but they’d claimed they didn’t have any record of the person who’d broken in to get my evidence bag. So they knew who’d gone in and didn’t care. Or someone who had very big clout persuaded the feds to look the other way. They had photographed me going in that night, but not Petra. And not the person who’d stolen the evidence bag. And then, the very next day, the apartment was taken apart by some tame construction company, paid for by a man who wanted to make a donation to the sisters for the Freedom Center. Very cute.

Brian Krumas had said something critical during the meeting. It had only registered at the time as a faint puzzler, and now, playing back what I could remember of the conversation, I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was something about his relationship with my uncle, something that co

Petra wasn’t a drug user, I was sure of that despite putting the question to Peter. As for gambling or some other expensive vice, I couldn’t picture it. But I wouldn’t have pictured her breaking into my office, either.

I was tangling myself up like a bowl of cold spaghetti. Assume, for sanity’s sake, that Petra was an unwitting or unwilling partner in Strangwell’s machinations. She was an overgrown puppy, not a malicious schemer. If she was in over her head, I needed to help her out. If she was trying to hide out in this big, bad city, or if she was hitchhik ing to her friend Kelsey’s, Homeland Security, or even George Dornick’s Mountain Hawk Security team, could track her easily. I needed to warn her. They know when you’re sleeping, they know when you’re awake, and, if you’re texting, they can find you so fast it will take you completely by surprise.

I pulled out my phone. I didn’t have the nimble thumbs of a twenty-year-old, but I tapped out:

Petra: wherever u r, stop texting, calling. Take battery out of phone: disco

Trust me. Vic.

Please trust me, little cousin, I begged in my head. I promise if you are in the hands of baddies, I will not jeopardize your safety. But if you are hiding and scared, let me clear this up. I’m putting my best person on it.

Of course, I, too, could be traced through my cellphone. Piece of cake, for a sophisticated crew. I called my voice mail and left a message that I would be off cellphone for a while and gave the number of my answering service for people to call. I took out the battery and stuck it in my briefcase.

Five buses had stopped while I’d been churning over what I knew or didn’t know. I boarded the next one, a Number 6, that lumbered over to Michigan and slowly took me up to the hotel where I’d left my car this morning. When I handed my ticket through the cashier’s window, I was told someone had already paid for my parking. I asked to see the receipt, sure there was some mistake, but when the attendant found it it was for cash. No one could remember what the man looked like who paid the bill, but he’d described the car, told them the ticket number, even paid a lost-ticket premium.

Strangwell, or Homeland Security, wanted me to know they could find me and deal with me whenever it suited them. I drove home slowly, meandering along the side streets, not because I wanted to check for the tail that was surely behind me but because I was too tired for speed. They could find me and stomp me out. Why hadn’t they done so already? Maybe because they thought I had whatever it was they were looking for. As soon as I produced whatever it was, they would dispose of me. Sister Frankie’s head, full of flames, appeared in front of me, and I shuddered so violently that I had to pull over to the curb until it passed.