Brian Krumas had said something critical during the meeting. It had only registered at the time as a faint puzzler, and now, playing back what I could remember of the conversation, I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was something about his relationship with my uncle, something that connected my uncle to Sister Frankie, but the more I pushed on it, the further it retreated from my mind.
Petra wasn’t a drug user, I was sure of that despite putting the question to Peter. As for gambling or some other expensive vice, I couldn’t picture it. But I wouldn’t have pictured her breaking into my office, either.
I was tangling myself up like a bowl of cold spaghetti. Assume, for sanity’s sake, that Petra was an unwitting or unwilling partner in Strangwell’s machinations. She was an overgrown puppy, not a malicious schemer. If she was in over her head, I needed to help her out. If she was trying to hide out in this big, bad city, or if she was hitchhik ing to her friend Kelsey’s, Homeland Security, or even George Dornick’s Mountain Hawk Security team, could track her easily. I needed to warn her. They know when you’re sleeping, they know when you’re awake, and, if you’re texting, they can find you so fast it will take you completely by surprise.
I pulled out my phone. I didn’t have the nimble thumbs of a twenty-year-old, but I tapped out:
Petra: wherever u r, stop texting, calling. Take battery out of phone: disconnect. U can b traced by GPS. Lay low until I send all clear.
Trust me. Vic.
Please trust me, little cousin, I begged in my head. I promise if you are in the hands of baddies, I will not jeopardize your safety. But if you are hiding and scared, let me clear this up. I’m putting my best person on it.
Of course, I, too, could be traced through my cellphone. Piece of cake, for a sophisticated crew. I called my voice mail and left a message that I would be off cellphone for a while and gave the number of my answering service for people to call. I took out the battery and stuck it in my briefcase.
Five buses had stopped while I’d been churning over what I knew or didn’t know. I boarded the next one, a Number 6, that lumbered over to Michigan and slowly took me up to the hotel where I’d left my car this morning. When I handed my ticket through the cashier’s window, I was told someone had already paid for my parking. I asked to see the receipt, sure there was some mistake, but when the attendant found it it was for cash. No one could remember what the man looked like who paid the bill, but he’d described the car, told them the ticket number, even paid a lost-ticket premium.
Strangwell, or Homeland Security, wanted me to know they could find me and deal with me whenever it suited them. I drove home slowly, meandering along the side streets, not because I wanted to check for the tail that was surely behind me but because I was too tired for speed. They could find me and stomp me out. Why hadn’t they done so already? Maybe because they thought I had whatever it was they were looking for. As soon as I produced whatever it was, they would dispose of me. Sister Frankie’s head, full of flames, appeared in front of me, and I shuddered so violently that I had to pull over to the curb until it passed.
The hunt, with a full pack of hounds closing in on a lame and limping fox and her brash and ignorant cub, that was my cousin and me just now. I went back to my burrow because I didn’t know where else to go. But I didn’t feel safe, reaching home.
I took my neighbor and the dogs into the backyard, away from any possible surveillance, and explained the situation as best I could, given how little I understood of it myself.
“You don’t think Peewee’s pa is really in on this!” Mr. Contreras was horrified.
“I think he knows what his pals are looking for, and he’s a frightened man indeed, but I don’t believe he knowingly put his kid in harm’s way.”
“So where is she?” the old man fretted.
I shook my head. “I’m too tired to think clearly. I’m hoping she’s run away, hoping they don’t know where she is. If she calls you, tell her to lay low. Then tell her to hang up at once before they can trace her. These guys have me totally off balance. If only I had the faintest idea what they want!”
37
THE OLD MAN AND THE DOGS HELPED ME SEARCH MY apartment for any obvious intruders or bombs. Mr. Contreras offered to feed me, but I was too tired to eat. As soon as they left, I went to bed and fell deeply asleep. I was so tired, none of my anxieties had the power to disturb me. But when my phone rang at one in the morning, I was instantly awake.
“Petra?” I cried into the mouthpiece.
“Ms. Warshawski, is that you?” The voice on the other end was diffident.
“Who is this?” I choked out.
“I woke you again. I’m sorry. It seems like it’s only in the middle of the night that I have the courage to talk to you.”
I’d been so sure the call would be from Petra, or a ransom demand, that I couldn’t think of anyone else, any other context. I lay back in the bed, trying to calm my pounding heart enough that I could think.
“I saw about your cousin on the news. It’s a terrible worry, when someone you love disappears on you.” The hesitant voice was flat.
Behind the speaker came the sound of hospital pages. Rose Hebert! My skin crawled. She had snatched Petra so that I could understand how bereft she’d been at losing Lamont Gadsden.
“Knowing how you must be suffering, I’ve been feeling guilty that I haven’t been wholly truthful with you.” She took a breath, the way she had the last time she called in the middle of the night, when she launched into the painful admission of her love for Lamont Gadsden.
“When you asked if I knew another name Steve Sawyer might be using, I said no. But back in the sixties, the Anacondas, they all took African names. Lamont, his code name in the gang was Lumumba.”
There was a long silence, during which I thought I might break into hysterical laughter. Petra had disappeared, perhaps been kidnapped, and the only thing Rose could think of was her long-vanished lover. It was hard to think of a response, but, in the end, I asked what Steve Sawyer’s gang name had been.
“I don’t know, but it was probably African. Like I told you, Johnny Merton, he gave his girl an African name. Johnny was big on all those African independence movements. He made Lamont study up on Lumumba, and Lamont talked to me about Lumumba and the Congo that summer, the summer before he disappeared, when he was trying to persuade me to be liberated with him…”
Her voice trailed off, into the confusion of memories of adolescence, where liberation meant sex as well as politics. I wondered why Rose hadn’t told me earlier; what about me would have made her think I would find African nationalism shocking.
She answered in her half-dead voice, “I guess I was afraid if I told you about Lamont and Lumumba, you might be, well, like some folks, like my daddy even, who thought if you called yourself after an African national hero you were next door to being a Communist. And then you’d stop looking for Lamont.”
I managed to thank her, and to tell her not to worry, that I’d see whether I could find Lamont under his nom de guerre. “Is there anything else it would be good for me to know? Something we could cover tonight? It may be hard to reach me for the next week or so.”