SORROW’S ANTHEM
Also by Michael Koryta
Tonight I Said Goodbye
SORROW’S
ANTHEM
MICHAEL KORYTA
Copyright © 2006 by Michael Koryta. All rights reserved.
To my parents, Jim and Cheryl Koryta, with love and gratitude
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My editor, Peter Wolverton, deserves the foremost thanks, as he remained confident that there was a book somewhere in the initial mess, and gave me the time and guidance I needed to see it through. Working with Pete and my agent, the supportive and insightful David Hale Smith, is truly a pleasure. Thomas Dunne, John Cunningham, and the rest of the team at St. Martin’s Press are exceptional in every facet.
My early readers—Bob Hammel, Laura Lane, and Janice Rickert—were outstanding, and greatly appreciated.
My uncle, Kevin Marsh, of the Cleveland Metroparks Rangers, provided insight into his department and the Cleveland law enforcement community in general. He should not, however, be blamed for any errors made or liberties taken by this writer.
Thanks also to Don Johnson of Trace Investigations, and to Stewart Moon, Donita Hadley, and the rest of the Herald-Times gang.
During the year surrounding publication of my first book, a number of writers whom I greatly admire went out of their way to offer advice, encouragement, and support. Such opportunities were without question the highlight of the first-book experience for me, and I am greatly indebted to all of you.
As always, my family is the most appreciated, and I need to offer a special note of thanks to my father, Jim Koryta, a Clark Avenue original who made the near west side of Cleveland a place of stories for me when I was young. It appears to have had a lasting effect.
PART ONE
MEMORY BLEEDING
CHAPTER 1
I heard the sirens, but paid them no mind. They were near, and they were loud, but this was the west side of Cleveland, and while there were many worse places in the world, it was also not the type of neighborhood where a police siren made you do a double take.
“You ready, West Tech?” Amy Ambrose asked, taking a shot from the free throw line that caught nothing but the old chain net as it fell. Out here the nets were chain, not cord, and while they could lacerate your hand on a rebound attempt, they sounded awfully satisfying when a shot fell through, a jingle of success like a winning pull on a slot machine.
“Of course I’m ready,” I answered, trying to match her shot but clanging it off the rim instead. This didn’t bode well. Amy had been challenging me to a game of horse all week, and I was distressed to find she could actually shoot. I’d played basketball for West Tech in the last years of the school, before the old building was shut down, but it had been several months since I’d even taken a shot. Amy had become a basketball fan in recent years, more inspired than ever since LeBron James had arrived in Cleveland, and I had a bad feeling that I was about to become the latest victim of her new hobby.
“I hope you’ve got a better touch than that when you actually need it,” Amy said of my errant effort.
“I was always more of a point guard in high school,” I said. “You know, a distributor.”
“So you couldn’t shoot,” Amy said, hitting another shot, this one from the baseline. She pointed at her feet. “You’ve got to make it from here.”
I missed. Amy grinned.
“You’ve got an ‘H’ already, stud. Looks like this will be a short one.” She was about to release her next shot when her cell phone rang with a shrill, hideous rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth. She missed the shot wide, then turned to me with a frown. “Doesn’t count. The cell phone distracted me.”
“It counts,” I answered. “You ask me, you should be penalized a letter just for having that ring on your phone.”
She let the phone go unanswered. I took a shot from the three-point line and made it. Amy missed, and we were tied at “H.” Her phone rang again, turning the heads of a few of the kids who were hanging out at the opposite end of the court. We were playing at an elementary school not far from my apartment.
“I’m not losing to you, Lincoln,” Amy said as I hit another shot. She continued to ignore the phone, which was on the ground behind the basket, and eventually it silenced. After a long moment of focusing, she took the shot and made it, forcing me to try again.
We traded makes for a few minutes, and then Amy pulled ahead by a letter. We were both beginning to sweat now as we moved around the court, the mugginess of the August day not fading as fast as the sun. Amy looked like a teenager in her shorts and T-shirt, with her curly hair pulled back into a ponytail. A couple of boys who were maybe sixteen went past on skateboards and gave her a long, approving stare.
“Your shot,” Amy said after she finally missed one. “Make it interesting, would you?”
I dribbled left and came back to the right, pivoted, and fired a pretty fadeaway jump shot that caught the side of the backboard and sailed out of bounds, a Michael Jordan move with Lincoln Perry results.
“That was embarrassing even to watch,” Amy said.
“I won seven games with that move in high school, smart-ass.”
“Really?”
“No.”
Her phone began to ring again. I groaned.
“Just answer the damn thing or turn it off, Ace.”
“Okay.” She tossed the ball back to me and walked over to pick up the phone. While she talked, I stepped outside the three-point line and put up a few more long shots, missing more than I hit.
Amy hung up and walked back onto the court. She stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes distant.
“What’s up?” I said, dribbling the ball idly with one hand.
“It was my editor. Big story breaking. He wanted to know if I had a good source with the fire department.”
“Oh?”
“Involves your old neighborhood,” she said. “Any chance you want to ride down there with me and do some reporting? Maybe you could hook me up with a good source or two.”
I smiled. “You’re way too suburban to be hanging out in my old neighborhood, Ace.”
“Shut up.” Amy likes to think of herself as tough and street-savvy, and she hates it when I hassle her about her childhood in Parma, a middle-class suburb south of the city. I was west side all the way.
“What’s the story?” I took another jump shot and hit it.
“Murder.”
“That does sound like the old neighborhood.” I retrieved the ball and dribbled back to the top of the key, my back to Amy.
“Some guy set fire to a house down on Train Avenue with a woman inside. Dumbass was caught on tape, though. A liquor-store surveillance camera from across the street, I guess. When the cops went to arrest him this evening, he fought them and got away.”
“Remember the sirens we heard earlier?” I said.
“That could’ve been the reason for them. Guy who set the fire lives up on Clark Avenue. I thought you grew up off Clark.”