“No, of course not. Billy is very responsible. But we’re concerned that he’s too much under the thumb of that Mexican preacher who came up here yesterday, and since you spend a lot of time down in South Chicago we decided you were the best person to make inquiries for us.”

“‘We,’” I repeated. “Is that you and your wife? You and your brothers? You and your dad?”

“I—you ask too many questions. I want you to get to work finding him.”

“I’ll want to talk to your wife,” I said, “so I need her phone number, home, office, cell, I don’t care which.”

This caused more spluttering: I was working for him, his wife was worried enough.

“You don’t need me, you need a tame cop,” I snapped. “You must have fifty or sixty of ’em scattered around the city and suburbs. I’ll tear up the contract and messenger it out to you.”

He gave me his home phone number and told me to report back by noon.

“I have other clients, Mr. Bysen, who’ve been waiting a lot longer than you have for help. If you think your son’s life is in imminent danger, then you need the FBI or the police. Otherwise, I’ll report when I know something.” I really, really hate working for the powerful: they think they’re the boss of the whole world, as we used to say in South Chicago, and that includes being the boss of you.

While I was on the phone with Bysen, Morrell had made me a cappuccino and a pita with hummus and olives. I sat at his desk, eating, while I talked to Bysen’s wife. In a quiet, almost little-girl voice, Annie Lisa Bysen told me nothing: oh, yes, Billy had friends, they were all in the church youth group together, they sometimes went camping together, but never without him talking to her first. No, he didn’t have a girlfriend; she repeated his participation in True Love Waits, and how proud they were of Billy after their experience with their daughter. No, she didn’t know why he hadn’t come home, he hadn’t talked to her, but “my husband” was sure he was with that preacher in South Chicago. They had asked their own pastor, Pastor Larch-mont, to call down to the South Side church, but Larch-mont hadn’t been able to reach anyone yet.