At the same time, the Bysens really did have enormous power, more than I could imagine. If you operated a colossus like By-Smart, with its global reach, with annual sales bigger than the GDP of most of the countries in the world, you could get congressmen and immigration officers to do pretty much anything you wanted. Say, Pastor Andrés was here on a green card—the Bysens could probably get that revoked with one phone call. Who knows—if he was naturalized, they might even be able to get his citizenship stripped from him. Perhaps that would take three calls instead of just the one, but it wouldn’t surprise me to hear they’d done it.

I printed ANDRÉS on the next page. I didn’t care much about his ties to Billy, but what did he know about the fire at Fly the Flag? He’d met with Frank Zamar ten days ago, the day I’d surprised the punk in the basement.

That punk. Between April’s heart stopping and watching the factory go up in flames, I’d forgotten the punk. Andrés knew who he was. A chavo banda, whom one saw around stealing from jobsites, Andrés had said, and he’d shooed him away from the street where we’d been talking. Maybe Andrés was just protecting his jobsite, but maybe he knew something more about that chavo.

FIND THE CHAVO, I added, followed by FREDDY?? Did he matter in the scheme of things? Seeing his name next to “Find the chavo” made me wonder if he was that chavo. But a punk, what would he be doing in Andrés’s office, able to overhear Buffalo Bill threaten the pastor? Or, or, or. My brain wasn’t working. Despite the heater, my feet were starting to freeze, and I was feeling a dull throb in my wound. I stuck the notebook back in my bag.

I was putting the car into gear when a midnight blue Miata, with a license plate that read “The Kid 1,” pulled up in front of the Dorrado building. I hadn’t suspected Billy of so much whimsy. I hesitated briefly, then shut off the Mustang’s engine and got out to cross the street.

I leaned over the driver’s door as Billy was starting to extricate himself. “Your car is about a hundred times easier to trace than your phone, Billy, especially with that vanity plate. Even I could track you if I wanted to. It will be child’s play for the big agencies that your dad and your grandfather use. You want them charging in on Josie and her family?”

He turned white. “Are you following me? For them?”

“Nope. I came to see Josie and her mom. And realized you’ve been sleeping here. It’s not a great idea, for lots of reasons, one of which is I don’t want Josie having a baby.”