“How should I remember? Tony Warshawski on first, what’s on second, that right?”
I laughed dutifully. “You know my dad’s been dead for some years now.”
“Yeah. Sorry I forgot to send flowers, but we didn’t stay in touch.”
“And I became a detective, but private. I’m not with the force.”
“Private dicks, they give me a pain in the whasis.” He swallowed deeply from his beer can and set it on the deck railing.
“I’m looking up an old case that my dad and you both worked.”
He didn’t say anything, but a pulse in his neck started to jump.
“Steve Sawyer.”
“Don’t ring a bell.” The tone was indifferent, but he grabbed the beer can and took another deep swallow. “Hazel! Bring me another!”
His wife had been standing at the grill with her plate of raw meat, waiting for me to finish so she could make dinner. She reached into a cooler by the grill and brought out another can. What a fun evening for her.
“You and Tony had been partners on patrol in ’sixty-six, and then you got moved to the detective branch at—”
“I can read my own history in the obituary pages. What’s your point?” He grabbed the can from his wife and popped the top.
“It was a high-profile case at the time. A young civil rights worker was murdered during a demonstration in Marquette Park, and months went by without an arrest. Then you picked up Steve Sawyer.”
“Tony picked up Sawyer,” Alito corrected me.
“I thought you didn’t remember Sawyer.”
“All those shines marching in the park, you saying that brought it all back to me.” He smirked.
“I didn’t say that,” I said sharply. “I said a civil rights demonstration.”
“Yeah, it was a demonstration full of shines.” He laughed, and, in the background, Hazel laughed tinnily, too.
I gritted my teeth but said, “So if it’s all come back to you, who was the snitch?”
“Snitch? What snitch?”
“At the trial, you said your snitch had pointed you to Sawyer. No one ever asked for your informant’s name. I’m asking you now.”
“Ah, jeez, what a dumb-ass question! Like, I remember every two-cent junkie who wanted a fix bad enough to finger his friends.”
“What about Lamont Gadsden? How well do you remember him from your old beat?”
The question took him off guard, and he slopped beer down the front of his Sox T-shirt. He hollered to Hazel to bring over a towel. When she’d mopped his shirt, he said, “What were we talking about?”
“Lamont Gadsden.”
“He another of your shine friends? Name doesn’t ring a bell. If that’s what you came for, you wasted a tankful of gas.” The words and tone were right, but his forehead was beaded in sweat.
I looked at him steadily. “When Sawyer came into court, he was badly disoriented, didn’t seem to know who he was or where he was, going by the trial transcript. What do you remember about that?”
“He tripped and fell against the bars of his cell. You could ask Tony, if he hadn’t croaked, and he’d tell you the same. Now, get the fuck off my property.”
“What do you mean, Tony’d tell me the same?” I felt as though someone had punched me in the gut.
“What I said. Everyone says your father was too good to be true, right? The level cop, not the cop who had community complaints or IAD smelling his shorts before he put them on? Well, I could tell you a thing or two about Saint Anthony.”
“Maybe the whole South Side had reason to hate your guts, but Tony Warshawski was the best damned cop in Chicago. You were lucky you had the chance to work with him. But you got hincty, like you claim Steve Sawyer did, didn’t you, and bought yourself a—”
I saw his fist coming a half second too late. I swerved, and he missed my jaw, but the blow socked my right shoulder. I kicked him on the shin and went for his solar plexus, but water suddenly poured over my head, my eyes, my mouth, and I was choking: Hazel had turned the hose on us, spraying her husband as thoroughly as she was me. Alito and I backed away from each other, breathing hard. I stared at him for a long second, then turned abruptly and opened the door to the kitchen.
“You can’t go through the house, you’re all wet,” Hazel observed in her unemotional nasal voice.
I followed her off the deck without looking again at her husband. She pointed me toward a narrow path that separated her house from the one next door. As I walked up the lane to my car, I could see curtains twitch at windows along the way. If I had to live with Larry Alito, I wouldn’t fill the house with china kittens. I’d have a large collection of axes.
17
THE FRIENDLY MAN FROM MOUNTAIN HAWK