Five of the men returned to the bar, but the rest of us crossed the street, an uneasy band, not talking, no one wanting to be the person who confronted Pastor Andrés. We pushed our way into the church, through the sanctuary to the big room in the back where they’d served coffee after the service on Sunday. In one corner, some toddlers were playing with plastic trucks and dolls, or just lying on cushions sucking on bottles. At a deal table near the door, Andrés was sitting with a group of some dozen parishioners, mostly women, hard at work on the Prophet Isaiah.

“What is this?” Andrés demanded. “If you have come for Bible study, Missus Detective, you are welcome, but if you are here to interrupt then you must wait until we are done. The Word of the Lord takes precedence over all human worries.”

“Not all, Roberto,” his coworker said. “Not when it is life and death.”

He switched to Spanish, speaking so fast I could follow only in part. El coche, that was me, then something about Freddy, Diego, the fire, the factory, and pegamento, another word I didn’t understand. Andrés fired something back at him, but the women at the table looked shocked and started speaking, too. Andrés realized he was losing control of his group and shut his Bible.

“We will take a five-minute break,” he announced magisterially in English. “I will talk to this detective in my office. You may come, too, Tomás, doubting Tomás,” he added to the man from the jobsite.

All of the men who had come with me from Cocodrilo followed us through the robing room to the pastor’s study. There were only two chairs in it, besides the seat behind his desk, so the men, and many of the women from the study group, crowded around the doorway.

“Now, Missus Detective, what is all this? Why do you keep harassing me, especially in church?” Andrés said when he had seated himself behind his desk.

“Freddy says you put glue in the locks at Fly the Flag. Is that true?”

“Yes, Roberto, did you do this thing?” Tomás asked.

Andrés looked from Tomás to the group at the door, as if deciding whether to bluff it out, but no one gave him any encouragement. “Frank Zamar was a man who had to choose between what is right and what is easy, and he didn’t always know how to choose wisely,” he said heavily. “After 9/11, he was busy making flags for everyone in the world, and he got a big order from By-Smart. He added a second shift, he bought new machines.”

“Then he lost the work,” one of the men said. “We know all that. My old lady, she one of the people got laid off. Why you go put glue in his doors because he lost his contract?”