I sat back on my heels. Lamont Gadsden with the Anacondas—no wonder Miss Ella hadn’t approved of her son’s friends. In their day, they’d been as notorious as the El Rukns. Weapons, murder, drugs, prostitution: whatever crime was happening in a broad swatch of the South Side, they could claim credit for it. In my three years with the Public Defender’s Office, maybe thirty percent of my clients had run with the Anacondas. I’d even drawn their chief once, when Johnny Merton couldn’t come up with cash one weekend for his own high-priced mouth.

Merton had been furious that he had to rely on an inexperienced PD. He’d tried to intimidate me into crumpling in his presence. “You the new snake charmer, girl? You don’t have the talent to charm Johnny Merton.”

He’d grown coarser in his insults when I refused to flinch. I was green, but I’d grown up in the steel mills. I might not be willing to sidetrack a judge with my cleavage, but I knew about insults and in timidation. I’d kept my legal pad in front of me, writing down everything Merton said, and when he paused for breath I’d say, “Let me read your comments back to you, Mr. Merton, and you tell me if this is what you want me to present to Judge McManus.”

If Lamont Gadsden had been an Anaconda, anything could have happened to him. They didn’t like members walking away from the gang. Leaving meant you left an ear behind as a token: no one will hear you on the street now when you call for help.

I looked up at Hebert’s unblinking eyes. “What I really am hoping, Pastor, is that you can give me some names, people who knew Lamont, anyone he might have been in touch with after he walked out of Miss Ella’s house in 1967. Or if you know anyone, Ms. Hebert. I’ve been to see Curtis Rivers, and he didn’t have anything to say.”

Again came the gargling sound, and then the words choked out with difficulty. “Dead bury dead.”

“Do you know he’s dead or are you just hoping no one will stir an old pot?” I asked.

He didn’t say anything.

“When did you yourself last see Lamont Gadsden, Pastor?”

He gasped, taking in air. Still without moving his head, he said, “Stopped church. Said hell bound. No heed. Baptized, no listening.”

“Yes, you baptized him. We took him into Christ’s body together, all of us. So how could you say he was hell bound? And why should he talk to you when that was all you would say to him?”

“Drugs. Never listen me, daughter, but drugs. Saw. Know. You, woman, no pants.”