Hardball (18 page)

23

VISIT A CLIENT . . . AND TALK

I DROVE OVER TO LIONSGATE MANOR SUNDAY AFTERNOON to meet Miss Claudia. I was tired of getting the runaround from her sister, and even from Karen Lennon, on when she would be fit enough to talk to me.

The building receptionist sent me to the skilled-nursing floor, where the head nurse told me that they’d taken Miss Claudia up to the rooftop garden. The nurse warned me that Miss Claudia was noticeably weaker and vaguer. She hadn’t been able to go to church this morning, and she had slept most of the day.

“On Sundays, when there’s no therapy, I like our stroke and dementia patients to have a chance to be outside. Even if she doesn’t seem responsive to you, she probably understands more than you’d think when you talk to her. Are you from the social welfare office?”

“No. I’m trying to find her nephew, Lamont, for her.”

The head nurse patted my hand. “That’s good of you. Real good. She talks about him all the time . . . at least as much as I can make out from what she’s saying.”

The “garden” turned out to be a dozen or so trees in pots enclosed by a low wooden fence. The manor had done what they could within their budget limits: window boxes with flowers and some vegetables hanging from the fence, big umbrellas making the space look almost gay, a place to get drinks, and, in one corner and under a canopy, a television set tuned to the White Sox game.

A couple of women were working over the tomatoes and peppers in one of the window boxes. Another group was clustered around a kitten, each trying to get the animal to come to her. The aide who was escorting me to Miss Claudia explained that they brought in different animals for therapy.

“The kitten will live here, but we have to be careful. These old ladies, they’re all so lonely, they get in terrible fights over whose turn it is to have Kitty in her room at night, so we have to say Kitty lives with Pastor Karen. It’s easier to bring in the therapy dogs, because they understand that the dogs have to live on the outside.”

Miss Claudia was in a shady corner, dozing in a wheelchair, with her sister knitting nearby. Even allowing for Claudia’s poor health, the two women looked as unalike as two sisters could: Miss Ella, tall, narrow, pressed and ironed; the younger sister, rounder, softer. Although she was wasted by illness, Miss Claudia’s face was still plump beneath her gray Afro, and you could see smile creases at her left eye, her good eye.

When the aide bent to gently shake Miss Claudia awake, Miss Ella frowned at me in awful majesty.

“My sister is very poorly today. You should have called before coming along like this to bother her.”

“I know she’s doing poorly,” I said, trying to remember not to give way to my quick temper. “I don’t want to lose the chance to talk to her altogether, that’s all.”

The aide was speaking loudly and brightly to Miss Claudia, as one might offer a treat to a toddler, telling her she had a visitor, let’s wake up from our nice nap. A big Bible, its red leather faded to russet along the edges where she’d held it all these years, dropped from Miss Claudia’s lap to the ground. Cardboard markers, inscribed with verses, scattered around her chair.

“ ’ Ible,” Miss Claudia cried. “Fall . . . no.”

I bent to pick it all up for her, and I tucked the markers into the front of the Bible. The covers were thick and lumpy, as if the book had suffered from the damp.

“You’re always dropping that big thing,” Miss Ella said roughly. “Why don’t you leave it in the apartment and keep a small one with you that you can hang on to.”

“No.” Tears oozed out of Miss Claudia’s left eye. “Keep with me always.”

I pulled a chair up next to her left side and placed the Bible in her lap, where she could touch it. “Miss Claudia, I’m V. I. Warshawski ...Vic. I’m the detective who’s looking for Lamont.”

“ ’ Tive?” she said, turning her head to me and getting the syllable out with difficulty.

“Yes, she’s the detective,” Miss Ella said loudly. “She’s the lady that’s taking our money and not finding Lamont for us. So maybe if she tells you why she can’t find him, you’ll let go of this idea.”

