“Only two days. We started two days before the fire. The day you came to the factory because of the sabotage, Mr. Zamar called me in, he was very angry because I was bringing a detective to the plant. ‘But the sabotage, Mr. Zamar,’ I said, ‘those rats, the glue, and then some chavo around this morning trying to do something bad again,’ and he said, like this—” She broke off to imitate Zamar sitting with his head buried in his hands, “He said, ‘Rose, I know all about it, a detective, she will only get the plant closed down.’ And then the next day, he came and offered me this job, this supervising job, and he said if I take it it’s five hundred fifty dollars extra a week, if I don’t want it he fires me for bringing you to the factory. Only the pastor, he can’t know. Mr. Zamar knows I go to church, he knows how much my faith means to me, but he knows how much my children mean to me, and he catches me between these two sharp thorns, the thorn of my love for Jesus, the thorn of my family, what am I to do? God help me, I took the work, and then I am truly punished because two days later the plant burns; Mr. Zamar is killed. I only thank God that it happened early, before me and the workers arrived. I thank God for the warning, that He didn’t kill me in the fire on the spot, that I have a chance to repent, but why must my children suffer as well?”

I stared at her in dawning horror. “You mean the pastor set fire to the building because Zamar was running a sweatshop?”

She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t say that. But when he found out about the sweatshop, he was very, very angry.”

Andrés had threatened Zamar that if he sent his business out of Chicago, the pastor would see he had no business left to protect. Was Andrés such a megalomaniac that he thought he really was God on the South Side? My head was reeling, and I couldn’t even find the strength to sit up straight.

I finally went to a smaller question, something I could manage. “Where did the people come from, the ones in the midnight factory?”

“Everywhere, but mostly Guatemala and Mexico. Me, I speak Spanish; I grew up in Waco, but my family was from Mexico, so Mr. Zamar, he knew I could talk to them. But the worst thing, the worst thing is, they owe money to a jefe, and Zamar, he actually turned to a jefe to get workers in his factory. Never did I think I would be doing such a thing, translating for him with that kind of mierda.”