Tears welled in Mrs. Mohr’s large eyes. She looked past me to Mr. Contreras. “What did he say to you? Or you to him? After he hung up he went back to his den—we turned the old kitchen into a den for him when we put the new one on last winter—and called some people. He wouldn’t tell me what the problem was, just went out and left me and I never saw him again. What did you say to him?”

Despite the air-conditioning, Mr. Contreras was wiping sweat from his neck, but he answered manfully. “Him and me—we were never very close when we was working. He hung with a different crowd, you know how that goes. But I heard from one of the boys that he was giving a lot of money to a charity. I never heard of the outfit, but Vic here has some friends who played the piano or violin or something at one of their benefits. I told him we wanted to come talk to him about it. I don’t know why it got him so upset, and that’s a fact.”

“What did he say to you?” Mrs. Mohr asked painfully.

“He thanked me. Thanked me for calling him in advance, I guess was how he put it. If I’d known … I sure wish I hadn’t made that call.”

“You think he went out to meet someone?” I asked Mrs. Mohr.

She plaited and unplaited her fingers. “I … yes, I guess he must have. He said he was going to Barney’s—that’s a bar, but you can get sandwiches there—that he had to talk to a man and he wouldn’t be eating lunch with me.”

“Is Barney’s where he went when he needed to talk to people privately?”

“Men need a place where they can go and be with other men. You young girls don’t always understand that. But you can’t keep them tied to your apron strings all day long, it doesn’t do your marriage any good. And I know Barney; we grew up together. His father used to own the saloon before him. They’ve been there on the corner of Forty-first and Kedzie for sixty years now. They serve good sandwiches, good corned beef, none of that packaged stuff they sell you at these fast-food places. It was a good place for Eddie to go. He could shoot a little pool too. He always liked that. But I wish I hadn’t let him go today. If I’d kept him here, found out what made him so upset, he wouldn’t have been walking down the street when that car drove by. He’d be with me still.”