Three hundred West Roscoe? I stared at the address. Harvey Krumas was Ernie Rodenko? He owned Ernie Rodenko? Either way, he had quickly mustered a couple of small-time contractors to clean up Sister Frankie’s apartment and used his home address for the holding company. However it had been worked, when Petra looked up the subcontractors, broadcasting the news all over the office in her loud, cheerful voice, Les Strangwell heard her. Les was protecting Harvey. Or was it Brian? Did it matter?
I felt odd: cold, hot, queasy, remote. I wasn’t fit to drive, not the fifteen miles to Curtis Rivers’s shop, but it was all I could think of. I had to find Steve Sawyer before Harvey and Strangwell and George Dornick turned him into a fall guy for Petra.
I have no memory of leaving the Internet café to go to my car or of driving to the South Side. I don’t remember if I stayed on Damen or went to the Ryan. I didn’t look for tails. I was an automaton moving through space. It wasn’t until I was walking away from the car that I came back to earth. I leaned against a light pole and sang a few vocal exercises, forcing myself to breathe, to get some semblance of calm for the hard interview ahead.
When I reached Fit for Your Hoof, Kimathi-Sawyer wasn’t on the street. I opened the door to the shop and parted the ropes to the interior. I’d forgotten the whistle and the recorded “Welcome to Chicago” announcement and flinched as they sounded.
The chess players were sitting at their board. The balding man with the paunch was still wearing his Machinists T-shirt; the skinny, darker one had on an outsize lumberjack’s shirt. Curtis Rivers stood behind the counter watching them play, a toothpick jutting at a jaunty angle from his mouth.
The Sun-Times was on the counter. My cousin’s picture had made the front page. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? the screamer headline read. The radio was still tuned to NPR. It was Worldview time in Chicago. The men had been talking, but when they looked up and saw me, the room became so quiet that even Jerome MacDonald seemed to sink to a whisper.
“You’re not welcome here,” Rivers said.
“Gosh, and you’ve been so subtle up to now I never would have guessed. Tell me about Steve Sawyer.”
“I’ll tell you all I’ve said before, which is you’ve got a hell of a nerve to come here and ask about him.”
“He changed his name legally to Kimathi, didn’t he, before the trial? But Lamont never went that far. He was Lumumba only to the inner Anaconda circle.”
Rivers shifted the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other but didn’t speak. I saw a red handbag on one of the ropes made of the kind of leather that I love, a soft, supple calfskin.
“At his trial, Kimathi-Steve was expecting Lamont to show up with some pictures, wasn’t he? And Lamont never arrived.” I stuck up an arm and unclipped the bag.
“Ask your daddy about that, Ms. Detective. Oh, right, your daddy is dead. Pretty convenient, isn’t it?”
I looked inside the handbag. There was a zip compartment where you could put your wallet and a pocket that would just hold your cellphone. I was not going to lose my temper. And I wasn’t going to start yelling about my father.
“You remember George Dornick, of course, since you remember Tony Warshawski,” I said, still peering into the bag.
The cold eyes on the far side of the counter didn’t give anything away.
“And you’ve seen the news that my cousin is missing.” I paused again but still got no response.
Rivers picked up the Sun-Times. “Cute blond white girl, of course it’s big news. I’m sure the cops can find some black man to implicate before the day is done.”
The chess players were watching me as if I were some complicated move on their board. I looked up from the handbag at Rivers.
“They already have.”
Rivers turned off the radio. The quiet became absolute. I found a price tag tucked into an outside compartment: five hundred thirty dollars. A bag like this would be triple that at a downtown store. I put it over my shoulder and went to inspect myself in a narrow strip of mirror behind the ropes.
“Johnny.” I continued to study my silhouette.
“Man’s in Stateville. Hard to see how he could be out grabbing white chicks off the street.”
“They figure he still has a lot of friends around town who’d do a favor for him. They’re going to try to pressure him through his daughter.” I turned around, not in a hurry, and leaned against the mirror.
“His daughter?” Rivers frowned. “What can they do to her? What I hear, she may not be proud of him. But she doesn’t pretend she doesn’t know him.”
“I don’t know what they will do, but I’ll tell you what they can do. Plant evidence that she’s trafficking drugs for him. Plant computer files that show she’s dipping into private funds at the law firm where she works.” I fiddled with the opening on the bag, a clever little tongue in hard leather that slipped into a catch.
When the whistle sounded and the loudspeaker announced “Welcome to Chicago,” we all jumped. I had my hand inside my tuck holster; Rivers had his under the counter. A woman parted the ropes, bringing in a pair of high heels that needed new soles. Rivers bantered with her but kept an eye on me.