“It is pretty darn unreliable to die in the fire that destroys your plant,” I said.

Mr. William glared at me. “Who talked to you, anyway, about his contract with us?”

“I’m a detective, Mr. Bysen. I ask questions and people answer them. Sometimes they even tell me the truth. Speaking of which, you were here Monday afternoon, and so was your son.”

“Billy?”

“You have other sons? I don’t know how you two missed each other. You really didn’t see him?”

William pressed his lips together. “What time was he here?”

“About this same time. Four-thirty, five. I figure you said something to him that made him decide to take off.”

“You figure wrong. If I’d known he was here-damn it, you’d think I was one of the stock clerks, not the CFO of this company. No one tells me one damn thing about what’s going on.”

He pushed open Grobian’s door. “Grobian? Why in hell didn’t you tell me Billy was here Monday afternoon?”

The truckers crowded in front of Grobian’s desk backed away so that William could look directly at the warehouse manager. Grobian was startled, that much was clear from his expression.

“Didn’t see him, Chief. He cleared out his locker, but you already know that. He must have come in just to do that.”

William frowned some more, but decided to let it go at that; he came back out to the hall to resume his attack on me. “Who hired you to look at Fly the Flag’s business? Zamar didn’t leave anything but debts.”

“Now, how do you know that?” I said. “Busy man like you, CFO of America’s fifth-biggest company, and you have time to look into one tiny supplier?”

“Attention to detail makes us successful,” William said stiffly. “Is there any idea of foul play in that fire?”

“Arson always makes one suspect foul play,” I said, equally stiff.

“Arson?” Jacqui managed to widen her dark eyes without wrinkling her forehead. “I heard it was faulty wiring. Who told you arson?”

“Why does it matter to you?” I said. “I thought you had your new supplier hard at work and everything.”

“If someone is setting fires in South Chicago companies, it affects us; we’re the biggest company down here, we could be vulnerable, too.” Mr. William tried to sound stern but only managed peevish. “So I need to know who told you it was arson.”

“Word gets around in a small community,” I said vaguely. “Everyone knows each other. I’d think your pit bulls from Carnifice would have picked up the story. After all, they’re staking out Billy’s pastor; they must have talked to the people he knows.”

“They tried,” Aunt Jacqui started to say at the same time William demanded how I knew Carnifice was watching Andrés.

“Now, that’s easy. Strangers stand out down here. Too many vacant lots, so you know when someone is lurking, and too many people who don’t have jobs, so they spend their days chilling on the streets. What did your guys find out about Billy’s car?”

“By the time we got to it, it had been stripped,” William said shortly. “Tires, radio, even the front seat. Why didn’t you let me know right away you’d found it? I had to learn about that from that black policeman who acts like he’s in charge down there.”

“That would be Commander Rawlings, and he acts like he’s in charge because he is. As for why I didn’t call you, too much was going on for me to think about you-like hiking two miles across the marsh to find your dead driver. Events happened too fast for me to think of calling you.”

“What did you find in the car?” Jacqui asked.

“You wondering if I ran off with Billy’s stock portfolio?” I asked. “He left a couple of books in the trunk. Violence of Love, the one by the murdered archbishop, and”-I shut my eyes, conjuring the titles I’d seen in the dark-“Rich Christians and Poverty, something like that.”

“Oh, yes.” Jacqui rolled her eyes. “Rich Christians in the Age of Hunger. Billy read us so many passages at dinner I had to become anorexic-no decent person could keep eating, according to him, with children dying all over the place. Did you pick up any papers, thinking they might be a stock portfolio?”

I looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Rose Dorrado told me you’d gone through her books, even shaking her Bible so that all her page markers fell out. What did Billy run off with?”

“Nothing that I know of,” William said, looking with annoyance at his sister-in-law. “We were hoping he might have left some kind of clue about his plans. He’d given away his cell phone and his car, which makes him hard to trace. If you know anything about him, Ms.-uh-you would do well to tell me.”

“I know,” I said, bored. “Or I’ll never eat lunch in this town again.”

“Don’t treat it like a joke,” he warned me. “My family has a lot of power in Chicago.”

“And Congress and everywhere else,” I agreed.

He glared at me, but strode down the corridor without answering. Jacqui clicked along next to him in her high heels, her bias-cut skirt swirling around her knees in a very feminine way. I felt acutely aware of my torn trousers and dirty parka.

35 Why, Freddy, What a Surprise!

The truckers didn’t take long with Grobian. When they came back out, the Harley driver gave me a wink and a thumbs-up, which sent me in to see the manager with a lighter heart. Is it such a bad thing to depend on the kindness of strangers?

Grobian was talking on the phone while signing papers. His buzz cut was still at a military length-to keep it like that he had to get it mowed every couple of days, although it was hard to know how the manager of a domain like his found time to fit it in. He was in his shirtsleeves, and I couldn’t help noticing how big his forearms were: a tattoo with the marine logo covered about four hairy inches.

He didn’t really look at me, just waved me to a folding chair while he finished his conversation. My hard hat and torn trousers weren’t as feminine as Jacqui’s fluttering skirt, but they did help me blend in. As I sat, I noticed mud caked on my leather half boots. Not surprising, considering how I had crawled under the fence to get into the warehouse, but annoying all the same.

When Grobian hung up, it was clear I wasn’t who he was expecting, but equally clear that he didn’t remember me.

“V. I. Warshawski,” I said heartily. “I was here two weeks ago, with young Billy.”

His lips tightened: he would have shown me the door, not a chair, if he’d looked at me when I came in. “Oh. The do-gooder. Whatever Billy may tell you, the company doesn’t care about your school day care program.”

“Basketball.”

“What?”

“It’s basketball, not day care, which shows you haven’t really studied the proposal. I’ll send you a new set of numbers.” I clasped my hands on his desk with the saintly smile of a confirmed do-gooder.

“Whatever it is, we’re not supporting it.” He looked at his watch. “You don’t have an appointment. In fact, how did you get in? No one at the front gate phoned-”

“I know. It must be hard for you to stay on top of your schedule with Billy gone. Why did he run away, anyway? He came down here, after-” I suddenly remembered the conversation I’d had with Billy after church on Sunday.

“Oh, of course. You squealed on him to his dad-you reported seeing him with Josie Dorrado, and Billy came here to confront you. You said a few minutes ago that you didn’t see Billy on Monday, so did he confront you on Sunday? You come into the office on Sunday afternoons? Have you told Mr. William about that?”

Grobian shifted in his chair. “I don’t see what that has to do with you.”

“Besides being a do-gooding basketball coach, I’m one of the detectives the family hired to look for Billy. If your conversation with him was the immediate cause of his disappearance, then the family will want to know about it.”

He looked at me narrowly: I might have Mr. William’s ear, or even Buffalo Bill’s-or I might be a con artist. Before he could challenge me, I added, “Mr. William and I just had a little conversation in the hall right now. I’m the detective who found Billy’s Miata the other night, where it had burrowed into the shrubbery underneath the Skyway.”