“The detectives come in. They laugh. I’m the party . . . I’m the death of the party to them, a big joke. They tell me I kill Harmony. They tell me confess, make it all easy, only I didn’t remember killing her. Now I can’t remember, one way or another. The demons, they come and claw at me day and night . . . Maybe the demons kill Harmony. Maybe the demons say, ‘Kimathi, you a devil, too. You in the gang. Just like pastor always said, you a child of the devil, you bound for hell. Go ahead, kill that sweet girl for all us demons.’ ”
“You never killed a soul in your life, Kimathi,” Rivers said. “Those detectives messed up your body and messed up your mind. You tell this white girl how they did.”
“They chain me up.” He was so ashamed at the memory that he looked at the floor. Tears seeped from the corners of his eyes. “They chain me, they call me nigger. They say I the song-and-dance man, dance for them. They put me on the radiator. They burn the skin off my butt, it bleed. They laugh. They say I singing for them. Then they put electricity on my manhood, they run a current. They say, ‘This nigger boy a good dancer.’ They laugh. They tell me next they gon’ cut off my manhood. So I tell them the words they want to hear, that I kill Harmony, that blessed child of Jesus.”
I felt tears spilling from my own eyes and a revulsion so strong it doubled me over.
“Yes, a pretty story, white girl, isn’t it?” Rivers said.
“And Tony Warshawski?” I managed to whisper.
“He come in the room, two times, maybe more . . . I’m hurting too bad to count.”
“And what did he do?”
“He tell them to stop. But they tell him, ‘Don’t act like Jesus Christ on the dashboard, Warshawski. This for your brother.’ ”
41
ROUSTING AN UNCLE
MY LEGS GAVE WAY, AND I FOUND MYSELF SITTING ON THE floor. Curtis Rivers looked down at me without pity, but I didn’t want any. “This for your brother” . . . “This for Peter.” Tony watched Alito and Dornick chain a man to a boiling radiator, watched them run a current through his genitals. My daddy—my wise and good and loving father . . . My hands were wet. I thought I would see blood when I looked at them, Steve Sawyer’s blood, the blood of every prisoner my father had watched in Dornick’s or Alito’s custody, but it was only tears and snot.
I don’t know how long I sat looking at the dust on the cracked linoleum, watching a spider crawl along the baseboard. I wanted to lie down on that floor and sleep away the rest of my time on the planet. After I’d found Petra, after I’d found Lamont, maybe I could curl up and die.
“This for Peter.” The Christmas Eve conversation I had remembered after seeing Alito came back to me again, my father saying, “Yougot your promotion. That’s enough, isn’t it?” and Alito replying , “You want to see him in prison?”
At last, I pushed myself up to a standing position again. My shoulders ached.
My father had been tense all fall after the summer of riots. I didn’t remember anything about the demonstrations that Harmony’s brother had organized with Sister Frankie, but they would have been outside my dad’s station. I could picture the tension inside the station, the Mayor’s Office putting heat on them, demanding an immediate arrest.
So the State’s Attorney’s Office organized a frame: get one of the Anacondas; they’re all guilty of something. Who knows why they picked on Sawyer or who put his name in play. Larry Alito? My mind flinched at the idea of naming my father. Arnie Coleman played along as the public defender conveniently assigned to the case. You choose the guy most eager for favors, most likely to play your game.
In Cook County, it didn’t take a genius, or even very much money, to persuade the head of the criminal defenders unit to give you a weak link. After all, by the time I was with the PD, and Coleman had moved into the number one chair, I saw him do it over and over. My coworkers and I knew money was changing hands. We just never knew how much.
I took a shuddering breath and looked at the four men. I needed to be a professional in this situation, which meant I had to pull myself together. I might not have another chance to talk to Kimathi.
“Mr. Kimathi . . . If I can, I’ll find the person who really did kill Harmony Newsome. But I’m afraid that means I need to ask you a few more questions.”
Kimathi swallowed convulsively and edged behind Curtis.
“At the trial, Mr. Kimathi, what did you mean when you said Lumumba had your picture?”
“That’s right, Lumumba has my picture.”
“But what picture?” I asked.
“He told Johnny. Johnny promised, and then no one came, they all left me. They all afraid the demons coming for them. I covered with demons.” He suddenly thrust his head under my face, bending over and skewing his body so that he looked at me sideways, his tongue sticking out like a Mayan mask. “See my demons? See how they crawling on me?”
I willed myself not to back away. “Those aren’t your demons, Mr. Kimathi. They belong to the detectives who tortured you. You tell those demons to go away, to go home where they belong.”