The speaker had been around the corner of the statue’s plinth from me, on another short flight of steps. When he realized I was actually listening to him, he asked for a donation so he could get something to eat. I stared at him without seeing him. They use their cellphones to watch you.
They were watching me. They’d tailed me this morning. Were they watching Petra as well? “Damn it, little cousin, who are you working for?” Not Dornick, or he’d know where she was. Maybe he did know where she was. Maybe that was why he didn’t want me looking for her. I thought about flipping a coin. Heads, he doesn’t know where Petra is. Tails, he does.
Was that what they were all talking about in Strangwell’s office? How will it play out for Brian Krumas’s campaign if we produce Petra versus us leaving her in hiding? Was that why my aunt had gone back to Overland Park, because Dornick assured her he knew where the kid was and would produce her safe and sound? But that really made no sense, Petra helping thugs break into my office and then they put her on ice. Well, maybe I could see it. They didn’t want their thugs ID’d, so they wanted to keep Petra away from the cops.
On an impulse, I tried Rachel’s cellphone. It rolled over to her voice mail. I tried her home number in Overland Park. The phone was answered by a man, who refused to say who he was or where Rachel was, only that he would take a message for Rachel.
I couldn’t tell a complete stranger to ask Rachel whether Dornick knew where Petra was hiding. The man answering the phone could be anywhere in the world intercepting Rachel’s and Peter’s calls, and he could be working for anyone.
I gave him my name and number, but no other details, then demanded to know who he was.
“Someone who’s answering the phone.” He hung up.
I hugged my knees to my chest. After the Navy Pier fundraiser, Les Strangwell had pulled Petra onto his personal staff. It was then that she’d suddenly announced an interest in my childhood home and the house in Back of the Yards. And in my dad’s possessions in the trunk. She knew I had the baseball. So there was something else that Strangwell wanted her to find. A photograph, since intruders had stolen the picture of my dad’s team? Something involving baseballs or baseball teams? What did I have that could matter to Les Strangwell and George Dornick? Nothing. Nothing at all, except obviously the Nellie Fox ball, which brought me back to where I started, spinning like a globe. No, nothing as grand as a globe. Spinning like water spiraling down the drain.
Peter and George Dornick wouldn’t care about Brian’s campaign, only Les Strangwell and the candidate’s father would put that first. But when I showed up unannounced, they kept on talking behind closed doors for half an hour. They were deciding on how to handle me. But what were they deciding to do about Petra? And why had my aunt gone home?
“Was it a game to you, little cousin? Or did they utter those mystic, magic words, ‘national security,’ and get you to believe them? They told you under no circumstances to confide in me. What about your Uncle Sal?”
“Not Uncle Sal, Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam be watching you. He know when you be sleeping, He know when you awake, He say it all be for national security’s sake.”
My partner on the other side of the statue’s plinth was still in full throttle on the people he said were watching him. Since I myself kept talking out loud, it was hard for me to feel that I was a more stable girder on the bridge than him. When was it paranoia and when were they really watching you?
I got up and pulled a five from my pocket for my companion. One thing about our outbursts: they’d driven everyone else away from us. Although, these days, with so many people spouting their secrets into the ether, it was hard to know who had real friends and who had invisible ones.
I crossed Lake Shore Drive at Roosevelt Road and waited for a northbound bus at the natural history museum. My cousin was queen of the texters. When we were riding back from South Chicago together and I mentioned I hadn’t heard her on her phone, she’d confessed she’d been texting. Had she sent a message to Strangwell, telling him we hadn’t been able to get into the Houston Street house? Did he send a team down then to throw a smoke bomb into my old house so they could search for . . . what?