Hardball

41

MY LEGS GAVE WAY, AND I FOUND MYSELF SITTING ON THE floor. Curtis Rivers looked down at me without pity, but I didn’t want any. “This for your brother”… “This for Peter.” Tony watched Alito and Dornick chain a man to a boiling radiator, watched them run a current through his genitals. My daddy-my wise and good and loving father… My hands were wet. I thought I would see blood when I looked at them, Steve Sawyer’s blood, the blood of every prisoner my father had watched in Dornick’s or Alito’s custody, but it was only tears and snot.

I don’t know how long I sat looking at the dust on the cracked linoleum, watching a spider crawl along the baseboard. I wanted to lie down on that floor and sleep away the rest of my time on the planet. After I’d found Petra, after I’d found Lamont, maybe I could curl up and die.

“This for Peter.” The Christmas Eve conversation I had remembered after seeing Alito came back to me again, my father saying, “You got your promotion. That’s enough, isn’t it?” and Alito replying, “You want to see him in prison?”

At last, I pushed myself up to a standing position again. My shoulders ached.

My father had been tense all fall after the summer of riots. I didn’t remember anything about the demonstrations that Harmony’s brother had organized with Sister Frankie, but they would have been outside my dad’s station. I could picture the tension inside the station, the Mayor’s Office putting heat on them, demanding an immediate arrest.

So the State’s Attorney’s Office organized a frame: get one of the Anacondas; they’re all guilty of something. Who knows why they picked on Sawyer or who put his name in play. Larry Alito? My mind flinched at the idea of naming my father. Arnie Coleman played along as the public defender conveniently assigned to the case. You choose the guy most eager for favors, most likely to play your game.

In Cook County, it didn’t take a genius, or even very much money, to persuade the head of the criminal defenders unit to give you a weak link. After all, by the time I was with the PD, and Coleman had moved into the number one chair, I saw him do it over and over. My coworkers and I knew money was changing hands. We just never knew how much.

I took a shuddering breath and looked at the four men. I needed to be a professional in this situation, which meant I had to pull myself together. I might not have another chance to talk to Kimathi.

“Mr. Kimathi… If I can, I’ll find the person who really did kill Harmony Newsome. But I’m afraid that means I need to ask you a few more questions.”

Kimathi swallowed convulsively and edged behind Curtis.

“At the trial, Mr. Kimathi, what did you mean when you said Lumumba had your picture?”

“That’s right, Lumumba has my picture.”

“But what picture?” I asked.

“He told Joh

I willed myself not to back away. “Those aren’t your demons, Mr. Kimathi. They belong to the detectives who tortured you. You tell those demons to go away, to go home where they belong.”

“Oh, they mine, they been living with me a long time. Pastor Hebert, he told me… he told me I’m bound for hell, hanging out with Joh

It was close to unbearable, talking to him, but I managed to keep my voice from cracking. “What about the pictures? What pictures did Lumumba have?”

Kimathi pulled his head upright and looked at Curtis, his brow wrinkled in worry. “Lumumba said he had a picture of who killed Harmony, but did I kill her? Did he have my picture?”

“You never killed her, Kimathi,” the machinist said. “And the white girl is right about the demons. They’re not yours. Send them to the person who owns them.”

As Kimathi spoke, I realized that was what my house-and-office wreckers had been hunting: the picture that showed who killed Harmony Newsome. That’s why Petra wanted to see my childhood homes, to see if Tony had taken that vital piece of evidence away, a picture that proved who killed Harmony. Would it be his brother in the frame? Would Tony go that far, out of loyalty to his family, and steal evidence and hide it at home?

“What happened to Lumumba?” I felt as though I were splitting in two, between the emotions pounding inside me and my calm investigator’s voice asking questions.

Curtis shook his head. “Joh

“You were at the Waltz Right I

Rivers nodded fractionally. “Lamont came in with Joh

“Joh

“No. And they weren’t fighting. Believe me, if Joh

“You think Lamont is dead?”

“I’m sure Lamont is dead,” Curtis said. “Brother didn’t have anyplace to hide that we didn’t know about. Miss Ella, she had family in Louisiana. They would have taken him. But we still would have heard. If anyone knows what happened to Lamont, it’s Joh

I squeezed my forehead with my hand. “What can I possibly offer Joh

“He’s not i

I fished in the handbag, looking for a tissue, before remembering the bag belonged to the shop. The machinist chess player pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and let me wipe my face and hands. All four of us knew what I could offer Joh

Kimathi telling his story, me collapsing in the face of it, that had shifted the relationships in the room. Rivers and his friends weren’t on my side, exactly, but I was no longer an enemy. I guess you could say I was on probation.

I looked at the soiled handkerchief. “I’ll wash this and get it back to you, but I have a lot to do first. A lot of ground to cover and not much time. You need to get Kimathi out of here. George Dornick knows where he is, and it would be pathetically easy for them to break in here. Kimathi has to go someplace where no one would think to look. And you have to make double and triple sure that no one is on your back when you move him. They’re sophisticated, and they have a lot of money to throw around.”

Rivers said, “I have a shotgun, and I was in Vietnam. I can look after-”

“No, you can’t. Dornick has firepower that makes Hamburger Hill look like a pie-throwing contest.”

“Listen to her, Curtis,” the lumberjack said softly. “She’s telling you for Kimathi’s sake. No time for ego-tripping here, brother.”

The machinist nodded. “We’ll take him away right now. You want him, Ms. Detective, you ask Curtis. Less you know, the better.”

He turned to Kimathi and began talking to him, cajoling him. Kimathi didn’t want to leave without Curtis. I thought I might start screaming. I wanted him out-now!-before Dornick or anyone else showed up here.