While I waited on the fire trucks, I kept trying the lock. The stabbing in my left shoulder made it hard for me to maneuver the thin wards. I tried to brace them with my left hand, but my whole left side was shaking; I couldn’t hold the picklocks steady.

I hadn’t expected the fire—I hadn’t expected anything when I came here. It was only some pricking of unease—disease—that sent me back to Fly the Flag on my way home. I’d actually made the turn onto Route 41 when I decided to check on the factory. I’d made a U-turn onto Escanaba and zigzagged across the broken streets to South Chicago Avenue. It was six o’clock then, already dark, but I could see a handful of cars in Fly the Flag’s yard when I drove by. There weren’t any pedestrians out, not that there are ever many down here; only a few cars straggled past, beaters, people leaving the few standing factories to head for bars or even home.

I left my Mustang on one of the side streets, hoping it wouldn’t attract any roving punk’s attention. I tucked my cell phone and wallet into my coat pockets, took my picklocks from the glove compartment, and locked my bag in the trunk.

Under cover of the cold November night, I scrambled up the embankment behind the plant, the steep hill that lifts the toll road over the top of the old neighborhood. The roar of traffic on the Skyway above me blocked any sounds I made—including my own squawk when I caught my foot in a discarded tire and tumbled hard to the ground.

From my perch under the expressway I could see the back entrance and the side yard, but not the front of the plant. When the shift ended at seven, I could just make out the shapes of people plodding to the bus stop. A few cars bumped behind them down the potholed drive to the road.

Lights were still on at the north end of the plant. One of the basement windows facing me also showed a pale fluorescent glow. If Frank Zamar were still on the premises, he could be doing something—anything—from checking inventory to planting dead rats in the vents. I wondered if I could find a crate in the rubble that would get me high enough to see into the back. I was halfway down the hillside, searching through the debris, when the window went briefly dark, then burst into fiery life.

I was still struggling to undo the front lock when sirens keened up South Chicago Avenue. Two trucks, a command car, and a phalanx of blue-and-whites screamed into the yard.