“Like the police, you mean? Or Big Art?” When he didn’t answer I said with what patience I could muster, “Okay. Why did you come here today?”

“I called my mother this morning. I knew my old man would be at a meeting, that I could count on him not being home. The slate-makers, you know.” He smiled unhappily. “With Washington dead, they were all getting together this morning to plan for the election. Dad—Art—might miss a Council meeting, but he wouldn’t stay away from that.

“Anyway, Mother told me about you. About how you’d been around but then you’d almost ended up the same—the same way as Nancy. I couldn’t stay in her place forever, there was hardly any food anyway and I was scared to turn on the lights at night in case someone saw and came into inspect. And if they were going to go after anyone who knew about Nancy and the insurance, I figured I’d better get help or I’d be dead.”

I curbed my impatience as best I could. It was going to be a long afternoon, getting information from him. The questions that were really burning my tongue—about his family—would have to wait until I could pry his story from him.

The first thing I wanted to clear up was his relationship with Nancy. Since he had let himself into her house he couldn’t very well keep denying they’d been lovers. And the story came out, sweet, sad, and stupid.

He and Nancy had met a year before on a community project. She was representing SCRAP, he the alderman’s office. She’d attracted him immediately—he’d always liked older women who had her kind of looks and warmth and he’d wanted to go out with her right away. But she’d put him off with one excuse or another until a few months ago. Then they’d started dating and had rapidly moved to a fullblown affair. He’d been deliriously happy. She was warm, loving—on and on.

“So why didn’t anyone know about it if you were both so happy?” I asked. I could just see it, barely. When he wasn’t shredding himself with misery his incredible beauty made you want to touch him. Maybe it was enough for Nancy, maybe she thought the aesthetics of it compensated for his immaturity. She might have been cold-blooded enough to want him as a conduit to the alderman’s office, but I didn’t think so.

He shifted uncomfortably. “My dad always raved on so much against SCRAP, I knew he’d hate it if I was dating someone who worked there. He felt they were trying to take over the ward from him, you know, always criticizing things like the broken sidewalks in South Chicago and the unemployment and stuff. It’s not his fault, you know, but when Washington got in charge, you didn’t see a penny going to the white ethnic neighborhoods.”

I opened my mouth to argue the point, then shut it again. South Chicago had begun its demise under the late great Mayor Daley and had been assiduously ignored by Bilandic and Byrne alike. And Art, Sr., had been alderman all that time. But fighting such a war wasn’t going to do me any good this afternoon.