“Have you ever watched someone put electrodes on a man’s balls and run a current through them?” I asked.

He squirmed, and his hand went reflexively to his crotch.

“After a time—and not a very long time—he’ll say anything to get it to stop. Tony watched Larry Alito and George Dornick do this to Steve Sawyer. He tried to get them to stop, and they told him they were doing it for you.”

“I didn’t kill the girl, damn it!” Sweat poured from Peter’s face, although it could have been the hot sun of course. My own face was aching from the sun hitting my burns through the Cubs cap.

“Why did you send Petra out to look for the photos?”

“I didn’t.” He was hoarse. “I didn’t know what she was up to. Rachel was worried about Petey, said she sounded strange, subdued, not like herself, and she stopped calling every day the way she usually did. I thought it was the work on the campaign. Strangwell’s a hard boss. Petey isn’t used to that much discipline or responsibility.”

“Was Strangwell at Marquette Park with you in 1966?”

He shook his head. “Les is a friend of Harvey’s, helped him on the PR side, taught him how to handle congressional hearings, that kind of thing. Harvey was Les’s most important client before the Strangler became a political op, so of course Les moved in to run the kid’s campaign.”

“Dornick?” I prodded. “Was he at Marquette Park with you?”

“Dornick was a cop. He was in the park, but he was holding the line around King. We razzed him about it at—” He stopped, realizing how bad that sounded in today’s context.

“We?” I prodded.

“All of us from the neighborhood,” he muttered.

“Harvey Krumas was there, too?”

“I said all of us from the neighborhood, and that’s all I’m saying.”

“If you didn’t kill Ms. Newsome, why did Tony cave and take evidence when Dornick and Alito threatened to send you to prison?”

“They could manipulate the evidence, Tony knew that.”

“And that Nellie Fox baseball …What was it evidence of?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered unconvincingly.

“That’s what Alito dropped off at my dad’s, isn’t it? The night he said you’d go to prison if Tony didn’t hide it?”

“That baseball didn’t prove one damned thing. George thought he was being so cute—” He cut himself short when he realized how much he was revealing, then continued. “Tony believed me when I swore to him that I never hurt that black girl. Why can’t you cut me the same slack?”