At Western Avenue, Ogden turns northeast, angling past the juvenile detention center. “You are not going there, my friend, if I can help it,” I said to the sleeping boy. He muttered something guttural, probably in Arabic, and shifted in his seat.

I turned north onto Western and drove four miles through the drab hindquarters of the city’s industrial zone. The lights from factories and trucks made it hard to tell whether the night sky was starting to lighten; the air was gray and gritty both day and night around here.

We were also close to the criminal courts and Cook County jail, so there was a heavy squad car presence. I tried to keep my mind on the traffic, not on the possibility that someone might be looking for a borrowed Jaguar’s plates. I breathed easier when I’d moved out of the area.

At North Avenue, I was only two blocks from my office, but I turned west again, into Humboldt Park, where gentrification hasn’t yet touched the Hispanic neighborhoods. If someone was hunting me, they’d have my

office staked out, but I didn’t think anyone would look for me in a Mexican church. I parked on a small side street behind.

It was a job to rouse Benjamin, and a bigger job to make him come with me to a Christian church. “I know what priests doing with boys in church. I know they hurting boys, doing bad things with boys.”

“Not in this church,” I said, pulling him up the walk like a recalcitrant mule. “This is the one building in Chicago that I know where you can be warm, where you can get something to eat and where you can be safe. This priest is a boxer-” I let go of him long enough to mime boxing-“this priest has harbored fugitives. He will look out for you.”

“He will try to turn me from my believing, my-my-” he hunted for a word-“from the truth.”

“No. He won’t do that. He believes in his truth as much as you believe in yours, but he will not disrespect your belief. He doesn’t disrespect my beliefs, which are different again from both yours and his.”

“And Catterine, she cannot see me here, and how can I know she is not shotted? Shot?”

“Catherine will be able to see you here, if it’s safe for both of you-it may not be. This really is the best place for you right now, Benjamin.”

He didn’t believe me, but he was old enough to know when he was out of options. And maybe, too, he figured I’d kept him safe this long, I might be trusted to keep him safe a bit longer. Or maybe he was just so tired he couldn’t fight anything going on around him. Whatever the reason, when Father Lou answered my anxious pushing on the rectory bell, Benjamin stayed at my side.

Father Lou’s T-shirt exposed the formidable muscles in his neck and forearms that he’d developed in his boxing years. His frown as he took in Benjamin’s and my bedraggled appearance made him look like a menacing Popeye. I hoped he didn’t frighten Benjamin into running.