I answered in kind, but when I looked at my trousers I saw to my annoyance that I’d torn them sliding under the back gate. For a month that wasn’t generating much income, I was sure racking up a lot of overhead.

“You knew Bron Czernin, didn’t you?” I changed the subject, not very skillfully, but I wanted to get in a talk before Grobian came out. “I’m afraid I’m the person who found him yesterday morning.”

“Hell of a thing,” the handlebar mustache said, “although Bron shaved close to the skin. I’m kind of surprised no one went after him before.”

“How so?” I asked.

“I heard that English woman was with him, the one he was driving around town with.”

I nodded assent. I shouldn’t have felt surprised that the men knew about Marcena—theirs was a small community in its own way. If Bron had been showing Marcena his routes and showing her off to his accounts, everyone who knew him would know about her. I could picture them alone in their cabs needing to pass the time, calling each other and spreading all the gossip.

“About fifteen husbands down here coulda taken him out anytime over the last ten years—the English broad wasn’t the only piece of ta—well, you know, friend, he kept tucked in that cab of his. Against the law, of course, and against company policy, but—” He shrugged expressively.

“Was he seeing anyone else? Marcena doesn’t have an angry husband who’d go after Romeo—Bron, I mean.” I thought uneasily about Morrell, but that was ridiculous—even if I could picture him mad enough to beat up a man over a woman, even if I could picture him doing it over Marcena, I couldn’t picture him doing it with his bad leg.

The men made a few suggestive comments about some of their acquaintances, but they agreed in the end that Marcena was Romeo’s first fling in almost a year. “His girl was getting upset, all the harassing the kids in school gave her. Finally, he promised the missus he’d stop, but, what I hear, this English pus—English lady, she was so classy and so exotic, he couldn’t resist.”

I remembered young Mr. William’s eagerness to find out who was squiring Marcena around the South Side. “Did Grobian know about her?”

“Probably not,” put in the handlebar mustache. “Bron wouldn’t’ve still been driving if Pat knew.”

“Figured that was what that Mexican punk was talking to Bron about,” the Harley jacket said.

My heart skipped a beat. “What Mexican punk?”