I flipped the pages. Softball in Grant Park. My dad played on one of the teams the department fielded. I used to know most of the men he played with. I frowned over the team picture now, reading the names printed underneath in my father’s curious boxy script. Bobby Mallory, in his rookie year on the force, playing shortstop. Two men who’d died in the last few years had been in the outfield.
My eyes widened in surprise as I looked at the man next to Bobby: George Dornick. He’d been part of Brian Krumas’s entourage last night. After the drumrolls and trumpets gave Krumas a royal fanfare, those of us lurking around his father’s table met the candidate and entourage. Dornick was running a big private security firm these days. He was advising the candidate on terrorism and Homeland Security issues.
It’s not strange to find ex-cops running private security firms. It was strange meeting him last night and now seeing him forty years younger, with his hair still brown and thick, grinning with my dad and Bobby and the other men I’d known. If Tony hadn’t died, maybe he’d have gotten rich doing private security, too.
I finally put the album away and went back to bed, but I couldn’t relax into sleep again. I found a bottle of blueberry juice in the cupboard and took a glass out to the back porch. Peppy, who’d wandered down into the yard, gave a short bark. I leaned over to see the back gate starting to open. Peppy stood stiff-legged, growling. I called to her, but she stayed at attention, growling more loudly as a luminous white shape appeared.
I started down the stairs in my bare feet but stopped on the second-floor landing when I realized it was my new neighbor returning home with his bass in its large white case. Peppy changed at once from warrior to cheerleader, circling around him as he came up the stairs.
“That’s a good feeling, someone to greet you at the end of a hard day. I was feeling sorry for myself just now, coming home to an empty apartment.” He was in black tie tonight, but he’d put the tie in a pocket and undone his shirt. “What are you doing up so late?”
“Indigestion. I ate too many politicians for dinner last night. What about you? Isn’t it three or something?”
“We finished at Ravinia, and one thing led to another,” he said vaguely, making me suppose he’d been with a lover. He leaned the bass against his kitchen door. “What politicians were you eating?”
“My cousin—the tall kid you may have seen around here—she has a bit part in the Krumas machine. She dragged me to a high-end event. At least my ex saw me looking my best, not the way my clients will in a few hours.”
“Oh, these exes! At least yours probably isn’t an oboe player. Their main relationship is with their reeds.”
“Mine was wound up most in his billable hours. But I brought my own faults to the table,” I added somberly, thinking again of Morrell and my failure to make that relationship work.
I left Jake Thibaut at the third-floor landing and went back inside. I tried to sleep the few hours that remained before I had to go downtown for my seven-thirty meeting. After I finished my presentation—more by luck than skill—I went to my office to check in with Marilyn Klimpton from the temporary agency. I tried to focus on reports and e-mail, but I was too sleep-deprived. I went back home to bed.
15
OLD TRIAL . . . OR SOMETHING LIKE IT
I WAS AWAKENED A LITTLE BEFORE THREE BY ANOTHER family drama: Mr. Contreras’s daughter, Ruthie, arriving from Rolling Meadows with her two sons, was shouting at her father from the doorstep. Mitch and Peppy were barking furiously.
Once again, I went to the street window to look down. The dogs were waving their tails as they barked to show they didn’t mean serious harm. Ruthie was standing on the cement slab in front of the door while her teenage sons lingered behind, looking as though they’d rather be anywhere than here. From above, I had a clear view of the black roots sprouting in Ruthie’s bleached hair.
“We have to find out about you on the news. You don’t have the common decency to call and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m going to meet all the bigwigs on earth,’ let alone invite me and your grandsons to go with you. Your own flesh and blood, and you show up on TV with that so-called detective.”
My cousin Petra suddenly appeared in the scene, dancing up the sidewalk, in stovepipe jeans and her high-heeled boots, clutching a sheaf of newspapers. The dogs ran to greet her, barks turning to squeaks of pleasure.
“Uncle Sal!” Petra’s husky voice drowned out Ruthie’s nasal whine. “Uncle Sal, just look! Wasn’t that a fabulous party? Weren’t we all incredibly brilliant? And you are a star, Uncle Sal. Did you see the Herald-Star? And the Washington Post used the same photo.”