“And you’ve seen the news that my cousin is missing.” I paused again but still got no response.

Rivers picked up the Sun-Times. “Cute blond white girl, of course it’s big news. I’m sure the cops can find some black man to implicate before the day is done.”

The chess players were watching me as if I were some complicated move on their board. I looked up from the handbag at Rivers.

“They already have.”

Rivers turned off the radio. The quiet became absolute. I found a price tag tucked into an outside compartment: five hundred thirty dollars. A bag like this would be triple that at a downtown store. I put it over my shoulder and went to inspect myself in a narrow strip of mirror behind the ropes.

“Johnny.” I continued to study my silhouette.

“Man’s in Stateville. Hard to see how he could be out grabbing white chicks off the street.”

“They figure he still has a lot of friends around town who’d do a favor for him. They’re going to try to pressure him through his daughter.” I turned around, not in a hurry, and leaned against the mirror.

“His daughter?” Rivers frowned. “What can they do to her? What I hear, she may not be proud of him. But she doesn’t pretend she doesn’t know him.”

“I don’t know what they will do, but I’ll tell you what they can do. Plant evidence that she’s trafficking drugs for him. Plant computer files that show she’s dipping into private funds at the law firm where she works.” I fiddled with the opening on the bag, a clever little tongue in hard leather that slipped into a catch.

When the whistle sounded and the loudspeaker announced “Welcome to Chicago,” we all jumped. I had my hand inside my tuck holster; Rivers had his under the counter. A woman parted the ropes, bringing in a pair of high heels that needed new soles. Rivers bantered with her but kept an eye on me.

When the whistle blew as she left, he said, “They hurt Dayo, Johnny will get revenge one way or another. That won’t make him confess to snatching your cousin.”

“Here’s how I see it. Either my cousin is dead or she’s bolted, and they don’t know where she’s run. If she’s dead, if they killed her, first they make Johnny crazy by screwing with his kid and then they get a Stateville snitch to claim he heard Johnny confess to putting a contract out on Petra—on my cousin—because he’s still mad at me for various reasons.”

It was painful to talk casually about Petra in such a way, clinical, detached, as if she were a movie script I was reading. The really hard sentence came next.