She walked heavily up the steps, her shoulders stooped. No one would look at you with love, or even lust, if you were so bowed over, but she didn’t need me to tell her that.
I turned around and headed back to the expressway. By now, it was the height of the afternoon rush, and the Ryan was about as express as a turtle with corns. I was stalled on the overpass above the Sanitary Canal when my cellphone rang. I figured the risks of talking while driving didn’t extend to talking while parking, but I did almost hit the car in front of me when the woman at the other end said she was Judge Coleman’s secretary and could I hold for him.
“Judge! Thanks for returning my call. I’d like to stop by to ask you about one of your old clients.”
“We can do this by phone. I told you the other night to leave Johnny Merton alone.”
I ground my teeth. “Not the Hammer. One of your first clients, Judge, when you were a new-minted PD. Remember the Steve Sawyer trial?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Harmony Newsome’s murder. Do you remember her?”
He turned so quiet that I thought at first the connection had gone. Someone behind me honked. A gap of four feet had opened in front of me. I scooted forward, glancing at the oily surface of the canal. The day was hot and humid, and the water looked as though every person murdered in Cook County in the last century had rotted in it.
The judge suddenly spoke again. “Why this interest in ancient history, Warshawski?”
I thought my answer over carefully. If I’d been able to meet with Coleman in person, transcript in hand, I would have tried to ask about all the gaps in the record—why he didn’t try to find out the name of the snitch, why he let the obvious collusion between the cops and the state’s attorney go by unchallenged—but, on the phone, I didn’t have any way of pressuring him.
“Steve Sawyer’s name keeps coming up in a missing-persons search I’m doing, but he’s disappeared as well. In fact, there’s no record of him at all after his trial. I’m hoping you have your old notes. I’m trying to find which prison he was sent to.”
“That trial was forty years ago, Warshawski. I remember it, my first high-profile case.” He laughed thinly across the airwaves. “I learned a lot from that trial, but I couldn’t possibly keep track of all the lowlifes who went through Twenty-sixth and California during my time there.”
I was finally on the farside of the canal. “Of course not, Judge, but the transcript did raise a number of interesting procedural questions.”
“Why did you read the transcript?” he demanded.
Of all the questions he might have asked, that was the oddest. “Looking for traces of Steve Sawyer, Judge. It was exciting to see your name there. Mine, too. My dad was the cop they sent to make the collar.”
Cellphones don’t give you good reception, but I thought I heard a quick intake of breath, almost a gasp. “You have questions about the trial, ask your father.”
“He’s been dead for years, Judge, and I’m not a big believer in séances.”
“You were a smart-ass know-it-all when you worked in the courts, Warshawski, and it doesn’t sound to me like you’ve changed any. I don’t owe you a damned thing, but I’m still going to tell you for your own good to leave all that old history in the archives. Merton, Newsome, the boy who killed her, leave it alone.”
He cut the connection before I could thank him. Just as well. I couldn’t have kept the savagery out of my voice much longer.
19
EXUBERANT COUSIN
WHEN YOU GET HOME FEELING THAT YOU’VE BEEN pummeled by all sides in the Hundred Years’ War and you’re longing to lie in the tub for a decade or so to soak away your wounds, the last thing you want is to see your high-spirited cousin’s shiny Pathfinder parked out front. I tried to slink past my neighbor’s place unnoticed, but the dogs betrayed me, whining and scratching at his front door. A moment later, they all bounded into the hall, dogs, cousin, and Mr. Contreras.
“Uncle Sal’s picture got me a kind of promotion,” Petra called. “We’re celebrating! Come on in.”
I protested feebly that I was exhausted, but they ignored that. Mr. Contreras bustled inside to get a glass of Spumante while the dogs circled me, yipping as if I really had been away for a century. The commotion brought the neighbor across the hall into the entryway. She’s a plastic-surgery intern who is perpetually affronted by the dogs. She keeps trying to get the co-op board to declare the building pet-free, but the Korean family on the second floor, who have three cats, was so far fighting on Mr. Contreras’s and my side.
“Really, the dogs won’t hurt you, they’re super-friendly!” Petra called to the doctor. “See Mitch? He’ll take food right out of my mouth, won’t you, boy?”