Star-crossed Lovers

The snow had stopped when I got outside. The snows of November are usually light, merely a warning to the city of what lies ahead, and this one had ended with a scant half inch. It was a fine, dry powder, blowing across the walks, disappointing a group of kids in the vacant lot next to me who were trying to turn it into snowballs.

I sat in my car, the engine running and the heater on, and tried to make a few notes while the conversation with the Dorrados was still more or less fresh in my mind, although I was hard put to make sense of anything I’d heard just now.

BILLY, I wrote in block letters in my notebook, and then stared at it, unable to think of anything to add. What was going on with him? When we spoke on Thursday, he told me to tell his father he’d call the company’s shareholders if the family didn’t leave him alone. Was that why Buffalo Bill had come to see me last night? And, if that was the case, what didn’t the Bysens want the shareholders to know? From my perspective, the company did a ton of outrageous things—locking employees in overnight, paying badly, busting unions, leaving families like the Czernins in the lurch when it came to health insurance—but the shareholders must know those things already. What could be so horrible that the shareholders would shy away from it?

I thought back to the prayer meeting out at By-Smart headquarters. The share price had fallen on the rumor that By-Smart was going to allow union organizers. Maybe Billy was just threatening to call and say that was really going to happen. But what would be the “or else”?

Just why had Billy run away from home? Was it because he was in love with Josie, or troubled by his family’s business practices, or ardently committed to the South Side? Certainly he admired Pastor Andrés, but what would make him ally himself with the preacher against his family?

Which brought me to the preacher himself, whom Buffalo Bill had threatened with deportation. Of course, the Buffalo dished out threats like hash at a diner—last night, he’d threatened to get the bank to foreclose on my mortgage and to shut down my business if I didn’t do what he wanted. Maybe it was a form of verbal incontinence—Mildred had kept shutting him up in a nice, deferential way.