“Billy, I just came from April’s house. While I was there, Freddy Pacheco broke in. He tore the place apart. At first, I thought he was looking for the drawing he’d made for Bron—” I pulled out the paper, now very worn, with a tear along one crease.

“You have that?” Billy cried out. “How did you get it?”

“It was near where your car was wrecked Monday night. What do you know about it?”

“My car was wrecked? How did it happen? Where was it?”

I eyed him narrowly. “At 100th and Ewing. Who was driving it? Marcena?”

“No, because they’d put her—” He clapped a hand over his mouth.

In the silence that followed, I could hear the kitchen clock ticking and a drip from the bathroom sink. I thought irrelevantly that I’d have to remember to tighten the faucet before I left.

“Who put her where, Billy?”

He didn’t speak, and I remembered Rose Dorrado, earlier tonight, telling Julia not to make telling the truth like a trip to the dentist. “All this decay will have to come out, Billy, before I can fix it and make it whole again. Start with your car. You gave it to Bron, right?”

He nodded. “I told Bron he could use it until I needed it again. I even wrote a slip out for him to carry, in case a cop or—or someone accused him of stealing it. But I wanted to go to the warehouse first and get my books, and a few things I’d left in the locker. I didn’t want to work for Grobian anymore, because he had insulted Josie, and he had insulted me by spying on her. That was before I saw he—well, anyway, I told Bron I’d give him the car when I finished all that.”

“You went to see Pat Grobian Sunday afternoon after church? He was at work, then?”

“No, but he lives down in Olympia Fields. I drove down after I talked to you. Pat was still in his underwear, watching football on TV, can you believe that? And he had the nerve to call Josie a—well, a name, I won’t repeat it. We had a fight, an argument, I mean; I don’t hit people. I was already worrying about stuff, and I told him I’d have to take some time off.”

“The stuff you were worrying about—you’d seen it in a fax from Nicaragua? That’s what your aunt Jacqui says.”

“She told you about it? When?” His eyes were wide with disbelief.

“I was out at your grandmother’s house last night. Jacqui didn’t say much, just that you’d misinterpreted something about the Matagalpa plant, but she—”

“She said that?” Billy was almost shouting in anger. “She told that lie right in front of my grandmother? Do you know anything about what’s going on down here?”