“At first, it seemed like a game, going around to all those places where Daddy and his folks used to live, and then it turned scary. When that nun got killed and you were in the hospital, they told me there would be something in her apartment, and they sent this horrible, horrible man to take me there. That was when I started to get really afraid and I almost told you, but then I thought of what they said about you being, like, an old lover of Johnny Merton’s and—”
“What!” I was jolted into sitting up. “Petra! Jesus, no! I represented him when I was a public defender, but he was one of the scariest people I ever met, at least until I got to know Les Strangwell. And you don’t sleep with your clients even if you want to. Please, tell me you believe me on this!”
“Don’t get mad at me, Vic, I can’t take it!” Her voice held an undercurrent of hysteria. She’d been alone with her fears too long.
“No, baby, I’m not mad at you. But it upsets me that they would tell such a big lie about me. I like you enough that I don’t want you to believe it, that’s all.”
“Okay,” she muttered.
I waited a tick, hoping for more, something like “Of course I don’t believe it,” but when she said nothing I pushed her to finish her story. “So you came along to Sister Frankie’s apartment with the horrible man . . . Was that Larry Alito? . . . And when you found me there, you signaled to him to leave. And then you texted him and told him to come get the bag of evidence.”
“It sounds awful,” she whispered, “hearing you say it out loud, but it got worse. They told me you had these old pictures, that was what they wanted to find, but they wanted the baseball, too. See, every morning Mr. Strangwell would ask for a report from me on what you were doing and what you were looking for, and when I told him you wanted me to do a little work for you, then he was really excited and said to do everything you asked and report back to him. But when I looked up those contractors, I saw their address was the same as Uncle Harvey’s Chicago apartment, and that was weird. So I asked Mr. Strangwell, and then he said . . . he said . . .” For a moment, she couldn’t go on, but then she managed to pull herself together. “That was when the Strangler said if I didn’t do exactly what he said, Mom and the girls would die and Daddy would go to prison.”
I kept petting her and crooning to her, trying to assure her that we could fix it all so that no one got killed or sent to prison, although I wasn’t sure about either of those things. Finally, when she seemed a bit calmer, I asked how she’d ended up here in Elton’s shack.
“That was after they made me open your office for them.”
“Yeah, babe, I know that much. I saw you on my video camera.”
“They said you had a picture that might send Daddy to jail,” she whispered. “When I told them you and I hadn’t been able to get into your old South Chicago house, they made me go down there with them to show them which house it was. Then when Uncle Sal gave me your apartment keys so I could make up your bed and bring you some yogurt—you know, while you were staying at Dr. Herschel’s—Mr. Strangwell made me give him the keys to make copies.
“I guess then they tore your house apart. I wasn’t there. This one man, the one they called Larry, he found an old picture of Uncle Tony and all of them playing ball together, and the Strangler was just totally pissed, because he said only a drunk idiot would think that proved anything about anyone. So they decided they had to go through your office.
“I had to go with them. They wouldn’t let me just tell them your keypad code because the Strangler said if you were there—like, maybe you didn’t get in to see the snake man—you’d let me in. Then they went just totally crazy inside your office, and I was terrified they would kill me because I’d seen too much. And Mr. Dornick kept phoning the Strangler and saying how could he be so sure a big-mouth like me wouldn’t end up babbling it all to you. So I pretended I was having my period, that I was bleeding and needed the bathroom, and went down the hall.
“This horrible man, the one they called Larry, he was standing there, holding his gun, and I saw the back door and just bolted outside and ran like fury. And Elton was there, out on the street, so I remembered how he talked about his crib. And I begged him to save my life. So the bus was just coming, and we jumped on. And he brought me here. And I’ve been too scared to leave.”
While I cradled her, I tried to think of a safe house, someplace where Petra at least could sleep while I tried to get the police to listen to my side of the story. I was imagining and discarding ideas when Petra suddenly asked about the pictures.
“What are they?”
“It’s an old story and an ugly one. Your father was at a riot in Marquette Park in 1966—”
“A race riot, you mean. When blacks were tearing down the neighborhood.”