As they reached the lobby, they separated without looking or speaking to each other. The meeting commander headed for the exit, while Alito studied the door to a FedEx shop near the coffee bar. I knelt on one knee to adjust my socks. Alito may have been a crappy cop, but he’d spent three decades studying wanted posters and he might recognize me close up despite my disguise. From my kneeling position on the floor, I looked out at the plaza and saw that the commander was going into the building where the Krumas campaign had its offices.
Alito’s phone rang, and I stood, moving behind him to a newsstand where I picked up a pack of gum. “Yeah,” he said into the phone, “Les already told me, and I know what he wants. You think I’m some kind of retard, you have to double-check everything I do?… Oh, the same to the horse you rode in on!”
He snapped his cellphone shut and stormed through the revolving door. “Les” had told him, had he? That man with the sandy hair and cold eyes: that was Les Strangwell.
I took my coffee out onto the plaza and sat in the shade. What line connected Strangwell to Alito? Of course, ex-cops do freelance work all the time, but what kind of security work did the Krumas campaign… George Dornick. Dornick was advising Brian on terrorism and Homeland Security issues. He was Alito’s ex-partner. Maybe Dornick was throwing some crumbs his way.
But what crumbs? I thought of my apartment. Someone who knew how to pick locks in a sophisticated way had gotten in there. A cop would have access to all kinds of tools. And George Dornick, with his special security services, had access to even more. But what could I have that Dornick, let alone Les Strangwell, might want? The picture of my dad’s softball team? Larry Alito had been in it, as had Dornick, Bobby Mallory, and a lot of other guys.
Alito was proud of his police service. It defined him. I couldn’t imagine any reason why he would want the picture unless it was pure spite against me. But there wasn’t any reason for that, either.
I didn’t have enough data to make up a believable story. I gave up trying, and took the El back to my office. Elton Grainger was out front, hawking Streetwise. He didn’t recognize me at first. But when he realized I’d been in a fire, he was all sympathy.
“And a nun got killed, you say? Oh, Vic, I don’t have a TV, I don’t see the news. That’s terrible. No wonder you haven’t been around. How’s that cute cousin of yours?”
“Cute as ever.” I tried not to grind my teeth. “Anyone been coming around looking for me while I’ve been away?”
“I haven’t been looking. But I’ll put out a guest book. Anyone comes up to the door, they got to sign in with me.”
He parodied a hotel doorman, and I had to laugh. Of course it was idiotic to think Elton would pay attention to anyone scouting out my office. I typed in the code on the door lock and went inside, keeping a hand on the handle of my gun in its tuck holster.
When I was inside, I searched the office, from the cot to the bathroom I shared with my sculpting lease-mate, but no one was there. I answered a few e-mails. But I had reached the end of my stamina, and set out for home.
When I got there, I found Petra out in the backyard with the dogs. Mr. Contreras had his barbecue going. She was sitting on the grass with her arms around Mitch, who acknowledged my arrival by lifting his head to look at me. Peppy, at least, came over to meet me.
“Poor Peewee is beat.They got her working too hard,” Mr. Contreras announced. “We’re doing burgers and corn. You want some?”
I accepted gratefully, and went upstairs for wine and a salad, leaving my hat and gloves. I brought some cushions down with me and stretched out on the grass, where I could see my cousin’s face. She looked pinched and anxious. But when she saw me studying her, she tried to grin in her usual enthusiastic fashion.
“I’m pretty beat myself, first day back on the job. I had to go to the Prudential Plaza this afternoon, and I finally got a look at Les Strangwell.”
“You didn’t talk to him, did you?” Petra asked, a little breathless.
“Not about you, not about anything. Guy has freaky eyes, don’t you think?”
She shivered but didn’t say anything.
“Petra, are you in trouble at work?”
Mr. Contreras frowned and started to protest, but he caught my little headshake and was silent.
“No, no! Why should I be in trouble? I do whatever they tell me to, and faster than a speeding bullet.”
“You just seemed jumpy on the phone today. And you’re definitely not your usual high-voltage self tonight.”
She played with her stack of rubber bracelets. “It’s like Uncle Sal said: they’re working me too hard. I even have to go back in tonight, as soon as I scarf down some of Uncle Sal’s home cooking. What took you downtown? Are you still looking for that missing gangbanger? Did you think you’d find him in the Prudential building?”
“Yep. Selling bonds out of the fiftieth-floor office. Actually, I’m going back out to Joliet tomorrow afternoon. Johnny Merton, the head snake charmer, has agreed to see me again, and I’m hoping the murder of Sister Frances may jolt him into telling me something.”
“You’re going out to the prison tomorrow?” she repeated, looking at me anxiously.
“Why not?”
She bit her lips. “Just… uh… I don’t know… you’re still hurting, I mean.”
“I’m a renewable resource.” I took a hamburger from Mr. Contreras and sat up to keep it out of Peppy’s mouth. “I’m like Hercules, except I regenerate my spleen, my skin, and my brain every morning.”
She laughed in a distracted, forced way and changed the subject, also in a distracted, forced way. She fed most of her hamburger to Mitch, then got up to leave.
I followed her to the side gate. “Petra! What is wrong here?”
Her large eyes filled with tears, and she stared at me for a long pause, then said, “Leave me alone, can’t you? Do you have to pry into everybody’s business?”
“No,” I said slowly. “No, of course not. But you’re acting-”
“I know what I’m doing. Leave me alone!” She slammed the gate.
“You haven’t been riding her over your place being torn apart, have you?” Mr. Contreras and the dogs had bustled over to join us.
I shook my head. “I wish now I had gone to her office today. Maybe I will after I get done with Johnny tomorrow.”
But the next day was when I came back from Stateville to find that intruders had been in my office and wrecked it with the force of an F5 tornado. That was when I found Petra’s white rubber ONE bracelet on the cement apron outside my back door. That was the night I spent with Bobby Mallory and the FBI trying to find any trace of my cousin.
After that sleepless night, my uncle Peter and aunt Rachel arrived. My uncle unleashed his own F5 on me, blaming me, at high volume, for anything that might have gone wrong with Petra. I tried to ride out the storm without fighting back because I knew raw rage was the only way he was able to express his fear. I was afraid, too, and so was my aunt. Finally, after several hours of his useless screaming, Rachel took Peter downtown to meet with the FBI’s Special Agent in Charge.
33
AFTER PETER AND RACHEL LEFT, I HAD A LONG TALK WITH Mr. Contreras, which included a promise to involve him in any action necessary to rescue Petra. I even shared with him the list I’d made of all the odd questions I had about my cousin during the past few weeks: the Nellie Fox baseball, her relentless interest in the contents of my trunk, her wish to see any storage places in the old family home in Back of the Yards, her effort to tour my own childhood home in South Chicago, her arrival at Sister Frankie’s gutted apartment last week, the smoke bomb that forced the Andarra family to vacate the house the night before Sister Frankie’s murder.