Dornick said, “Out of curiosity, Vicki—Vic—if you were going to look for her, where would you start?”
“I started at her apartment, but someone had been there ahead of me. Since Peter doesn’t want me looking, I’m not going to hunt elsewhere. But I would probably talk to Larry Alito.”
“Alito?” Krumas and Dornick spoke his name in unison. Then Dornick said, “I wouldn’t trust much that an alkie like Larry would have to say.”
“He met with Les Strangwell a couple of days ago. I’d like to know what Strang—”
“How do you know that?” Krumas demanded.
“I’m an investigator, Mr. Krumas. It’s my job to find out stuff. I’m not sure what it would take to get Alito to tell me about that conversation, or some of the other things he knows, but—”
“Guy would sell his wife for a six-pack, probably turn in his own kid for a keg. Stay away from him, Vic, he’s bad news.” Dornick was giving me an indulgent smile, as if I were a toddler who needed extra coaching.
“He’s short-tempered and he drinks, but he’s an experienced cop. And Strangwell wanted him for an urgent, confidential assignment the day before Petra disappeared.”
Dornick laughed. “You think Larry has something to do with Petra’s disappearance? I’m surprised you’ve made it in this field as long as you have, Vic. An imagination like yours belongs on TV. Speaking of which, what are you imagining about that Nellie Fox baseball?”
“And you know it’s a Nellie Fox baseball because . . .”
The words hung in the air. For a moment, Harvey looked like a stuffed bear on a mantelpiece. And then Dornick laughed, and said, “Lucky guess. Fox was the household god in your grandfather’s family for everyone except your renegade father. Pete, let me give you a lift up to the Drake. Vic, listen to your uncle and stay the hell away from searching for Petra.”
36
WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON?
I LEFT THE MEN HAILING CABS ON MICHIGAN AVENUE. I wanted to see all three of them out of sight before reclaiming my car, but even then I took a roundabout route, catching a bus down Michigan to the south end of Grant Park, where only a handful of tourists passed the homeless guys lying on the grass, and it would be easier to see if I had company.
Everything in the meeting I’d just left was setting off warning bells. When Peter should have been with his wife, or talking to cops, or even talking to me, why was he huddled with Harvey Krumas and George Dornick in a meeting in the office of Chicago’s most feared political op? And then there were the repeated injunctions for me to stay away from Petra, as if they knew where she was or maybe had received some kind of threat or even a ransom note.
It wasn’t until I sat at the foot of a statue on a shallow flight of stairs that I realized how tired I was. Using the red sweatshirt from my briefcase as a pillow, I leaned back against the crumbling concrete steps and shut my eyes.
The Nellie Fox baseball meant something important, even devastating, to Peter. Harvey Krumas and Dornick both knew about the ball; that was clear from their reactions. Petra had been ordered to get it from me. That was why she had behaved so oddly about it, with her clumsy story about wanting it for a surprise present for her father. Dornick or Krumas, or even Les Strangwell, had learned that I had the ball probably because Petra had burbled away about it at the office.
I could almost hear her gusty laugh as she informed her pod mates in the NetSquad: “Can you believe I thought the White Sox had played a woman at second? Daddy would disown me if he learned I didn’t know about Nellie Fox! My cousin says he was, like, a big star a hundred years ago.”
All the Millen Gen interns texted or Twittered constantly. Nellie Fox, transgender ballplayer, would become part of Twitter that day. That part was easy to imagine. Word filtered up to . . . Whom? The candidate? The Chicago Strangler? The candidate’s father? One of them told Petra she had to get the baseball from me.
That much I could believe, but I wasn’t sure that the ball was what the thugs who’d torn apart my house and office had been hunting for. Why had they taken the picture of the slow-pitch team if all they wanted was the ball?
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said, so lost in thought I spoke out loud.
“That’s what I be saying all along. It don’t make no sense. Those rockets they send up, they messing with the weather. Then they use their cellphones to watch you, see if you know what they up to.”