The practice wasn’t as intense as Monday’s, but the girls did a creditable job. Julia Dorrado came, with María Inés and Betto, who put the baby carrier in the stands and played with his Power Rangers during practice. Julia was out of shape, but I could see why Mary Ann McFarlane was enthusiastic about her game. It wasn’t just the way she moved, but the fact that she could see the whole court, the way players like Larry Bird and M.J. had done. Celine, my gangbanger, was the only other person on the team who really had that gift. Not even Josie and April, both of whom we needed on the squad, had Julia’s sense of timing.
When practice finished, I took them all to Zambrano’s for pizza, even Betto and the baby, but I hustled them through the meal. It was already dark, and I wanted to get down to the underpass where Billy’s Miata had crashed before the streets were completely deserted. I dropped Julia and María Inés at home, with her brother and the baby, but didn’t take the time to see Rose, just sending up a message that Josie and Billy were still deeply hidden.
“I think they’re safe,” I said to Julia. “I think they’re safe because the Bysens are spending a lot of money looking for Billy; if anything bad had happened to him and Josie, they’d have found them by now. Your mom can call me on my cell phone if she wants to talk about it, but I want to look myself in one place I don’t think the detectives searched. Got that?”
“Yeah, okay…Do you think I can still play with the team?”
“You are definitely good enough to play with the team, but you’ve got to get yourself back in school before you can practice again. Can you do that between now and Monday?”
She nodded solemnly and got out of the car. It worried me that she left the baby carrier on the backseat for Betto to deal with, but I couldn’t add a parenting skills class to my current load; I just watched until he and the baby were safely up the walk and inside the house, then turned south, to the underpass where I’d found Billy’s Miata.
Carnifice might have searched this area for William, especially if my hunch was right that he was hot for whatever document Bron had used to threaten the company. Still, South Chicago was my briar patch. I refused to believe that Carnifice would think about it the way I did. The Bysen family was a job for them, not a complicated part of their roots.
The first part of the Skyway is built into an embankment that severs South Chicago—in fact, when it was built it put a lot of little shops and factories I’d grown up with out of business. But as it approaches the Indiana border, the highway rises up on stilts; homeless people build little shelters under them, but mostly commuters and locals use the road as a handy garbage bin. I pulled over to the verge, driving carefully—I didn’t want to puncture a tire down here—and left my lights on, pointing into the thicket of dead branches and discarded appliances.
The bracken showed fresh scarring from where the Miata had plowed into it. It had been three days now, and the area saw a lot of movement, people hiding in the undergrowth or sorting through the debris for salvage, but because of the cold the car tracks were still visible. I was no forensics expert, but it looked to me as though the car had been driven deliberately into the thicket, as if someone wanted to hide it—I couldn’t see any traces of swerving or other signs that the driver (was it Marcena? had it been Bron?) had lost control of the car.
I moved slowly, inspecting every inch of ground as I walked forward. When I got to the end of the broken branches, I got down on my knees—I’d put on old jeans after the basketball practice just for this search.
I was glad of my mittens, as I pushed the undergrowth aside and inspected the area for any trace of—anything. I found a small piece of the front fender, the paint still shiny, unlike the dull, rusted metal all around me. It didn’t mean anything, but I still stuck it into my parka pocket.
Overhead, the traffic was crawling. It was the height of the evening rush, and everyone was creeping out of town to their tidy suburban homes. They were also eating and drinking—which I knew because they tossed out their empty cans and wrappers, which floated down into the garbage underneath. I was almost hit by an empty beer bottle when I started to explore the area to the left of the car’s treadmarks.
I kept picking up stray pieces of paper, hoping that whatever document the Bysens were looking for might have fallen out of the car when it was being dismembered. I kept telling myself that this was futile, a sign of desperation, but I couldn’t stop. Most of what I saw were discarded advertisements, oriental rugs for five dollars, palm readings for ten, which I guess showed we need guarantees about the future more than we need our floors covered, but all kinds of stuff got tossed over the side of the Skyway—bills, letters, even bank statements.