“Where is it?” she persisted. “Could I take a picture and send it to Daddy?”

“Petra, you are up to something. I don’t know what, but…”

She flushed, and played with her array of rubber bracelets. “Oh, he’s turning seventy next year, and Mom and I were trying to think of something really special to do. I thought of the baseball, and-”

“I thought you just said you’d talked to him about it and that he’d love to have it.”

“Why are you biting on me like I was some steak bone? I’m just making conversation!” She nearly tilted the wing chair over in her agitation.

“Then let’s make some more conversation. What really brought you to Sister Frances’s apartment the other night? And who came with you?”

“I told you-”

“Baby, I’ve been listening to line spinners since I was six, and you are not in the majors. Not even double A.”

She scowled at me. “If I tell you now, you’ll make even more fun of me.”

“Try me.”

“I thought, it’s not like you have an assistant or anything. And when we went to South Chicago, I loved how you dealt with those gangbangers. I thought if I went in and found something-a clue or something-maybe you’d take me on as an apprentice when the campaign winds down. But if you’re just going to laugh at me…”

Her face was so red that it almost glowed in the soft light of the guest room. I slid off the bed and knelt next to her, patting her shoulder.

“You want to be a detective? You know the ‘fun stuff ’ you said I got to do, after I tangled with that gangbanger on Houston Street? Your folks would eat me for lunch if you were working for me and got your eyes burned. Not to mention that you could have gone through the floor in that apartment.”

I sat back on the daybed as another thought occurred to me. “Petra, someone threw a smoke bomb into my old house on Houston last Sunday. Señora Andarra said she saw one of us watching from across the street. That wasn’t you, was it?”

“Vic! You told me not to go down there alone.”

“Does that mean no?” I asked. “You weren’t trying to play detective and get into that house?”

“I wasn’t playing detective at your old house, okay?” Her face turned red again in her agitation. “Now I’m sorry I ever said anything to you about it. Daddy says your mom spoiled you something rotten, so you never learned how to let anyone else be in the limelight.”

“That a fact? Is that what you were doing at the Freedom Center the other night? Showing me how to let you be in the limelight?”

“Oh, you twist everything I say the wrong way.” She strode from the room, her rubber bracelets bobbing up and down on her arms.

Her exit was a little anticlimactic: one of her bracelets flew off as she reached Lotty’s front door. I bent to pick it up; it was white and labeled ONE. It was supposed to make us want to get together as one planet to solve AIDS and poverty.

I shut my eyes. I was supposed to be the grown-up in this situation. I handed her the bracelet, and said, “If I try to learn how to share the limelight, will you try to learn how to listen to directions?”

Her flush faded. “You mean you would let me study detecting with you?”

“Most of what I do is truly tedious, like all those bills on the bureau there,” I warned her. “But if you want to work for me for six months, see how you like it… Sure, we can give it a try when you’re through with Brian’s campaign.”

She flung her arms around me, pressing into the raw new skin on my chest, then ran into the waiting elevator. I stopped in the living room to say good night to Lotty. I was puzzling over Petra’s words, and her behavior, with Lotty-Could Petra be serious about trying to emulate me? Could she be lying about being in South Chicago last Sunday?-when Lotty’s phone rang.

It was Carolyn Zabinska for me. “Vic, we went to Frankie’s place as soon as we got in tonight,” she said without preamble. “A demolition team had come in from nowhere and stripped the room. The building manager said it was an anonymous benefactor who wanted to do something good for the church and that builders would be arriving tomorrow.”

31

A FEW DAYS LATER, I LEFT LOTTY’S FOR HOME. MY GAUZE had come off, revealing puckered red skin underneath. I was to wear special gloves day and night, a kind of lacy mitt. There was to be no swimming for now, and no sun for some months to come. I graduated from my special plastic-lensed dark glasses to ordinary dark glasses. I was cleared for viewing television and computer screens and for driving a car.

I spoke with the doorman several times during my stay with Lotty. He hadn’t seen anyone lurking around, waiting for an injured private eye to emerge. No strangers had come calling for me except the law, my first day there. I was beginning to believe the attack on Sister Frances had been connected to her work at the Freedom Center. The thought didn’t stop my wanting to find her killers, but it eased my nightmares. I hadn’t killed her. I’d only been the helpless witness to her death.

While I was recuperating at Lotty’s, I wasn’t idle. I returned all the calls from the media that had piled up. Sad but true, part of being a successful PI is for people to see your name on the Web.

This was especially important because my temporary agency phoned to say that Marilyn Klimpton was quitting. “She didn’t expect to be there on her own with so many angry clients and all the reporters and so on trying to reach you. Also, you being attacked in that bombing, she’s afraid for her safety, being alone in your office. We don’t think we can send anyone to replace her right now.”

“Then I don’t think you and I will be working together again in the future, either,” I said grandly.

This was just great. Not only was I out of commission but the backlog waiting for me would be growing to Himalayan proportions again. I called my answering service to tell them to handle the phone during normal business hours, and then I started phoning my clients to see what business I could subcontract out and what could wait a few more days for me to get to it personally.

Some people had already moved their inquiries to bigger firms with more detectives. Prudent. If your lead investigator is singed, go where you know there’s backup. I thought of my bills and tried not to panic. I thought of George Dornick’s Mountain Hawk Security and his offer to hire “Tony’s daughter.” I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

And I worried, too, about my cousin. Something wasn’t right with her story about why she’d shown up at the Freedom Center the night I’d gone back there. It was flattering to think she wanted to emulate me, but I was having a hard time believing it. And the smoke bomb at my old home on Houston… Señora Andarra had told the cops she saw the woman who grew up in the house watching from across the street. Conrad thought that had to be me because he associated only me with growing up in the house. But Señora Andarra probably thought of Petra and me as a family unit… It had been Petra who spoke to her in Spanish.

Although Petra had sworn angrily she hadn’t been playing detective in South Chicago, she hadn’t categorically denied being there last Sunday night. But why would she have been down there? I couldn’t begin to imagine a reason.

I finally put the idea aside and called the management company that handled the Freedom Center building, hoping they could tell me who had sent over a demolition team to gut Sister Frankie’s apartment and prepare it for the builders. They couldn’t or they wouldn’t tell me.

I left a message on Sister Carolyn’s cellphone to see if she could get any information out of the contractors. She was in a meeting with an INS attorney, but she called back several hours later to say she’d talked to someone from both the wrecking crew and the builder. Both contractors insisted they didn’t know who hired them. They had been promised cash, almost double their usual fees, if they would drop everything and take care of the building.