“It might be evidence. In which case, fondling it might delete any other prints on it.”
“I should have thought of that. Dang—I’ve had it in my coat all day.” I should give it to Conrad, for his bomb and arson team. But Conrad had been rude to me. On Monday, I’d send it to a private forensics lab I work with.
As we lay in the dark, Morrell asked if I really knew where Billy was.
“No-o, but Grobian—he’s the manager at the By-Smart warehouse down on 103rd—if Grobian really saw him with a Mexican girl, I figure it’s someone Billy met at Mt. Ararat—he sings in the choir there. So maybe I’ll go down to church in the morning.”
21
Loose Buffalo in Church
A dozen children in white and navy—skirts for the girls, trousers for the boys—were doing a synchronized dance in the aisle when I slipped into Mt. Ararat the next morning. According to the notice board out front, church started officially at ten. It was about eleven now. I’d come late on purpose, hoping things would be nearing an end; instead, the service seemed to be barely under way.
I’d driven Morrell back to his own place in Evanston before coming down—he said he’d stayed in Chicago with me because he thought I was going to be laid up with my wounded shoulder, not for the pleasure of holing up with Mr. Contreras and the dogs. I understood his point, but I still felt forlorn; I dropped him at his door without going inside. If Marcena was curled up in front of the television, so be it.
As I drove south, it began to snow. By the time I reached the church, a thin dusting covered the ground. Thanksgiving was two weeks away. The year was drawing to a close, the sky pressing down as if urging me to lie flat and sleep the winter away. I parked on Ninety-first Street and hurried into the church—I’d decided Mt. Ararat deserved a skirt, or expected a skirt, and the cold air whipped through my panty hose and up my thighs.
I stopped inside the front door to get my bearings. The building was hot, with a bewildering barrage of sound and motion. The dancing children weren’t the only people in the aisles, just the only ones doing something organized—as I watched, people would jump up into the aisles with a hand held up in the air, and stand for a time before returning to the pew.
The children were wearing long-sleeved T-shirts with red tongues of fire on the fronts, and the legend “Mt. Ararat Troop Marching for Jesus” on the backs. They were doing a routine involving kicking, clapping, and stomping, with more spirit than skill, but the congregation was applauding them and shouting encouragement. An electric band accompanied them, harmonium and guitar with drums.
The choir director, an imposing woman in a scarlet robe, was singing, moving with an electric energy of her own. She moved between the congregation and the front lip of a raised platform where the choir and the ministers shared space with the band. Both she and the band were miked up so high I couldn’t make out any of her words, let alone what language she was singing in.
Behind her, wood armchairs were arranged in two semi-circles. In the middle one sat Pastor Andrés, wearing navy robes with a pale blue stole. Five other men were ranged around him, including one very old man whose bald head bobbed uncertainly on a thin neck, like a large sunflower on a stalk too thin to support it.
The choir stood behind the men in two densely packed rows, singing along with the choir director, slapping tambourines and twirling around as the spirit moved them. There was so much twirling and arm waving, it was hard to pick out individual faces.
I finally spotted Billy in the back row. He was mostly blocked from view, partly by a tangle of electric cable that snaked between the mikes in front of the minister and the band, partly by a massive woman in front of him who moved with such fervor that he only appeared at intervals—kind of like the moon popping out from behind a heavy cloud. What made him most noticeable was that he was the one chorister to stand still.
Josie I recognized more easily, since she was at the far end of the front row of the choir. Her thin face was alight, and she shook her tambourine with an abandon she never showed on the basketball court.
I scanned the choir, and then the congregation, looking for other members of my team. The only one I saw was Sancia, my center, near the back of the church, with her two babies, her mother, and her sisters. Sancia was staring vacantly in front of her—I didn’t think she’d noticed me.
When I took a seat in a pew partway up the right side, a trim woman in a black suit turned to clasp my hand and welcome me. Another woman bustled up from the back to hand me a program and an offering envelope, and also to say how welcome I was.
“Your first time here, sister?” she asked in a heavy Spanish accent.
I nodded, adding my name. “I coach basketball at Bertha Palmer. Some of the girls on the team come here.”