Free Hardball by Sara Paretsky Page A

entrance was piled with papers. As I walked past, I saw church bulletins mixed with bills and magazines—sort of like my own entryway except for the bulletins. We followed the loud voices to the living room. They came from a television, where a minister was exhorting us to send him money for letting us know how very sinful we are. The light from the screen flickered on the bald head of a man in a wheelchair. He didn’t turn his head when we came in nor move when his daughter took the controls from his fingers and pressed the MUTE button.
    “Daddy, this lady here is the one I told you about, the one Sister Ella and Sister Claudia sent. They want her to find Lamont.”
    I knelt next to the chair and put my hand next to his on the armrest. “I’m V. I. Warshawski, Pastor Hebert. I’m trying to find people who knew Lamont, people who might know what happened to him.”
    A thread of saliva dribbled from the side of his mouth. “ Lamont. Trouble.”
    “He means Lamont was a troubled young man,” Rose said softly.
    “Made.” The pastor mouthed the word with difficulty.
    “Daddy, he didn’t make trouble,” Rose cried. “He had good reason to be angry, when you think of the terrible injustices we suffer.”
    Pastor Hebert tried to speak but only produced a kind of gargling. Finally he choked out the word, “Snake.”
    “Snake?” I repeated doubtfully, wondering if he meant Lamont was a snake in the grass.
    “He didn’t belong to the Anacondas, Daddy! He helped them protect Dr. King!”
    Father and daughter had clearly had this argument many times. His face didn’t move, but her lips were trembling, as if she were six, not sixty, and finding it hard to stand up to an unyielding parent.
    I sat back on my heels. Lamont Gadsden with the Anacondas—no wonder Miss Ella hadn’t approved of her son’s friends. In their day, they’d been as notorious as the El Rukns. Weapons, murder, drugs, prostitution: whatever crime was happening in a broad swatch of the South Side, they could claim credit for it. In my three years with the Public Defender’s Office, maybe thirty percent of my clients had run with the Anacondas. I’d even drawn their chief once, when Johnny Merton couldn’t come up with cash one weekend for his own high-priced mouth.
    Merton had been furious that he had to rely on an inexperienced PD. He’d tried to intimidate me into crumpling in his presence. “You the new snake charmer, girl? You don’t have the talent to charm Johnny Merton.”
    He’d grown coarser in his insults when I refused to flinch. I was green, but I’d grown up in the steel mills. I might not be willing to sidetrack a judge with my cleavage, but I knew about insults and in timidation. I’d kept my legal pad in front of me, writing down everything Merton said, and when he paused for breath I’d say, “Let me read your comments back to you, Mr. Merton, and you tell me if this is what you want me to present to Judge McManus.”
    If Lamont Gadsden had been an Anaconda, anything could have happened to him. They didn’t like members walking away from the gang. Leaving meant you left an ear behind as a token: no one will hear you on the street now when you call for help.
    I looked up at Hebert’s unblinking eyes. “What I really am hoping, Pastor, is that you can give me some names, people who knew Lamont, anyone he might have been in touch with after he walked out of Miss Ella’s house in 1967. Or if you know anyone, Ms. Hebert. I’ve been to see Curtis Rivers, and he didn’t have anything to say.”
    Again came the gargling sound, and then the words choked out with difficulty. “Dead bury dead.”
    “Do you know he’s dead or are you just hoping no one will stir an old pot?” I asked.
    He didn’t say anything.
    “When did you yourself last see Lamont Gadsden, Pastor?”
    He gasped, taking in air. Still without moving his head, he said, “Stopped church. Said hell bound. No heed. Baptized, no listening.”
    “Yes, you