“You’re making this shit up to cover your own butt,” my uncle said.
“Peter, someone ID’d Petra, ID’d her standing on Houston Avenue while thugs threw a smoke bomb into the house and ransacked it. What did you have her doing?”
“People make mistakes all the time when they’re asked to ID someone. Petra wasn’t there. You might have bought off a witness—”
“To get my own cousin in trouble? Or for any reason whatsoever?” I wanted to pick him up and bang his head against the concrete barricade above us.
“Do you understand, I am crazy with worry. I will say or do anything to see Petra doesn’t get hurt. And if that means accusing you—of anything—I’ll do it.”
“You know they’ll never let Petra walk away from this,” I said. “When they find her, they’ll dump her body someplace where they can implicate one of Johnny Merton’s boys. They’d like it to be Steve Sawyer, of course, as Dornick suggested in Strangwell’s office yesterday. Dude’s already gone down once instead of you, why not twice?”
“Dornick told me back then that Sawyer was a killer, he and Merton both,” Peter burst out. “Sawyer was just going to prison for a different murder than the one he actually did.”
“Have you ever watched someone put electrodes on a man’s balls and run a current through them?” I asked.
He squirmed, and his hand went reflexively to his crotch.
“After a time—and not a very long time—he’ll say anything to get it to stop. Tony watched Larry Alito and George Dornick do this to Steve Sawyer. He tried to get them to stop, and they told him they were doing it for you.”
“I didn’t kill the girl, damn it!” Sweat poured from Peter’s face, although it could have been the hot sun of course. My own face was aching from the sun hitting my burns through the Cubs cap.
“Why did you send Petra out to look for the photos?”
“I didn’t.” He was hoarse. “I didn’t know what she was up to. Rachel was worried about Petey, said she sounded strange, subdued, not like herself, and she stopped calling every day the way she usually did. I thought it was the work on the campaign. Strangwell’s a hard boss. Petey isn’t used to that much discipline or responsibility.”
“Was Strangwell at Marquette Park with you in 1966?”
He shook his head. “Les is a friend of Harvey’s, helped him on the PR side, taught him how to handle congressional hearings, that kind of thing. Harvey was Les’s most important client before the Strangler became a political op, so of course Les moved in to run the kid’s campaign.”
“Dornick?” I prodded. “Was he at Marquette Park with you?”
“Dornick was a cop. He was in the park, but he was holding the line around King. We razzed him about it at—” He stopped, realizing how bad that sounded in today’s context.
“We?” I prodded.
“All of us from the neighborhood,” he muttered.
“Harvey Krumas was there, too?”
“I said all of us from the neighborhood, and that’s all I’m saying.”
“If you didn’t kill Ms. Newsome, why did Tony cave and take evidence when Dornick and Alito threatened to send you to prison?”
“They could manipulate the evidence, Tony knew that.”
“And that Nellie Fox baseball ...What was it evidence of?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered unconvincingly.
“That’s what Alito dropped off at my dad’s, isn’t it? The night he said you’d go to prison if Tony didn’t hide it?”
“That baseball didn’t prove one damned thing. George thought he was being so cute—” He cut himself short when he realized how much he was revealing, then continued. “Tony believed me when I swore to him that I never hurt that black girl. Why can’t you cut me the same slack?”
“Because, my dear uncle, you are willing to let George Dornick put a bullet through my head to protect yourself all over again. And despite your protestations that you’d do anything for Petra, I don’t see you going to Bobby Mallory, spilling your guts, so that your kid can come out of wherever she’s hiding and stop fearing for her own life! I’d love to know what they’re giving you that’s wonderful enough for you to let everyone around you—your brother, me, but, most of all, your daughter—take the fall for you.”
I waited a moment, hoping he’d say something, anything, to give me a handle to turn. When he remained silent, I started down the stairs that led to the tunnel under Michigan Avenue. Peter called after me; I waited for him at the bottom.
“Leave town, Vic.” He pulled out his wallet and tried to shove a fistful of twenties at me. “Leave town until all this blows over.”
“Peter, it’s not going to blow over. Bobby Mallory is already pulling a thread out of this ball of yarn. Don’t tell me your friends can force him to drop the investigation.”