Hardball

“Don’t you think if Miss Claudia knew about the pictures, she would have pulled them out and had prints made?” I objected. “What I imagine happened is that Lamont went to consult Joh

“Maybe Lamont had prints made, prints that disappeared when he did, but he was smart enough to stash the negatives with the one person who really believed in him: his auntie. He couldn’t count on Rose Hebert. She was too much under her angry father’s control. And he couldn’t count on Joh

“Why?” Karen inched forward toward the Deerfield Toll Plaza. I fished in my wallet for exact change.

“She didn’t know about the pictures, but Ella kept claiming Lamont sold drugs. Claudia might have thought she was holding a packet of heroin or some acid or something.”

We were both quiet for a few car lengths, but Karen kept glancing at me, biting her lips. She finally blurted out, “There’s something you need to know, but I’ve been worrying about how to tell you. When I talked to my intern, she said some men had been around looking for me. They heard from the head nurse that you and I were both visiting Miss Claudia last night, and they thought I would know where you were.”

“Cops?” I demanded.

Karen shook her head. “My intern wouldn’t know something like that. She assumed they were, but she didn’t think to ask for any ID. And, after everything you’ve said today, I do wonder if they could be with George Dornick’s company.”

I rubbed my forehead. “That means they could be at your home. After we go to my lawyer’s, you’d better let me come back with you to check for an ambush. If it was Dornick’s people, he may also have dug up your cellphone number, which means they could be tracking us.”

I smiled bleakly. “No one is safe if they are around me. Dornick is doing an excellent job of driving that point home. Perhaps you and Bernardo could move into an empty room at Lionsgate Manor until this mess gets cleaned up.”

“I’ll be okay, Vic. They’ll believe me when I explain I’m just the pastor who’s been too naïve to see through you.” She made a soft O of surprise with her rosebud lips, and I laughed.

“It’s my Victorian face,” she added. “No one ever thinks I understand the big bad world. It’s you who’s in trouble and in danger.”

The traffic began moving marginally faster. I kept checking the road, using the makeup mirror in the sun visor and peering into the right wing mirror. The same cars crawled around us. I couldn’t tell if any of them were paying us special attention. It was when we oozed off the Ke

“We have company,” I said. “I’m jumping out before they pin us. I’ll try to send a cop your way.”

Before Karen could react or speak or even slow the car down, I had stuffed the envelope of negatives and prints into the back of my jeans and opened the passenger door. I held on to it tightly, got my feet and myself out and ru

I pushed through the first revolving doors I came to and sprinted through the arcade. I heard steps behind me, shouts of outrage as my pursuer collided with someone, but I didn’t waste time looking back.

The envelope was digging into my rear as I ran, but the pain reassured me that I still had my precious cargo. I should have left it at Cheviot. Regrets, save them for later, I panted to myself, and sprinted around a trio of slow-moving women to the building’s rear revolving door.

Wells Street seemed to be full of messenger bikes. Real messengers? Pursuers? Impossible to tell the difference. A bike jumped the curb and headed straight at me, another was approaching from the side. I could see the glint of a pistol in the first man’s hand. As he lifted it, I pulled off my Cubs cap and rolled on the ground. When he reached me, pointing the pistol at me, I stuffed the cap into the spokes of his bike. The bike wobbled, toppled. The pistol went off. The crowd screamed and scattered, and I sprinted up the stairs to the El.

A train was rumbling into the station. I shoved past a line of commuters sliding their cards through turnstile slots. They yelled at me angrily, and the stationmaster hollered in his microphone, but I jumped over the turnstile and ran up the final flight of stairs. I managed to squeeze through the train’s doors just as they were closing.

The car was packed. I collapsed, standing against the doors, sobbing for air, while the mass of commuters pressed into me. My gun was cutting into my side, the envelope into my back. My legs were trembling from my run and from my fear. I thought of Karen back on Monroe Street. I hoped that when they saw I’d gone, they’d left her alone. Please, please don’t let her be one more person injured in my wake.

For several stops, I rode without being conscious of where I was, moving away from the doors as we pulled into a station, leaning back against them when they closed again. We were heading north on the Brown Line, I finally realized. And, wherever it dropped me, there might be watchers waiting for me. How big an operation could Dornick afford to mount against me? How many El stops could he stake out? Was I making him more powerful than he possibly could be?

I couldn’t ride the train forever. I got off at the next stop, Armitage Avenue. It’s in the heart of Yuppieville, and there was a good crowd to cover me leaving the station.

Because it was Yuppieville, it was filled with a million little boutiques. I longed for a wig, something that would really transform me, but the best I could come up with was another hat, a white golfing cap. The thousand dollars I’d cashed last week was dwindling, but I bought a new shirt, too, replacing Karen’s navy T-shirt with a white one that proclaimed G-R-R-L POWER. Maybe it would rub off on me. It had been days since I’d had dark glasses on, and my eyes were aching from the glare. I went into a drugstore and found a cheap pair. And lipstick. In a coffee shop, I picked up an extra-large herbal tea and went into their restroom to wash off and plan my next move.

When I was clean, and rehydrated, I felt marginally better. But I couldn’t imagine any course of action, no way to get out of the area, no useful destination that would help me find Petra, no way to get my photos to Freeman Carter. By now, Dornick might have scoped out Morrell’s Honda. I couldn’t take a chance on doubling back to Lionsgate for the car. I couldn’t go home or to my office, although I was halfway between the two.

Outside the store, a homeless man was hawking Streetwise. “As long as you have a roof over your head and a family that loves you,” the guy in Mille