“Two-minute warning, Chiefs down by five,” I reported to Mr. Contreras, who rubbed his hands gleefully, anticipating the pot that waited for him back at my apartment.
I heard Morrell’s uneven step as he limped up the hallway to get his laptop and his phone directories. In a couple of minutes, he’d read out addresses to me of all the girls on the team who had phones, including Celine Jackman, although I couldn’t imagine Josie going to April’s archenemy on the team. I sketched out a map of the neighborhood and jotted the addresses onto the grid of streets. The addresses covered over a mile going north to south, but didn’t range more than four blocks east to west, except for April’s father. Benito Dorrado had moved out of South Chicago to the East Side, a relatively stable, marginally more prosperous neighborhood nearby.
It took well over an hour to poke around the streets and alleys near the homes of the girls on my squad. I didn’t feel like rousing any of them to ask after Josie: a late-night visit from the coach, looking for an errant player, would only get everyone on the team completely freaked out. With Mitch next to me on a short leash, I peered into the garages we found—most of the girls lived in the bungalows that dominate the neighborhood, and these often had garages in the alleys behind the houses. In one of the garages, we’d surprised a gang meeting, eight or ten young men whose flat-eyed menace made my skin crawl. They’d thought about jumping us, but Mitch’s low-throated growl made them back away long enough for us to beat a retreat.
At one-thirty, Rose called to see if we’d found any signs of Josie. When I gave her all my negatives, she sighed, but said she guessed she had to go to bed: she had to continue her job search tomorrow, although as heavy as her heart was lying in her chest she knew she wouldn’t make a good impression.
Mr. Contreras and I headed on south, under the legs of the Skyway, to Benito Dorrado’s small frame house on Avenue J. There weren’t any lights on in the bungalow, which was scarcely surprising since it was now after two, but I didn’t feel the same scruples against rousing him as I did for the girls on my team—he was Josie’s father, he could pay attention to some of the dramas of her life. I rang the doorbell urgently for several minutes, and then called him on my cell phone. When the phone had rung tinnily a dozen times or so behind the dark front door, we went around to the back. The single-car garage was empty; neither Benito’s Eldorado nor Billy’s Miata were anywhere in sight. Either he’d moved or he was spending the night with the overpainted puta.
“I think this is where we go home to bed.” I yawned so widely my jaw cracked. “I’m seeing spots instead of street signs, which is not a good time to be driving.”
“You tired this early, doll?” my neighbor grinned. “You often ain’t later than this.”
“Not that you pay any attention, right?” I grinned back.
“No way, doll: I know you don’t like me poking around in your business.”
Usually when I’m out this late, I’m at a club with friends, dancing, exhilarated by music and motion. Sitting in a car, peering anxiously through the windshield, was another story. South Chicago was a hard area to drive in, too: streets dead-end into bits of the old swamp that underlies the city, or into a canal or shipping lane; others bump into the Skyway. I thought I remembered that I could cross west to the expressway at 103rd Street, but I ended up at the Calumet River and had to turn around. On the far side of the river lay the By-Smart warehouse. I wondered if Romeo Czernin was driving for them tonight, if he and Marcena were parked in some schoolyard, making love behind the seats in the cab.
The road was rutted here, and the houses were spaced wide apart. The long stretches in between weren’t really vacant: old beds, tires, and rusted-out car frames poked out of heaps of rotting marsh grasses and dead trees. A couple of rats crossed the road in front of me and slid into the ditch on my left; Mitch began whimpering and turning in the narrow backseat—he’d seen them, too, and was sure he could catch them if I’d just turn him loose.
I flexed my cramped shoulder muscles and opened my window to get some fresh air on my face. Mr. Contreras tutted in concern and turned on the radio, hoping the noise would keep me alert. I turned north again, on a street that should get me to an access road for the expressway.
The temperature was hovering just above freezing, WBBM reported, and the expressways were all moving freely—clearly, two in the morning was the time to drive in Chicago. Stock markets had opened sluggishly in London and Frankfurt. The Chiefs had rallied after the two-minute warning, but still fell short by eight points.
“So you beat the spread, cookie,” Mr. Contreras consoled me. “That means you only owe me seven bucks more, two for the third-quarter score, one for the total number of sacks by New England, one for—”