At the end of the summer, as they were coercing Petra into helping them break into my home and office, Dornick had become more brazen and more violent. When Peter and Rachel came to Chicago after Petra disappeared, Dornick told them that their other four daughters were as good as dead if either parent told anyone anything about the Newsome murder, the Sawyer torture, the death of Sister Frances, the coercion of Petra. Rachel flew back to Kansas City and went into hiding with her girls.

All this emerged slowly, of course, but Terry Finchley called me periodically to brief me. As the fall wore on, a prosecutorial dream came true: Harvey and Dornick began attacking each other. Harvey claimed it was Dornick’s idea to blow up Sister Frances before she could confide in me. Dornick claimed he knew nothing about it, that Harvey and Strangwell had employed Larry Alito, a loose cannon, an alkie-Dornick had warned them that Alito was unreliable-while Strangwell said Alito was Dornick’s go-to boy anytime he needed heavy lifting that he wanted to keep private.

After a lot of hemming and hawing and horse trading, the State’s Attorney’s Office brought charges against Krumas for second-degree murder in connection with Harmony Newsome’s death. Krumas’s lawyer had been pressing for involuntary manslaughter and probation, but as the national spotlight started shining on Chicago’s finest, the state’s attorney realized he couldn’t afford to let Krumas off with nothing but a rap on the knuckles.

Dornick’s situation was more complicated. He hadn’t helped kill Harmony Newsome, but everyone, including Bobby, believed Dornick had engineered the subsequent cover-up. Peter sang loud and long on that theme. Then there was Sister Frankie’s death. Detective Finchley’s team traced the Ford Expedition that the bomb throwers drove to one of Dornick’s personal crew. And Finchley was willing to believe that Dornick had shot Alito out of fear that his old buddy would crack and flip for the state if the heat got too intense.

51

GABRIELLA’S VOICE RETURNED

IN THE WEEKS BEFORE MISS CLAUDIA DIED, I WAS RACING the clock, hoping to find out what happened to Lamont. The day I took my aunt to Fit for Your Hoof, Curtis told me he’d persuaded Johnny to talk to me.

“He needs to get it off his chest and tell someone, and I told him he owed it to Miss Claudia. She needs to know. She loved that boy. Now, Miss Ella, if Lamont had gone on, like our physics teacher wanted, been a college professor with degrees after his name, she’d still have labeled him a failure. But Miss Claudia was pure love down to her bones. She deserves to hear, and I’ve made sure Johnny’ll tell you.”

I wanted to know how Curtis and Merton communicated. I wanted to know if secretly, after all, Curtis was a high-ranking Anaconda. But something in his face told me I’d better not push my luck.

I got Yeoman to organize an emergency visit to Stateville for me and met with Johnny in the dingy lawyers’ room one last time. I’d brought one of my photo books with me and laid it between us on the scarred deal table.

“These are the pictures Lamont took,” I said. “I guess Curtis told you I found the negatives?”

Merton nodded.

“He showed them to you the night before he disappeared, didn’t he?”

Merton nodded again, shut his eyes, took a breath: another one getting ready to jump off the high dive for me, or at least for Lamont and Miss Claudia.

“My man came to me at the Waltz Right Inn, just like Rose Hebert told you. He had a set of these prints here, and he wanted to go to that piece of shit representing Steve, show him that some white boy killed Harmony and some cop pocketed the evidence. We talked it over, him and me. We knew what went on at the Racine Avenue station. We knew the risk he was running going in there at all, but we agreed he’d better speak up. But I told him to take prints in, don’t let them have the negatives. If they destroy those, there’s nothing left.

“So off he went the morning the big snow started. And the day after it ended later, when you could go outside again, there he was, in my backyard, dead. His ears had been cut off, but he’d been killed before that.”

“His ears!” I said. “So, Dornick and Alito killed him. Or someone at the station did. And they planted his body on you. And if you called the cops, everyone would agree that it was an Anaconda hit. Dornick would say Lamont had turned state’s evidence against you and that you’d murdered him in revenge.”

Johnny gave a sour smile. “You’re not so stupid after all, are you, white girl?”

“I have my moments,” I said drily. “What did you do?”

“I took Lamont inside with me and sat with him all day-sweating blood, you’d better believe-thinking every second that the cops were going to come tear my door down. I wouldn’t let my wife or my little girl in. I made up a big lie, a big story, and it cost me my marriage. My wife, she thought I had some other woman in there with me. She left in a hurry, went to her own mama’s. I guess because of the storm, all the cops were on emergency duty. Not even that shitbag Dornick could come around to check on me and Lamont for three days.

“A big warehouse blew down on Stony the day before the snow. As soon as it got dark, I carried my brother down the stairs. I got my little girl’s sled and pulled my man along, wrapped in blankets. Three miles, that was, hard walking, scared every five minutes some damned cop would stop me.

“Don’t you ever repeat that out loud, white girl, that the Hammer was terrified.” He gave a mirthless bark of laughter and flexed his arms so that the snakes rippled under my nose.

“Anyway, I dug through the snow, buried him in the foundation of that place on Stony. No one ever looked in there after the storm. I sat by the newsman every day at three when the early edition hit the stands, looking, but they just built right on top of my boy. They never looked, they never found him. Day three, up comes that shit Alito, merry as can be, acting on a tip that I had drugs on the premises. They had a warrant and they searched high and low, but you’d better believe the crib was clean. I scrubbed that place from window to floor-and more than once, too-and I had Curtis there to watch they didn’t plant nothing. My only joy was knowing they were going crazy, trying to find out what happened to the body. They were pissed as hell that the place was clean, but they finally took off. For months, Alito would stop by, or sometimes Dornick, now and again. But after a while, it all died down… all died down until you came along, nosing into it.”

“When I looked at the pictures, it seemed to me you might have saved Dr. King’s life.” I opened the photo book at the shot that showed the tattooed arm shoving King’s head down.

Merton’s mouth set in a bitter line. “I saved him for some white punk to put a bullet in two years later, that’s all. And what did it cost? Miss Harmony died, took a lot of light out of the South Side when that baseball hit her in the eye. Steve-Kimathi, he calls himself now-they rearranged his privates and his brain for him. And they killed my man Lamont. That’s a high price my homeys paid for one little shove of my arm.”

“Your daughter might like to know,” I ventured.

The anger that was always smoldering behind his eyes lightened slightly. “Yeah, take the tale to Dayo. Let her know-how did you put it?-I ‘had my moments,’ too.”

Against all protocol, I leaned across the table and squeezed his hand where the tongue of the snake licked his knuckles.

When I got back to the city, I took the story to Bobby. But he said he had enough going on without digging under a building on Stony Island looking for one more dead gangbanger. “Even if Lamont Gadsden’s there, even if we find him, what am I going to do about it? It’ll be Merton’s word against Dornick’s, and even if for one day out of my entire forty years on the force I am willing to believe a gang scum over a cop, I’d never sell the state’s attorney on it. Dornick has plenty on his plate. Let it ride, Vicki. Let it ride.”