Bobby Mallory was at his bleakest during those weeks. He was taking part in a special housekeeping task force, and, from everything I was hearing, he was unsparing in his investigation. But it was painful for him to have to recognize the history of corruption and abuse among the men he’d spent his life with.
Dornick and Alito were by no means the only culprits. They could never have treated suspects so vilely without active collusion up and down the chain of command. Sixteen other officers who’d served at the Racine Avenue station came under federal investigation for allegations of brutality. It was shocking to see that the torture of suspects had continued at least into the nineties. Given the climate of torture cultivated by the U.S. Department of Justice in recent years, some cops apparently felt they had no reason to hold back on their own forays into “extreme rendition.”
Bobby wouldn’t talk to me about it directly, but Eileen Mallory came over to my apartment one afternoon for coffee and told me how betrayed he felt by the relentless revelations of abuse. “The department’s been his whole life. He’s feeling that he dedicated himself to, I don’t know, you could say to a false god. And besides that, he always measured himself against your father, and he feels it deeply that Tony was willing to write a letter protesting the torture and that he, Bobby, did nothing but request a transfer so he wouldn’t have to work with Dornick or Alito. That letter ended your father’s career, you know. He never got another promotion after that.”
“But Tony didn’t stop it!” I burst out. “He watched it! He went into the room and told them to stop, but Alito said, ‘We’re doing it for your brother. For Peter,’ and Tony walked out again.”
Eileen reached across my coffee table to put a hand on my knee. “Vicki, sweetheart, maybe you would have gone in and made them stop. You’re courageous enough, reckless enough. You’re truly your mother’s child that way. But you don’t have a family to support. Families are terrible hostages for men like your father. What other work could he get to support you and Gabriella where he knew your health and welfare would be taken care of? Your mother, God rest her soul, she wore herself out giving piano lessons to little girls for fifty cents a week. You couldn’t live on that. Tony did the best he could under very painful circumstances. He spoke up. Do you know how much courage that took?”
After she left, I took a long walk with the dogs, trying to digest Eileen’s words, trying to reconcile the idea of the father I loved so intensely with the man who’d been a cop, done a job, knowing he was working with men who committed torture.
I remembered the letter he wrote me when I graduated from the University of Chicago. It was still in my briefcase all these weeks later, waiting for me to get it framed. Back home, I pulled it out and reread it.
I wish I could say there’s nothing in my life I regret, but I’ve made some choices, too, that I have to live with. You’re starting out now with everything clean and shiny and waiting for you. I want it always to be that way for you.
After a time, I walked down to Armitage and gave the letter to a framing shop. We picked out a frame in green, my mother’s favorite color, with a gay pattern around the edge. I could read it and feel well loved. And know what he regretted, and mourn that. And try to realize that you never fully know anyone, that we, most of us, live with our contradictions. I, too, have my flaws, the hot temper he’d also warned me about in the letter, the temper that had frightened my cousin so much it almost cost her her life. Could I learn from that terrible mistake?
Of course, I wasn’t the only daughter trying to come to terms with a flawed father. My cousin had more serious issues to face than I did. At least Petra had her mother and sisters to help her try to cope with the shocks they’d all suffered during the last month. The day after our marathon night at police headquarters, Petra flew down to Kansas City to be with them.
My aunt Rachel was bewildered and unsure of what she wanted to do, whether to support Peter through his upcoming legal travails or take her girls and start over without him. Peter was staying in Chicago for the time being, renting a studio apartment on the Northwest Side. Petra wouldn’t talk to him, and he and Rachel weren’t talking often.
When Petra decided at the end of a week that she wanted to return to Chicago, Rachel flew back with her to spend a few days with her at her loft. My aunt made me take them to see Kimathi at Curtis Rivers’s shop. Rachel wanted to see for herself the person who had suffered on Harvey Krumas’s behalf. Kimathi was in agony in our presence, and Rivers ushered him out after a few minutes.
“I’m so sorry,” my aunt kept whispering. “I’m so sorry.”
Rivers nodded with his usual grim expression and didn’t say anything. Rachel blinked at him helplessly. She finally asked if Kimathi needed any financial help . . . would they send him to a good therapist or find him an apartment if she footed the bill?