Hardball

Morrell’s car was still down near Lionsgate Manor. We agreed it might not be smart for me to show up there again tonight. Everything I wanted to do involved making phone calls, from talking to Murray Ryerson to finding Petra’s college roommate.

“You can make those calls from my house,” Karen offered. “I have an early meeting tomorrow, and it’d be easier on me if you spent the night with me than driving you up to Evanston.”

She rented the second floor of an old workman’s cottage on the Northwest Side. It was on a quiet street, a few blocks from the river, with a little balcony where she sat in the mornings to drink coffee. She showed me to the bathroom and gave me towels and soap. I was a good four inches taller than Karen, but I could wear her T-shirts. She gave me one to sleep in.

When I got out of the shower, Karen had opened a bottle of wine and set out a plate of cheese and crackers. A big orange cat she called Bernardo materialized and wrapped himself around her legs. Somehow, despite the traumas of the day, just being able to sit and talk naturally, even to laugh without worrying about who was eavesdropping, raised my spirits.

After a glass of wine, I felt able to call Murray for details about Alito’s murder. Karen had one of those phone services that lets you mask the number you’re calling from, so I didn’t need to worry about it showing up on Murray’s caller ID. Of course, as soon as Murray heard my voice he wanted to know where I was. And a lot of other tedious stuff.

“Murray, darling, as I said earlier, I’m on the move. The more time you waste asking frivolous questions, the less we have for a heart-to-heart. I haven’t heard the news, except a report that Alito’s body fetched up on the riverbank down by one of those big scrap-metal yards. Tell me what happened.”

“Warshawski, it’s all take with you and no give. I bought you a shirt, I bought you jeans, I let Dr. Herschel take a piece off me, and now this?”

“I know, Murray. Every time I see you in that sky-blue Mercedes convertible, I’m thinking, There he goes, the people’s reporter, never thinking of himself, always giving. So give.”

“Oh, damn you, Warshawski! Alito was shot at close range, very close range, by someone who probably had an arm around him, very pally, and then dumped him over the bridge. What I’m hearing, whoever killed him must’ve thought Alito would go into the river or get buried in scrap. Instead, he landed in a pile that was due to be brought up for remelting. The guy operating the forklift fainted, almost fell onto a molten rebar belt.”

Murray paused a beat, then said, “A lot of people think it’s quite a coincidence, you calling me this morning to tell me you’d spotted Alito breaking into your office and him showing up dead this afternoon.”

I drank some more wine. “Murray, does anyone at the Star feel attached to facts these days? Say, just in the interest of protecting the paper from a libel suit? I told you I’d found a witness who ID’d Alito. I couldn’t have spotted him at my office myself because I wasn’t there. I was in Stateville with the Hammer at the time Alito was breaking in.”

Murray brushed that off. “I talked to the widow… What’s her name? Hazel? Right… She said you’d threatened him.”

“Yep, I been hearing that. I told her exactly what I told you. I have a witness who ID’d him. Period, end of story.” I twirled the wineglass around, watching the light change the colors on the surface. I had changed Alito’s life, too, twirling a story around him as if he were wine in a glass.

“Of course I threatened him,” I said roughly. “I didn’t know my words would get him killed. I hoped they’d goad him into doing something that would betray himself or his handlers to me. But when I spoke, I pushed him and his handlers to the brink.

“Alito wasn’t going to take the fall alone, not if Mallory or the FBI were coming after him, so he called… whoever hired him. Let’s say, oh, George Dornick, his old partner when they were both with the force. Or one of Dornick’s clients… Call him Les, just to give him a name. Alito’s a drunk. He has a pension and a little boat and nothing else. Les and George are afraid he’ll crack. He can do heavy lifting for them, but not if he’s going to lead someone like Bobby Mallory straight to them.”

“Les?” Murray exploded. “Like Les Strangwell?”

“Good night, Murray. Sweet dreams.”

I hung up, and grimaced at Karen. “I think I really did send Larry Alito to his death. I think… I don’t like myself very much today.”

“Did someone really identify him going into your building?”

I shook my head. “It was a hunch, and apparently an accurate one, since it must have sent him scrambling to Dornick, or even Strangwell.”

I repeated Murray’s description of the murder. “It must have been Dornick… I can’t see Strangwell embracing Alito, either… But his old partner? The man who gave him odd jobs to help him run his boat and his little retirement bungalow on the water? Yes, Alito would feel he had to trust him.”

“Maybe you did set in motion the events that got him murdered today. But you can’t be greedy over guilt, you know. If he hadn’t been the kind of person who would break into your office, your phone call wouldn’t have made any difference in his life.” Karen looked at me earnestly, her round young face flushed.

“ ‘ Greedy over guilt.’ I like that. I have been greedily guilty all day.” My distress over my father swept through me again, a wave that made me shut my eyes in pain.

I changed the subject. We ended up drinking the whole bottle of wine and laughing over family stories, like the one about her grandmother whose father wouldn’t let her learn to drive so she took the family car and drove it into the horse pond and then calmly went in the house, packed a suitcase, and took off for Chicago.

It was close to midnight when I finally helped my hostess pull the sofa apart and turn it into a guest bed. For the first time in a week, I slept eight hours. Like a tranquil baby.

45

KAREN HAD ALREADY LEFT FOR HER EARLY MEETING WHEN I woke up. She’d made coffee and put a note next to the carafe, asking me to call her on her cellphone before I took off. “Someone needs to know where you are. I’m your pastor. They can’t compel my testimony.”

I smiled a little at the thought of Karen as my personal pastor. She didn’t get a morning paper, so I took a cup of coffee back to the sofa bed to watch the television news. After the daily economic horror story, Alito’s death dominated the morning shows.

Only Beth Blacksin, on Global Entertainment’s Cha

Beth’s story would force Dornick and Les Strangwell to spend some energy on damage control, which would take a little heat away from their searches for me and Petra. On the other hand, two of the networks mentioned the “Chicago private eye, whom police badly want to question, after hearing of threats she made against the dead man.” One of them even had put my photograph on the screen, fortunately an old one copied from a newspaper. It had been taken when I had a head full of curls, not my current Marine cut.

“And I want to question you, too, Bobby,” I muttered. “Who are you covering for? How much did you know back in 1967? You, too, were in Marquette Park during those riots.”

I got dressed, in my jeans and Karen’s T-shirt. I’d rinsed my underwear out in her bathroom last night, but my socks were kind of funky. I decided to borrow some from Karen, although I felt a few qualms going through her chest of drawers looking for a pair. Her underwear was severely utilitarian, but her socks were fanciful, almost kiddish. I skipped Hello Kitty and some bright red devils and angels and settled on a pair showing Lisa Simpson jumping rope.