I stared at him, rocked, the way one always is at such monumental lies. Freeman shook his head warningly: Don’t attack him in here. Leave that to me.

“So Harvey had a shot at Dr. King,” I went back to the main story. “He threw the ball. Only Johnny Merton, standing next to King, pushed King’s head out of the way.”

I reached for the photo book and flipped through it to show the Hammer’s arm pushing King’s head out of the way. “Your ball hit Harmony Newsome and killed her, Mr. Krumas. And George helped you out … because you all grew up together on Fifty-sixth Place.”

“George had to put on his riot gear and be Mr. Cop, turn against his own, but he knew where his loyalties lay,” Peter said. “With us, with the neighborhood we were fighting to preserve. Have you been down there? Have you seen what those people did to our house? Ma looked after that place—”

“It’s very hard, Mr. Warshawski,” Detective Finchley said smoothly. “Very hard for everyone who lived through that time.”

It hadn’t even registered with Peter that there were black police officers in the room—not just Terry Finchley but three uniformed officers as well. My uncle’s face turned the dull mahogany of embarrassment, and Petra’s pale skin blazed crimson under its caking of mud. I felt pretty shame-filled myself.

“And George knew where his true loyalties lay,” I prompted. “Not with the city he’d sworn to serve and protect but with his homeys, with Harvey, whose daddy owned Ashland Meats, and with you, Peter. His high school buddies. George wasn’t far away when Harvey threw that baseball. He saw what happened.”

Bobby was still looking at a place over my head, but he nodded in my direction. So I went on.

“George sent Larry Alito into the middle of the marchers to pick up the ball. Alito turned himself inside out with excitement, a rookie getting to play with the big boys. He did what he was told, and George saw he got a promotion right away. Rookie to junior detective, no questions asked. Alito took to the job like the proverbial duck.

“When the heat came down from the Mayor’s Office to arrest someone for Ms. Newsome’s murder and George decided one of the Anacondas could carry the can for Harvey, Larry was the eager boy who attached electrodes to the suspect’s testicles and ran a current through them until he fell apart and confessed to anything the detectives wanted him to say.”

Petra gasped in shock and turned to stare at Peter. Peter looked at the table in front of him. Detective Finchley was making an effort to control himself. I saw the pulse throbbing in his left temple.