I took Claudia’s left hand and held it lightly between my own two. As slowly and clearly as I could, I explained who I’d talked to and what I’d learned, or hadn’t learned, about her nephew. She seemed to be following me, at least following some of it, interjecting a syllable here and there that sounded like the names I was reciting.

“I’ve been looking for Steve Sawyer,” I said. “He was Lamont’s friend. They were together the night Lamont left your home.”

Miss Claudia frowned. “Not ’Teve.”

“You don’t want a detective? You’d like me to stop looking?”

She shook her head. “No, no! You look, find ’Mont. Talk bad. ’Teve . . . S-s-s-t-uh-eve ... not name.”

Miss Ella smiled grimly at my confusion. “She thinks his name isn’t Steve. But of course it is.”

“What is it?” I asked Miss Claudia.

“No ’member. Not ’Teve.”

The aide brought over a glass of apple juice, and I held it for Miss Claudia to drink. “Will Rose know his name?”

Miss Claudia smiled gratefully on the left side of her face. “As’ ’Ose. Love ’Mont.”

Yes, Rose Hebert had loved Lamont. “Do you know any of Lamont’s other friends?”

Claudia slowly shook her head.

I let her rest for a minute or two, then asked if she remembered Harmony Newsome. Claudia’s good eye brightened, and she struggled to tell me about Harmony and the neighborhood. I couldn’t make out much of her garbled syllables except that Harmony’s father had been a lawyer. I think Miss Claudia was telling me he had money, he could afford to send Harmony to college, but I wasn’t sure.

When I got to Harmony’s death and reminded Miss Claudia that Steve Sawyer had been convicted of her murder, I brought up what George Dornick had said. “Do you think Lamont told the police that Steve Sawyer killed Harmony Newsome?”

“Not ’Mont, no. ’Teve friend, baby, school, friend. ’Mont good boy. Not hell, good boy.” Tears leaked from her good eye again.

“See what you’ve done?” Miss Ella said with a kind of grim satisfaction. “My sister can’t help you. You need to leave, Miss Detective, and stop bothering us.”

Before I could voice my anger—she hired me, it wasn’t my idea to ride out to Stateville or get insulted by Curtis Rivers in the last few weeks—Miss Claudia said, “No, Ella. Find ’Mont, you.” She tapped my hand with her own good one. “’Mont ’Conda not. Friend Johnny, yes, ’Conda not. Leave, give—” She stumbled over the word and finally picked up the Bible and showed it to me. The markers fell out again.

“ ’ Mont . . . Ella give ’Mont ’Ible, he give me. Leave, see Johnny, he say, ‘Keep, keep safe, keep safe.’” She squeezed her eyes shut and struggled to speak. “I keep. ’Mont come, I give.”

“The night he left home, he told you he was going to see Johnny?”

“ ’ Es,” she managed to say.

“Then he gave you his Bible and told you to keep it safe for him, that he would take it back from you when he came home again,” I translated.

She smiled in relief that I had understood her but didn’t try to speak again. I picked up the markers and tucked them into the Bible. Before I gave it back, I turned the well-worn pages, looking to see if Lamont had left anything.

“I’ll do my best for you, Miss Claudia,” I promised.

She squeezed my fingers again with her weak left hand. When she smiled, I could see what a beautiful woman she’d been before her stroke. Miss Ella was frowning more deeply than ever, but I felt better about the case when I left. Not because I had any better ideas, but because I understood now how much it meant to Miss Claudia that I find her nephew.

I felt a little less optimistic after talking to Rose Hebert that night. She didn’t know what Miss Claudia meant, that Steve Sawyer wasn’t Lamont’s friend’s name. “Of course his name was Steve. Maybe he called himself Steven to be formal, but I don’t know what else Miss Claudia had in mind.”

