On the other hand, if Joiner didn’t want to talk to me about the men because of some problem the company was having with them—say a lawsuit—he would have known when I came in on Friday. But the first time I spoke to him he’d obviously never heard of them.

I couldn’t figure it out, but the thought of lawsuits made me realize another place to look for the men. Neither Pankowski nor Ferraro was in the phone book, but the old ward voter registration records might still be around. I turned right on Ninety-fifth Street and headed into East Side.

The ward offices were still in the tidy brick two-flat on Avenue M. A variety of errands may take you to your committeeman’s office, from help with parking tickets to ways of getting on the city payroll. The local cops are in and out a lot what with one thing and another, and even though my dad’s beat had been North Milwaukee Avenue, I’d come here with him more than once. The sign proclaiming Art Jurshak alderman and Freddy Parma ward committeeman, which covered all of the building’s exposed north wall, hadn’t changed. And the storefront next door still housed the insurance agency that had given Art his toehold in the community.

I knocked most of the sludge from my right shoe and put my pumps back on. Brushing my skirt as best I could with a Kleenex, I went into the building. I didn’t recognize any of the men lounging in the first-floor office, but judging from their age and their air of being as one with the furnishings, I thought they probably went back to my childhood.

There were three of them. One, a graying man smoking the fat little cigar that used to be a Democratic pol’s badge of office, was huddled in the sports pages. The other two, one bald-headed, the other with a white Tip O’Neill-style mop, were talking earnestly. Despite their differing hairdos, they looked remarkably alike, their shaved faces red and jowly, their forty extra pounds hanging casually over the belts of their shiny pants.

They glanced sidelong at me when I came in but didn’t say anything: I was a woman and a stranger. If I was from the mayor’s office, it would do me good to cool my heels. If I was anyone else, I couldn’t do anything for them.

The two speakers were going over the rival merits of their pickup trucks, Chevy versus Ford. No one down here buys foreign—bad form with three quarters of the steel industry unemployed.

“Hi,” I said loudly.

They looked up reluctantly. The newspaper reader didn’t stir, but I saw him move the pages expectantly.

I pulled up a rollaway chair. “I’m a lawyer,” I said, taking a business card from my purse. “I’m looking for two men who used to live down here, maybe twenty years ago.”

“You oughta try the police, cookie—this isn’t the lost-and-found,” the bald-headed one said.

The newspaper rattled appreciatively.