“Did you vandalize a Brooka?” Basil asked.

“A what?”

“A Brooka sofa. When we opened the store this morning, one of the sofas was … soiled. With a substance.”

“Poop,” Amy added.

Carl blushed. “Look,” he said to Basil. “Can I talk to you privately? Man to man?”

Basil made an “I got this” gesture to his team. “Stay here. I’ll be right back,” he said, and then he took Carl by the arm and steered him a few steps down the Bright and Shining Path.

“Here’s the thing,” Carl explained. “I haven’t been well lately. I don’t totally know what happened last night.”

“Are you on drugs?”

Carl looked distressed. “I get these headaches. I got epilepsy, did I tell you that? Sometimes I black out. And when I wake up, I got dirt on me or glass in my hair. Look at my hands.” He held them out. His fingernails were black. “They were clean when I went to bed last night.”

“You don’t remember anything?” Basil asked.

“I had pills. But I can’t get my prescription filled no more.”

“How long have you been sneaking in here?”

“Please don’t get angry. It’s just a place for me to sleep. And use the john. I’ve never stolen a thing.”

“But you’re breaking stuff,” Basil said. “Mirrors, curtains, glassware—”

“No, never, I swear,” Carl insisted. “I’ve treated this place like I would treat my own home. That’s your motto, isn’t it? A Home for the Everyone? This is my home.”

“No, this is a place of business.”

“I got nowhere else to go,” Carl said. “I tried hiding out in Lowe’s and Ikea but they’ve got much better security. Can’t you guys show a little sympathy?”

He directed this last comment over Basil’s shoulder to Amy, Ruth Anne, Matt, and Trinity, who were all standing right behind Basil.

“My wife’s got my little girl,” Carl continued, “and I can’t visit with her until I’ve got some kind of place to live that’s not a shelter bed. So I took the bus out here to fill out a job application and I was walking around thinking, This place is way better than the shelter, you know? And so I sort of stuck around. You got great prices in the café.”

“You’re a victim of the economy,” Basil said, offering something.

“You can say that again,” Carl agreed.

Amy saw Basil get a shifty, thoughtful look, and she knew he had found his teachable moment. After spending most of the night trying to establish his authority, he was finally going to close the deal.

“I’m afraid this isn’t my decision to make,” Basil said. “Here at Orsk, we’re a team. And as a team, we make our decisions together. That’s called Orsk-Mindedness.”

“It is?” Amy asked.