Say what you will about today’s children—all those crime shows they watch make them understand the double–cross young. “Something like that.”

“You don’t know how tough Mom is. If she wanted Nicola gone, phht, out the door she’d go. No, Nicola took it all right.” He frowned. “She sold it at a place near where she lived. When Mom raised the roof and called the cops and everything, the Chicago police found it at this—some kind of jewelry resale shop.”

“Pawnshop,” I suggested.

“Yeah, that’s what it was. Pawnshop. And the man from the pawnshop picked out Nicola from a photograph. And I remember Dad saying”—here he flushed painfully again—”’Stupid spick only got twelve hundred dollars for a fifty–thousand–dollar necklace.’“

“Do you know why she stole the necklace to begin with?”

“Her little girl had asthma and it got real bad, she had to go to the hospital, only Nicola couldn’t pay the bill, I guess. I heard her asking Mom for a loan, and, well, it was thousands of dollars, I guess Mom couldn’t possibly loan her that much money, it would be years before Nicola could pay it off. I gave her five hundred dollars—the money I’ve saved from my grandparents’ birthday checks—only then somehow Dad found out, he stopped the checks, that was when he and Mom made me—”

He pulled at his T–shirt, so that the Space Berets stern faces distorted into sneers; when he spoke again it was in such a rapid monotone I could barely make out the words. “They made me go to this camp for fat kids where you had to run all day and only eat carrots for dinner, and by the time that was over, Nicola was arrested and on trial and everything. I never saw her again. I thought if she ran away from jai … only now she’s dead. Who killed her? Did you tell Mom she got kicked to death?”

If I’d known this sensitive boy was listening I wouldn’t have been so graphic with Eleanor. “The doctor who tried to save her life at the hospital said he thought she’d been punched or kicked, but no one knows who did it. I’m hoping I can find that out. Did she ever talk to you about any of the people in her life, anyone she was afraid of, or owed money to?”

“It’s only that she was—she wasn’t very big and she was afraid of people hitting her; once she thought Mom was mad enough to throw something at her, she—it was horrible, she was begging her not to hurt her. I wish—” His face crumpled and he began to cry. “Oh, shit, oh, shit, only crybabies cry, oh, stop.”