24

FIRE IN THE NUNNERY

AT SIX MONDAY EVENING, I RANG THE BELL TO SISTER Frankie’s apartment on the fringes of Uptown. She lived in a square box, the kind of characterless building that went up in the sixties, with metal-framed windows set level against the tan brick walls so that you didn’t even have a ledge to hold a window box. The Mighty Waters Freedom Center had offices on the ground floor. The rest of the building seemed to be private apartments, some with nuns; F. Kerrigan, OP, and C. Zabinska, BVM, for instance. From the other names, and the discarded toys I could see in the entryway, it seemed that a number of families lived here, too.

The building sat flush with the walk, without even a token patch of grass in front. No one looking at the cracks in the bricks or the open windows where fans tried to stir an evening breeze to life would accuse the sisters of violating any vows of poverty.

After a minute, I rang the bell again. The lock would have been easy to undo with a credit card, but I leaned against the door and watched the street while I waited. Someone had opened a hydrant on the far corner, and kids, mostly boys, were racing in and out of the jet of water. Couples embraced, at bus stops or in alcoves. A woman whose matchstick legs stuck out in front of her like Raggedy Ann’s was sitting on the bus stop bench beating her thigh with a shaky fist, muttering, “You can’t tell me that, you can’t tell me that.” In the alley, kids were lighting firecrackers: the Fourth was only a week away.

It had been a full day, and if I hadn’t been so impatient to hear what Sister Frances could remember of her day in Marquette Park forty years ago I would have gone home for an early supper and bed.

Karen Lennon had called around noon to thank me for visiting Miss Claudia. “Miss Ella is angry, but I’m glad you didn’t wait for me to give the green light. Miss Claudia feels much more at peace now. I think she’s ready to die, knowing that you are committed to finding her nephew.”

That statement had alarmed me: I realized Miss Claudia was frail when I saw her, but I hadn’t been imagining her as close to death.

Lennon tried to reassure me. “The doctor says she’s stable, but, with strokes, that can change rapidly, too. But after meeting you, and feeling reassured that you’re taking her seriously, that could make her feel less stress, so it could help her get stronger.”

When we hung up, I felt a renewed stab of urgency in the search for Lamont, but I didn’t know what I could be doing. With a sort of helplessness, I put in a second request to see Johnny Merton out in Stateville. Perhaps by the time the visit came through, I could think of some quid pro quo that would make the head snake speak to me. “Parseltongue, that’s what I need,” I murmured out loud as I brushed my teeth. A language for communicating with snakes.

The door suddenly opened behind me. “Detective? I’m Frankie Kerrigan. Sorry to keep you waiting. We were having a short meeting on our Iowa refugees.”

Frankie Kerrigan was a thin, wiry woman, around seventy, with curly gray hair that had once been red. Her face and arms were freckled and sunburned. She wore a T-shirt and jeans. Her only badge of office was a plain wooden cross on a thin chain.

She seemed to realize I was searching her for signs of nun-ness, because she flashed a smile, and said, “When I have to talk to a judge, I put on a veil and a skirt, but, here at home, I get to wear jeans. Come on up, Detective.”

I followed her into the hall. “You know I’m a private investigator, right, not a cop?”

“Yes, I remember that. I didn’t know how you like to be addressed.”

“Most people call me Vic.”

The hallway was a jumble of strollers and bicycles, like any urban building. Unlike most, the halls and stairwell were scrubbed clean; I could smell the disinfectant as I trotted up the stairs after her. The Virgin of Guadalupe sat in a niche at the turn in the landing. At the top of the first flight, a weeping Jesus looked at me from a foot-high cross.

“How was Iowa?” I asked while she unlocked her own front door.

“Depressing. Five hundred families broken up by these ridiculous raids, women and children left homeless, the business that employed them shut down for loss of workers. We’re doing our best. But the judicial atmosphere these days is so punitive, our best is pretty futile.”

She ushered me into a front room that was furnished simply but with warmth: bright throws on the daybed and two chairs, bookcases built of a light wood and filled floor to ceiling. A small fan sat in one open window. In the other window, she’d built a shelf to hold a plant erful of red and orange flowers.

