“Anyway, I dug through the snow, buried him in the foundation of that place on Stony. No one ever looked in there after the storm. I sat by the newsman every day at three when the early edition hit the stands, looking, but they just built right on top of my boy. They never looked, they never found him. Day three, up comes that shit Alito, merry as can be, acting on a tip that I had drugs on the premises. They had a warrant and they searched high and low, but you’d better believe the crib was clean. I scrubbed that place from window to floor—and more than once, too—and I had Curtis there to watch they didn’t plant nothing. My only joy was knowing they were going crazy, trying to find out what happened to the body. They were pissed as hell that the place was clean, but they finally took off. For months, Alito would stop by, or sometimes Dornick, now and again. But after a while, it all died down … all died down until you came along, nosing into it.”

“When I looked at the pictures, it seemed to me you might have saved Dr. King’s life.” I opened the photo book at the shot that showed the tattooed arm shoving King’s head down.

Merton’s mouth set in a bitter line. “I saved him for some white punk to put a bullet in two years later, that’s all. And what did it cost? Miss Harmony died, took a lot of light out of the South Side when that baseball hit her in the eye. Steve—Kimathi, he calls himself now—they rearranged his privates and his brain for him. And they killed my man Lamont. That’s a high price my homeys paid for one little shove of my arm.”

“Your daughter might like to know,” I ventured.

The anger that was always smoldering behind his eyes lightened slightly. “Yeah, take the tale to Dayo. Let her know—how did you put it?—I ‘had my moments,’ too.”

Against all protocol, I leaned across the table and squeezed his hand where the tongue of the snake licked his knuckles.

When I got back to the city, I took the story to Bobby. But he said he had enough going on without digging under a building on Stony Island looking for one more dead gangbanger. “Even if Lamont Gadsden’s there, even if we find him, what am I going to do about it? It’ll be Merton’s word against Dornick’s, and even if for one day out of my entire forty years on the force I am willing to believe a gang scum over a cop, I’d never sell the state’s attorney on it. Dornick has plenty on his plate. Let it ride, Vicki. Let it ride.”