Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem

sorrow’s anthem
by
Michael Koryta

Koryta’s impressive second hard-boiled mystery is a worthy successor to his debut, Tonight I Said Goodbye (2004), an Edgar and Shamus finalist. Cleveland
PI Lincoln Perry, haunted by the circumstances that led to his estrangement from his best friend, Ed Gradduk, clutches at an opportunity for redemption
on learning that Gradduk is a fugitive from the law, suspected of arson and murder. Perry’s hopes of repairing their relationship are dashed after his
childhood confidant dies in an accident. As a result, Perry shifts his mission to clearing the dead man’s name. Perry, aided by his partner, follows a
winding trail of dirty cops and multiple suspicious fires toward the truth. The 22-year-old author, who works for a PI and for an Indiana newspaper, displays
credible insider knowledge of those professions as well as a gift for creating both sympathetic characters and a fast-moving, twisty plot.

Also by Michael Koryta
Tonight I Said Goodbye

THOMAS
DUNNE
BOOKS
ST. MARTIN’S
MINOTAUR
fifi
NEW
YORK

To my parents, Jim and Cheryl Koryta, with love and gratitude

An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

SORROW’S
ANTHEM
. Copyright Š 2006 by Michael Koryta. All rights reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in, enseal artrcks
or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Koryta, Michael.
Sorrow’s anthem / Michael Koryta.p.
cm.
ISBN
0-312-34010-9
BAN
978-0-312-34010-0 . .

First Edition: February 2006
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 Rick-ert—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.”
“That’s right.” I took another shot. “What’s the guy’s name?”
“Ed Gradduk.”
The ball hit hard off the back of the rim and came bouncing
straight at me. I let it sail past without even extending a hand. It
rolled to the far end of the court, but I kept my eyes on Amy.
“Ed Gradduk,” I said.
“That’s how my editor pronounced it. You know him?”
The sun was all the way behind the school now, the court bathed
in shadows. The ball lay still about fifty feet behind us. I walked
across the court, picked it up, and brought it back to Amy. She was
watching me with raised eyebrows.
“You okay?”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Here’s your ball. Listen, I’m sorry, but I need
to leave. Consider it a forfeit if you want. We’ll have a rematch
some other time.”
She took the ball and frowned at me. “Lincoln, what’s the problem?
Do you know this guy?”
I wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand and
looked off, away from the orange sunset and toward the shadows
east of us. Toward Clark Avenue.

“I knew him. And I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go, Ace.”
“Go where?”

“I need to take a walk, Amy.”
She wanted to protest, to ask more questions, but she didn’t. Instead
she stood alone on the basketball court while I walked away.
I went around the school building and out to the street, got inside
my truck, and started the engine. The air conditioner hit me with a
blast of warm air and I switched it off and lowered the windows
instead. It was stuffy and hot in the truck, but the trickle of sweat
sliding down my spine was as cold as lake water.

It’s early summer. I’m twelve years old, as is Edward Nathaniel
Gradduk, my best friend. We are spending this night as we’ve spent
every night so far this summer: playing catch in Ed’s front yard. The
yard is narrow:, as they all are on Clark Avenue, so we begin our game
in the driveway. As the night grows late, though, the house and the trees
block out the remains of the sun, and we move into the front yard to
prolong things. Here, with the glow of the streetlight, we can play all
night if we want to. The ball is difficult to see until it is right on you, but
we’ve decided this is a good practice element, calling for faster reflexes.
By the time we get to high school, we’ll have the best reflexes around, and
from there it will be a short trip to the major leagues. High school, to us,
seems about as real a possibility as the major leagues this summer; a
dreamworld with driver’s licenses and cars and girls with breasts.
''Pete Rose is a worthless piece of shit,” Ed says, whipping the
ball at me with a sidearm motion. “I don’t care how many hits he
has.”
“Damn straight,” I reply, returning the throw. Ed and I are Cleveland
Indians fans, horrible team or not, and if you’re a Cleveland Indians
fan you hate Pete Rose. You hate him because he is a star player
in Cincinnati, a few hours to the south, but more than that, you hate
him because he ran into Ray Fosse at full speed in an All-Star game
more than a decade ago and Ray was never the same after the collision.
Thirty years after the team s last pennant, a player like Ray Fosse
means a lot to Indians fans. He is another bust now, another hope extinguished,
but for this one we get the satisfaction of blaming Pete Rose.
“My dad said he’d like to see Pete Rose come up to Cleveland and go
into one of the bars,” Ed says. “Said he’d get his ass kicked so fast it
wouldn’t even be funny. 'Cept it would be funny, you know? Funnier
than shit.”
Ed has a way of talking just like his old man, which explains the
persistent profanity. My own dad would clock me if he ever heard me
swearing like we do, but when I’m with Ed, it’s safe. Cool, even. A
couple of tough guys.

“Damn straight,” I say again, a tough-guy phrase if ever there was
one. “I wish I could be there to see it.”

“Pete’ll never come to town,’' Ed says. “Doesn’t have the balls.”

Ed lives on Clark Avenue, and I live with my father in a small
house on Frontier Avenue, just south of Clark. Our wanderings carry
us as far east as Fulton Road, and a favorite spot is St. Mary s Cemetery
on West Thirty-eighth. Sometimes EdandI run through the cemetery
at night, telling each other ghost stories that start out seeming corny
but end up making us sprint for home. Ed’s mother is always at home;
my mother has been dead since I was three. I have a framed picture of
her on the table beside my bed. The first time Ed saw it, he frowned and
asked why I had a picture of my mother in my room. I told him she was
dead, flushing with a mix of shame and anger—ashamed that I was
embarrassed to have the picture out, and angry that Ed was challenging
it. He looked at it judiciously, touched the edge of the frame gently
with his finger, and said, “She was real pretty.” From then on, Ed
Gradduk has been my best friend.