“So, when I worked for him in the criminal PD’s Office, he cut so many deals with the State’s Attorney’s Office, he looked like the SA’s chief assistant. You know he got his reward: a state appellate judgeship. Judge Coleman was hanging around Harvey Krumas at the big shindig on Navy Pier the other night.” When Bobby didn’t say anything, I added, “And George Dornick is young Krumas’s adviser on Homeland Security and terrorism.”
“What’s your point, Vicki? That Krumas knows a lot of people?” Bobby smacked his forehead in mock comprehension. “Oh, I get it. Harvey Krumas fixed the Steve Sawyer trial forty years ago, even though he was just a twenty-something guy from the South Side without any power?”
“His father owned Ashland Meats,” I said.
“Yeah, that was a two-bit outfit before Harvey took over and turned it into the operation he’s got today. When I joined the force, Dornick used to razz Harvey about having the bulls with the smallest . . . Never mind that. But in—”
“Dornick used to razz Harvey?” I asked. “Harvey was never a cop. Or was he?”
“No, no. He and Dornick grew up in Gage Park together. Ran around with Tony’s brother, your uncle Peter. Are you trying to say that somehow Harvey got Arnie Coleman to turn on his own client while Dornick got the perp to make a phony confession and now Harvey’s rewarding them by letting them lick his son’s ass, if you’ll pardon my French? Do you imagine if Tony was still alive he’d be part of that inner circle, too, because he tortured Sawyer for Krumas?”
It was my turn to be discomfited. I left without trying to say anything else, but when I returned to my office I looked up Dornick and Alito. Bobby had made me feel defensive, but when I first said their names he’d grown quiet. At full strength, the CPD includes some thirteen thousand officers. It’s true Bobby’s been with the force a long time and he knows a lot of people, but he doesn’t know all thirteen thousand. Yet those two names had stood out for him.
Of course, Bobby would have met Harvey Krumas and my uncle Peter through my dad. If Peter and Harvey had grown up with George Dornick, I guess it wasn’t surprising Bobby would have met Dornick, too. And since Alito and Dornick worked together, Bobby would have known Alito as well.
Maybe I was reading too much into Bobby’s reaction to their names. But that didn’t stop me from digging around on the Web.
There were hundreds of hits for George Dornick. Dornick had started Mountain Hawk Security when he retired from the force. His website told me that the firm specialized in training police officers around the world in how to do everything from recognizing and combating terrorists to identifying clandestine drug labs. Mountain Hawk provided tactical training for officers needing help with close quarters combat, use of Tasers and other “restraining devices,” wilderness survival for desert-and mountain-based forces, and how to use cars as offensive weapons in urban environments.
“Our clients expect total confidentiality, and we provide that, along with world-class training, so we regret that we can’t supply you with a client list. We have worked with police forces throughout the Americas, in cities, in jungles, and in the punishing Sonoran Desert. We have also sent our experienced personnel into combat zones to provide support for American troops. With offices and equipment in nine strategic locations around the globe, we can be at your next training meeting within hours.”
I found pictures of Dornick, looking alert and combat ready, with everyone from Chicago’s mayor to the president of Colombia. I saw Dornick demonstrate the use of Tasers to women at a domestic-violence shelter and read articles about contracts he’d received from San Diego, Waco, and Phoenix to conduct special border-patrol training sessions. I couldn’t find information about his life as a policeman, but he’d left the force some fifteen years ago.
Alito looked more like the average cop. Forty years on the force, retired to a small lake in northern Illinois. The little bit of press he’d gathered showed a mixed picture. He’d been cited for bravery during a hostage crisis involving armed robbers at a strip mall on Roosevelt Road. Then, six months later, he was accused of using excessive force at the same incident, for killing both robbers, as the situation unraveled. He’d injured one of the hostages, which was why he’d been cen sured, and an unnamed coworker quoted him as saying, “She’s lucky to be alive, and they’re better off dead, so what’s the beef?”
Since a lot of the citizenry agreed that a dead armed robber saved the city the expense of a trial, the letters to the editor were predictably pro-Alito, with a segue into the importance of every American being fully armed at all times.