“So what happens then is the first assistant director or the on-set producer calls you over and quietly hands you an envelope with forty thousand dollars of cash in it and asks you to take care of it. And you go over to the poor bastard, make an assessment that, surprise, the injuries actually are fatal after all, and pop one into their skull. The stunt person shows up at home, neck unbroken, gets on a plane to Chicago six hours later and everyone’s back to work the next day.”

“And you’re forty thousand dollars richer.”

“And with a clear conscience because honestly it’s better for everyone.”

“Unless it’s that one time out of a thousand.”

“That’s the risk. But then it’s only bad for me and the stunt person. Everyone else is off the hook, liability-wise.”

“This is something that’s happened to you.”

I smiled. “I am offering this strictly as a hypothetical.”

“Give me something less gray now.”

“Another hypothetical, you mean.”

“Call it what you want.”

“All right. Down on the far South Side, we’re talking a couple streets inside the city limits, there’s a restaurant that’s been shut down for years. And every Thursday night, there’s a fight club that goes on in it.”

Langdon smiled. “What, like the movie? ‘The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club’ sort of thing?”

I smiled back. “Not exactly. In this one, the fighters go after each other with hammers and baseball bats.”

“Jesus.”

“And it’s not run by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. It’s run by a pack of hardass motherfuckers who used to run dog fights until they figured out this is safer and more profitable.”

“Okay, but who the hell volunteers to fight like that?”

I looked at Langdon. “Are you from Chicago? I mean, born here.”

“I am, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“Are you from the South Side?”

“Oh, Valdez, tell me you’re not about to get racist on me. My own black self was just beginning to like you.”

“My point is that Chicago is still super-segregated and racist, and there are lots of young men who can’t find work because of it, and you would know it if you were from the South Side. And that there are hardass motherfuckers like the ones who run this fight club who are happy to give these young men fifty bucks a fight to bash each other’s brains in with a hammer, and they’ll take it because what else have they got.”

“Jesus,” Langdon said again, and took a swig of her coffee. “And dispatchers are involved in this shitshow somehow.”