“Were Steve and Lamont at the Marquette Park march?”
“Daddy ordered everyone in our church to stay away, but Lamont and Steve, they ignored him. Johnny Merton, he’d taken part in the deal the gangs made with Dr. King, that they wouldn’t fight that summer, and, in exchange, they provided protection along the march routes.”
She sucked in a breath, remembering, and continued very softly. “Oh, Daddy was angry. He hated having his authority crossed. When Steve and Lamont did what Johnny wanted, not what their own pastor said, he read them out of the congregation. It was a terrible, terrible Sunday, and after church Daddy told me my own soul was in danger if I ever even spoke to Lamont Gadsden again. Even so, if I had to go to the store or something, I’d take a route that led me past his home, or Carver’s Lounge, where he and the other Anacondas shot pool . . .” Her voice trailed away.
This morning, George Dornick told me Lamont had been the person who fingered Steve Sawyer for him and Alito. I remembered the funny look he’d given me when I’d asked. Maybe it had really been Pastor Hebert, furious with his two parishioners, wanting to get the police to take care of them for him?
“How angry was your father with Steve and Lamont?” I asked Rose abruptly. “Could he have turned them in to the police?”
“What a terrible suggestion! How dare you even think a thing like that!” She pushed her chair away from the table. “Daddy is the holiest man on the South Side!”
Like Tony had been the best cop on the South Side? Were we daughters always like this, always ready to leap to our fathers’ defense even against the evidence?
I looked into her flushed face. “Ms. Hebert, I apologize for speaking so bluntly. I shouldn’t have said the first thought that came into my mind. You say you don’t believe Lamont was a police informant, and certainly not your father. Who, then?”
She twisted her fingers together. “Does it have to be one or the other?”
“No. It could be someone I haven’t even heard of, some two-bit player in the Anacondas. But I went over to Stateville to see Johnny, and he’s pretending he never heard of Lamont. That makes me think, well, I’m sorry to give you the harsh unedited workings of my mind again, but—”
“You think Johnny murdered Lamont? I wondered, too, when he disappeared . . . But it’s hard for me to see a reason . . . Unless Lamont snitched out Steve . . . Yes, that could be a reason . . . But . . .” Her words twisted around with as much agitation as her fingers.
“Oh, that Johnny Merton, there’s nothing I wouldn’t believe of him. And yet, he set up a clinic in our neighborhood. He made the government give our children the same milk they handed out in the white schools. He looked after his little girl like she was the crown jewel. Dayo, that was what Johnny called her. And that made Daddy mad all over again because it was African. It means ‘joy arrives.’ ”
She gave an unhappy bark of laughter. “My daddy would have looked at me and said, ‘Joy departs,’ so why am I standing up for him?”
“Where was your mother when you were growing up?” I asked.
“Mama died when I was eight. My granny, she took me in for a while, but her heart was bad. And, anyway, Daddy wanted me home where he could keep an eye on me.”
I paid for the pie and the coffee and drove Rose back to her home. During the short ride, she tried cleaning her face with a tissue. She couldn’t face her father looking distressed.
“He’ll think it’s about sex. At my age, with my life, he’s still sure I’m off having sex with strange men.”
“Go for it,” I said mischievously, pulling up in front of her house. “It’s not too late, you know.”
She looked at me, startled, almost afraid. “You are a very strange woman. Where would I even find a man who’d look twice at me?”
As she got out of the car, I remembered a final question. “Do you know where Steve Sawyer is now? I think Curtis Rivers and Merton both do, and they won’t say.”
She shook her head slowly. “He was in prison a long time. I know Curtis, he visited Steve. But I heard, maybe he even died there. Don’t be thinking Curtis would tell me. He doesn’t like me any more than, well, he seems to like you. He thinks I was always carrying tales back to Daddy when we were in high school. He can’t forgive that.”
She hesitated, then leaned back into the car. “You’re a good listener, and I appreciate that. I’m grateful.”
“That’s good. I’m glad.” I was a good listener because I needed her to tell me things, a thought which embarrassed me enough that I added, “You can always give me a call, you know, and talk to me again.”