She brought tea—“Hot tea is the best thing to drink in hot weather, I’ve always believed”—but didn’t waste time with other preliminaries.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am that someone is revisiting Harmony’s murder. She was an amazing young woman. I met her when I went to Atlanta to work with Ella Baker, and Harmony was one of the SNCC volunteers there. She was a student at Spelman. But she was from Chicago and came back here at the end of the spring semester to do organizing. She’d already been arrested three times in the South, during sit-ins and trying to register voters. That gave her a kind of glamour and credibility with young people in her neighborhood.”

She picked up a photograph from a small desk. “I found this after you called last week. Harmony’s mother gave it to me after the funeral. And when we started the Freedom Center, we named it in Harmony’s honor, after her favorite Bible verse.”

The old eight-by-ten showed the young woman whose face I’d seen in the
Herald-Star
story, but more alert, more attractive, than in the old file photo. She was standing next to SNCC founder Ella Baker. Both women were smiling, but with a kind of fundamental seriousness that made you feel the importance of their mission. The picture had been inscribed, “Let justice pour down like waters.”

I handed back the picture. “I hope you realize that I’m not revisiting her death but trying to find Steve Sawyer, the man who was convicted of killing her. You said on the phone you hadn’t been happy with the verdict.”

“No, I wasn’t, and I did try to go to the police when I learned about the arrest.” Sister Frankie frowned over her teacup. “You see, Harmony and I were marching next to each other when she suddenly collapsed. I thought at first it was the heat. You have to understand, the noise was so intense, and the heat, and the hate . . . We couldn’t hear each other, let alone any individual voices from the mob. But all the young men from the neighborhood, all those gangbangers, they were clustered around the leadership—Dr. King, Al Raby, and so on—near the front of the march.”

She flashed a wry smile. “We women were at the back . . . Women and children last, you know, when it comes to public action or recognition . . . Harmony got hit from the side. At the moment, it was so shocking, I couldn’t think at all, let alone analyze what happened or even think about looking for a killer.

“Later, though, after the funeral, after the horror of the march and Harmony’s death subsided a little, I started thinking it over. The missile had to have come out of the mob, out of the crowd surging around us. All the gang members were up front, you see, around Dr. King and Al Raby. The person who killed her was at the side, and that meant it couldn’t have been a black person. The mob would have murdered any black man if he’d been in their midst.”

I felt let down. I’d been pinning my hopes on something substantial, an explicit identification. “So you didn’t see who hit her?”

She shook her head. “I offered to testify at the trial, but Steve Sawyer’s attorney wouldn’t put me on the witness list. I tried to insist, but my bishop called me and told me I was out of line. The cardinal was trying to calm passions in the city, and, there I was, stirring them up.” She smiled sadly. “Nowadays, that wouldn’t stop me. But then, I was only twenty-six, and I didn’t know how far I could go before the hierarchy would stop me.”

“What was it you thought you could add, your opinion about where the gang members were standing relative to you and Harmony?”

“No. It was something else. One of the boys had a camera. He was taking pictures of us, and I hoped—”

A loud bang cut her off midsentence. A rifle report . . . an M-80? Glass splintered and jangled, a large starfish-shaped break now in the window over the flowers. Sister Frankie sprang to her feet as a bottle filled with liquid sailed through the break, the telltale rag in its mouth.

“Get down! Get down!” I screamed.

She was bending down to pick up the bottle when a second bottle flew in. It hit her in the head and burst into flames. I grabbed the throw from the daybed and flung it and myself on her, wrapping her up, rolling her along the floor. I heard a third bottle land, and then screams from the street, car tires screeching, and, above it all, the hissing of fire, the snapping of flames, as fire grabbed books, bookcases, my own jacket. Choking on smoke and gasoline fumes, I rolled myself on top of Sister Frankie, trying to put out the fire licking at the arms of my jacket. Nun, throw, detective—an ungainly bundle—rolling to the door. I stuck up a quickly blistering arm, fumbled for the knob, tumbled into the hall.